And Then There Were Three: Hackmaster Campaign

When last we left our heroes, Flint Goldheart and Grimwulf were in a dungeon, with Flint severely injured (a 10pt, an 11pt, and a 5pt wound, with 3 HP to his name). Ava and Elwyn came up from Vew a few hours behind us, and they start looking around Salt Haven for where we went. They reach the graveyard just as Flint and Grimwulf limp out of the dungeon, no sign of the ghouls. Whew. After a bit of banter between Flint and Elwyn, they head back to the inn for a few days of healing, aided by magic and some Honey Brew. Flint made it back to 20 HP, and decided that was good enough to head back down.

We retraced Flint and Grimwulf's steps, and met with the ghouls where we did before. Flint took a couple scratches, but avoided being paralyzed, then waded in and DESTROYED one of the ghouls with a single axe-blow... 46 points with a hand axe, due to a massive critical. (Grimwulf's player asked where this dwarf was last time). The second did manage to TOP me, but our party brought it down. Once Flint recovered (with some critical care from Ava Cado), we headed through one of the doors, encountering a room full of mouldering carpets and the like. Flint realized he had a spear (found on a corpse last time), so he offered to poke it.

"I've got a spear, I'll poke it" is going on his tombstone.

Two giant ticks exploded from under the carpets and attacked him. Flint, with his massive 8 HP, took 31 points... 2 more than his maximum HP. Despite burning all his Luck Points to avoid this, he's dead. He's not pining for the fjords, he's an ex-parrot. The party fought the ticks to smashy, and then retreated, having looted the only thing of value (Flint's corpse).

I started work on a new character; leaning towards one of my favorites: A halfling cleric of the Traveler.

Savage Worlds Mass Effect

I wrote this about a year ago, and initially posted it on my old blog and the Giant in the Playground boards. Since I like it, I thought I would port it over here.

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These are designed to take place between Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2, and are pretty preliminary. They're also designed to be pretty plug-n-play with SW, focusing more on mechanical representation than making sure that prices are accurate and all.

Please, feel free to feedback.

ODE: The One Deck Engine

So, a while back, I was thinking about Josh Hilden's Shores of the Dead, and half thinking about doing a game based on it. Now, I had a few ideas, but I also wanted to do an honest-to-goodness playing-card based RPG. I thought of the old Dragonlance SAGA system, which was based on a unique set of cards with nine suits and some pretty horrible problems... but, wrapped around it, it's a not-bad system for human-scale conflicts. I tossed it around, and got some downtime while at GenCon to write a bit, and came up with the following.

GenCon Day 4 and 5

Oi.... so, my netbook is pretty horrible, so I waited to do this until I got home. My laundry is in progress, and I'm trying to decide if I've got enough ConCrud to take off the two days I actually have to work this week. Probably not, but I'm seriously considering it.

GenCon 2013, Day 3

I made it a point today to do some actual playing. Next year, I want to have a shirt that says "Impress Me With Your Demo" and wear it to the various days. Because I had the most fun with demos.

GenCon 2013, day 2

So, day 2 of GenCon. Friday. I feel I should preface this a bit, though.

Houston, where I live, is not a terribly walkable city. It is, for most of the year, more or less a boiling toilet.. hot, humid, and with a funk in the air. So, when I come to something like GenCon, and have to walk 3-4 blocks several times a day, my feet are KILLING me. Blistered, with ankles screaming in agony. Thus, I tend to wake up, take some acetaminophen, and be ok until about lunch... then I sleep away the afternoon, and maybe do something in the evening. This means I'm missing a lot of the Con, but am having a fan-freakin-tastic vacation. So, yeah.

GenCon 2013, Days 0 and 1

I could probably Storify most of my tweets over the past couple days and call it good, but, well, writing things out helps to gel them in my head.

After Action on a Rules Change

So, tonight I bought some poker chips (and a deck of cards for an unrelated game I'm designing) for use in the Star Wars game. Every person got 2 blue chips and 1 red chip, representing their Force points for the session. The red chip, however, represented giving in to the Dark Side... using a red chip increased your Dark Side score by 1, in addition to the benefits of a force point.

Overall, it went very well. People used a lot more Force Points (I found in previous games that they tended to sit unused), and tended to suggest novel uses for them, some of which I allowed.

In addition to the standard "Add 1d6 to a given roll", I allow:
1) Add 1d6 to a given defense for a single attack.
2) Subtract 1d6 from the damage of a single attack. If the damage is to be halved (for example, folks were free with grenades this evening), this applies to the raw total, not the final damage; so if the bad guy rolls 14 damage with a grenade, and you roll a 4, you take (14-4)/2 damage, not (14/2)-4 damage.
3) A red chip may be spent for a single use of a dark side power. This will result in an increase of 2 to Dark Side score... 1 for calling on the Dark Side, 1 for a Dark Side power.

I also wound up PLAYING with the red chips a lot. Holding them up at appropriate moments. Turning them over in my hands. Because even when players spent them, I let them keep them. You can pour as much Dark Side as you like into an action if you REALLY want to succeed.