The Mosster Truck

What a fun session we had today! The kids finally got a taste of the action waiting for them in our Savage Worlds Sxibi campaign setting. They started out at Billy Bob Bo's Weaponry Emporium (my 10-year-old named the store) where Ramoka bought a pair of punching daggers, and Lucia bought a used ray gun. Zukey asked for an elven curved blade, and the shopkeeper disappeared behind a curtain. A moment later there was a flash of light, a crackling sound, and the smell of ozone. Then he returned handling an elven curved blade oven mitts, and advised Zukey to be careful because the sword was "hot." Then he effectively robbed her by charging her $200 for the sword (he had asked how much she was willing to pay, and she had replied $200. Sold).

While deciding on the ray gun, my daughter asked me to look up pics of ray guns online so she could decide what she wanted it to look like. She ended up drawing one from her imagination, but we all thought this DIY project looked cool.

After they had paid for their weapons, a delivery man walked in and handed some packages to Billy Bob Bo. Lucia's danger sense warned her that something was wrong, and her hair turned brown. She tried to warn the shopkeeper, but it was too late, the package exploded and purple moss shot in every direction. It stuck to a few of the customers in the store and killed them. That's all the adventurers needed to see, and they left the store lickety-split, passing a befuddled-looking store security robot on the way. Out front, they noticed the delivery man's hover truck had moss growing on its sides. Ramoka's fur stood on end, and they elected to leave the scene...

...and visit a tattoo parlor! We spent about 15 minutes drawing tattoos and searching Google for ideas. Meanwhile, I went to YouTube and found this music (a style called Dubstep), which I told them was playing in the parlor. "Turn it up!" they said, because it really did feel right for the setting, and it was decided that the type of people working and hanging out at the tattoo parlor ("BAE," which stands for "Body Art Explosion") would want it loud. Thus it was that they each spent $50 and about an hour inside getting their ink done, while just outside the doors, the mosspocalypse was getting underway. As they were finishing up, they heard the screams from outside, and sporadic gunfire. Again, hair turned brown and fur stood on end, and they warily approached the door to see what was going on outside.

The first thing they saw was the hover truck, now completely covered in the purple moss, running amok, mowing down pedestrians, and crashing into everything. It was completely dominating the streets, careening around corners and then returning again with a vengeance. They also saw some people covered in moss ambling about. "Zombies! Moss zombies!" exclaimed Lucia. Then she announced her hair was no longer brown: it was now black. "What does black mean?" I asked.

"It means I'm deadly," she replied, drawing her laser pistol and preparing to step outside.

"But you'll hurt the people!" objected Ramoka.

"They're dead! Can't you see? It's too late, the moss got them!"

And so on.

Ramoka and Zukey hatched a plan to obtain weed killer, but they needed to know where to buy it. They consulted Robot (played by my wife), but they accidentally asked her where to find robot killer instead of where to find weed killer. Robot was so frightened by this slip of the tongue that she leaked oil all over the pavement, and refused to use her internet connection to aid them until they apologized and agreed to buy her some Quaker State motor oil. The kids agreed, and Ramoka and Zukey ran off to the pharmacy around the corner to get the weed killer (but not before Ramoka threw a tattoo needle into the face of one of the moss zombies).

Lucia stayed behind to fend off the other zombies. One of them hit her hard, leaving her shaken, but the moss didn't take root on her skin. She recovered quickly and took them out one by one with her pistol. Eventually Ramoka returned alone* with the weed killer, and the two of them went around another corner to follow the sounds of sirens, explosions, and automatic weapons fire they were hearing.

They found four SWAT team commandos with shields taking on the moss-covered hover truck. My youngest played the role of the cops, and since it wasn't her character, she was suddenly all about blowing away baddies. Ramoka charged in with the weed killer, spraying down one corner of the truck and delivering a painful wound that made the truck honk in agony. Lucia toasted it with her ray gun and brought the truck to the brink of destruction, and the commandos finished it off. Their weapons ignited a hydrogen tank which exploded with concussive force, knocking almost everyone over and spraying moss everywhere.

We were getting tired so we wrapped up the session with a conversation with one of the commandos, who said the SWAT team could use some stout folks like the players' characters. Lucia said sure, why not, since they did have a coffee machine at the precinct. Ramoka was open to the idea but not thrilled with the early morning hours. We'll see if Zukey takes the bait. They need jobs, that much is certain.

More to come.

*Note: Ramoka was alone because Zukey decided that discretion was the better part of valor and stayed behind at the pharmacy. Thus continues a trend in our games: the character with the most power - in this case Zukey is a "mentalist" with psionic powers - is always played by my youngest daughter, who feels that most if not all combat should be strictly avoided.

VaHomeschoolers 2011 Conference

I spoke today at the VaHomeschoolers 2011 Conference, and I think it went rather well. The room was full, and the audience was great. Many of them were familiar with RPGs, and that made for a lively discussion. One guy in particular at the back of the room had some excellent input about the Dungeons & Dragons Red Box, specifically that it provides a quick and fairly easy way for people new to the hobby to get started.

