Finding Out About NEW RPGs is Easier and Harder Than Ever... #RPGaDAY2017 Day 3

In the before times, in the not now, it was pretty easy to find out about what role playing games were coming down the pipeline. All you had to do was pick up a copy of The Space Gamer, Different Worlds, White Dwarf, The Dragon, or one of a host of magazines dedicated to the role playing game hobby. Some of those magazines predate me as a gamer, but they all covered new game offerings during a portion of their run.

Prior to the existence of these magazines, it was harder to find out about new games. You had to rely on word of mouth and the distribution chain providing advertisements to your local game store. One of the figures who made it easier back in the day, according to Shannon Appelcline's excellent Designers and Dragons, was Lou Zocchi who began including advertisements for games in his own published games. This service led to him becoming one of the first distributors in the hobby. Other than Zocchi though, it was rough going in the early days, but as the industry grew so too did those magazines.

In the early days of the intarwebs, there was a wonderful GO TO location for gaming news called gamingreport.com. It had everything you wanted: press releases of upcoming games, industry insiders leaking the games they were developing, and articles by Kenneth Hite on obscure games. It was a one stop shop for all you needed to know. Sadly, it disappeared for a variety of reasons and since that time we have returned to a digital form of the pre-magazine era in many ways. We are largely reliant on word of mouth and solicitations from distributors to game stores. It seems that we are reliant more and more on our communities for information, much as earlier gamers were reliant on 'zines from their communities.

I know what you might be thinking, "but this is the internet era and there is information EVERYWHERE!" That's exactly the problem. There is information and product solicitation scattered everywhere, almost at random. There are Kickstarter RPGs, there are indie press rpgs that sell at Indie Press Revolution but not on Kickstarter, there are strong independent publishers like Evil Hat Productions who have a core fanbase that keeps up to date with their newsletters, there is io9, Nerdist, and ICV2, but as good as these sites are they are too much shaped by their editorial preferences to cover a wide portion of the industry in a useful way to consumers. ICV2 is more a service for retailers than fans, so its stories tend to have underlying assumptions about knowledge of solicitations.

The fact is that I find out more about upcoming RPGs from the independent blogs I read and my Twitter and Facebook feeds than I do from any other source. There are too many distribution methods Kickstarter, Self-Publish, PDF only (where I find out by just looking at what's new at RPGNow/DriveThruRPG more than from an informative source), traditional hobby store, large retail exclusives, the list goes on and on. There is more information than ever, but it isn't centralized and that makes it challenging for a "broad interest" gamer like me. Were I only interested in games of a particular niche, then my searches and sites would be limited, but my interests range from Apocalypse World to The Zorcerer of Zo, okay bad example because those are both indies...how about...D&D to Apocalypse World to Zombicide to Karthun to the Protocol Series to Swords & Wizardry to Rotten Capes to Hero Games to GURPS? I missed the last Rotten Capes Kickstarter because it appears that I was the only of my friends who knew about it.

We need a service/place to cut through all the noise and get to the signal. We need a new GamingReport.com or a great generalist magazine like Different Worlds or The Space Gamer at their prime, but I don't see one coming unless someone launches a Patreon for one.

The Role Playnig Game I'd Most Like to See Published is... #RPGaDay2017 Day 2

Thanks to great services like Mythoard, I've been able to read a ton of old Judges Guild Journals and issues of Pegasus where there is a lot of early work by RPG Industry legends like Jennell Jaquays. I've also seen some wonderful advertisements for products of the early RPG era. Some of those products were published, but others faded into the ether never to be seen again. I would like to see most of those games published again in some form, and I'd love for most of the fanzine of that era to be scanned and sold by their original publishers on RPGNow, but the one I'd most like to see publication some day is Judges Guild's super hero role playing game. It was to be called Supra-Sentinels.

I wrote about this and a couple of other games back in 2014. At that time, one of the game's original authors said that they were looking into revising and releasing this game. I'd love to see it happen and would be among the first to buy it when it is released.

Over at The Acaeum, one of the original authors gives some clues to what the game would be like and it makes me all the more intrigued to see it:

1.  I'd like to think our game was pretty sophisticated for its time, yet less complicated than what we saw as our main (would have been) competitor CHAMPIONS.   It was a point-building system with dice for determining actions (ie. attacks, defense, etc.)   We'd studied the three or so systems out there around the early '80s and came up with what we thought was a pretty darn good game.   We were starting to worry that CHAMPIONS would eclipse us because it was taking so long for JG to get to the point of being able to afford to publish it.

2.   We were, indeed, very close to being in print.   The game would have been out probably 9 months sooner, had I not moved out of town for a job and my co-authors sort of...didn't do much with it to put the finishing touches on it while I was gone.   By the time I moved back into town and got to work on it again, JG was already getting shaky, financially.   The advertisement got us pretty excited.   Then, they went under just as it was about to go to press.   Took a while to get the manuscript back from them, as it had gotten buried under stuff at their location in Illinois.   (This was about 1982 or 83?)  To get that close to being a published author was one of the single most disappointing moments of my life.    It taught me a good lesson about how we all have them from time to time, though.

What Published RPG I Wish I Was Playing Right Now -- #RPGaDAY 2017 Day 1

For as long as I can remember, I've been a fan of Super Hero role playing games. My entry into this particular gaming milieu was Hero Games' excellent Champions 2nd edition role playing game. I happened upon a copy and was amazed that game designers had even attempted to capture super heroes using game mechanics. At the time, I was only familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, Star Frontiers, Tunnels & Trolls, and Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. I had played all three of those games and their mechanical foundations did not prepare me for what Champions offered.

Unlike the other games with which I was familiar, Champions did not have randomly created characters and instead allowed players to build whatever they could imagine. The only limit to the character you could design was the number of points available at creation (100 points with 150 more possible if you took Disadvantages). Other than that, it was all good. During my initial Champions experience, I didn't have anyone to play the game with and spent all of my time making characters and doing some solo battles. My character builds were heavily influenced by the sample characters in the rule book and thus were typically of 200 total character points (100 and 100 from Disadvantages). This included my personal write ups for the X-Men. I was content with my view of the game, but this view was to be shattered in short order.

A couple of months after I discovered Champions my family moved to a new city, I finally encountered a group of gamers who played the game every weekend. Given that this was the Bay Area, and the game company was a Bay Area company, I soon discovered a rich and vibrant Champions community. I also discovered that how I interpreted character adaptations to the game was very different from others. Some of that difference, I maintain to this day. I personally believe that too many gamers inflate the stats of their favorite characters out of love for the character, rather than an examination of benchmarks and mechanics of the game. But these are things that can only be understood through play, and that was something I had not yet done with Champions. In playing the game, I learned how some combinations worked better than others and I learned that other players were much more likely than I had been to "grab" the "Obvious and Accessible" items some characters used in combat. Not that I designed a lot of those kinds of characters, I didn't, just that I had expected gamers to behave more like the characters in comics than like "tactical gamers" and that the rules treated gamers as tactical gamers while allowing them to behave like characters in comics.

