Seeking a 2015 Ennies Nomination

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Ennies 2015 Logo

Ennies 2015 Logo

This year, I am seeking your vote! To be an Ennies’ Judge.

I would appreciate it if you would take a bit of your time to go vote for the 2105 Ennie Judges. Read up on the 2015 nominees.

The Ennies are “an annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming.”

One challenge that I believe faces the Ennies is the issue of 800 pound gorillas. The games and companies that are the gateway into our hobby.

I acknowledge that many gamers stay in the entry way, playing only their gateway game. That is awesome and works for them.

But I would like to also celebrate the games that are less well-known. That may scratch a very niche itch.

This may require a few adjustments to the game categories; And I believe my answer to one of the nominee questions helps illuminate where I would like to help shape the Ennies:

I would love to recognize first time entrants for their own award. This could be a general grab bag, or a narrow set of categories.

 

I would love to see awards for best third party material.

A vibrant third-party community is something to celebrate.

Best open content, either licensed under the OGL or Creative Commons (or other licenses), would be a great addition.

So, if you would also like to celebrate excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming, please take some time and read up on the 2015 nominees then go vote.

The Gnomes of Levnec by Zzarchov Kowolski

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Admiring Zzarchov Kowolski’s Scenic Dunnsmouth, I reached out to him for a review copy of The Gnomes of Levnec. He was gracious to oblige.

I was curious for two reasons:

  1. Scenic Dunnsmouth is a masterful adventure toolkit.
  2. My wife is The Soapy Gnome, a soap maker

What Do We Have Here

Gnomes of Levnec provides a handful of locations. The village of Levnec is the “obvious” starting place.

The village is small and not bustling…something is amiss…there are a few clues. There are a handful of NPC descriptions along with possible responses to enquiry. And a few descriptions of buildings. Player interaction will be key.

Along with the village, Gnomes of Levnec describes a few other locations and creatures. Places to explore. Opposition to overcome. Creatures whose time is passing.

Random Tables

And a fantastic “so you are lost in the woods” table. Based on the map, and the awesomeness of the table, I would make sure that I roll on that table the first time they head into the woods. And at least one more time.

At its core, you roll a d8, d6, and a d4 consulting the corresponding table. If you roll triples, doubles, or max then you will apply a kicker to the results. There is a lot of information encoded in the tables.

As with many well written random tables, I appreciate the potentiality of the random table. Things that could happen, but won’t. Early on, I would skim random tables. Now, I read them as they help to convey and reinforce the author’s intent. They are like a baton hand-off from the writer to the GM…with the author saying “I’ve done my part, now you make sense of this.”

What about the Gnomes

Yes, there are gnomes, and their role is important to this adventure. It is unique and unexpected.

Picking Some Nits

Gnomes of Levnec has nice headers but its paragraphs are dense affairs; Scanning the text is difficult.

To Buy or Not to Buy?

Buy The Gnomes of Levnec if you are:

  • Wanting an interesting take on gnomes
  • Willing to fill in some blanks
  • Fleshing out the edges of civilization, where the old and bizarre still live and breath
  • Interested in things off kilter
  • Looking to have your characters’s crawling through the woods

Don’t buy it if you are:

  • Looking for a dungeon crawl
  • Interested in lots of action (ie Combat!)
  • Are not up for a mix of morbidity and whimsy
  • Not wanting to come up with a hook for adventure
  • If you are wanting explicit instructions on how to run this
  • Certain your players won’t talk with NPCs
  • A strict believer in traditional gnomes
  • Interested in adventures using “formal” language

Scenic Dunnsmouth by Zzarchov Kowolski

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I believe the complete list of adventures I have run closely from a book are:

  • The Red Hand of Doom (D&D 3E)
  • The Night Below (AD&D 2E)
  • The Dramune Run (Star Frontiers)
  • Under the House of the Three Squires (Torchbearer)
  • Breakout (Marvel Heroic)
  • Bloodstone (D&D 3E, Burning Wheel)
  • The Trouble in Hochen (Burning Wheel)

Yet I own lots of adventures. And keep buying more. Because I like smashing the ideas of the adventures into my brain for later reference.

Screencapture of the PDF cover of Scenic Dunnsmouth by Zzarchov Kowolski

Zzarchov Kowolski‘s “Scenic Dunnsmouth” piqued my curiosity after I read the following back cover text:

Scenic Dunnsmouth features an innovative village generation system using dice and playing cards to ensure that every expedition to Dunnsmouth is unique.

It delivers on that promise.

What Do We Have Here

Most adventures I’ve read provide a “fully formed” adventure. A living creature with skin, guts, skeleton, and sinew.

A fully formed adventure may work for an adventure with a simple relationship graph (i.e. Dungeon Crawl) but for a mystery, attempting to hold the concepts and pieces of the adventure in my mind is challenging.

