Satine runs a game...

<---(Satine shown here totally not in the middle of running a game)

So my 5th level thief, Blixa, started life as a Warhammer PC. He then, through the magic of FLAILSNAILS Google + games, has migrated through the D&D retroclone Swords & Wizardry, then AD&D, possibly Mentzer red box-era D&D in there, Labyrinth Lord (another clone), Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy, and now, for his greatest challenge ever, we took this 3d6-rolled-in-order schmuck and kitted him out with skills, feats and dailies so he can roll 4th Edition style (and his little dog, too)...

And--god help us--our girl Satine is the DM.

Actually Satine's been DMing a lot lately since she started organizing twice-weekly games at Meltdown Comics* but since I've been in another country all winter this was my first chance to see her actually go to the comic book store and see her do it. Some notes:

-Did you see that episode of Axe** where Satine lost her PC and was saying how she'd lost the last one 15 years before? You know how she lost that one? Hell hounds. You know what she had us fight? Hell hounds.

-4e's much-lauded balance relies on several assumptions, one being that your PC has 4e stats. Mine doesn't. He's got a 7 strength, 7 con and his best score is a 14 dex. I had to self-balance by trying as hard as possible never to ever do anything that required me rolling the dice. Which is exactly how I run Blixa in every other game. (Thieves suck) (Yet oddly this thief is one of the highest level FLAILSNAILS PCs.)(And people die like flies in those games.)(Go figure.)

-Satine's good at describing things as they happen "It explodes and there's a shimmer of light..." etc. and has an admirably relaxed attitude toward the Rules As Written. We're doing group initiative f'r'example. World hasn't ended yet.

-So I'm in a ring of fire, right? Because I brought flaming oil with me and these are ice hell hounds...

-Best 4e moment of the night: So all the other players are totally new to the game--this is their first campaign (and they're so sweet). This one kid is trying to shoot a hellhound with an arrow and decides he'll run so that me and my ring of fire are between him and the hell hound, then shoot an arrow through the flame, so it catches on fire on the way and then hits the hell hound. Excellent***.

-Worst 4e moment of the night: The brand new girl (the D&DMelt crowd is about 20% female) with her psion has seriously this 4 page character sheet and has to wade through it like a bucket of pint tar every round. Satine did a good job of priming the kids with "Hey you can do whatever you want, these are just some of the things you can do" but still, a 4e sheet is a lot to handle and poorly organized. And the fact that the online builder does it for you means the new girl wasn't along for the ride in making all these numbers happen so she doesn't remember them.

-Kinda What You'd Expect 4e moment of the night: The new girl finally finds the part of her character sheet where she can use her brain powers to make the hellhounds fight each other. Everybody is like Whoa, you're awesome! She seems much happier and more relaxed and pro-active once we're out of combat rounds.

-So there's one of those situations where you grab an NPC to interrogate and eventually--you guessed it--the NPC loses an ear. That always happens. Do you blame Tarantino or Lynch or do you blame ears? They look so cut-offable.

-The kids love Satine. It's cute. I hope they aren't traumatized when she kills them.

______________
*Hollywood geography lesson: Meltdown Comics, by dint of being in central Hollywood across from Guitar Center and also massive, is sort of the Hollywood funtelligentsia's front lawn, like you take the MGM executive you're trying to talk into producing your Alita Battle Angel movie to eat at Toi across the street and then go buy an Alita Battle Angel comic book so you can go "See she looks like this?" and then he goes "I get it, I get it...I'm seeing...Cameron Diaz?" and then you cry--with the much smaller and less vinyl-toy-infested Secret Headquarters in Silver Lake being more the same cohort's den/drawing room, like where you go to meet up with the other screenwriters and special effects guys and DJs and go "Cameron Diaz? I know, right, but I'm getting 9 figures just for the treatment so fuck it".

**There's currently some propaganda telling you to join the marines at the beginning of the video. Don't join the marines.

