review

Dragonbane – rulebook walkthrough pt 2: character advancement & conditions

David Skelector Dragonbane, Fantasy, jeux de rôles, review, Roleplaying Game, RPG

Part 1: Character creation and magic

If character creation in Dragonbane is a bit different from other D&D-adjacent system, we’re now gonna talk about two mechanics that makes it, hmm maybe not groundbreaking (what is nowadays?), but unusual in a good way.

Character advancement:

There is no levels in Dragonbane. Instead how your character can improve is by increasing his skills (including with weapons), gaining new spells (see part 1) and, less frequently, gaining new heroic abilities.

Each time you roll a d20 and roll a 1 (a dragon) or a 20 (a demon) you check a box next to the skill you used.

In addition, if you answer yes to these questions at the end of the session you can check a skill box of your choice:

  • Did you participate in the game session? (a freebie)
  • Did you explore a new location?
  • Did you defeat one or more dangerous enemies?
  • Did you overcome an obstacle without using force?
  • Did you give in to your weakness (optional rule)

(You can also find a teacher that has at least 15 in the skill you wish to improve and is better than you. The cost in time and money is left to the GM discretion, no direction is given in the rulebook beyond that unfortunately.)

Then, at the end of the session, with all checked boxes you must roll a d20 and exceed the number you already have in order to increase your skill by one. Pretty simple.

Heroic abilities: There’s 2 ways to gain new heroic abilities. The first is if you manage to increase a skill to 18 you immediately gain a new heroic ability of your choice. The other way is by accomplishing a « grand heroic deed », that’s also left to the GM’s discretion but it’s mentionned that it should be a rare event.

Pushing your roll & Conditions:

Now, another fun and interesting mechanics that is actually an optional rule, but I really see don’t why one wouldn’t include it, is the Pushing your roll. If a character fails a skill check he can choose to re-roll but with a cost, he’ll suffer from a condition from now on. Each attribute is linked to a specific condition: Strength >> Exhausted, Constitution >> Sickly, Agility >> Dazed, Intelligence >> Angry, Willpower >> Scared, Charisma >> Disheartened.

You choose the condition you’ll gain and will have bane (roll two d20 take worst) on any skill check linked to the affected attribute. You can’t choose a condition you already have and you’re also supposed to roleplay somewhat the whole deal.

You can also gain conditions in other ways, an environemental effect, a monster attack, etc. To remove a condition (or all conditions) you must do a shift rest (6 uninterrupted hours).

Closing Comments:

  • For me the character advancement system is reminiscent of the Elder Scrolls video games (I’ve played extensively to Morrowind back in the day, didn’t even try Skyrim though) where your stats simply improve with how much you use them. I like this.
  • An unfortunate side-effect though, at least for my young players, is the « I want to roll… » just in the hope of rolling a 1 or 20 and check the skill box. Listening to a door with an awareness check has never been so popular I tell you.
  • I’ve homebrewed somewhat the questions in my game (i.e did you explore a new location? >> did you find an iconic location in the dungeon?)
  • The way we play, my players’ characters suffer from at least one or two conditions each session, both from pushing their luck and dungeon hazards. The way to remove a condition is a bit more arduous than simply shift resting in my game, they must find a way for their characters to have a good time (i.e having a quality meal).
  • The conditions makes me think of my basic military training where I saw several guys vomiting from exertion (sickly!) but still going on, I dunno, makes sense to me.

Part 3: Combat and Monsters

Dragonbane – rulebook walkthrough pt 1: character creation and magic

David Skelector Dragonbane, Fantasy, jeux de rôles, Play reports, review, Roleplaying Game, RPG

I’ve been using the Dragonbane ttrpg system (DB) for several sessions now- testing the limits of it in fact, with a megadungeon campaign, but I think for the moment I’d do something between a walkthrough and a true review. Suffice to say I like Dragonbane a lot but like every other systems, it also has some flaws.

First thing first, I’ve seen it often called an « OSR » game but I don’t think that’s quite accurate. It’s a fairly light system (the rulebook is slim at 112 pages) and there’s also many random tables (i.e magic mishaps, injuries, etc.), but here the comparison ends as I think the implied style of play is a bit different than OSR (i.e all the different actions you can do in combat).

Character creation:

You have the classical humans, elves, dwarves, halfings and then you’ve also got those guys, the duck-persons mallards and also wolfkin.

