Cheap Shots

A few things that caught my eye on DriveThruRPG:

• "Moon Dust Men" - It's Kenneth Hite, it's for Gumshoe and you're chasing aliens in the 1970's for some reason - it's bound to be weird. I've been hearing about Gumshoe for a while now and I couldn't tell if I needed another book or what but I went ahead and spent my $2.95 this one to see. It's not complete - you need one of the other bigger Gumshoe games to get the rules - but it looks like a good enough treatment of the investigating-UFO-crashes-in-1978 genre if that's anyone's thing.

• Monster Hunter International RPG - looking here this is apparently a licensed game based on a book series that is using the Hero System! It's been awhile since I've seen anything licensed or new for Hero so I was kind of pumped. Then I started reading that it has the setting AND complete Hero System rules in a 300 page book ... hmmm ... that seems ... unlikely. Considering Hero 5th editon's core book was 372 pages, how could anyone fit a decent setting plus those rules into that size of a book? Then I checked Champions Complete ... and it's only 240 pages! OK, maybe this is possible. Maybe they finally have Hero moving in a more sane direction than it was going. It's a pleasant surprise. I'm not buying this particular book, but it's a nice thing to see.

• "100 Hungarian Sounding Names" - WTF? Is that a product or a google search? It's only 50 cents, but seriously, you would have to have internet service to get this product, and if you can do that you can type "Hungarian names" into your favorite search engine and have in seconds. Like this page. Beyond that, I can't think of a time I've ever said to myself "I really need a Hungarian-sounding name", although in one of my old Top Secret, James Bond, or Superhero games I might have used a few. It's a free market but this seems like effort that isn't going to see much use.

• "Evil Wizards in a Cave" - Wow, we are really scraping the bottom for adventure titles now aren't we? Not even trying anymore. Look for the sequel "More Evil Wizards in a Different Cave" coming soon. Title aside it's 88 pages long and appears to be a sandbox valley environment for OSR games - it may be fine as far as content. It's clearly no threat to my "Lots of Monsters in Really Small Rooms" megadungeon project.

Wrath of the Righteous - Campaign Prep

In case it might help someone else here's what I've been doing to get ready for the WoR campaign.

Rules Stuff - it has to be addressed so I tackled it first:

• Ability Scores: Pathfinder has several options for generating ability scores. As much as I like rolling the dice for this I thought we would try the new-school approach and make this another set of "interesting choices". I went with 20 points, which in PF terms is "High Fantasy". It gives good but not godlike scores, typically 16/15/13/12/10/8 or 17/14/12/12/10/8, slightly lower if someone wants to get rid of that 8, or more peaky if someone wants a full 18 before racial bonuses.
• Races: Core Book, standard D&D races. There are a lot of options for swapping out racial abilities in the Advanced Players Guide and I would probably let someone take them if they were interested but it didn't come up.
• Classes: Core Book + Advanced Players Guide. I included the APG mainly to bring in the Cavalier, which fits the theme of the adventure almost as well as the Paladin. I'm not a fan of all of the classes in this book, but I don't have to play any of them so it's not a real problem. When we get to the prestige class levels I'll probably add some more books to this list.
• Traits: An optional Pathfinder thing that ties into one's background, I kept them optional. Most of them took at least one and a little more flavor doesn't hurt.

As far as the rules in general I don't have enough experience with these rules to feel the need to change anything yet. I'm not going to try and solve problems that haven't come up, so we're going as-is for now. The only potential wrinkle I can see is that non-magical healing is almost as slow as in 3E and I find the whole "we'll just spend another day resting up to heal" to be a real momentum-killer in the middle of a time-sensitive adventure and throwing extra random encounters at the party to get them moving again is risky at the low levels. I'm going to ride it out for now and try not to make assumptions based on the older edition's rough spots.

Tools:

I am deliberately choosing to run this campaign using Hero Lab/PC Gen + Pathfinder Combat Manager instead of my usual on-paper approach. I've played around with it on some superhero games but not really used it for D&D. This changes some of the session prep work as most of the monster stats are already available, but I have to "build" the NPCs to use them. This is actually a positive as it means I am much more familiar with their capabilities after rebuilding them as it seems to stick better for me than just reading it off the page. It also means I can see what kind of shape my PC's are in during a fight and what resources they have expended too. So far I am enjoying it a lot.