I showed a minute or two of some video I took of one of my first gaming sessions that involved my kids and the next door neighbors. Some folks wanted to see a bit more. If I can figure out how to split the video up into smaller chunks, I'll post a bit of it on YouTube and then provide a link to it here (the problem I'm having is that the programs I'm trying to import it into to do the editing say I don't have enough disk space. The video is 33 hi-def minutes). So we'll see.

Thanks to everyone who attended and made it such a special session. I really enjoyed it, and I hope at least a few people walked away inspired to give role-playing games a go in their own households.

Introducing the Insurgents

I've been doing some light research on science fiction themes with added focus on technologies that scientists today are already working on the foundations of. One that has really grabbed my attention is this concept of uplift. To quote the Wikipedia article:

In science fiction, uplift is the development or transformation of animals into an intelligent race by other, superior beings.

An example of uplift would be genetically altering chimps so that they are as intelligent as humans. I don't know about you, gentle reader, but I find the possibility of this type of tampering to be unsettling. I'm not going to go so far as to say it's ethically indefensible, but it just feels very wrong to me.

It also opens up all kinds of crazy possibilities in our science fantasy role playing game. For example, yesterday I was thinking ahead to our next session. The kids have spent a considerable sum on rent and deposits, and soon they're going to start literally eating up all their funds. They're going to need jobs. What kind of jobs should they find? Far be it for me to railroad them into specific careers, so I did a quick Google search on "NYC help wanted." I wanted to find lots of options for them to choose from. Whatever I found I would modify to fit into the distant future setting. UPS needs a driver helper, ergo an interplanetary shipping agency on the planet Sxibi does too. There were also quite a few ads for entry level jobs with the National Guard, and that gave me all kinds of ideas about a planetary defense force that has its hands full with local, subterranean insurgents. That's when the uplift idea struck me.

The planet Sxibi is one huge megalopolis, miles high and deeper still, but it wasn't always so. It used to be a vibrant, natural world, teeming with life. Sapient life forms were beginning to evolve, being perhaps only a few million years off, when the galaxy's wider civilization intruded. Sxibi was chosen as the galactic capitol for its central location and vast natural resources. The city was built with arcological principles in mind, blending architectures to meet the needs of the 1+ trillion populace with ecologically beneficial elements to provide a semblance of balance and prevent the wholesale destruction of the planet's native life forms. To some extent the architects were successful, though many wild indigenous species were driven to extinction. Those few to survive did so on the city's outer fringes, which in most cases meant far underground where the bottommost levels abutted the magma layer. Most of these extremophiles were simple organisms, but one turned out to be fairly intelligent.

I had this idea of a subterranean species living on the fringe, intelligent but not truly sapient, not like us. An ideological human scientist, angry at the "civilized" races' treatment of this native Sxibian species, uplifts them to give them true sapience. They are naturally a hive mind species, like bees or ants, so the uplift gives the collective, not individuals, sentience. It doesn't take long for the hive to realize the predicament it's been put in, and it begins attacks to undermine the massive civilization above. These are the first salvos in a war that will culminate in the extinction of the hive mind species, or the reclamation of its planet...and perhaps conquests beyond?

My initial thoughts included presenting knowledge of the attacks to the characters through the filter of the city's massive propaganda machinery. The spin from media outlets, exacerbated by word of mouth of the frightened masses, would frame the attacks in the worst possible light: as terrorist acts perpetrated by insurgents. No mention would be made of the fact that the species responsible for the acts was indigenous to the planet and striking out in what it perceived as self-defense. These kinds of facts can always come out later and muddy the picture for the players, forcing them to wrestle with ethical gray areas. I'm looking forward to that.

But I had more immediate concerns. What does the species look like? I had been thinking of some kind of arachnid species, something terrifying and alien in the way that our own terrestrial spiders are. The more I thought about it, though, the more it smacked of Starship Troopers. So I sent an instant message to my friend David Burgess. David is a gamer who can always be counted on for thought-provoking ideas. It was like he already knew what I was thinking, because right away he started asking me what the indigenous species was like. I said I didn't know and needed some ideas. Over the next few minutes he gave me two great words to latch onto: moss, and hive mind. I've already given away that I took the hive mind idea and ran with it.

The moss idea turned out to be pretty good too. I don't know what my buddy had in mind, but the moss made me think of kudzu and extremophiles and zombies and golems, almost all at once. Here's how I see it working: the moss - which isn't really a plant, of course - is a chemosynthetic organism, deep indigo in color with a velvety texture, that spreads through reproduction using spores. The moss slowly covers organic or inorganic material. It can then consume that material's nutrients, or it can put the material to more sinister use. For example, the moss can grow over a deserted battle robot, then "drive" that robot, becoming a fearsome, moss-covered war machine serving the hive mind. Or it can convert its slain foes to moss zombies. Alternatively it can attack living tissue with its spores, attempting to invade a host organism and kill it to take over its form. The moss growth is slow, though, so while this can be a painful attack leading to a serious condition that requires prompt medical attention to arrest the spread of the moss' growth, it is not acutely effective. In other words, the moss isn't able to mobilize zombie followers during the same battle in which it kills its victims to create the zombies. It takes hours, let's say, maybe even a full day. Of course, breathing the spores is not wise and may hasten onset of symptoms.