Long story short, I learned that you can only truly judge the quality of a game by playing it. I still love Champions and think it is one of the top 3 or 4 super hero games out there, but my view is now grounded in experience of how the game works and how when some character building norms take over the game can slow down significantly and lose some of its charm.

Eventually, my love of super heroes and super hero games led me to purchase Villains & Vigilantes, Marvel Super Heroes, and DC Heroes, all of which have there charms. At one point in time, not that long ago by some standards, I could claim to own a copy of every super hero rpg published (at least in one of its editions). With the explosion of pdf based publishing, that is no longer the case and I'm sure I'm missing out on some great games, but I also have a HUGE backlog of games I'd like to play...see how I'm pulling this back to the question of the day?

Among that backlog is Jay Harlove and Aimee Karklyn/(Hartlove)'s early Supergame. It wasn't the first super hero rpg published, that was Superhero 44/Superhero 2044, but it was one of the first and predates Champions. Both the first edition and revised edition came out in 1980. I discovered the game as a "real" thing and not just something mentioned in old gaming magazines, when I moved to Los Angeles after graduating from college in 2000. I was looking for gaming stores and found a long standing game store in Long Beach that had a copy of the 1st edition. Later searches on the internet have shown me that I got a significant bargain on it, as I did with copies of Warlock and a couple of other games originally designed by the Southern California gaming community.

Supergame, like Superhero 2044 which predates it and Champions which comes after it, has a point based character creation system. It also has an interesting skill and combat system that I think has a lot of potential. Some of the stats are odd in how they are presented. For example, if a character has an Agony score (similar to Stun for Champions fans) of 10 or more they suffer no penalties to how they move or act. Given that scores start at 0, and that some sample characters have 0s in other stats implying that a score of 0 is sometimes the "average" score, it seems odd that a person has to spend points just to be a normal person in some areas and not others. Why not just have stats start at "average" and let people buy them down later? Or why not have Agony start at 0 with no penalties and allow negative scores to cause impairment? It's a small complaint, and there are a number of neat features like different defenses against different types of attack (pre-Champions remember). A thorough reading of the rules, both editions, and the supplements has convinced me that I need to play this game to evaluate whether the designed characters are effective at all in a way that would be fun. There are far more characters who have an Agony of 10, or a Physical (like Hit Points but with those with less than 10 being hurt), which means that if they suffer just 1 point of damage they will be impaired.

 I think there is a very good game buried in the Supergame rule books, but I think it is a game that needs a lot of play testing and rules tweaks to bring out that game. I applaud Jay an Aimee for their hard work on the game and their ability to get a game like this published in 1980, and this is definitely a game I wish I was playing right now. I have so many questions I'd like answered and I'd love to house rule this game into a more complete system.

The Black Company is Excellent Military Fantasy

The Black Company by Glen Cook
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Glen Cook's first entry in the Black Company series is an interesting combination of originality and trope that bridges the gap between epic fantasy and sword and sorcery. This volume tells the tale of the Black Company from the point of view of Croaker, the Company's surgeon/medic, as they begin their employment under a mysterious figure known as The Lady. While high magic abounds in the world of The Black Company, and happens in the vicinity of the Company, it is not the focus of the story. The main narrative focuses on the skirmishes, battles, and scouting and assassination missions that the Company engages in during a revolution against The Lady.

Descriptions of events are sparse and most character names are nicknames like The Lady, Croaker, One-Eye, Raven, The Captain, The Limper, Darling, Soulcatcher, etc. It is rare that an actual name is used, even in the case of locations in the book. This gives the reader a feeling that they are reading a translation of a text written in another language where the author has translated names into the new language, or a feeling of narrative distance that one gets when reading a history rather than a story.

Cook borrows strongly from existing fantasy literature, both high and low. The Lady can manifest "The Eye" in a manner that echoes Sauron in Tolkien. The grim and gritty battles echo the writings of Robert Howard and the first assassination mission echoes a Fritz Leiber tale of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. While the narrative tapestry borrows from a myriad of earlier literature, with Dark Lords and Prophesied Saviors and all, the end result is highly original. It's a fun read, and Croaker's voice comes through as experienced but not jaded. Some of the best details are focused on the "hurry up and wait" culture of the military, details that add greatly to the realism of the book.

View all my reviews

Back in the d20 era, Green Ronin published an excellent sourcebook for the series. I'd love to see an updated version for the AGE system...which I think might fit the setting better than d20 did. 

From a Gaming Perspective the MY LITTLE PONY MOVIE Adds a Lot of Material

The My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic franchise is moving from the small screen to the big screen on October 6th and as a gamer dad I could not be more excited. A quick glimpse at the new film poster the production released for #SDCC gives one hint why. The Mane Six and Spike don't have aquatic features just because it's cute, they have them because the new movie is adding new mythological creatures to the Pony-verse. A look at the film's trailer gives even more context to the additions. Give it a quick view.

Earlier this year, River Horse publishing published an excellent role playing game based on the My Little Pony IP. In that game, players can make characters based on the three types of ponies that are featured in the series: Earth Ponies, Pegasi, and Unicorns. The Alicorn, a combination of Pegasus and Unicorn, is mentioned in the role playing game, but is not allowable in play. Just based on the trailer of the film, I see two things that I want to bring into my roleplaying games. The first is a new kind of pony, called "Sea Ponies," are featured in the book Under the Sparkling Sea. The second is the existence of a Unicorn with a broken horn, which inspires the question of "what happens when a Unicorn breaks its horn?"

Given my daughters' love of the Percy Jackson books, I'm particularly excited about Sea Ponies. Of all the characters and creatures of the Percy Jackson-verse, the hippocampus Rainbow was their absolute favorite. Now hippocampoi are cemented as a type of pony. If River Horse, who given the company's name should, doesn't publish guidelines and traits for hippocampoi in the next couple of weeks, I'll be posting some here, but I'll have to read Under the Sparkling Sea first in order to see what traits need to be created. The great thing about the My Little Pony RPG is that the the system is very adaptable while also being easy to learn and run.

In fact, I'm going to commit to it. I'm also going to stat up some Savage Worlds versions of the Mane Six based on the way they are defined in the River Horse game. Given the similarities between the systems, it will not only be easy but fun as well.

Derek Yee's SWORD MASTER is a Beautiful Film in Sonata Form

The wuxia pian is a cinematic genre that wanders in and out of favor among the theater going public, but it is one of the most aesthetically beautiful and emotionally moving genres in film. While there are some basic similarities between wuxia and kung fu films, both often feature wandering warriors, the differences far outweigh the similarities. Chief among these differences is the symphonic nature of wuxia narratives. Where kung fu films tell a story with a central them from beginning to end with all the intervening expository scenes necessary to define the motivations of the characters, the characters in a wuxia pian are the thematic elements. As Stephen Teo writes in Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions about wuxia auteur King Hu, "Hu is the most musical of martial arts directors. He composes his work like a symphonic piece where the recapitulation of a theme is imperative to the enjoyment." The compositional nature of wuxia as a genre is perfectly depicted in Derek Yee's aesthetically beautiful and emotionally powerful 2016 film Sword Master.

