Pathfinder's Kingmaker

Hiya folks, if you have been following Kelvin’s blogs of the Kingmaker story, eg ‘Living in a Box’, and likewise by Stuart on his blog, The Great Game, eg: ‘A Short Cut to Mushroom (soup)’, you may be aware there are a bunch of us playing Paizo’s Kingmaker Campaign using the Pathfinder rules. Having completed books – or as I call them – ‘Acts’ / or Story Arcs 1 and 2, I thought I’d offer up a little commentary and some thoughts on them.

Well – we decided to go ‘retro’ and return to an older edition of D&D having given 4e a go (I ran Paizo’s Rise of the Runelords for Acts 1 and 2, and Ric had run some of Open Designs ‘Wrath of the River King’ slotted into his homebrew setting). We were after a more open, sandbox game – our interest sparked by Kelvin’s Rogue Trader game that was VERY open. ;) & we were also after that retro feel where we had more options than simply killing everything, and only using powers…. A return to skills and a more open game-play. Paizo had produced the sandbox campaign Kingmaker, and with its ruleset Pathfinder, we decided to give it a go, and see where it took us!

Why I’d recommend Kingmaker (using Pathfinder):

It is a sandbox game, in which players can affect the story, and is not driven by a linear plot development. (Yes – players are limited to a certain size of the map – via their charter from Brevoy, their noble sponsors – but what they do, who they kill, who they ally themselves with in the realm is up to them)

The Pathfinder rules – they are better, IMHO, than 3.5 D&D, more like a souped up version of D&D (influence of Iron Heroes here?), and the tweeks from 3.5, although making it a little fiddly for those of us who are familiar with 3.5 and thus have to declutter our brains from 3.5 gobble-di-gook, the tweeks and changes are welcome ones, and make game play better! Stuart has written a few words here about 4e v Pathfinder – in a fair way IMHO. :)

Pathfinder rpg is well supported – with the Pazio prd, as well as a fansite pfsrd.

Paizo’s Adventure Paths are also well supported – via fan postings on the message boards. I was able to mine these posts from folks who were ahead of me in running the game, and learn from their problems, their ideas on bring some parts of the game to life, and reflecting on how to foreshadow future issues and so on and so forth. Ideas about climate, culture, names, working out some tricky points in the game, how to make sure the players have a background that will advantage them/ link them into the setting etc. Really useful to have a community of other GMs to converse with about the materials, rather than do it all on your own. This is a key advantage of any Pathfinder Adventure Path.

We have really enjoyed it. And players have responded. We have 2 bestiaries now – one for the players for their companions and summonsed creatures stats; 3 copies of the Advanced Players Guides, I have pre-ordered Bestiary 2… and we are looking forward to the new Magic book in April 2011….. None of us have played at this level before in D&D (bar me – level 9 was my limit in a game I ran – The Night Below for 2nd ed way back in 1995-1997)

I am looking forward to playing in Kelvin’s ‘Carrion Hill’ scenario for Pathfinder level 5 and our Winter BenCon all day gaming sometime over xmas – where we get together and play games (rpg one shots/ board games) all day! I am also looking forward to recharging my GMing brain, and having time to paint some minis before I get back into the hot seat! Kelvin’s turn first! Carrion Hill - & Rogue Trader?

Imagining D&D

This post over at Grognardia seems to have spawned a meme, as a number of gaming bloggers have posted their responses. Here's mine.

This is the cover image that, more than any other, makes me think of Dungeons & Dragons:

This image was plastered over the comics of my youth, so before I even had the slightest idea of what a roleplaying game was, I was aware of D&D. As such, this image has a lot of nostalgic pull for me, although not enough to make me pick up the the new edition of D&D4 masquerading under this image.

Still, even this isn't the image that defines D&D for me. That image isn't a cover at all, and it's arguable if it's even an image as such:

To this day, I have a preference for landscape character sheets in D&D, purely because of this one document.

My D&D

I have no plans to run any D&D any time soon, but if I did, there are some tweaks I think I'd include, most of which would alleviate the problems I have with the original game.