The moss also has the ability to form phosphorescent patterns over its surface. This it can use to attempt to confuse its victims, as well as to imitate light patterns and effectively camouflage it under certain conditions.

This is very cool and all and gives me plenty of material to work with for multiple adventures. I'll be able to weave this into the backdrop of the characters' daily lives fairly easily, even unobtrusively, starting slowly with minor news items in the media and progressing to word of mouth. And terrorism can strike anywhere, so if things get too slow, the moss can always be counted on to pick things up no matter where the characters find themselves. Since context can have a huge impact on how events are perceived, anything can happen with the moss and how the characters react to it (immediately or ongoing), so I can't even be accused of railroading.

The moss idea is not, however, particularly original. Hive minds have been present in science fiction and gaming for ages. David pointed out the Thorian in Mass Effect as obviously similar, along with the buggers in Ender's Game. In fact, I've read Ender's Game to my kids, so they are already familiar with the concept of the hive mind. Meanwhile the mental picture I have of the Prometheus-esque NPC, the fanatical environmentalist who uplifts the moss hive mind, looks suspiciously like Dr. Peters
from the movie 12 Monkeys (whether he continues to maintain a passing resemblance to his original human appearance after the hive mind fuses him into the collective, and the extent to which either it controls him or he exerts his influence over it, are matters for speculation and outside the scope of this discussion. All I know is that I have a rather amiable BBEG - with the 'E' as in "evil" being somewhat ambiguous and debatable - with whom reasoning is completely out of the question).

Originality was never my goal, however; I don't intend to publish this campaign setting. I was just looking for something wicked cool that I could use in lots of interesting ways that would allow me to introduce some challenging ideas with lots of murky gray areas. I think I've found it.

Any suggestions on what to name the moss species?

Gaming at the Campsite

We're going on a camping trip next weekend with our homeschooling friends. Some of the people who will be camping with us are readers of this blog. If you're one of them, Liv wants you to know she's going to be running a Pathfinder RPG game for the other kids, and asks that you help her build some hype by letting them know about it. She's creating an adventure and bringing pre-generated characters so players can step right in and start playing. No experience will be necessary to play.

She spent a few hours today with the boy next door and my copy of the Pathfinder Bestiary dreaming up encounters for the game. It promises to be exciting.

By the way, I'm thinking that boy is going to look back on this in twenty years and realize that he didn't know how good he had it. A girl, creating RPG adventures with him. Exceedingly rare, or at least it used to be. That didn't happen back in the day!

Savage Worlds

Today we finally started our Savage Worlds game. Just as I do with our Pathfinder game, I'm running a custom campaign of my own design using the Savage Worlds system. You should take that term "design" with a grain of salt, because I'm making up everything - and I mean everything - as I go along. There is no design, in other words. The setting is in the far-flung future, on a planet called Sxibi (pronounced SHI - bee, which rhymes with Libby). Sxibi is an all-city planet, based loosely on Asimov's Trantor, which revolves in orbit around the black hole at the galactic core. It's sky is lit by the glow of dozens of sparkling suns illuminating a local nebula's gas clouds, but most residents never get to enjoy this sight. Sxibi is home to over a trillion souls from all species and walks of life from around the galaxy, and when you have that many people, the vast majority of them live by necessity miles beneath the surface, or at least nowhere near the uppermost levels. Only the wealthy get to play up top.

We only had three players today: my youngest daughter opted out, and of the neighbors next door only the boy was free. My oldest daughter played Lucia G. Cithog, a mostly human scientific experiment who escaped from the lab and is on the run. She's a goth chick whose hair changes color to match her mood, and who doesn't get excited about anything and can't be bothered to care. My girl says she took this approach because of the problems we were having in the Pathfinder game. By getting into character and role-playing the apathetic goth girl, she won't feel tempted to try to be bossy and run the show. She will "go with the flow." She told me this tonight at lights out. I thought it was a thoughtful approach on her part and I thanked her for her initiative. It's funny: while we were playing this afternoon I thought she was having a miserable time. She was kind of moping and seemed rather disinterested. I asked her what was wrong and if she was feeling ok. She replied that she hadn't had her morning coffee yet. I was too dense to catch what she meant, and thought she was talking about real life. A few minutes later I asked again if she was sure she was ok. This time, for a split second, she smiled energetically, all teeth and energy, nodding her head, then went back to deadpan and said, "I'm in character." I'm liking where this is going and how she's creatively tackling the teamwork problem.

