Dreams in the Lich House: Bloggers

Showing posts with label Bloggers. Show all posts

Monday, August 21, 2023

Current Mood

I joined meme culture. The opportunity to run a game for my high school buddies has put me behind the screen again with the Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LOTFP) rules in hand, and it's been a blast. I love the LOTFP rules and aesthetic. The rules compliment the scenarios very well - LOTFP is lower-powered and focused on exploration, and the scenarios are equally light on combat and concerned with engendering a growing sense of mystery and dread.

Meanwhile, Adventurer Conqueror King powers up the combat side of classic D&D, which is a natural fit for Gygaxian adventures (heroic fantasy) that feature a lot of tactical combats as in The Temple of Elemental Evil. My vision for the Greyhawk campaign is to make it a tour de Gygax, including Tsojcanth, the Giants, and Descent into the Depths of the Earth. We've missed a few weeks of scheduling, but I'm hoping to get it back on track soon. We're going to relax the scheduling to bi-monthly to make it easier on a couple of the regulars to accommodate, and this is going to create a natural opening for me to keep the LOFTP running as a bi-weekly game too (win-win).

I spent a chunk of time last week laying out the foundations for the LOTFP campaign, York 1630. I'll post the process this week, a play report on the LOTFP game, and another adventure review. Happy Monday.

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

The Licorice Eaters

August 9th marks the end of "the days between", an 8-day period where Deadheads (fans of the Grateful Dead) reminisce or celebrate the impact of the band. Jerry Garcia was born on August 1st (1942) and died on August 9th (1995) and the period is named for a melancholic and nostalgic piece called Days Between. There's a groovy boho town nearby called New Hope, where a gallery featured a free exhibit with a bunch of Jerry artwork, visiting that was my nod this year to marking the "days between".

I don't expect people outside of America to know the Grateful Dead - shoot, most Americans have forgotten about this particular subculture. But the Dead did something back in the 70's that energized a following that shows no signs of diminishing. They gave their sound away.

With a few exceptions, the Dead studio albums are not particularly good. Their magic comes from live performances. Every show has a unique set list. Songs are played differently from night to night - solos are different, arrangements are different, they experimented on stage. The Dead's formula fused psychedelic improvisation and jazz to traditional roots music like blues, folk, country, and bluegrass to create a distinct and new thing. People started sneaking recording equipment into the shows to catch that lightning in a bottle and relive or share what was otherwise a transient experience. As befitting a band built on libertarian ideals of freedom and expression, they weren't interested in policing this taping activity. "The shows are never the same, ever. . . . and when we’re done with it, they can have it." In fact, by the 1980's, there was a formal section behind the sound booth on the floor that was reserved at Dead shows for the tapers to set up their audio recording equipment.

An entire non-commercial sub-community sprung up within the Dead sub-culture around copying and sharing tapes, fan to fan. The Internet Archive and Relisten both have some 17,000 recordings* of the Dead shows from the 1960's until 1995 that have been digitized by tapers and posted online for anyone to listen. All free.

To be fair, there is also commercial activity that's keeping the scene alive - the Dead's record label still releases re-mastered and cleaned up versions of concerts a couple of times a year, from higher quality recordings patched directly from the sound boards, and that's what you can hear on streaming platforms like Apple, Spotify, or Nugs.net as Grateful Dead Road Trips, Download Series, or Dick's Picks, named after one of their archivists (Dick Latvala). You're paying for quality. (As an aside, I recommend Nugs for anyone that loves modern live music and jam bands, but if that's your kicks you probably already know about it).

Something else has happened because the music is about performances and not studio work. The songs evolve. It's an open invitation to do your own thing. Everyone who played with the band or a side project has put their touch on the music - you can hear Dead songs played by touring acts like Dark Star Orchestra and Joe Russo's Almost Dead; in my area there are like 15 Dead cover bands that do the bar circuit in and around Philadelphia. Dead & Company, with John Mayer and several Dead members, just finished a sold-out ballpark tour in the states that was extremely good. Several days a week you can go have a beer and a burger or ribs and catch a Dead tribute band in your area - like I said, there are over a dozen around Philadelphia, and every state has them. Some of the Philly ones are quite good.

Jerry had a quote: "If I work as hard as I can in my life, I may be able to end up building this thing that nobody can tear down after I'm dead." This train is still chugging along.

Maybe it's unnatural or a forced comparison to compare the Dead scene to roleplaying games and early D&D? They were both fronted by 70's icons with beards? The OGL, and through it the OSR, opened the door to allow community sharing that captured similar egalitarian and communal spirits as the tapers and the cover bands. There was a heady sense of freedom and creativity in the early OSR, and a great sharing of ideas. Think of the interesting projects this scene has produced, whether it's one page dungeons, Hydra co-op, D23, or Prince's funny "no artpunk" collections. There is commercial activity, too - many retro clones offer free rules, but you'll pay for quality if you want nice printed editions with art.

I don't keep up with all the permutations of new retro clone rules, but people are still cranking them out. Does anyone follow all the new adventures that are published? It feels like an ocean. I try to keep tabs on what Bryce is looking at, and I get the sense it's a fraction of what's actually out there - just waves lapping on the shore. I'm generally a positive, glass half full kind of person to start with, but this feels like a healthy scene with a lot going on, even if it is a bit decentralized and chaotic, with different centers of gravity. Tenkar still has his crowd, there's the Dragonsfoot people, Pundit's place, the old school conventioners, some Discorders and Substackers sprouting up here and there. Not a booming scene, but a scene that has weathered controversies and kerfuffles and has settled into a mostly even keel.

I have tasted of newer iterations of the game, and they've left me wanting - they're not licorice. I'm glad an OSR scene was still here to come back and experience.

Later tonight when I'm pouring a bourbon or scotch to reflect on another "days between", I'll also tip one for the OSR and the folks out there still doing good, creative work and keeping this scene alive. Cheers all.

*Footnote: the Dead performed some 2300 concerts over their 30 year run, but since any given concert could have been recorded by several tapers, that's why there can be 17,000 recordings in the internet archive.

Friday, May 19, 2023

Arise Dead Blog - I Have Need of You

That moment when you're done with that Seattle company.

It was always a matter of when, not if. Our long sojourn with 5E has ended. I tried to stiff upper lip the Mos Eisley Cantina effect and the easy mode buttons as long as I could. The kerfuffle over the OGL a few months ago was too much - I ditched my D&D Beyond Subscription and shelved 5E for good. It's all over except for the selling.

