[Review] Swords and Wizardry

Another birthday, so that means…

That’s right–treating myself to another OSR  free pdf printed and bound in a binder and plastic page pockets, in this case Swords & Wizardry by Matthew J. Finch, who also wrote “A Quick Primer to Old School Gaming.”  This goes into my collection along with Basic Fantasy RPG and Labyrinth Lord.

Review after the break

Character death

The last player character I had die during a gaming session was shot in the back by another PC.

It was too bad, because I had successfully navigated the character across a post-apocalyptic wasteland, survived pirates and psychotic robots and watery deathtraps.  I had even, while hanging onto the side of a tossing raft, uttered the cool tough-guy phrase “gun me” before having a pistol slid over to him by another PC.

But, we were using pre-generated characters, and apparently in my PC’s past he had shot and killed another PC’s father, and the punk kid shot me in the back at the very end of the adventure.  So it goes.

I didn’t mind, not just because he was basically a one-off character not of my own creation, but also because it was a death that worked for the story.  He was a self-destructive gunslinger looking for death, and he got it.  In the matter of PC death, I don’t mind when PC’s die because they are unbelievably stupid (“yes, I will try to disable the bomb even though I lack the appropriate skill”) or take on overwhelming challenges, either heroically or foolishly.  I’m not a fan of the “oops–you stepped on a trap.  You die” where it just comes out of nowhere, but I get that it happens too.

Long story on PC death after the break.

[books for gamers] All the Gold of Ophir

All the Gold of Ophir, written by David Drury, is half pulp detective, part hard-sci fiction story.  Private investigator Michael Flynn has been hired to look into the “accidental” death of a young man on a Jupiter space station.  The victim worked for the mega-corporation that not only owns the station and employs three-quarters of its thousands of inhabitants, but also has its own lethally-armed security force.  Flynn is assisted by corporate attorney Wendy Chadwick and opposed by Silvanus Drake, so improbably named that J.K. Rowling would even blanche.

Drury is a professor of engineering and uses his knowledge to tell the story, one laden with stereotypical characters: the Irish hard-drinking PI, the incompetent and belligerent head of the police force, even the psycho ex-girlfriend (whom I kept calling “Ira” after Spade’s ex in The Maltese Falcon).  The mystery was interesting and the action moved along well (although I had a pretty good idea of what happened fairly early on).

My only complaint, because I can let hackneyed, two-dimensional characters slide in a story like this one, is that in science fiction you have to give the reader certain boundaries of genre.  Faster-than-light travel?  Aliens?  Artificial intelligence?  You have to let the reader know what exists and what doesn’t, especially when you’re doing a mystery.  It isn’t fair to say, allow teleportation to exist in the last chapter if it is instrumental to the plot.  And Drury succumbs to this–after establishing the boundaries throughout the book he breaks one (as the underwhelming “shocker”) to tie up one of the loose ends.  Or in other words, you can get most of the mystery on your own, but you’ll never get the last ten percent because Drury breaks his own rules.  It is a frustrating end note to an otherwise fun weekend read.

From a gaming perspective, All the Gold of Ophir reminds RPG fans of how depending the gaming industry is on pulp-ish stories.  The Jupiter space station would make a fine sci-fi environs, big enough to introduce new elements but contained enough to keep players from running far off the beaten track (my biggest gripe with sci-fi RPG’s).

Skaven Nightrunners 1

 

Five Skaven nightrunners by Games Workshop.  I don’t own a Skaven army, but perhaps I could use them for Mordheim.

 

Nightrunners

These guys were primed black, basecoated, and then dipped.

 

[Fiend Friday] Orc Subchieftan

[Editor's Note] As an way for me to explore how easy or difficult it is to create advanced creatures using the rules in the Pathfinder Bestiary, I’ve decided to try to make one.

Orc Subchieftan

Orc Subchieftans are often found serving as leaders on raiding parties, supervising guards, or protecting the tribe’s chieftan.

CR 3

XP: 800

Orc Fighter 3

Init +0  Senses: darkvision 60 ft., lowlight vision; Perception +0; light sensitivity

Defense

AC 15, touch 10, flat-footed 15 (+5 armor)

hp 18 (3d10+2)

Fort +5, Ref +1, Will +1

Defensive Abilities: ferocity

Offense

Speed 20 ft.

Melee: Greataxe +7  (1d12+4, *3)

Ranged: javelin +3 (1d6+4)

Statistics

Str 19 (+4)  Dex 11 Con 14 (+2) Int 8 (-1) Wis 10 Cha 8 (-1)

Base Atk: +3 ; CMB +7 ; CMD 17

Feats: Power Attack, Improved Bull Rush, Cleave, Combat Reflexes, Stand Still

Skills: Intimidate +3

Languages: Common, Orc

Ecology (same as Orc)

Treasure: Scale Mail, greataxe, 3 javelins, regular treasure

 

[Review] Pathfinder Bestiary

My wife presented me with a copy of the Pathfinder Bestiary for my birthday (by request).  For those unfamiliar, Pathfinder is Paizo Publishing’s attempt to keep the D&D 3.X edition (and all the supplement they created for it) viable by making essentially “3.75 Edition.”

