Toadman Champion Names

Hypothetically, if one were building a dungeon level full of vicious toadmen, one would need names for the champions of their gangs (the ones who speak Common).  Many of these are combinable into compound names. 

1d10:

1. Ribbert
2. Hroat
3. Hreeen
4. Brep
5. Hrerm
6. Hrup
7. Peep
8. Hreet
   
9. Chup
10. Kermax the Eviscerator
    

On the New Journalism

Tenkar has a post recently about EnWorld (RIP), and how it has gradually degenerated from a useful news-source in the 3.0 release era into an advertising-delivery vehicle.  Unfortunately, I'm having issues commenting on blogs, but my unposted response was effectively "welcome to journalism in the internet era!"  News is advertising is news.  Somebody has to pay to produce it, and there's no money in subscriptions anymore.

But then I got to thinking...  EnWorld is already Old Media.  Its integration of advertising is ham-handed, in much the same way that rpgnow's featured reviewers are.  Internet forums?  Very 2001.  There's room in the market for a more 2016 RPG newsvertising site, after the buzzfeed model.  Here are some sample headlines that I wrote instead of sleeping:

• Eleven reasons you drive your DM to drink
• Five pictures that explain why Dark Sun was the best goddamn RPG setting every published
• The seven dumbest monsters in the Monster Manual V will leave you wondering what the author was thinking
• Six amazing games and why your group will never play them
• Five terrible fantasy novels that we all love anyway
• The nine most underrated magic items in the DMG, and why they're actually awesome
• Six terrible OGL splatbooks that you might remember nostalgically
• Six phases every new player goes through, in Conan the Barbarian gifs
• Top ten D&D villains of all time
• These seven derpy dragons will make you chuckle
• The six types of weird people at gaming cons, and how to survive dealing with them
• The five worst Forgotten Realms NPCs and why everyone hates them
• Six heavy metal albums you should base your next campaign on 
• These five cats just want to play too
• Eight ways you know you're an old-school gamer

I could keep going.  This shit writes itself.  I already have pictures of cats and pictures of dragons on the agenda; all you need now are reaction buttons and gifs from Game of Thrones, and it'd be a hit with "the Millenials."  Even if it weren't a commercial success, it'd be pretty funny to write.

On Hobbits

It is sometimes said that the whole point of hobbits as protagonists, for Tolkein, was that they were never meant to go adventuring in the first place.  They were weak, soft, sedentary creatures, with copious appetites and a great love for civilized niceties.

This doesn't really fit into the standard model for OSR classes, where you have a prime requisite, and for demihumans in ACKS at least also a minimum stat in order to qualify for your race.  However, rolling 3d6 in order does occasionally generate a set of stats which is literally unplayable; the simplest case would be something like a set where all stats were less than 9, though it would also be possible to do with a high Con and possibly a higher Cha, since there's no Cha-only class in Core.

And that's where hobbits should come from: the stat sets that don't qualify for any other class.  Give them a racial maximum stats instead of minimum stats, and maybe an inverse prime req bonus, where the more horrible your stats are, the more XP you get.  I'm only about half-joking.

I don't really know what else to give them - probably not great fighting, some sneaking, decent HD (they do not seem to die as often as one might expect...), tendency towards ridiculous circumstances...  But at the end of the day, playing a hobbit should be less like playing a ranger than playing a tourist who, despite his absolute unfitness for adventuring, makes do with a surfeit of either blind luck or divine providence.

Really good saves, I guess.

ACKS: Custom Magic Types

So there's a Patreon for new and interesting ACKS content, and their first release was today - rules for constructing new flavors of magic (ie, Divine, Arcane, Fae, what-have-you).  It doesn't quite go so far as letting you build True Sorcery, but there are still some interesting things I could see people doing with it.