***Even if there's no way I would've let him do that. Unless maybe he coated the arrow in oil first. But hey, adventure is the aestheticization of physics

Vornheim: Hack This Book Contest + All Games Considered

So I'm doing a contest...



See, I did this D&D book and, judging from the links I've been getting, people like it...



"It is inspirational reading; the most so I have seen in maybe 25 years for any sort of RPG. "

Dragonsfoot Forum



"It’s probably the most-bang-for-the-buck RPG product I’ve ever bought in my life. "

Lost Papers of Tsojcanth 1 and 2



"This is quite simply one of the best and most useful RPG products that I have every purchased and read through in my entire gaming career."

WrathofZombie'a Blog



"[Vornheim] is like the first crash of Johnny Ramone's guitar across the bow of fantasy arena rock. Vornheim is, as I have said elsewhere, like the Sex Pistols covering Ptolus."

Hite, Kenneth



"I can't recommend it enough. No matter what edition you use, or retro-clone, this is going to help any campaign you make. Not just for the city games either."

RPG: Rants and Raves



"I can pretty much guarantee you that if you have any interest in running urban-based fantasy at any point in your campaign, then you, too, will find it worth every penny."

Alexandrian, The 1 and 2 and 3



"The stated goal of the book is not only to allow a GM to create a city on the fly, but to make it interesting, memorable and fun, and I would argue that it more than succeeds in that task." Brighton Role-Players





"So the real magic of the book, like I said before, is how it becomes easy to create textural elements, randomly or semi-randomly, with very little effort"

Drawings and Dragons



"This compact book does contain enough genuinely useful material for detailing a fantasy city on the fly to make it indispensable to any referee whose campaign involves regular urban forays outside the dungeon."

Grognardia



"Smart and yet playful. A bold kick up the arse to other setting books."

Haque in Black



"For me, Vornheim - The City Complete Kit is the most innovative role-playing product for a long time and is a hot candidate for an Ennie."

LeckerTHAC0! (English Translation)



"And it's all a very inspiring and stylish package"

Metagame (English Translation)



"I have to admit I am rather impressed... 5 out of 5 stars"

Other Side, The



"It's inspiring and I want to skip work, press gang my players or co-workers and use it right now."

Places to Go, People to Be



Planet Algol 1 and 2 " It's an innovative product, but it shouldn't be; that not an indictment of Vornheim but of what RPG products are generally produced."



"In terms of art and graphic design, Vornheim looks like no other RPG book ever."

RPG.net Forum Discussion



"This is definitely not your daddy's Greyhawk or 2e Renfaire Realms anymore."

RPGSite Forum Discussion



"This is really my cup or tea."

Savage Swords of Athanor



" It gave me a whole lot of flexibility that I've never really experienced in a game before. Seriously, if you haven't bought Vornheim yet, you really need to. Even if Zak's game isn't your style, use the format and concepts and fill in the tables with things that meet your style. It's that useful."

Gaming All Over The Place



"Everything you've read about it is true. Including and especially the talk about changing how people make stuff for their games."

Seeking Wing, The



"I want something that will make it easier for me to run sessions in cities with little or no prep, and I really want this Kit to do that for me; so, first impressions, does it do the job it sets out to do? My quick answer: yes!"

Sky is Full of Dust, The



"HOLY **** IT'S **** AWESOME!"

UK Roleplayers Forum Discussion



"I will definitely use the book at the table."

Apprentice of Old School (English Translation)



(the Underdark Gazette liked it, too)



"I think this is probably the best product I think I've ever come across."

This guy did a video review (cue up to 7:29)(and even though it's from "Scary Hair Studios" I swear I had nothing to do with this video)



"It's exactly what it says on the tin: a thunk-provoking tool kit that'll probably be great fun to unleash on the players."

Vaults of Nagoh



"In some urban RPG’s, an unexpected player decision might be disastrously time consuming; not so with the aid of Vornheim. Vornheim provides the referee tools to handle any number of circumstances that might occur within a city adventure."