Pathfinder RPG is the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide put together in one $50 brick, while the Pathfinder Bestiary is the Monster Manual.

Each monster (and there are purportedly over 350 of them) are given one page, most of which is taken up with the large stat block and explanation of special abilties.  The rest is the Paizo-style depiction of the monster and a small paragraph describing the creature.  I like the Paizo-style rendering of the monsters, some of which are distinct from D&D’s version, but the descriptions are pretty sparse.  They do give an italicized description of the monster for the DM to use, something that 4E’s Monster Manual lacks.

In the back, there’s are sections detailing advancing monsters (adding hit dice and abilities to make a greater or lesser version of a monster), adding templates (such as “fiendish” or “celestial,” but oddly lacking “dire”), and adding class levels.  The last was a big feature of third edition, spawning troll rangers and the like.

The Pathfinder Bestiary lends itself to comparisons to both the third and fourth editions of the Monster Manual. Clearly it cleaves much more closely to the former than the latter, and how you feel about those two books will probably shape your own opinions about the Bestiary.  There are a few things worth noting, however.

First, the descriptions of the monsters are more “PG-13″ than “PG” sometimes.  Many of the monsters are described indulging in bestiality, cannibalism, and even incest.

Second, with the exception of the dragons, each monster has only one stat block.  This is a big difference from the Fourth Edition Monster Manual, which has multiple versions of each monster (e.g. a goblin warrior, blackblade, hexcaster, etc.)  Fourth Edition seems to be geared more towards having encounters with almost “warbands” of different monsters while Pathfinder still seems to hold to Third Edition’s inclination of having solo or small groups of monsters in each encounter.  You’ll need to do the legwork of adding class levels to the base characteristics if you want to flesh out your drow society or make an ogre chieftain.  (Or, I suppose, buy a Paizo supplement.)

On a more subtle note, the art in Bestiary, and Pathfinder in general, seems less influenced by World of Warcraft with its giant-shoulder-pad anime style illustrations and more dark-and-gritty leather straps with lots of daggers, what I think of as more “Verner Klocke” if you know your miniature sculptors.  If I can oversimplify things, it’s like this:

• Third Edition: spiky shoulder pads
• Fourth Edition: blocky shoulder pads
• Pathfinder: no shoulder pads

I hope that makes sense.

In the end, I think books full of monstrous opponents, or supervillains, or NPC’s really serve their purpose when they inspire a DM/GM/CK/Judge.  This is one thing I think the Fourth Edition Monster Manual did when it gave sample groups of monsters; a DM could ask him- or herself, “in what context would my party encounter this group?”  Most of the monsters in the Bestiary are well known canards of D&D.  There are several new monsters, on loan from Necromancer Games, which add dashes of new flavor.  And while I want to like Pathfinder, because I like the idea of making more distinct PC’s and less stock “character builds,” the game still has the biggest problem of Third Edition–it’s front-end loaded.  I can sit down and crank out an evening’s worth of play in a fairly short period of time with 4th Edition.  It’ll take quite a bit of work to stat out the same with Pathfinder.

Burned-out peasant cottage finished

As the title says, I think I’m done.

8th Edition Warhammer Fantasy?

So, GW hasn’t released all the army books yet, but realize that they have done some bad army books.  Ergo, we get new rules, apparently with Empire and Orcs again.  Seventh edition was released in September 2006, although it seems like it was just yesterday.  That’s probably because I’m still sitting on piles of unpainted dwarfs. It also explains my immediate reaction of “WHAA!!!  Those greedy SOB’s!” but then going, “oh well, it actually has been a while…”  Four years ago is actually a lot longer than I think some times.

Another WIP shot of the hovel

Got a little behind with mostly real-life problems, but here is the interior of Anda’s burned down and overgrown farm house.

WIP

WIP

Fieldstone 6: the burned hovel

It’s been a long time since I posted something substantive.  I don’t like to burden my hobbyist audience with real life quasi-drama, but suffice to say that my plate has gotten just a bit more full over the past few weeks, and yes it has impacted my hobby time.  I’m still running my RPG on a regular basis, but the evening hobby time is a little pinched.

Anyways, onto other news.   As it turns out, I won the grand prize for the Andaville raffle, a good sized gift card for the Home Depot.  Since it isn’t a gaming-related prize, the field is wide open.  But for now, I’m doing Andadas a favor by throwing together one or two of the pieces for his town that either weren’t taken or were taken but not made.  Ergo, here’s a WIP shot of what I’m doing now, a burned-down peasant farmhouse.

 

WIP burned down farmhouse

I’ll probably have it done next week.  Stay tuned.