Archive for July, 2010

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RPG history: Midgard

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Issue 1 of the Strategic Review (1975) contains an interesting ad: “POSTAL DUNGEONS & DRAGONS VARIANT, a game which combines D&D and MIDGARD will be handled through the magazine, FANTASIA. To obtain full details, write: FANTASIA, Jim Lawson, …”

I just noticed this for the first time yesterday, and wondered, what was “MIDGARD,” which was compatible in some way with D&D? Was it a 70’s RPG I had somehow never heard about? or was it just a D&D campaign set in a Viking world?

Strategic Review 6, in its ‘zine review column, Triumphs and Tragedies, has this to say about the Fantasia magazine:

FANTASIA TODAY is a “magazine of postal fantasy gaming.” It seems to be based on a massive game, using revised “Midgard” rules. The price varies with the size, so get in touch with Jim Lawson, … Vol. I, No. 6, had an excellent article on herbs and magic, complete with sketches of each herb. The printing, though, which runs from fair to poor, relegates it to the status of MINOR TRIUMPH.

I’d never heard of a 70s Midgard RPG, but then again, I’m not exactly a grognard. I got into D&D in the late 80’s: anything before AD&D and the Red Box is ancient history to me. But, as you’d expect from someone who is drawn to pseudo-medieval fantasy, I like ancient history. Just as mountain peaks gain majesty with distance, so do nerds (even putting aside any majesty-reducing hygiene issues).
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Every Book’s a Sourcebook: Little Women

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Elsewhere, I’m reading Little Women – slowly – and blogging about it in excruciating detail. Little Women may seem like an unlikely source for D&D inspiration, but that’s because you’ve forgotten that Every Book’s a Sourcebook.

Here’s a passage that Little Women‘s author, Louisa May Alcott, liked so much that she put it, or something very close to it, in two books (Little Women and A Long Fatal Love Chase):

Valrosa well deserved its name, for in that climate of perpetual summer roses blossomed everywhere. They overhung the archway, thrust themselves between the bars of the great gate … Every shadowy nook, where seats invited one to stop and rest, was a mass of bloom, every cool grotto had its marble nymph smiling from a veil of flowers and every fountain reflected crimson, white, or pale pink roses, leaning down to smile at their own beauty. Roses covered the walls of the house, draped the cornices, climbed the pillars, and ran riot over the balustrade of the wide terrace, whence one looked down on the sunny Mediterranean, and the white-walled city on its shore.

Valrosa sounds like a beautiful city: overgrown with flowers, perhaps so overgrown that it is in fact abandoned. What if my campaign’s Undead City, instead of being a depressing gray ruin overrun with ghouls, is a beautiful, sweet-smelling garden city overrun with ghouls? White roses climb up the city’s walls and choke the alleyways. They blossom through the eyesockets of ghoul-devoured corpses in the street. A cool grotto with a flower-covered marble nymph sounds like a great place for the fleeing PCs to get beset by skeletons.

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Posted in 4e D&D, fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

lankhmar linkhmar

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Scrolls of Lankhmar has a nice post about my discussion of Lankhmar and early D&D.

Srith of the Scrolls points out that Pulgh is not the only mystery in the Nehwon mythos in Deities and Demigods. Who is “Cold Woman”, who looks like a sort of Halloween-ghost sheet monster?

Cold Woman has a bizarre list of powers. “This creature is basically a huge white pudding. Her powers include illusion generation…” “Her corrosive secretions dissolve metal at the same rate as a black pudding.” “Cold Woman lures persons into her lair with gems and jewelry, which are scattered about her cave. She then paralyzes them and inserts one of her eggs into the body.” “Her young are known as Cold Spawn.”

I don’t remember any such creature anywhere in Leiber, but I did find this passage from The Jewels in the Forest that I think may have inspired whoever wrote up Cold Woman. Fafhrd rants:

“Oh, by Glaggerk and by Kos!” he roared. “By the Behemoth! Oh, by the Cold Waste and the guts of the Red God! Oh! Oh! Oh!” Again the insane bellowing burst out. “Oh, by the Killer Whale and the Cold Woman and her spawn!”

That’s all I can find: 6 words, “Cold Woman and her spawn.” From that, the author (Ward, or Kuntz, or whoever) presumably spun the rest of the entry: the combat stats, the adventure hook, and the classic first-edition PC-devouring egg attack.

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gaming with the bullies

Friday, July 9th, 2010

The first D&D game I ever played was in my 5th grade classroom, right before summer vacation, when our teacher had basically given up and let us do what we want. Everyone – nerds, jocks, bullies – was united in their obsession with D&D. (It was the 80s.) The DM was one of the Bullies.

“You walk into a room,” he said to one of the jocks, whose fighter was on point duty. “Where do you walk, the middle of the room, or the sides of the room?”

Most of us didn’t really know the character generation rules, so we’d all given our characters 18 in every stat. The jock had brought his beloved character sheet from home. His fighter had a 13 intelligence, so we called him “Stupid.”

“I’ll walk in the middle of the room,” said Stupid.
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The Ten Mile Tower – Mile 1

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

A couple weeks ago I posted about the Ground Level of the Ten Mile Tower as the beginning of an 11 part series detailing an exciting adventure in the Ten Mile Tower, a tower that stands over 10 miles tale and touches the stars themselves! I ran this adventure with my weekly gaming group to their delight (and mine), and now I present it to you in an exciting easy to digest format!

Overview

I had already decided that though the Ten Mile Tower has thousands of levels, each worth exploring in their own right, the tower is basically broken up into ten sections, each ruled over by a powerful leader. However, since I wanted to create a sense that the tower is filled with MANY different creatures, from the lowely bullywug to the noblest dragon, I didn’t want to bring out the big guns just yet.

The 1st mile up the tower is filled with goblins, orcs, bugbears, lizardfolk, and kobolds, standard fare for most adventurers in heroic tier. By paragon tier (this adventure is intended for level 11 heroes), there’s not much here that can challenge you. Exposing higher level heroes to monsters like this is fun since it reinforces how badass they’ve become. However, it’s also helpful to remind them that while a dozen kobolds can be dispatched with relative ease, a tribe of hundreds of kobolds is not going to be quite so easy:

And thus:

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The Twilight Saga: Escort

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

I just saw Eclipse, and it seems like it could be turned into a magnificently terrible D&D 4e campaign.

It’s a high-powered paragon level campaign. In addition to their regular powers, everyone gets to choose a few cool powers from the Monster Manual. However, every adventure is concerned with protecting a level-1 NPC minion.

The NPC, Bella Swan, a) has an annoying personality and b) always acts in the most suicidal way possible. Bella Swan has no standard actions. She can, however, Mark as a minor action. In combat, Bella’s usual strategy is to move adjacent to the most powerful enemy and then Mark two opponents.

Besides fighting their opponents, the PCs must nursemaid Bella: use forced-movement powers to get her out of danger; mark opponents to override her marks; Grab her and drag her out of danger; hide her in a box or a cave, with at least one PC assigned to keep her out of trouble. Oh: concealment doesn’t work very well, though, because all the DM’s monsters always know exactly what square she is in because of her unmistakeable smell. They will also attack her instead of any other opponent.

Actually, maybe Bella’s not strictly a minion. She has 2 HP. When left unattended, she’s always getting Bloodied by, say, cutting herself on a sharp knife. If this happens, the party cleric had better immediately use healing resources on her, because there are more sharp knives lying around the world. (Let’s give Bella another ability: whenever she becomes Bloodied, she immediately Marks all opponents and allies within 5 miles.)

If any PC kills Bella, he immediately gains a level. However, the campaign ends.

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