It's all Zach's fault. Putting up a link to 300 RPG related text files culled from BBSs during the 80s and 90s. Almost all of these are 'relevant to my interests', coming as they did during the era at which TSR was at its zenith, and I just can't stop browsing. Some of the files are brilliant, some of them are weird, some of them ridiculous; all but a tiny minority are wonderful.
A few favourites:
1 - The curiously entitled Complete Guide to AD&D Alchohol for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (is that a tautology? It's definitely something) by some forgotten genius by the name of Reid Bluebaugh. Alchohol is the great love of my life after food, sex and D&D (okay, and the missus), so I'm especially interested in supplements which contain chapters on Popular and Strange Alchohols Amongst The Worlds, When the Still Explodes, and Getting to Know Your Booze, as well as monsters such as the Giant Alchohol Ant and magic items like the Ring of Wine Changing. Whatever Mr. Bluebaugh is doing now, I wish it had been him who'd designed 4e.
2 - A short file describing a magic item called the Bag o' Wondrous Items, which produces everything from 10' poles to star trek phasers to baskets of radishes to randomly generated golems.
3 - A probably-broken but undoubtedly cool new class of Dwarf mages called the Dwarnoi, who can turn stone creatures like a cleric can the undead.
4 - 'How to Join the Center for Monster Control'; rules on becoming a member of a secret society of...monster controllers. A mere 500sp entrance fee is required - along with a go-ahead from the 'board of magocratics'.
5 - A kind of manifesto for Cyberpunk games called Cyberpunk: The Rules. I'm particularly intrigued by rule number 9: "Crossbreeding produces mutation". Not so much a rule as a... motto?
6 - Rules on the Grenade weapon proficiency for 2e AD&D.
7 - An especially necessary supplement, given the proclivities of certain members of the hobby: The (more or less) Complete Guide to Hygeine for Fantasy Role Playing Games. First chapter: When Do Adventurers Go To The Bathroom? This one has Mr. Reid Bluebaugh's fingerprints all over it, but the author isn't credited.
8 - Literally dozens, if not hundreds, of new spells.
9 - First in a series of Netbooks of Plots, containing such gems as Help the local good, but dying, wizard to attain lichdom and You are assigned to protect a person, but don't let them know you're protecting them.
10 - A miscellany of stuff for a certain gonzo AD&D setting, called (of course), The Rhyme of the Ancient Spelljammer. New items include The Pangalactic Gargleblaster (there's that Reid Bluebaugh again) and the Dispel Magic Grenade; new monsters include the Holomath (which appears "as a very large balloon or ball, with a mouth-like opening in front", floating around in wildspace, and can blow out a cloud of gas for awful effects).
Showing posts with label strange ideas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strange ideas. Show all posts
Friday, 14 November 2008
Tuesday, 10 June 2008
d12s and a Statement of Intent
d12s never get the love, do they? d20s have a whole system named after them; d10s are the weapon of choice for the World of Darkness games, ORE, Chaosium's Basic Role Playing and many others; even d8s have some uses in AD&D, but for some reason all d12s ever get is the dregs from the table. You want to work out the damage of a two-handed sword? Okay, the d12 is your man, but that's about all he's good for.
I was thinking about this today, while more generally mulling over dice and their many virtues. I don't think it's remarked upon often enough just how fun rolling dice is. For starters, there is a real tactile pleasure in picking up a fistful of them - d10s are my favourite for this, which is one of the reasons I like ORE - and just chucking them across the table. The weight of them, and the noise they make, patterpatterpatter - it's great. Secondly, as we all know, pleasure is really all about anticipation, whether it's looking forward to a nice big slap-up meal, kick-off at a football match, or building up to "the big night" after the first couple of dates with a new girl- or boy-friend. Now, rolling eight d10s isn't quite as good as the build up to sex, I admit, but it almost is: those few moments from the time the dice have left your hand to the time they come to rest flip all the same sorts of buttons. They just don't flip them quite as hard. Even the potential for disappointment is accurately emulated.
I seem to have digressed. I was talking about d12s, wasn't I? So anyway, yes, I was thinking about rolling dice today and decided, what the heck, I was in Shinjuku, so why not swing by The Yellow Submarine and get a handful? So get them I did; I am now the proud owner of ten new d12s, all sparkling and smelling of newness. The next question is what to do with them.
As you know if you've been keeping up, my new idea is a project I've taken to calling "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." It's basically a fantasy campaign which takes Mallory, MacDonald, Dunsany, White and Wolfe as its starting points rather than Tolkien and Moorcock; "fantastical fantasy," as I like to put it. I'd basically been thinking about running it in using a bastardized form of Risus, but this new brood of baby d12s I'm now parent to have started whispering "Use us! Use us!" in very insistent tones, and I don't think I'll be able to resist them much longer.
