Many Irons In The Fire

In addition to the work I'm doing to wrap up Saga of the Splintered Realm, I also have two webcomic sites that 'officially' launched yesterday and today, respectively. I'm trying to use this blog primarily to talk about gaming-related stuff, but thought some of you might be interested in the other projects I'm working on...

mtdaa.com is a weekly adventure webcomic featuring my Army Ants characters in new adventures. The newest story line started yesterday, so it's a great time to jump in.

Teachingted.com launched this morning, and it follows the daily activities of a public school teachers. It's a classic gag-a-day strip with some political commentary thrown in for good measure...

Now back to editing. I am through page 110 of the revised rules and editing, and I've made MANY more changes than I thought I would... it's going to be a tight little game when all is said and done!

Of Two Handed Fighting and Weapon Sizes

I'm here doing FINAL edits of the Saga of the Splintered Realm core rules, and I ran across those pesky two-handed fighting rules again... and in cross-referencing them realized just how overly bloated and unnecessarily complex they are. Here are the problems (before I share my solution... I have to build up to it, you know):

1. Various melee weapons can be used alternately 2-handed, EXCEPT for the great sword, which always requires 2 hands. When you opt to use a 1-handed weapon 2-handed, you get a +2 bonus to damage. Great. Except for the fact that a longsword (1d8 damage) is inherently better than a greatsword (1d10 damage) when used 2-handed... and you can only use the greatsword 2-handed. No reason to ever get one of those...

2. The rules become even MORE complex for dwarves and stoutlings... they HAVE to use certain large weapons 2-handed, and can't get the 2-handed bonus with these weapons... opening up a category of even more weapons that suffer the same 'penalty' as the greatsword above. No intelligent dwarf (and I'm talking INT 3+ here, so the bar is pretty low) who wants to fight 2-handed would ever use a battle axe, because a hand axe 2-handed deals 1d6+2, while the battle axe deals a measly (by comparison) 1d8.

You can now perform an imaginary drum roll for my solution. Ready?

ALL melee weapons are 1-handed weapons by their nature! Can I swing a staff and hit someone while wielding it one-handed? Sure. Can I wield a greatsword one-handed? If I'm a fantasy world fighter, you bet I can.

BUT, if I elect to wield a weapon 2-handed (which only 'fighter types' like fighters, dwarves, elves and stoutlings can do), I get to shift up to the next die... so that greatsword deals 1d10 one-handed, but deals 1d12 if I go to town. Since there's no weapon category that deals 1d12, I don't have to worry about an awkward die shift up... and now a stoutling with a shortsword who's swinging that bad boy 2-handed still gets to deal a respectable 1d8 base damage, the same as he'd deal with a longsword 1-handed (which he cannot use, since he's just a 'lil guy). It's an intuitive fix that is EASY to remember and requires no cross-checking.

And by the way, I HAD to downgrade stoutlings after thinking about how they are just about the size of my six-year-old daughter, albeit with about 20 more pounds of body mass. She's half my height, and a longsword would be unwieldy for her, no matter how strong she was.

Basically, a magic user, cleric or thief can wield any of his weapons with one or two hands, but mechanically doesn't get an advantage to damage. He's not sufficiently trained to get a significant boost from the additional leverage. Gandalf can swing away with his staff either with one or two hands, but unless he's purchased a talent that upgrades his combat abilities (which he has done - he's flippin Galdalf after all), he's dealing that base 1d4 damage (poor guy).

This is also a nice little fix to keep fighters as the best fighters. They are the only ones who can get greatswords (or other obnoxiously large weapons) that deal 1d12 two-handed, so they are the kings of battle. This is also nice because they can opt to fight with a shield and great sword (if they are on the defensive) or drop that shield and let 'er rip (if the monster is chewing on someone else at the moment). It provides a little bit of tactical differentiation in combat without any mechanical bloat.

Okay. Back to editing... on page 67 of 144...

Proof of Life

The proof copy for the first Saga of the Splintered Realm book came in today, so the project moves along. I've put together a few boxes as I try out methods for making the individual boxed sets, and the dice came in a few days ago for the upper tier rewards. Progress!

Vault of the Goblin: The Final Map - Post 500

My 500th post!

