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.

Comments: 1 comment

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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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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For anyone who’s been playing with the two new web-services that the online version of WotC’s Character Builder uses, you may have tried remotely logging in, but wondered how the password needs to be encrypted?

Well I’ve cracked the way passwords are encrypted and have been able to login remotely and do simple actions such as, get a list of all my characters and export the XML for an old style DnD4e file.

Here’s a simple bit of C# showing how to encode a password.

public static byte[] SimpleEncrypt(string value, string key)
{
    byte[] buffer2;
    ICryptoTransform transform = GetSimpleAlgorithm(key).CreateEncryptor();
    using (MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream())
    {
        using (CryptoStream stream2 = new CryptoStream(stream, transform, CryptoStreamMode.Write))
        {
            byte[] bytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(value);
            stream2.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
            stream2.Flush();
            stream2.FlushFinalBlock();
            stream.Position = 0L;
            buffer2 = stream.ToArray();
        }
    }
    return buffer2;
}

private static SymmetricAlgorithm GetSimpleAlgorithm(string key)
{
    AesManaged aes = new AesManaged();
    byte[] source = new SHA256Managed().ComputeHash(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(key));
    return new AesManaged { Key = source, IV = source.Take<byte>((aes.BlockSize / 8)).ToArray<byte>() };
}

As you can see this takes the username and password as inputs, if you’ve built a nice client wrapper around the SOAP webservice, something that Visual Studio does for me, then logging in is as simple as calling the login method on either of the web services.

contentClient.Login(username, SimpleEncrypt(password, username));

If we then use the GetAvailableContent() method of the ContentVault service, we can return and enumerate a list of characters.

ContentInfo[] content = contentClient.GetAvailableContent(0);

for (int i = 0; i < content.Length; i++)
{
    XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(content[i].CommittedContent.Details.ToString());
    var name = doc.Element("CharacterDetails").Element("Name").Value;
    Console.WriteLine("{0} : {1}", i, name);
}

Then using the GetData() method of the same service we can grab the DnD4e XML file.

DataWithVersion data = contentClient.GetData(
    new ContentVault.ContentIdentifier { ContentID = content[0].CommittedContent.Identifier.ContentID },
    null
    );

RawContentBlob blob = data.Data as RawContentBlob;

String charFile = new UTF8Encoding().GetString(blob.RawData, 0, blob.RawData.Length);

File.WriteAllBytes("d:\\temp.dnd4e", blob.RawData);

There you go just a brief window into some of the things the ContentVault service can do.

No word from WotC on whether or not we’re allowed to do this though. I did ask, but never got a response.

One last note, if you’re doing this in Visual Studio then make sure the bindings for the web services have allowCookies set to true, then the login will be remembered for the subsequent calls to the service.

If you’re consuming the SOAP in some other not Microsoft way, then obviously you’ll need to do the same thing, save the cookie from the login response and send it on with any following requests.

Comments: 14 comments

Tags: #DnD, 4e, D&D, DDI, Programming

The new Silverlight character builder uses web services to communicate back and forth with WotC’s servers. I’ve spotted two web services so far, the ContentVault service and the D20Workspace service.

ContentVault: http://ioun.wizards.com/ContentVault.svc
D20Workspace:  http://vecna.wizards.com/D20WorkspaceService.svc

You gotta love the host names there.

The ContentVault service, as you’d expect from the name appears to me, after a little investigation, to deal with grabbing content from the server.

The D20Workspace service looks like it is how characters are loaded, updated and checked against the rules and saved.

Everytime you make a new choice in the client and there’s a slight pause, this is your choice being submitted to the D20Workspace service.

The Silverlight client doesn’t appear to be going anywhere near the compendium for data on powers/races/classes, infact I can’t see that data coming from anywhere infact. A mystery. I need to look closer, perhaps it’s downloaded with the Silverlight client code for speed purposes?

Both services have login methods, so if WotC were to give a little guidance, and if the compendium data is also available as a login protected webservice, then I don’t see any reason why someone couldn’t write an HTML/Javascript client based on those services. And as you’d have to login to use it then WotC shouldn’t mind that kind of extensibility being used.

Look what a great API has done for Twitter for example.

Comments: 1 comment

Tags: DDI

I’ve decided a 4e wand of wonder would be a interestingly fun item for my group. So to that end I’m collecting crazy ideas for random effects!

So if you have an idea please submit it using this form!

Or head over to http://bit.ly/WandOfWonder.

Submit as many as you like!

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