The meta gaming group, WHRPG has outgrown it’s West Hertfordshire borders as we expand further to encompass Hertfordshire from the east to the west.

And so we’ve changed the name to HertsRPG.

We now have five groups either running or getting revved up to run. Watford, Apsley, Tring, Welwyn Garden, and Bishop’s Stortford.

Checkout the new website: http://hertsrpg.com.

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Tags: Apsley, Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, Herts, HertsRPG!, Tring, Watford, Welwyn Garden City, WHRPG

The Secret Fire RPG*, from Secret Fire Games will be released on the opening day of GenCon in PDF and ePub formats. Hard-copies of this refreshing new RPG will be available soon after, possibly even by the end of the weekend.

Everything I’ve read about TSF so far has been good. It sounds old, and yet it sounds new, which is pretty much what’s said about many OGL remakes of old D&D.

TSF though is not an OGL clone, it’s something different. TSF’s developers have taken the best of the old and blended skilfully with modern RPG ideas. A blend I can’t wait to read about and play when I get my hands on the book.

So here’s looking forward to August 4th and the release of The Secret Fire.

* the RPG previously known as Legends & Labyrinths

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Tags: Legends & Labyrinths, Release, The Secret Fire

Legends and Labyrinths, as George Strayton recently revealed, is not actually the name of his new game, but a codename it was developed under.

The production name is “The Secret Fire”, a Tolkien reference if there ever was one! The company producing it is Secret Fire Games and I’m sure you can all spot the reference again in the logo.

I’ve been re-reading Lord of the Rings recently. Also I’ve been out cycling a lot in the countryside surrounding my new home, parts of which seem very shire like.

I’m playing in a Pathfinder game, which is great fun, but it doesn’t capture that spirit of exploration and adventure that D&D was for me in the early 1980s as a young Tolkien fan. The Secret Fire promises to bring back that feeling and I can’t wait to both play and run it.

I looking forward to reading the book when it’s released, it’s going to be an interesting RPG. For more information see the following sites:

http://legendsandlabyrinths.com

http://secretfiregames.com

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Tags: The Secret Fire

Thanks to some incoming posts on my Google+ stream, I’ve spotted a new upcoming RPG recently, by the name of Legends and Labyrinths.

I was directed to a blog post that outlined how L&L is different from other fantasy RPGs and it makes for a very interesting read.

My first reaction was, do we need another old school remake of early D&D? But I was wrong, it’s not an OGL clone but an entirely new creation from the dark mind of George Strayton, screenwriter and game designer.

It’s seems to have a feel of early D&D melded with elements of more modern RPG thinking and I can’t wait to give it a go.

I was so taken with the ideas and game-play possibilities, that I pledged some cash to the L&L Kickstarter Campaign, thereby securing my hardcopy of the book on release. That release date of course will be GenCon next month.

Check out the blog post about how L&L is different and if you it tickles your fancy then why not secure your own copy!?

I’m looking forward to making some helpful little L&L software projects to aid my job as GM.

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Tags: DMing, News, roleplaying, RPG, World Building

I’m not DMing at the moment, someone else has taken the helm of our group for a while. After a bit of a vote we’ve ended up playing the first Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rise of the Runelords.

I’ve got to say that the Adventure Path does seem very well written, although I’ve not peeked at any of the books. It’s very reminiscent of the old 3.5 stuff that Paizo wrote for Dungeon when it still existed in print.

I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy the return to 3.5, although after a couple of weeks it feels kind of homely and comfortable like the return of an old friend. I’m still into 4e and must get back to regularly attending the local weekly encounters session, but I’m also finding something in Pathfinder/3.5 that I feel is not as emphasised in 4e, which is the differences between classes.

I understand this was the whole point of 4e design, balance, balance and more balance. Which in my opinion the design definitely achieved, but is it at the expense of a feeling of variety? I’ll know more when we’ve played further and the Wizard has become overpowered and I feel left behind!

