The Chaos Grenade

WYRED Directional Survey

vaguemumble — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:51:06 -0500

For the peeps who’ve been following my little cyberpunk rpg project, “WYRED”, could y’all be a doll and fill out this quick survey? Your feedback will help decide on what to work on next.

WYRED Directional Survey

Babbling on LL's "AEC", Descending AC, and other things.

vaguemumble — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:44:18 -0500

Here’s my thing: When it comes to retroclones, I mostly only keep tabs on them for when someone is looking for a particular flavor of an out-of-print edition of D&D. Most of the time I point peeps between either Labyrinth Lord or Dark Dungeons; the latter because it’s a clone of my personal favorite iteration (the Rules Cyclopedia.)

That said I hardly ever play with them, because I own a crap ton of the original old books. And a lot of the peeps I play with have them, too. Usually if I’m printing out or purchasing an OSR-driven title, it’s because it does something new or different that makes it stand out as its own game. A good example?Stars Without Number by Sine Nomine.

But one book that has caught my attention is Labyrinth Lord’s “Advanced Edition Companion.” I originally wrote it off as “Yay, LL made an AD&D clone” and left it at that. I may have underestimated the cool here by quite a bit.

Advancing a Game Without Being Advanced

Instead of directly cloning AD&D, it presents all the cool options as just that: Options. It was written to be built off of the Labyrinth Lore core rules to expand the system instead of replacing it. Same mechanics, same number scales, same hit charts and everything. Racial classes from the core game can mingle with advanced character Race/Class combos without any changes really.

Not present are a lot of the complicated fiddly bits they stuck into AD&D. Don’t get me wrong, those fiddly bits can be pretty damn fun, but after a while I’ve learned to appreciate simple combats over some crazy combat maneuvers (I get frustrated every time I see a Fighter with 18/00 strength throwing shit tons of darts as multiple attacks and killing off half the room.)

I also love the presentation and order of the rules in the AEC. Instead of binding it as a single, solid book…I printed out the whole thing and stapled them together in packets of sections. Character creation and equipment is one packet, spells are a couple other packets, magical items, monsters etc….doing it this way was perfect since it allowed me to label and quickly grab parts I wanted as they were needed.

So in short: The ability to tack in races, classes, and more spells like they had in AD&D but keeping the simple, easy and loose mechanics of “Basic” D&D. Hot damn, I found my sweet spot. Even better….despite the fact that LL was based on a different iteration and scale (the B/X rules) than the Rules Cyclopedia (Mentzer’s BECM), I’ve had no real problems using it instead of the core LL rules.

Some Little House Tweaks

We’ve also started playing a house rule to speed up combat. It’s inspired by the combat mechanics from Stars Without Number, and it works quite awesomely with old D&D. Essentially, all characters get an Attack Bonus equal to the difference between their THAC0 and 20. When attacking an opponent, the roll is now 1d20+Attack Bonus (and any modifiers)+Opponent’s Armor Class. Any rolls of 20 or higher is a hit. This makes it a LOT easier for new players (or players of modern editions) to grasp the idea of a lower AC being better, since it’s pretty much lowering the bonus to attack. It also gives a static difficulty/target number to beat.

If anyone who is running Labyrinth Lord would like to give this variant a spin, I whipped up a quick reference chart and a modified character sheet that I’m using for my campaigns. Feel free to download these suckers for personal use:

Advanced Attack Table for Labyrinth Lord (uses the same to-hit as core LL)

Modified Advanced Sheet for Labyrinth Lord

Obligatory Thoughts on D&D 5e

vaguemumble — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:05:48 -0500

I posted over at Loremaster.Org some initial feelings about “D&D Next” being announced.

It’s still too early to comment anything really, but, I can say I’m finding this a time to retire 4th Edition for me. This isn’t a decision out of spite; just, I don’t really have any games of it going on or planned for the near future. I’m looking forward to playtesting the new edition; but in the mean time I’m plenty satisfied with the older edition games I take part in.

Gaming Resolutions for 2012

vaguemumble — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 08:49:00 -0500

2011 was an interesting year in gaming for me. I played a LOT more old-school D&D, ran the D&D Encounters program for our new local game shop, have become a tablet-PDF junkie, and have managed to hack together a cyberpunk RPG that I’m satisfied with.