My next oldest girl plays a character named Ramoka, from the planet Sherarie. Her species is completely a product of her own imagination. She is seven feet tall and covered head to toe in purplish fur that glows in the dark. She has long, pointy ears, and her six arms end in hands with sticky claws. She is an excellent climber and archer. We didn't actually get much play in today (we had some final character sheet prep-work to complete, and the kid next door hadn't even started a character yet), so we haven't had a chance to see what Ramoka's personality will be.

The boy next door created a Japanese half-human, half-"acid dragon" character named Kai Z. Suzuki. I'm guessing the encounter with the black dragon during our last Pathfinder session made a big impression on him. Anyway, we decided that his dragon wings give him an edge, so this gave us our first chance to create our own Edge (Savage Worlds doesn't have flying or wings listed as Edges). His character is still maturing, so he does not yet have a breath weapon, and his scales are not yet armor grade. While dreaming up all his features, out loud, he got really excited when he decided that the last time a half-dragon sheds before death, his scales will be made of pure platinum. Pretty cool stuff going on in that kid's head. I added my own herpetological twist by rolling 2d20 and determining that he would be shedding in the next six days, which means his eyes are somewhat opaque and milky blue as he nears ecdysis. Anyway, Kai comes from the medieval era of our own planet, and aliens went back in time and abducted him for experiments or slavery or something, brought him forward into our game's epoch, and now he has escaped. There seems to be no shortage of folks evading the authorities in this game.

They also made friends with an obese NPC named Tox Cudann. Points to the first reader who can tell me where I got his name. He's an obese pilot with the MacGyver Edge (too cool that they made an Edge called MacGyver...and yes, it's exactly what it sounds like). They'll be seeing more of him, though they got separated in Customs (see below).


My wife said go ahead and create a character for her, too. She asked to be a robot, one who is street smart and can obtain all kinds of information from the nets, kind of like R2D2. For her Hindrance she chose Quirk: her character is liable to break into song and dance at inconvenient times. She also has wheels instead of legs, which will make mobility interesting. Sadly, she didn't get a chance to play because she was cooking dinner.

The characters got to know each other as passengers on the space flight bound for Sxibi, right as the ship was popping out of hyperspace. We had a little discussion about the nature of general relativity and how the perception of time varies with different frames of reference. I babbled some nonsense about how the technology of the future seamlessly blended light speed, time travel, and "between space" to permit intragalactic travel without all the heartache of your loved ones aging and dying while you're away. The characters watched out through their portholes as the ship descended first into Sxibi's atmosphere, then into a massive tunnel miles wide that burrowed straight into the city's metallic exoskeleton. There the ship merged with Sxibi's internal traffic, millions of ships gliding through the world-spanning tube, with many lanes vertical and horizontal alike. Think of it like our interstate highways, but in three dimensions, and they're wrapped inside a series of interconnected buildings on a massive scale. Their ship descended into a sub system further down via another tunnel, decelerating as it went, and soon they were below ground level, though there was no way to determine that visually. Eventually the ship eased onto a landing pad, the passengers disembarked, and the characters found themselves in Customs.

While wasting away in the horrendously long Customs line, they learned that everything was going to be tied to their retinal patterns. Money, access, advertisements, you name it, kind of like in the movie Minority Report. Everyone who comes to Sxibi gets their eyes scanned at point of entry. So along comes this squirrely guy while they're waiting - literally a diminutive squirrel-like humanoid - who approaches them in line and sells them lenses to change their retinal patterns. Eventually they neared the front of the line. A robot was scanning everyone's eyes, and from that point forward, that scan would be the basis for all their future transactions. It was then that the players had to make their first decision: should they wear the fake lenses for the initial scan? Or should they get a legitimate first scan and then use the fake lenses as needed down the road? Lucia went ahead and popped in the lenses for her scan. Ramoka and Kai kept their lenses pocketed and had legitimate retinal scans taken. What impacts this decision will have down the road is anybody's guess.

And that's where we stopped play.

Sandbox

A few sessions ago, something happened to me that's never happened in 30 years of on-again, off-again game mastering: the players decided to completely bypass a dungeon I created for them.

The characters have this 3' long, rainbow colored feather belonging to a Couatl: a giant, intelligent, winged serpent. Couatl are typically good in nature (though not necessarily "friendly") and may be mistaken by primitive cultures as benevolent deities, but I digress. By looking at the feather through the Eye of Ilgerish, the characters noticed a pattern in the barbs. The feather was marked with the name of the Couatl from whom it came: Cualli Amoxti* , whose name is Nahuatl for "Good Book." The significance of this, or where they might find this Cualli Amoxti, remains a mystery. They made this discovery on the same day that a thief named Rixi attempted to steal the feather from them. They also learned that the person who hired her for the job was willing to pay 5,000 gold pieces for the feather, and had some goblins tracking it down for him too. They knew that this being was waiting for the feather a few miles away in an abandoned quarry. At long last they had a lead to help them understand the purpose of the feather which they had won in one of their first adventures, and which the voice of the ancient protector Duranys had called his "token" that would assist them in the discovery of his seven caches.

