Session Report: It's the End of the World As We Know It...

And so it was that the party finally finished off the Chaos Cave.  Steadily escalating earthquakes rattled the group as they forced their way into the center of the dungeon, in search of the Holy Relic of Moradin, the Dwarven God of Dwarves and Beer.  There, in the center of the dungeon, they found Gorgosh, a Dark Cleric, summoning swarms of the Undead, and his Death Knight servant.  There was a force bubble surrounding the entrance, which all of the party save Glacia and her manservant were able to bypass with no trouble.  Wading into the ocean of the Undead, Banebeard, the Dwarven Cleric, was an Undead Turning Machine, destroying scores of Skeletons and Zombies each round, and it essentially because a race between the two clerics - Gorgosh raised them, Banebeard put them down.  Then the Death Knight entered the fray, pointing it's deadly finger at poor Serendipity the Thief/Mage, recently returned from retirement at the insistance of her paramour Aloud.  A deadly Power Word: Kill (aka Fus Ro DIE) spell was spoken, and just like that, no Saving Throw, Serendipity was dead.  The pitched battle continued, with Gorgosh slowly retreating to a small back room, where an eerie blue light glowed ominously. 

Finally Glacia passed her saving throw and was able to penetrate the bubble, and in two leaps bounded all the way across the battle, and into the back room.  So focused was she, that she didn't even see the Illithid playing with a machine in the back of the room.  The machine that was casting the eerie light.  The machine that extended below the surface into the earth.  Which was shaking violently by this point.

Slowly the party whittled down the vast numbers of undead, and closed in on Gorgosh and the Illithid, who turned and fought.  The Illithid unleashed it's devastating mind blast on Glacia, but unfortunately, she was in a state of frenzy and apparently immune to such effects.  It tried to charm her, with similar results.  It was still confused by the lack of effectiveness when Vincent, the militant wizard cleaved it's head from it's body.

Nonetheless, the damage was done.  The machine spun to stop, but the earthquakes continued to rattle the dungeon, causing portions of the cave to collapse entirely and lava to spew from the earth.  Grabbing the Holy Relic of Moradin from the dead Illithid, the party ran as fast as their legs could carry them, but the earthquakes knocked them from their feet time and time again.  Just as the lava was cresting and about to swallow them, Veravum, the hapless Githyanki paladin, opened a planar portal and rescued them.

Passing through the astral plane on their way back to their flying ship, they saw the Githyanki Astral Fortress Weissehaupt burning as it fell through space.  Clearly there was some serious s**t going down.  Arriving back on their boat, they saw the earth rippling like water.  The horizon to the east, the direction of the Human Lands, was glowing steadily as lava overtook it.  To the south, they watched  the entire Elven Nation rip itself from the earth and spin away into the sky.

Veravum helpfully pointed out that the Holy Relic of Moradin was mined by the Moradin himself from the earth beneath Sigil, and posessed, among other things, the ability to function like a portable Spelljamming Helm.  A debate immediately began with regards to who, if anyone, should be saved from the impending global apocalypse.  Some suggestions included an order of Militant Wizards, a tribe of yeti, and "F*ck 'em all, I never liked anyone on this dirtball anyways."

Only time will tell what becomes of the party!

The 5e A-Team

So my group has decided to playtest D&DNext, and as such have formed the perfect group in order to provide WOTC with the most balanced set of feedback possible.

Hannibal, aka Ark.  He's the man with the plan, he's the Grognard of the group, he's guy WOTC would give it's proverbial left nut to get back in their camp.  He'll be DMing.  Specialty: Crunching DM-side rules.

B.A. "Bad Attitude" Baracus, aka Kaye.  Our resident tank.  Cut his teeth on the powergamer-friendly 3rd edition, and is trying to adjust to Labyrinth Lord and 2e restrictions.  Specialty: Tweaking characters to the point where they exist solely for a specific purpose.

H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock, aka The Boy.  Regards 4e as "real Dungeons and Dragons", he's WOTC's other target demographic.  He's unpredictable at the game table - sometimes his characters fight, other times they go out of their way to avoid conflict, and contemplate settling down and roleplaying a quiet family life instead.  Specialty: Can the rules keep up with his imagination?

