New B/X Monster: The Uberilla

Uberilla
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 7 (L)
Move: 120' (40')
Attacks: 4 claws
Damage: 1-6/1-6/1-6/1-6
No. Appearing: 1-2
Save As: Fighter 4
Morale: 9
Treasure Type: L
Alignment:

A giant, two headed gorilla, both heads having one eye, giving it a sort of cyclops like appearance. The Uberilla has four arms and four legs. Their fur is purple. An Uberilla can attack up to two opponents each round with two claws (with each attack suffering a -1 penalty to-hit due to poor depth perception) or may focus all four claws on a single target (without the penalty). If two claws hit a target, the Uberilla grabs the target and makes a bite attack for an additional 1-6 damage.

Inspired by watching World of Quest with my son this morning.

Filling Out My Lulu Order

I am planning on placing an order with Lulu over the next while. Currently my shopping cart contains:

• Fight On! #13 (which rounds out my Fight On! collection)
• Towers of Krshal
• Terminal Space

I want to make sure my shipping costs are worth the trouble so what else should I add to my order?

B/X Sword, Science & Sorcery - House Rule #1 Classes

Classes
Classes allowed will include:

• Fighter (as B/X rulebooks with the additional ability of when fighting creatures with less than 1 HD their # of attacks = their level)
• Thief (as B/X rulebooks)
• Magic-User (as per the B/X rulebooks. However, their prime requisite changes to wisdom given the willpower and resolve required to master spells and using my strict reading of their spellbooks)
• Barbarian
• Scientist
• First Men
• Savage
• and possibly a Mutant class and a Synthetic class which I will post soon.

All characters are human (at least in some derivative form for the mutant and vat-man).

Edit: I had considered using Labyrinth Lord with the Advanced Edition Companion so I could use various types of humans ala the Races of Algol Men but decided to stick with B/X.

The Dungeon of Random OSR Evilness was done in my absence.

Before my long break I had the idea of posting a small dungeon using the B/X rulebooks and the free materials provided by the great members of the OSR blogoverse. In what I like to think of as a case of great minds think alike, the Planet Algol blog shortly thereafter made a post titled Semi-Random Megadungeon "Saturday Night Special" Generation Using Existing Resources that did pretty much exactly the same thing I was thinking about.

I will be revisiting this for the B/X Sword, Science & Sorcery game.

Key Principles for B/X Sword, Science & Sorcery

The key principles for the B/X Sword, Science & Sorcery campaign are:

1. Develop an online, weird science meets sword & planet campaign using my favourite version of D&D plus a some house rules.
2. Specifically designed to fit into the busy schedule of adults having a flexible schedule. It will follow the same scheduling convention as what was used for the West Marches - there will be no regular time: every session will be scheduled by the players on the fly. It may eventually also include face-to-face play.
3. Designed as an open game. There is no regular party: each game can have different players. Invite your friends. Ideally, I would like to draw from a large pool of people. This will be enforced by having the players use a tavern in the city as a "homebase" and using Jeff's Triple Secret Random Dungeon Fate Chart of Very Probable Doom if you don't make it back before the end of the session. To support the open game there will be campaign wiki.
4. The game is an exploration-focused sandbox game set in an ancient, sprawling and decadent city with a maze of catacombs and vaults beneath it and an alien landscape outside the walls that provide for numerous adventure opportunities.
5. I am a busy guy (and paradoxically quite lazy) therefore I am going to try to make life as easy as possible for myself. The main resources I will use include Vornheim, Towers of Krshal, various published adventure modules (some of which you may recognize), various maps and adventures available online, my archived copy of Scott Driver’s World of Thool blog, the Planet Algol blog and some adventure sites I make up myself. But I will steal shamelessly from anywhere.
6. The players decide where to go and what to do. It is a sandbox game. No overarching plot, just the overarching environment.
7. A "beer 'n pretzel" game where fun is the key. Everyone is aware that it is a game and can enjoy as such. This isn't Shakespeare, this is a game of murder-hobo where the players that gather the most treasure win.

B/X Sword, Science & Sorcery

I am looking at starting a new online sword, science & sorcery B/X campaign. 
The elevator pitch is...

Sword and sandal and weird science meet in a sprawling ancient and decadent city lying in the blasted terrain of a dying planet. The city has numerous palaces, temples, arenas, inns, taverns, brothels, towers, prisons, laboratories, graveyards, etc. for adventures to snoop, infiltrate, rob, burn down, etc. Also, below the city lies a megadungeon, as well as an uncountable number of dungeons, lairs, vaults, chambers, tombs, caverns, crypts, and caves to explore/plunder. Outside the city's walls lies the potential for hexcrawl exploration of the alien landscape.