We've been playing a Greyhawk-based D&D game for several months now (a classic clone). We're up to 8 players (a 9th may join this week) and I'm running it almost like a West Marches game - every week starts and ends back in town so we can roll with whoever is available the following week. It's been a fine approach with busy adults with varied schedules (and there are always a few stalwarts who rarely miss a game).

The players have been asking if I'd write up the game sessions on the blog, so arise dead blog - I have need of you. Game reports will help absent players catch up on what they missed, while logging the player's mishaps. We're playing a campaign built around Gygax's greatest hits, starting with Hommlet and the Temple of Elemental Evil (Gygax and Mentzer, I know). Since we're a couple of months in, the players are already exploring dungeon level 1 of the Temple proper. I have some work to do to get caught up. I'd love it if we're able to proceed to Tsojcanth, the Giants, and then Erelhei-Cinlu.

There's some housekeeping to do. There are a zillion spam messages to clear out of the comments and unapproved messages waiting. I'm sure there are broken links and missing images - don't ignore your blog for years, I guess. Oh, and LOTP just put all their PDFs on sale for like $1, so I grabbed a bunch of missing stuff. I skimmed a few of them and burned my eyes out. Those guys dance to their own drum beat, that's for sure. And they like pictures of dongs. Some "reviews" will be forthcoming. It'll be great fun.

Seems like it will be an interesting summer, too, as various publishers try to extricate themselves from the OGL and flip WOTC a well-deserved double bird. Time to roll the boulder away from the cave entrance and stumble out into the sunlight.

Saturday, January 1, 2022

That Which is Dead May Not Die

Yesterday I mucked the stalls. After 16 months of neglect, the old "Lich House" was completely inundated with rotting piles of spam and junk comments. I suppose it's fine to have zero comment moderation enabled if you're going to weed the garden on a regular basis, but the Lich House had become a tomb overgrown with sketchy offers leading to the dark web.

I am putting a difficult year and a half behind me. Beyond the obvious (we've all been living through a pandemic) I've had kids go off the rails, serious home damage, and a tough work environment - challenges in multiple dimensions that knocked me off the internet for an extended time. We've all had those days, months, years, decades. For me it's been this past year. Things are turning around. It's time to dig out of the crypt again and emerge, hesitantly, into the cool night air.

I've still been running some games! I've had a kids and dad's group that's met regularly since about 2007, and while we skipped here and there, we mostly kept playing. We finished WOTC's Tomb of Annihilation and moved on to 5E's official megadungeon, Undermountain (official title - Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage). It's a much-maligned publication by the Gen Z crowd. I'm determined to see for myself if 5E could be folded, shaped, and forced into behaving like a system fit for an old-school megadungeon campaign.

Oh, you've noticed 16 months away from the blogosphere hasn't dimmed my disdain for the Fifth? It's true, the love-hate relationship with modern D&D is still in force. My players adore this game system. I like my players and am willing to indulge them. I continue to see the Fifth as a personal challenge to prove that you can parrot more satisfying game styles from simpler times in the hobby. I'm doing it for science.

Here's what's next for me. First, I haven't been reading any blogs - I want to catch up with what people have been talking about the past year. I'll continue to split time between what's happening in the OSR discussions versus a few of the 5E-centric bloggers out there I used to enjoy. I'll also do some retrospectives on Undermountain to date and how I've managed to build a compelling dungeon exploration campaign for the Fifth around a 'big dumb hack and slash dungeon with no story'.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

What Are Your Favorite Blog Posts?

I am not a particularly deep thinker; my gaming is more about applied science rather than theoretical science. But there have been many deep thinkers in the blogosphere through the years, and I've sopped up ideas like a sponge and made them part of how I run games. My best games are the product of inherited wisdom.

When I was thinking last week about participation in the OSR blogosphere, I couldn't help but remember posts that had a lasting impact on my ref style. Here are a few that come readily to mind, although this list is only scratching the surface. If you have your own favorites (and wouldn't mind linking in the comments) I'd be greatly appreciative. There are tons of D&D blogs, and I personally only see or read a narrow subset.

The Oracular Power of the Dice

Back in the early days of the OSR, Grognardia was massively influential, and James Mal frequently posted multiple times per day! We embraced randomness as we returned to old school gaming, and it's been an important part of my make up ever since - random tables for encounters and content creation, sure, but it's just as important for things like reaction rolls and morale checks (which modern games have mostly left behind). Give yourself the chance, as referee, to be just as surprised at the direction your game goes as the players by allowing ill fortune or serendipity to intervene. Plus a little randomness lets you flex your improv muscles.

Gygaxian Naturalism

Back to Grognardia, I'm fairly sure that blog coined the phrase "Gygaxian Naturalism" - the idea that random tables becomes a short hand descriptor of the game world in the "show don't tell" vein. Furthermore, if those monster listings also contain randomization (number appearing, and percentages of also appearing) you begin to create a deeper picture of the world through tables. I'm firmly in the camp that random tables for encounters help put the world in motion and support the simulation of a fantasy world.

I Hate Fun

In the early days of LOTFP, James Raggi was a prolific blogger. A lot of it was promotional but there are thoughtful essays here and there; discussions of the "Weird" and using horror in D&D, for instance, and "I Hate Fun" - a polemic against modern D&D's predilection for putting the game on easy mode (and this was in 2008 !! Long before the elimination of Save or Die effects and massive healing). D&D is a casual beer and pretzels game for the majority, but that doesn't mean *you* can't run your game to challenge your players. My players are firmly in the modern camp of "winning is fun" but even they'll admin prevailing against challenges with real consequences is the best.

Rogues in the Sandbox

Long before the Zakpocalypse, you could find jewels over on PDNDWPS. The one I remember is the idea that super heroes are reactive, defenders of the status quo, like firemen in the station waiting for an alarm to go off. The villains are the ones that initiate action and make plans; they make the first move; they upset the status quo. In fantasy gaming, this has implications for your open world sandbox game. Are your players Conan-like scoundrels willing to plan capers? Or are they more like the police and firemen that want the local lord or patron to dole out missions smiting malefactors? I always thought this conceit did a good job of illuminating why some groups are better off doing guided adventure paths and not sandboxes. One thing I carried forward from 4E was the "points of light" setting concept, because it imagines a world that's almost entirely hostile surrounding small islands of civilization - allowing your sandbox to potentially appeal to scoundrels and do-rights alike,

Combat as Sport or Combat as War

This wasn't exactly a blog post, I believe it first showed up on En World. For the combat as sport crowd, the encounters in the game are the end in themselves, and players in that style of game want a good, balanced fight between their characters and the monsters, highlighting the way their clever tactics and play skill lets them win during combat. For the combat as war crowd, encounters are obstacles to their real goals; they see a balanced encounter as a strategic failure; proper play is about tilting the battle field so the odds heavily favor your side. Good game play is about creating a plan so you never have to fight a balanced encounter, and can get on to the real goals with resources intact.