Choosing your Kin, you get an ability from it, a small power that you can activate spending willpower points (your wp pool is equal to your willpower score), for example the mallards get « ill-tempered » giving them a boon (advantage, roll twice take best) on attacks at the cost of getting angry (a condition, more on that later).

Choosing a Profession (the complete list: artisan, bard, fighter, hunter, knight, mage, mariner, merchant, scholar and thief), you get an Heroic Ability, another thing you can activate spending willpower points (the fighter for instance gets Veteran, something that lets him play with his initiative order a bit).

If you choose the Mage profession, you don’t get a Heroic Ability but instead get access to three Rank 1 spells and two Magic Tricks from one magic School. Others can also learn magic but not at the beginning.

Next step is rolling your attributes (the same 6, or thereabouts, willpower instead of wisdom, 4d6 take three, assign to one attribute at a time.

Lastly, based on your attributes numbers, you’ll have scores on skills, which are either free or trained (chosen from your profession’s list and a few you can choose as you wish), the minimum is 3, maximum is 14. thus if you have a 17 or 18 score in an attribute on a trained skill, you have 14 for that skill that will be used with a d20 roll under or equal. So, it’s a Roll Under system.

The whole character creation is pretty easy and fast as apart for Kin and Profession most of the choices are already made for you. A few more customizations, rolled randomly (i.e starting gear, a memento), and you’re ready to go. Nothing to complain there, all good.

Magic:

Spells are ranked from 1 to 5, with most within the 1-3 range, with each rank from 2 and above having a lower-ranked spell as a prerequisite.

There’s four magic schools: General, Animism, Elementalism and Mentalism. Everyone that has the Magic Talent heroic ability (from being a mage most probably) can access General magic and also choose one of the three other schools.

You can remember a finite number of spells depending on your Int score but can have more into your Grimoire. The magic system is somewhat Vancian (memorizing spells, spending them and getting to choose anew after resting) but with the addition that you can cast any spells that you have in your Grimoire if you double the casting time (2 rounds instead of 1 for most spells). That’s a nice touch, a bit more flexibility is good.

Spells also take magic points to cast (from you wp pool, as determined by your willpower score) and cost 2, 4 or 6 points depending on how strong you want the effet to be.

So both memorized spells and spell points, a bit cumbersome in my opinion.

But something pretty big is effectively missing from the whole thing: how do you acquire new spells? As it stands, it’e pretty much up to the DM to decide, that’s weird.

I would add that the spells list to choose from is a bit limited, some offensive spells are just stronger versions of lower-ranked ones, making the latter completely obsolete (which also feels wrong). There’s seventeen Rank 1 spells to choose from initially, with not too bad a variety of effects but it could also be better.

There’s also a nice (optional) Magical Mishaps table in case a character roll a 20 (remember, it’s a roll under system) whereas they could vomit a frog the moment they tell a lie for some time or some such.

Addendum:

There was a KS going on recently for financing two more Dragonbane books, one being the Book of Magic… They clearly recognized the need, that’s great, because as it stands the magic part of the game is the weakest.

Part 2 – character development and conditions

Dungeon Rats (gritty fantasy prison break)

David Skelector computer game, megadungeon, review, Roleplaying Game, RPG

I think that video games have now too prominent an influence over tabletop rgs, often to the point of denaturing the latter. But if we stay clear of what works for crpgs but should absolutely not be imported to ttrpgs, we can absolutely borrow some great ideas from one to the other.

Now the game I’m gonna talk about I can’t say it’s a great game, I would not even recommend it except for a very specific kind of gamers, those who like punishing turn-based tactical games, like say Darkest Dungeon or Battle Brothers.

Dungeon Rats by Iron Tower Studio is kind of an annex to the more complex Age of Decadence game, both set in the same ancient Rome-like world. If the latter offers a full immersive rpg experience, the first only focus on tactical combat with some (very well-made) crafting on the side.

The premise is quite interesting to me: we’ve been sent to a special kind of prison, a deep and nearly depleted mine, we’ve arrived at Rock Bottom… As we’re the fighting type we’ll be spared the back-breaking work and have a few missions until we’ll be facing a hard choice: live our the rest of our miserable, short life in the oppressive darkness or… try to escape.

Now, as we’re in the aptly-named Rock Bottom, to see the light of day and gain our freedom we have to go up!