Vorpal Dice



"It crawls with cunning charts & maps"



"The biggest problem I have with Vornheim: The Complete City Kit is that it's going to make all other city sourcebooks seem dull by comparison."



"It is a beautifully illustrated and very well constructed book."



"...Vornheim is an amazing approach to doing a city sourcebook which, although intended for old-school D&D, has plenty of utility for story gaming."



"...felt like a breath of fresh air after all these colorful, overproduced RPGs"



"Looking over Vornheim. Wow. this is really, really good."



"Infinite *s out of 5...The book is almost insidious in nature as it seeps into your own creativity and basically challenges you to be more creative, to raise your game to another level, and to be better at running your games."



"Zak dribbles more creativity and inspiration on page 3 (territories surrounding Vornheim) than most books manage in their entirety. And that's a pale shadow of page 7..."



"... too valuable not to have in you DM arsenal."



"I read Vornheim during my vacation and was amazed. Zak's really got something great here. I'd say award-winning."



"Random tables and charts, strange characters and locales, and snakes as books. Brilliant."



"The quality of the book is exceptional in every way."



"This totally raises the bar, you realize."



"Where Ptolus is a huge, whopping, incredibly detailed city book, this is stripped down the the very basics, the bare minimum, so that all that’s left is the raw rock and roll. It has exactly as much as you really need, leaving the gamemaster to play around and flesh out the rest..."



"...Vornheim is Byzantine, brilliant, and exhilarating..."



"Vornheim is, in my opinion, one of the most innovative RPG products I've seen in years. It is exactly what it claims to be, a city building toolkit designed to make life easier for the DM and provide a vast and interesting urban sprawl for your players. If you are even remotely entertaining the possibility of a city-based campaign, you need this book."



"It's a damn good book, full of useful stuff."



"If you are planning urban adventures, Vornheim is AWESOME for it. I ran adventures in a small town of 1300 and it was very useful."



"I honestly can’t find anything negative to write about this book, it really is a slice of fantastic RPG creativity and I urge anyone who enjoys fantasy city gaming to pick up this gem before the print-run of 2000 copies disappears."



"Good ideas, great tables!"



"It is an amazing toolkit and wonderful aid."



"It is a work of art, brilliant in how useful it is."



"I have to give you props sir, your experience and insight into city play made for a better night for me and my friends."



"The book is crammed with quirky and imaginative ideas."



"Once I next run a game set in a fantasy metropolis, I will most certainly have my Vornheim by my side, whether it be set in Sigil or Kaer Maga or the City of Greyhawk."



"Actually at last count I have read this think five times. Each time I read it, I realize more and more, this is the perfect city book."



"Lot's of goodies to use for any city-based adventuring. "



"I have to say that thus far it’s really changing the way I look at city campaigns and the build of a fantasy city in general. Zak really is an amazing wellspring of ideas; he’s sort of the Grant Morrison of D&D..."



"It is awesome."



"It's official...Vornheim is freakin' amazing. Best city supplement ever."



"It's quite inspiring...I can't believe that anyone would not be able to take some creative inspiration from it."



"...a beautifully produced handbook for running city adventures."



"...brilliant..."



"...mind-blowingly awesome and original..."



"I would like smaller books that take an approach kind of like what Zak S. did with his Vornheim book: give me the means to make and use good content on the fly for a specific adventure type"



"Vornheim is an amazingly cool supplement. I've been using mine (PDF) almost since the day it came out." (down in the comments)



"Vornheim is awesome; I'm still getting used to it, but there are so many tables in there that allow me to generate interesting things on the fly."



"Flipping thru my copy of Vornheim. I'm pretty sure I want ZakSmith/Sabbath's brain..."



"That thing is a friggin' work of art."



"Vornheim is excellent. Atmospheric, great spur for creativity. Can't wait to use it!"