Matt Finch's Old School Primer

Matt's quick primer for old school games is a free PDF over on Lulu.com, but I encountered it through lots of blogs. Although it's called "the old school primer", I'd say most of it could just be called "good game mastering advice". It's about making your games interactive and not dice-rolling bore fests. Things like challenging the players, not their character abilities, and advice on narrating the game so it's evocative and descriptive and engaging. It's solid gold for referees. The primer holds up well across editions (except maybe the advice of keeping the game heroic, not super heroic... both 4E and 5E eschewed gritty "zero to hero" starting points for player characters. Otherwise it all applies just fine for 5E.)

I've clearly landed firmly in the camp of "no dice fudging" but can't remember any landmark posts laying out an iron clad argument. For me it comes down to integrity and unforeseen results are the most interesting; if that means my dice are on a cold streak and the monsters get smoked one night, good for the players; if the dice are on fire and they can't catch a break, well you need nights like that too, to appreciate when you actually have good fortune.

I've also stayed committed to resource management. Much like the combat as war crowd, where the planning is the game, so it is with managing resources. Not exactly "OSR-era", but here's a cool post I came across recently that had an insightful twist on the resource sub-game: If Your Torches Burn for only One Hour your NPCs will be More Important. Dealing with logistics forces the players to engage with the game setting - visiting towns, villages, markets, and worrying about henchman, hirelings, and ordinary people. I felt it. Looking through this new lens, I think this is why I love the domain game in old school play so much; it forces engagement with the game world because the players have to interact like fellow citizens of the fantasy realm, and not just unconstrained super powered tourists.

That's enough for this time. As requested, would love to hear some of your favorites. What's the saying, when you talk (or blog) you're only sharing stuff you already know, but when you listen (or read other people's stuff...) you get the chance to learn.

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Blog Roll Update

I'm going to do some maintenance this weekend and clean out some old blogs I used to read that have gone dormant or belly up. Let me know if you have any favorite blogs that are still doing the good work, I'll check them out and give them an add (including you're own, if you're a new blogger). For the state side folks, safe holidays everyone! See you in a few days.

Sunday, November 3, 2019

A Grateful Miscellany

They say you should practice gratitude; taking a few minutes each day to reflect on what you're grateful for has beneficial effects on your mindset, emotional health, and even physical health. You can find it all over the wise Google in mainstream publications - the science of gratitude. Life is stressful, you've got to take care of yourself - get out and run or exercise, eat and sleep well, cherish the folks around you. I'm a pretty grateful person overall. (Coincidentally I'm a giant Grateful Dead fan, too).

Here are a couple of things I noticed this week in the gaming world that inspired some gratitude and appreciation.

Mike Mearls on Greyhawk
I rotate across a bevy of podcasts on the way to work, mostly non-gaming - history, philosophy, even some fantasy football. Once in a while I'll fire up something about gaming. I wouldn't categorically recommend WOTC's "Dragon Talk"; it's usually a bit of marketing, some exposition on obscure Forgotten Realms lore (yawn), and then a guest. Some of the guests are doing fantastic things with D&D - psychologists using D&D to improve social skills with autism kids, for instance - real heartwarming stuff. But many of the guests are streamers, celebrities, or improv groups talking about their shtick. Every once in a while they do a "Sage Advice" where they deep dive on some rules with their rules guru, that's usually golden. Dragon Talk is in my podcast queue; I'll typically look at the details and delete anything that seems yawnstipating.

This week's first serendipitous moment when I was doing clean up on some old Dragon Talks sitting on the iPod and saw one that had an interview with a cartographer, so I fired it up in the headphones while doing some house cleaning. The cartographer interviewer was fine, the real gem was a 45 minute interview with Mike Mearls on why he loves Greyhawk as a setting. (You can listen to it from here: Dragon Talk with Deven Rue - Mike is at about 9 minutes in.)

The interview starts with an overview of campaign settings, from OD&D's start, the Greyhawk supplement, up until about the Forgotten Realms Greybox. The theme of the interview, though, is why Greyhawk is different from the Forgotten Realms, and analysis on Gary's approach. Greyhawk is human-centric, and focused on political states with very real human motivations. Unlike later campaign sets, it's very much a tool box that presents the world right on the cusp of change (the return of Iuz, for instance) but doesn't tell the DM how the change needs to go. It's a launch point for DIY D&D.

By comparison, the Forgotten Realms is all about the metaplot. There are oodles of canonical references, novels, and published campaign arcs. The Realms is ideal for the dungeon master that wants to run the game, but can't spend much time each week preparing their own stories; you can pick up any of the WOTC hardcovers for 5E and run something out of the book. And to be fair, WOTC has been doing a good job of creating open-ended sandbox campaigns in the Realms. I'm not a big fan of the Realms for many reasons, but I like how they've done most of their 5E adventure books.

But the main point of the podcast is Mike gets why Greyhawk is so highly regarded by our niche. Down with canon. I actually think if WOTC publishes a Greyhawk source book, their internal struggle is with whether they return to the 1983 Brown Box setting and omit Greyhawk Wars and From the Ashes (which pushed Greyhawk down the meta-story canon path).

Incidentally, Wizards of the Coast currently has a 2019 marketing survey posted to collect feedback on how you play D&D in 2019, including your favorite settings. Get out there and vote for Team Greyhawk. (Wizards of the Coast 2019 survey).