So I drew up the quarry and the dungeon carved from it, and I infested it with all kinds of goodies, including the bad guy (a hobgoblin, but there's more to him than that), his gang of goblins, a few assorted aberrations, some undead, a few nifty tricks and traps, and assorted clues and red herrings. It took a week to finish. It's not a big dungeon: it is intentionally small. But I customized it for these adventurers. It seemed like a really good fit for them.

But they didn't bite.

Instead they talked to Fibon's Skull, who is a fan of big city libraries and places of learning, and decided to travel to Port Manteau to seek the answers. Sure, I figured the party would eventually get there anyway. In fact, as readers of this blog may recall, I'd planned on it. It seemed like a better base of operations for deep exploration than the small villages we were using, and maybe even a good location for a proper megadungeon. It also fits in with Elerisa's aspirations to get back into "high society." But I wasn't in a rush to get them there because I find cities difficult. So they made the journey and on the way narrowly avoided a big confrontation while camping out in the rain. Now they're inside the city walls, and they suspect the hobgoblin and his crew may be there as well.

I'm left with a dungeon that will in all likelihood never be used, since it has little significance for the adventurers and is now fairly out of the way. In the old days, if such a thing had happened, I would have salvaged the parts. Although players never skipped entire dungeons on me, they did occasionally bypass whole sections of them. In these cases I simply reused the parts they missed in subsequent dungeons. Now, though, I find myself unwilling to do that. I've been sucked into this idea of the true sandbox, in which the game master creates his world, fills its places, and lets come what may. It is like a huge sandbox that the characters can play in, and they get to decide where they go and what they do. If I just move everything around so that they experience a planned series of events in a specific, predetermined order, then it renders their decisions meaningless. Just as you wouldn't want to go through life without self-determination, so would you disdain playing a character whose destiny is preordained. There's no pride of accomplishment in that kind of game. Therefore it's the players' decisions that must drive the story.

And so I'm left to risk all and create the megadungeon beneath the Port City of Manteau, regardless of whether they choose to descend into it or not. Hopefully this time I can make it sufficiently tempting, but just in case I can't, I'm only building a little bit at a time.

---

* Pronounced cu-ALL- ee ah-MOSH-tee.

Eye of Ilgerish

The following is Open Game Content according to the Open Game License.

The kids found this one in the same wizard's laboratory where they found Fibon's Skull and Nephrym's Claw. Okay, okay, so magic treasures were a tad abundant that day. Maybe I was feeling generous. The dangers of that dungeon offered commensurate risk, though, and none of the artifacts can be used without a price. The Eye of Ilgerish is no exception.

The Eye is literally an over-sized, bloodshot eyeball with a red cornea. It's actually about the size of a baseball. Despite its rigid appearance, it's not hard like marble, but it's not exactly squishy either. Whoever Ilgerish was, she was made of tougher stuff than the flesh of mere mortals. The eye is rather slippery, and must be handled with care to avoid dropping it. The reason it's slippery is that the eye must be kept in a saline solution, else it becomes agitated and ineffective. Agitating the Eye is a bad idea, as we shall see.

The sclera (the white part) goes all the way around, and there's a hole in the back that you can look through. Using the Eye in this way is like using a Gem of Seeing. Now, I know what you're probably thinking: the Gem of Seeing is considered a major wondrous item and has no business in the hands of low level characters. I agree, which is why I've limited its power and made consequences for its use.

In terms of limits, the big one is time. The Gem of Seeing can be used in 5 minute increments for up to 30 minutes per day. The Eye of Ilgerish , by contrast, can only be used as long as the player using it can keep her own eyes open without blinking, and that only three times per day. The GM times the player with a stopwatch and divides the number of seconds by 6 to arrive at the maximum number of rounds the Eye can be used in that instance. Beyond that number of rounds, the Eye's magical effects become somewhat distorted and unreliable. Double that duration and the user can't see anything at all through it. Additionally, even before the normal duration passes, the range conveyed upon a mortal user of the Eye is only 60', as compared to the 120' conveyed by a true Gem of Seeing. Finally, the eye is so slippery that it must be handled with two hands. To use it one-handed, the character must succeed on a DC 20 sleight of hand skill check. Using the Eye is a standard action.

Now, on to the consequences! First, a little background. Ilgerish is a powerful demonic being of the Abyss who once ran amok in the characters' world's distant past. When her earthly manifestation was destroyed, some of her physical parts remained behind to wreak havoc among mortals. The Eye is one such part. In her native form (still alive and well in the Abyss), Ilgerish still has all of her eyes, and one of them is the analog for the Eye in the characters' possession. Ilgerish spends most of her time (99%) in a deep sleep, weaving nightmares where dwell in perpetual terror the souls of those who were foolish enough to worship her in life. When she wakes, she searches for means to escape her prison and return to the world of men and women where she can find new souls on which to feed.