Scenic Dunnsmouth takes an interesting and divergent approach from a standard adventure. It provides you with:

  • the guts – the core mystery
  • some disassembled mixbag of bones – d4, d6, d8, and d12 kind of bones
  • a bolt of mottled skin – the look, feel, and tone of the writing
  • some connective tissues - Families, relationships, and even possible feuds
  • a toolkit for assembling the adventure

And there lies its genius.

Some Assembly Required

Yes there is a core mystery and evil. But Zzarchov provides a procedure for assembling your Frankenstein’s monster of an adventure.

With a fistful of dice you determine:

  • The locations of the town
  • The weirdness level
  • Where to position a few of the stock characters

Then, you shuffle up some cards and determine the town’s inhabitants. And that is it.

If someone or somewhere doesn’t show up in your town construction, it does not exist in this incarnation of Dunnsmouth.

Taking Notes to Help Remember

When I am reading, I’m a terrible note taker. I don’t mark in my books. The exercise of finalizing Dunnsmouth was the best note taking session for any of my adventure preparation.

The final result of the procedure was a map with numerous locations keyed by:

  • dice size
  • rolled value
  • card suit
  • card value

With those four bits of information, I can get a general sense for the tone of Dunnsmouth. I can also lookup in the character index more information about the inhabitants and locations.

Not bad for 30 minutes of adventure preparation!

To Buy or Not to Buy?

Buy Scenic Dunnsmouth if you are:

  • Interested in unique procedures for adventure creation
  • Looking for weird fantasy
  • Looking for an interrogation/observation-based mystery

Don’t buy it if you are:

  • Looking for a dungeon crawl
  • Interested in lots of action (ie Combat!)

Other Reviews

A Handful of other reviews of Scenic Dunnsmouth.

Fond Memories of the Kenku

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For a few years in high school and college, I had a tradition of running a New Year’s Eve one shot. We would order up a six foot sub, plenty of caffeine, and start gaming around 5pm. Our sessions would last until 8am or so.

One session, I believe it was December 31st, 1993, I had a very rudimentary adventure planned out. The characters were going to escort a diplomat to another dignitary’s seat of power. I had a few set pieces in mind:

I also provided the characters. If memory serves they were 8th level or so in AD&D 2E. The characters were:

  • A human priestess of Sune
  • A dwarf fighter/thief
  • A human thief/diviner
  • A human fighter
  • And a few others now lost to my memory

As I was handing out characters, I gave my friend Matt the Diviner/Thief. It was a finesse character with no apparent ability to directly influence things (poor Strength and Charisma).

Matt looked at the character sheet and ask: “Why do I speak Gnomish?”

And that is when the wheels went in motion. He was working for the gnomes but something went sour. An early scene established that Kenku were slighted by the gnomes and were going to take it out on him.

This was one of the first times that I had truly improvised my game based on a question from the player. And as it turned out, this left a lasting impression on me.

First, I have always been particular to diviners. Even when I play Apocalypse World I gravitate towards high Sharp characters, attempting to observe and build an advantage.

Second, the power of asking questions at the table cannot be understated. While the details of the encounter with the Kenku are lost, I believe everyone at the table enjoyed the dynamism of an encounter where it wasn’t simply “Kill someone.”

Third, Kenku. I fell in love with the avian masters of subterfuge. While I haven’t brought them back into play, I’ve always had them waiting in the wings.

So this past week, I began exploring how I might use Kenku. Thinking more about their motivations and social structure.

Write-up for Fate Core

Kenku
Aspects: That Shiny will be Mine!, Blackmailing Information Broker
Skills: Good (+3) Deceive, Fair (+2) Stealth, Average (+1) Contacts, Burglary
Stunts: Mimicry. Can mimic familiar sounds, voices, and accents.
Stress: 2 boxes

Write-up for Dungeon World

Kenku Group, Stealthy, Devious, Organized, Intelligent, Cautious, Hoarder
Short sword (d4 damage 1 piercing) 6 HP 2 armor
Close

“I’m telling you, he had a beak and clawed hands!” said the prisoner.

“Right. I’ve heard that one before. And there were a dozen of them,” said the jailer.

“Yeah! How’d you know?”

“Because you ain’t the first. I’ve heard lots of things. But the idea that there are a bunch bird men running things in this city is absurd. Think about it? Wouldn’t someone have caught on by now? The council? The guards? The guilders? Shut up and face up to it…you did something stupid, and 10 years hard labor is your reward.”

Instinct: To collect that which shines

  • Pass through society without drawing attention
  • Mimic the sound of anything ever heard
  • Blackmail: Let other people do your dirty work!
  • Where there is one, many are sure to be found

Fascination with the Flame Princess

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Last week, I found myself once again in Chicago. I had plans to meetup with Nathan, and we agreed to connect at our usual rendezvous – The Wanderer’s Refuge. While waiting for Nathan, I stumbled upon a few copies of Better than Any Man, a product that I had kickstarted for Lamentations of the Flame Princess’s 2013 Free RPG Day drive.