I’m playing a Cleric, and I like some of the changes that pathfinder has made to 3.5, such as the ability to Channel Energy a number of times per day, and so not use up all my carefully chosen spells being the party band aid.

The campaign is going well and I’m looking forward to playing more of it.

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Tags: Playing, Review, roleplaying, RPG

This is not RPG related, but as you know I love a bit of music and wanted to point out a cool online guitar course.

Learn to play guitar with Gigajam Guitar

Apologies for the non RPG interruption!

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Whilst the Capn’ is fighting the internet trolls with his +2 words, I have a game to review. Obviously, I’m talking about Bully Pulpit’s wonderful game Fiasco, written by Jason Morningstar. The one that @Captcalamitous called “too indie even for me”. Is it very indie? I guess, although I don’t see anything wrong about that. The presentation is sleek and stylish, the quality of the book is amazing, and for twelve pounds I got a physical copy and a PDF download. Can’t go wrong. On top of that, every month there’s a new free playset on the website, complete with a crisp and fresh gorgeous illustration.

Fiasco calls itself a roleplaying game of powerful ambition and poor impulse control. The book presents itself as a “make your own Coen brother’s film in a few minutes and play it out in your living room” kind of thing. Which is exactly what it is, and it works wonderfully. Now, if you’re not a film aficionado then you’re probably wondering who the hell these Coen brothers are. For those of you less film savvy, think of films with criminal ideas gone disastrously wrong, possibly with a lot of black comedy elements. Like Guy Ritchie films or, say, Ocean’s Eleven that end up killing each other for the money they just stole, until there’s nothing but the money left (I’d so watch that).

The way it works is, you choose a playset, which is effectively a list of details styled around a certain theme. The default ones that come with the book are a southern town, a booming town in the wild west, suburban life and a research station in Antarctica. There’s plenty more to choose from on their website, like a rock tour or a group of adventurers who just slew a dragon and want all of the loot for themselves. These give you some ideas for the relationships, needs, objects and locations you’re gonna give to your characters. And then you play out scenes, where you either set up the scene and let the other players resolve it, or give your friends the right to set you up but choose the outcome yourself. You play these scenes till it all comes crashing down. There’s a bit more to it than that, but this forms the bulk of the game.

I’ll be honest with you, the rulebook sat on my shelf for about three months, if not a bit more, without being touched. I read it as soon as it came in the post, which took me about 2-3 hours, very quick for a roleplaying game. But finding a group to play with was not as quick. Admittedly my wife jumped at the idea, and our flat mate was partial to it as well, but we felt like we needed one more person. Now, after having played it, I wish we had been playing it all along. In fact, I enjoyed myself so much that, right after we finished, I wanted to dive in again and play a second game. We picked the ‘Antarctica research station’ playset and slowly progressed through character creation, which took a bit more time than the book suggests. But in the end we had a rag tag group of flawed individuals that were about to face each other in inevitably gruesome fashion. I felt like my character was the catalyst for it all; being the guy who scams the warehouse system, is being investigated for fraud and has an unhealthy obsession with his fire axe.  Why would I create such a psychopath? Well, the beauty of the game is that you’re only responsible for 40% of who your character is and what he does. The rest is decided by the group and the game still feels like you have the right amount of control.

There were a few hiccups I have discovered. The rules for the setup were incredibly vague and hard to read. I had to re-read it a few times. This might just be me but I usually don’t find rulebooks confusing. But this I feel is a minor issue compared to how much everyone in our group preplayed. Instead of playing the scene we would pre-describe what would happen in it, and when it came to actual roleplaying we wouldn’t know what to do since everything’s already been said out loud.  The book addresses this and tells you to avoid it, but it’s very tempting to still do it. Of course this isn’t the game’s fault, but it did taint our session slightly.

