So, earlier this week I became even older than I have been before, and was given some cash to celebrate. Of course I did the responsible thing with my money and blew most of it on TTRPG books.
New additions to my collection are Danger Gal Dossier for Cyberpunk Red, Building Better Worlds for the Alien RPG, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide for 4th Edition D&D.
From a quick look through each; Danger Gal Dossier looks to be a useful collection of NPCs, not just stat blocks, but personalities and organisations. I look forward to giving the NPC creation guidelines. bash in my proper look through. Building Better Worlds is for anyone who wants to play Newt’s family. As I got the PDF before the hardcopy arrived I have been messing about with the planet and colony creation tables and they’re a fun mini game, more on that in the longer write up. And the 4e DMG seems to be laid out pretty well and have some decent advice for running the game.
Getting the 4e DMG also means I have one from each edition now. 1st, 2nd (revised), 3.0, 4th, and 5th.
I also grabbed a few Magic the Gathering D&D art cards. i don’t play MTG, but these make great bookmarks and are just the right price to hit the free postage threshold on one site I order from.
In one way TTRPGS are like sports, if you can’t play ’em you can at least watch someone else do it. I was going to use a different comparison here, but decided to keep it clean.
So what have I been watching whilst unable to play?
First up is Black Dice Society. An official D&D actual play that was made to promote the launch of Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft in 2021. However unlike a lot of promo shows that only run for a few episodes this horror themed game ran for around 60 episodes. When it initially aired this broke my sleep patterns from the time zone difference. Still one of my favourites and I go back every so often to watch it.
In this series B. Dave Walters guides Tanya DePass as Fen, Mark Meer as Brother Uriah Macawber, Deejay Knight as Desmond Drunes, Noura Ibrahim as Nahara, Sage Ryan as Valentine, and Becca Scott as Tatyana through pretty much every Dark Domain there is. It should probably be mentioned that as a horror campaign it can deal with some pretty dark stuff, so viewer discretion is advised if you think some of the themes may not be for you.
What I picked up from this series is how to build atmosphere, create drama and pace things. B. Dave does a masterful job of building the feeling of each Dread Domain, and the players all buy into this so well and add to it. The fights are really well paced and they never drag.
This Pondering entry of the Pick Up Pile will be a long one as it’s covering the Deck of Many Things set for Dungeons and Dragons 5e, published by Wizards of the Coast . So that’s two books and a deck of 66 cards to go through.
I have the limited Alternate Art cover set of this, however the covers are the only difference in the two versions, the internal contents being identical. The cover is very nice, with spot gloss effects on any raised details and artwork, further enhancing them. This is another winner in the line of Alt art books.
I’ll go chapter section by section and chapter by chapter through the Book of Many Things, giving an overview of contents and commenting on them.
The first section is the Dungeon Master’s Toolbox, each chapter covering ways the deck can be used by the DM to enhance their game, even if not using it as the magic item itself in game.
Fool. As with the tarot card that shares it’s name this section is concerned with beginnings. It details the history of the Deck of Many Things throughout the earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons. From the first appearance in Greyhawk 1975 where it was 18 but nameless cards (the effects of which did have some resemblance to the modern deck) to the set that comes with this book. The more recognisable names and effects starting to be codified in the ’79 DMG. An interesting, if maybe too brief, history of the deck. The rest of this chapter serves as an overview of those that follow.
From the 1st Edition DMG
Key. This chapter has details on how to introduce the deck to your game without breaking it. Several adjusted decks are listed, tailored to different group tastes, such as a relatively low powered deck for lower levelled characters or one with harmful cards suitable for a horror themed game. The there are brief sections on how to introduce the deck in your game’s story and how to introduce the effects of a card draw. Following is a section suggesting magic effects for each card when used a s a separate artefact on its own. Such as the Gem card storing a 6th level spell and being able to cast from it daily, or the Star granting advantage on saving throws for 10 minutes. A really nice alternate use for each that could be worked into a campaign where players are assembling a deck from scattered cards, and want to use them for something before the deck is complete. Finally there is a part dedicated to making new cards, suggesting that any characters attempting this should be at least 17th level and it should take a long time and some exceptionally rare components. Perhaps more suited to NPCs unless you have a very high level open ended campaign.
I just took delivery of my latest ebay score. I now have the Dungeon Master Guide for AD&D 2nd edition revised from 1995.
Note the lack of “S” on the end of master. So this one is neither plural “masters” or possessive “master’s.” Thank fuck they sorted this out from 3rd ed onwards.
The first thing I noticed glancing through this after looking through the 1st ed DMG is te text size is bigger and the layout is much easier to skim. All in all much easier on the eyes. There’s some great full page art pieces in here, all with a definite consistent style which is nice. Sadly my beloved weird little guy table from 1st ed doesn’t seem to return, ah well.