One of the things which struck me most about Dragonlance: Fifth Age was the abstract experience system. Instead of totting up points, a player would get a single "Quests" statistic, which would increase by one with every adventure completed; Quests also determined a player's hand size, and since the game had a card-based resolution mechanic, the more experienced a character, the more options they'd have when attempting tasks. The grey area, of course, is in defining an adventure, but that's easy enough to figure out. I'd use something similar in my D&D, which would alleviate a lot of my pedantic gripes with the old system.

I'd use JB's alternate combat system, not because I have any real problems with the existing mechanic, but simply because I like the ideas behind JB's streamlined approach. I'd tweak it to use ascending armour class, because I've never understood the descending type.

I would also borrow the thief skill mechanic from James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg because it's neat and clever, and not a million miles away from my own thoughts on the matter. I'd probably also use his "only fighters get better at fighting" rule, although I haven't given much thought to how that would gibe with the above combat system.

I quite like the way that Pathinder clerics heal and turn undead using the same power, so I'd use something similar, although I'd consider simplifying it a little. I might also borrow an idea from the Final Fantasy games and have any healing magic cause damage to undead creatures.

There are probably some other minor bits I'd fiddle with (I like the elegance of Swords and Wizardry's single saving throw), but those would be the major rules changes I'd make for my D&D. Would it still be D&D? Well, that's a question for another day.

Ahead of the Game

I find myself in an interesting situation. The Pathfinder campaign, sorry, "Adventure Path", is going well; we're almost to the end of the first book, and the inevitable confrontation with the mysterious Stag Lord. This fellow is the mastermind behind the local bandit problem, and is the main obstacle to the settling of the area by civilised folk.

The thing is, I think I know who he is. This isn't through having seen spoilers, or even worse, cheating, but rather that the authors of the first adventure book have laid a number of, to my eye obvious, clues. Which wouldn't be a problem, except I think I know, based on those same clues, how the entire campaign, sorry, "Adventure Path", will turn out.

So that's the interesting situation. It's almost as if I've played the scenario before, so I'm going to remain quiet about what I think I know, in part to not spoil things for everyone else, and in part because my character, the tengu monk, is unlikely to have figured it out. And yet it's not quite like having read the scenario, because it's very possible that I've misread the signs, and the whole thing will go in a very different direction. There's almost another game going on here, a bit of narrative cat-and-mouse, as I find myself trying to out-think the authors.

We should meet (and very quickly eviscerate, if our barbarian continues to prove as effective as she has done so far) the Stag Lord in this week's game, and his unmasking will tell me a lot about the accuracy of my predictions. I can't wait!

The Undying Sorcerer

This is my contribution to Zak's Secret Arneson Gift Exchange. If you want to see what it's all about, click on the link, but essentially it's celebrating the lives of the creators of Dungeons & Dragons by creating something new for the game.

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Aeons ago, when the continents had different shapes and long before mankind climbed down from the trees, the land was ruled by a proud and mighty reptilian empire, of which the lizardfolk of today are but the atavistic descendants. Their religion taught of a glorious afterlife, in which the dead would live again, and in the case of the nobility, complete with all their possessions, including their slaves.

This was a lie. The dead found a vast, featureless grey wasteland, where everyone was on an equal footing, and the riches gathered in their material lives would have been of no use, even if they had transferred over as expected.

One priest-lord decided to escape, and turning all its mystical learning to the problem, found a way back to the material plane, only to discover that millennia had passed, its beloved serpent empire had long passed into ruin, and its body had become a dry, withered mummy. Further long stretches of time passed, the priest-lord trapped in its old body, itself trapped in its tomb, surrounded by useless treasures.

But then the humans, inquisitive as ever, broke into its tomb and began looting the priest-lord's belongings. One of them opened its sarcophagus and reached in to pilfer its burial jewellery, brushing against the mummy's arid flesh, and the ancient creature sensed an opening, a connection.

And jumped.
-----
The Undying Sorcerer is the soul of an ancient magician occupying the physical form of some humanoid being. It has spent untold millennia trapped in a sterile afterlife and having returned to the material plane, wants nothing more than to enjoy life in the most hedonistic way possible. Having awoken in a tomb surrounded by wealth appropriate to a member of the nobility, it has found that it has lots of money to spend on the most exquisite depravities, and that modern human society is only too keen to participate; the Sorcerer is most often found not in some dusty tomb, but in high society, throwing decadent parties for the aristocracy.