The Monsters Know What They're Doing
My other serendipitous discovery this week was the blog, The Monsters Know What They're Doing. The author, Keith Ammann, has been writing weekly breakdowns of monster tactics for the past 3 years. He deep-dives the Monster Manual or sourcebook entry, combining an analysis of the monster's attributes, skills, combat statistics, and flavor text, to provide a ready-to-use set of tactics at the table (for 5E). Your kobolds will behave differently from orcs, which are different from goblins. He's doing that for everything. It's yeoman's work, and his blog is easy to search so you can target a specific monster and review tactical suggestions in advance of your game session. Need an idea what the monster shaman will summon with the Conjure Animals spell? Chances are he's got a breakdown for you in the tactics. He's collected a few years of his material into a book - I don't have it yet, I just discovered the blog this week from an online mention. I'll post a review if I get it; in the meantime the blog is free, searchable, and a fantastic labor of love. If you're a DM for 5E, it will give you ideas when planning tactics for upcoming monster encounters and put you in the monster's shoes.

In the spirit of sharing, are there any world-building, DMing, or similar gaming podcasts you've been enjoying? How about other hidden jewel blogs like The Monsters Know that you want to pass along? Drop a note, thanks!

And one non-gaming thing to be grateful for - the Dead are touring again! They played Halloween night in my area (Madison Square Garden) and I'll catch some shows this weekend down in Virginia, too. (Photo courtesy of my friend Mindunn who maneuvered through the floor and got some great pics). Happy Sunday.

Friday, December 23, 2016

Game On

Nobody found my phylactery in time. The long sojourn pursuing arcane studies in the ivy-covered halls of academia has come to an acceptable conclusion. The portal to the sepulchral tomb creaks open, and the lich re-emerges. The master of the Lich House has returned.

After a year and a half of grinding my way through a master's degree, I'm back.

I've kept tabs on the D&D blogosphere - mostly OSR stuff, naturally, but I follow a little 5E too - and continued to run some games. I was still running Dwimmermount up until September, but the last semester was crushing. When you rank work, family, kids, school (defending a master's thesis), running games, and then writing about games, the actual running of games beat out writing about them. The Lich House had to go dark.

The Dwimmermount group is going to pick up next week (right after the holiday) and I'll do some kind of summary of the missing game reports to get caught up. We were on session 36 or so, and the published game reports petered out around 18 or 19. It's a spectacular megadungeon. The players were battling back and forth with the Termaxians over control of the Great Machine and the power to open the prison of Turms Termax. We're right at the best parts. I'm going to run Curse of Strahd for 5E, but I'm especially looking forward to working on my own stuff again.

I'll also catch up on game reading - lots of good stuff came out the past year that I haven't given much attention yet. I've got Maze of the Blue Medusa, Brood Mother Sky Fortress, ACKS Lairs and Encounters, and Operation Unfathomable queued up to read. After powering through a book per week for months and months for school, I'm looking forward to catching up on fun gaming reading. What else did you guys like this past year?

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Hell Freezes Over in Finland, and other 2016 Things to Watch

Since I've started blogging again, and the calendar turned to 2016, there have been a whole series of announcements on things I didn't expect to see this year.

Jim LOTFP is Going to Gencon
I was really surprised to see the news that LOTFP is going to Gencon. I ran some LOTFP at Gencon years ago, and there were controversies a few years back where some prudish Gencon organizers didn't want the LOTFP games or modules on display in the dealer hall and whatnot - can't have gore, horror, and boobs on display in Indianapolis! I never expected to see an announcement that Jim LOTFP is making the long haul from Finland to Indianapolis. I'd love to make it out there - get a bunch of missing LOTFP stuff in person. My teenager is looking to play some "edgy" D&D with his friends, and LOTFP's early stuff (Tower of the Stargazer, Grinding Gear, Hammers of the God) strikes a good balance between classic dungeons, weirdness, and horror, so I have him checking out Stargazer (he played through all those, plus Death Frost Doom, back during a game I called "Gothic Greyhawk").

Does that mean the long-awaited Referee Book is getting done this year? That one's been kicking around a few years now. That seems like the kind of product and release that would warrant an appearance at gaming's biggest convention.

Delta Green Trail of Cthulhu?
I like the Delta Green world, but haven't played BRP in a long time; any recent horror games have been Trail of Cthulhu. One of the bits of news coming out of the recent Delta Green kickstarter is that Pelgrane Press is doing a 1960's Delta Green setting book (written by Ken Hite, naturally) called The Fall of Delta Green. That one is going right to the top of the pre-order list. Maybe we'll see a full-blown Gumshoe Delta Green book at some point, too.

The Auran Empire for ACKS
The guy(s) over at Adventurer Conqueror King are making some moves; the president of a video game company joined the management team, they just had their Lairs & Encounters kick starter clear $25,000, they're publishing articles via a decent-sized Patreon, and now news that the Auran Empire setting is coming this year. I've played ACKS intermittently since it came out in 2011, and I thought the Auran Empire was going to be the company's "Castle Greyhawk"; that product that was talked about since the early days but never managed to see print. 2016 could prove me wrong!

The Return of Strahd
It's been all over the blogosphere, the next 5E sourcebook \ adventure is a return to Barovia (The Curse of Strahd). Love it! Looks like it's going to include more about the lands of Barovia and an updated delve into Ravenloft in an adventure for levels 1 - 10; I guess they need something for those low level guys to do before they can fight Strahd. My players had a lot of fun beating that guy a few years ago in Gothic Greyhawk.

5E OGL?
I'm doing school on the weekends so there's no chance I'll be working on any grandiose 5E megadungeon this year. I eagerly await the efforts of an enterprising 5E designer with old school sensibilities who creates a (good) epic 5E megadungeon - I've got some money right here. 5E doesn't play out the same as the old school clones because of the power levels and wahoo magic stuff, but it's a really fun game and I hope this OGL brings some good things to the market. Splatbooks and rules bloat need not apply - although I could be persuaded by an updated setting like 3E's Midnight, or a well done Asian-themed setting. Speaking of which, I need to pick up a copy of Yoon Suin this year and check out Stonehell 2 - those were a few old school products from last year that slipped by while I wasn't blogging. I may get my first Indie game this year too, something like Dungeon World (after some recent recommendations here).

Now if someone could announce they got a Traveller license for Star Wars or Star Trek, 2016 would be completely bananas.

What are you looking forward to this year in the RPG game-o-sphere?

Monday, January 11, 2016

For the Dungeon Campaign: Are your towns safe?

I've seen some campaign discussions through the years where the referee has declared that towns are safe zones for their dungeon or wilderness campaign, and adventure only happens "out there" - perhaps outside of town, across the river, or in the dungeon itself. Can anyone who's run this kind of game discuss how the experience went?