I’ll get a full write up of this done at some point, but I have been thinking about the ordering of the Pick Up Pile Pondering posts. I’ve decided to concentrate on newer books first, as they are what people are more likely to be looking for reviews of, then covering older stuff like this when there’s a gap in the newer stuff.
Crap, I just realised the header image I took earlier today is already out of date.
Welcome to the first post in a new series, The Pick Up Pile. I’ve been looking for something to do with this blog as it’s been sitting idle apart from the January Character Creation Challenges, especially with my solo Twilight: 2000 game being on hiatus as it’s a bit depressing to play in light of current world events.
Also it keeps my little grey cells bubbling away and it kinda justifies my game collection whilst I don’t have a game group.
So whats in the Pick Up Pile? Well, as the name suggests it’s going to be about games and game related stuff I’ve recently picked up. I got a few game books for Christmas and have picked up a bunch of things on Ebay and elsewhere recently.
Christmas gifts were the Paranoia core cook, Fallout: The Role Playing Game core book, Righteous Blood Ruthless Blades, Tales from the Loop, and The Deck of Many things.
Initial thoughts on each of these;
Paranoia is a slim hardcover, with substantial glossy pages. The writing is quite large and well laid out making it easy to read. Art is interspersed throughout and is of a decent quality, showing characters, scenarios, equipment and organisation logos
Fallout has a ribbon bookmark, more books should have ribbon bookmarks. (I have a thing for ribbon bookmarks!) It’s a hefty book, that looks well laid out and separated into clear sections. Lots of really nice art that I think is concept art from the videogames.
Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades is a nice convenient smaller size hardback, with 260+ pages. The art is great, thematic and consistent all the way through. The text is clearly laid out in, full page width and of a easily readable size.
Tales From the Loop has some THICK paper, 192 pages in a book thicker than some 300+ page ones I have. As expected in a game derived from an artist’s work, the art is fantastic. From what I’ve read this really gets what the 80s were really like, more than a lot of properties do. I’d bet on it having been written by people that actually lived through the decade.
The Deck of Many Things box set is striking. The books and cards are really nice looking pieces. The Book of Many things appears to be a good DM targeted expansion, items, creatures, idea prompts etc. The cards themselves feel nice and the companion book details a few ways of using them.
Purchases were all D&D related, I got the 4th edition PHB, the 3rd edition DMG MM and PHB, and the 1st edition DMG.
Initial thoughts on these;
I like the cover art on the 4th Edition PHB having spot gloss effects highlighting the logo and the central figures in the art. The interior is clearly laid out and readable. The art in each section has a very distinctive style that seems unique to this edition, everything’s so curvy and pointy at the same time. It’s odd seeing magic items in the PHB, I’m more used to seeing them in the DMG. From an initial skim combat does seem very minis and grid based.
For my tastes 3rd Edition has the best spine artwork, that old mage’s tome look. The text looks a little cramped and the sketchy lines around it make it a little less immediately readable to me. The sections seem laid out as you’d expect from 5e. The Monster Manual has a bunch of critters in it that don’t appear to have been updated to 5e, that’s something I might look into doing. Finally it is nice to see the tables listed in the contents page at the start of each book, so if you know what table you are looking for you can jump straight to it, this needs to return.
The 1st Edition DMG shows people in the 70s had better eyesight, the text is tiny. It’s a solid book, from what I can tell my copy is 44 years old, and even missing its spine the text block is holding together. There’s a lot of detailed stuff in here and it will take me a while to work though. As shown in the Character Creation Challenge I really like the funny little guy generator in Appendix D.
I intend posts for this to be split into two categories. “Pickups” where I post about something new I got in, maybe a photo or two and a couple of thoughts after a brief skim through (I guess this counts as the first “Pickup”) , and “Ponderings” where I’ll put up a larger entry for each book as I work through them. I’ll give and overview of the physical appearance of the book, and a few thoughts for each chapter highlighting things that stand out to me.
I’ll also add new purchases to the pile as I pick them up, putting them in the queue to be covered. They won’t necessarily be covered in the order that I got them, more likely when they excite my “Ooh shiny!” impulse.
If I ever get to the end of the queue then I’ll pick something older out of my collection and cover that until I get something new and shiny.
No plans for a schedule yet, as that depends on how long it takes me to get through a book and how much I have to say.
Day 30. I was a bit stuck for something for today as I’d finished my Paranoia characters, but then my Ebay habit came to the rescue. I recently picked up the AD&D 1e DMG and it has an appendix for generating Creatures from the Lower Planes. Why just those planes and no others? I dunno, but there ya go.
So I decided to roll up a monster from that, and then using the D&D 5e DMG and Monster Manual, a few conversion guides I found online and a healthy dose of just guessing, I converted it to a D&D 5e creature/NPC.