"This is a damned good game book. Even the first part of the book, which presents Vornheim itself, is full of material that can be directly incorporated into any city campaign. The whole book lives up to the subtitle ("The Complete City Kit"), not just the ingenious shortcuts and excellent tables."



"This little book by Zak S, best known for I Hit It With My Axe, and the D&D with Porn Stars blog, is pretty damned awesome."



But so anyway, yeah.



So here's a contest:

The Official Vornheim: Hack This Book Contest



So what I want (and what we all want, because we like useful new GMing tools) is for you to hack Vornheim. Expand it, make it bigger, make it more fun, make it do things it doesn't yet do....



For example:



-Re-write a table in Vornheim for a different genre of city: a sci-fi city, a modern city, a gilded steampunk city, a pirate city, whatever.



-Re-write something in Vornheim for use outside a city--make it into a dungeon table or a wilderness table or a seagoing table.



-Expand something in Vornheim--like the Immortal Zoo of Ping Feng but feel like it could use an aquarium? Want to make 80 more legal situations? Want to make the encounter chart into a d1000 table? Knock yourself out.



-Did I forget something? Make a whole new table or tool for use in medieval urban adventures.



Point is, take any idea in Vornheim and run with it. Entries will be judged on:



-Usefulness: Does this thing look like it'd produce gameable results at many different tables? How often? At how many different tables? Or how many times at one table? Give us something that makes our job easier or more exciting. Your Random Medieval Funny Hat Table may wow them at your Friendly Local Game Store but, to be honest, it doesn't really do a lot of heavy lifting.



-Efficiency: Did you manage to get what you need across without the GM having to dig for it?



-Style: Did Zak think it was neat?



Rules:



-Enter as many times as you like, however, since the secret reason for this contest is to give us all more game stuff, each entry must be published on-line so that everybody can use whatever tool you've devised. If you don't have a blog or wish to remain anonymous, then send it to me at zakzsmith at hawt mayle dawt calm and I'll publish it if it's any good and I have time and I feel like it. If you do publish it on your own blog remember to email me and tell me you did it.



-Entries should be no longer than a double-page spread in Vornheim itself. Remember: efficiency is beautiful, efficiency is art.



-If it doesn't have to be a pdf DO NOT MAKE IT A PDF (or at least not only a pdf). In an email, text is fine: "cut" "paste". In a blog entry just type it. Pictures are fine.



-Speaking of art, don't just send a picture unless it is also a map or diagram or otherwise part of a game-useful tool.



-I reserve the right to be totally arbitrary and my decision is final and entering the contest means you waive any legal rights to claim damages or claim anything legally-binding about this contest or anything arising from it and me writing this constitutes I'll do my best and try to be a right guy about all this shit and if you don't trust me, don't enter.



-Contest ends on Gary Gygax's birthday, July 27, 2011. Winners will be announced soon after unless there's like a gazillion entries.



Fabulous Prizes:



First place winners will receive a signed copy of Vornheim PLUS a single prize package thingy of their choice from the list below, second place winners will get to pick one thingy from what's left over after that, third place winners get to choose one from what's left over after that...



-Art: Original artwork from the interior of Vornheim signed by me



-Work: A d100 table on a topic of your own devising written by me (if this prize is chosen it will also be posted here on this blog).



-Game stuff: I will give you a list of all the game stuff sent to me over the years that's left around this house and you can pick something and I'll send it to you.



-Booby prize: If you're a fan of one or all of the DNDWPS girls I can get you signed pictures or memorabilia or some other mutually-agreed upon thing--lemme know once you win.



-Hey man, can you...?: If you have a product to pimp, I will read it or watch it and review it and post the review here.



-15-minute Commission: I will take 15 whole minutes out of my day and draw a thing of your choice, then have the girl who works for me mail you the drawing.



____

Oh, and PS, here's me and Satine and Mandy and Kimberly and James Raggi on the All Games Considered podcast.