Having seen, and performed, all kinds of horrors in its time, and having been trapped in a hell without sensation, life and colour, the Undying Sorcerer fears nothing but a return to that joyless afterlife, and will fight with ferocity to prevent such a fate.

(Game statistics are in Labyrinth Lord format, but should be easy enough to convert to other fantasy games of Arneson/Gygax descent.)

No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 120 (40)
Armor Class: By armour (varies)
Hit Dice: 9
Attacks: By weapon (varies) or Spell
Damage: By weapon (varies)
Save: C9
Morale: 11
Hoard Class: XVII

The Undying Sorcerer is usually equipped with the best armour and weaponry money can buy, but will try to avoid direct combat. It will be accompanied by 2d4 humanoid or trained animal bodyguards, each of at least 2HD, and 2d12 concubines, around half of which will be humanoid. Once per day, the Sorcerer can also summon up to two animal-headed demons (treat as gargoyles) to fight on its behalf; these return to their home plane by the following sunrise or sunset, or if killed. The Undying Sorcerer avoids lizardfolk, as it is disgusted by their decline.

The Undying Sorcerer casts spells as a fifteenth-level cleric. If druid spells are available, then the Sorcerer also has access to these, at the same level of ability.

As a form of undead, the Undying Sorcerer is immune to Charm, Feeblemind, Hold, Polymorph, Sleep, and Death spells (such as Power Word: Kill or Ray of Death). These immunities are mystical in nature, and apply to both its original and host bodies. It can be turned; a success forces its soul back into the original, mummified body.

The Undying Sorcerer's most potent ability is that of transferring its soul to a new body. It can transfer at will, and over any distance, to its original body, or to a nearby mindless vessel, such as a golem, but otherwise must touch or be touched by its target, then the target must make a save versus spells in order to resist the transfer. A living victim's soul may be simply overpowered, or it may be forced out of the body to another location, at the GM's discretion. The Undying Sorcerer has access to all innate abilities of its host body, but not spells or other learned abilities.

If the host body is killed or destroyed, the Undying Sorcerer will attempt to transfer to its killer, or a nearby vessel, but if not will return to its original body. Should this original body be destroyed, then the creature is flung back to the afterlife, even if occupying a different body at the time. The mummy is guarded at all times to prevent such a fate, and the Sorcerer keeps prisoners at close hand for a quick transfer if forced back.

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My brief for this was "A monster midway between a vampire and a lich in power. It should have spellcasting powers and other abilities that would place it at the peak of Expert-level challenge (14th level). An Egyptian theme is a plus."

I'm not that familiar with the mechanics of D&D, so I decided instead to focus on the fluff side of things and make the monster interesting and different enough that the rules didn't matter. I had a look at a lich and a vampire and went for something that was roughly between the two. Then I got to working on the fluff, which was much more fun. The Egyptian theme was easy enough to incorporate, but since it's a fantasy game, I decided to go further back than a mere human civilisation, and a serpent empire seemed suitably pulpy. One thing I noted about the higher-level undead was that they were all bog-standard evil masterminds, and I wanted to do something different there too, so I had a think about what else might motivate the Undying Sorcerer. I liked the idea of a being who had come back from the dead out of a genuine love of life, but to maintain enough of an edge to make it possible for the being to an antagonist, I settled on the idea of the ultimate hedonist, someone who wanted to live life to the fullest, because it had already seen, and rejected, what death had to offer.

Living in a Box

Back in my youthful gaming days, I remember a collaborative game of Dungeoneer in which we'd take turns to GM the thing as the rest of the group wandered about a world map. Dungeoneer is a very broken game, but we had fun with the aimless format, perhaps because everything else we were playing at the time was quite plot-focused.

With the rise in interest in such sandbox gaming sweeping the gaming blogs over the past couple of years (which has even led to both Paizo and Wizards of the Coast releasing sandbox scenarios), I've been itching to have a go at such a freeform game again. I made an attempt to run something of the sort in Call of Cthulhu, but the players resisted it, with good reason I think, and so it didn't work out. Later, I had another go with Rogue Trader, and this was much more successful, as the game is much more suited to exploration and poking around at the corners of the map to see what's there.

