Castle Falkenstein

I've been to Bavaria and toured Neuschvanstein, the magnificent castle built by King Ludvig "the Mad."  I've seen the sketches of his beautifully designed, never built opus Castle Falkenstein (is it just me or does that gate look like a gaping mouth?)...at my old house, I kept a postcard of the image on my fridge for awhile.

What I've NEVER done, though, is played R. Talsorian's Castle Falkenstein RPG. Long out-o-print, I missed it when it was first published (I was probably too busy playing Vampire the Masquerade at the time); years later I regret never getting it, as I've read many excellent things about it, both from a design perspective (cards instead of dice? cool!) and from a game/entertainment perspective (I LOVE "steam-punk"). 

Oh, wait...did I say "out-of-print" for years? Um...apparently not anymore!

I was in the local game store, "checking things out" (as I am wont to do), and was greeted by the prominently displayed Castle Falkenstein RPG on their front shelf.

"What's all this about?" I asked the shopkeep.

"They're printing it again."

Now this is what HE says...I found no news of this on the R. Talsorian web site, nor was I given the option to purchase it from their on-line store (not that I would anyway...I like my books pre-printed, thank you very much).  But the shop manager assures me the game is in distribution again, he has three copies and he has pledged to "stock it as long as they continue to publish." 

Wow, I don't know. I didn't pick it up yesterday, but I'm thinking maybe I should snatch it while it's still on the shelf, seeing as how I've been looking for this RPG for the last couple years in the used book shops. Ugh. Money's tight right now a little tight right now to be investing in theory-craft right when I'm in the middle of my own writing projects.

But FALKENSTEIN...I must possess it! Shoot.

Maybe I can get them to hold a copy till next Friday. Not only is there another household paycheck coming in on the 15th, I've had a couple games on the shelf in desperate need of being sold back for "store credit" (including another R. Talsorian game: Cybergenerations. Man, I have no idea how/where I acquired THAT turkey!).

: )

Magic Item: Wayedge

Everybody is doing it. I'm just going with the flow this morning.

Gunnar Red-Beard, stared over the bow of his longship, eyeing the coastline while listening contentedly to the straining grunts of his pillagers, pulling at the oars. The raiders had been sailing for several weeks, but morale was still high...the vikings knew their captain had never failed to lead them to ports ripe with plunder.  Still, this southern continent was new, even for them.  

Stroking the haft of his axe, Gunnar dispelled doubt from his mind. Wayedge had yet to point false, and the sea chieftain had come to trust the weapon as his men trusted him. 

The wind picked up and Gunnar signaled the oars stowed as a gust filled the sail. Skimming over the blue sea the longship rounded a jutting spur of rock and a murmur of assent rippled through the crew of the fat and happy seacoast town that came into view. Obviously, the townsfolk had felt their bay sufficiently hidden that little defense was necessary. Gunnar smiled to himself as he gripped his axe....

Wayedge is an axe +2 of razor sharpness; on a high enough attack roll, it will sever a limb (determined at random by the DM) from its opponent. The unmodified roll must be an 18-20 for this to occur against a normal humanoid opponent or 19-20 against a monstrous or larger-than-man-sized opponent. If the target is entirely composed of solid stone or metal (for example, a golem), then a natural unmodified roll of 20 is needed regardless of size. Creatures without limbs (such as purple worms) are unaffected by this ability.

Wayedge is Chaotic in alignment, though it is unintelligent. It exists to lead its wielder to new places where it might be used for bloody slaughter. The owner of Wayedge will never be lost, on land or at sea, instinctively knowing the right way to go. A destination must be held in mind, though it need not be one the character has ever before visited. Wayedge can only grant knowledge of the direction of the destination...obstacles, traps, and secret doors are not revealed.

Owners of Wayedge are subject to insatiable wanderlust and an inability to settle down; a character will never stay in any one location (town/city, castle/dungeon) greater than 1-4 weeks before moving on. There is no saving throw against this compulsion. Once a character has left a location, he or she will not return to it for at least a year.

