CAUTION! Still Under Construction

I have been quiet for a bit but I am still working on stuff.  I have been doing a lot drawing and writing.  

I have organized an online DC game with not alot of interest.  Besides wanting to play a good story. I also want to playtest out some of the new stuff for Dice Chucker.  The group is great there has been some good discussion on the rules. One big change you will see in the final Dice Chucker 4th edition is alterations to PD costs and a reworked Inept rule. 

As I said I also want this to be a good story.  My aim was something that felt old school retro D&D.  I have posted about my love for old school gaming before.  I really wanted to create a setting that had that look and feel mixed with my tongue and cheekiness. I thought I would post some pics of the game. 

The premise is the characters have arrived in the village of Notte.

 

The Intrepid Heroes

The dragon called Atharexphlarghallapharexykhan, who claimed the nearby dungeons beneath the ruinous Castle Greymoor as its lair, has recently been slain and its hoard lies unclaimed.  Adventurers from all over have come to brave the dark depths to try their luck. 

Currently the party gathers its courage for the plunge with drinks and food at the Red Moon Inn. 

The Red Moon Inn

The world is still very much developing and I have been enjoying it greatly.  The group has helped me lots with unexpected interest and questions which drives me to expand in direction I had not considered but still adds to the world I was going for.

There is much courage gathering and merry making.

Well thats all for now.  

Two New Uploads

Well I finally have w00t! rpg up.  Its been done for a couple of weeks. I have been heavily working on Dice Chucker, plus I need to let w00t! gel in my head awhile then look at it one more time before posting.  The goal of that is to reread the rules make sure it all makes sense and to TRY and catch typos. I may have mentioned it before my head has a built in autocorrect and I still miss alot.

As a bonus I also am posting a slightly reworked and renamed game I developed some years ago, the called BIG BEERS, small pretzels, now called Dungeons & Beers.  Simple, fast, and definately not serious.  Be warned it is not intended for those under the age of 21.  I have a character sheet for this that I will post as well, soon…maybe…Idunno..who am I kidding…

Boom… direct links:

w00t! rpg

Dungeons & Beers

Dice Chucker 4th Edition now available

In the past I have held off on release material till I felt it was complete.  I am opting for something different this time.  Dice Chucker 4th ed. Is playable as is…as far as I know anyway.  I have not done any playtesting (still working on that….) so if something is wonky or really broken I wouldn’t know.  

So I am putting up for download as work in progress and am hoping for someone out there on the internet to take pity on me, download it,  play it ALOT, and communicate with me about it during the process.  I would love to dedicate some space on this here blog to play reports, photos, adventures, illustrations, and whatever to other people.

So here is the link. Try it out and let me know what yall think.

Where the Hell are All the PBeM Players???

Ok I have a grip.  I.have been wanting to playtest Dice Chucker 4th ed.  Unfortunately I do not have time for a rl group.  So I thought I would run a game or two online.

However the term online gaming has now come to mean pretty much one thing where to me it used to mean three things.

Lets be clear I am NOT young…but nor am I passed my prime.  I DO remember quite a bit of life before the internet.  When I got online it opened up a new world of gaming possibilities.  People began playing rpgs by email (PBeM) and on forums in play by post (PbP)  With tech speed increasing by leaps and bounds, soon ideas of virtual tabletops were born for real time play.. At first these were like personal chat clients soon they evolved into more visual forms.  As well as MMORPG( I’m not even getting into those…)  So you get online now and search for an online group and 90% are groups that play live via virtual tabletop…

That is great and all but if I don’t have time to sit down with a rl group, the same restrictions still apply to sitting down with a group virtually.

I am a bit of an anomaly in the gaming world.  I have an outside career that is athletically demanding at times and keeps me in wild areas with no connections.

Email is the perfect medium for me to game in.  I can check it when I have signal and don’t have to be available at a specific time.  

There are several play by post sites and this would also work and I have tried.  

However among the PbP players they seem to be very loyal to certain games.  So getting someone to try a game like Dice Chucker has yet to pan out.  Plus it really is just an extra step. When I have direct access to my email

So again I ask the question: Where the hell are all the PBeM players? You can’t have all disappeared, and/or be so locked down in a game that I can’t find anyone?  

Dice Chucker 4 ed. Metagaming

I talked previously about changes to combat. 

Now I want to talk about metagaming.  I have been doing a lot of deep thinking on the true purpose of Dice Chucker.  What in my opinion makes it different from other RPGs.

It took awhile for me to put it into coherent thought, I work alot on feeling and it can be hard for me to explain exactly how something feels.

What makes Dice Chucker different is it purposely enhances, employs, and emphasizes metagaming.  All the stuff that goes on within a gaming group, that is not directly part of the story. All the jokes, venting about real life, gossip, the stuff that builds and cements a gaming group in friends or into stronger friends. That is one of core objectives of DC.