How I Want To Hear About Your Setting

Ever since I started the-thing-I-wrote-which-I-have-talked-about-at-length-but-which-I-have-no-special-desire-to-plug-here people have called it a "setting". Which is true, that's what it is, but I guess I never thought of it as a "setting", it's just "the place where I put my D&D ideas so Kimberly can decapitate them".

Anyway, I am looking forward to Sir Larkins upcoming rundown of the Forgotten Realms because everything he writes is readable and I can never get through setting books on my own. (Ok, not "never"--I got through Carcosa and I got through some Palladium stuff when I was 12 or whatever because I had nothing better to do.) Anyway, I have Literacy (English) at like 98%--so what's the problem?

The problem is most setting books are packed with extensive descriptions, in prose, of an RPG world. The world is either:

A) explicitly based on an existing literary, cinematic, televisual, etc. one, or
B) a technically original one.

If A, then that world is better described elsewhere. In the book or movie it came out of. I may not know how many miles Lankhmar is from Quarmaal, but most of what is in a Newhon sourcebook I already got in a much more entertaining form from the Newhon stories that I apparently liked so much that I bought an RPG based on them.

If B, then we have a different problem:

The world must be described. However: the RPG writer who writes about a world (no matter how awesome the setting itself is) is, almost by definition, worse at that than a writer who just writes stories for a living. Or at least writes things for a living that I wanna read.

I want to read maybe 0.001% of all genre fiction ever written by professional fiction writers with reputations in the field. Even assuming I likewise want to read 0.001% of genre fiction ever written in the form of a setting book by an RPG writer, that still probably adds up to maybe 2.1 people in the history of the medium, ever.

In other words: the setting book is full of original writing in a form that is not really the RPG writer's strong suit.

And if you're reading--as leisure--something you'd rather not read, you're not going to remember it. So if, as a GM, I actually need to remember that Squealhalla is the capital of Gullgorgica, I'm screwed.

A related problem is that the world is almost always full of concrete setting details which are basically re-skinned and re-arranged versions of things in pre-existing fact or fiction. Like the Holy Grail becomes the Sorcerer's Sphere and there's a faux-England and a faux-Germany and a Tolkienian forest, etc. These things are on purpose and done for reasons I can basically get behind, but the writers then have to waste a lot of wind talking about Great Cataclysms and fuel shortages instead of going, basically "Ok, you saw Mad Max, right? Mutants Down Under is like that, only with mutant kangaroos carrying uzis, ok?" or telling you the comparative population densities of Ilthbone vs. Harnmarr or that the war between the Skorks and the Guelves lasted 1300 years.

This is when I start to nod off. Yes, I'm sure Oerth is a fantastic place, but it's not because the great marsh gives rise to Mikar River east of the Grandwood Forest or because the Lorridges are found at the northern end of the Lortmil Mountains--it's because it has beholders in it.
__________

So how should it go? I think if you want to give the world a setting, don't tell us, show us. RPG writers are good at writing rules--rules that simulate genres--so give us the setting in the form of rules (and monsters and items and all that) and nothing else.

Rather than describe how the Clanward Barrens are different than the Skarrblown Marches, just do this:

Random Encounter table:

Clanward Barrens

1-2 Wild dogs
3-4 Stone ghosts
5-6 Claw merchant
7-8 Monk
9-10 Pilgrim

Skarrblown Marches

1-3 Wild dogs (hungry, 1/2 hp)
5 Abandoned Claw Merchant Cart
6 No encounter
7 Eerie rustling sound
8 Bone vulture
9 Pilgrim
10 Dead wild dog

Want history? Want flavor? Nothing in all of World of Greyhawk beats this sentence:

Relic: Eye of Vecna
Seldom is the name of Vecna spoken except in hushed voice, and never within hearing of strangers, for legends say that the phantom of this once supreme lich still roams the earth...(and now some rules about the Eye).

i.e. Build the fiction out of the tools you give us to run it, rather than worrying about describing each place and then telling us the rules that re-iterate what you already told us in encyclopedia-entry form.