D&D Comics

Yesterday, I was reading through the blog posts over at A Rust Monster Ate My Sword and I stumbled upon the HEE-larious panel-by-panel analysis of the old TSR comic/ads that were published in Marvel comics. While I have blogged about these before myself, I found myself incredibly amused by Mr. Brackett’s scathing dissection of these old comics and how they’d translate into actual RPG terms. I found myself laughing out-loud quite often (especially the commentary on Valerius’ less-than-team-oriented attitude). Check it out!

I remember that, back in high school, Marvel put out a slew of comics based on both Dragon Lance and (I believe) AD&D. My brother had some of these and I recall reading them, even though I wasn’t playing D&D (of any persuasion) at the time. Some of them had stat block info or monster/magic item descriptions in the back, making them double-entertainment as both fiction and game supplement.

Did anyone else read/collect these back in the day? Does anyone know if the they were two separate series or am I just confused in the head? And were these published AFTER the advent of 2nd edition AD&D or before?

Thanks!

Are You Ready For Some Football?

Man, I am.

September in Seattle is generally a pretty good time of year if you’re into the NFL. My parents started taking me to Seahawk games when I was 8 or 9 years old (they got their first set of season tickets around 1978 or ’79), and my wife and I are lined up to go to 5 of 8 home games this year. Plus with the new HD TV (our first new television in 10 years), everything looks set and ready to go.

Of course, this is all assuming Jim Mora meets the fans’ expectations as a new head coach…otherwise, Seattle could be in for a loooong year.

The last three or four years I’ve been involved in a fantasy football league, with my buddy Jon. Somewhere on the blog-o-verse I read the comment “fantasy football is D&D for adults that used to beat-up D&D players as kids.” There may be some truth to that, but Jon (who is no gamer and never was) readily admits that playing the “role” of a fantasy team owner isn’t much different from playing D&D, and thus doesn’t fault me my vices. Of course, he also plays fantasy basketball AND fantasy baseball, so he is a certifiable nut job with little to criticize anyway.

(do Canadians play fantasy football with the CFL? I honestly don’t know, and there are several of our Northern Neighbors that read this blog…I’d be interested in finding out)

Of course, for me as a long-time gamer, football season always brings out my passion for the REAL fantasy football game: Blood Bowl. Games Workshop’s Blood Bowl long ago proved to be my “gateway drug” into the silly (and expensive) hobby of painting miniatures. While I played RPGs for years without a single miniature, I can trace my minis collection back to the purchase of my first Blood Bowl boxed set circa 1995.

Actually, my first Blood Bowl set (the 2nd edition version) may have been purchased PRIOR to 1995, but it was 1995 when I had graduated from college and was living off Broadway that I first became obsessive-compulsive with miniatures. Suddenly, I was working full-time and had a bunch of extra cash on my hands…and I lived just down the street from a little shop called Games & Gizmos where I could engage in Warhammer 40K (then in ITS 2nd edition) tournaments.

Ahh…the good old/bad old days.

Nowadays, I am NOT obsessive-compulsive with regard to collecting miniatures. Games Workshop has fortunately cured me of ever wanting to support them again with their quick succession of releases and re-vamps of the 3rd-4th-5th editions of 40K (are they up to 6th yet? Maybe) and their official abandonment of Mordheim and Blood Bowl (yes, I realize these games are still supported on-line…that’s a whole ‘nother issue).

However, I still have minis that are un-painted, and every Autumn, when football season rolls around, I get the urge to do some painting.

My total collection of minis is fairly enormous for a dude that doesn’t actually wargame all that much. Part of this has to do with my completionist nature; part is simply a product of purchases made over a dozen year span. The end result, though, is pretty amazing…in addition to hundreds of 40K minis I have enough Blood Bowl miniatures to field at least 24 teams.

That’s pretty crazy if I do say so myself…practically enough to form my own NFL, Blood Bowl-style. Of these, fully half are completely painted and another 7 teams are in various states of being “finished up” (the Dark Elf team is probably my most miserable bit of un-finished business, as I’ve never been able to decide on a final color for their team uniform, and they have been painted and re-pained more than once).