• Psionics are an obvious first candidate (if you're in to that sort of thing, which I'm not particularly).
• Rather than a generic "Divine" magic source with the same effect-type multipliers for all deities, break it down further.  Shouldn't Thor's clerics be better at Blast spells than, say, Freya's?
• Though I still ought to finish the Book of ACKSalted Deeds at some point.
• Ooold-school Magic the Gathering (like, Arena-old), with each color having its own set of multipliers on different effects.
• Corny wire-fu martial arts, with touch-range blast and death spells (Poisoned Buddha's Palm, Dim Mak), personal transfiguration (Giant Strength all over the place), protection (Shimmer, Iron Shirt), movement (Air Walk, Swift Sword?  Or should we say, Flurry of Blows, or A Thousand Fists?), and healing, optional enchantment (the old Ninja of the Crescent Moon hypnotic pattern) and detection.  Spell slots?  I think you mean ki points.
• Heck, the sort of 'mythical China' you see in films like Iron Monkey or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon actually checks out pretty well against ACKS' thematic assumptions - empire, threatened by corruption from within (and, less frequently, invaders from without).  You just have a few more certified bureaucrats and a few fewer feudal warlords (though depending on the time period...).

ACKS: Wilderness Movement Points (Also: Snow, Weasels)

The current "you have n miles of move, times m for terrain, and you can go that far in a day" wilderness movement system works great in homogeneous terrain.  In heterogeneous terrain, however, it becomes a pain in the ass.  Hence, a simplifying abstraction!

A lovely, grassy, flat 1.5 mile hex of plains or farmland costs one movement point to traverse.

A party in the wilderness has 4 MP/day per 30' of movement speed.

• 30' -> 4 MP
• 60' -> 8 MP
• 90' -> 12 MP
• 120' -> 16 MP

And so forth for mounted parties.  Forced March increases the MP available in a given day by 50%.

The following terrain types have the the following costs to traverse in movement points:

• Grassland hills, flat forests: 3/2 (Three per two)
• Wooded hills, barren mountains, swamps: 2
• Forested mountains, icy mountains, forested swamps?: 3
• Truly miserable haunted mountain glacier hellscapes not fit for man: 4

Following a road drops the MP cost down one category (so following a road through a hex of flat forest costs 1 MP rather than 3/2, road through mountains is 3/2 rather than 2, and so forth). Bad weather, snow, or mud increase the cost by at least one category (ie, snow-covered mountains are 3 MP instead of 2 because they have standing snowdrifts, and go up to 4 when actively snowstorming).

Snowshoes may be used to negate the movement penalty for snow on the ground (and weigh one item (sixth of a stone) per pair).  Skis on snow-covered terrain can reduce its cost to traverse to one category lower than its base (ie, snow-covered mountain is only 3 MP per 2 hexes when traversed with skis in good weather), but weigh one stone per pair.  Fighting while wearing skis is sort of hard, and may require Riding (Skis) to move and attack in the same round.  Snowshoes and skis are not compatible with livestock, except for dogsleds, riding sabretooth tigers, packmammoths, and other extra-fuzzy beasts of burden specifically adapted to the snow, who count as having snowshoes.  Characters with Riding (Skis) may skijor behind such beasts under snowy conditions.  I will figure out rules for this later, but it will be fast - as the beast doesn't actually need to carry the rider's weight except on the uphill, skijorers probably count as less encumbrance than their actual weight for determining the overland speed of the beast+skijorer combo.

TODO figure out sled dog prices and availability in markets.

Iceweasel: Not Just A Firefox Fork Anymore

Begin digression

Huh, giant weasels are actually very competitive with grizzly bears and giant boars stat-wise (faster, lower AC, comparable HD, low damage but they latch on so they only need to hit once, best carrying capacity of the three, scent, noted to sometimes burrow into dungeons -> you can probably take them into dungeons).  Not trainable as war mounts per DaW:C ("Anyone can ride a giant weasel...  once."), but hunting/packweasels (or Beast Friendship henchweasels) would be pretty great.