Granted, I also took a summer Hiatus this year, from game blogging and playing. I almost killed the blog completely (and then some lame ass hackers did that for me.) I stepped away from the vitriol and flame wars, and took a much needed breather. In real life, I wanted to free my schedule and free time up for having kick ass adventures in real life. Mission accomplished.

So looking ahead in 2012, I’m eager to get my dice rolling again, as well as continuing to write up some fun stuff to share with peeps. While I’m usually not a big fan of resolutions, I think there’s a few gaming related ones I plan on keeping this year:

~20 lbs Weight Limit:

I am DONE with lugging around tons of books, miniatures, grid boards and fiddly bits. 20 lbs is my rough estimate of the weight of my AD&D tote bag (it’s a Rush “2112” book bag that holds ALL of my AD&D 1E books.) My game nights for D&D 4E are infamous for me having to lug so much stuff to the table. I refuse to run ANY game this year that requires multiple trips to unload.

Matter of fact, I’m quite spoiled by how WYRED turned out. Using the PocketMod format, I now have a small cardbox that carries 10 copies of the rule booklets, character folios, pens, dice, and notecards for NPC’s/plot tracking.

Table Economy

This goes along with the ~20 lbs Resolution: I’m sticking to games that don’t require a lot of tabletop space to play. I’ve discovered over the last couple years that I am a STICKLER for table economy. Nothing gets to me more than having limited elbow room because of all the dice, character sheets, skill cards, miniatures, terrain pieces, and then suddenly someone going SNACKS! And all of our stuff is barraged with bags of chips and Little Debbies. No, I’m NOT calling this a problem with our hostess, because chips and Little Debbies are AWESOME.

I’m calling it a problem with the game we’re playing. If an RPG requires us to forfeit player comfort, or involves me standing up and maneuvering around the game table, or can’t even be played in a living room/couch setup, it’s not getting ran by me this year. Same if the game requires additional trackers and fiddly bits.

If a rules call takes longer than 6 seconds to look up…

….wing it.

More Self-Contained Games

I am not getting involved in RPG systems that require hefty investments or multiple books. Especially systems that trickle out supplements that feel like required parts of the game. No more will I buy a Player Handbook and wait months for a Game Mastery Guide or Beastiary to come out.

If I can’t acquire the core game experience in a single purchase, I’m out. And I don’t define “core” as the rules without character creation, and I sure as hell don’t define it as introductory levels of play.

More Love for The Under Dog

My favorite games of last year didn’t come from big companies or have major productions. They came from individuals, with a love of the hobby and were more concerned for writing fun games for people to play than huge games for people to invest in. Creative Commons licensed games won my heart and made me never want to see an OGL again. Other games took old ideas but spun them in new ways that I felt were genius.

This isn’t some kind of hipster finger to the man kind of attitude….this is loving games for the sake of gaming, and I seem to find a lot more of that in the indie and self-published markets.

Ignore the Flames.

True story: this year at our New Years Eve party, I was the idiot who tripped, stumbled, and dove straight into our bonfire. Had to go to the emergency room, get stitches, and have a 3rd degree burn on my arm.

That’s about all the flames I can stand for this year. And those were legit. So forget about me paying any attention to some pretentious bullshit on gaming forums this year. You guys have fun with the edition wars, old school vs. new school, sexism and political correctness in gaming….I’m not going to buy into any of those discussions. I’m gonna roll dice, and I’m going to enjoy my games with my players like we want.

Because, like I said before: the only gaming community that matters is the one at your game table.

WYRED Errata

vaguemumble — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:53:00 -0500

I’ve updated WYRED to 1.01, with the following fixes (nothing major):

->Tough As Nails perk should have 2 Soak, not 3.

->Status perk should have listed a difficulty of 9, not 13.

->Hand Razors augment should have a damage of 2, not 3.

->Changed term “Defense” to “Soak” on Armor table to save confusion.

->Renamed document files to “Complete Rulebook”, “Pocket Book 1 - Core” and “Pocket Book 2 - Augments & Gear” to stave off confusion from people who didn’t realize there was a non-pocketmod version of the rules available in the file. My bad.