You have already seen it done through Power Dice and more subtly through the light hearted writing style and completely laid back rules.

However I wanted to do more to really emphasize that objective. I have never included a traditional game master section, never saw the point. I won’t be including one in the 4th ed. Instead I am using a section called Metagaming. In it you will find the rules for existing PDs..including a few new ones. As well you will find a couple of new things. 

 First Dice Chucker will now be the first rpg to reward awesome game masters with mad skills XPs.

 Chuckers get to decide when their DM deserves an XP. The goal is to show the gms their hard work is truly appreciated and they are indeed a valuable member of the group.

Dice Mongers will be able to use the XP for a variety of things. Like other chuckers they can spend them to boost an npc’s draft total by +3 and draw from the dice bag for the same cost. Additionally they use them to unlock and use meta powers.

Meta powers allow the Dice Monger to alter things in the game, that may benefit the chuckers or make things a bit harder, but always more interesting and entertaining. Examples include stealing PDs, or granting all mooks in a combat the equivelent of tough dice.

The other addition is challenges. Think of challenges as little in game competitions between the chuckers and Dice Monger.

Challenges work off a special new power die, that triggers a roll if one is drawn. The roll determines what challenge from the challenge chart is to be played. Most challenges are completely ridiculous. They don’t take away from in game time, they are meant to be done while continuing the story. Many can be played simultaneously with other challenges.

The winning side of a challenge is award victory points.  Victory points are totalled up at the end of a session. The winning side gets to add some new Power Dice to the dice bag for the next next session only free of charge.

Why in the hell make this stuff an official part of Dice Chucker???

You can use these new rules or not that is completely up to your gaming group.  My point is to show.people.you can think outside the gaming box. There are lots of innovative games out there.  Take nothing as dogma. Free your soul and your dice….if.you even care to use dice.  Remember these are only games and have fun.

Of Mice and Monsters

For some time I have been a fan of anthropomorphic stories. I have a few different ideas kicking in my head (always do..) But what I am talking about right now is a very specific subgenre which I am not even has a name.  I call it mouse fantasy.  

The subgenre has been around for awhile. Just look at these classic stories: The Mouse and the  Motorcycle (1965), Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971), and even Redwall (1986).

These all inspired me,in many subconscious ways when I was young. While I never ambitiously attempted anything in the subgenre it non the less helped to shape my view on fantasy/sci-fi.

However recently my ADD had be en tuned into mouse fantasy. This has been stirred up recently by a new guard of the mouse fantasy subgenre, David Petersen’s Mouse Guard. 

Unfortunately my art is no comparision to his intricate and beautiful creations. Plus as is evident my style and tastes tend to be a bit more silly.

I decided I wanted to create a mouse high fantasy game… I say decided but I really no idea where the brakes are on my imagination(…really should find my owners manuel) 

I want something that was very d&d-esque with mice. My vision is also very whimsical an ovetal forest environment with lots of creative use of natural material. The occasional repuposing of items that belonged to the far away “giants”

 As to advesaries…every good d&d game has them. I don’t really want dragons and owlbears.  I want it to be on a scale with mice. So natural creatures likes actual owls and snakes but with some fantasy creatures of a smaller stature such as a cockatrice.

The idea is still very much developing. I havr done lots of doodles.  I am leaning heavily to using watercolor for this for the whimsy.

Also leaning towards using w00t! for this as well I think the light nature of the rules fit the idea as well I can see a roleplaying and skirmish aspect to the idea.

Old School Line Art & Gaming

My introduction into the world of gaming came around 1989. I was already quite fond of sci fi and fantasy. I loved my NES, especially The Legend of Zelda. My older brother in the early 80s had tried Dungeons & Dragons, did not care for it and tossed it a side. Years later I was given his first edition AD&D Players Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide. I was hooked.

I poured over the books endlessly. One of the most fascinating things in the books was the artwork.

These early years of mine were influenced by saturday morning cartoons (…including Dungeons & Dragons…), comic books, and video games …all bright colors and flash. The black and white drawings were a stark contrast. The images themselves were often a little fuzzy on old musty paper, depicting strange, dark scenes. It stirred my imagination.

…one of my favorites..

Recently I have found myself thinking more and more about old school roleplaying.  What it must have been like sitting dim basement in the late 70s.  All pen, paper, and imagination.  Bellbottoms, shag carpeting, and a crackly transistor radio soft in the background.  Those where our pioneers, our forefathers and foremothers.

I have been playing around with the style of that era..adding my own twist to it.

…the adventurers confronted…

…..victory is OURS!…

So as I move forward with DC 4th ed. and as we as gamers move forward with our hobby ever closer to mainstream, remember what and who it was that brought us here.

  Pick up some old rpg and try to put yourself in its timeframe see it through eyes that would have seen it brand new and innovative.  Try it out yourself.  Kill all the electronics and go old school for a night. 

Admire, appreciate, and apply.