That's how Carcosa does it--character classes, new items, spells, monsters--no big blocks of background info. The closest thing to a traditional travel guide is short hex-by-hex descriptions of points of interest--but even these are done in the form of usable game info. You have to piece it together--yet you could never say that setting wasn't described.

During a game, a GM puts his or her art into the ideas and into making the rules compliment and expand those ideas, not into prose descriptions of interchangeable mundanities. Why not have the setting description do the same thing?

All anybody wants to know about your setting is:

-How is it different from every other setting in the genre? and
-What rules did you come up with to make that happen?

If you are writing a commercial product then, ok, you can write an introduction--for the newbies. Otherwise: Give us a map, give us a picture or two, and give us the rest of the setting in the rules. Trust us, we will read the rules, that's why we bought the book.

Let's try it...

We can see how well this works in the comments. I put a table, you fill it in with data matching the last place the PCs were in your game. Let's see if we can tell these settings apart..

What's Chewing On That Carcass? Table For The Last NonDungeon Place Your PCs Were...(roll d6)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

DIY D&D's Most Valuable Product Yet Is...

(...according to my completely unscientific poll...)

...Jeff Rient's Carousing Mishaps Table. Three people said they used it, one said they'd be all over it if they had a regular campaign going, and 2 reported using my standing-on-the-shoulders-of-the-giant-that-is-Jeff adventure-seed-generating version of it (3 if you count me. It basically sparked the entire I Hit It With My Axe campaign--whether that's good for bonus points is a matter of philosophical debate.)

I will do the community the favor of not speculating on what the fact that the most popular game material it has yet generated is essentially a table for explaining your PC's hangover says about it.

Part of me can't help but wonder if we might've gotten a different result if James Mal had asked.

Megadungeon Design, Unicorns, Dead Elves, etc.

This sketch represents the basic layout of several different areas of a megadungeon. Which way is north depends on which area you're in and which level you're on. What each color means likewise is area-dependent. On certain levels I only read squares and on others I only read circles. The idea is to print this page out lots of times and annotate each sheet separately.

This is the beginning of the key. Each line represents a level. It's sketchy, but it was very easy to get the basic "gist" of each level by doing it this way. Basically, the more I liked a color, the more I used it in the map, and then I coded it so the more common creatures were keyed to those colors.

Here are some of the girls' character sheets:
Kimberly...
Connie...
Kimberly's stuff, with awesome drawings. (click to enlarge if you plan to enjoy life)
Satine's first TV character, Mirror. That 19 dex didn't save her...

And here's this...

Some "I Hit It With My Axe" News...

Watch the first video here to see the latest news on 'Axe'.
Mildly not safe for work.

question, progress report, plug, plug, game idea

-Here's a question for you, DMs...Monster stats in RPG products: Ok, you'll want special attacks, defenses and anything unique about a beast to be well-defined, but how much do you really need a product to give you the rest of the stats for new monsters? If it's new, then what's the disadvantage to just telling the DM what the thing is supposed to be about, and DMs can define AC, HP, and damage in whatever way fits his/her campaign?

I mean, if it's just some mook it might be nice to have all that already written out for you, but if a product is providing you with what's supposed to be a cool new monster then wouldn't you, as a DM, want to "custom-fit" it to your world?

Ok, maybe in an adventure module it's different, since the HD etc. tell you where in the adventure's toughness-hierarchy the monster's supposed to fit, but in (say) a sourcebook-type thing? Does me telling you the Orgulus Oozes of Vornheim have 2+2 HD mean anything or help, really?

Give me your pros and cons here.

-Finished almost all the pictures and maps for the city kit, just gotta do the big city map that we're planning to print on the inside of the dustcover. We're (hopefully) doing all kinds of cute format things with this book to maximize the bang for your buck.

