Breaking shields [LotFP, LL, etc.]

Shields might be handy AC boosters. But as armors are almost unbreakable what about shields? They might break.

When character or a creature with a shield is hit with natural 20 result, there's a change that the shield breaks.

4 in 6 change for small shields and bucklers
3 in 6 change for medium and wooden shields
2 in 6 change for large and enforced shields
1 in 6 change for tower and metal shields

If there are no different types of shields in game use fifty-fifty (3-in-6) or what is most logical.

Also for flavor if an enemy attack is strong enough (lots of damage with a single blow or several attacks in a row for example) the shield might break. Use shield's change to break or x-in-6 change what suits best.

Sometimes natural 20 isn't necessarily needed at all. If a dragon stomps the character with a shield rolling well but not well enough to hit or rolls ridiculously bad damage, maybe it was the shield what saved character this time breaking into splinters in process!

In my opinion shields can be much more flavor and even character's trademark than just a static AC bonus.

[Labyrinth Lord] Gobbowolf - half lycan, half goblin

Cleric players can create their own religion

In many fantasy rpg settings there are religions Cleric characters can choose from, but there are also games without a setting in a core book (i.e. Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Labyrinth Lord only two to mention). If you are using your homebrew campaign or generic world where the adventures are location based (i.e. running LotFP or LL where characters operate from the village you have created to do adventure modules or your own adventures) there might be one or few religions you have created. But does that have to restrict what religion(s) the Cleric character can follow?

No.

If there are options of religions to choose from don't restrict you player creating his own order to follow.  It might not be big in your campaign setting but rather a small order/religion/cult. There already might be dozens of gods so there might very well be a lesser god to follow. It's just that there aren't too many followers but the character happens to be one of them.

The religion/cult/order should have a name and a deity naturally. Player can also describe the practices. It is good that player checks his idea of this smaller custom religion with his Referee to be sure that it fits the campaign setting.

The good part is that from the player's idea of his Cleric's religion/order/cult the Referee can add a new religion/cult/order in his campaign setting. The Cleric player's own little custom religion/cult/order might be just that; a small generally unknown and not with much influence or it might grow to be a bigger thing in the campaign setting.

There might be also other flavors to the game. The character might want to convert others in the setting towards his own little religion/cult/order and he might spend his hard earned loot to make it stronger. In a high enough level (Labyrinth Lord) the character might even build his own temple for the religion and start to be a major player in his religion/cult/order.

If the game goes that far that the character is wealthy and experienced enough to establish something for his religion and then retire his character might become a NPC in the campaign world making the religion an actual bigger thing in a game world. Wouldn't that be a great reward for a player? Starting as a 1st level Cleric worshipping this minor deity but when retiring he has achieved something bigger for his religion/cult/order?

And if the players play together well they might create something bigger! Cleric making a temple, Fighter creating a stronghold etc. This way the party might even create a micro nation!

Here's another idea. The deity character worships is a weaker god. It might be new or just awaken from a long idling. Player's Cleric would be actually only one who has a vocation for this new god. What ever the reasons are why the player's Cleric was chosen are beyond human understanding. But the character has a mission directly from his god; to make his god stronger. This way the character would be the prophet for the god and the god's power would depend on the character's actions. Building temples and shrines and proclaim places holy in addition to convert people to this god could be a mini-campaign inside of the real campaign.

What would be better starting point for this Cleric than to get his fellow adventurers to support his and his god's cause?

Referee can also make custom rewards. For every x people Cleric converts and for every shrine, holy place, temple etc. the Cleric makes there could be a reward from the god. And those in the party who actively help the Cleric to do his god's will will also benefit from the rewards. The rewards might be bonus XP or something supernatural like blessings or even enchantments on their equipments (Fighter who slays enemies in the name of his fellow Cleric's god's name gets his blade enchanted against undead etc.).

With a custom religion/order/cult of the party's Cleric there are unlimited possibilities and motivations for party to quest. It's simple to make party to go into that dungeon because god said they to go there. McGuffin at its best.

Let's look back at the year 2012

This is the post about my gaming year of 2012. I'll write here about things that affected my gaming the most.

Old School Reneissance And Clones

Old Dunegons & Dragons never was the game I enjoyed when I was a kid. I already played RuneQuest and Warhammer 1e so when testing some red box D&D and AD&D 2e those didn't feel fun for me. The main reason propably is that I didn't start gaming with d20 (well, my first game was ANKH what is inspired by D&D) so D&D just didn't feel special anymore.