In all truthfulness, this really is my big pot-o-crazy…whenever I stumble across a boxed Blood Bowl team in an obscure corner of a game store I tend to buy it. I have old Ral Partha minis that I have converted to Blood Bowlers (notably there was a period of time when there were no Treeman miniatures, and I simply painted up old Mountain Giant minis to look like Birdseye, the Jolly Green Giant…hey, my hobbit team needed their Big Guys!).

Anyway, this will be my first football season in the new house, and for a change I have several possible venues for painting. The kitchen has the best light (as well as the HD TV), but I have my own “game room” where my wife won’t have to look at my paints and brushes and newpapers. Heck, I even have a spare bedroom masquerading as a “TV room” upstairs that I could use to both paint AND stay out of the wife’s path (I should point out that my wife IS a football fan AND she enjoys Blood Bowl, too…she even has her own team…but she HATES the clutter that comes with the painting projects).

Ah, well…this is the kind of “tough decision” that’s not really very painful at all. Maybe this year I’ll finally finish the Dark Elf and Skaven teams. If I get around to it, I could even post some photos.

Go Seahawks!!! (*skraaw!*)
: )

Crap...Cannibals

Nearly missed my bus this morning as I got sucked into reading up on Raggi’s latest over at LotFP and its associated links. I know I’ve heard of Cannibal Holocaust before, but I’ve never seen the film nor do I know much about it.

Sheesh…cannibals.

I don’t know why the idea of cannibalism turns my stomach as it does. I have a fairly high tolerance level for acts of violence, filth, and depravity but cannibalism is one of the few things that really “get me.” Whether we’re talking scenes from comics (Frank Miller’s Ronin comes to mind) or scenes from film (Doomsday comes to mind). I don’t know why.

Not that watching TV shows about historic cannibals (whether the Donner party or the Maori tribes of New Zealand) bother me. Certainly I have no beef (forgive the pun) with cannibalism when it’s handled tastefully (inexcusable pun!). Observe the cannibalism in John Wick’s Orkworld…nothing incredibly terrible about eating folks whien it's part of the native traditions of a culture, in my opinion.

I guess the thing that makes me say, “ew, gross,” has more to do with the exploitive use of cannibalism in fiction…the idea that a group of folks (again, I’m not talking serial killers, as the occasional Hannibal Lecter aberration is to be expected in our crazy society), yes the idea that a GROUP of folks would hunt other humans for the purpose of using them as their preferred choice of food. THAT’s what gets me and makes my skin shudder.

And, of course, this may be the very purposeful reaction intended by the author of such “horror” works that include the eating of people. Really…you want to talk about a fate worse than death? It’s being held captive waiting for your turn on the butcher block. Ugh!

Anyway, as relates to role-playing in general and D&D specifically, I find it interesting that, in looking back over my own gaming history, I have never made cannibalism a part of my games. Not for horror, or suspense, or even humor (the Bugs Bunny in the stew pot variety). Human sacrifice, yes. Impalement and head-hunting, sure. Cannibalism…big, fat no. And this is despite playing many adventures set in “savage” or “lost land” settings (Dwellers of the Forbidden City, the Isle of Dread, and my own knock-offs). If I wanted to take the journey into cannibalistic terror, I had the vehicles to do so but the thought NEVER EVEN OCCURRED TO ME. It is like a curious blind-spot that (in retrospect) appears to stem from my queasiness surrounding the topic.

This is all just musings, folks...I don’t know if it means I’ll be adding cannibals to my future D&D games or anything, just got my brain going this morning. I give lots of props to Raggi for coming up with yet another interesting (and spine-chilling) idea for an adventure module. I hope he gets it done!
; )

Clockwork FAQ

Hmmm…weird to write an Frequently Asked Questions document for a one-page game, but here are a few answers to a few questions that have come up:

RE Bravery (Brv): Do NOT round when calculating Draw or TAC. For example, a Draw of 5 + 3.5 + 2 = 10.5; 10.5 is higher (faster) than 10 but lower (slower) than 11. A TAC of 10 + 3.5 + 2 = 15.5; characters must roll equal or below 15.5 to hit (in other words, roll 15 or less; a 16 is over 15.5 and thus misses).