Sword Master is a remake of the 1977 Yuen Chor film Death Duel, updated with modern film effects and techniques and directed by Derek Yee who played the role of the lead character in the 1977 production. This is a film where a star performer returns to one of his key roles to direct the film with a new vision. Death Duel was a masterful wuxia film, but Yee's Sword Master has an underlying sorrowful and nostalgic emotional tone that allows it to stand on its own without any real need to be compared to the original save to mention the deeply personal connection the director has with the original film.

On one level Sword Master is a story of how two of the greatest swordsman eventually come to face one another in a fatal duel. How they get there, and their reasons for fighting, are complex. From the opening moments of the film, we know that the skull faced and doomed Yen Shih-San and the legendary Third Master of the Divine Sword Hsieh Shao-Feng must meet in a battle only one will survive. As the film progresses, the audience's emotions range from excitement at the skilled display that awaits to mourning that one of these men must die to accepting that the eventual outcome is not only necessary but beautiful as well. 

Where Sword Master a kung fu film, Yen Shih-San would be pursuing Hsieh Shao-Feng for killing his master or some similar motivation and who the villain and hero is would be cleanly established. That is not the case in this tale told in sonata form, rather than straight forward narrative. 

Following musical compositional stucture, Yen Shih-San represents Death and Swordcraft. From his makeup and music to his character's struggling with an illness of the soul that is killing him as sure as cancer, everything about Yen Shih-San radiates Death. When the film opens Yen Shih-San is on a quest to defeat all of the greatest swordsman in the world in order to secure his legend and to be remembered as the best swordsman of his era. He has forsaken everything in order to attain this end, he has even forsaken his obligation to protect the innocent from those who would oppress them. As a wandering swordsman, he has two obligations. To attain excellence at swordcraft and to defend the innocent. He is only focusing on one of those tasks and this has led to a corruption of his Chi, and his doom. After winning a fight in the opening sequence, he travels to the Divine Sword school in order to challenge their Third Master who is the greatest swordsman of the era. If Yen Shih-San can defeat the Third Master, his journey is complete. Sadly, Yen Shih-San discovers that the Third Master is dead and that everything he has sacrificed is for naught.

Hsieh Shao-Feng represents Humility and Righteousness. When viewers first encounter Hsieh Shao-Feng, he is known only as Ah Chi (or Useless Chi). In Hsieh Shao-Feng's first scene, he spend a night of self destructive excess in which he forsakes all of the material things in life after which he must become the janitor at a brothel in order to pay his debts. Hsieh Shao-Feng has attempted to leave jianghu, the world of martial arts, by forsaking all sense of pride and by abandoning the exercise of martial prowess. We do not know why Hsieh Shao-Feng has chosen this path, we only know that he would rather be beaten near to death than to harm another person. Where Yen Shih-San has chosen combat over Righteousness and Humility, Hsieh Shao-Feng has forsaken swordcraft for Humility and given that he defends the weak at the first opportunity (even though he does so without fighting) we know he has also focused on serving the innocent. 

Each of our warriors is half of a whole. Each represents half of what a swordsman must be. Each leaves the world of martial arts, jianhu, behind at the end of the first act. But one can never leave the world of martial arts, to do so is to be destroyed and to watch those you love suffer. Such are the stakes, and so our two themes must interact in a cinematic equivalent to a developmental section and arrive at a recapitulation of the themes where they are resolved into a single theme and a warrior is made whole.

In order to accomplish this monumental task, there must be an external threat of sufficient scale to bring our heroes back into the world of martial arts and such a threat exists. With the death of the Third Master, the Divine Sword school can no longer keep its place at the top of the martial world. It can no longer protect the weak from the excesses of champions of evil who seek to spread suffering. A new school has risen to challenge the Divine Sword and to spread misery. This school provides the basis for one of multiple relationship triangles in the film. The triangle triangles of conflict include one between our two heroes and the new evil subjugating the masses, a love triangle between Hsieh Shao-Feng, his former fiancee/bride, and his true love, another love triangle between Hsieh Shao-Feng, an admirer of his fiancee, and his fiancee, a triangle representing the struggle between good and evil that contains Hsieh Shao-Feng, Yen Shih-San, and Shao-Feng's father, and another, and another, and another. There are relationship triangles to spare in this film and they each interact in ways that reveal the underlying motivations of the characters.

There is much to write about regarding the intertwining of relationships in Sword Master, but it is much better to watch the interactions of the relationships as they resolve. For in their resolution we unravel the following mysteries: Why did Hsieh Shao-Feng abandon the Divine Sword school and "kill" the Third Master? Why does the new threat exist? Why did Hsieh Shao-Feng abandon his fiancee and how can he have done so while still being a Righteous man? 

All of these questions are answered in a film that is filmed beautifully with wonderful digital matte paintings that transport the audience out of our world and into the fantastic world of rivers and lakes that is the world of martial arts. The high flying swordsmanship is a joy to watch on the screen as the choreography and camera work combine to create vivid imagery that displays great martial prowess without brutality. One may never be able to leave the world of martial arts, but when watching Sword Master one finds that they don't even want to leave. 

Los Angeles Gamer Gallery: David Nett

In this first entry in the Los Angeles Gamer Gallery series, we'll be taking a quick look at David Nett. He is a gamer, actor, webseries producer/writer/director, one of the founders of Nerdstrong Gym, and a tremendous advocate for the role playing game hobby. David came to Los Angeles after attending the University of Minnesota at Duluth in order to pursue a career in acting.

I first became aware of David Nett when he and his production company put together an interesting webseries entitled GOLD. The series was about a professional role playing gamer who suffered an injury during a championship match that left him emotionally scarred and unable to effectively lead the U.S. team in international competition. His story takes place at a time when viewers are abandoning watching live games in favor of computer based competitions surrounding MMORPGs. At the time, I thought the story seemed far fetched. Who would watch live role playing game sessions? Other than me that is. In the years since, David seems to have been on to something. While online Game Streams aren't competitive in nature, they can be quite sophisticated and very entertaining.

GOLD: Episode 1 (HD) from David Nett on Vimeo.

Where the first season/series of GOLD displays all of the rough edges one expects from an early project, and a significant amount of what I call pilotitis, the second season is a very entertaining and far more personal tale. That series, entitled Night of the Zombie King, doesn't appear to be available for streaming right now, but it is well worth tracking down a copy. Where the first season of GOLD tried to simulate a world with professional gaming on a large scale, this season brings it down to the individual level and tells the tale of a gamer coming home to finish a campaign left unfinished when he moved away from his small town to a larger community. It's a tale of returning to old friends and reliving fond memories while overcoming past wrongs. It's very good and deserves to be expanded into something more.

David recently stopped by Geek & Sundry's GM TIPS show with Satine Phoenix where they discuss what to do when your stories get derailed.