In the Cons column, if they fail morale they might flip out and try to eat you.  They're also pretty pricey, but that sword cuts both ways when you're using them as garrison (Excellent for garrison duty.  "The peasants' revolt has reached our gates, sire."  "I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, but...  release the weasels."  "I...  I've never seen so much blood, sire.") or you've established a giant weasel breeding program to corner the market.

Apparently "a confusion of weasels" and "a boogle of weasels" are both valid collectives for weasels.  If I just came up with a random-ass collective noun for some animal, I wonder how long it would take before google decided it was actually a thing.  Your homework assignment for tonight is to use "a conspiracy of cuttlefish" in a sentence somewhere on the internet (seriously, with those w-shaped pupils and adaptive camouflage, they can't be up to any good).  I look forward to your reports.

End digression

Right. Where was I before I started thinking about snow and weasels?

If the party doesn't have enough MP to traverse the next hex at the end of the day, keep track of how much of the next hex they still need to traverse.  You know, the sensible thing.

I think that's all there is to this.  Should make dealing with the sort of overland adventures in mixed terrain we're doing a touch easier.

Wigle Whiskey Tasting Notes

Totally unrelated to gaming, except inasmuch as it has become traditional for certain of my players to show up to ACKS hungover.

Wigle Whiskey (not to be confused with WiGLE) is a Pittsburgh distillery named after Phillip Wigle, a local hero(?) of the Whiskey Rebellion.  Anything having to do with liquor is a bureaucratic nightmare in Pennsylvania these days (what with the state Liquor Control Board's monopoly), so Wigle is one of just a handful of distilleries (well, legal ones) in what used to be a very still-heavy part of the country.  They had a free tasting last night, so being a whiskey drinker of unsophisticated palate, I decided to go try their goods.

After a bit of a wait in the cold, I tried the following things (in roughly the following order, so it might be expected that things I tried later have slightly less accurate reviews):

• Landlocked Spiced: Landlocked is a honey spirit that has been compared to rum.  I rather like honey spirits (eg Bushmill's Honey Whiskey, with Barenjager on my to-try list), and this one was OK but not amazing.  Tasted a bit flowery almost?  From their notes, I was probably getting too much vanilla over the honey, which is not what I was hoping for.
• Small-Batch Maple Wheat Whiskey (which I'm not seeing on their online store, curiously): Wheat whiskey aged in charred oak barrels with maple staves, if I recall correctly.  I went through an "mmm, tastes like drinking a tree" phase a year or two ago, and this is representative of that style in the best possible way.  Not to my current tastes, but if that's what you're into, probably pretty good.
• Walkabout Apple Whiskey: Wheat and rye whiskeys, barrel-aged, blended, and cut from cask strength using local cider rather than water.  A promising premise, but there was definitely a discordant note that threw things off for me; I'm not sure if it was the rye or the woodiness from the barrel aging or something else, but something did not combine well with the apple flavor.  Not a fan, but it's an experimental on their parts so I think we'll see further refinements in future.
• Landlocked Clear: I know, you're supposed to mix clear spirits, but this was pretty good.  An unapologetic, uncomplicated honey spirit, would probably blend well with apple flavors.
• Straight Wheat Whiskey: One of their flagship whiskeys, and quite good - not as sweet as a corny bourbon, not as woody as a Tree In A Barrel, nicely balanced, tasty.

On my way out I ran into some friends in line who decided that the wait wasn't worth it, and we went and got thai food while I metabolized before driving home.  So that all worked out rather well.

Quality Software Design

As noted previously, I have been writing scripts to automate parts of ACKS.  One of those scripts is a treasure generator, for which I designed a configuration file language (really it's a random table description language, but the treasure generator is the main thing I use it for).  I've gradually added in support for rolling dice of dice ( (1d6)d6 and such) and other esoteric features to support hex-stocking, but that's not something I use all that much (well, not recently).