I have now officially finished mapping for the Vault of the Goblin... I've decided to go back and re-number all of the encounter areas to have each area receive an individual number. I was starting each section over again with the number 1, and creating more confusion for myself than necessary... this project keeps moving along. I want to have pdfs done in the next few weeks, and all Kickstarter rewards out the door by the end of April.

This map is the closest I'm ever going to come to my own version of the Tomb of Horrors...You can only get through by losing a hand, lighting yourself on fire, withstanding a disintegration field, and navigating a trap-filled, anti-magic hall. Sacrifices will needs be made...

This way to mapping MADNESS

Early on in the process (like WAY early... check out this map from 2011) and even more recently (this map from about a year ago), I had been thinking about how the human settlement and the Vault of the Goblin go together.

As all the pieces finally come together and I make it all align nice and purty for the Saga of the Splintered Realm, I hit a bit of a problem. Or rather, a bit of several problems...

1. The keep map is a little on the sloppy side. It was one of the earlier maps I did in the evolution of mapping techniques.

2. The two maps don't layer over each other nicely. I kind of see where the central entry goes in relation to the upper keep, but the other entrances don't line up where I want them to.

3. There are some elements of the maps that I've sort of hand waved in play because I didn't love the utility of the layout. Some things were a little off from where I truly wanted them as I played.

4. Worst of all, the two maps are on graph paper that is 5 squares to an inch and non-photo blue, while all of my more recent maps are 4 squares to an inch on graph paper that always picks up the lines whenever I scan or photocopy it... and I have a ton of the newer style maps that all look clean and sharp.

So, I re-designed the two, breaking one of my cardinal rules, which is never re-draw. You can get bogged down in fixing old work that you don't move forward. However, since these two maps are CENTRAL to the experience of the Vault - these are the two maps referees are most likely to use and re-use - it was important that they had the most utility possible.

Now, if you printed them out and lined them up, the northwest pile of rubble on the vault map lines up under the octagonal temple in the northwest corner of the keep, the main stairs align under the south central building (the hall of warriors), and the stairs in the northeast align under the inner keep to the far east of Fort Morovar.

I present to you the revised Fort Morovar and Vault of the Goblin Entry Well:

Mushroom King's Domain

Okay, before you read any further, you should check out the incredible map by +Dyson Logos that inspired this one...

Back? Good.

I have been thinking that in the Vault of the Goblin, the goblins didn't have much in the way of food... and packing a few thousand goblins into a deep hole for a while, things are going to get testy if everyone is starving to death. While I think they would subsist on a steady diet of rats and big spiders (those would be plentiful), they'd need a staple for their diet as well...

Enter the Mushroom King's Domain.

I've never had a use for shriekers (I didn't even put them in the first iteration of the core rules - but I will now), myconids, and various mushroomy stuff. All that changes now!

The thought is that the mushroom king (a myconid of maybe 4 HD who lives in the southern chamber, sitting atop the largest of the toadstools) had an agreement with the goblins to let them skim some mushrooms for gifts they'd bring him...

In the northern part of the chamber are patches of shriekers that not only alert the myconids to the presence of outsiders, but also attract a huge centipede that roams the place. It will eat only shriekers (finding them quite the tasty treat), but hates the taste of all other fungi. However, he's been around them so long that he has, like a clownfish does with sea anemones, made himself virtually invisible to them, since he's coated with so much fungus slime. So, the shriekers never go off as he slithers by... but their shrieking will attract him quickly. He'll go to town chowing down on shrieker for several rounds before he notices the fellowship, giving them time to either beat a hasty retreat or plan their attack.

I'm having fun designing these smaller, self-contained encounter areas as sub-sets to the Vault of the Goblin...

Vault of the Goblin: Connective Tissue

Inspired by the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, I've been thinking of the Vault of the Goblin as a series of nodes that are connected by larger expanses of 'not much'... long tunnels, great empty caves, and the like...

Of course, there are the areas that are off (or along) the beaten path, but which are smaller expanses of 'something' that are not tied directly to a node - the connective tissue of the nodes. These are almost like random encounters along the path between nodes. I'm going to formalize these in their appearance, but I'm still thinking of ways to randomize these as well...