But in order to do so we first have to go through gang territory:

And that’s where I said to myself that this game would be highly interesting as a ttrpg conversion. DR is a pretty limited game, mostly linear, from one fight to another without a lot of choices. Converted into a proper tabletop dungeon and with faction play with the above-mentionned gangs? And with the fascinating crafting/alchemy system (i.e. you can make liquid fire, or craft The Claw, a spear made with a scorpion pincer). There’s a lot of potential there methinks.

There’s more to fight than fellow prisoners though. From giant ants, scorpions, carnivorous plants, giant spiky worms to… demonic metal-skinned beings! Hmm, yeah, there’s a weird turn into sci-fi in the later part of the game, that’s a matter of taste I guess if one would keep the abrupt theming change or not.

Just for fun, the levels/sub-levels are thusly arrayed in DR, note that the whole thing is more horizontal than vertical (maybe 4 Levels, 5 counting the Fort):

  • Rock Bottom, where the latest prisoners are dumped
  • Deep Caves, below Rock Bottom, full of critters and lava but somewhat less depleted in ressources
  • Old Town, neutral ground, I would imagine, of the upper level
  • The River, fast underground river, access to precious fresh water, controlled by the Dredgers
  • Crystal Caves, eerily-glowing minerals
  • The Mines, labyrinthine, controlled by the Molerats
  • The Forge, soot-blackened, controlled by the heavily-armored Praetors
  • Ancient Factory, sub-level, sci-fi, robots
  • Old Cellblock, « proper » prison, home of the Emperor, ex-gladiator, inhumanly enhanced
  • Fort, above the dungeon, sunlight at last! but we’re not out of danger yet, a century of legionnaires is between us and freedom

The Sword of Roele review – crappy adventure, good dungeon pt 2

David Skelector Birthright, Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, jeux de rôles, review, Roleplaying Game, RPG , ,

This is the long overdue second part of my review (that virtually no one was waiting for) of this mostly forgotten TSR adventure The Sword of Roele, for the Birthright setting. In the first part I’ve talked about how it has an absolute mess of a scenario, hilariously bad. But now I’m gonna talk about its main dungeon which I find, as the title says, pretty good.

The Sword of Roele, Wolfgang Baur, 1996, AD&D2E, levels 5-8

So you’ve gone through the arduous process of the module’s disjointed, scene-based nodes and finally found the adventure’s main dungeon where the macguffin, I mean the Sword of Roele is. You stand in front of:

The Great Tomb of the Order of the Sun

  • Mid-sized dungeon, 2 levels, 53 rooms
  • funerary complex of knights do-gooders and some of their major figures
  • designed by an evil magic-user architect to accomodate his own needs in his plans to achieve lichdom

The tomb’s only entrance is collapsed with only a narrow path to get in (shown as the « goblin path » on the map even though there’s no goblins in the dungeon, a obvious sign that the dungeon has been refurbished and changed from its original purpose). The PCs will immediately have to confront the troglodyte sentries and do some tunnel fighting.

There’s an whole tribe of 41 trogs in the rooms near the entrance. The trogs are also intruders to the dungeons.

Here’s a great bit:

« If the troglodytes lose 10 or more of
their number, they retreat into Areas 3
and 6. In the storage area they climb up
the tunnel into the audience chamber
(Area 8). They are cold-blooded so they
suffer only one-quarter damage from the
brown mold’s cold. In the hall, they hide
in the shadows behind the statues, waiting
for a chance to ambush foes. »

The trogs take advantage of their resistance to brown mold, that’s great!

When the PCs are in they’ll see large double-doors at their left (upper right on the map), they’ll feel a draft of cold air coming from the right (caused by the brown mold) and see an impressive hallway in front with rows of stone statues/caryatids on each side. They’ll probably notice the corpses of dead thieves on the floor too, at the limit of their light source. Good telegraphing for what represents the main gimmick of this dungeon: of course some caryatids are monsters (circled in red below)! As written the caryatids are the equivalent of lesser stone golems and are perfectly beatable. When I ran this dungeon I’d upgraded the stone statues to full stone golems status, they absolutely have to constitute a proper threat to force some hard choices (and clever ideas) from the players IMO.

a caryatid ready to crush your skull
An « optimal » run to reach the second level could look something like that, with some tense moments of crossing the hallway with the help of diversions. (huh, you may want to include room 21 and 22 if you feel confident! 😉 )

Apart from the troglodytes and caryatids the main denizens are of the undead variety with some constructs sprinkled here and there. The dungeon definitely suffers from a gygaxian naturalism syndrome where things make sense for a tomb but there’s a lack of wonder involved.