Last year I started to get really interested in OSR thanks to several blogs. At that time I enjoyed mostly Vampire: the Masquerade and was totally bored in fantasy because it was almost exclusively fantasy that I gamed when I was a kid (some scifi and cyberpunk too, but less of those).

But reading all neat OSR stuff I realized that fantasy can actually be cool if you do it right. Also I found out that actually some old-school games are rules simple and you can focus on the adventure instead of hundreds of pages of different rules.

I do enjoy storytelling games where characters are in the center but I also found out that games where the adventure is the main thing are awesome. Also the fact that it is so easy to write universal material for old-school games is awesome!

Lamentations of the Flame Princess

It was late 2011 when I bought the Grindhouse Edition box but I started to read and like it in early 2012. The rules are simple and I like the weird/horror themes of the game as I am a horror fan. It was easy step to start digging OSR with LotFP because it did hit the spot where my interests are. Also the Referee book is good read.

I liked the rules how they played like 3.0 but still old-school. That's ascending AC there. When I played D&D 3.0 I stripped the rules and when got into LotFP I realized that its rules are what I wanted 3.0 to be.

I never was that interested in pre-made adventures because I wanted to create and control my own games. LotFP adventures are so good that they actually made me appreciate pre-made adventures for the first time.

Of the 2012 games for me LotFP must be one of the most influencing game. It was the final hit for my OSR interest and it is a great game with great adventure and sourcebooks.

Also whole year 2012 LotFP products (Vornheim, adventures, Isle of the Unknown) were only gamebooks I wanted to buy new. That's something.

Labyrinth Lord

When searching for a real retro-clone (LotFP is like house-ruled version of traditional D&D-esque fantasy games) there were several game PDFs I checked out but none of those felt right for me. Then I found Labyrinth Lord and with some background research I realized that this is the real retro-clone for me.

I love how simple the rules are even though I am not a fan of Thac0 type combat (it fits LL perfectly though).

Labyrinth Lord is like old D&D for me now.

Most of the year I only owned the no-art PDF of Labyrinth Lord but in the autumn I won the softcover book in one competition. That was super awesome!

Creating Material

Now with OSR it is super easy to write fantasy (and other genre) material for roleplaying games. I don't have to worry what system to use, because OSR is universal system. Raggi in LotFP showed how to easily write stats for monsters and NPC compatible for both ascending and descending AC (armor as leather). And it's pretty fun to write little fantasy stuffs in the blog (and easy as I said).

Mutant Future

Interested in OSR and liking Fallout 3 videogame a lot and hearing about Gamma World I started to find out about that game more. Soon I found that Gamma World 1st and 2nd edition would be most interesting for me but unfortunately those are out of print now. Then I found Mutant Future and I was happy!

With Mutant Future you can play totally gonzo or more realistic Mad Max style. Or Fallout game with black humor including mutants. Mutant Future easily found its way to my favorite games. Rules are simple, mutations are whacky and post-apocalyptic setting is neat. I love playing this game and I am looking forward to buy the book.

Netflix

This is not roleplaying game, but I have enjoyed watching movies when I go to sleep (some movies might take even 5 days to finish). TV series I haven't watched that much but with Netflix coming to Finland and being compatible with Xbox 360 I've watched also several series.

When I watch movies I always thing roleplaying. How this scene, background story, character, gadget and so on could be awesome in a rpg.

Netflix is not only an awesome passtime but also great resource for endless inspiration for roleplayer.

Labyrinth Lord - Fighter # of attacks quick fix

In the character class rules section it's told that Fighters get an additional attack every 5th level after level 15.

That's stupid, because several levels earlier all characters already have an option to get stable with own castle, stronghold, wizard's tower etc.

And other classes have these other knick knacks they can perform while fighters only swing swords.

That's why fighters get an additional attack every fifth level starting from level 5.

Opitonal: instead of increasing # of attacks Fighter can optionally gain another d20 when rolling to hit (# of hit dice). The best (highest) result of these additional dice is kept.

_____________

Examples:

11th level fighfer could have:
A) 1+2 attacks per turn
B) 1+1 attacks per turn and second hit die
C) 1 attacks per turn and two bonus hit dice

Chainmail bikini statted

Chainmail bikini is one kind of armor that possibly cannot protect you that much. Here's stats for the chainmail bikini and what it actually does.

AC: No change.
Price: 50 gold (silver for LotFP)

If the opponent doesn't hit you roll d20 against your Charisma. If the roll result is below your Charism the opponent is awed and cannot attack you for your Charisma modifier + 1d3 turns (minimum 1 turns).