The real driving force behind the mechanics however is ‘The Tilt’ and ‘The Aftermath’. The Tilt is a midway point and introduces a car-crash element to your stories. Suddenly my axe-guy, who up to this point was only mildly threatening, had to become a murderer because some of the other players thought that “Greed leads to killing” is a good tilt element to introduce to our game. The aftermath is an exercise in the unexpected. It’s a montage-like summary of the game that wraps things up with three to five sentences per character. Again, because you are not in control of your fate, you never truly know how the game is going to end, even when you think you have it all figured out. I was fairly sure that my axe-man was not coming out of this alive. Not only did he get away with only a minor insignificant head injury, but the final sentence of my montage revealed him in a new warehouse, getting up to no good again.

The bottom line is: this game is awesome. I can’t think of enough ways to recommend it. Oh and I hear there’s a sourcebook coming out in the near future too.

p.s. Follow me on twitter @banjotheclown

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Tags: #DnD, fiasco, indie, Review, RPG

Asshats

It seems to me that the internet, whilst being a thoroughly useful tool, gets abused by serious dickwads who think it’s their right to target people with bilious and vitriolic comments purely because they have a different opinion to them. I for one have had enough, you know who you are and to be frank I consider all of you to be a waste of sperm and oxygen thieves, the world would be a better place without all of you. Yarrgggh!

Just because there is no real way to police the idiots mentioned in the above paragraph doesn’t mean that we have freedom of speech, for instance, were this article calling for a fatwah or a crusade I could expect to be visited by some of the chaps in blue uniforms and called to account, should I threaten to blow something up it would be much the same. I have always been a big fan of the quote “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” however, when someone devolves to personal attacks, purely because I say I don’t like something then the bets are off. they don’t get to do that and I will not feed the trolls, I will explain where they are mistaken and that will be my final comment on the matter.

I don’t like 4E, it is my opinion that it is turning into a squad level tactical game, the way things are going with it does not appeal to me in the slightest, I will not be using any of the cards, I will also not be running any more of it. For me the rot set in during a game of LFR I was running when the players told me that they didn’t have time for roleplaying they wanted to get to the encounter. Hey asshole! Yes you out there, the angry one with the red face, step away from the pc and go and do something more useful for the world, see if you can win a Darwin award.

There I said it, I don’t like 4E, does that make me a bad person? Does it mean I am consigned to gamer hell? Does it mean that WoTC storm-troopers will come and kick down my door and drag me away? What about me, will I break into homes where they’re playing 4E and kill everyone? Will I demonstrate outside games shops and call anyone playing 4E rude names? Nope, none of the above, I’ll continue on as I am, I’ll play something different and WoTC can no longer sell me every book they produce, I also cancelled my ddi subscription all told they have lost someone who spent a large amount of $ on their products, but hey that’s cool, because I know there are people out there who do like it and will continue playing it.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one talking about the elephant in the room or that spanky new set of clothes the Emperor is not wearing, but hey-ho it’s only zeroes and ones at the end of the day.

Now on to something I do like.

Pathfinder Adventure Paths

Just recently I have started running 2 games of Pathfinder, I decided to run their adventure path product – Rise of the Runelords this for me is an extremely well written and produced product, it’s filled with information, excellent scenarios and loads of colourful art, in it Goblins take on a whole new life and seem akin to some of the darker fairy tales. I have run the first part of this campaign  twice now for 2 seperate groups and it was fresh each time, the group dynamics were different, the party makeup was different and the town seemed to come alive for both groups. There have been some memorable moments too, from the Cleric of Cayden Cailean holding a goblin at bay with a rapier until the ranger loped in and sliced it in half to the bumbling sorcerer who tripped over his robes whilst trying to run away.

My players managed to bring their characters to life, they have places to stay, money problems, women problems and they are saving up for their next gadget/toy just like everyone else. The storyline is really good and I expect to have a lot of fun with the 2 groups, I’m well aware that the group is the key to roleplaying goodness, just like I’m well aware that the system does not really dictate the style of play, what I think the system does do is lend itself to a particular playing style and lead the game in a particular direction.