Templeton "Faceman" Peck, aka Me.  Yeah, that's right, I'm a ladies man.  You didn't know that about me, because I keep it low key on here.  But now you do.  I was raised on 2e, and my characters tend to be smooth mother f***ers.  Specialty: non-combat focused, charisma based character generation

The Rotating Girl Character, aka The Woman.  My better half.  Rounding out our group is my fiancee, who has never roleplayed before.  Ever.  She's not really sure if she even wants to, or will enjoy it, but is a good sport and is helping out for a session or two to test out the rules.  Specialty: Doesn't really have one, that I know of.  She's there to see how easy the rules are to pick up.

DnD Next is off to a... wait... what's that you say?

So the debut of the public playtest has hit a bit of a snag or two, and as you can imagine,  NERD RAGE ABOUNDS.  

 Join in the fun!  The more everyone hammers the links the longer it'll take us all to get the playtest!  Yay!

Zombie Apocalypse Survivor

Gamquistu - Games, Quizzes and Stuff.

Based on what I've seen around the blogosphere, RPG bloggers will make up the majority of the population of mankind after the first year of the zombie apocalypse. I think that, rather than sharing a badge, it would be more interesting to share the answers that got us all these high scores. I, for one, would like to know who the people are that are going to shut the door on people, or not go across town to check on loved ones. Stuff like that is good to know.

As I'm staring at the title of this post, I'm reminded of the excellent Charlie Brooker series Dead Set. It takes what, on it's surface, is a patently absurd idea - a zombie outbreak occurs, trapping the contestants of Big Brother inside the Big Brother House, and plays it perfectly straight. Brooker uses the situation, in the tradition of the genre, to comment on society at large, and does so wonderfully, creating a tale that is humourous, pointed, and horrifying at various points. Check it out. And really, check out anything Charlie Brooker does, he's a cynical, shouty version of Jon Stewart, minus Stewart's self congratulatory smarminess.

Meanwhile, in Grognardia...



He will break you.  But will he learn from the experience?



A link to yesterday's post by James M was emailed to me yesterday evening.  I read it in the middle of the night, and I've been wrestling with it ever since.  On the one hand, my inner Ayn Rand is offended - hamstringing those who are naturally gifted, giving undeserved bonuses to second-handers, etc.  On it's surface, it Harrison Bergeron-izes D&D, strapping lead weights to the legs of the physically gifted and such. 

On the flip side, within the confines of James' example, it seems to make sense.  If you accept the precepts of D&D, that melee combat is a strength based affair - someone with massive strength wouldn't need to learn as much about fighting, they get a bonus to hit by virture of their muscles, and crush skulls when they connect.  You can even extend that example to Rogues and their Dexterity stat - for them, everything is all about their Dexterity, and a slower Thief would have to pick things up quickly in order to succeed.  Higher Dex = better AC, harder to hit, etc.

I think things break down, though, once you get to the Cleric and Wizard.  Until you get to 4e, while your Intelligence and Wisdom would have an impact on your progression through those classes, there wasn't as much of a direct correllation between the Stat and their abilities.  A low Intelligence could keep a wizard from casting high level spells, and a low Wisdom could cause Clerical spells to fail, but how do you draw a direct line from that to increased/decreased experience, like you do with a fighter?  In 4e I can see it, since everything is stat based, no matter what class you have, but in older versions of the game, you just didn't see that.

And yet...

And yet, I can't shake the feeling that there's something to this.  The game can really punish you for poor stats, as poor Torvalds found out, and this is something good to level out that sort of thing.  But it seems to run counter to the idea of Old School Lethality.

Needless to say, I am conflicted.

FtA: Apocalyptic Nihilism

I was discussing my idea for From the Ashes with a friend, specifically the idea that once you reach Level 9, your powers have reached their peak, but they destroy you in the process.  Chewing on a pen, he replied, "That's pretty nihilistic, man."

I started to argue with him, but what's the point (heh).

It did get me thinking, though.  Every once in awhile, I look around at our society, and think to myself, "We're never going to make it."  The impulses which drive our species are as contradictory as they are destructive, we strive to discover truths that undermine the very same things we build, we prod, blindly, at forces well beyond our control, and we do it all with a pride, a hubris which causes the beast within me to howl with desire to see us fall, to finally receive our comeuppance, at last.