If anyone finds any other glaring hiccups, please, drop me a line.

WYRED - Leaner, Meaner Edition

vaguemumble — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:20:00 -0500

GET THE BAD BOY HERE. (2 MB Zip file)
Contains “complete” core rulebook, two pocketmod books, a character sheet and a pocket“character folio.”

This is probably the most drastic iteration of WYRED written so far. My gaming group loves it, so I’m curious how it flies with the online crowd. I completely blame Stuart Robertson and his game Weird West for influencing this version.

A lot has been trimmed out, some of it streamlined and simplified, and what you have here is just the necessary core rules. They have been re-organized a bit, and crammed into two PocketMod booklets for easy carrying and high mobility. There’s still a “complete” document in regular format for reading digitally or printing out. Part of the organization was inspired by what I noticed was “two phases” of character creation: the statistical creation, then the toy shopping (augments, weapons, gear etc.) Splitting the Core Rules and Gear into separate booklets means as soon as someone is midway through creation, he or she can hand off the first booklet so the next player can get started while they window shop.

Here are the big changes that I can think of:

Return to d6 Mechanic:Little fixes to the system, like Combat Rating and changing armor to pure soak, really adjusted things well for the d6. The d12 mechanic was sound…but I came to realize the d6 version was easier to gauge and scale. Plus, this keeps it in the realm of “easy to find dice in a pinch” and maintains compatibility with other WyRM systems. (And is anyone else really, really excited about Veil of Secrecy coming out like I am?)
Streamlined Augment Listing: I ditched bionetics in the core rules, as well as legality listings and “Edge Link” (which was a VERY hard decision.) I figured both of those could be house ruled in easily depending on GM and campaign, but weren’t “essential” to the game. A couple pieces of augments also were scrapped to save space….I could easily bring them back in a future supplement though.
Drugs & Toxins omitted. Again, this was more to do with deciding what was core to the game and trimmed for page economy in the pocketmod format. That said, I would really love to make a full Drug & Toxin supplement booklet.
Simplified/Cleaned Up a Few Rules: A few perks were simplified (like Buddy), Hacking was re-written (and hopefully comprehensible.) “Net Defense” is now called “Cyber Defense” because the original term confused a couple players (came off sounding like a “net total.”)
Character Sheet Updated: Stealing a modification from Mathias’ sheets for his “Star WYRED” game, I’ve added columns for a “total bonus” on the weapons and skills for quicker modifier reference. Why they hell didn’t I do that in the first place?

As always, looking forward to some feedback.

I know some peeps will probably be taken back by the simplification and omissions, but I have to be honest: I think I love this approach the most for WYRED. No bullshit, straight to the point, and open for tinkering and expansion. The PocketMod format actually inspires a ton of ideas in me…..I envision in the long run having a core booklet, and then optional booklets of rules to mix and match for your campaign.

Just a thought. Tell me if I’m crazy.

r3dwingpig: PIGPack 1.0 texturepack for Minecraft 1.0.0 About:...

vaguemumble — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:14:00 -0500

Texture Pack Test Track

castle with a dock

The Nether!

My latest house and bridge (& my farm)

A couple mobs

r3dwingpig:

PIGPack 1.0 texturepack for Minecraft 1.0.0

About: It started off being a re-skin of the textures I hated (dirt, gravel, cobblestone, etc), but over the last year I kept adding textures from other texture packs as well as many textures of my own. You can call it a compilation but 30-40 textures are completely original and the rest are borrowed/modified. Credit is given in the pack.txt file. The texturing community is fantastic, I couldn’t have made this without you.

I hope you like what I’ve thrown together.

DOWNLOAD HERE or download from PlanetMinecraft.com here.

Read change logs and more on the [PIG] forums.

Something I Learned from PocketMod....

vaguemumble — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:17:00 -0500

So this week, I had a crazy idea: Could I cram WYRED into an 8-page PocketMod?

Short answer to that question: No.