Aside: Funnily enough there’s several mention of a resident vampire in the tomb, he’s supposed to be a big deal but he’s in fact nowhere to be found, he’s not even statted! Oops!

The rooms themselves are a mixed bag.

Some are great, like the Chamber of Shadows:

« Three of this chamber’s walls are covered
with an abstract pattern of black
lines. The fourth wall depicts a black
bridge over a misty chasm to a gate of
light. Words are carved into three of the
four stone walls. »

[…]

« The painted bridge at the far side of the
room is the Bridge of Sighs and Shadows,
a magical link through solid rock between
this room and the Divination Room. Only
those who know its secret can cross it. »

Other rooms are pretty boring. There’s several rooms in a row that are just filler; here’s a room with undead falcons, here’s a room with undead hippogriffs, the next one with undead griffons…

The second level is smaller and is designed essentially to confuse the players. It’s heavy on teleportation tricks, traps and of course it has more undeads and constructs.

There’s no faction play in this dungeon, the troglodytes are immediately hostile and other than them there’s few sentient beings. There’s an imp to be found who actually gives good advice as it serves his purpose, that’s nice. There’s also an homonculus but if you’ve met the imp he’ll feel kinda redundant. As written you may also be accompanied by the ghost of the order’s high priest that you can meet before entering the tomb and he does have useful information to provide (and some big secrets) but he’ll get angry if you fall into the usual adventurer’s tomb-robbing habbits and most people will be happy to put him to rest one way or the other before long.

So all in all, this dongeon has several weaknesses, even a few gaffes, but it has also several strong points, the hallway with the caryatids being a favorite of mine. It’s not a great dungeon but it’s good and it certainly doesn’t deserve to be completely forgotten as it is now.

Worlds Without Number rpg – almost a review

David Skelector Fantasy, jeux de rôles, review, Roleplaying Game, RPG, science fantasy

Edit 2024-04-09: I’ve refined a bit my thoughts after more sessions of play.

Edit 2024-06-25: idem

Worlds Without Number (WWN) is a 396 pages book by Kevin Crawford. It’s origins lies in the Stars Without Number sci-fi rpg system by the same author. This time the default setting « Latter Earth » is a science fantasy world in the vein of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth, Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun or M. John Harrison’s Viriconium (those are my own references, sadly the author doesn’t cites his inspiration sources).

What the book claims to offer is nothing less than everything you need to run a sandbox campaign, or about 2/3 of the book on worldbuilding, mostly in the shape of random tables. The worldbuilding part seems well done to me but I’ve only skimmed through that part, I might use some of this content some day but as of yet I didn’t. The reason why I’ve bought WWN is for the rpg system it offers – so my comments for today will focus on this (much slimmer) part.

What the WWN system is all about?

  • It’s a hybrid system. An old-school D&D chassis (i.e roll 3d6 in order for your six attributes) combined with a modularity (i.e foci (feats) that let you be an expert at something, combat or otherwise that also have hydrid classes) that you don’t find in most standard old-school systems.
  • It has only 4 main classes: Expert, Warrior, Mage, and the Adventurer (that lets you combine with one of numerous « part-classes » with something like 80 combinations). There’s sub-classes for the Mage: the classical High Mage, the Necromancer, Elementalist and many more. To be frank, I’m on the fence with this whole part-class thing, it offers a lot of options for customizing a character but it also feels a bit wonky. It’s like two systems of character creation instead of one, maybe not a bad thing per se but not the most elegant piece of design either IMO.
  • Human-centric world. You can play an elf or dwarf or WWN’s own brand of fantasy races, but only with a bit of fiddling.
  • The spells have Vancian names like: « The Coruscating Coffin » or « The Jade Palanquin of the Faceless God ». The magic-users have very few spells per day (only one at 1st and 2nd level!) but again, they’re a lot more impactful than your regular magic missile, i.e. Invisibility at level 1. Magic isn’t risky (like in DCC for example) but you have to choose your moment carefully for maximum impact. Aside from the spells, mages have Arts, lesser magical abilities, most of them utilitarian in nature (read magic + darkvision combined as one example). Each magic specialities have a good list to choose from.
  • Combat is d20 based but skill checks use 2d6 + attribute mod + skill level (1 to 4) to beat 6, 8 or 10 or more depending on difficulty. With this less random formula, the characters skill’s competency feels a LOT more relevant.
  • On the character’s sheet there’s a list for « readied items » based on the encumbrance capacity (strength-based) of the character. It’s great and efficient.
  • Combat is fast and deadly and in my impression it feels more chaotic than tactical (not necessarily a bad thing) unless you pay very close attention to the list of combat options provided i.e. screen ally, snap attack, etc.