Also, I'm not using a screen for this one. I always use a screen - except for ICONS - and have for years. This time it's rolling in the open, let the dice fall etc etc. I'm not big on fudging anyway, and with most of the monster stats on the laptop screen there's not much to conceal. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.

Prepping a Published  Adventure:

I read it once all the way through before doing anything else for the campaign This initial read-thru is really just to see what it's about - I read it about like I would read a book. Does it look like fun? Does it make sense? Is there any stupid sh*t  or things my players are going to hate in it?

Most of the things my players hate boil down to "forced railroading", stuff like the trap or fight that automatically knocks everyone out, etc. Most of the stupid sh*t boils down to a plot pivot or a writer being overly cute. I'm sure most of you know what I mean.

This adventure had no real problems. It begins with a somewhat forced situation and is fairly linear but then pretty quickly widens out into a sandbox set in a ruined city before focusing back down to a major confrontation with evil. I'm willing to accept a narrow beginning to kick off a new 1st level campaign and I like that it eases up soon after. The structure is good, the events taking place are interesting, and it does feel like there is a point to it all in my opinion.

A week later I read through the first half again from a "what are my players going to be doing" perspective. I look at how much plot and how much freedom the players will have. I look at traps and monsters to see what's in the mix, stats,  and how they might work together. I look over the maps and see how everything connects, sequences of  and if I understand the layout of each dungeon or wilderness area or city. 

Maps are critical. For a dungeon, maps show the connections between encounters and pretty much define the choices available to the players at any given time. Maps are also where sandbox adventures tend to fail, whether it's a printing error, a disconnect between the key and the map, or a simple lack of clarity. If I look at two maps and can't tell how Map A connects to Map B (where are the stairs to the next level? Where is this building on the city map? Where is this monster lair on the overland map?) then it's a problem, and it happens more than it should.This adventure looks good so far.

Monsters are important but are easier to replace or fix than almost anything else. I think I have spent 57% of the last 3 years of game time running kobolds. From Basic to 4E I have run kobolds. If this adventure featured kobolds I was probably going to swap them out. Fortunately this was not a problem. There are also plenty of notes about how different enemies in certain areas will cooperate, or not, and why, and that's how it should be.

One somewhat different aspect is that there are some NPC's that go along with the PC's for the early part of the adventure. They are higher level, but each is handicapped in some way so as not to overpower the party. they are capable enough to not just be helpless victims, but their individual problems keep it under control. The whole point is that the PC's relationships with the NPC's as it develops during the early adventure can open up some good and bad things down the road. It's interesting, but I' m glad it's limited and not assumed to be continuing all the way through the thing.

The only thing I didn't really like - and that's probably the wrong word - was that there is a heavy focus on one or two NPC's gender and orientation. I don't care about it on the surface, but instead of "like" let's say I think it's overkill and largely a waste of space for an NPC in a D&D game. Current gender is relevant, sure. The fact that it used to be different doesn't seem relevant at all as I can't see that coming up in a convrsation with strangers (the PC's) in the middle of a fight with monsters. Orientation, well, frankly that doesn't come up much in my games and I can't see a campaign that focuses on a desperate, heroic crusade to stop a demon invasion having a whole lot of time for worrying about that anyway. Sure, go ahead and note that these two female NPC's are married (and faithful), fine, but I don't know that I need a full page or more of text describing the entire history of their relationship. It's not a huge problem but it seemed like an odd sidetrack for an otherwise tightly written adventure.

Anyway, this one is a good one and I don't really see a need to change anything. Sure, I may retcon some relationships between certain PC's and NPC's as they are encountered, but the maps are solid, the monsters are not the usual fare, the plot stuff makes sense, the sandbox part is handled well, and the NPC's are well done. I don't mind a little railroading to kick a new campaign off "en media res", especially with a new mix of players and a new system to worry about. 

If I was changing something I typically use post-it notes on the relevant pages or I just rewrite the entire section in my notes and note that down in the book. I haven't needed to here yet but we'll see what develops in play.

Finally, a day or two before the first game I went through the entire adventure and made sure the monsters were all available in my tool of choice (Combat Manager) and if they were not (such as some of the monsters with class levels) then I built them in the tool. It's a little work but it's fun and makes things a lot easier during the game. The same goes for the friendly NPC's too - if it has stats it goes into the machine.