But what I did pull off was condensing WYRED down to an 8-page document, including the character sheet. Only reason it wasn’t PocketMod friendly was I suck at layout/design theory, so the fonts came out teeny-tiny. This is also related to my hubris, as I hardly omitted or left out as much as I could. That isn’t to say I didn’t strip stuff out of there: Drugs and Toxins were omitted, a few pieces of Augmentations, little things like “Legality” and Edge-Link for the augments (okay, those can be pretty major things….but I felt they weren’t necessary for the enjoyment of the game.)

I could have taken a lot out and still have it a functional, pocket-sized cyberpunk RPG. Did I really need to put the vehicles in there? Are Range Bands detrimental to the game, or just an awesome carry over I borrowed from RAG?

Yes, this all stems from my recent enjoyment of Weird West. It goes back further, actually: like my friend Mathias who has been using WYRED to run his own space opera games and all the talks we’ve had about how nice it is to have a system that feels complete, but isn’t bogged down with the nitty gritty. Games like High Valor and ICONS where the mechanics are fast and easy to scheme up on the fly.

This week I was able to take a 38 Page Document and strip it down to 8. Granted, I removed a lot of flavor and fluff and discussion…..but at the same time, it makes me wonder how much is necessary for WYRED to be a complete game. Should I write it like it may be someone’s first cyberpunk game? Or is it safe to assume (yes, I know they say about that) that the bulk of my target audience will already have a good grasp of both the genre AND how to run an RPG?

Either way, I now have a draft of the bare naked game (well, scantily clad) that I’ve been slowly pecking away it from time to time for almost a year now. I may use this as a skeleton for a completely re-written draft. I’m pretty comfortable the nuts and bolts are right where they need to be….what I want now is a rulebooks that is as fast to read as it is to pick up and learn to play the game. I’ve taught complete newcomers how to build characters (that actually excite them!) in minutes. I want someone to be able to freshly pick up WYRED and be able to teach their friends how the character gen in a couple hours, no sweat.

Hello! I red you made a "gamma-world like" version of D&D classes but i cannot find it :| Is it public? Can i have it? where it is? XD

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:29:34 -0500

My old blog posts have been archived on Wordpress. Unfortunately, I lost most of the graphics I used with my old hosts, so a lot of the articles have broken images :(

That said I went and touched up the posts and made sure they linked right. Here you go!

http://thechaosgrenade.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/my-take-fantasy-origins-for-gamma-world/

Weird West Play Report

vaguemumble — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 13:10:36 -0500

Despite fighting a sore throat and stuffy sinuses, I managed to run a full gaming session of Weird West last night for my friends. Character creation was dirty quick, even with the little bits I added, and everyone was comfortable hopping into the game.

Warning: Blatant References to Gaming and Pop Culture to Follow.

The party is an already established group of freakish heroes for the town of Hollow’s End. Being that they were already 3rd level, it was understood that they have become the “vigilant” protectors of the town, no thanks in part of the lazy drunken Sheriff. The group consisted of:

“M”, a Dhampir monster hunter
Danielle Craig, lady Gunslinger.
Jake McGruff, Werewolf brawler.
James Jones, a fire-and-brimstone Preacher man.
Adrian Campbell, a Scottish-born Apache-trained scout.
“Countess” Minette, exiled Royalty turned lady of the night, and part time sorceress.

Rundown of the Adventure:

Some bad hombres calling themselves “The Raven Host” worshiping some “Tzeentch” feller came ridin’ into town, all fussin’ and a feudin’ and burnin’ places down and demanding conversion. They were led by an amigo who called himself “Malakai” and he wasn’t too nice to the Preacher Man.

Upon their arrival, the Sheriff wasn’t too fond of the idea of talking to these guys (especially since they didn’t look all right, ya know what I mean?) and so he threw his star down and left town. The Apache put it on and walked out to talk to Malakai, who did nothing but promise to take over the town and force conversion and torture.

Danielle positioned herself behind some crates and opened fire on the hombre; he turned to flee but not before giving his mutant thugs the OK to continue smashing up the town. As he left he warned that everyone had until the next night to leave or face their wrath.

The heroes quickly dispatched the abominations, although not without a few missteps, missed shots and the Countess getting all beaten on. She’s dealt with tentacled monsters before, though, and just happened to keep her lightning bolts handy in her purse at all times.