Today, however, while deciding to condition scroll contents on scroll language, however (so that dwarven spell scrolls are always divine, or turtleman spell scrolls have a chance at unique / Player's Companion turtleman spells, or so forth, as part of my grand designs to customize my treasure tables), I ran into a failure in my own foresight in design.  While loading giant lists of spells-by-race-and-level into my main treasure table config, I realized that said file was starting to get a bit lengthy...  up towards a thousand lines.  Not a technical hurdle for my Text Editor of Choice, but somewhat inconvenient to dig through.  And here I had failed to add a #include, import, or other "let me load this other file" feature into my description language!

The danger in actually using a thing you designed is that you might find bugs in it.  This hazard is even more probable if you let other people use a thing you designed.

(And yes, players, I know I should be working on a dungeon instead.  But you haven't told me which dungeon to build first!  I did figure out where the elven treasure map (er, letter) points, though, so that's a thing prepped)

RennFest, Colonial Battlefleet, and Setting Work

Just what it says on the tin:

Had a good time at the Maryland Renaissance Fair(e) this weekend.  Rediscovered mead; much like honeyed whiskey, but with strong overtones of water.  The jousting at German renn faires was better, but this one had elephants and pythons and a cursing well which I am stealing for my upcoming campaign, so hey.

Also picked up a copy of Colonial Battlefleet from the wargame vault today.  Interesting system.  Their initiative mechanic and the roles mechanism are both interesting changes from Starmada, and the fact that they provide a Big List of Weapons should prevent some of the guncheese we had in Starmada: Admiralty. I don't like how they laid out said table (by weapon tonnage, rather than alphabetically by weapon name or weapon 'family'), but that is at least a useful ordering during ship contruction.  Their shields are also very different from S:AE shields (would be interested in seeing some non-forward-focused shields, but I'm happy enough as-is without the extra complexity).  I like the way they handled tech levels, mostly, except for Laser Weaponry, which I think they screwed up with regards to Screen role availability.  One thing that does torque me off a little is some of the really implausible faux science used to justify mechanics that are in place for game balance reasons - things like "When you teleport something, all inorganic chemical reactions in it cease.  As a result, you can only teleport marines, not bombs."  That grinds my gears a bit; you could've just said "You can't teleport bombs because the yield isn't sufficient for a man-sized bomb to damage a starship" (since scale is intentionally vague), or built a bomb-teleporter weapon, or left the players to not think of it like we didn't in six months of Starmada games with teleporter-marines, but no.  Instead you had to make something ridiculous up and call attention to it, which might produce a counter like "OK, that's cool, we're the Tyranids and we're going to build living bomb-marines with organic detonators.  Wheee-BOOM."  That said, upon running a test game against myself with some converted Homeworld ships, it was quick, bloody, reasonable simple, and overall satisfactory.  So if any of the old Starmada Crew is reading this, I'm down for some games over internet (it's hex-based, so should work fine with VTTs).  Fair warning, though - I have been growing out my beard since the weather cooled off... (for those unfamiliar, we observed that gamers with beards were significantly more likely to win at Starmada than were clean-shaven gamers.  The prevailing hypothesis is that this was due to the increase in planning efficiency acquired by stroking one's beard)

Oh yeah.  The editing is not fantastic, and some areas are lacking examples, but the intent of the rules is generally clear, so it's just sort of annoying rather than obstructionary.

Finally, ACKS setting.  Contemplated Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Northern Reaches (Western Marches into mythic Scandinavia), and Midnight in the Late 3rd Age.  Am currently settled on "The Scaled Continent".  The pitch:

In elder days, the children of squamous gods ruled the world, and man, elf, and dwarf suffered beneath their forked and envenomed lash.  But now their empire has fallen to ruin under rebellion and internal strife, and the men of Aura seek the reclaim the treasures that were once stolen from them and taken across the Sea of Tears, to line the jungled halls of the serpent-kings.  From the Isle of Voltager, their settlers and adventurers struggle against the environment, the natives, and sometimes each other for the riches of... the Scaled Continent.