Some things unique to WWN:

  • There’s a « Shock » mechanics in combat – martial melee weapons will often (except against an opponent with high AC or with a shield) do damage, even with a miss. It’s a bit conterintuitive but characters that are built for combat (warriors in particular) can do potent damage without ever succeeding with their d20 fight checks…
  • There’s a System Strain mechanics that put a limit (your constitution score) on the number of time you can be healed before having to recuperate in a safe place (i.e in town).
  • Levels are capped at 10 at which point you may (depending on the type of campaign) become a « Legate » and have access to new powerful abilities.
  • A lot of character features to mititgate randomness, including automatic hits, sucesses on skill checks, balancing of hit points the more you level up, etc.

So here’s a few from the hip comments after we had several sessions of play, this might change with further experience:

  • Overall WWN characters are as fragile (edit: not quite true, they have several options to mitigate damage) as your standard old-school one but feel a lot more capable.
  • The list of part-classes and foci available ensure a great customisation but that comes at a cost: if a player wishes to examine all the options then creating a character in minutes like in simpler systems would be impossible.
  • My players are a bit confused with the Shock thing. A low hit points character can easily die from just the shock damage and that seems a bit excessive. But overall I think it makes more sense than wooshing weapon swings half the time.
  • My brother Jason played an Adventurer (part-Expert, Part-Healer) and can do magical healing all the time, like every frikin round. He even calls his character a « healing tower » like in these tower defense video games… It’s an odd design choice, in stark contrast with the full Mages who have one big moment per session and I’m still on the fence on what to do with this character. (edit; removed the character)
  • The system strain is, as far as I can tell, designed to be implemented within an expedition of several sessions’ worth of play. With how we’re playing now with the PCs always back in town after their session of dungeon-crawling (and with downtime), it doesn’t come close to being relevant. I think I’ll have to adjust that.
  • My sister’s Necromancer have wiped out 20 out of 24 (1 HD) skeletons with her Smite the Dead spell in last session. Her unique spell of the day but certainly well-spent. The magic system is still fairly close to D&D but its tweaking of limited-use but POTENT spells is interesting. But don’t expect your main villain to fare well in this environment!
  • If most of the WWN system is perfectly okay for generic fantasy, the crafting system notably is pretty much designed with science fantasy in mind.
  • The Intelligence attribute isn’t linked to magic-using this time around so I guess you could have a dumb as a rock Mage? It feels wrong to me. Intelligence is linked with « efforts » which are used to fuel the « Arts », the lesser magical abilities.
  • The book lacks a proper bestiary, (edit: it has some creature base stats as well as options/powers to add but that’s it, creatures have to be « built », they are not ready to use). Edit: That’s still my biggest complaint to date.

All in all, WWN has some weaknesses and I might tweak a few things but I like it. It offers a solid core, with its main strengths being the handling of skills, character customization and idiosyncratic magic system. The main character classes are well thought out and you can easily create whatever you have in mind if you invest a bit more time. A D&D-adjacent game that has a pretty unique feel.

The Sword of Roele review- crappy adventure, good dungeon pt 1

David Skelector Birthright, Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, jeux de rôles, review, Roleplaying Game, RPG

I couldn’t find any review of this adventure so maybe I’ll fill a tiny little niche with this, I dunno…

The Sword of Roele, Wolfgang Baur, 1996

This is probably one of the most obscure adventure of 2E D&D. It was written for Birthright, a fantasy setting heavily inspired by Tolkien’s Middle-Earth (with a dose of Highlander soul-stealing in the mix) and purportedly the least popular of the many settings there was at the time. Birthright had a unique focus on domain play; a prerequisite was that at least one player would play as a ruler, with the characters sharing responsabilities of governing, dealing with the many problems arising on their lands and perhaps going to war with neighboring territories. The mechanistic part of the domain play was a bit of a mess but fascinating at the same time, or at least it was for teenager me.

