These things will be test-driven at GaryCon V. If they work there, I'll share them with the rest of the internet.
Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts
Saturday, February 9, 2013
33 Days Till GaryCon! More Aces & Eights Prep
The shootout rules for Aces & Eights doesn't require much in the way of stats. In fact, all you need are two stats (Accuarcy and Speed), hit points and knowing what weapon you are using and how much ammo you have. So you don't need much in the way of a character sheet either. last year I just used index cards for character sheets. This year, I'm going even smaller.
What we have here is ten shootout character sheets printed out on Avery Business Card stock. The sheets are already perforated so I don't have to cut anything out. The front has the basic stat blocks typed out. The back is printed with headstones so that when a PC dies, the player can flip the card over and put him in the 'graveyard' of dead varmints. I bought a pack of 10 sheets at Wal-Mart for less than $4, which should give me up to 100 PCs for the game. I don't think it will get that high, but you never know.
These things will be test-driven at GaryCon V. If they work there, I'll share them with the rest of the internet.
These things will be test-driven at GaryCon V. If they work there, I'll share them with the rest of the internet.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
50 Days Till GaryCon! Yesterday, Today and B1.
By now everyone has heard about DnDClassics.com, yes?
Like most everyone else in the OSR that has heard, I also grabbed a free copy of Module B1 In Search of the Unknown. I never had a copy of the original when I started playing D&D. Or if I did it has been long lost and forgotten. But I also have a PDF copy of B3 Palace of the Silver Princess, that I got for free from Wizards of the Coast back when they offered it on their site, and I noticed something interesting about the two modules. They have a lot of instances where they expect the GM to fill in the details of the module themselves.
This is one of those things that I believe separate the OSR from modern games. In the OSR, there is a pretty big 'do-it-yourself' mentality when it comes to gaming, and especially GMing. The idea that a Dungeon Master could take a published module and stock it with monsters, traps and treasures in a completely different manner from another GM is one that seems to call to the old-school gamer and horrify the new generation. For those of us that started in the 70s and 80s it was our game. By that I mean that regardless of the rules, published modules and magazine articles, in the end you were the one responsible for creating the world you ran and/or played in. No rules on how to resolve a particular issue? Make something up. The module you purchased isn't set in your campaign setting? Move it to your campaign and change a few words to make it fit. Party is too high level for the adventure, beef up the monsters for a greater challenge.
Nowadays, too many gamers want something 'official' before they will use it. Creativity has been stifled in the name of uniformity. Somehow, gamers have become afraid of the companies that produce their favorite games rather than seeing them as a provider of resources for their own home game. Any challenge must first be approved by the Powers That Be lest it force the new gamer to think and grow. Players have gone from recalling the time they traveled to the Barrier Peaks to ticking adventures of a to-do list so they can reach the next level and make sure it's been reported in the proper online database.
Pfft. I'm a gamer. I game to have fun. I game to be challenged and to offer challenges myself. To think. To learn. To grow. Give me something I'm not expecting. Give me something me and the other gamers can laugh about for years to come.
I'm in search of the unknown. Give me that.
Like most everyone else in the OSR that has heard, I also grabbed a free copy of Module B1 In Search of the Unknown. I never had a copy of the original when I started playing D&D. Or if I did it has been long lost and forgotten. But I also have a PDF copy of B3 Palace of the Silver Princess, that I got for free from Wizards of the Coast back when they offered it on their site, and I noticed something interesting about the two modules. They have a lot of instances where they expect the GM to fill in the details of the module themselves.
This is one of those things that I believe separate the OSR from modern games. In the OSR, there is a pretty big 'do-it-yourself' mentality when it comes to gaming, and especially GMing. The idea that a Dungeon Master could take a published module and stock it with monsters, traps and treasures in a completely different manner from another GM is one that seems to call to the old-school gamer and horrify the new generation. For those of us that started in the 70s and 80s it was our game. By that I mean that regardless of the rules, published modules and magazine articles, in the end you were the one responsible for creating the world you ran and/or played in. No rules on how to resolve a particular issue? Make something up. The module you purchased isn't set in your campaign setting? Move it to your campaign and change a few words to make it fit. Party is too high level for the adventure, beef up the monsters for a greater challenge.
Nowadays, too many gamers want something 'official' before they will use it. Creativity has been stifled in the name of uniformity. Somehow, gamers have become afraid of the companies that produce their favorite games rather than seeing them as a provider of resources for their own home game. Any challenge must first be approved by the Powers That Be lest it force the new gamer to think and grow. Players have gone from recalling the time they traveled to the Barrier Peaks to ticking adventures of a to-do list so they can reach the next level and make sure it's been reported in the proper online database.
Pfft. I'm a gamer. I game to have fun. I game to be challenged and to offer challenges myself. To think. To learn. To grow. Give me something I'm not expecting. Give me something me and the other gamers can laugh about for years to come.