It seems like encounters in towns and cities can provide relief and contrast with the tactical world of the dungeon, so I'm wondering, even for a megadungeon campaign, whether I'd actually want to declare towns and cities 'safe zones' or not, and limit a facet of the game. On the other hand, I can see benefits in making towns purely transactional places that quickly get the focus back to a specific locale.

I'd love to hear perspectives from folks that have gone with the 'town is safe' approach, or some guidance toward blog posts or other writings where the discussion has been expressed already. Thanks much!

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Visiting Dwimmermount for Christmas

Arise from the dead, sleeping blog; we have things to do. I have a couple of weeks break over the holidays, and I'm starting a new game. I've finally taken the weighty, hardbound version of Dwimmermount off the shelf and plumbed it's storied depths to run at the table.

I consciously avoided Dwimmermount after its kickstarter; the affair descended into a messy drama, and when I got the book after an interminable period, I had mixed feelings about the process. Quite a bit of time has since passed then, and curiosity got the better of me. Now, after having read the book cover to cover, and kicking off an actual-play adventure there, I state that Dwimmermount is amazing. Over the course of the next few blog posts, I'll take a deeper look at Dwimmermount and why it's one of the pivotal books in the OSR movement.

But I do need to step back and revisit some points about the publication's history to put my trepidations into context. There's a deep irony in the publication of Dwimmermount. The source campaign was heavily featured on the blog Grognardia, which catalogued James Maliszewski's exploration of early Dungeons & Dragons and the roots of the RPG hobby. His blog was a good read, and immensely popular. James used Dwimmermount to explore the modes of play espoused by Gary Gygax and embodied in Gary's legendary mega dungeon, Castle Greyhawk.

Castle Greyhawk has never seen print. It was a living, breathing dungeon created over many years and innumerable game sessions, a collection of scant notes, worn maps, and hazy recollections of the author. As fans, we hounded Gary for decades to commit Castle Greyhawk to a publication. There have been heroic fan versions, but for various reasons, Gary took the original with him to his grave.

After some years of running his popular Dwimmermount game (and reporting it on his blog), James launched one of the most successful OSR kickstarter campaigns I can recall, to fund a print version of Dwimmermount. The gentlemen over at Autarch, publishers of Adventurer, Conqueror, King (ACKS), had recently entered OSR publishing with their successful launch of ACKS, and they partnered with James to deliver it.

In a bizarre twist of history repeating itself, the project soon got into trouble. The effort of turning scant notes, worn maps, and the author's hazy memories, into a fully realized, printed megadungeon, turned out to be just as daunting for James as it had for Gary Gygax. James withdrew from the project, and Autarch, which had other considerations in play, such as their reputation as a new publisher, and a bevy of planned products, carried on with the commitment to the backers. The final publication of Dimmermount is a blend of James' original campaign and the embellishments added by Autarch to build out the raw notes, remediate gaps, and reconcile inconsistencies.

The final product is a triumph. But how do we assign credit and authorship? I'm perplexed by the ambiguities related to the creative process and the finished work. Is a creation diminished if the author fails to complete the piece and a second author, or even a third, comes along to see it through? I'm sure many projects are collective efforts and we are none the wiser for having been spared the details on "how the sausage was made"; in the gaming space, this project stands out because of the public way we came to know the visionary creator withdrew, the sordid response by a minority of fans, and how the remaining team stalwartly carried on. The mixed pedigree of the product has forced me to reflect on the permutations of collaborative art. Actually, working the discussion out as I was writing this brought me to an epiphany: is it perhaps silly to get caught up on authorship concerns and pedigree on the eve of "Star Wars Day"? I'm taking the family to see the new movie tomorrow. It's not like we even considered looking askance at the work of Disney or JJ Abrams because George Lucas is out of the picture; in fact I'm thankful there will be no Jar Jar Binks. (Don't let me down, JJ Abrams - I better not see Gungans).

This preamble to Dwimmermount is waxing long. I'm very fond of the book, and as you check back over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing my reasons for praising it highly. We'll look at the world of Dwimmermount, its role as Axis Mundi, how it embodies various old school ideals, and then take a look at the dungeons themselves.

To close this bit of blog necromancy, I'll offer a brief account on where I've been: I started a demanding master's program this past year, a 16 month grind calculated to launch me on that next career arc. Juggling family, 3 kids, a challenging corporate gig, and a master's program at an Ivy league school has put a serious crimp on creative output and gaming. I've been keeping up with some blogs, I ran some 5E over the summer, but I've mainly shifted into a consumer of gaming content rather than developing stuff whole cloth for my home games. That won't change for another year, but I do expect to write about gaming and keep up with the news in OSR-land. Glad to see so many of you are soldiering on while this place has been dark.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

13th Age and Taenarum

One thing I've been considering as Taenarum motors along is how to incorporate more effects of the gods (and their intrusions on the mortal world) into the campaign. This is the time after the heroic age of mythic Greece; heroes and dungeons are the new spectator sport of the gods. Once players have earned a few levels and started to experience some success, they should be on the radar, coming to the attention of otherworldly patrons and antagonists.

I never picked up the 13th Age game from Pelgrane, but I'm a fan of the publisher and follow its projects. A thought flew into my brain - 13th Age had a system called "Icons", powerful background characters in the setting - and a way for either the player or DM to invoke them during the game session. I'm not fully clear how the system worked, but it seems like an option to present various Greek deities and similar powerful characters in Taenarum. Aid from an Icon, assuming that's something they do, could easily be represented via 5E's inspiration mechanic.

Does anyone have practical experience with 13th Age and can provide some pointers on how they used 13th Age style Icons in their game? Does this seem like a good fit for various petty Greek gods?

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Needs More Drow

It's a lazy post for a lazy Sunday afternoon while I get ready for some Sunday night games... how would you work Drow Elves into the world of antiquity?

We'll be playing a 5E game and I've worked a number of the 'modern D&D' races into the setting already. Dragonborn are descendants of the Spartoi, the dragon-men created by Cadmus (and Jason) by sowing special dragon's teeth. Tieflings are outcasts from the decadent cities of the East. The game doesn't use Orcs; I'm using the Half Orc to represent humans cursed by the gods to live as hideous outcasts. Dwarves are creations of Hephaestus, while their dark counterparts, the Duergar, are minions of Hades.