As you can see it looks really, really weird. A snake head with one eye and a trunk, an apes body with bird wings and four arms. Yeah, the kind of monster description than makes me I wish I could draw. Though I see the trunk as more of an enlarged elephant seal nose, so it doesn’t get in the way of the insect mandible concealed in the mouth.
For conversion to 5e I say that it had 7 attacks originally and this is more than I can be bothered to roll for a single creature in a round. So I broke it up into a mutliattack with a bite and either hands or feet, or a missile based AOE as he launches spines from his back.
AC was simple as a one guide suggested just subtracting 1e AC from 19 to get a score for 5e. So 19-1= the new AC of 18
Ability drain and life drain reminded me of the Shadow’s Strength Drain. I decided to add this to the bite to represent the poison, but allow a saving throw as this is already a damaging part of a multiattack.
I reverse engineered the Proficiency modifier from strength, where the guidance is to leave 18str as it is), and attack modifier which is 1e Hit Dice halved +2, so 10/2=5 then +2 to get +7 to attack.
An 18 strength would give a bonus of +4, so the remaining 3 of the attack score must be the proficiency modifier.
Acid immunity remained the same with nothing to convert. Magic resistance is a very different system between editions, so I used the version seen on many 5e stat blocks of Advantage on saves against magic or spell attacks.
Comparing what I now had to several existing stats and creature building guides I saw we were at the CR5-6 level and the advice there is to hit around 28-35 points of outgoing damage a round. So each of the possible attack groupings were given dice ranges that average in this area.
Following this the rest was filed in by comparing to existing monsters and adding equivalent scores, and a fair bit of guesswork.
This gave us Abbwaloesh, Demon Soldier of the Acid Pits.
Oh, and his name well it’s Ape Bodied Bird Winged And Legged One Eyed Snake Headed, so I just took the first letter of each word in that.
Tomorrow we have the last Deadland’s character and the last character for this year’s challenge, “Doc” Emmet Green, a Mad Scientist.
Day 28. Another week down and the last Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition character for this year. Today we have “Professor” Montgomery Fitzwilliam, a Changeling Haunted One College of the Spirits Bard.
Monty’s chosen face for performances was a thin, dark haired human man with a pencil moustache, think younger John Waters. His powers came to him after doing one of his “spiritual readings” with a new Tarokka deck he actually attracted the attention of the spirits that now follow him.
Mechanically I had to make Monty a level higher than the previous D&D characters to get in the Cartomancer feat from the Book of Many Things. I picked this as it fit with the whole stage magician/spiritualist who uses cards in his act deal. Also the Spray of Cards spell from the same source was chosen for thematic reasons, and is a pretty decent spell too.
I have done a version of this character before, but tweaked and rebuilt him for this as I wanted to add BoMT material to a character, and he was already a perfect match.
This does show however, how limited the space on the standard D&D 5e character sheet is for anyone noting down anything other than feature names. I had to spill over into the Treasure box and have very little room left. How many more sheets would I need if I bumped him up to level 20?
Tomorrow’s Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition character is Damian Hale-Seyton 27 year old rock star.
Day 21, the third Sunday so time for this week’s D&D 5e character, Vryn’a’ath, a Githyanki Eldritch Knight gate warden, and doorman/bouncer at a Githzerai bar.
Vryn’a’ath kind of fell together in creation, I knew I wanted the Gate Warden background, and a bar run by someone who wants tp unite the Gith seemed like the perfect place for him to work. So I ended up with a bouncer used to throwing people out, sometimes to other planes of existance.
He is as committed to reunification as his boss, and uses his watch over portals to help allies of the cause and hinder enemies.
He ended up being pretty strong combat wise, but his INT makes his spell attacks little low. A reasonable trade thoug for a low level character. Also concentrating on auto hit spells like magic missile, or defensive ones like shield makes this matter less.
Maybe I would have liked higher perception for him so he can spot things that are out of the ordinary as part of his security job. “You are not coming through that portal in those trainers, dress shoes or nothing!”
Next week’s character for D&D5e is “Professor” Montgomery Fitzwilliam, a Changeling Bard Cartomancer.
Tomorrow’s CoC7e character is Dolores Hale-Seyton, the family member for our ongoing history for 1999.
How has it been a week? SunD&D’s here already. My plan for Sundays is a D&D 5h edition character using something from the books released i the last year. First book up is Bigby Presents: Glory of Giants, which I used to build Hrarrank, Bugbear Path of the Giant Barbarian.
As ever with this challenge I roll a stat array I would sell body part to get when making a character for a game; 16, 14, 14, 13, 13, 11, before adding any ASI’s. This character, and the following D&D characters will be built at level 3, as this is where most subclasses come online.