From his acting and directing career, to his work at Nerdstrong Gym, David has found a way to incorporate his gaming experiences into his work and creative endeavors. This is a common theme in the Southern California gaming community, and one of the things I love about it. The gamers I've met down here are about expanding the hobby and using what they've learned in the hobby to make them better at everything else they do. When my friends and I were working on the pre-production of our failed documentary about the "gamers hidden among us" called Dice Chuckers, David was one of the people we wanted to have as our principle interviewees.

Los Angeles Gamer Gallery: A New Series at Advanced Dungeons and Parenting

Los Angeles Gamer Gallery is a series of posts discussing the Los Angeles gaming community and some of the wonderful people who play and promote games in Tinseltown and abroad.

Why the Los Angeles Area?


Though the Los Angeles area has long been a vibrant part of the role playing game community, it is often overlooked in histories of the hobby. In my experience the Midwest and Bay Area tend to dominate histories and discussions of the people involved in the promotion of the hobby, because TSR and Chaosium. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I took a few days to drive around the area to seek out game stores and gaming groups. I had expected to find some, but not too many. After all, Los Angeles is a big city with a lot of distractions, beautiful weather, and all sorts of entertainments. Such a place didn't seem to me to be a good growth environment for people who gather around a table to tell collaborative stories. Okay that should read, "to gather around a table to tell collaborative stories without money being involved," as a large part of Los Angeles' economy is based on sitting around tables and coming up with stories collaboratively. I expected hard core gaming to develop in small towns with long winters, where people are looking for constructive things to do with their time that have to take place indoors.

Yes, those were my assumptions. Yes, they are overly reductive and bad assumptions. But I came from a small town with cold winters, and those were my assumptions. What I quickly discovered was that the Los Angeles area had a rich gaming community, one that has been central to several developments in the gaming hobby.

Shortly after the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game was created, members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society began playing the game and writing about it in their long running fanzine APA-L. In 1975, authors of APA-L branched out to create Alarums & Excursions under the editorship of Lee Gold. Alarums & Excursions is one of the most influential, if not THE most influential, fanzine in gaming.

1. It was gamers at Aero Hobbies who created the Thief class for D&D in 1974. 
2. Students at CalTech played a version of the game called Warlock that was published by Balboa Game Company. 
3. John Eric Holmes, a professor at USC, wrote the first Basic Set of D&D and in his book Fantasy Roleplaying Games can be seen playing D&D at Long Beach's War House game store.
4. While Superhero 2044 is the first published superhero role playing game Jay and Aimee Hartlove's Supergame was the first point build superhero rpg that was fully playable out of the book. Like Champions, the Hartlove's work is clearly inspired by Superhero 2044 in how its combat system works.

Southern California influenced the early days of the hobby and remains the home to a vibrant and innovative gaming community to this day. I'll leave discussion of Southern California's place in the history of games to those who already make it their career to document gaming history, what I want to do with the Los Angeles Gamer Gallery is to write short posts that highlight members of the community who inspire or intrigue me.

My first post, which will be posted shortly after this one, will be David Nett. I chose David because he exemplifies the way a lot of Southern California gamers incorporate their gaming experience into their lives in interesting ways.

Madelyn Kidd's Academy for Inquisitive Children: Saturday Morning Investigations in the Deadlands

My recent enjoyment of Saving Throw's recently added Wildcards streaming role playing game show, and the announcement of a Scooby Doo/Supernatural crossover episode on the CW, I was inspired with a small campaign kernel. So join me as I introduce you to...

Madelyn Kidd's Academy for Inquisitive Children

On "real" Independence Day (July 3rd) 1863 the United States and the world experienced "The Reckoning." The border between Earth and the Happy Hunting Grounds was sundered, if only for a moment, and all kinds of terrors leaked into our world. On that day, the field of Gettysburg was littered with corpses...and some of those corpses rose from the grave to spread horror. In the years that followed, the sinister Reckoners selected four champions who would transform the world into a literal Hell on Earth. All of this is well documented in the Deadlands Role Playing Game. What is less well known is that on that day, the forces of Good selected some champions of their own. Four children who were born on the day of The Reckoning who might just have a chance at stopping the world's transformation, but only if they could meet up and gain sufficient knowledge and power to thwart the Servitors who served the Reckoners.

These young children would never have met if it hadn't been for Madelyn Kidd. A simple school teacher from Serendipity, Pennsylvania, Madelyn had been on a picnic with her beau Aleister McKenzie overlooking the Battle of Gettysburg when the events of the Reckoning took place. Her beau was killed by a stray bullet and as Madelyn reached over to comfort her dying lover, she experienced a vision of a terrible future. She saw the world as it would be if the Reckoners had their way. She also saw a vision of hope where she was the founder of a new kind of school, a school dedicated to teaching children the skills necessary to fight back evil and to bring joy to lands that are dominated by fear.

While her vision was grand, the results so far have been very meager. Madelyn Kidd's Academy for Inquisitive Children was successfully established in 1865 in the town of Serendipity, Pennsylvania. The first graduating class of two students matriculated in 1869 and both of these students have gone on to jobs with the Union Government. Since that time, Madelyn has trained a number of gifted young students and currently has 45 students enrolled in her school. For all that success, not one of her students has gone on to achieve any great success against the evils the world is facing. All of her students are struggling against the darkness, but no great hero has emerged. Madelyn is on the verge of giving up hope as her four oldest currently enrolled students seem more concerned with solving local mysteries than they are with confronting greater threats.

Madelyn had high hopes for these four students. All four were born on the same day, July 3rd 1863, and all four exhibited high levels of potential. They were quick learners too, but they lack focus. They constantly take day trips in their Stagecoach, which they have named the Ratiocination Roller, to neighboring cities to unravel mysteries that the locals think are supernatural. Initially, Madelyn encouraged the behavior because she knew how important it was to fight real supernatural dangers, but as it became clear that every "supernatural" foe the students fought was revealed to be a fraud she began to lose hope. How would these students fare against the real horrors of the Weird West, let alone the Servitors, if they never had to face down supernatural horrors? It's a worry that has begun to affect her sleep. She recently sent them on a trip to disputed territory to do a field study of flora and fauna in the hopes that the students would begin their training in earnest. Time is so short and 17 year old kids have to grow up quickly in the Weird West.

What Madelyn doesn't know is that her students really are fighting supernatural foes, they only make it appear that the creatures they defeat are humans in disguise of swamp gas. This is because "Em" Vilnius noticed that when she made towns think that the evil that haunted them was a mere trick being performed by greedy individuals, those towns became happier and more successful places. It didn't take "Em" long to catch on to the fact that the best way to undermine the Reckoners was to take away the power that fueled them...fear. The kids, who call themselves Ratiocination Incorporation, are looking forward to their trip into the Weird West with the knowledge that if they get into too much trouble, they might be able to call on Madelyn Kidd and her other students to help them fight the good fight.

What every the case, Madelyn hopes to create a world where the Reckoners might have succeeded if not for those Madelyn Kidds kids.