The connection between her Eye of the physical world and her abyssal eye is the key to understanding the risks associated with using this device. If the characters attempt to use the Eye when Ilgerish happens to be awake (1% chance), they will see whatever she is seeing from her lair in the Abyss. Such sights are sufficient to drive mortals mad, and a Will save (DC 20) is required to stave off fear lasting 2d4 rounds, followed by confusion lasting a number of hours equal to 20 minus the adjusted Will save roll attempt (e.g., you have Will +4, roll a 13, so fail your save and you're confused for three hours). In the case of a failed save, holding onto the Eye is impossible, and the Eye is dropped. The Eye won't break, but this has implications for anyone foolish enough to pick it back up now that Ilgerish is awake.

If the Eye has been dropped, Ilgerish is now not only awake, but also alert to those around the Eye. She will attempt Dominate Person on anyone who picks up the Eye within an hour of it being dropped (after that, the connection has faded and she's asleep again). The DC for the Will save to resist domination is 22 (treating Ilgerish as 20th level sorcerer with 25 charisma). The dominated person will be instructed by Ilgerish to make his or her way to a place where a proper summons can be performed to release the demon back into the world. She is patient, though, so if it looks like the victim can't complete the task right away, Ilgerish will attempt to achieve the same end by use of Geas-Quest. All this can be avoided if the Eye does not come in contact with the skin, and as long as the handler does not look into the eye (either side).

Irritating the eye by using it past its duration (discussed above) increases the chance of awakening the demon to 10% at first, and up to 50% if double the duration.

Need I mention that mentioning Ilgerish's name in the Eye's presence is a terrible idea?

Now, all this being said, I haven't actually been playing the Eye of Ilgerish this way in the homeschool campaign. Basically it's just been a slippery Gem of Seeing that has to be kept in saline or it stops working. No check for awakenings and all the weirdness that follows. I don't want to give them any nightmares. The girls have, however, clued in to the fact that it's more than just a device, that it's somebody's eye (I didn't have to say a thing: it's an eye, and that's enough to arouse their suspicion. Their instincts in this regard have been pretty good), so they've only used it sparsely. As the kids get older, I can bring some of the more interesting dimensions of this magic device to bear on our game. In the meantime, we've been using it as a means to quasi-explain the alternate reality the kids' characters find themselves in when my oldest daughter GMs. We know that the Eye has something to do with the alternate game, but we don't know exactly how that works.

Perhaps it is not for mere mortals to understand such things!

The Big Game

Our friends have gone home and the dust has settled, and I can finally report on how our Pathfinder RPG session went.

Marra, played by a seven-year-old girl, seemed to have a great time. She was thoughtful, attentive, and enthusiastic. She understood everything that was going on and seemed to have a fairly solid grasp of the mechanics of the game, given her age and that it was her first RPG experience. She has a tendency to roll high on a d20; I don't think she missed or failed a roll for any skill check all night. Marra is welcome at our table any time.

Her parents had interesting playing styles (the wife was a first-timer) which brought something new to our table, and they seemed to have a good time, but I don't think it was necessarily the game. Whether they'll join us for future sessions will depend in large part, I suspect, on how badly Marra wants to return. They are always welcome, of course. Regardless, we will see them again because they are such dear friends, but I suspect we're more likely to engage in a rousing game of Qwirkle than D&D or any of its offshoots when next we meet.

My wife played her half-orc monk true to character, which made for an interesting dynamic between her and my oldest daughter during the opening scene at the Mean Bean, a coffee house. Now, I hate to be the kind of dad who throws his kids under the bus, but they don't read this blog, and what I'm about to say is relevant to the topic of using RPG's in homeschool and teaching to virtues, so here it goes: my kids were in rare form last night, and not in a good way.

Elerisa can be a bit of a control freak, and it was annoying the other players at the table. My wife and I both found ourselves correcting her as she tried to tell her sisters - especially Fiona, our youngest - what to do. At one point when Fiona said what she was going to do, Elerisa basically told her something to the effect of that's stupid, don't do that, do this instead. Elerisa wanted something and my wife wasn't letting her character just have her way, because questioning Elerisa's actions was the right thing for the half-orc to do under the circumstances. Elerisa became obnoxious and badgered my wife as she tried to get her way and it became a parenting situation. We prevented it from getting too ugly, but I was embarrassed and I think my wife was too.

My oldest was not the only offender. Fiona became a wall flower and decided she was too embarrassed to play with first-timers (her explanation to me later), even though Marra is her best friend. With all the commotion and with her tiny, increasingly bashful voice vanishing beneath the threshold of normal human hearing, it was hard to figure out what she was trying to do in game (which, as it turns out, was to run into the Mean Bean's kitchen to hide from the fight that was breaking out, and to look for marshmallows to throw into the fray). Meanwhile Norma, my "middlest" child, couldn't be troubled to pay attention to the game and spent much of the evening on the floor of the dining room with her feet sticking up in the air. She said she was restless, a claim that was supported by her constantly asking me for an update with regards to the time. This from a child who is always asking when our next game is going to be.

