Fri, 10 Sep 2010
I had to upload a document to scribd.com the other day to get a document out of their archive, so I uploaded my notes for my Savage Worlds adventure “Return to the Frontiers of Alusia”, a revised version of a GURPS adventure I ran in 1988 in the DragonQuest setting Frontiers of Alusia. Anyway, today I uploaded a revised version that has my hand-drawn maps from the original 1988 version.
Sat, 11 Apr 2009
Spoilers!
GURPS Bunnies & Burrows, “The Herbmaster's Plea”, p. 94.
Introduction
Fudge Bunnies & Burrows is the first RPG that I played with any of the kids, and was probably the first RPG that I played with most of them. It's ideal for introducing kids to RPGs: bunnies are familiar enough for them to grasp the idea quickly, but different enough so that it's neat.
[This is an after-the-fact post. Again, I could have sworn I'd written something about this before.]
I found my notes on this, which reminded me of some of the things that happened.
I ran the first example adventure from GURPS Bunnies & Burrows, “The Herbmaster's Plea”, p. 94. I used Steffan O'Sullivan's Fudge Bunnies characters, and let the players pick the ones they liked best. Several of the players had probably played this scenario before, but it was enough years ago that they'd forgotten it, and I changed things around a bit. I still had the map I drew of the barn from the farm from “The Herbmaster's Plea” for a B&B game on 2003/01/18 with B.B. & T.A. [1], so I could reuse that.
Attending
- M.B. & C.P.B, jointly playing Chamomile, a bunny with healing powers
- L.B., playing Raspbery, a storytelling, risk-taking bunny
- T.A., playing Stripe, a capable young King's Scout bunny
- D.B., playing Oakroot, a solid and reliable, very strong but somewhat dim member of the Owsla.
Actual Play
They went through the forest on the way to the farm, and were attacked by mongooses. In evading the mongooses they ran off separately and all of them but Stripe got lost. Oakroot and Raspberry eventually got back together and were bickering so much (in character) that I figured their bunnies must be brother and sister. Oakroot and Raspberry made so much noise that the didn't notice the bear, and almost ran into him. Oakroot was so confused that he ran into a tree! Raspberry had dashed ahead and hidden behind another tree, and when she say the bear approaching Oakroot she used her skill Throw your Voice to distract the bear long enough for her and Oakroot to escape. Stripe had tracked them down and had been watching them from a safe distance, and soon joined up with them. They found the others at the edge of the forest, and headed off for the farm. They went into the hedge, but just managed to stop before one of them got caught in one of the traps in the hedge. They sneaked along the hedge, and then stuck across the new-mown hay field to the pig pen, where they spent some time talking with the pigs, who were very bored. They decided to let the pigs loose as a distraction, but they needed a lever to open the gate to the pigpen. They went through the pigpen, through the chicken house (asking the rooster first), and into the tractor shed, where they found a screwdriver. They eventually got the gate open, with the cooperation of the pigs, and in the confusion while the dog was distracted they dashed across into the barn.
In the barn they eventually found the herbmaster in one of a set of rabbit hutches in the hayloft of the barn, and they managed to figure out how to open the hutches and set all the bunnies inside free. Oakroot and Stripe accidentally scared the hutch rabbits, and one set didn't want to escape to the warren and were making lots of noise to alert the cat that something was wrong. Raspberry used her Storytelling skill and Enthrallingly Charismatic supernormal power to calm them down by telling them a story about .. FIXME: spelling? Elharairah and convince them to come along quietly.
They eluded the rats and all made it back safe to the warren, which welcomed the new rabbits joyfully.
| [1] | That earlier session was “The Missing Kit”. It had the same PC bunnies as an earlier game that used “The Herbmaster's Plea”, so it was natural for the farm to be an important part of the scenario again. For “The Missing Kit” I drew a map for the barn that was very loosely based on a barn that was on my grandmother's farm that I spent a lot of time in as a child and teenager, first playing and then working bringing in the hay. |
Sat, 02 Aug 2008
The first D&D game I owned was the Holmes blue-box edition of Basic D&D; the first D&D game I played was AD&D 1E. I was in junior high when I got the Holmes box set for Christmas from my parents. (If I am remembering correctly.) That summer I started playing D&D with a group of my brother's friends from high school, and I played with them until that group gradually dispersed, some when they left the state for college, and some when they left the state after college for jobs elsewhere. I had long been DMing by then. My younger brother joined the group at some point. He got Tunnels & Trolls as a Christmas present one year, from my uncle Chuckie, if I remember correctly. We played it several times, but it was a simpler game than AD&D and at the time seemed to offer less, though in a very entertaining way.
Gamma World, 1st edition, was probably the first RPG I bought, other than AD&D. (How did we buy the AD&D books?) We never played Gamma World, for some reason. Probably because I wasn't able to figure out the rules, or because it was too gonzo.
Need a footnote about missing out on the flexibility T&T saving roll system — not surprising, since I never saw any of the T&T solos that used it so extensively. Also, how that gave T&T gamist tactical play without complicated rules, unlike D&D 3e and 3.5e.
While still in junior high, or perhaps my first year in high school, I ran across DragonQuest. Although it was written in a “numbered rules” style that I was unfamiliar with (having never played wargames) that required me to read it closely several times through before I understood any of it, I was fascinated by it from the very first read. DQ's skills gave all characters interesting distinguishing abilities, where as in AD&D only thieves had similar such abilities (other classes depending on selection of spells to distinguish the magic using classes and magic items to distinguish the others.) The D100 based unified mechanic used by DQ was also very attractive, as was the more detailed combat system. The professional skills seemed less restrictive and therefore less of a mere game construct than the equivalent AD&D classes. The fact that every character could learn magic also seemed freeing.