I'm in search of the unknown. Give me that.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Back again.
Sorry for being away for so long my loyal reader. May has been a busy month for me, including the motherboard on my laptop dying on me.
I'm a bit disappointed in not finishing April A-Z, but at least it gave me some ideas for blog topics. Hopefully I can keep things up in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, I have something that might be of use to the gaming public in general. I was looking to create a table for determining the level of magic-user and cleric spells on things like spell scrolls and items like a ring of spell storing. Specifically, I was looking for a table where the chance of getting a lower level spell was exponentially greater than getting a higher level one. Being a bit of a math geek, I actually came up with a mathematical formula for creating this kind of table:
I'm a bit disappointed in not finishing April A-Z, but at least it gave me some ideas for blog topics. Hopefully I can keep things up in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, I have something that might be of use to the gaming public in general. I was looking to create a table for determining the level of magic-user and cleric spells on things like spell scrolls and items like a ring of spell storing. Specifically, I was looking for a table where the chance of getting a lower level spell was exponentially greater than getting a higher level one. Being a bit of a math geek, I actually came up with a mathematical formula for creating this kind of table:
For those not familiar with calculus; this formula is the sum of all iterations of x to the ith power, where i is all integers from 1 to n, with the sum equaling 100. The lowercase n represents the highest level of spell; nine for mages, seven for clerics. My goal was to use this formula to find the value of x, and develop my tables from there. The only drawback that I have with this is that I have to figure out the ranges in reverse, for a 1st level mage spell I use x to the 9th, not x to the 1st.
(Thanks to Gratuitous Saxon Violence for pointing out a slight error in my placement of i and n in my summation. It has been fixed.)
Now at this point, I realize that I have lost most of you. If I have learned anything from April A-Z is that most of my readers and followers are literary types. So I imagine that you are all reading this going, "David, what the hell are you talking about?" or "Get with the damn tables already!" All I can say is, trust me the math works! Here you go.
(I re-ran the calculations for the tables on a spreadsheet. The following should be a more accurate representation of
| Mage (x=1.476) | d% Roll | Cleric (x=1.708) |
| 01-33 34-56 57-71 72-81 82-88 89-93 94-96 97-99 100 | First Second Third Fourth Fifth Sixth Seventh Eighth Ninth | 01-42 43-67 68-82 83-90 91-95 96-98 99-100 |
Monday, March 21, 2011
More paper hats for pewter minatures!
In the meantime, I have created another sheet of "hats" for people to use. This sheet adds five more hats (labeled K-O) for sleep, stun and death, as well as 10 hats for poisoned status.
Sheet 4
I also thought I should give a run-down of the status effects and what they could be used for. Some of these are obvious, but others may be specific to particular game systems. I tried to keep these as system neutral as possible overall.
- Sleep- either under the effects of a spell, KOed, or just dozing off.
- Stun- variety of effects that isn't quite knocked out, but not able to do much while awake.
- Blind- character can't see.
- Deaf- character can't hear.
- Mute- character can't speak/cast spells. May be used to represent characters under the effect of a silence spell.
- Burn- character is en fuego and at risk of taking continuing fire damage.
- Para.- paralysis
- Web- trapped in a web, either from a spell or a big freakin' spider.
- Engulf- the character is engulfed by something. Could be swallowed whole by a monster, trapped in a water elemental, etc.
- Petrify- character has been turned to stone.
- Posion- character is poisoned
- Dead- 'nuff said.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Paper hats for pewter miniatures.
I was inspired by Jolly Blackburn's Hack Kaddies on the Kenzer & Company Forums to try my hand at my own ideas for some paper cutouts to be used with standard miniatures.
Let's say you have an orc facing off against a spellcaster PC. The caster decides to cast a blindness spell on the orc to gain an advantage. As the GM, you want to make sure you keep that orc's condition in mind while you tend to all the other combatants on the field. What's the solution?
A paper hat!
I created the "hats" in AutoCAD, and scanned the printouts as Jpegs so anyone can use them. I'm a bit new to Google Docs, so if the links I'm about to provide don't work, please let me know. If anyone has any suggestions for new "hats", leave a comment and I'll try to get them worked out when I can.
Let's say you have an orc facing off against a spellcaster PC. The caster decides to cast a blindness spell on the orc to gain an advantage. As the GM, you want to make sure you keep that orc's condition in mind while you tend to all the other combatants on the field. What's the solution?
A paper hat!
Basically I created a few sheets of easy-to-build "hats" that list a status condition. If a Pc or NPC is under the effect of the condition in question, you can just place the "hat" over the mini as an easy visual reference.
These "hats" are pyramidal in shape. So, if you have to recycle minis for a combat session, say a group of kobold reinforcements coming to bail out the batch your PCs just cast a sleep spell on, you can use the "hats" as markers for where the old figures stood while you brought in new ones.
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