They did managed to capture one of the fiends, and attempted to get some information out of it. They received a broad whereabouts of the Cult’s lair; but decided against chasing after them and instead set up an ambush. The Preacherman apparently kept a stock of Dynamite in his church…..

When Malakai rode in the next night with a horde of undead, they blew most of those scumbags to kingdom come but only managed to knock Malakai off his horse. Danielle sniped him from the rooftop, but he retorted with a few green lightning bolts himself. He then attempted to charm her to shoot her colleagues, but being a tough girl that she is she shrugged him off and unloaded another round.

McGruff tackled Malakai while Adrian also put himself in a ranged position with his bow. Meanwhile Countess and “M” attempted to dispatch the undead; her spells were flying all over the place except the intended targets. Despite Preacher Jones’ shielding powers of faith, M got a little too cocky with his Dhampir abilities and ended up being completely devoured by a dispatch of zombies.

Realizing that the tide of battle needed a tremendous push, Countess turned around on Malakai and unleashed a charm to convince him he’s blind. As he fell to his knees cursing her, the Preacher dropped his ward, pulled out his handgun with both hands and yelled “Merry Christmas Motherfucker…..err….no wait….Light of the Lord, Bitch!”

A beam shot out from his pistol, blasting Malakai’s head like a melon. The remaining zombies then collapsed in place without their master to sustain them.

Overall Impressions:

Everyone had a great time, so that’s an automatic “winning.” My buddy’s younger brother played with us, and from what I understand his previous experience has only been a few D&D 3e games. He loved how much we were able to work with such a simple system and still keep it fun and challenging. Everyone picked up the mechanics quickly; although going between the d20 for attacks and d6 for Difficult Tasks. That said, I love the Task system and I was able to quickly scheme up some rolls when needed.

That, and there’s something to be said about being to pack the whole game book, character sheets and NPC notes in my coat pocket.

Key Me In: More Experiences with Nook Color

vaguemumble — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 11:25:36 -0500

Felt obliged to do a little bit of a followup to my Nook Color Review for RPG Nerds.

First off, let me state I’ve taken the plunge and instead of booting Cyanogenmod 7 completely from my SDCard, I’m now running a fully rooted Nook Color. The performance increase has been noticeable, but honestly nothing to write home about. The only major difference to me now is being able to use ClockworkMod to update the software with ease.

Recently, I’ve parted with my laptops. The Nook has served itself as the perfect PDF reader I’ve been looking for, so I gave my ASUS T91 tablet to a buddy of mine who could get more use out of it than me. My Alienware I sold to my roommate, since he needed a new gaming rig and I found myself opting to take my Nook for web surfing over lugging that thing around.

I’ve actually been pretty happy with sacrificing a lot of the PC features of a laptop for an android tablet (or at least a Nook hacked into acting like one.) That is until NaNoWriMo rolled around, and I found myself attending the midnight write-ins as the only guy with pen and paper. Decided it was time to remedy this.

A Little Ingenuity and a Few Quirks

Amazon had a Breed CTRLCase for the Samsung Galaxy Tab dropped down to 19.99 (believe it’s up to $29.99 now.) I decided to take my chances, being that the Galaxy and the Nook Color were both 7” tablets. Turns out the Nook is a little bit bigger; and fitting it into the straps was a tight squeeze. I ended up taking my scissors out and just completely snipping away the top part of the straps, leaving the bottom to snuggly slide my Nook in.

The keyboard part is a wireless bluetooth keyboard with softkeys. My big fingers had to adjust to the key size but overall I think I found a good pecking speed with it. At least if I spill any drinks on it there’s no harm. Linking the keyboard with my Nook was no problem at all.

It isn’t without its flaws, however. I’m not sure if it’s because of the nature of Blutetooth, the softkeys or just this keyboard in particular…but I’ve noticed the occasional double-tap of keys. Let’s juusst saay I saaw tyypos liike thiis here and there. It didn’t happen enough to be annoying when writing emails, checking G+ or Facebook….but when you’re trying to write long-term it becomes a nuisance.