Thematic elements:

• Settings: 
• heavily-trapped temples to bloodthirsty gods
• overgrown and ruined cities of the Old Masters
• human frontier settlements (incl. abandoned and overtaken)
• the Serpent's Tongue (major river)
• sailing ships anchored off the coast
• volcanoes
• Opposition: 
• Lizardmen, frogmen, toadmen, turtlemen, crocodilemen, &c
• With accompanying witch-doctors and guardbeasts
• Prehistoric and/or gigantic beasts 
• yes dinosaurs 
• also giant cockroaches 
• and dire armadillos carrying dire leprosy
• Monsters from South American and/or African myth and ecology
• (some research required, void where inaccurate)
• Dragons 
• Pirates
• Dragon-pirates
• not, however, from Ninja Island
• Screaming river-eels
• Wereleopards (forvalaka)
• Anything with scales that didn't fall into the above categories
• Ambulatory plant life
• Dysentery and worse jungle diseases
• Monsoon season
• Resources:
• Local guides
• Mules
• Dugout canoes
• Treasure maps of dubious veracity
• Steel and alcohol (as trade goods with the natives)
• Gullible henchmen (but when aren't those a resource?)
• Treasure:
• Golden idols
• Crystal skulls
• Rubies the size of a man's fist
• Holy grails?
• Spellbooks containing forgotten and forbidden spells of the reptile mages, written on halfling-skin vellum (demium?)
• Exotic spices and hardwoods
• Rescued slaves
• Cities of gold
• Fountains of youth
• Possible untimely death
• Modules:
• Caverns of Thracia
• DCC#16: Curse of the Emerald Cobra
• A source of fond memories from my youth
• Isle of Dread 
• Temple of the Frog (inasmuch as it is a ruined temple "in the city of the enemy")
• Thematic fiction:
• "Lost World" stories
• Heart of Darkness
• Pulp portrayals of the tropics (eg, King Kong)

 So!  Time to map!  Oh wait, I can just write "JUNGLE" in great big capital letters on a hexmap and be mostly good to go.  Just have to draw a coastline, some islands, a river, and a distant mountain range...

Wordgames with Family

How I feel while playing wordgames (Scrabble, Upwords, etc) with my family (all credit to sinfest):

Where the incantations in question are words like "chull", "rax", "grep", "urist", and "ftaghn"

Folklore, Rumors, and Legends of the Shieldlands

These are (mostly) actually from play.  Some are false, some true, and some of questionable veracity.