How would you put Drow into the mythic world?

Thursday, July 3, 2014

A Framework for D&D Horror

It's no secret I've been casting about for the right vehicle for running a campaign merging horror and D&D styles. I have a deep passion for the genre, although it's not always the best fit for my gaming groups - especially when I have a bunch of kids at the table. Earlier this year I put horror development on hiatus to focus on developing an adventure campaign appropriate to all ages - regular readers are familiar with Taenarum, my mythology themed megadungeon. Taenarum is going great, but that doesn't mean I won't revive the horror side projects. It's just a matter of finding the right approach.

Specifically - I need something that lends itself to episodic play and small scenarios so we can do some one-shots and interpolated games. It also needs to merge the key tropes of D&D and horror. Before delving forward, let's take a moment and identify said tropes.

Old school D&D emphasizes exploration and recovering treasure over combat, separating it from newer iterations. Settings assume gold and treasure is sequestered in old ruins guarded by traps and monsters, lending itself to a player-driven sandbox style. Exploring old ruins to recover treasure, while avoiding combat - these shouldn't be too hard to work into a horror game.

Traditional horror game scenarios are almost always presented as mysteries. The players are engaged with defining the mystery, then presented with clues and evidence that allow them to ultimately confront the danger or solve the mystery. The mystery structure lends itself to horror when you overlay uncertainty, isolation, and the weird and unnatural over the top. The place where horror gaming tends to break down is the ongoing campaign. Either the entire campaign represents a macro-mystery, or you need a good narrative explanation for why the adventurers keep running into the horror of the week. Monster hunter shows, while greatly entertaining, usually don't generate much terror or horror.

Stepping back, I'm thinking the theme of "bad places" supports blending the genres. Picture a countryside littered with mysterious and forbidden ruins, each surrounded by peculiar lore and shunned by the locals - for good reason. A handful of horror writers have gone down the path of mythologizing a local area with lurking horrors - HP Lovecraft's Massachusetts, Ramsey Campbell's Severn Valley, or Stephen King's Maine spring immediately to mind. Creating such an area as a D&D style sandbox, with most plot hooks represented as legends and lore around lost treasures, seems well within grasp of our available technologies - the hex crawl, the site-based location, the conventional mystery structure.

Of course, each place necessarily represents a challenging, 'screw you' style of dungeon - as in, you woke the dead, now deal with it. I've repeated it before, horror is ultimately conservative, and victims and protagonists alike bring the horror down on themselves by treading into the forbidden. Monsters stand as warnings and signposts at the limits of humanity, guardians of the frontiers. Striving to learn things 'man was not meant to know' calls for destruction. (Grave robbing old tombs and recovering secrets best left buried fall into the same category).

This reminds, I saw something either this week or last where a reviewer was making cranky complaints about Death Frost Doom and the way the twist in that dungeon can screw over the players. I tend to view this as misalignment of audience. Spoilers about Death Frost Doom: In a moment of greed, the scenario sets the players up to destroy a thing that unleashes ancient horrors, sending the adventure into a radically different direction. It's brilliant. But it is very much true to the tropes of the horror genre, not heroic adventure fantasy. Springing a survival horror twist on the players is fair game in a horror scenario. There has to be alignment of expectations between the players and referees (and I guess, in some cases, module reviewers) around the nature of the game and the genre we're actually modeling.

Anyway - this is where I'm at with it. Start small, with a simple hex crawl and a few scattered lairs, and craft the sites into locations filled with mystery and horror. I'll post an example in the next day or so to demonstrate the flavor. Some of the more interesting questions fall into whether 'the horrors' should revolve around traditional monsters imagined fresh, or creatures generated whole cloth ala Lovecraft or Campbell. What do you guys think?

Monday, June 30, 2014

Catching up with the Lich House

I've been off the web for a couple of weeks. Business travel, a major system outage back at headquarters, and then prep for a professional exam all conspired to give me more urgent things to attend than blogging - which, at the end of the day, is really just a vehicle for my musings and chronicles about games.

The Taenarum campaign is still moving forward; Taenarum is my classic megadungeon locale, a sprawling dungeon around the entrance to the Underworld and the vaults of Hades. The monsters and themes are heavily inspired by Greek myth and heroic fantasy. I'll need to do a recap of recent game sessions. The first 16 dungeon areas are ready for play, so I'm moving on to the larger game world. I've been working on the calendar and festivals, charts for generating annual campaign events, and maps. I can't stress enough the importance of campaign events outside of the dungeon to help bring the rest of the world to life. I've also started hex mapping the setting and have some interesting questions to answer - like, should I use characters from Greek legend in the game as kings and heroes?

I also had the chance to read GURPS Horror. I'm not a GURPS player, but I've been hearing about the book for years as a general resource for horror gaming, and it's written by Kenneth Hite. I was not disappointed. I'll consider doing a review, but I couldn't really speak to any of the GURPS game rules or statistics. My evergreen side project is developing a good approach to running a campaign that merges sandbox style D&D (or similar class and level-based gaming) with horror themes. I've had some good megadungeon concepts that integrated the horror with a sandbox style of play, such as the Black City or Harrow Home Manor, but since Taenarum is an active (heroic fantasy) megadungeon, I'm looking to do something a little different. Developing two megadungeons at once doesn't sound enjoyable, even if one is horror and awesome. July is just about here, which means it's time for some summer Cthulhu. Altair moves in the sky, and the stars are right.

So that's it for today - I'm back online. For the readers - do any of the aforementioned topics sound particularly interesting to develop or share on the blog? Otherwise I'll get caught up on game reports first. I also need to get out there and see what I missed with other bloggers, too. Have there been any OSR dramas or tempests in a teapot that are worth spectating? I'm looking forward to seeing the Basic D&D PDF this week - WOTC is supposed to put it up July 3rd, right?

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Alas Poor Feedly, I Knew Him Well

Day two of the DDOS attack against Feedly, and I've lost track of many of the other blogs I read. Supposedly the attack is mitigated, but I still haven't been able to get to Feedly. Is anyone else in the same boat? After google reader was taken out into the field and shot, I ported everything to Feedly. It's been a good reader so far - although the effort is manual to add things to a blogroll so I rarely get to it. It was much simpler when blogger had a follower widget on every blog and you could just hit 'follow' and then import them directly.