There’s also an occasional lag that occurs, especially when my words-per-minute kick up full blast. Most of the time the lag is minimal, and the words quickly catch up. But there has been a few times where entire sentences had been dropped off in the middle of the catch up, causing fragmented thoughts to occur without careful watching.

But these issues only came off as minor setbacks that I was able to work with. Eventually I found a pecking pace at around 30-40 WPM that didn’t seem to bog down the tablet and kept up with. Also, using an app like Null Keyboard appeared to clean up most of the double-tap issues (they still happen, just a lot less frequently I noticed.) Also by using Null Keyboard to disable the Android Keyboard, it kept the on-screen board from popping up as well as the accent menus from occurring.

As for the software I’ve been using, I’ve been fond of OfficeSuite Pro, which I actually got for free from the Amazon Store during one of their “free apps of the day” promotions. It ties in with Google Docs, has plenty of formatting features, and one thing I’ve come to love is that it has a recovery feature. Another app I’ve attempted using, QuickOffice Pro, was pretty slick until it randomly crashed on me and I lost about ~600 words or so. Although, it does seem OfficeSuite is notorious for saving documents that can’t be opened by other word processors, even though it’s saving them as .doc files. This hasn’t been a hindrance to me, though, since I usually save my drafts to Google Docs to keep all my work up to date across all of my devices (yes I occasionally write on my phone too, as well as the desktop.)

One more annoying quirk: It appears “Spell Checkers” don’t exist in Android word processors. I’ve gotten over this, however, and have learned to just focus on getting my writing out of my skull and then going back to my work later on the desktop to perform edits in my downtime.

Parting Shots

Overall, I’m happy with the keyboard case. Even with the quirks, it’s turned my tablet into a nice, portable netbook that doesn’t hinder or burden me to lug around. I was able to enjoy a straight 7 hours of jamming music over Spotify and banging away at my NaNo novel before the battery got to extremely low levels.

I’m hoping with the new Nook Tablet coming out, that we’ll see enhanced Bluetooth support (as well as keyboard cases tailored to the devices) and I’m hoping the premium word processor apps will continue to evolve. In the mean time, in regards as to whether a tablet beats a netbook or laptop, I’m going to say it depends on what you’re wanting out of it. As far as word processors go, the PCs and Macs win. However, if you’re looking for something more portable and easier to take with you, and you don’t mind sacrificing some features for mobility, something like the Nook Color or any other Android tablet isn’t a bad deal, and is still pretty functional.

Hey! What about us RPG Nerds?

Oh yeah! I suppose that was my original angle of review, huh? Okay, I would say laptops still have the upper hand in terms of programs like Masterplan, Hero Labs and the like. Browsing through the Android Market, I’m not seeing any must-have RPG apps that would hang on par with those products.

But if you’re a more minimalist GM who is just looking for a mobile solution for note taking or doesn’t mind tracking his adventures in text files, a modded Nook Color with a cheap Bluetooth Keyboard may actually be quite nice. There’s plenty of free text and note-taking apps that can be used and abused with ease for your gaming needs.

And aside from the quirky word-processing, the device still rules in terms of PDF reading. I honestly feel ezPDF on a Nook Color surpasses Adobe Reader on a full powered netbook or laptop any day.

Weird West: A Quick and Dirty Review

vaguemumble — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 01:49:00 -0500

Tonight I decided to take the plunge and make the hefty investment of 100 US Cents ($1.00) to have a look at the Weird West Basic Role-Playing Rulebook put out by Stuart Robertson of Robertson Games.

The game totes itself as (from the DriveThruRPG description) “The streamlined and fast playing adventure roleplaying game for weird western worlds of cowboys, kung-fu, magic and otherworldly malevolence.” It was then followed up with this interesting tidbit:

We’ve cut out the ‘what is an rpg’, game fiction, and other ‘fluff’ to keep the rulebook as lean as possible while still having enough detail to make it fun.

So, then…..did it deliver?

What You Get:

Purchasing this game gets you an 8-Page PDF file appropriate for just about any reading device (it even looks nice on my crappy phone.) The file also contains a PDF and PNG file of the “Pocket Mod” edition of the game, allowing you to print out and fold up an entire rule booklet using a single sheet of paper. One nice touch was the suggestion to print up a copy on the go, or one for each of your players. I always dig it when a digital publisher pretty much gives the thumbs up for sharing with our play groups.