That might seem like a fair amount of work but it doesn't feel like it - and if it does then that's a warning sign. For me knowing an adventure inside and out is the key to a successful run. Writing your own means you are automatically familiar with it. The published stuff has a lot of advantages but this is not one of them - you have to make it your own on some level. Reading it, making some notes, putting some stuff into a program - this is what works for me. I'll let you know how it plays out.

Freedom City: Year One

The concept is to follow a number of new heroes during their first year of being superheroes. This is not a new idea, but one difference here is that I would set it in Freedom City, which unlike most of the comic book stories of this type already has a well-established and well-known super team known as the Freedom League. This would give the new heroes something to play against - are they aspiring to membership? Do they see the league as allies or competition? They are not the first heroes, nor are they the most powerful, at least at first. Then there is the opposite question ; how does the league see them? I don't normally like to play up an NPC group all that much when a campaign begins as it can make your players feel like they're playing the B or C team but I think I can make it work as a positive in this campaign. To set this interplay up one of the character creation rules would be that these new characters cannot have any defined relationship with the Freedom league or any of its members - we will develop that in play.

For players who don't want to play rookie heroes I came up with an option mostly inspired by Dark Knight Rises: you can play a hero coming out of retirement but it's been years, probably a lot of years, since he was active. This will take a little more background work to weave in but there is a lot to work with in Freedom City so I don't think it will be a problem. In this case the character may once have been a member of the league but resigned and has not been in contact with them for years.I'm also going to need some creative use of Disads/Complications/Limitations to reflect this whole state of affairs. I'm thinking something like Deadlands "Veteran o' the Weird West" where you get extra advancements but have to draw a card which tells the DM what interesting effects are lingering on from your greater experience.

Timeline-wise I have been thinking about moving things back and setting it right after Centurion dies (or right before) instead of 10-20 years later as in the book. He might be the reason some of the heroes do what they do, and regardless of the exact timing the chaotic aftermath of Omega's assault would be a good time for new heroes to appear. I like the idea of giving the players a chance to make some personal connection between their characters and the self-sacrificing Roman Superman of the setting - I mean, what's the point of having that in the background if you can't hook into it, right, and what better finale (or kickoff) than a dimensional invasion and a big sacrifice? It's there, it seems like I should use it for something! That would also let me use the "history" in the book as an outline for events for a decade or so if I want to use them. Moving beyond Year One we could look at our runs as the "big events" of a year or so in the hero business (kind of like Pendragon) and advance the campaign calendar at whatever rate we choose using out-of-session talk to cover the in-between times. Comic books aren't all that linear or consistent when it comes to timelines so I'm trying to come up with a looser approach to that whole thing. I don't need a bunch of mechanics around this just something I can communicate to the players. In the end I may just go with the default timing of the 2E Freedom City book and give up trying to outsmart myself with this but at the moment it's still something I'm working through.

So nothing earth-shatteringly original but a little more structured than than the way I usually begin a campaign.  With some of the published adventures to kick things off, then detours through whatever personal agendas develop in play, and then a "Season 1 Finale" - perhaps using Time of Crisis if I go with the more standard timeline - I could arrange a decently satisfying run. By the time we run through all this there's a good chance we're into next year and there's a new 3E version of Freedom City out presumably with a timeline advance, and we could jump things forward a few if we felt like it or just play through and see where our version of the city goes.

The Non-Dungeon Stuff Update

It's been pretty D&D-intensive around here lately with the combination of Next, Pathfinder, and the ongoing 4E game - and there is more coming - but I wanted to talk about the other stuff.

• Icons: nothing new really. I'm reading Stark City but we haven't tried to do anything with the game for a few months now. I may turn SC over to one of the apprentices to see if they want to try running something. Team-Up did finally come out but I'm not going to worry about it until we start playing more.
• Marvel Heroic: The boys want to continue our Antarctic adventure but we haven't had time or have decided to play something else instead. these things come in surges and right now we're "surging" on D&D type games. It will come back around to this at some point though.
• Savage Worlds: If we run anything here it will probably be Deadlands. I have an outline for campaign but I don't have a timeslot for it. Someday I'd like to pick up our Necessary Evil game too but I don't  have a slot for that either. And of course there is always Weird War 2 which pushes a bunch of buttons for me. Ah well, SW is in the "want-to" bin right now more than anything else.
• Gamma World: I finally picked up the last box for the 2010/2011 edition of GW, "Legion of Gold" which expands the rules options in some nice ways and completes the campaign begun in the main boxed set with a trip to the moon of gamma terra. It looks interesting and one of these days we will play through it.
• Vague interests, nothing concrete: Traveller, Trek, Star Wars, Rifts, Shadowrun - the usual suspects, always interested but never enough to actually bump something else and start a game.  