So here it is: a Statement of Intent. I'm going to write a new game system entirely based on d12s, for use with my Sir Gawain and the Green Knight setting. If I'm feeling lazy I'll probably just rewire Risus for use with d12s rather than d6s. But if my creative juices are pumping I might very well take a crack at coming up with something Brand New. Watch this space.
I was thinking about this today, while more generally mulling over dice and their many virtues. I don't think it's remarked upon often enough just how fun rolling dice is. For starters, there is a real tactile pleasure in picking up a fistful of them - d10s are my favourite for this, which is one of the reasons I like ORE - and just chucking them across the table. The weight of them, and the noise they make, patterpatterpatter - it's great. Secondly, as we all know, pleasure is really all about anticipation, whether it's looking forward to a nice big slap-up meal, kick-off at a football match, or building up to "the big night" after the first couple of dates with a new girl- or boy-friend. Now, rolling eight d10s isn't quite as good as the build up to sex, I admit, but it almost is: those few moments from the time the dice have left your hand to the time they come to rest flip all the same sorts of buttons. They just don't flip them quite as hard. Even the potential for disappointment is accurately emulated.
I seem to have digressed. I was talking about d12s, wasn't I? So anyway, yes, I was thinking about rolling dice today and decided, what the heck, I was in Shinjuku, so why not swing by The Yellow Submarine and get a handful? So get them I did; I am now the proud owner of ten new d12s, all sparkling and smelling of newness. The next question is what to do with them.
As you know if you've been keeping up, my new idea is a project I've taken to calling "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." It's basically a fantasy campaign which takes Mallory, MacDonald, Dunsany, White and Wolfe as its starting points rather than Tolkien and Moorcock; "fantastical fantasy," as I like to put it. I'd basically been thinking about running it in using a bastardized form of Risus, but this new brood of baby d12s I'm now parent to have started whispering "Use us! Use us!" in very insistent tones, and I don't think I'll be able to resist them much longer.
So here it is: a Statement of Intent. I'm going to write a new game system entirely based on d12s, for use with my Sir Gawain and the Green Knight setting. If I'm feeling lazy I'll probably just rewire Risus for use with d12s rather than d6s. But if my creative juices are pumping I might very well take a crack at coming up with something Brand New. Watch this space.
Monday, 2 June 2008
Mona Lisa in the Dungeon
I remember reading an essay a few years ago whose title and author I've forgotten, but which was about Icons of Western Art. It sounds like it was written by George Steiner but for some reason I want to say Stephen Greenblatt; it's probably neither.
Anyway, it was all about how every genre of Western art has, basically, a Mona Lisa. That is, each one has a single iconic example which comes to signify the genre itself, and which in a sense becomes the platonic 'ideal' form. What is surprising (according the author whose name I've forgotten) is that very often these titanic pieces aren't the best. The Mona Lisa is mediocre, Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's worst plays, The Lord of the Rings is very much a flawed masterpiece, and Moby Dick would benefit from having two thirds of it cut out - but something about these works caught onto our culture's collective imagination and wouldn't let go.
Now, RPGs aren't really art, but it's funny how the same applies in our hobby. I'm talking, of course, about Dungeons and Dragons, especially its older varieties. There are so many better - much better; quicker, more intuitive, easier and more comprehensive - examples. There are huge, silly, awful flaws rife within the game. Whole swathes of the rules don't even make any sense. So many of the assumptions it is founded on are utterly bizarre.
And yet it works. And not only does it work; it's the best role playing game ever. Why this should be is as much a mystery as to why Mona Lisa attracts throngs of thousands to the Louvre each day and why Hamlet still occupies the position of "greatest play ever written".
Spot the difference:
I wonder if anybody's ever statted up the Mona Lisa...
Anyway, it was all about how every genre of Western art has, basically, a Mona Lisa. That is, each one has a single iconic example which comes to signify the genre itself, and which in a sense becomes the platonic 'ideal' form. What is surprising (according the author whose name I've forgotten) is that very often these titanic pieces aren't the best. The Mona Lisa is mediocre, Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's worst plays, The Lord of the Rings is very much a flawed masterpiece, and Moby Dick would benefit from having two thirds of it cut out - but something about these works caught onto our culture's collective imagination and wouldn't let go.
Now, RPGs aren't really art, but it's funny how the same applies in our hobby. I'm talking, of course, about Dungeons and Dragons, especially its older varieties. There are so many better - much better; quicker, more intuitive, easier and more comprehensive - examples. There are huge, silly, awful flaws rife within the game. Whole swathes of the rules don't even make any sense. So many of the assumptions it is founded on are utterly bizarre.
And yet it works. And not only does it work; it's the best role playing game ever. Why this should be is as much a mystery as to why Mona Lisa attracts throngs of thousands to the Louvre each day and why Hamlet still occupies the position of "greatest play ever written".
Spot the difference:
I wonder if anybody's ever statted up the Mona Lisa...
The Mona Lisa
Chaotic Evil Cleric of Diinkarazan
Level 11
.......
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