I've had to manage DDOS events in my career - no fun. DDOS mitigation costs aren't burdensome to a big company, but I can imagine they're crushing to a start up. It highlights how these cloud service providers we rely on are actually small shops behind the scenes. Good luck Feedly team!

How are you keeping up with blogs these days? Is there another popular reader, or are you just watching the G+ stream?

Friday, June 6, 2014

The Sandbox Buddha

It's been a busy week by me - I've been putting up crown molding at the house, taping, repainting, all sorts of home remodeling stuff. I've learned the ins and outs of the "compound miter saw". But the project is wrapping up - at least until I start tearing up the old flooring - so I can get back to some writing.

I enjoy bloggers and the folks that visit us out here on the blogs. It's a chance to learn new techniques, see how other people run their games, and take in some contrary viewpoints. My recent post here on my megadungeon practices linked to older posts here on the Lich House, and after seeing some of the questions dropped on them, I recognize that clarity and communication are skills I don't always demonstrate. Let's see if I can improve!

The ambiguity in question is around my sandbox mantra, X is for Killing. While my joy and excitement in the post is palpable, the actual underlying message was oblique. The phrase came from Il Male, an Italian blogger (English as a second language), who populated his sandbox with all sorts of things for the players to target: "Gods are for killing; clerics worship gods, therefore, are for killing; if it's not human, is for killing." (sic) Il Male, what happened to you, buddy? Someone should compile a list of all the old school type blogs that have flamed out - like a diff between one of Cyclopeatron's old lists and Dyvers mega blog roll. Anyway, the mantra isn't that all the campaign elements are there to kill the players; rather, it means that it's perfectly fine if the game elements get destroyed or killed by the players. Nothing in the referee's world has plot immunity. Nothing is predetermined, and the game can go in any direction.

This philosophy is extremely liberating to me. It's like a gamer adaption of Buddhist thought. Let go of your material possessions and your expectations, referee. Expectations are the root of suffering. Allow the experience of your game setting to happen without premeditation. This sense of detachment from your creations is what allows your game to be open to any possibility. It allows you to truly be an impartial referee.

Other virtues that are evangelized on the old school blogs such as letting the dice fall and honoring random results, these all flow naturally when you distance yourself from the results and leave behind any expectations that a game session or a combat needs to go a certain way.

Sandbox Buddhism is not the opposite of story. Your game setting should be loaded with game elements that are rife with goals and motivations and potential actions - the building blocks of story. Your NPCs must have their own agendas, along with the rulers, the organizations, the conspiracies. Events are happening all the time in the game setting, regardless of what the players are or aren't doing. Just don't get attached to any of them.

This game approach is the opposite of the Adventure Path. Adventure Paths require following a predefined story from scene to scene. The Adventure Path style seems immensely popular with the 3.x player base. It's a fantastic vehicle to allow the players to take on a specific role (heroes, marauders) and follow a strongly outlined narrative to an epic conclusion. However, where I'm at with my gaming hobby, I prefer running games where I have very little idea how things are going to go from game session to game session or how the campaign is going to develop. I don't know how it's going to end, and it's that detachment from the results that allows me take such a neutral stance. The players are the drivers that determine the path of the game, not me, and certainly not an author. The games are significantly more interesting and enjoyable for me by allowing the players to drive the direction. I'm as surprised as anybody at the end of a game night - and that's worth everything.

I do realize I've developed a great reliance on the megadungeon structure. For all of its flaws around fantasy realism, it is the simplest campaign structure to put sandbox theories to the test and hone the craft. As I continue to grow as a hobbyist, I'm sure I'll branch out into the other sandbox forms. Eventually.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Rapid React - The New D&D Covers

Big news yesterday - release dates and covers for the newest edition of Dungeons & Dragons are all over the internet. Plenty of peers in the OSR blogosphere have been posting the news. I'm a bit conflicted about the news!

The largest issue I'm having is that the covers belie an approach to anime fantasy that sits far outside my desired game experience. I want a game inspired by fantasy literature, not wuxia inspired fantasy super heroes flying through the air and bashing monsters on the noggin. The new covers scream out that the monsters are bigger and more ferocious than ever, and the heroes fly! Is that what D&D has become?

On the other hand, I'm going to reserve judgment on the actual game play - the playtest reviews have been generally positive and folks that follow the words of the Mearls have reported the new edition is meant to support a range of play-styles - including old school sensibilities. The buy-in for the starter set is fairly inexpensive and there's no reason not to sample the game when it comes out.

Here’s the important part: the mass market opportunities inherent in a successful boxed set trumps everything. Consider my neighborhood. Our street is infested with children. Last count, there's like 18 kids ages 7-13 in our section of the block alone. My oldest (a 12 year old) runs a backyard game of Traveller on the picnic table for a group of kids that grew up on HALO style video games. When last I checked, they were exploring a derelict ship where space spiders and venom zombies battled pirates and the survivors. However, the parents of these kids aren't going to seek out an obscure game shop and buy a massive tome of Pathfinder or order a Traveller hard cover online. They are the kind of parents that will buy their kid a $20 D&D boxed set if it's in the games section of Target or Walmart. If this thing is successful, I could see our entire block playing D&D by summer's end with a half dozen copies of the boxed set in the hands of kids. Whatever RPG throne Paizo assumed with the death of 4E, it appears to be short lived - no offense meant, Pathfinder fans.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the new WOTC game. A rising tide raises all ships and helps all RPGs. I hope the new edition is a smashing success and would like to see the game line do well. I'll take it a step further and say, despite the awful covers, that I also hope this is a game I'll enjoy playing. Why not? It has the potential to be Dungeons & Dragons again, and inspire a new generation of kids that missed out on the heyday of the early 80's. Heck, while we're tossing gold pieces in the wishing well, I'm even going to hope for an OGL type of agreement to allow folks to make compatible works.

In the meantime, I'll continue to pay attention to bloggers more passionate about WOTC than myself who are reporting on every word of the Mearls and the minions. It's going to be an interesting couple of months, right? C'mon, WOTC, we're pulling for you to get it right. Now if I can just stop judging books by their covers...

Sunday, April 27, 2014

What Does a Product Owe You?

A couple of writers I really enjoy posted follow ups to a scathing review of Island of the Unknown by RPG Pundit. I realize not everyone reads the same blogs as me, so here are links to the articles in question. First, RPG Pundit's review: Review of Island of the Unknown. Pundit's style is bombastic and critical, and every once in a while he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed down there in Uruguay, packs a shotgun with metaphorical buck-shot (shuck-shuck, locked and loaded), and fires off a double-barreled review like this one: "There are meth-heads on street-corners with no gaming experience who could improv a better setting than this."