It is inspired by some of the blogs I follow such as Planet Algol and Scott Driver's old Thool blog as well as novels such as Leigh Brackett's Skaith and Mars series.

The next few posts will develop some of my thoughts and the house rules I am considering.

If you are interested either reply in the comments below or email me at p_armstrong [at] email [dot] com.

Can anyone tell me about Roll20?

I just saw Roll20 and was wondering if anyone could tell me about it? Have you used it? Is it user-friendly for us non-online savvy people? Give me a SWAT analysis? ;)

I have been thinking about revisiting online gaming and was thinking about trying G+ but then I saw Roll20 and it piqued my interest.

From Underground Con

Last Saturday I attended Underground Con here in Calgary. It is a great little unpretentious gaming convention held at a neighbourhood community hall. I believe this is the second year that it has been held but I was unable to attend last year. I am glad to report I had a great time.

The morning started off with me joining Roger from Stirges Suck and Cam, Sandy, Zedd and Bruce to play in David Miller's great Cthulhu-Scooby Doo game that used the Jenga Tower-based Dread rules. The character questionnaires that started the game were answered by everyone in a mixture of camp, humour and imagination. I played the Freddie analogue named Buck Slade. The tower is used whenever a character takes a risk within the game or needs to do something beyond his or her normal abilities. A player makes a “pull” according to the rules of the tower game, and if the tower collapses something horrible happens to their character and is then out of the game. One hour into the game us players did indeed DREAD having to make a pull from the tower. I had a lot of fun.

During the second slot I played in a swashbuckling Tri-Stat game pitting Pirates vs. Ninjas. The game was fun but very linear. It turned out that the gentleman to my left at the table was John Montague. John is a game designer and illustrator. He was taking time out of demoing his game Villains. After the Pirates vs Ninjas game, I hovered and watched while John demoed his game for another group. The production quality was outstanding and while I didn't actually play it, the game play looked quite interesting. I will be keeping a keen eye out for the game.

During the final slot I ran Richard Graves' The Mad Demigod's Castle plus Joe Bloch's Castle of the Mad Archmage using the OD&D rules for a full table of players. The players were a great mix. Roger is familiar with old school D&D, of course, and CJ is a wily 1E AD&D vet. All of the other players did not have any experience with TSR versions of D&D but had played 3rd and 4th edition. I was excited to see them quickly jump into the appropriate mind set.

We started the 4 hour session with 10 minutes of character creation. I had a rough treasure map that led to a treasure on the 3rd level of the dungeon but was really just a plot device - I never expected them to make it that far. The adventure proper began with the characters hiring a couple of retainers and then set off for the ruined castle.  After ad-libbing the exploration of some surface ruins, the characters delved into the dungeon. The players displayed the correct amount of paranoia but unfortunately also foolishly dove head-long into too many pointless combats. A handful of deaths and four hours later the adventure ended just short of midnight. Everyone seemed to have a good time and I really enjoyed it.

After a couple of years of DMing a linear adventure path, it was really refreshing to DM a more open scenario, even if for just a one shot. It did reinforce my desire to make the next campaign a sandbox. Hopefully my group agrees.

The Typical B/X City

One thing I am fascinated by is the setting that is implied by the rules and tables in the B/X rulebooks.  For example, the average B/X Armourer is far better off than the average Calgarian in terms of the ratio of average housing price to average annual income.  The average house price in Calgary is about $470,000 and the average household income is approximately $125,000 per year for a ratio of about 3.76-to-1. Page X52 in the Expert rulebook says that a typical two-storey wooden civilian building costs 1,500 gp. The average an Armour is paid 100 gp per month (1,200 gp per year) for a ratio of 1.25-to-1. I'm not too sure this really tells us anything but I find it interesting.

While I was recently looking at the wilderness encounter tables on page X57 and X58 I was thinking about the probabilities of city encounters. Below is a table that lists the probability of having a specific encounter given in the random encounter tables as well as how many times each encounter would happen in a year. It assumes one random encounter check per day using the dice rolls given on page X57 and X58:

A few observations off the top of my head:

1. The typical B/X city is a place of commerce - the highest probability is with a Trader followed by Bandits.

2. Two encounters with Ghouls in a year?!? What kind of place is this? How do the normal humans survive?

3.  You will encounter a Dwarf, Elf or Halfling as often as a Goblin, Orc or Ogre. I find the low probability of encounters demi-humans interesting. Also, the chance of encountering a chaotic humanoid is higher than I thought. Not quite Mos Eisley but more monsters wandering around the city than I thought.