I won’t go into the Rise of the Runelords AP in too much detail, I know at least 2 of my players read this stuff I write, but the story really does build to an excellent end game, if you’re a GM and you haven’t seen this stuff, buy the pdfs and have a read they really are good.

And finally I’d like to welcome Banjo the Clown to the crew, unlike me Banjo likes 4E and NWoD, but then I guess there’s no accounting for taste. *wink*

Seriously Banjo runs a mean 4E game and I’m sure he does the same for the various World of Darkness games he runs too, sniff, not been invited to one of those, I understand he’s running Promethean at the moment and it’s all going to end in tears.

That’s enough from me today and remember if you’re an angry asshat, go and find someone else to pester!

Comments: 6 comments

Tags: #DnD, 4e, Captain Curmudgeon, Fantasy, Nerd Rage, Pathfinder, roleplaying

As you may have noticed, CaptCalamatous recently joined our crew, and I’m also pleased to announce another new crew member, the ship’s clown, BanjoTheClown who produced our recent Gamma World : Legion of Gold review and unboxing video.

So welcome to Banjo and the Captain and keep an eye on posts from the two of them!

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Say hello to the newest member of the Buccaneer’s Guild – Banjo the Clown. Because every pirate crew needs one. And without further ado, my first post:

The 7^th edition of Gamma World is now complete. Which is an odd thing to say, because the game in itself was advertised as complete. But this expansion really rounds things up. The things that felt like they were missing from the base game are finally here.

Instead of writing up a list of the things that are inside I thought I’d do an unboxing video instead. I did end up making a few mistakes (on which I’ll elaborate later) and the video quality is a bit grainy but bear with us as this is our first attempt.

It’s hard to review this game without reviewing Gamma World itself. Everything that this expansion adds, feels like it should have been part of the game all along. I imagine this was deliberate WotC strategy targeted at gamers who want to have ‘the entire thing’ without too many purchases. I know this because I am one of these completists (although the disease has not progressed lately and is being kept under check by my wife and student budget). Is this an ideal publishing model? No. I would have preferred that both of these expansions were part of a single boxset bunched up together with the main game and sold in a higher price range. Then later on, after the vocal internet community has expressed what it wants, a new expansion could be released that features these additions. Unfortunately, this publishing and design model is a bit too old. Companies like to preplan everything now; they know what source material is going to come out for a game a year before the game is even out. This, of course, has its ups and downs. But I digress…

I say I digress because Gamma World is still a great game. The only thing that irks me about it is that most players, when creating characters, focus on the quirky too much leaving the rest slightly one-dimensional. This closes off a lot of roleplaying options during game-time. I am guilty of this too. Just ask my Hawkoid-Arachnoid character, Piotr Parker.

The unboxing video says that there are six new origins. There are in fact eight of them. And whilst some feel a bit here and there, they are still great additions to the grand total. The unboxing video also says that there are no feats in Gamma World which is no longer true because it is one of the things that the expansion adds. Every origin gets a set of three feats which you get at levels four, seven and ten. The first question my wife asked was “Are there more levels now?” to which I had to sadly shake my head. This would have been amazing frankly. Finally, the video says that the adventure takes you to the moon, which is true. But there is also an entire chapter devoted to Moon Zone 9, an outer space location that provides rules and useful tips for running adventures outside of Gamma Terra. And let’s not forget the very important moon gear (no ancient moon junk table though).

What did I forget? The forty-five odd pages devoted to new monsters which fill out the higher level monster tier, missing in the base game and the first expansion. I am glad to report that monsters now go all the way up to level fourteen. Finally Piotr will be able to dine on his favorite meal – the space eel.

Banjo out.

Comments: 4 comments

Tags: #DnD, 4e, dungeons and dragons, gamma world, roleplaying, unboxing