The one non-D&D thing we have played semi-regularly (though there's been a gap for the last month or so) is Mutants and Masterminds. It's been all 3E this year but despite my proclamation a few months back I'm back to leaning towards running a 2E game because I sat down and worked out an outline using the published material I have and realized I could probably run for a year on it alone. Given that pile of plots, stats, and maps, and the near-zero prep time, why am I not running this? 

I have a concept in mind I am calling "Freedom City: Year One" which is comic book terms would be following the adventures of a group of brand new heroes who all appear in the same one-year period and begin careers as superheroes in the shadow of the well-established and well-known Freedom League. No, it's not super-original but it is more specific "concept-wise as opposed to my usual "make up some heroes and we'll figure it out" approach. More on that tomorrow. In the meantime, yes, I am working on figuring out a timeslot to run this alongside my "dungeon overload" of late 2013.

Dungeon Stuff - An Update

You'd think after playing this game for multiple decades there wouldn't be much left that I didn't already have, but they keep ... making ... more ... stuff! I manage to resist the collector/completist bug most of the time (I don't have "everything" for the first three editions of D&D) but I do like to have "main" books for any game I am attempting to run. To sort things out:

• 4th Edition: Still running it as the main campaign. Picking up the last few WOTC books and looking over the small-but-maybe-not-as-small-as-you-think number of books published by companies other than WOTC. I have almost all of the WOTC stuff but I'm thinking the "endgame" of collecting 4E is picking up the D&D Encounters and LFR modules. There was quite a pile of stuff that was not put on store shelves and I expect next year's game will be to pick up that stuff if I'm still feeling it.
• Pathfinder: Starting to run it as the "second" campaign and picking up the core books as I go. Paizo has published a LOT of stuff for this game so I'm trying to narrow my focus to only those things are relevant to my current campaign. The PDF's are very nicely priced at $9.99 each for the big rulebooks, but those are exactly the kinds of things I like to have in book form to pass around the table. To avoid overloading the budget I'm taking a "PDF's now, books later" approach where I can. 
• Next: Running it for the Apprentices when time allows and thankfully there's nothing else to "get" for this one right now. Hopefully my Pathfinder library will be under control by the time they start charging for this one.
• OSR type stuff: Don't need any more rules but I am looking forward to the second half of Stonehell coming out, even if our expeditions into the first half are stalled out. Adventures are about the only thing I look for when it comes to the older editions these days. 

I'm probably going to stop worrying about the other stuff - our "pure" basic game and our 4E ToEE, and even Stonehell - until the boys ask me to run them again. I may take a shot at converting Stonehell to Next but that will probably not happen in the immediate future. The others aren't going anywhere and can be picked up anytime.

Motivational Monday

Warhammer Online Shutting Down

A virtual fistbump to all the players of Warhammer Online who found out this week that their game is shutting down in December. I never got into the game beyond the demo but I love Warhammer and I know exactly how you feel. I hate to see any online game that has a following fold up like this. Last year it was CoH, this year it's Warhammer - who will it be next year?

Articles:
 Massively summary:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/09/18/warhammer-online-to-close-december-18th/

Dev Thoughts (lots of cool stuff in here):
http://www.warhammeronline.com/article/Warhammer-Notice-Shutdown

Overreaction Friday

Fun Stuff:

• Temple of Elemental Evil is free at DTRPG/RPGNow/DnDClassics.com for a week or so. Check here or log into your site of choice to get it.
• This week was the 30th anniversary of the D&D cartoon. WOTC article here. I had mixed emotions about it as I was 14 when it came out and it was clearly written for younger kids. The visuals of the monsters were cool, especially Tiamat, but listening to Ralph from Happy Days flip into panic mode multiple times every episode made it hard to watch. I did pick up the DVD a few years ago just to have it but it's not a humongous part of my 80's D&D memories.  

New Stuff

The final D&D Next packet is out and I'm still digesting it. They have added new races, changed expertise dice to flat bonuses, and added skills back into the game. Oh, and the Bard is in too.

There are numerous and significant changes to every class - it looks to me like any existing characters of medium levels and up will require a rebuild. I suppose that's part of the "playtest" aspect but I thought we were closer to the final form than this.