So I'm left wondering what the lessons learned are, and I think my wife has hit the nail on the head. Sadly, I won't be able to articulate it as succinctly as she did, but I'll valiantly make the attempt. She is a fan of Cesar Milan, a.k.a. The Dog Whisperer. From Cesar's show we learn that dogs feed on the energy of the people and animals around them. When there is a lot of nervous excitement, dogs will get riled up. Is there a reason to think it wouldn't be any different with kids? She points out that I put a lot of stress on myself in the last few weeks to prepare for this game. I wanted my friends' first gaming experience to be a positive one, and I think Elerisa wanted the same thing. It was our big chance to show our stuff, to share this awesome experience we've been having, and there was excitement in the air. My wife says I was handled the GM duties calmly and smoothly, but I can tell you I broke out in a sweat almost right away, so chances are there was at least some aura of anxiety about me, however subtle or subconsciously detectable. Clearly Elerisa didn't handle it well at all, and that's something we're addressing with her. There are behaviors to address with the other two as well, and we're doing that.

So today we sat down with the kids and talked about our experience last night and the kinds of virtues and soft skills we're going to work on in the future. Things like diplomacy, tact, compromise, and respect. Staying focused and channeling our energies toward accomplishing shared goals. Confidence and courage to strut our stuff in front of our peers. And finally, for me, finding that inner calm and peace of mind that comes from knowing that everything's going to be alright, and to just let the chips fall where they may.

Introductions Are In Order

I picked up these plastic miniatures for the game this weekend because I had no good ones for the four new players to use. It bothers me that they're not accurate representations of the players' characters. I worry that the players will substitute the appearance of the minis for the images in their imaginations, rather than the reverse. I've always hated minis for this reason, even when they're fairly accurate, but I guess with later editions of D&D, including Pathfinder, they're a useful and (almost) necessary evil. I rarely used them growing up and I guess I got used to doing it that way.

As always, to protect the anonymity of my friends and family (whether or not that's a worthwhile goal), I'll use character names to reference both the characters and their players.

Clockwise from the top: The Unnamed, played by my wife. She has 24 hours to name her half-orc monk character. Obviously her mini is neither half-orc nor a monk, but it is female and big. Next is Erynian ("Wren"), a female elven druid played by a good friend of ours. Gender and race are correct, but the spear is misleading. Marra the halfling ranger is played by Wren's daughter, and represented by a male halfling (didn't see any females). Finally, Isaiah Deluvia, a Saurian wizard played by our friend (Wren's husband / Marra's dad), will be using a human male mini since no Saurian-like minis of any class were available at the store.

Savage Worlds

My copy of Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition came in the mail this week. I've read through the book and I like what I see. I'm going to be using the Savage Worlds (SW) system for teaching history this year, specifically by inserting my kids' characters into actual historical events. I imagine I'll blog more extensively on that in future posts.

I've mentioned before that I have guests coming over this Saturday for a big Pathfinder game, so this weekend might not be the best time to try out SW. Maybe if the kids are up to it on Sunday afternoon we'll run a little play test, but I have a feeling they'll be all RPG'd out by then. Whether it happens this week or next, here's what we've thought up.

When I was first telling Norma about SW, I said it could be used for any setting. I said, "Pick a setting, any setting. If you could role play anything, anywhere, what would it be?"

She said, "I'd like to be shrunk down and play in a dollhouse, with my dolls coming to life." I said that maybe we could do something like that and started thinking about how to set it up.

Back when the girls were younger, I used to make up bedtime stories featuring a character named the Forgetful Fairy. The Forgetful Fairy gets into a lot of trouble due to her notoriously short attention span and short-term memory. Some stories were epic in scope and went on and on for weeks. Nowadays we read chapter books (currently working on The Golden Compass), so it's been a long time since the Forgetful Fairy has made an appearance, though my kids remember her fondly. When thinking about the SW dollhouse idea, I thought it might be interesting to bring the Forgetful Fairy out of retirement.

So here's how it will play out: the characters are kids who are away from home with their parents and stuck in a boring situation, and one of them wishes out loud that they could be back at home playing with their dolls. The Forgetful Fairy magically appears and grants the wish, and all three are shrunk down to doll size and whisked away to the dollhouse where their playthings all come to life. They have a blast playing with their dolls until they start to feel hungry. They call out for the Fairy to return and end the spell, but she's off doing other things and has, of course, completely forgotten about them. The rest of the adventure is a quest to the kitchen where both the food and the telephone can be found. Obstacles to overcome include the stairs, the cat, a faction of dolls that doesn't want them to leave, and possibly a snake (I keep pet ball pythons in real life, but they don't actually roam free in the house). Also, since the telephone is attached to the kitchen wall and the buttons are on the handset, calling their parents may be quite challenging. Allies along the way will include their Polly Pockets and an escaped Hamster.

