A Life Full of Adventure

Lirapto are a predatory species originating from a different world. They are extremely violent and self-interested. Lirapto reproduce asexually, and before coming to this planet a hundred years ago would leave their young to fend for themselves after only a few weeks.  Those that survive are tough and emotionally jaded. Even now, the young are still abandoned by individuals and cared for by the community as a whole. Their culture has no concept of pair bonding, sexual relationships, or marriage. Ideas like love and affection are weak and rarely expressed. Lirapto society is completely hierarchical and merit-based. They are highly cognizant of any hierarchical difference between themselves and those around them. They will not even speak to certain individuals if the difference between their social status is large. Because their ways are so alien in general, Lirapto receive -3 to all reaction rolls. The Lirapto believe that their monothei...

The Eagle's Eyrie Dungeon is part of the setting offered in Greg Christopher 's The Last Candle module. If used along with the module, the characters likely come to the dungeon in search of historical scrolls on behalf of the priory. This is the task I set my party with. Here are some notes: The goblin player didn't want to start with party. He wanted to be a captive found during the first encounter. This was his excuse/justification for traveling with the others. It took a while, but he was found with the Dark Elves holed up on the other side of the frost maggots.  The first door the party went to was locked and scrawled with a warning "STAY OUT". The dwarf cultists used the spell Peek to look into the room and see the Ghouls walking around the pillar. Since the spell was relatively long-lived, he also looked into the sitting room. The human sorcerer knew what she was looking for right from the get-go and cast Detect magic. The spell pointed beyond ghoul ...

On Thursday I played an online game of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e. I have some stuff to write up from the game, I just haven't gotten to it. Last night I ran Ambition &Avarice here at my house. It was an amazing time. I want to get that write up posted, too, but it will probably be rather long. Hopefully they will be up in the next couple days, or sometime this week. It's a busy week.

The Last Candle is an OSR-compatible introductory module for low level characters. Much like the Keep on the Borderlands, this module provides an urban setting set around a priory (The Last Candle) and a nearby dungeon setting (The Eagle's Eyrie). This module is a step up from the classic Keep, however, because it offers numerous adventure opportunities in the surrounding lands. There are five plot hooks set in the priory allowing for multiple different adventures. There are 20 wilderness encounters detailed for the surrounding areas. There are 11 areas of interest, further detailing the surrounding areas. Finally, the Eagle's Eyrie dungeon has 64 keyed rooms. The combinations of encounters, areas, and adventure opportunities should be more than enough for any group to adventure even past the 1-3 character levels listed on the front cover. Your group should get a lot of miles out of this product for only $4. A bit more from the product description: The Prieuré de Chauril...

Greg Christopher, author of Ambition & Avarice , posted these tips on Google+ yesterday. I thought I would share. It helps for those who might be stuck in a combat rut. Read on and open your imagination: This was asked in the Ambitions & Avarice community, but I thought I would share publicly because it says a lot about how people think. It was brought up by [Jim]. Jim noticed that since my monster model also incorporates a very low rate of attack bonus progression, a PC in heavy armor would be very formidable. If your troll (you are running the game) has no attack bonus and the knight has an AC of 22, you are going to be flailing and doing nothing, right? A lot of times in traditional RPGs, we think of combat as people standing next to each other just bashing away. That's why this seems to be a problem. And I'm not picking on Jim here, TONS of gamers think this way. But in the A&A rules, you can initiate a grapple with a touch attack. So that knight wit...

A Satyr is a humanoid that is half human and half goat. They are naïve and curious in most aspects of life. They are also a randy race, often caring for little more than the pleasures they can get out of life. These pleasures include wine, shapely nymphs or other enticing humanoids, and a soft place to sleep. Their whimsical nature is particularly difficult to control. Instead a satyr needs to be focused onto a task at hand, usually by an outside party. A satyr has the head, body, and arms of a human, but the lower extremities of a goat. They usually have small horns poking out of a head of unruly hair. The hind legs are powerful, giving them bonuses in running and leaping. Most satyrs are vegetarians who balk at the thought of killing another living creature. In extreme situations, however, one does what one must no matter how distasteful. The running bonus gives the satyr +4 to dexterity for the purpose of calculating encumbrance and speed rates (pg 32). Furthermore, a satyr who ...