Multiclassing is in.It's pretty much 3E style with minimum ability scores required for each class. Spellcasting looks a little messy right now as they attempt to solve the multi-classed spell-casting progression problem - there's a table specifically for figuring spells per day - but it looks to me like if I take 5th level fighter/5th level M-U I'm still only throwing spells as a 5th level M-U - the fighter levels still add nothing. A Ranger though, would add half levels, meaning a 5/5 M-U/Ranger would have spells per day as a 7th level caster, which is potentially a little better, but it's still capped by individual class level limits as far as what spells you can throw, so that character wouldn't be tossing any 4th level M-U or Ranger spells Confusing? I agree. It also means that this is another thing they have to consider when adding new spellcasting classes to the game and how this would interact with any alternative mechanics. I hope this gets better over the next year.

There will be updates to this packet! Both the Druid and the Paladin mention a future update to this packet.

Dragonborn do get their breath weapon (basically an encounter power) and it goes up in damage as they level - interesting.

Warforged look pretty strong - no need to eat, drink, or breathe, +1 AC, Stat bonuses are +1 to Str and Con. I can see a lot of metal barbarians in the future.

Drow get their classic spell abilities as they level up rather than all at once. Makes sense to me - assuming you're allowing them as PC's in the first place.

Skills are not like any previous edition of D&D so let me summarize:

• There is a fixed list of less than 20 skills but it looks like it would be trivial to expand this if desired
• Skills are just a more specific ability check - "Make a Stealth check" is just a d20 + dex bonus
• Each class grants "Proficiency" in certain skills (some fixed, some variable) and Proficiency gives a bonus on that kind of skill check. This bonus starts at a +1 and goes all the way up to +6 as the character levels up from 1-20. 
• Since it's a bonus -and not a ridiculous one - that means a fighter and a rogue can both make stealth checks but the rogue will have a +1 (at low level) that the fighter would not, unless he picked up the proficiency somehow, like with the "Stealthy" feat.
• Craft type skills have been rolled into "Tool Proficencies" so if you're proficient with blacksmiths tool you can make stuff and with thieves' tools you can open locks, etc. 
• Some classes have a further thing called "Expertise" which gives them a flat +5 bonus to checks on a number of skill and/or tool proficiencies.

I like this approach in general, though I'm not sure about the tool thing. 

Expertise looks pretty powerful too as Rogues get it at level 1 and Bards get it at level 3 - that means while everyone else is running around with a +1/+2 proficiency bonus (on top of stat bonuses) the Rogue or Bard will have a +5 on top of that. It definitely keeps the thief's niche safe as picking any lock or sneaking past anything with a decent perception ability is going to take an "expertised" thief at low levels. At higher levels other characters can handle the routine stuff pretty easily but I would still want the expert thief for the truly difficult stuff. 

I think this is pretty useable in play though as it basically creates three tiers of character when it comes to resolving individual tasks:

• "Well I have a decent stat bonus, I can try it" - There's a chance
• "I am proficient in that" (and have a decent stat bonus, hopefully)- I should be able to make it
• "I have expertise in that" - No sweat

Beyond these long term considerations you also have the situational modifier of advantage/disadvantage coming into play as well. I think that's pretty flexible and easy to run in play. 

There's a big article about it here where they explain the thinking behind this approach and I mostly agree with it. There's some Q&A stuff here too.

Hopefully we will get a chance to update our characters and play it this weekend. More next week.

Coming Attractions: Wrath of the Righteous

I've been reading a lot of Pathfinder lately. What sparked the resurgence of interest there just as we're digging into Next? Well, this:

Here's the blurb:
For more than a hundred years, the demon-infested Worldwound has warred against humanity, its Abyssal armies clashing with crusaders, barbarians, mercenaries, and heroes along the border of lost Sarkoris. But when one of the magical wardstones that helps hedge the demons into their savage realm is sabotaged, the crusader city of Kenabres is attacked and devastated by the demonic hordes. Can a small band of heroes destined for mythic greatness survive long enough to hold back the forces of chaos and evil until help arrives, or will they become the latest in a long line of victims slaughtered by Deskari, the demon lord of the Locust Host?

This is the new adventure path that just kicked off last month. I'm on the Paizo email list and when I saw the description I realized I was probably going to need to look into it. I have a player that typically plays a paladin and has mostly played paladins in the 25 years (wow that's a bigger number than I realized before) that I have known him. He likes being the heavily armored stand-up good guy fighting the good fight. He goes off in another direction occasionally but if I'm starting a new fantasy campaign I can pretty much count on him to play a knight/paladin type character, regardless of system. This new AP is pretty much "Knights and Paladins Throw Down With Demons to Save the World!" and it has him written all over it. Because this exists, I must run it for him.