So as you can imagine, reading books like Adam Parfrey's Apocalypse Culture is not very good for me.  It contains essays, written by those who promote extreme philosophies, each representative of the decline of some facet of modern society.  Whether it's making a case against art, or a meditation of the ascension of the atom bomb in the superpsyche of our species, it is 362 pages on why we should just cease to exist.  Some of the stuff included within I don't even want to print, considering the number of people who leapt upon this blog at the mere mention of "porn".  I shudder to think of the type of attention this blog would draw, were I to mention some of the things contained within the book.  I'm relatively jaded, but even I put the book down several times, exclaiming, "Oh come ON..."

Interestingly enough, in the introduction to the Revised Edition, Parfrey states that he simply revised the 1st edition, because he didn't feel as though a book entitled "Apocalypse Culture" should have a sequel.  Of course, having made that statement, he did exactly that 13 years later, when he published Apocalypse Culture II.  No doubt he chuckled ironically and twirled his moustache as he did so.  I haven't read it yet.  It surfaced on my "to read" pile, but after glancing over my shoulder to make sure noone was looking, I moved it down a few books.  I guess I have to be in the mood.

I am a fan of comic books, and while my interest has been waning in recent years, I still manage to pick up anything that Garth Ennis writes.  His books tend to have a very distinct "style" to them - they very often involve hard men living dangerous lives that get by with the help of good mates, who drink heavily and swear profusely, but at the end of the day can be counted on to get the job done.  In 2000, he was given free reign to pretty much do whatever he liked with the Punisher, a title that hand been mismanaged and was currently languishing in obscurity.  His first stab at it was absurdist and over the top, a dark comedic romp more than anything else.  In 2004, though, things got serious.  The title was relaunched in Marvel's MAX imprint, which was basically an R-Rated Imprint, and things got ugly.  White slavers, IRA bombers, the war in Afghanistan, the Punisher took them all on.  His run peaked, however with the release of the one-shot, "The Punisher: The End"

With gritty art by comics legend Richard Corben, this was the Ultimate Punisher tale, with the character taken to it's natural conclusion.  Emerging from a fallout shelter in the remains of a prison, he finds himself in a post apocalyptic wasteland.  Not the fun kind, there are no biker gangs or mutants, just death and destruction.  He journeys through Upstate New York to a last holdout of mankind in the ruins of the former site of the Twin Towers in NYC, where he finds the last holdouts of humanity, the powerbrokers, the wheelers and the dealers who drove humanity to it's current state. 

The story is as bleak as it comes, and the statement it makes about humanity is dark, but it's worth the read. 

Nihilism is tough to pull off in an RPG.  RPGs, and games in general, are typically purpose based, making nihilism difficult to portray in any sort of meaningful sense.  How do you build a system around a lack of purpose?  The two concepts seem fundamentally at odds.  To a certain extent, you can put Call of Cthulhu in the category, where "victory" means surviving without going insance, but the "Game" aspect creeps in, meaning you have to give them some sort of satisfaction, some closure.  Even so, it's tough to take CoC seriously in a nihilistic sense, when there are tentacled monsters popping out of cupboards and such.  Lovecraft's nihilims was all about subtext and that's nigh impossible to allow to shine through in an RPG. 

Twilight 2000, though.  Now that was a Nihilistic RPG.  You play a soldier, stuck in Europe as a war nobody cares about anymore slowly grinds to a halt, not because of a lack of will, but merely a lack of supplies.  I played this a couple of times in High School, and haven't played since, so I'm not sure if the impact this game had on my design of From the Ashes was based more on GDW's design or my GM's own nihilistic tendancies.  We played for several months, as our party first tried simply to survive, until we were able to find some measure of safety with a group of people, and we fought off intruders, scavenged for supplies and tried to rebuild society, at least within our own little part of the earth.

And then we died of radiation poisoning.

Seriously, that was it.  We turned right when we should have turned left, and stumbled into a hot zone, and three sessions later, we were all dead. 

I don't think From the Ashes is a fundamentally nihilistic game.  Or at least, it doesn't have to be - it's not designed to be.  Are you going to die?  Yes.  Absolutely.  There is no retirement for these characters.  They are agents of change, as society digs itself out of the rubble, and they burn themselves out affecting that change.  They flare brightly and then they burn out.  The idea is to shape the world around them before they go, and that, I think, gives more purpose to a game than a hundred plundered dungeons, or a thousand slain dragons.

The Cat Piano

This is well worth the watch, it's almost Lovecraftian, despite the cartoony art.  Seriously, it's only 8 minutes long - do yourself a favor and watch this...