We'll see what happens.

List of Acronyms

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of acronyms related to role-playing games. Instead, it's a list of acronyms you're likely to see in my own blog. Hopefully I'll be able to embed a link to this list in the design template of my blog so people can easily reference it from any post.

List of Acronyms

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1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5e, 4e - Editions of Dungeons & Dragons. I think I've also seen "0e" (see OD&D) used before in reference to the original game, back before the hard-backed books, back when the rules appeared as three separate soft cover magazines. I first picked up the game after that, in late 1979, back when it was just called "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons," which we now refer to as "1e."
3.75 - Pathfinder RPG is sometimes called this, since it was based on D&D 3.5e and features some changes.

AC - Armor Class.
AD&D - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. They got rid of "Advanced" with 3rd edition. There used to be a "Basic" edition (called just "Dungeons & Dragons") that was simpler by comparison.

BBEG - Big, Bad, Evil Guy. Usually the head honcho opponent that characters face at the end of a given adventure.

CE - Chaotic evil, an alignment.
CG - Chaotic good, an alignment.
CHA - Charisma, an ability score in D&D and related games.
CMB - Combat maneuver bonus, a Pathfinder-specific stat for non-standard combat actions such as grappling.
CMD - Combat maneuver defense, a Pathfinder-specific stat for resisting non-standard combat actions such as grappling.
CN - Chaotic neutral, an alignment.
CON - Constitution, an ability score.
CR - Challenge rating, for determining the relative difficulty of an encounter.
CRPG - Computer role-playing game.

D&D - Dungeons & Dragons.
dn (as in d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20) - A shorthand notation for referencing dice. The number (n) following the 'd' refers to the type of dice, or number of sides of the dice. A number before the 'd' indicates the number of times to roll that type of die. For example, "3d6" means roll three six-sided dice and add the results to determine the total.
d% - Shorthand notation for percentile dice, i.e., two d10, but instead of adding the results, one result represents the tens column and the other becomes the ones column. In this way two d10's can be used to get a result between 1 and 100. A roll of 3 and a roll of 7, for example, would yield a result of 37.
D20 - A rules system upon which many role-playing games are based, where a 20-sided die is the one most commonly used. Introduced by Wizards of the Coast for D&D 3e.
DC - Difficulty class, a number you have to meet or exceed with a roll of a 20-sided die (plus your bonuses) in order to succeed in some attempted action.
DEX - Dexterity, an ability score in D&D and related games.
DM - Dungeon Master, D&D's equivalent to the more generic terms Game Master or referee.

GM - Game master, the "referee" for an RPG.
GP - Gold pieces.

Homebrew - Custom made by the GM, as opposed to purchased.  This can apply to dungeons, adventures, or whole world settings.
HP - Hit points, the number of points of damage you can take before dying or falling unconscious.

INT - Intelligence, an ability score in D&D and related games.

LARP - Live action role-playing. Think playing games in costume.
LE - Lawful evil, an alignment.
LG - Lawful good, an alignment.
LN - Lawful neutral, an alignment.

Mini - Miniature figurine used to represent a character, NPC, or monster on a play mat.
MM - Monster Manual, a D&D-specific book.
MMO - Massively Multi-player Online, as in, "World of Warcraft is a MMORPG."

N - Neutral, an alignment.
NE - Neutral evil, an alignment.
NG - Neutral good, an alignment.
NPC - Non-player character, or characters/creatures role-played by the game master as opposed to the players (see PC).

OD&D - "Original" Dungeons & Dragons, published in 1974, before the hardcover AD&D books. The "original" has been added posthumously.
ORPG - Online Role Playing Game, or computer RPG you can play online.

PC - Player character, the character role-played by a player.
PF - Pathfinder, published by Paizo, which is both a set of published adventures (in their setting, Golarion), and a game system (see PFRPG) with which to play them.
PFRPG - Pathfinder Role-playing Game.  Similar to D&D 3.5.

RPG - Role-playing game. In this blog, unless I state otherwise, when I say RPG, I mean TTRPG (see below).

STR - Strength, an ability score in D&D and related games.
SW - Savage Worlds, an RPG.

THAC0 - To Hit Armor Class Zero (but often pronounced "THAK - oh"), a stat that was used back in 2nd edition AD&D.
TPK - Total Party Kill, when every character in the party dies.
TTRPG - Tabletop role-playing game, like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Savage Worlds, Faery's Tale, Star Wars, Marvel Super Heroes, etc. (sorry if I didn't list your favorite!)

WIS - Wisdom, an ability score in D&D and related games
WOTC - Wizards of the Coast, producers of Dungeons & Dragons and the trading card game, Magic: The Gathering.  Owned by Hasbro.

XP - Experience points, awarded to characters for their accomplishments, and applied toward character advancement (e.g., at 2000 xp you reach 2nd level).