The Birthright line had many books but most of them were player-facing domain splatbooks, with only a handful of adventures ever made. The sword of Roele is one of those few.

And boy if it’s a weird one…

Adventure Intro:

  • The Chimera, a powerful immortal being, tries to coerce the player characters, mostly with thin-veiled threats or open war if needed, and promises of riches too, in helping to defeat her most bothersome ennemies, the Three Brothers, audacious mages that are continually encroaching on her territory and sources of magic
  • The Three Brothers also try to enlist the player characters with the appeal of finding the eponymous Sword of Roele, an ancient and prestigious sword (more symbolic than powerful) before the Chimera does (note that the Chimera isn’t reaaly interested in the sword, it’s just a way to entice the player characters). It’s all a lie, the Sword of Roele is in fact kept far away in one of the Gorgon’s treasury (the Gorgon is the Big Bad of the setting). What the Three Brothers really want is access to the Gate to Heavens (!) hidden somewhere in the Chimera’s lands in an ancient tomb, so that they could somehow skip their earthly existences and become divine beings or some such. They want the player characters to secure the tomb and planted rumors about the magic sword to confuse the Chimera (and would-be DMs too).

So, two rival factions trying to recruit the player characters to their cause, one evil, one non-evil but self-serving and dishonest about its true motives. Not a bad hook entirely, I think.

Except, there’s also:

  • The Monkey King (the chinese Monkey King? yes, the same) , an Animal Lord (?) who knows all about the Three Brothers and the Chimera because he was spying on them for some reason. He wants access to the Gate of Beastland (of course he does) to return home. Where’s the Gate? In the same aformentionned tomb, with the other gate! He also wants to mess with the Chimera so that she finally gets the last little nudge towards complete madness, for the fun of it. Oh! And speaking of fun, he stole the Sword of Roele and put it right where it was claimed to be but wasn’t before! He may be the one that convince the player character to embark on the adventure as he will present himself to them in the guise of an astrologer who foretells great events and all.

Now, let me say that this whole convoluted business with the Monkey King is completely incongruous. The Chimera/Three Brothers conflict was perfectly fine by itself. I’ve nothing against the Monkey King as a character but to put him in here, in this context? Why? I also think he’s avery bad fit for the Birthright setting thematically speaking.

That said, regardless of which faction convince the player characters to act, the next phase of the adventure will happen inside the Chimera’s domain.

They may choose to fight marauding gnolls that have been causing troubles in the region lately, in which case even if they brought their armies (a real possibily in Birthright), the number of gnolls will just match the number of soldiers they have. Sigh. But anyway, this part is just a sideshow.

aside: the adventure kind of forget about the possible players’s armies after that, too cumbersome?

What they’ll really have to do to advance in the adventure, after having some random encounters and passing through the territory of the « Lizard King » and his lizardmen, is going into the Cryprus Valley and find one specific tower of one of the Three Brothers and either speak with him or maybe kill him and his brothers (if they chose to work for the Chimera, nice to have the choice) and they’ll obtain the location of the Tomb of the Order of the Sun. This section could be accomplished really fast, depending on where the PCs land in the region, if they speak to NPCs and what the DM throws at them.

Whilst in the valley, the PCs will also encounter Jamila the bird maiden and her tribe of carnivorous apes. A bit of an odd NPC but if the adventurers agree to give a (subtantial) amount of meat to her apes, she’ll cast a divination spell that points to a « tower of the eye » (not to confuse with three other towers that they’ll come across…) and « speak to the stones ». Armed with this knowledge, the PCs will then go at the tomb site.

Around the Tomb

However, the entrance is hidden and as designed there’s two ways to find it. One is to go at the ruined temple in the vicinity and there the PCs will come upon the ghost of the good-aligned high priest of the Order of the Sun who will immediately try to possess one character to get inside the tomb. His goal is to accomplish the last rites he never had time to do properly on the corpse of a hero-knight. If the adventurers manage somehow to convince the ghost of their good will, they could gain an invaluable ally that knows a lot about the tomb (albeit one that wouldn’t tolerate tomb-robbing). Tricky, tricky.