-Here's the latest 'Axe' episode, with Bobbi Starr and company getting hurt by gnolls.
The Escapist took out some of the more explicit details of Bobbi and Kimberly's dungeon adventure, to see the uncensored version click that link. The censored version's here, because I can embed it...


-If you live in NYC, Tavis of The Mule Abides is hosting a...thingy (symposium maybe?) on D&D and its relation to contemporary art tonight featuring some excellent and funny and smart contemporary artists that I have personally played D&D with many times and also featuring a video letter from me since I couldn't be there.


-What with all this business I haven't had a proper game in weeks. I played a bunch of German board games brought over by Axe cameraman Darren to pass the time waiting for Mandy to get better: Small World, Samurai, Thunderstone, and Whatever-it-is of Catan.

Catan bored me almost to death. I almost died. Trading sheep? Really? Why people keep making and playing games involving farms I'll never know--so far as this rootless metropolitan Jew is concerned, the point of civilization is to get as far away from animal shit as possible. I'm with Luke Skywalker.

Also it kinda drove me nuts how the little wood pieces didn't really slot into the board, they just sorta sat on top like dry pasta on a cutting board, waiting to get knocked off every time Connie rolled her dice all over them. Which sucks because where the pieces are is really important.

Anyway what I actually want to talk about is how one of the games was really good and has some D&Dable elements.

Hold on, I have to go eat some cheese...

Ok (thank you all dairy farmers) now anyway...

Samurai is a simple sort of cross between Go and Risk where basically you play on a map and there are cities and you build up four types of influence--political, military, religious, and agricultural (yeah, yeah, I know). You have a limited amount of each (represented by cards) and the trick is distributing them around the board, turn-by-turn, in such a way that, when it ends, you've got the right stuff in the right place.

It's not like you have to rule the whole world, you just have to get more total influence than the enemy, so each game results in a distinctive patchwork of overlapping influences over various forces.

It strikes me that, with a little tweaking, this could make an excellent addendum to the D&D endgame or a plot generator for a campaign. Work it like this:

-Play a session of D&D.

-Get out Samurai. Rename the cities (alternately, you could decide the board represents a city rather than a continent, and the PCs are vying for control of neighborhoods). Each player represents a faction, a ruler, or a god (someone or thing that is roughly aligned with the PCs interests).

-Add or subtract cards from the players' hand(s) based on what happened in the D&D game (i.e. if they found the Ice Chalice of Eleth Sussar then they get an extra 2 religious influence or whatever).

-Play Samurai.

-Alter the D&D campaign to reflect the results of this contest of gods/kings/local mafiosos, etc.

-Say "6 months later..." then start playing D&D.

-Repeat.

The DM Doesn't Hate You, He Just Represents People Who Do

Click here to see full size and without the Guitar Hero ad...

Your RPG Museum

So Alexis has been talking about putting together a sort of database/museum/wiki/library of the best DIY D&D stuff--both in terms of rules and setting materials.

Not all the stuff, just the best stuff. So I'm wondering what such a resource would consist of.

My very simple request for today for y'all is:

"Give me a link to at least one on-line DIY RPG resources you have found to be useful in creating a game."

This should be, if possible, something that you actually used.

You are NOT allowed to link to any commercial product, to a novel, to any .pdf longer than 3 pages, or to anything I--or anyone else reading the comments--can't immediately read from the comfort of his or her home computer right now. You also can't link to anything you yourself wrote or to anything on this blog (though that's sweet and thanks if you were planning to), since I already know about everything on this blog.

This list helped me write up a random book table--which, yeah, I use, since snakes are books, and also I liked the throwaway rule about how owning a book on a subject helps with knowledge checks on that subject.

Also:
Noisms 25 word description of his Yoon-Suin setting: Tibet, yak ghosts, ogre magi, mangroves, Nepal, Arabian Nights, Sorcery!, Bengal, invertebrates, topaz, squid men, slug people, opiates, slavery, human sacrifice, dark gods, malaise, magic.