Madelyn Kidd 

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d10, Spirit d6, Strength d4, Vigor d6
Skills: Fighting d6, Gambling d6, Guts d6, Intimidation d6, Investigation d8, Persuasion d6, Riding d6, Spellcasting d10, Stealth d4, Streetwise d8
Charisma: 2; Pace: 6; Parry: 5; Toughness: 5; Grit: 3
Hindrances: Enemy (Major), Heavy Sleeper, Loyal
Edges: Arcane Background (Magic), Attractive, Brave, Connections, Investigator, Linguist, New Power, Power Points
Powers: Armor, bolt (burning cards), hunch, mind rider; Power Points: 15
Gear: Hatchet, Knife (Str+d4) x3, Playing cards x8, Shirt/blouse, dress, Spectacles, $247 

Jedediah Heiter

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d8, Spirit d6, Strength d4, Vigor d6
Skills: Fighting d4, Guts d6, Investigation d6, Notice d4, Persuasion d4, Repair d8, Shooting d6, Weird Science d8
Charisma: 0; Pace: 6; Parry: 4; Toughness: 5; Grit: 1
Hindrances: Big Mouth, Doubting Thomas, Overconfident
Edges: Arcane Background (Weird Science), Knack (Bastard), New Power
Powers: Deflection (Jedediah's Ocular Disruptor), stun (Jedidiah's Auditory Imbalancer); Power Points: 20
Gear: Backpack, Bed roll, Boots, Canteen, Derby, Drill, Duster, File, Gun belt, Hammer, Lantern, Lantern oil (per gallon) x2, Lockpicks, Mule, Rifle (.38-.52) x5, Shirt/blouse, work, Trousers/skirt, Watch, gold, Winchester ‘76 (.45) (Range 24/48/96, 2d8, Shots 15, AP 2), $62.65

Petra Quartz

Attributes: Agility d8, Smarts d4, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigor d6
Skills: Fighting d6, Guts d6, Intimidation d6, Notice d4, Riding d6, Shooting d8, Streetwise d4, Throwing d6
Charisma: 0; Pace: 6; Parry: 5; Toughness: 5; Grit: 1
Hindrances: Arrogant, Stubborn, Vengeful (Minor)
Edges: Quick Draw, Two-Fisted
Gear: Backpack, Bed roll, Boots, Chaps, Colt Peacemaker (.45, Double-Action) (Range 12/24/48, 2d6+1, Shots 6, AP 1) x2, Duster, Gun belt, Knife (Str+d4), Pistol (.40-.50) x10, Quick-draw holster, Rifle (.38-.52) x5, Shirt/blouse, work, Trousers/skirt, Winchester ‘76 (.45) (Range 24/48/96, 2d8, Shots 15, AP 2), $133 

Eliza "Em" Vilnius (Hellstromme)

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit d8, Strength d4, Vigor d6
Skills: Faith d8, Fighting d6, Guts d6, Investigation d4, Persuasion d8, Riding d6, Shooting d6
Charisma: 2; Pace: 6; Parry: 5; Toughness: 5; Grit: 1
Hindrances: Bad Dreams, Heavy Sleeper, Loyal
Edges: Arcane Background (Miracles), Brave, Charismatic
Powers: Aim, armor, barrier, beast friend, blind, boost/lower trait, confusion, deflection, dispel, elemental manipulation, environmental protection, exorcism, gambler, greater healing, healing, inspiration, light/obscure, protection, pummel, quickness, sanctify, smite, speak language, stun, succor, warrior’s gift, windstorm
Gear: Boots, Horse, Knife, Bowie (Str+d4+1, AP 1), Saddle, Saddlebags, Shirt/blouse, dress, Shoes, Shotgun shells x2, Suit/fancy dress, Trousers/skirt, Winchester LeverAction (Range 12/24/48, 1–3d6, Shots 4, +2 Shooting rolls), 80¢

Mockingjay 

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d4, Spirit d8, Strength d6, Vigor d6
Skills: Fighting d8, Guts d6, Intimidation d6, Riding d6, Throwing d6, Tracking d4, Tribal Medicine d6
Charisma: 0; Pace: 6; Parry: 7; Toughness: 6; Grit: 1
Hindrances: All Thumbs, Curious, Loyal
Edges: Arcane Background (Shamanism), Beast Master, Brawny
Powers: Beast Friend, healing; Power Points: 10
Gear: Arrow x5, Bolas (Range 4/8/16, Str+1, Shots 1, see notes), Boots, Bow (Range 12/24/48, 2d6, Shots 1), Horse, Knife, Bowie (Str+d4+1, AP 1) x2, Shirt/blouse, work, Spear (Str+d6, Parry +1; Reach 1; requires 2 hands), Tomahawk (Str+d6), Trousers/skirt, $68.50

Daleks Battle Cybermen in Doctor Who: Exterminate Miniatures Game Starter Set

In 2015, Warlord Games announced that they had acquired a license to produce games and game related material for the Doctor Who television show. Warlord Games is one of the premiere miniature gaming companies in the market today with a catalog that features some of the best games on the market including: Bolt Action!, Beyond the Gates of Antares, Konflict '47, and a long list of rules sets for various historical and fictional settings.

Warlord Games was founded in 2007 when company founders, John Stallard and Paul Sawyer who had experience working for Games Workshop, decided to create a new miniatures company that offered high quality plastic miniatures for overlooked genres. Their first product was a set of 28mm plastic Roman Legionnaires, which was successful enough for the company to continue and grow. And grow they have. In the decade since their founding, Warlord Games has expanded into creating rules for almost every historical era and two fictional settings. They produce high quality rules and high quality miniatures for gaming and have a focus on creating affordable games.  This focus has inspired them to create a line of print and play paper wargames as well as their miniatures games.

Doctor Who: Exterminate is Warlord Games first major game license release, though Warlord Games will be releasing products for 2000AD properties in the near future. The Doctor Who: Exterminate starter set retails for £35.00 and includes two factions (Daleks and Cybermen) as well as rules for using the Doctor and Companions in play. Miniatures sets for the 10th and 12th Doctor, as well as a number of other factions, can be purchased separately. It should be noted that the rules needed to play the Doctor or alternate factions are included in the base boxed set and only the miniatures need to be purchased separately.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this game plays, but I doubt that it will be displacing 7TV as my "go to" game for 60s, 70s, and 80s BBC/ITV science fiction and espionage game play. That's the great thing about products like this though, you buy them for the parts you want (either miniatures or rules) and use other systems for the parts you don't. 

It's a nice looking set, and I'll likely be pre-ordering it when it comes available in the US store or I decide I'm willing to pay exorbitant international shipping.

Judge Dredd: Mega-City One in Development from Rebellion and IM Global Television

Fans of Judge Dredd received some potentially good news today with the announcement that Rebellion and IM Global Television will be producing a television show that takes place in the Dredd-verse called Judge Dredd: Mega-City One. From early press materials, including the interview with Producer Brian Jenkins and Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley embedded below, it appears that the main character of the show will be Mega-City One and not Dredd. From a creative standpoint, this is will allow showrunners and writers to explore a wider array of stories, and delve deeper into Dredd-lore, than might be possible if the creative team focused on Judge Dredd. Not that there aren't many great tales featuring the Judge, but the comic's biting commentary on American culture will be stronger if the city is a strong character.