Recent Lamentations of the Flame Princess Arrivals

Recent Lamentations of the Flame Princess Arrivals

I had been unable to get a physical copy – what with it being released while I was neck deep in RPGs at Origins last year. So I quickly snagged a copy of this gorgeous adventure. I asked the store owner the cost, and he said “It was part of Free RPG Day, so its free!”

Later, I had an afternoon to kill and found myself again at Games Plus in Mount Prospect, IL. My first visit there, I had bought The God that Crawls and The Monolith from beyond Space and Time.

This visit, they had 4 copies LotFP Rules & Magic. But I already had my copy from a previous order. Though I stood over those books and admired their quality.

Late last year, during one of James Raggi’s crazy “Things are On Sale” days, I purchased a physical copy LotFP Rules & Magic as well as Geoffrey McKinney’s Isle of the Unknown and Carcosa – having read and reviewed the PDF a few years prior.

I kickstarted indigogoed Vincent Backer’s The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions during James’s crazy indigogo blitz – 19 concurrent indigogo campaigns many of which did not fully fund. I wanted to see Vincent’s take on the more OSR related things.

Last month, when James was asking for volunteers to test out a payment processing system, I jumped at the chance to both help out and get a discount. I ordered Kelving Green’s Forgive Us, Zzarchov Kowlolski’s Scenic Dunnsmouth, and Kenneth Hite’s Qelong.

I also have the Grindhouse Edition of the LotFP rules and Zak S’s fantastic Vornheim. The Grindhouse Edition rules provide a digestible introduction to a game that just isn’t quite like the games that I remember from years past. Things are more fragile and mysterious.

Vornheim is amongst my favorite supplements. It is not an exhaustive description of the city, but instead provides tools, guideposts, brief “essays” each for bringing Vornheim to life.

So confident am I that I will love everything Lamentations of the Flame Princess, I joined the Pembrooktonshire Gardening Society. And my card arrived today.

But here is the dirty secret…

I’ve never once played a Lamentations of the Flame Princess game. But they are amongst my most favorite role-playing books.

First, they are gorgeously produced – from the evocative cover art to the decadent paper stock. Just handling them is enough to drive the bibliophile wild.

Second, they are different. They are weird – in comparison to much of what is out there. In some ways reading each of the books transports me. As I crack open one of these books, it is as though I am given another chance at being introduced to RPGs.

So cheers to you James, for all of your crazy endeavors! You are taking risks in what you publish – acknowledging as much in The Monolith from beyond Space and Time – and I’m enjoying seeing the end results. Especially in their high quality printed form.

 

Getting the Band Back Together

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Thus far, 2014 has been a year of very little gaming. Normally I would be experiencing withdrawal symptoms, but that has not been the case.

I’ve focused on helping my wife get her soap business off of the ground. We are in year two of the Soapy Gnome,  with the next month focusing on opening a shop in downtown Goshen, Indiana.

My children are involved in more after school activities, which means more time spent in transit. They are teenagers and I can see the window of time with them closing. So I won’t give up those hours.

I’ve also had a significant amount of work related travel over the last two years. This has meant I’ve had face to face time with a handful of gamers from other parts of the country. But it chews into any continuity in game schedules.

I had an opportunity to do some freelance work, and have opted to not pursue it. When I crunched the numbers I had at best 2 hours of unaccounted for time each weekday. And perhaps 20 hours on any given weekend. In other words 138 hours of my 168 hour week are accounted for.

All to say I’ve been busy.

But I want to get back to gaming. I would want to try to find an evening and establish a schedule. I would love for someone else to run the games, and coordinate things, but that may be wishful thinking.

My brother has suggested that we play games via Google Hangouts. And I’m working my way up to that. I love sitting around the game table and playing an RPG. The social aspect is so very fantastic.

Backing Project: Dark by Will Hindmarch

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My absolute favorite RPG sessions always involve a heavy dose of scoundrels and rogues. Which is why I’m backing “Project: Dark” by Will Hindmarch.

In fact the single most memorable session in my gaming experience started with everyone having committed a crime and were given a chance for freedom – Irv the Mole if you are keeping score at home.

I know that there are those that would just as soon wait until something is complete and released so they don’t assume a financial risk – or they simply don’t want to wait. And for those on the sidelines, I can understand; Personally I have a few Kickstarters that I’ve relegated to the “if it shows up, fine” category.

I have personally met Will on numerous occasions; And played in a few of the games run by him. He is the utmost professional game designer with a solid track record. He truly understands games.

And while I missed my chance at GenCon to play early drafts of the game, those were able to spoke quite highly of the game.

The Kickstarter is already funded, and I can promise my players that come March this will be brought to the table.