Seeing that this was coming I went ahead and dove into Pathfinder, both the rules and the Inner Sea setting. I already was familiar with the rules having had the core book for a while and having run the Apprentices through the Beginner Box a while back. I picked up the Advanced Players Guide which adds some classes and feats and stuff because it looked like the most generally useful addition to the core game. My main focus though was the setting.

I really have not paid much attention to the setting for Pathfinder. I need another fantasy game setting like I need another set of fantasy roleplaying rules, so my general rule has been to ignore new settings and focus on the ones I already have. In the last month I've added Numenera and the Inner Sea World Guide and various other supplements so clearly I'm not paying attention to my own rules about these things either.

I haven't finished the big book yet but so far, wow, it is very good. It's very much made to game in, not just read about, and much like the Rome book I posted about yesterday it strikes a great balance between detail and brevity. Two of Paizo's founders were long time fans of Greyhawk and there are a lot of touches in this world that I recognize. Also, "Realm of the Mammoth Lords" - damn I'm ready to throw dice just reading that. So I do like the world, more than I expected to.

Yep, there's a smaller setting book on the Worldwound too and I went ahead and read it as well. It's somewhere between post-apocalyptic and "let's invade hell" turned backwards - the Abyss has invaded the world instead. There's some similarity to the Chaos Wastes in Warhammer Fantasy too. I plan to use quite a bit of that kind of flavoring.

So at this point I've refreshed myself on the rules, read most of the general setting, read the regional setting book, gotten to play a little bit, and read the first adventure. Am I still keen on doing this? Oh yeah, it's happening. This is very much the "crusade" adventure path where the good guys take on un-debatable Big Evil for the fate of the world - there's a lot of black and white with just a little gray.

They're also using the rules from the new "Mythic Campaigns" book which I have not read. Apparently it is comparable to the stuff from epic level play but instead of having to wait until you hit level 20 to start down that track, you can add in "mythic" abilities alongside the normal leveling path, representing divine will, fate, destiny, whatever. It is a power increase of some kind but it does seem appropriate for this set of adventures so I'm willing to give it a try as there are mythic monsters too.

Oh, also, on top of all that, this is the first AP that is specifically planned to take characters all the way from 1 to 20. Most of the others end up somewhere in the teens - this one is the full ride. Add in the mythic stuff and this should be a pretty good test of how Pathfinder circa 2013 handles high powered play.

Practical Considerations:

• We still have the scheduling issue. Finding a day where people can play regularly has been a problem. I've tried to solve this by setting two goals: I want Steve (the player this is meant for) to be able to play, so I'm working around his schedule first. Second, I want the Apprentices to be able to play in this one with the grown-ups. I typically run separate games for the kids and the adults - this is the crossover game. So it's looking like this will be a weekend game, on the weekends we don't play our ongoing 4E campaign.
• Players: Well I have the one, and at least one of the Apprentices should be available. Now I have to see if the rest of the grown-up crew can make it or if I can find some new players. I'm also willing to allow them to run multiple characters to make this happen. So we're probably looking at 3-6 players to make this work. 
• Juggling other campaigns: It's a challenge. I finally had to set a schedule for the 4E game to give us a reasonable chance to stay on track. - more on that in another post. Having that predictability does mean that I can set some times for other games and not worry about favoring one over another . Assuming we carry on with 4E Next, and Pathfinder that means I'm running three campaigns just for D&D type fantasy! I've often said I'd like to have 3 campaigns going most of the time: one fantasy, one sci-fi and one supers, and I have it half right! One plan was to run next on a weeknight when the kids are here but so far homework has interfered with that and kept it to weekends only. That may just have to do for now. It's going to be hard to squeeze in any supers time for a while though. If I can do some Marvel or M&M also on an alternating schedule then that means I'm only running twice a week and that should be manageable.
• I had also talked at one point about starting a game up at the LGS because I feel like I could manage a weeknight game and it would be a nice way to find more local players. One of my players asked me about burnout and that's a consideration but if I'm running in different systems with different groups of players I don't think that's as much of an issue.  