Jenkins and Kingsley show a lot of enthusiasm for the project in their interview, but they admit their own novice status as film and television producers and highlight their partnership with IM Global Television. Founded in 2007 by Stuart Ford, IM Global Televsion has recently announced a number of major television projects in development including Judge Dredd: Mega-City One and series based on Glen Cook's The Black Company and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s science fiction novel Cat's Cradle. It's a relatively ambitious line-up for the relatively young company, but IM Global's President Mark Stern has a solid resume of work on genre properties from his time at the Syfy network where he was President of Original Content.

It's still very early in the development process, but as someone who owns many Judge Dredd collections, board games, and rpgs, I'll be looking forward to seeing what Rebellion and IM Global Television put together.

Star Eagles Highlights Flexibility of Ganesha Games "Song of" Miniatures Rules

Ganesha Games recently launched a Kickstarter project for their upcoming space fighter miniatures combat game Star Eagles, and it looks like a winner. The game is designed by Damon Richardson and aims to be a quick to play and deep simulation of desperate starship dogfights in the deeps of space between the forces of ConStar and the S'Sekai. Watching the how to play video Damon put out to promote the project, one thing stand out very quickly. Like many Ganesha produced miniatures games, Star Eagles uses the very flexible Song of Blades and Heroes fantasy skirmish rules as its foundation.  Song designer Andrea Sfiligoi has already demonstrated the flexibility of the Song system in a variety of genres in his work for Osprey Publishing, but this is the first time that framework has been used for spacecraft battle simulation.

One of the key innovations of the Song system is how it simulates who has the "initiative" in combat situations. Damon's video highlights this innovation in the how to video, but it deserves highlighting that the system forces players to choose between being aggressive which may cause them to lose the initiative before they desire or to play more cautiously which may result in them not achieving as much as they'd like during their turns. It's a great way to reflect how certain strategic choices can affect later tactical decisions. This isn't to say that Damon's game is a reprint of Song, like most games that use that system as a foundation there are significant differences, rather this is mentioned to praise Damon for selecting a system that better emulates the chaos of a dogfight than a standard igo-ugo system would.

There are a couple of additional things worth mentioning with regard to Star Eagles. The first is that this is a project that demonstrates how exciting the times we live in with regard to gaming really are. While Kickstarter is used by bigger companies to mitigate risk by combining market research and capital for projects, and in my opinion this happens to often, this is a case where it is being used as it should be. This is a small company creating a product that could not otherwise be produced at the high level of quality they are planning, and by small I mean REALLY small since most game companies are small in any comparison with the corporate world. Addition to being  a small company, this is an international endeavor where the designer and the publisher are on different continents working together to create a product to be sold around the world. Damon Richardson, who was a fine Forgotten Realms DM in his youth, lives in Reno, NV while Andrea Sfiligoi of Ganesha Games is located in Italy. This is something I would not have imagined possible as a child, but is something that happens with relative frequency in the modern gaming market. Exciting times indeed.

Check out the Kickstarter and back it if the theme interests you.

Planescape: Torment Returns on April 11th

When Bioware released Planescape: Torment in December of 1999, they did so just as 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons was gasping its last breath. Planescape was an odd choice to base a large scale computer rpg upon. The setting was unique, creative, exciting, and critically acclaimed, but it wasn't a particularly high volume selling setting for TSR. Add to this that Wizards of the Coast had just purchased TSR in 1997 and the Planescape setting, like many other D&D/AD&D settings, had been partially released to the wilds to be curated by fans. The game and the IP were languishing in limbo, even as the D&D brand would be resurrected shortly by the release of 3rd edition.


It may have been an odd choice, but it ended up creating a brilliant result. Planescape: Torment leveraged Bioware's Infinity Engine to create an rpg experience unlike any that had been produced to date. Most of that experience was rooted in the surreal qualities of the Planescape setting which may not have been a bestseller, but it was a magnificent creation. David "Zeb" Cook and his team of creative talent that included James Ward, Dana Knutson, and Tony DiTerlizzi combined their talents to produce an innovative and interesting sandbox. A sandbox that Chris Avellone and team explored with inspired creativity. Planescape: Torment is the Infinity Engine game I've played through most frequently, and given the strength of those titles that is saying something.

On April 11th, 2017 game developer Beamdog will be releasing a visually updated version of the game for both the PC and Tablet. Do yourself a favor and pick it up when it comes out.

Mystrael Shawk -- An Effect Based Lightning Wizard for D&D

Last week, I discussed how useful it can be to approach D&D magic from an effects based or special effect design philosophy as both a player and a DM. Using this approach allows for gamers to add a little of narrative magic without the need to have a deep understanding of the mechanical balance underlying the game system required to make new spells from whole cloth. This is an approach used by the Champions role playing game and by Pinnacle Entertainment Group's Savage Worlds rpg. The Savage Worlds rule book describes this approach in the following way:

"But just because these powers work the same from setting to setting doesn’t mean they have to look the same, have the same names (to the characters in that world), or even have the exact same effects—that’s where Trappings come in. 

For the most part, Trappings should be merely cosmetic. But sometimes it makes sense for there to be additional effects. A heat ray should have a chance of catching combustible objects on fire, for example, and an electric blast should do slightly more damage to targets in full metal armor."

Coming at magic from a special effects approach can be intimidating and you might not trust me that it can be done without creating a lot of work for players and DMs, but I'm going to attempt to show you how it does just the opposite. It allows for the creation of a lot of imaginative and narrative effects without the need for creating new mechanics. To aid in this process, I will be posting a series of D&D 5e Wizards based on Power Themes and who use effects based spells.

Image Source Anna Steinbauer

Mystrael Shawk 

Human Lightning Wizard (Soldier) 

Level 5

Str 8 (-1)   Dex 14 (+2)  Con 14 (+2)  

Int 16 (+3)  Wis 10 (+0)  Cha 12 (+1)

HP (5d6+10) 32           AC 12 or 15 (dex; Crackling Aura + dex)

Init +2      Speed 30      Proficiency Bonus +3

Attacks: Dagger +5 (1d4 piercing), Dagger (ranged) +5 1d4 piercing, Spells +6 
Senses: Investigation 16, Perception 10
Saves: Intelligence +6, Wisdom +3
Skills: Arcana +6, Athletics +2, Intimidation +4, Investigation +6, Sleight of Hand +5 
Feats: Keen Mind
Human Traits: Bonus Skill (Sleight of Hand), Bonus Feat (War Caster)
Wizard Traits: Spellcasting, Arcane Recovery, Arcane Tradition (Abjuration), Lighting Ward (13 HP)
Spell Casting Ability (Known: 3, 6, 6, 4; Slots: 4, 4, 3, 2; DC 14)