• It's widely believed that elves choose their gender upon reaching adulthood, and that some never choose at all.  When asked directly, elves generally change the subject.
• The nomadic Yezidi horsemen are ancestor-worshippers, and believe that the deities of other groups are actually powerful evil spirits.  They believe that resurrection is a trick to bring demons into the mortal world in human guise, as no Yezidi soul would return from the paradise beyond, where there are more goats than a man can eat, endless seas of fresh water, and the worship of one's living relatives.
• Rust monsters are unusually friendly beasts who bear no ill-will towards mankind, greeting people carrying food (metal) with a happy burbling noise and a companionable headbutt, much like one would expect from a cat looking to be fed.  Sadly, most humans don't perceive it quite the same way.  This problem is only exacerbated by the belief that the flesh of the rust monster is delicious; gourmands purport that it has the best qualities of both lobster and steak.
• The rat-men worship a death god named Hao-Dee.  For a non-goblin to utter his name is a blasphemy most terrible, and warrants a holy war seeking their destruction.  Some linguistic scholars believe that the utterance of "Howdy!" in greeting among Shieldlanders originated as a means of signaling mutual enmity towards goblinkind.  Most Shieldlanders are quite unaware of both this hypothesis and the fact that saying "Howdy" to goblins will greatly provoke them.
• A dwarf's beard is the source of his stonecunning, and if he shaves, he loses this ability until his beard grows back.  Thus, shaven beards are seen only among the nobility, for whom it is a symbol of not needing to know their depth beneath the earth.  That other races' women do not have beards leads to all kinds of confusion as a result, when uninformed dwarves mistake them for nobility.  Female dwarves do have beards, which in addition to imparting stonecunning are often woven into slings for hands-free carrying of their children.
• Ghouls are either very stupid or rather cunning, depending on who you ask.  They can also climb, and sometimes lurk on ceilings.
• It is widely believed that hollow, circular tubes which are open on both ends serve as conduits for dark forces.  This conveniently explains the complete lack of sewer systems in the Shieldlands.  The fact that most Shieldlander plumbers are slightly mad and promote an air of the occult doesn't help matters.
• The elves call their progenitor sun goddess Amaterasu.  The Zaharans call it Ammon-Ra in its destructive male aspect.  The humans bastardized the Zaharan name to Ammonar.  The typical reaction of elves to this mispronunciation is one of gentle disappointment with the folly of the short-lived races, occasionally accompanied by mockery and derision.  If one persists in this after being repeatedly corrected, however, they will eventually become deadly serious, and may challenge the offender to a duel.
• It is said that residing on holy ground delays or reverses the terrible aging caused by the touch of the restless dead.
• The orcs of the Shieldlands have an aversion to the color red; ever since the utter destruction of the orcish Red Horde at the hands of Ancaglon the Black, to use the color in a tribal name is to invite defeat.  The same is true of painting a shield red, and the one way in which the orcs respect hygiene is that they are very careful to scour blood from their weapons and armor after battle.  They also prefer targets who wear red, believing them to be easily vanquished.
• Every spring, the town of Opportunity celebrates All Thieves' Day.  Any thefts successfully committed on this day within city limits and without the victim's knowledge are not prosecutable.  If the victim discovers the theft before sunset, though, then he has until the end of the next week to recover his possessions before they become the rightful property of the thief.  Tradition holds that the celebration began one spring after a particularly harsh winter with the stealing of food stores.  Merchants, and most other wise folk, tend to avoid the town on this day, but a bustling market develops outside the gates.
• Gnolls can't help but laugh.  Sadly, this means that they find laughter unpleasant (much like we do sneezing) and are somewhat touchy on the subject.  As they already have short fuses by nature, there is no surer way to end up fighting a gnoll than to tell a joke, and gnolls bear a remarkable hatred for bards and halflings.
• The Judge of Deal has suffered injuries that would kill most mortal men, and none know his age; many believe that he is immortal so long as the town of Deal stands.  Sages scoff at this notion, and make a hobby of proposing alternate explanations.
• Witch-hunts are traditional in the Shieldlands, occurring in the weeks preceding the two equinoxes and the two solstices.  During these periods, witches hunt for fresh components for the rituals they perform on those days of unusual power.  Many children partake in scavenger hunts during these weeks out of imitation, and some witches arrange such hunts as a means of finding promising children for either apprenticeship or sacrifice, depending on the disposition of the witch in question.  Adults, on the other hand, are unusually polite towards witches during these times, as the witches are often in a hurry and apt to turn obstacles into newts.
• The elephantmen never forget.
• A dwarven creation myth holds that in the beginning, Armok created the dwarves, but grew bored when they failed to war amongst themselves and instead spent their time mining and creating works of art.  Thus, Armok created dragons to go forth and devour the dwarves, and strengthen them in the crucible of dragonfire.  As a result, dragonhunting is regarded as a sacred act of worship among the dwarves.  To rear a dragon, however, is sacrilege, while to ride a vanquished dragon is an expression of utmost divine favor and right to rule.  Shieldlanders who know of this myth generally have a different take, blaming the dwarves for the dragons who eat their livestock.  When a dragon appears to menace a township, it is not the virgins but the dwarves who are first offered up to it by the fearful human populace.  Dragons, for their part, do seem to prefer humanoids with beards who smell of alcohol, but are not picky as to the actual species.  It is also believed that this origin is the reason that dragons love gold.

Anything I'm forgetting, gents?