So while I'm still solving those problems I don't see anything insurmountable and the campaign binder (and cover) is under construction and I'm looking at what I can do with HeroLab and PCGen and other online tools. Schedule-wise I think it's going to boil down to four regularly-running games: 

• 4E Impiltur - twice a month
• Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous - twice a month 
• D&D Next - a few times a month on different days (easier since everyone involved lives here)
• Super-something once or twice a month, because I want to.

Anyway this Pathfinder thing should kick off fairly soon. More to come on that. 

Weird Wars Rome

Introduction:

This book brings together three things I really like: Savage Worlds, the Weird Wars series of supplements for that game, and ancient Rome. This is the product of a kickstarter that closed out at the end of August 2013 and yes I was a backer.

• Savage Worlds has been around for over ten years now. The rules have been printed several times but there's never really been a drastic change in "edition", nothing comparable to the edition changes we've seen with D&D over the years. It's right at the top of the systems I like the most but have played the least, having run several short campaigns but nothing longer than six months or so. I run it when I can and I follow the game pretty closely as there's a lot of interesting stuff, both from Pinnacle and from the multitude of third party publishers for the system. There is almost always something interesting in the works.

• Weird Wars started out as a d20 game set in World War 2 back during the early 2000's d20 boom. I had many of the books for that one (since sold off) and I ran a few episodes of it. The material in it was pretty solid and the mechanics were fine but it never really felt like something that needed the full 20-level zero to hero to demigod progression. At the time I thought it would have been better as a GURPS campaign and that's still not a bad idea. Since then it has been reborn as ongoing set of releases for Savage Worlds, beginning with Tour of Darkness - Weird Wars Vietnam back in the early days of SW. Since then we have seen a new Weird War Two book as well and now we have Rome.

• Ancient Rome is something I've been interested in for a long time. I took latin as my foreign language in high school and took plenty of ancient history classes in college. I consider it an "area of interest" and pick up new books on it whenever one catches my eye. I also think it has great potential for a fantasy campaign with a slightly different flavor than D&D.

Composition:

This is a single volume about 100 pages long, with PDF, softcover, and hardcover versions all coming out of the project. About half of it is for players and about half is for GM's. It's very pretty, with full color throughout, a parchment look to the page ground, and plenty of art.

Let me say up front that this is not a general resource for either the republic or the empire. This is very much focused on the military of Rome, the legions, and the military history of Rome. If you want a more general resource for gaming, the GURPS Imperial Rome better covers that angle. If you want a military focus though, this is probably the best single resource for that kind of game that I have found.

There is a character creation section that covers things like ranks and titles, there is coverage of Roman military equipment, and some setting rules covering things like sieges in Roman times and naval battles with galleys. This is plenty of material to make a member of the legion and get a good feel for what he's about. These sections give you the "who" and the "what" of Rome. Note that there is no way to start the game with magical powers - no arcane backgrounds, no holy stuff - you may be able to do some pretty cool things but you are not a wizard or a cleric in the D&D sense.

There is a section on both the history of Rome, from rise to fall, and the regions covered by the Romans at some point, typically province by province. This takes less than 20 pages but it is solid and is plenty to get a player up to speed on "Rome". For this section in particular, I like the balance of breadth vs. depth. If you want more, there are lots and lots of books out there on this subject. This is the "why" and the "where" of Rome. I should also note that all of this is real history - none of the weird stuff is in here yet. That comes in the GM section.


Then comes the "War Master's Section" and we have a rundown of the general weirdness, some mechanics, a guide to running a military campaign, a random adventure generator, two adventures (kind of a mini-capping), and a bestiary. Again, this is about half of the book and it is packed with useful material. Call this the "how" of a Roman campaign.

Execution:

So how would a Weird Wars Rome campaign play? Now I haven't run this yet but here's how it looks to me: It's a militarized Call of Cthulu where you don't always lose. To expand:

• The assumed beginning is that you are new or lightly experienced members of the Roman army 
• As you carry out your duties and fight some battles you become aware that there are some strange things going on
• Sooner or later you confront this strangeness directly and (hopefully) overcome it

Upon confronting the weirdness you could of course die or be injured, but you might also go mad (there are insanity/trauma rules) and you might be inducted into one of the secret societies that fight the weirdness to preserve humanity, expanding the options beyond straight-up military campaigns. This is where the magical powers can enter the campaign as these groups can teach the characters some new tricks. There is also some discussion around a campaign that spans the range of Roman history, playing a series of mini-campaigns with descendants of earlier characters fighting the secret war across the centuries which is a cool idea.