The Game Itself:

As promised, this is a very streamlined game. So streamlined, in fact, it’ll be hard for me to review it without completely giving the rules away. Character creation is quick and simple: Points are assigned across four attributes, and the character choses one of four Paths to progress in (Fighter, Adventurer, Gifted & Magician.) Their path immediately determines the die to roll for Stamina (hit points), the maximum damage die-type weapons they can use, and how their stats progress through leveling. If the characters have points in Magic, they get to choose from a list of powers.

Combat mechanics consist of rolling a d20 and consulting a chart for difficulty, and then rolling dice for damage. There are various Fight Actions listed that offer modifiers to these rolls.

Difficult Tasks that occur outside of combat are based on a single D6 roll mechanic. The goal is to roll 5+ to succeed. There is a Difficulty number assigned to the roll, and the nature of the action is based off one of the four attributes. An attribute over the difficulty adds the difference to the roll, and a rating under subtracts the difference.

What Isn’t Present:

No Bestiary / NPC’s
As mentioned, no setting or fluff. The “Magic and Weird Abilities” section is probably the only area you’ll find any kind of flavor pertaining to a “Weird Western” setting.
No monetary guidelines or rules for starting equipment

My Thoughts?

I’m torn. My initial reaction, just glancing through the document, was that I got what I paid for. Okay, I hate to admit it, I initially felt ripped off….but only because a few of my favorite RPG systems were free that offered full books and supplements digitally at no cost. Those games also felt quite a bit more detailed and complete; and upon initial glance through I felt Weird West came off as a vague home-brew document.

But upon an honest, full read through…my opinion changed. The game presented here, while being very rules-lite, is perfectly playable. A moderately-experienced GM could easily whip up an entire evening of gaming on a few note cards or a sheet of paper; characters can be made in moments, and the game can kick off right away.

Part of me still wishes for more in the core game book, but another factor I took into consideration was the PocketMod nature of the game. By figuring the target audience is most likely RPG veterans and not complete newcomers, Mr. Robertson was able to take a very zen approach to condensing the rules and working within the confines of an 8-page limit.

Parting Shots:

Weird West isn’t for anyone looking for a detailed Western game setting. Anyone seeking something akin to Deadlands or Aces and Eights will probably feel underwhelmed here.

That said, anyone wanting a bare-bones game system to run their own games without much hassle (or having to deal with setting-specific rules or guide lines) could probably get a lot of mileage out of these mechanics. Do-It-Yourself GM’s who love to tinker (I happen to be one of those) could easily use this as a skeleton for their own settings and tales.

Ultimately, you need to ask yourself the value of a buck. While there are plenty of Free RPG’s out there that are chock full of more details, rules and mechanics…this game is an achievement of minimalist design and function. There is a beefy little game within these 8 pages; and being able to cram it and present it in such a way is pretty neat.

And the cover art is pretty damn awesome.

Ha ha! Thanks r3dwing! r3dwingpig: Made this Spider Jerusalem...

vaguemumble — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:07:53 -0500

Ha ha! Thanks r3dwing!

r3dwingpig:

Made this Spider Jerusalem skin for @revlazaro. It turned out rad!

Download is here from PlanetMinecraft.com…woop woop!

Rev. Laz gets off his ass and makes another Youtube update.

vaguemumble — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:16:15 -0500

Rev. Laz gets off his ass and makes another Youtube update.

Breaking "Encounters"

vaguemumble — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:59:26 -0400

So last week, we took a vote at our D&D Encounters night:
It was decided that while we enjoyed the game so far, that all of us were there to play D&D and didn’t really care about the incentive rewards (even though they are pretty cool.) Our Wednesday Night crowd is kind of a double edged sword…..we have just enough people involved that we can usually keep one table going; but not enough regulars to bust out a 2nd table. But, we have been known to decline a few stragglers because “our table is full.” For those unfamiliar, the D&D Encounters setup requires one DM, minimum 4 players, maximum 6 at the table. Which sucks when we have 8 people total show up.