The other way, also a complicated one, is to spot the aforementionned « tower of the eye » and, crossing the bridge leading to it, they’ll see Kengri the « petrified sleeping giant ». With a transmute rock to flesh or dispel magic, the adventurers would then have to convince the giant (he’s been put there to guard againts tomb-defilers the text says) to reveal to them the entrance of the tomb. What would help to convince him (the text also says) is the PCs to say that they’ll help the ghost of the high-priest to get in… Phew…

I think that my players (my sister in particular) would just let possess one underling to find the entrance and then to hell with the ghost… So not an impossible situation for savvy players but wow, if this adventure isn’t overly complicated in all the wrong places.

Next, the pièce de résistance, the dungeon/tomb!

Basic Fantasy Roleplaying – First Impressions

David Skelector Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, review, Roleplaying Game, RPG

I’ve started a new campaign with the kids. We’re playing with the basic fantasy roleplaying system which is essentially a simple, old-school D&D retroclone. I used to play D&D 2nd edition in high school in the 90s between other games – and back then we thought it was clunky and, well… quaint? But this version is even more back to the roots!

But anyway, I wanted something simple and fast, that somehow mimicked what we’re doing when we, or the boys between themselves, play in theatre-of-the-mind mode. A non-stop flow of encounters. And old-school D&D really gets the job done in this regard.

So, basic IS basic: you can play a cleric, a fighter, a magic-user or a thief. You roll 3d6 for your 6 stats IN ORDER, this means that, coupled with class restrictions, often the dice will decide for you which character class you will play. Which is fine by me. Of course, the boys are pretty much in the habit of choosing their type of characters, and for their first foray, they will.

Impressions after first play:

  • Goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, most of all standard humanoids, have between 2 to 8 hit points, rolled randomly. They can be pretty dangerous to 1st level characters mind you, but are comically easy to kill too. My sons are always amused (and somewhat incredulous) when their feeble 2 damage attack still manage to kill the (fresh) fearsome orc in front of them!
  • Healing potions are not part of what you can buy as supplies it seems. We changed that but maybe I should have stuck with it.
  • Isaac wants to have a « long rest » (à la 5th edition) every 2 battles, inside the dungeon, even if I keep reminding him that it he would only gain 1 hit point, and would most assuredly be interrupted by « wandering monsters » anyway.
  • Surprise checks: a d6 roll when you open the door, reveal monsters and checking if either side is surprised, is a surprisingly fun mechanic. The boys are always delighted when the monsters stand dumbfounded before them after a failed surprise check!

Back to the beach – (meet the crabmen) – review

David Skelector Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, review, Roleplaying Game , , ,

J’ai à peu près fait le tour des aventures des dungeon magazine (pdf gratuits en ligne) et, pour moi, l’aventure Back to the beach (par Willie Walsh, dungeon magazine 50, 1994) sort nettement du lot.

Synopsis: Un lieu de pèlerinage peu fréquenté devient tout d’un coup le centre d’attention lorsque des ruines sont découvertes sur place. Les agents du Roi envoyés pour démystifier l’endroit sont cependant confrontés à des créatures inconnues d’eux et fuient les lieux en proie à la panique. Un décret royal annonce une récompense aux braves aventuriers qui extermineront ces créatures.

Le gros de l’histoire tourne autour d’un malentendu (j’aime toujours cette prémisse), alors que des « monstres » sont perçus comme une menace devant être éliminée (classiquement), tandis que le scénario est parsemé d’indices pour le percer à jour (pour des joueurs le moindrement attentifs), ainsi que des fausses pistes pouvant égarer les têtes brûlées.

L’adversaire désigné, les Hommes-Crabes, n’en est pas vraiment un. Ceux-ci n’attaqueront que pour se défendre et ils ont des motivations autre que kill! kill! kill! D’ailleurs, chose assez rare dans D&D, l’auteur leur a élaboré une culture assez développée (pour un courte aventure) empreinte d’actes ritualisés et de petits traits quirky. Les Hommes-Crabes potentiellement rencontrés (non-hachés menu par les PJs) ont des noms, des personnalités distinctes, des rôles dans leur tribu, etc. Le tout est très divertissant à lire.

En quelques points:

  • courte aventure principalement d’investigation et de communication
  • peu de locations mais facilement intégrable dans une campagne déjà existante
  • peu d’avantages pécuniers pour les PJs
  • des alliées potentiels de gagnés plus la satisfaction de ne pas avoir massacrées des créatures évoluées!