Every 1000 gold (silver for LotFP) extra you invest in your chainmail bikini you get +1 to your Charisma modifier when wearing it.

Chainmail bikini cannot be used with any other armor (except with helmets and shields if those are separated from other types of armor).

New oldish games of my choice [OSR]

I never actually played retro games (70's and early 80's) and got interested in OSR and retro clones thanks to RPG Bloggers feed. Then I started to find out what I have missed back then when I didn't like  older Dungeons & Dragons and I realized that I had missed the whole point.

Now my choices for retro are:
- Lamentations Of The Flame Princess for weird and horror fantasy
- Mutant Future for science fantasy and post-apocalypse
- Labyrinth Lord as all around retro-clone for fantasy adventuring

For some reason I didn't like any d20 systems but when I played D&D 3.x I did like the basic simplicity of it. Roll d20 adding bonuses trying to get as high result as the difficulty is that time. I didn't like all the rules because I thought many of them were really unecessary for fun gaming and just did slow play down.

Then how LotFP was advertised and how it looked caught me and I got it. It was a big positive surprise to find out it basically used D&D 3.x system stripped down from all the things what made playing slow. Then I started to dig deeper and liked the idea of Gamma World and found that Mutant Future is now available update of it. I had a change to read almost all the rules of Gamma World first and second edition and found out that Mutant Future is really close to these originals. At first I thought that THAC0 style combat resolution was awkward but realized that it is actually like any other roleplaying system. You just need a table or two to play it. Other rules are really simple. That's why I also downloaded Labyrinth Lord to use in fantasy instead of using D&D 3.x which I only used like 1/5 of the rules.

Also LotFP, MF and LL are really easy for players to adapt. My player isn't really technical so these three games I mentioned are great. You roll your character, fill in the remaining information, buy equipment and are ready to play! No point buys. No character tweaking or optimization, no special rules to know. And it is easy for GM to track player character's capabilities also.

One awesome feature is also how easy rules are to adapt. Character is doing something there are no rules or abilities marked in character sheet? Just roll d20 under ability and apply modifier from -4 to +4 based on the situation. That's easy! You don't need rules to cover everything when you can roll under ability. Or GM can just roll d6 and rule what change something is to happen based on character and situation.

I love how simple retro gaming actually is. For some reason I always thought it is really complicated and roleplaying was more rules than playing and acting it out. Like Raggi has said, it is not important what characters can do but what they do. In OSR it is you the player who decides what his character does instead of checking out your character sheet can your character do it.

Also my player likes retro systems in gameplay. And it's easy for me to say what die she must roll and what number she needs to score. In LotFP I ask her to roll d6 and tell the result if her character finds a trap or in Mutant Future I tell her to roll d20 and add 2 to the result and try to get less than her DEX to climb that roof.

With retro games there is more time for actual story when rules don't take time to figure out for every single die roll.

At first I didn't like the idea of lack of skills for example. But who needs 30 to 100 different skills? You have speech but you cannot barter because you don't have that skill. That's bullshit. In OSR characters always have a change.

Now I feel that I could run every game with ascending or descending AC. It's too much work to convert games though, but the idea is so much better in retro gaming. For example Vampire: the Masquerade claims to be a storytelling game but the rules are clumsy. Vampire: the Requiem (and new World of Darkness) made rules a little more straightforward but still it is a little clumsy to be called storytelling.

What do you think? Can OSR/retro games be more storytelling after all with rules?

Marching order is important

Before I dug into some OSR games I never actually thought about marching order. I thought it is just silly and more like a feature you need in computer games (for example Baldur's Gate). But now I have read both Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord and thanks for them marching order is now really important. Not only in oldschool adventuring but also in modern games.

Sometimes in any game player characters are venturing in city streets or strange planets and an encounter happens. Then I start to figure out who is standing where and players usually tactically tell then their location. But if the marching order was used that hassle would be not happening as player characters are already in position and I just would have to locate the enemies.

Picture from ausgamers.com

Marching order is not some technical game rule to follow. It simply tells in what order and formation player characters are venturing. Who is in the front row and who is in the back and are there some characters scattered around walking nearby and are some characters protected in the middle. When this all is decided before any encounters it gets more interesting. I have found out that without marching order most powerfully defensive characters are always in the direction where enemies attack. This time in the front and next time in the back. Players get this small cheating tactical phase of announcing their characters' locations but it is not realistic. Or very exciting.

So, thanks to Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord I will from this post use marching order in every game I GM.