The fact that the only DQ adventure that I was able to find at the time was Paul Jaquays' The Enchanted Wood was also a plus, because I found it to be head and shoulders above any other adventure I had seen at the time.
I can seen now that most of these things I liked about DQ were the things that added to greater detail in distinguishing characters, as well as what I called realism them, but today might more accurately call verisimilitude. I think a good part of it was that by this time AD&D had become its own genre and I wanted something less tied to those particular tropes. DQ seemed to simulate a wider variety of fantasy than AD&D.
I think it is safe to say that I was suffering from an anti-D&D backlash at this point.
At some point I bought a copy of Avalon Hill's Powers & Perils. (If my memory of buying this from the hobby store in downtown Clarksburg is correct, I must have bought this fairly early on in my gaming career.) At some other point I bought Iron Crown's Rolemaster. Both of these blew my mind with complexity. P&P's setting, however, was another glimpse at a non-AD&D fantasy universe.
A friend of mine bought Traveller early in our gaming careers. We tried making characters a couple of times, but were never able to figure out what we should do with them afterwards — I think we could never bridge the gap between dungeon crawling and monsters killing characters in AD&D and 40– and 50– year old ex military characters in Traveller. I don't think we had any Traveller adventures to help us along.
I ran a very successful DragonQuest campaign in my first year at college with three of the original group and a couple of other players, using Paul Jaquays' wonderful Enchanted Wood adventure setting.
Later in college I started a long-running campaign set in SPI's minimal Frontiers of Alusia setting using DragonQuest at the beginning.
Note
The rest of this desperately needs rewritten.
My leaning to greater detail and verisimilitude lead me in time to GURPS, with a small detour along the way for 3rd edition RuneQuest.
I bought RuneQuest, 3rd edition (RQ3, the Deluxe Boxed Set) and Griffin Island (also a boxed set) in stores, somewhere. Like DragonQuest, I found them fascinating. Unlike DQ I never got my group to successfully play RQ. RQ3 and Griffin Island were a glimpse into a style of culture-based gaming that I had never encountered in my AD&D experience, but were complicated enough that my players hated character generation, and we never got much beyond that. I never saw any of the Glorantha materials until much, much later, post Internet. Griffin Island, though, even with the occasional incoherence in its Glorantha-less state, resonated with more depth than anything I had yet seen. (I never realized, until years later, that the Paul Jaquays whose DQ adventure The Enchanted Wood had so opened my eyes was also one of the authors of Griffin Island!)
GURPS for me was about even more finely grained definition of characters. Learning from problems my players had with RuneQuest character generation, I created GURPS versions of all their DragonQuest characters. Since, in the process of simulating all their DQ abilities with GURPS, I'd along the way upgraded their characters somewhat in power, everybody had fun and it all worked out. Already accustomed to a hex-based tactical combat system and role-under skills from DQ, it was an easy adjustment to GURPS, and the campaign continued successfully for many more sessions.
I think, however, that later I moved away from GURPS because making/updating characters was such a pain, even with the assistance of Bill Seuer's GURPS MAKECHAR program. (Let us just say that the main villain of the campaign, and evil wizard, ended up a 1000 point character.)
I ran a short Elric campaign after my Frontiers of Alusia campaign.
After that there was a hiatus in my gaming. I continued to buy and read RPG material, but didn't have a regular group.
WFRP — First encounted in WD? Then bought main rulebook. At first dismissive of the rules, but again fascinated by the picture of the old world and the high quality of some of the adventures. Again, the one time I tried running WFRP things didn't work out with my gaming group.
Most of my buying WFRP was during my hiatus.
I really only came to understand RuneQuest during my hiatus from gaming, in the 90s, when I started seriously to track down the RQ3 material I'd never know about, including the post RQ3 fanzines. I even found a copy of RQ2 in a game store in Austin, Texas, while there on travel for work.
After my hiatus from gaming, I was looking for simpler games. Fudge, BESM, and finally Savage Worlds.
Retro-gaming: interest in early classic AD&D modules we missed (which lead to Wilderlands and JG tegel manor then badabaskor, etc. then 3e/3.5e reprints) which lead to buying lots of PDF games including classic BD&D module b10 (superb!) leading to RC purchases, then other BD&D modules and AD&D modules, pondering running BD&D for B20, then buying thunder rift, mystara interest online maps, retro clones (never quite the D20 basis with old-school feel I thought I wanted) to original D&D interest (early unlicensed download), buy PDFs from rpgnow, pondering running OD&D, swords and wizardry, download retro modules for OD&D, philotomy, other current OD&D player/gm sites/campaigns, more JG and understanding which JG were OD&D, more pondering BD&D for B10 and other B/X modules.
parallel thread: tactile pleasures: card, bennies, status chips,
custom poker chips for wounds, shaken
RQ found ... earlier than GURPS, later? but only understood much later in 90s during my serious RQ buying days after ran long GURPS campaign (Call of Cthulhu/Elric helped understand/like Rq?) and bought RQ2. early GURPS gaming at college BAMF? compare to dates of Alusia becoming GURPS?
road building costs in JG Ready-Ref sheets! (PDF just as confusing as I remember printouts! Did Ray end up with them?)
Tékumel. Call of Cthulhu.