Cantrips:Lightning Ball (Acid Splash), Crackling Illumination (Light), Shocking Grasp

Spells

1 -  Arc of Lightning (Burning Hands), Crackling Aura  (Mage Armor), Electric Shield (Shield), Synaptic Shock (Sleep), Static Tickle (Tasha's Hideous Laughter), Plasma Arc (Magic Missile)
2 - Lightning Cloud (Cloud of Daggers), Immobilizing Shock (Hold Person), Electrify Weapon (Magic Weapon), Mystral's Lightning Arrow (Melf's Acid Arrow), Clinging Field (Spider Climb), Electrical Flash (Blindness/Darkness)
3 - Electrical Animation (Animate Dead), Sphere of Lightning (Fireball), Ride the Lightning (Fly), Lightning Bolt

As you can see, merely by renaming some of the spells the descriptive effect in play of certain spells is altered without changing their effects. Take Crackling Illumination as an example here. When it comes to game effects, it doesn't matter whether light is produced by illusory fire, real fire, crackling electricity, or radiant illumination. All that matters is that the spell produces the effect of light. Similarly for Mage Armor, since we aren't categorizing any kind of damage, the appearance of Mage Armor doesn't affect game play.

It isn't until we get to spells like Lightning Ball (Acid Splash) that one's "but that's a typed damage and it matters" alarm should flash a warning that there might be some mechanical differences of consequence. One could merely hand wave such concerns and point out, as Michael Shea at Sly Flourish often does that Dungeons and Dragons isn't designed to be a balanced game and that imbalance is a part of what we like. I won't do such hand waving here, though that is a perfectly "D&D" thing to do. Instead, let's take a look under the hood of Acid Splash.

Range: 60 feet
Damage: Save or Take 1d6 Acid Damage
# Creatures affected: 1 or 2 within 5 feet.

The reskinned Lightning Ball only changes one aspect of the spell, the damage type. In fact, since the spell already can damage up to 2 creatures in close proximity the spell's mechanics fit nicely with the reskin. The question here becomes, "Does the spell significantly improve if it becomes lightning based?" There are after all different creatures who are resistant/immune to different damage types and affecting a disproportionate number might affect game balance. This criticism only holds so much weight since the Elemental Adept feat allows casters to ignore type resistance (though not immunity). So...what are the differences between Acid and Lightning regarding number of creatures affected?

Creatures Resistant to Acid in Monster Manual: 17
Creatures Immune to Acid in Monster Manual: 15
Number of Creatures Vulnerable to Acid: 0

Creatures Resistant to Lightning in Monster Manual: 34
Creatures Immune to Lightning in Monster Manual: 19
Number of Creatures Vulnerable to Lightning: 0

Here we can see that by choosing a Lightning damage type, the spell has become more limited with regard to the number of creatures it can damage. Given the negligent effects of changing the damage type, we can quickly see that this won't change game balance.

Similarly, describing Sleep as an effect that results from a quick electrical burst or Spider Climb as a static field that surrounds the hands and feet of the caster does nothing other than add a narrative touch to play. The same is true for describing Animate Dead as electrical impulses arching through corpses to control their movements.

There are some damage types that are clearly better or worse than average when it comes to this kind of analysis. Very few creatures are resistant to Radiant damage and 98 monsters are immune to poison, for example, and you would have to decide whether or not to do the "it doesn't really matter" hand wave or ban those as reskinnable trappings in your games. One thing to consider for spells like Sleep is that you might have the creature's resistance apply to the hit points rolled against the spell. That significantly reduces the power of that particular spell against certain foes, but it adds the illusion of unpredictability to your magic and makes magic more magical.

My next character will be a cold themed Wizard.

Using a Special Effects Approach to Spell Casting in D&D Games

There are too many spells in Dungeons & Dragons and it reduces the sense of wonder in the game. Magic systems are one of the most difficult design challenges that face prospective game designers, players, and game masters. Magic in fiction, and in our imagination, often defies quantification. In fact, one might argue that what makes magic magical is that it is mysterious and that by quantifying it, you diminish its impact. I am sympathetic to this view, but I actually think that having the rules present purely mechanical effects and letting players add special effects is the best way to handle this problem.

The solution that D&D often uses is what Jeff Grubb calls the "Very Large Spellbook" approach in the Kobold Guide to Magic. This works by flooding the zone with so many spells that no one really knows what every spell does and thus leaves a sense of wonder as new things are discovered. The problem with this approach is that you can end up with five different spells that turn a target's bones into liquid. This isn't bad when the mechanical effects of each spell is different, but can be a problem when many of them have pretty much the same effects with minor changes in the amount of damage done. If the spells have different mechanical effects, it allows for themed mages. If it only fiddles around the edges of damage, it isn't very interesting. Jeff Grubb's discussion of how standardizing bones into liquid spells reduced the wonder of the game, while reducing the number of times spells need to be looked up in the rules because no one knows how a specific spell works.

One solution often under utilized in D&D circles is the approach used by Champions.

Whether or not you play the game, the Champions role playing game by Hero Games is one of the best role playing games ever designed and is one that every Game Master should read for advice on how to best run a game in any system. My first experience with the game was the Revised Edition, also known as the 2nd Edition, of the game, and I spent hours upon hours making characters for the system. Okay, I spent hours and hours making my version of the X-Men for the system only to have friends who were more experienced with the system tell me how I had done everything wrong, but that's beside the point.

The thing that most struck me about the game, and that still amazes me, is how the game took what is often called an effects based approach to gaming. What is typically meant by this description is that the rules don't worry about what powers and abilities look like, rather we are only concerned with their in game effects. While this is a central concept to how the character creation system works in Champions, it was an idea that took a few editions to fully articulate. The first edition of the game, published in 1981, only mentions the concept in passing in the Energy Blast power and on page 29 where it describes how to model a character who can change shape using Multipower with three slots that each represent a different special effect. The second edition expands on this idea more clearly and states on page 47, "Powers in Champions have been explained thoroughly in game terms, but the special effects have been left undefined...energy may be lightning, fire, cold, sonics, radiation...The special effects of your Power can contain minor advantages and disadvantages..." By the 3rd edition of the game, the designers have moved discussion of special effects to a position at the beginning of the Powers chapter, rather than following it. On page 20 it states, "When choosing powers in Champions always start with the effect and work back to the cause." The stress here is that the mechanics are important for the adjudication of success or failure in the game, but that what something looks like in the minds of the players during the game doesn't need to be categorized in the rules.

This special effects, or effects based, approach was relatively freeform in the first three editions of Champions and is what enabled players to simulate an infinite number of effects with only limited mechanics. For this reason, I prefer to call this earlier approach to effects based design the special effects approach. This distinguishes it from the more granular effect based approach of later editions of Champions and give primacy to only quantifying what absolutely must be represented mechanically and leaving the rest to improvisation. Later editions of Champions, beginning with 4th edition which is my favorite edition, began a process of quantifying too many effects for my tastes. Given my preference for improvisation, I prefer to avoid over quantification of phenomenon. Your mileage may vary on that account, but that will have little bearing on this discussion as it continues.