On Friday Greg Christopher of Chubby Funster games released his full version of Ambition & Avarice on RPGNow. I think it is well worth the cost. I'm actually going to buy it when he releases the print on demand option as well. If you downloaded his beta version, there should be a discount for the pay version in your email. You might want to double check. Mine went to my spam folder. Here's the blurb from RPGNow : Ambition and Avarice is an action-adventure roleplaying game with an easy-to-understand OSR chassis. The characters are rough and ready adventurers. No more moralizing paladins and clerics. Even the religious characters are willing to get a little dirty in the pursuit of their goals. The game brings a fresh look to medieval fantasy with 10 unique classes that each bring something special to the table. Each class features; - Expertise in a class-specific task; like the Sorcerer's counterspelling ability or a Cultist's ability to sacrifice humanoids...

1) Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Warhammer wasn't the first fantasy roleplaying game I ever played, however it is the one I've put the most work into. When a friend of mine first introduced me to the first edition book, we sat down, made characters, and talked about a world of possibilities. Then we actually drew an entire town , searched the rule book, and placed all applicable careers into the town. I had made fantasy adventure before, but I only populated a few necessary NPCs. This town became the living, breathing fantasy realm that all GM advice tells you to create. Events happen in the town regardless of the players. Townsfolk live and die. Events unfold in the background. When the players come back to the town, they may find it much different than when they left. I hadn't done anything like this; I hadn't created anything outside of a dungeon before. The Warhammer career system, and some brainstorming with a friend, brought this all out of me. 2) D&D 2e I ...

I've been really bad at getting follow-up thoughts on the adventure I ran at the convention last weekend, so I'm just going to post what I have: Ambition & Avarice by Greg Christopher 1) Combat was too easy . This was my fault. I maxed out the PC HPs, but I left the HP of the creatures in the adventure at what they were rolled. We had a 22 HP orc ranger fighting 1 HP recently spawned orcs. To be fair, all the opponents should have been at max HP as well. Now, this isn't to say that people didn't get injured. We did have injuries, and we did need healing. I'll talk about that in the next point. 2) The Cultist changes things . Once the party saw what the Cultist could do, they suddenly wanted to knock their opponents out instead of killing them. We had a hobgoblin player trying to knock orcs out with the flat of his axe blade. A couple other players told me they were specifically trying to hit with the pommels of their swords.These players wanted their oppo...

OK, so these aren't random and weren't asked to be when the meme started. These are the 7 rpgs I have played the most since I began gaming. They are in order of the ones I've played the most, starting at the left. This is also the order I have DMed the most, up through Basic. I haven't GMed Earthdawn, Shadowrun, or C&C. I think the only game I've run that's not here is Ambition & Avarice .

We had a fun game on Saturday. The 3 character deaths all came from traps in the Haunted Halls. I'd decrease the power on at least two of the traps if was going to run the adventure for first level characters again. We didn't get a chance to try the combat system as the characters just happened to choose paths no where near any monsters. Even random encounter rolls came up with nothing. Lucky. I'll tweak this a bit before running it at SnowCon . I really want to see a party use the bomb I planted in the pile of metal stuff in the entry room. The weekend convention is over, so it's back to school and studying for me. Therefore I'm already excited for Dwimmermount next weekend. We should be able to finish level 1 in a sitting or two. I hope so, because I want to run a level or two at SnowCon in January. Finally, if I can get DodecaheDRONE in time, I'll run that at SnowCon, too. I want the game designers that are kind enough to interact with me on Google+ to ...

This FREE game was pitched to me as an OSR retro-clone. That’s usually enough to get my attention.   What I was introduced to when given an early draft was a game that reminded me of Basic D&D with a few extra, very cool, options. I started to write a review, but I could quickly see that it was going to be too long. Here’s my like/dislike or pro/con list: Pro: Dungeon Throws . These are similar to some well-known thieving skills, but everyone has them. How good you are varies by race, class, and how you spend discretionary points character points at each level.   Sad Panda: When I first was exposed to Dungeon Throws, they were in percentiles. Greg has apparently changed them to a d20 roll instead. I know it’s 6 of one and half dozen of another, but I really preferred the percentile rolls. (I’m sure that’s the WarHammer Fantasy Roleplayer in me talking.) Pro: Races . There are a great variety of races to choose from. They are categorized as Civilized a...