That campaign's taking a break (oh, and such plans I have!), but I obviously did something right, as we moved straight into another sandbox game, this time using Paizo's Pathfinder rules. I think the plan may have been to use D&D4 at first, but we've had a good go with that ruleset, and I'm not sure it's to our tastes as a group; this suits me, as I was out of gaming for the entirety of D&D3's lifespan, so Pathfinder gives me a chance to see what the game is like.

I was a bit concerned, as I've seen and heard many horror stories about the pernicious crunchiness of D&D3, but we're about four sessions in, and it seems no more fiddly than D&D2 was, and is much less of a hassle to play than the overly tactical (to my mind) D&D4. It does strike me that something like Swords and Wizardry would be a more appropriate to a hex crawl game, but we've invested too much money and effort to switch now!

We're playing through the Kingmaker series of books (how Paizo's Adventure Path format translates to a freeform game, I don't know, so I'm keen to have a look at the books once we're done), and so far it's been great fun; we've got a proper old-school hex map, and we're wandering around the wilderness, investigating points of interest, fighting wandering monsters, and all that great retro goodness.

Three Things I Have Learned From D&D Fourth Edition

I pretty much bypassed Dungeons & Dragons during my gaming "upbringing". My original group played a bit of everything, but mostly Shadowrun and Call of Cthulhu. We did have a brief go at AD&D2, running through the first book of Night Below, and we played a couple of sessions using the "Black Box" basic D&D set, and it was this version of the venerable game which caught my attention more than any other, although we never played it again after that.

My current group plays the fourth edition of D&D quite a lot, and while I enjoy it well enough, I do find myself longing for a simpler, more pure version of the game, and I keep thinking back to that black box. Of course, it is unavailable now, except through eBay and the like, but there is Labyrinth Lord, which is more or less the same thing (albeit based on a slightly earlier version), and completely free too. I've talked about the game before, but that was more of a discussion about mechanics, and today, I'm more interested in the more philosophical side of things, specifically how my experiences of the newest edition of D&D would now affect my appreciation and play of an older version. So here are three random musings of that nature.

1: Interesting Locations are Important
Fourth edition emphasises combat environment right from the outset, with player-character abilities often involving moving opponents from square to square, or making use of different kinds of area effect and so on. This isn't hardwired into the rules of older editions in the same kind of way, and as such, I think it can be easy to assume that it can't be done, and to thus overlook the importance of the shape, size and nature of the battlefield. So if I ran or played LL now, I would take time to created unique settings like this, and even though there are no pushing or pulling powers in the rules, they are a light enough framework that nothing breaks if a players wants to, say, forego damaging an opponent to instead push them down a hole.

2: Different Monster Roles are Important
This is related to the first point, as the older editions of the game gave, in most cases, a single block of statistics for each type of opponent. There would be one type of orc (AC: 6 HD: 1 Damage: 1d6), and that again makes it easy to just fill dungeon rooms with identical versions of that orc. Fourth edition makes a big effort (too much perhaps, forgoing the elegant third edition concept of the template in favour of a completely new stablock for each type of each monster) of showing how that same group of orcs can instead be made up of front-line bruisers, nimble archers and lightly-armoured skirmishers, and it is a good reminder that there is no reason at all why this cannot be imported back into an older version of the game.

3: Different Mechanics are Important
This is the biggest epiphany for me. For the longest time, I did not like the percentage-based thief skills of older editions, or the way finding secret doors varied based on class, and so on. As such, the universal mechanic approach of third and fourth editions appealed to the neat freak in me. Then I had a conversation with another gamer about how fourth edition perhaps goes too far in this other direction, and almost flattens the class differences out; what I came to realise was that although the specific mechanic will vary between a fourth edition At-Will fighter power and a fourth edition At-Will wizard power, they're both At-Will powers, and they both have the same kind of effect on the opponent. In an older edition, the fighter rolls a d20 to do what she does (hit an opponent, mainly), the wizard usually doesn't roll at all to use his abilities, but has a learning/resting sub-game built into the class, and the thief gets to bust out a whole different set of dice to use her skills; I had previously seen this as untidy, but now I understand it to have a positive effect on the game, because it emphasises the different roles and abilities of the classes at a more emergent level than raw rules mechanics. In other words, these are opportunities for the player themselves to do something unique at the table, rather than have the class differences be relevant only in the imagined space of the game.