So when might a special effects approach help a D&D game?

Let me look to one of my favorite online shows to explain.

An example of a situation that could have benefited from a special effects approach occurs in Episode 8 Part 1 of Saving Throw Show's series "The Lost Brigade" when Havana Mahoney attempts to have her Druid Theronna Wolfmancer cast the spell Summon Swarm upon some creatures she and her allies were combating. This event happens at around minute 41:37 in the episode (also embedded above). The Dungeon Master, Mason McDaniel, initially encourages a special effects approach when Havana asks what the spell looks like and Mason gives a few possibilities while leaving the final depiction up to her as to whether the rats she wants to summon burrow out of the earth or are vomited from her mouth. Either one of these options is narratively interesting and visually exciting. It's a good moment of game play, but this quickly gets sidetracked as the group attempts to find the spell in the rules. This leads to a few minutes of discussion which pull both the players and the audience out of the game. Eventually, it is discovered that the spell Havana wanted to cast is a Pathfinder spell. She asks if she can use it anyway, but after some discussion this is rejected and Havana sighs and casts Call Lightning. It's the first time in my life that I think I've ever seen a Druid essentially say, "yawn...I guess I'll just use the old standby Call Lightning. YAWN again. KABLAM! DRUID TAC-NUKE! Wish I could have done something interesting."

And you know what? I agree with that assessment. I really wish that Havana had been allowed to cast her 2nd level Summon Swarm spell, but how do you do that?

The first thing that you can do is to let the player use the Pathfinder spell. For a second level spell, which was the case in the episode, this wouldn't particularly damage the game as OP-finder doesn't spiral out of D&D maths until higher levels. In this case, the player would have summoned a swarm of rats that attacked the monsters as listed in the Rat Swarm entry. This isn't a bad solution, and it would have rewarded the player for an inspired narrative choice, but it isn't a special effects based approach and the search of various wiki/books delayed game play. Notice, I am not discussing that Havana's presentation of how big the swarm would be and how much damage it does wasn't accurate to the Pathfinder rules. That was merely a product of the websearch and getting her phone trapped by wiki-spam.

The second approach, the special effects approach, is to ask what special effect the player wants and what mechanics fit the expressed mechanical limits. Havana wanted to use a 2nd Level Druid spell that summoned a swarm of rats that bites foes. So the mechanical emulation is area effect damage appropriate for second level. The first spell that jumped into my head was Spike Growth.

"But," you say, "Spike Growth is a spell that transforms the ground into spiky thorn covered terrain."

Does it? Not from a special effects/effect based approach.

From this approach, the spell covers a 20 foot radius of terrain with ___________ which makes the ground difficult to walk on and which cases a creature to take 2d4 piercing damage for every 5 feet they travel. This transformation is camouflaged as to not be obvious until the victims move into it and take damage.

So here are the effects:
20 foot radius
Difficult Terrain
Moving within or into causes 2d4 piercing for every 5 ft moved.
Concealed.

Havana wanted a swarm of rats to attack the foes. This pretty much does that. All you have to do is say that Theronna Wolfmancer has summoned the rats and that the creatures will soon feel those effects. Imagine the shocked looks on the creature's faces as rats rose from the earth to devour them.

That's not all this spell could represent. It could represent an area of earth where magma has been brought close to the surface, ice spikes, the thorns in the book, a miasma in the air that chokes those who move through it. None of those effects change the mechanics of the spell, which are what define the level of the spell, but each of those feels different in play due to the role playing aspect of the game. It is key to note that the damage is piercing for creatures who have those kinds of resistances.

Personally, I like the idea of Spike Growth being a near invisible miasma of toxic spores which pierce the lungs. The again, whose to say that Call Lightning couldn't just be Lightning Rats rising up from the earth to bite opponents with their Lightning powers or even just the summoning of a Pikachu?

What are some other spells that you would/could reskin for different effects?

A Kickstarter Superbacker's Thoughts on Late Projects

I've been backing Kickstarter projects, primarily Tabletop Gaming projects, for quite some time. I've been a fan of the platform from early on and really like the idea of supporting creators by providing them the fund to work on creative projects. Some friends of mine and I even put together a small project of our own a few years ago.

 

 

I believe that helping a creator navigate the balance between keeping the wolves away from the door and making something neat is a worthwhile endeavor. We're likely to get better freelance projects if freelance creators don't have to worry about whether they will be able to eat or not. This isn't to say that I think Kickstarter funds should be used to buy meals, unless that's what the Kickstarter is about, but rather to say that money being fungible Kickstarter allows creators to spend their own money on food because backers are willing to cover some of the R&D expenses that the creator might have needed to take out of the food budget in order to make a thing.

 

Just because I'm a believer in the platform and concept doesn't mean that everything I've backed has come to fruition. In fact, I'd like to share with you some of the projects I funded many moons ago that are still in process and to share my thoughts regarding why I'm not in a fervor and yelling at the creators who have yet to deliver projects...if they ever will. To that end, I'm sharing projects in three categorys: Late but Likely, Late and Uncertain, and Written Off. 

I want to make clear that I am not listing any of these projects to shame anyone, far too many backers make that their life's work. Instead, I wanted to show how creative many of the ideas presented on Kickstarter are and how there are projects offered that one might never see if Kickstarter didn't exist.

 

Kickstarter projects I've been waiting to be completed for years, but have confidence will be finished by professionals due to personal emergencies or need to have other priorities like having a roof overhead. Most of these projects are by people I know and who have a long history of creating excellent products in the industry:

FAR WEST

PROJECT DARK

MONSTER ACADEMY

MEKTON ZERO

TRANSFORMING EXPECTATIONS

Project I'm uncertain about, though it looks like it is going to make it even after horrible tragedy:

 

TALES OF THE FLOATING VAGABOND

Project I'm certain I will write off as a sunk cost and never receive because law suits and D&D seem to go hand in hand:

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: A DOCUMENTARY

I've had good success overall with the projects I've backed seeing daylight. I've also never viewed Kickstarter as "pre-ordering" products. It is a means to help creative people make interesting things that they couldn't afford to make otherwise. So long as the makers are making a good faith effort, I'm fine with the risk.

Of these projects, I dumped the most investment into the documentary. It funded in 2012 and has encountered many legal conflicts. I had high hopes for the documentary and got to meet some of the crew when they hand delivered my copy of Playing at the World that was part of my pledge.

As for the other projects?

Being creative is hard. I backed these knowing that I was funding the creation of a project. I was "Kickstarting" it. This isn't "KickCompletionBond" and it's not "KickPreorder." Things like BackerKit and PledgeManager are pre-order portals that allow people to take low risk on backing and go all in only if a project finishes. Those I hold to a stricter "purchase" standard and there is a difference between backing and purchasing.

I'm happy to have supported authors and creators who have created entertaining products in the past and who have supported me in some of my creative endeavors.