If you're not familiar with the Island of the Unknown product, it describes hundreds of hexes on the eponymous island, populated with bizarre creatures and idiosyncratic magic users. Other than providing one strange encounter for each hex, there's very little over-arching flavor - there are no plot hooks or stories, the magic users aren't provided with motivations or rivalries.

Joseph over at Greyhawk Grognard and Noisms at Monsters and Manuals posted some interesting follow up articles to Pundit's review, on the nature of sandboxes and the nature of monsters. It's fascinating because they both invoked similar pillars of table top gaming - players at the game table need to be able make informed decisions or their choices are meaningless. If the players are in a wilderness hex crawl with 6 directions to travel, they might as well roll a 6-sided die to choose - unless the referee is supplying them with enough information to weight the options. That's where the game is at, that's where the fun is - the exercise of meaningful choice and then handling the consequences.

I love folklore and history. I love bestiaries and monster manuals. Noisms discusses how real-world monsters have thousands of years of history and storytelling behind them - the monsters of folklore have evolved and survived the generations, and have mythic resonance for it. For my purposes, I'll be bold and take his statement the rest of the way: because real-world monsters have survived as storytelling elements for thousands of years, players already know some things about them. (30 years of D&D play might have something to do with it too). Because everyone knows some things about those monsters already, they're the combat equivalent of rumors and plot hooks when encountered. The player's ability to read the signs, identify the opponent, and make a plan for combat against the monsters of myth and folklore is every bit as important as their ability to sift through plot hooks and make decisions in the sandbox outside of combat.

I'll generalize and say bloggers have a tendency to overvalue new and unique monsters - perhaps that's a perception borne of selection bias since that's what people post on their blogs. For adventure gaming, those things have to be the exception, not the rule. Otherwise you rob the players of too much agency, they lose an element of strategy and planning. Of course this caveat is for adventure gaming. In horror games, where combat is to be avoided and the monster is meant to be otherworldly and unknown, all bets are off. Go crazy with your unknowable eldritch mutants.

As an observer of OSR publishing, this discussion around Island of the Unknown raises an interesting question: What does a product owe you? There was the Dwimmermount kerfuffle some time back because some of the descriptions in a draft manuscript were bland and the referee needed to elaborate them. I don't see the same vitriol at Stonehell, an early OSR publication, and the descriptions tend to be quite sparse. As consumers buying a product, there is an absolute right to pen scathing critiques of products that don't meet our expectations. It's a free internet, and if you plunked down your money, by all means - get out there and let folks know about it. Send the publishers a message. Do it.

In the preface to Island of the Unknown the author calls out that the island is left intentionally bland to make transplanting it to the referee's home campaign a simple matter. The product does what it says on the tin. The flip side is making a product so dripping with campaign flavor that adapting to your setting is an impediment. There is the argument of writing rooms and descriptions to avoid all need for improvisation by the referee - minute details done to excess. Then there's the idea of providing only those details the referee couldn't make up at the table - the art of providing just enough evocative detail.

It's a fascinating phenomenon to observe this tension between products that spoon feed the referee everything they need, on the one hand, versus less verbose products that require adaptation and thought. Of course, the reactions to the aforementioned products leads to these contentious reviews and internet squalls - and who doesn't enjoy some popcorn moments here in the blogosphere? We're people.

For my part, I'm on the side of saying that Island of the Unknown failed for me as well. The author's previous work, Carcosa, is also a massive hex crawl, but the encounters and inhabitants of Carcosa are filled with motivations, and motivation creates story. One random hex in Carcosa may be filled with escaped slaves seeking safe haven; they're fleeing the bad guys in the next hex. The bad guys will pay a reward if the runaways are captured. No matter which hex is encountered first, the players will have the opportunity to learn information about something else nearby and engage with story. Island of the Unknown is littered with idiosyncratic magic users (all lavishly illustrated) but none of them have personalities or stories or ties to the larger whole. It's a greatly missed opportunity.

I suppose in a roundabout sort of way that describes my own litmus test for a successful product. I can embellish details about empty rooms or turn bland treasure into something more interesting, if necessary. What I want a product to be doing is providing goals and motivations for the inhabitants and antagonists. I can take it the rest of the way.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

A First Look at the Scoreboard

Here's a first look at Taenarum's "Scoreboard" (image below). There are a few adventurer parties scattered between levels 1-3 that I need to add as well - they're either listed on wandering monster tables or buried in a room key. A couple of long time bloggers helped me out with some parties from their home campaigns yesterday on G+ - thanks fellas!

I'm convinced more than ever that keeping a scoreboard for progress in Taenarum is going to be amazing. It creates instant rivalries with the other groups on the board. It provides an immediate sense of accomplishment for the players as their haul of loot moves them up the board. It gives me a reason to have people in far off places like Sparta, Mycenae, or Corinth know about any given adventuring company. It gives the game a funny, ironic, self-referential twist. And it's going to give me a ton of material for rumors and foreshadowing.

For instance, the group is asking about the third dungeon level back in town. Whatever bland rumor I had previously can be immediately dressed up. "Oh yeah, there was this guy a while back - Higgins. His guys learned that the ghoul king knew the whereabouts of the Bident of Hades, and that his court was somewhere in the northwest quadrant. Of course, they never came back..."

I also like to put evidence of previous explorers in the dungeon. I think it hearkens back to my love of Journey to the Center of the Earth, where the characters are following in the footsteps of a legendary explorer, Arne Saknussemm, and they keep finding his runic "A.S." carved along their downward path. I'll use a ready list of past explorers like the ones on the scoreboard to embellish such details. I'm keeping notes on the side about at least one notable member of each party for it.

I've seen dungeon concepts where the dungeon has been sealed, and the party represents the first humans to visit it in a long time. There is a place for that approach, no doubt, but consider the opposite: the dungeon is vast, unknowable, and eternal; generations of explorers have tried to plum its murky depths. Very few retire to old age; it's always the last mission that spells doom. Adventurers come and go, but the monsters, traps, tricks, and lure of easy wealth endures.

Anyway, here's a first look at The Scoreboard - it's a work in progress. It's not too late to suggest your own entry, either in the comments or on the G+ thread.

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