RE Draw: If Draw is equal, individuals shoot simultaneously. Yes, this can result in Tarentino-esque shoot-outs.

RE Pistols shooting twice: Each shot requires its own TAC roll. Both shots occur at the same time (so the person with Draw 10 shoots twice AFTER everyone with Draw 10.5+ and BEFORE everyone with 9.5-).

[On a related note: if your two-fisted gunman wants to empty both smokewagons at once, all shots go off at the same time...don't forget those TAC penalties!]

RE Clockwork prices: Man, make something up! Generally, never more than a couple hundred dollars (should cost less than a good horse). For pricing in general, I use the costs listed in TSR’s Boot Hill game for both goods and services. Doctor’s fees aren’t THAT expensive (compared to hospital care in the 21st century), and neither should be man-sized clockwork parts (compared to good-excellent horseflesh). Repairs of existing prosthetics should be cheaper than installing new parts (which also require surgery). I assume I’ll be including full price lists in the full-length game (when I get around to writing it).

RE Normal folks: Abilities vary by background. Average townsfolk should have total attributes of 24 or so (Spd 4, Acc 4, Brv 6, Str 10) with only the elderly and young children having less than 7 in Strength (Str). Women of the Old West were just as hardy as the men-folk, as far as I’m concerned.


For those wondering where the hell I got the idea for Clockwork…well, basically I wanted Boot Hill (which I consider to be a mighty fine RPG) to be a bit less deadly, withOUT scrapping the excellent combat system. The only way I could think to do this was to force occasional re-rolls (or “safe” hits) of certain body locations. Since folks in the Wild West didn’t wear Kevlar, I had to think of a way to make limbs resistant without armor. Cybernetic prosthetics sprang to mind, and coupled with the images of the steam-punk anime Steam Boy…well, you end up with Clockwork.

As far as adventures go…heck, pretty much any of the old BH modules can be adapted to Clockwork (just add gears!). I suppose I could write up some quick conversions notes between the original game and the micro-CW, but that’ll have to wait till a later post. Interesting design note: my current “full length” version of Clockwork is much closer to Boot Hill, but due to space limitations of the micro-format I was forced to simplify both character creation and combat immensely…and I think it actually makes the game better (i.e. smoother and faster). I’m beginning to think that the final version of Clockwork will be much closer to the one-page version, rules-wise, than to BH…but we’ll see.

AFTER the B/X Companion of course…
; )

Conan the Barbarian, B/X Thief

One of the books I picked up at the used bookstore this weekend was the Gregory Manchess illustrated Conquering Sword of Conan, the third volume in a collection of un-edited Howard writings, apparently compiled by Patrice Louinet. Yes, I realize I should probably be reading Sallinger before I dive straight into the “fun” literature of Conan…sue me.

This particular collection showcases Howard’s works in the order that he published them, culminating in his (recently reviewed) masterpiece, Red Nails…which I have never read, by the way. I’m looking forward to it.

Anyway, as I read ol’ REH’s wonderful description concerning his most well-known protagonist, I can’t help but come to the conclusion: in B/X terms, Conan is a thief.

Not a fighter. Certainly not a demi-human or spell-user. But a thief.

I know I mentioned this (briefly) before, but it was more an off-the-cuff remark (I have a tendency to make those a lot). But I am totally 100% in bed with the idea now. If I was modeling a character after Conan for B/X play, the Cimmerian barbarian (rolls off the tongue, don’t it?) would totally be a D4 hit dice thief.

Of course, he’d be a D4 hit dice thief with an 18 constitution; that much is clear. Everything in Howard’s writing details how healthy and wholesome (and ironed stamina) Conan’s constitution is compared to civilized folk and men of lesser stature. He out-lasts and out-paces everyone…that is the mark of a solid 18 in Constitution. And with +3 hit points per die, he’ll have a better hit point average than a standard fighter (5.5 per level as opposed to 4.5). Once he hits name level, of course, his hit points increase just as any other fighter (+2 points per level).