Always seems to me a marvel of precision and concision, and has helped me think about what different places in my campaign should be like.

Oh, and P.S...
it's Wednesday...

Look At That, It's Wednesday Already

If you don't like your pleasures small, click here.

Thank You For Not Being Ignorant Assholes

First, I'd like to note that the show is doing really well and so for those of you who watch it, thanks. The rest of this is for everybody whether or not you watch it:

Even though it has little to do with the bottom line, once in awhile the pyrotechnic display of bigotry, sexism, self-righteousness and can't-be-bothered-to-google-ignorance that I periodically get in my inbox in response to this TV show that the Escapist pays us to make about our game kind of makes me despair for humankind. I don't mean that as an exaggeration I mean it literally. No matter how many nice letters and traffic bonus checks you get, there's only so many times you can read "Wyverns can't talk, you and your stupid tattood whores don't know shit about D&D stop posing" before you honestly start thinking: "What's the point? What's the point of ever trying to talk to anyone you don't already know? People seem to go out of their way to misunderstand and score snark points off everything you say. Why not just hang out here in my apartment in Hollywood with my stripper friends, making paintings and doing cool Hollywood things and play our game and forget about all these stupid nerds and their stupid nerd hobby?"

This line of thinking, however, only goes so far before I remember you guys and I remember the fact that pretty much everybody who reads and writes to D&D With Porn Stars only says things that seem sane and smart and recognizably human and there's almost no obscure topic I can talk about--game-related or otherwise--that somebody out there doesn't seem to know something interesting about and I just want you all to know that I appreciate that. When I start thinking that there's just no way to make yourself understood about anything even slightly out of the ordinary unless you're standing right in front of people I remember how many people have--for whatever reason--ended up on this site and started reading and then thought "Hey, this porn actor actually sounds like he knows what he's talking about" and although I regret that I live in a world where you actually have to thank people and be surprised when people don't act like assholes I just want you all to know that I know and appreciate the fact that y'all are smart and don't act like assholes.

And I appreciate how rare and nice that is and the girls do too and if it weren't true I wouldn't keep doing this.

Another Totally Free Product Brought To You By DIY D&D

This week's episode of "I Hit It With My Axe" is long and serious. (Relatively--it does feature spontaneous titfondling and casual PC mutilation, if you're into that sort of thing.)

I generally like the pointless funny episodes more since funny's funny, whereas any plot revelations in the game are stuff I knew about ages ago and often made up to begin with, so they have less impact on me.

This plot-heavy episode, however, is notable since I had some help from some cyberfriends:

-Jeff of the Gameblog wrote most of the nobles of Vornheim (other than Vosculous Eeben). I figured: if I write some high-level fancies for this city, they may or may not ever get used, depending on what the PCs decide to do. Hell--there's no guaranteeing they'd even return to Vornheim.

However, it's nice to have some stuff there, and it's nice to throw fellow DIYers some cash from the show's budget (even if it means I temporarily become a YDIer) to develop a little depth on the setting in case I ended up needing it while I focused on more pressing things like sifting through 16 hours of tape looking for a 2 second clip of someone zooming in on a blue-wizard-with-pointy-hat miniature.

With Jeff's permission, I might put his full write-ups for the nobles up here--maybe fleshed out into full-on artifacty NPCs.

-The Death Frost Doom module to which Mandy refers to during the very blurry exposition was, of course, produced by consummate professional James Edward Raggi IV a.k.a. Lamentations Of The Flame Princess.

Fans of that grim and unforgiving auteur may be interested to note that sometime around October the 'Axe' crew will be returning to the site of Death Frost Doom* (which I am, rather lazily and metally, calling 'Deathfrost Mountain'). Wherein they will encounter some things that were not in the original module. One of which is very large.

In case you didn't feel like clicking the link or just like your videos small:



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*At which point I will make sure the LOTFP logo appears in the credits, James. I figured this time we were just talking about it rather than "using" it.