This isn’t to say our town’s first endeavor in D&D Encounters wasn’t a success for us. The format of the weekly encounter, the set game time and the “come as you are, when you can” motif had really been appealing for my players. A lot of the guys (and gals) at the table have kids, jobs, school etc. It’s been fun for them to have a weekly game they know they can miss and hop back into.

We’re going to continue playing the module; but I’m going to be spicing things up a tad and tailoring a few more challenges and encounters to the group. When we’re done with the Lost Crown of Neverwinter, we’re going to continue playing in the campaign setting and see how far we can run with these heroes. We’re keeping the emphasis on the rewards being player based and just keeping things loose so folks can hop in and out without punishment. This also means we can bring in some of our home rules for speeding up lengthy encounters (I’m a huge fan of Morale saves), open up the character customization and possibly bring in some extra gun goodies (like Fourthcore Armory…..charged magical items ftw.)

Really, I do encourage anyone who is looking for a quick D&D fix to check out their FLGS and see if they’re running D&D Encounters. I don’t see our departure as a “failure” — it brought in folks who’ve never played 4E (or hardly had the time) and gave us a way to experience it and meet new players.

WYRED Rough Drafts 5 & 6

vaguemumble — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 08:59:00 -0400

WYRED, my cyberpunk rpg based off the WYRM rules found in games like Warrior, Rogue & Mage and Resolute, Adventurer & Genius, has just released its 5th AND 6th rough draft copies.

The 5th Draft is the “final” version of the original d6-based rules. The 6th Draft is the first version of our d12-based mechanic. It’s still essentially the same game, but the number scale has been beefed up for a wider range of success/failure to help remedy the issues of “feast or famine” dice rolls (where it felt like everything was either complete misses or critical explosions.)

But for those who enjoyed the d6 version and would like to continue building off of it for their own WyRM games, I’ve also made the “raw” un-formatted Open Office document available.

And, of course, the game and mechanics are being developed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 Unported License.

You can grab the file links off my post at RPGTableTalk.

Review of "Neverwinter Campaign Setting"

vaguemumble — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:09:12 -0400

Originally posted on Loremaster.Org

I’m going to be up front about this: I was never really big into the Forgotten Realms…

….I think I developed an aversion after a while because it became so popular, and so much was put out for it, it became daunting to even consider running it. To me it would be like trying to run Star Wars without ever seeing the movies.

…Last week, a copy of the Neverwinter Campaign Setting came in for me. This has been an interesting time for me, since I’ve been returning from not only a summer-long gaming hiatus, but also a quite lengthy hiatus from 4^thEdition. My time back behind the DM screen has been experiencing the D&D Essentials line for the first time, as well as running my first season of the weekly Encounters program, which just happens to take place in Neverwinter. Coming into this already having a taste of the setting and political backdrop of the campaign from the Wednesday night games, I was eager to crack open the book and see not only what it could provide to my gaming table – but how it stands for someone with little investment or interest in the Forgotten Realms setting.

Read My Full Review Here.

Pull the Pin, Throw Blindly.

vaguemumble — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:06:00 -0400

Here it is, another reincarnation of The Chaos Grenade.
I’ve been using this blog title since Feb of 2009; mostly for RPG related works.
Earlier this year, I took a bit of a gamer hiatus and then returned feeling much better. Unfortunately, when I returned I found my website was the victim of a nasty vulnerability and hacker attack, which pretty much set up a bunch of nastiness that I didn’t feel like doing with. I recovered what I could of my old blog posts (and archived them on a free host), cleared out my old web host (since a lot of it was trashed anyways) and wiped my hands of the matter.

But what can I say? I miss my old brand. I need a casual gaming nerd outlet. I was already here for my writing blog; might as well try this old girl again.

Random Stuff of Interest:

I recently became a product reviewer on Loremaster.Org
I also have a YouTube channel with some nerdy stuff and home movies.
I have a massive tabletop gaming collection, especially with RPGs.
Favorites include D&D, World of Darkness, RIFTS, Savage Worlds, High Valor, and many others I don’t feel like looking up right now.
I also enjoy online gaming, especially with Hamstorm Nation [PIG]. We mostly play GuildWars, Minecraft, and Black Ops.