Now is this a campaign you run for ten years and everyone has characters retired to keeps and temples? Maybe not. It is certainly conducive to an intermittent and episodic mission-style campaign with no set end point. I think you could run it with a gradual progression up the ranks approach and end up with the characters in positions of power where they can take on a bigger role in both the nation and the ongoing war.

I have a vague concept in my head right now where over time the weirdness becomes more known and the emperor creates "Legio XIII" to deal with the problem on a larger scale - it's still a secret, but this 13th legion's leaders know what's going on and the unit is sent in to deal with problems that are on the verge of getting out of hand. This would add the fun of keeping the secret a secret on a bigger scale, potential rivalries with other legions who resent this other unit joining in, and some political fun as nobles and others scheme around the fringes.

To enhance the flavor of a Roman RPG there are a lot of tools available:

• Use Roman numerals as much as possible. They're easy to learn and easy to read.  There are dice numbered this way and that adds more to the game's flavor than you might think.
• Throw in a little latin, at least for titles and the names of the cities and provinces which are easily found in this book and a ton of other references as well.
• There are plenty of Roman and other ancient miniatures available. This helps change up the look from a typical D&D game and Savage Worlds works well with mini's. There are supposed to be figure flats coming out for this specific game as well.
• Ground it in history - pick an era, pick a region, and set your adventure in that specific time and place.  Use historical figures associated with your chosen setting. Even if your players aren't history buffs this makes the world feel more real just like it does for Faerun or Glorantha, and it has the advantage of being actual history - it might come in handy sometime other than at the game table.

Comparisons:

• This is unlikely to be a sandbox campaign, at least right out of the box. I can see ways to maybe run it that way but the game as presented is more like a superhero campaign: You are defenders of the status quo and when a threat to humanity or Rome arises you must deal with it.
• This is a game with swords and magic but it is a pretty long ways from D&D in that you are not stating out with magical powers and you are not typically motivated to fight this fight for loot and XP's
• On a power scale Savage Worlds is more cinematic than GURPS but less so than D&D 4th Edition so your characters should last for more than one fight and be able to do some cool things but you are not actually superheroes

One other note: like the other Weird Wars books Rome takes full advantage of Savage Worlds' designed ability to allow PC's to easily run their own NPC companions and fight larger battles in a session. The PC's may be accompanied by other legionnaires, auxilia, or helpless villagers caught in a bad situation. This can really enhance the feel of being in a larger scale military operation and should be a lot of fun with all of the colorful elements of a Roman force.

Inspiration:

• Having recently rewatched HBO's "Rome" with Lady Blacksteel it's a good source of inspiration as the two main characters are Roman soldiers in the late republic. If I ran this game I'd expect to see a lot of Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus in any characters I or my players made.
• Gladiator - pretty obvious but this movie deals more with internal Roman politics while the game is more focused on weirdness in the provinces and the frontiers of the realm. At the very least though the music makes for a good background while playing.
• Also having rewatched/introduced Apprentice Blaster to King Arthur, the Clive Owen version form a few years ago, I think it's a really strong source of inspiration for a campaign in Roman Britain. There are some interesting characters, you get a feel for the land, the opposition, and the overall situation, and there is plenty of room for weirdness. What might the "Woads" do when the Saxons invade besides call on Arthur? What if the Saxons have some more sinister influence than just conquest? What the heck is really going on at that villa in the middle of barbarian country? I can run an adventure based on this without almost no prep at all - it writes itself!

Next-to-final-thought: This is one of the few RPG's that would fit in well at a historical miniatures convention and I bet it would be a blast as you get a bunch of players who really know about these characters and this era get to dive in at a micro level and geek out, and then you get to throw zombies at them. I think it would be a blast.

Conclusion:

This book solidly covers its promised subject and strikes a perfect-for-gaming balance between brevity and detail. If you play Savage Worlds and are interested in a Roman campaign it is definitely worth a look. If you do not play Savage Worlds I'd say it's less of an easy "yes" and may be more dependent on the price and your personal sensitivity to that. Much of the content on Roman history and military equipment could be picked up through other non-gaming sources but it is handy to have a single book that brings it all together if that's a type of campaign you are interested in trying. I, however, do play Savage Worlds and I feel that with this book, a rulebook, some cards and dice, and what's in my head I could run an enjoyable game for my friends or my kids or both and run it for quite some time.