The main idea behind building Hrarrank was using the Path of the Giant feature to get as much reach with her weapons as possible, so making her a Bugbear was an obvious choice, as was giving her a halberd for reach. This results in her having a 20ft reach in melee when raging. 5 as standard, 5 from being a Bugbear, 5 from the halberd, and 5 from the rage. this is all at level 3, later on here rage gets an extra 5 ft added with a subclass improvement.
For her backstory I decided that she came from a community of giants and goblinoid folk working together forging things. However she’s the easily bored and distracted type when often leads to chaos. This lead to the elders of the community agreeing heartily when the idea of her travelling and demonstrating their weapons came up.
A straightforward build as this is the TTRPG I’m probably most familiar with.
Tomorrow’s character is Barnaby Seyton, the second of my CoC7e characters, next week’s D&D character is Verity, the Tiefling Planar Philosopher Wizard.
Yep, I know this is late, I know I said I’d do it in the first few days of the month. It was delayed for several reasons;
I’m Lazy.
Hitman 3 just added Freelancer mode and it’s addictive as hell.
I’m lazy
Thoughts presented in no real order, other than how they occurred to me when I was putting together the bullet point draft of this post.
Firstly this has been a fun way to engage with the TTRPG hobby whilst I’m still without a gaming group. Going through the rules, creating a character, learning the ins and outs beats looking at the books on my bookshelf.
I am noticeably better at character creation in systems that I carried over from last year. This year’s D&D and CoC characters didn’t take anywhere near as much time as last year.
Also I improved at character creation on games that were new this time as the weeks progressed. Week 4 characters taking a fraction of the time week 1’s did. Dune was the noticeable example here as the looser more narrative system threw me at first, but was more comfortable by the end. I think I’m now at a stage where I’d be comfortable playing Dune, but not running it,I don’t think I have quite enough of a handle on the game system or style just yet.
Free League’s Year Zero system continues to impress. It’s quite something that the system in Twilight:2000 and Blade Runner from this year, and Alien from last year’s challenge, is so similar across games enabling fairly quick character generation if you’re familiar with another system in the family. Yet the tweaks made for each game really tune it in for the required flavour. Twilight:2000 feel desperate and like they’re trying to survive against the odds, Blade Runner characters feel like noir detectives with better gear and a shitty job.
D&D 5e remains familiar. it was my route back into the hobby and possibly where I’ve made the most characters. This year I took the characters up to 3rd level as that’s where subclasses and more interesting features kick in. This didn’t take much longer if at all than last year’s 1st level characters.
Tiny Dungeon was a last minute addition to the roster after my copy of Blade Runner was delayed. I picked this up last year sometime on offer and it was well worth it. The light pick a few options and done character generation was a breeze and would enable you to get into the game quickly. The rest of the game looking as light makes it seem ideal for quick pick up games.
Speaking of quick, Mörk Borg, quick and very dirty, in a grimy way. This was only made possible by the release of the plain text version of the rules last year. I tried with the normal release and can’t look the the page for too long without a basilisk sized headache developing. Character generation for this was fun and quick, ideal for a game that seems to see characters as disposable. The flavour dripped, almost literally, from some of the descriptions too. As I said in one entry, I think this would be fun for one shots or short campaigns with being so over the top. I don’t think I could face a several month long campaign with this much grimness though.
Cyberpunk Red was very straightforward, it’s an update of an older game so you know what you get; skills, stats, gear, and a lifepath character history. The skill list maybe a bit too long, things like accounting, business, and bureaucracy could all be rolled into business maybe. I guess it depends on how specific you want your character’s skills to be.
The free DLC add ons from R.Talsorian’s site were fun. They really help add a bit more flavour to each character, be it a skateboard and no brains, a bunch of TCG cards, older gear for a more mature character or custom netrunner gear. I hope these continue for as long as possible.
Call of Cthulhu was fun, after making mercenaries and soldiers and spellcasters coming up with normal people with normal jobs is a nice change. Though they’re lives are about to be very not normal.
I think I noted it last year, but the charts for background information really spark my imagination and help flesh out who each character is. This is a common thing across games now but I think CoC‘s is one of the best.
However I would like to see some careers that don’t use EDU for career skill points. Whilst I will always say there’s no suck thing as unskilled work, some careers just don’t use your education that much. I guess true to HPL’s characters this does lead to creating weird intellectual nerds though.
Also I’m not keep on Appearance going down and Education increasing as you age, I’ve only got handsomer and stupider as I’ve aged. More seriously, I’m just not fond of APP as a stat. Maybe it’s just my personal dislike of superficial people.
Overall I’ve been quite pleased with this year’s entries. It’s shown the range of possible characters in hobby, even with these pretty mainstream games. From bartender and professional soldier to insect person druid and minotaur ports hero.
Also this year I learned shortcut keys for ü and Å, this will probably only come in useful in next year’s challenge, as we don’t use those characters in English. Maybe we should though, we need more letters with bits on them.
Three Kobolds With A Trench Gun 