None of these are rule changes as such, although the first two do lead to a bit of tinkering with what is already there, and I think that, for me, they would enrich the playing of something like Labyrinth Lord, capturing what I like about fourth edition and combining it with a ruleset which is much more to my tastes.

Some Labyrinth Lord House Rules

I've not been gaming much of late, and my Call of Cthulhu campaign seems to have withered, hence the lack of updates. So I thought I'd instead share some ideas I had for a Labyrinth Lord game I was going to run, and still may one day if there's interest. Labyrinth Lord is more or less a clone of Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons, one of my preferred editions of the venerable game but even so, there are some bits I don't like so much, and these are my changes and additions.

• Armour Class is flipped, so AC0 represents no armour at all and AC14 is as armoured as you get, which makes much more sense to me. Essentially, this means that at first level, a character's to-hit target number will be 10+AC. I won't go as far as a 3.Xe unified mechanic, but I like high rolls to be better, and the old add/subtract AC/to-hit system hurt my brain; I think THAC0 may be the main reason behind me abandoning AD&D 2e for other systems.
• "Skills" are similarly amended to roll high, so an elf, for example, detects secret doors on a 5+ rather than a 1 or 2. Same probability, more sensible to my mind.
• The Big d30 is an idea I've stolen from Jeff Rients. Once per session, each player may roll a d30 instead of the normal die, whether it be a d6 to discover a secret door, or a d20 in combat, or a damage die for a weapon or spell. It must be declared beforehand, and is not a reroll, and it cannot be used to roll for statistics or hit points. It also only replaces one die, so if a player wished to use the d30 on a 2d6 roll, they would instead roll 1d6+1d30.
• Thief Skills are rolled on a d6 instead of a d100, mainly because I've never liked that d100 chart. I've converted the probabilities, which has led to a bit of fudging, but it's close enough. A thief can use The Big d30 for these rolls. As an aside, I subscribe to the school of thought which says that any character can attempt to pick a lock, or climb a wall, and so on, but only a thief can pick a lock without leaving signs of entry, or climb a sheer surface.
  
  
  
  
  

  Level	PL	FT	PP	MS	CL	H	L
  1	6+	6+	6+	6+	2+	6+	5+
  2	6+	6+	5+	5+	2+	6+	5+
  3	5+	6+	5+	5+	2+	6+	4+
  4	5+	6+	5+	5+	2+	5+	4+
  5	5+	5+	5+	5+	2+	5+	4+
  6	4+	4+	4+	4+	2+	5+	3+
  7	4+	4+	4+	4+	2+	4+	3+
  8	3+	3+	3+	3+	2+	4+	3+
  9	2+	3+	3+	3+	2+	3+	3+
  10+	2+	2+	2+	2+	2+	2+	2+

  
  
  
  
  PL is Pick Locks, FT is Find Traps, PP is Pick Pockets, MS is Move Silently, CL is Climb, H is Hide, L is Listen.

The latter is the change of which I'm most wary, since the probabilities have been changed; I don't think it breaks the game, although I do think it will change the way thieves work in play. Until I actually see it in action, I won't know for sure, so if anyone wants to use this (or any of the other bits) in their Labyrinth Lord or D&D games, and would like to let me know how it works out, I'd be grateful.

Fight On! #4

Fight On! is a magazine for fans of "old school" Dungeons and Dragons, presenting articles, house rules and full scenarios; there's even some campaign setting stuff in there, including a mega-dungeon presented one level per issue. There's a particular focus on Original D&D, but there are enough similarities between the various versions of the game that the contents of the magazine are useful for any edition up to 3rd, and even that's probably workable. And of course, the contents are fully compatible with newer retro-cones such as Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry.

Anyway, it's a solid magazine that's improved with every issue, and to me it feels a little bit like White Dwarf before that publication turned into a miniatures catalogue; Fight On! has that same sense of enthusiasm and creativity that made WD such fun. Like the older magazine, not every article is a winner, but there's so much content that the individual GM is bound to find something of use in its expansive 100 pages.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I have some art printed in this issue, but I'd recommend it even if I were not involved, and I've got no input into the first three issues, which are also well worth a look. You can buy it (and previous issues) in print form here, and a pdf edition will be released soon.