In fighting ability, being a thief doesn’t make Conan much less than a fighter in the hand-to-hand department. In B/X play, a fighter’s chance to hit increases by 10% every three levels, a thief’s increases 10% every four levels. A name (9th) level fighter and a name level thief have the exact same chance to hit. After 10th level, the hit differential is separated by at least 10%. However, I’d argue the strength of Howard’s Conan is at least 16 (forget Schwarzenegger for the moment) which provides a +10% bonus to hit, allowing our thief to keep pace up until level 22.

Of course, if one looks at the opponent’s Conan fights, one doesn’t see many of particularly potent armor class anyway…if all you’re fighting are dudes in standard armor, a high level thief will need the same to hit in melee (“2”) as a fighter.

Conan uses any and all weapons, just as does a B/X thief. Contrary to his film depictions, he generally goes clothed (often wearing a shirt), though he is more likely to wear little or no armor when adventuring (in warfare he wears mail and carries a shield). This latter IS a bit of a sticky point as B/X thieves are not allowed to wear any armor other than leather. However, I don’t have references to Conan using any of his thief skills while "armored up"…perhaps in his DM’s home-brew the price one pays for violating class restrictions is an inability to use special class abilities? This makes a bit of sense when you figure anyone can “wear” a chain shirt (but you’ll end up a D4 hit dice fighter with neither thief nor magical abilities).

And Conan DOES exhibit thief abilities. Sure, he bludgeons his way out of prison in the story Rogues in the House, but that’s only because he was jailed without lock-picks! In The Servants of Bin-Yatkin he shows his ability to climb sheer surfaces and read languages as a high level thief (in fact, the description of the latter ability perfectly jibes with its explanation in the Cook/Marsh Expert set). If Conan doesn’t “pick pockets” it’s only because he’s a character more prone to the “direct approach” (I know the feeling!). Even so, he still moves with cat-like stealth and often ambushes opponents from the shadows.

His attitude is certainly one of the opportunist and adventurer, not the fighter. Howard’s Conan isn’t motivated by honor, duty, or loyalty (except to his men…see below). In general, he is motivated by sheer greed and looking for an easy score. Even though he eventually becomes king of Aquilonia, it is through assassination and usurpation, rather than carving out a dominion and building a castle (the way for a B/X fighter to obtain a baronial title). More often than not, Conan is a thief, outlaw, pirate, highwayman, and bandit lord. The dude is a thief.

Let’s talk about his other abilities. He is certainly literate (Intelligence of 9+) but speaks only a smattering of many languages, not being necessarily fluent (depending on how one runs a campaign with multiple human/”Common” tongues). Wisdom he does not possess in bulk, except for the wisdom of experience. This he gains quickly which would indicate a high Dexterity (the Prime Requisite of the thief class). As Howard most often describes Conan as panther-like in grace, movement, and reflexes (as well as possessing the speed of a striking cobra), I think it safe to assume he possesses a 16+ in this attribute.

As a leader of men, Conan is described as having a very magnetic personality…a high Charisma, able to inspire his followers by his own deeds and actions, if not any particularly flowery speeches. This and his usually favorable reaction from the lady-folk indicate that he has at least a 13+ in Charisma and quite possibly 16-18. There is, of course, no requirement of being a fighter in order to lead mercenaries in B/X play (oh, and though Conan never creates a “thieves guild” there are instances from the stories that might be considered the establishment of “hide-outs” and the attraction of 1st level thieves, i.e. “bandits”).

Personally, I can’t think of any other genuine way to model Conan in B/X play other than as a thief. At least not given the rules as written (I mean, one could house-rule a bunch of “barbarian abilities” but this simply pre-empts the thief…you know, the way the cavalier class one-upped the fighter in AD&D?). The more I read of his exploits in Howard’s original literature, the more convinced I become. To me, it simply exemplifies how versatile the B/X rule system is…not every thief has to be some glib-tongued con-man a la the Grey Mouser. A brawny, taciturn Hillman from the North makes a fine thief as well!