No Last Jedi at GaryCon 2019

I got to run my "The Last Jedi" replacement Star Wars Saga adventure called NO LAST JEDI at GaryCon last week. I've finally recovered from the Con Crud, so can now do a recap of how it went.

First of all, in case anyone wants to run a game of SW Saga themselves using the new movie's characters, I've uploaded pdfs of the character sheets I made for the game under the Campaign Resources of the Vorpal Chainsword. Second, I uploaded a bunch more pictures from the game people were nice enough to send me under the Gallery section of the site.

The story starts out with essentially the same opening crawl as The Last Jedi. Only in this case Rey has been training with the enigmatic Luke Skywalker for about 3 weeks, but has learned little of his motivations. The game opens with Chewy returning from the Resistance fleet in the Millenium Falcoln with Fin, Poe, and BB-8 in tow (Poe came in on his X-wing). They were sent by order of Princess Leia to plead with Luke to return to the fight with the resistance. The players attempted to convince Luke of the nobility of the cause, but he kept insisting it was too dangerous for everyone if he left. At that point, BB-8 played a holographic message from Princess Leia for him.

"Luke, I beg you to return from exile and rejoin our fight for the resistance. We have lost much since you left, the New Republic all having been wiped out by Starkiller Base before we were able to destroy it. But we have hope yet, as we have learned the secret location of the leader of the First Order, this Lord Snoke. We believe that if we can capture or kill Snoke the First Order will fall and Ben may even return to us. But I know that Snoke is strong in the Dark Side of the Force, and only with your help could we ever hope to prevail, but press on we must. The last remaining ships of the Resistance fleet are amassing for the final assault on his secret headquarters even as I record this message. This BB unit has the coordinates where to meet us. Help us Luke Skywalker, you're our only hope."

(Note: If the Players convinced Luke before playing the hologram then he will fight with them in the upcoming scene and one player can control him. But in this game they did not, and Luke still refused.)

BB-8 revealed that the location is in the Horuset system. At this Luke paled and says "We must stop her!" Just at that moment the sound of a Tie Fighter roared overhead!

(Note: I had a bluetooth speaker setup behind the DM screen and had a Star Wars soundboard loaded up on my phone so I could play sound effects from the movies. The sound of Tie fighters screeching by and blasters and lightsabers crashing together REALLY helps amp up the fun of any Star Wars game)

The Imperials had tracked the heroes to the old Jedi planet (the official name is Ach-To, fyi). The Imperials were now searching the planet for Luke. Now Luke has no choice but to go, so they've got to get back to the Millennium Falcon and Poe's X-Wing, and of course Phasma and a squad of Stormtroopers stand in their way.

(Note: The old Star Wars minis from the Wizards of the Coast line are perfect for the RPG, as they're pre-painted and super durable. I love them. You can still get them from ebay and some miniature websites like coolstuffinc.com.)

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They fought their way past Phasma and her stormtroopers. Luke ran off to handle some AT-STs on the other side of the battlefield (if they'd convinced Luke earlier then instead he'd have stayed and helped and BB-8 could've controlled him). One unexpected hilarious moment of the game was that BB-8's player decided to roll around between bushes and ask if there were Porg nest under there. When he found some, he'd shock the Porgs to cause a burst of Porgs out of the bushes, startling nearby Stormtroopers, including Phasma! He even rolled so well on this that a hunting Nexu burst out of the plants intent on eating the Porgs and the Stormtroopers along with them. So the heroes were able to slip by Phasma (who was fighting off the Nexu) and blast their way clear to the Falcon.

Next we had a Starfighter chase scene, where the Falcon and Poe's X-wing were harrassed by Tie Fighters as they tried to break through the blockade surrounding the old Jedi planet. (I used the X-Wing miniatures for this, as they just look awesome.)  Finn and Rey acted as gunners in the Falcoln while Chewy flew, and Poe and BB-8 fought off Ties in the X-Wing. Luke just meditated mysteriously in the X-Wing.

They escaped the blockade and made their way to the Resistance fleet. Here Leia and Luke embraced and Luke explained the plot. Long story short is that Luke actually found Snoke over 5 years ago while he was mopping up Empire remnants and old Sith artifacts with his crew of freshly-trained Padawans (including Ben Solo). They had found some holocrons mapping out some of Palpatine's other projects and were shutting them down before they became a problem for the New Republic. Unfortunately one of those projects was the Tomb of Darth Plagueis, Palpatine's old master. Palpatine couldn't kill Plagueis because Plagueis could jump bodies, and had done so many times before to remain immortal. Plagueis would jump into his Sith Apprentice after he was fully trained but before the Apprentice got wise to him, thus allowing Plagueis to live forever. But Palpatine figured it out, and froze Plagueis in a Force Trap deep within a Sith Tomb on Korriban. This Tomb required Palpatine to occasionally visit and maintain the suspension so Plagueis wouldn't wake up. With Palpatine's death though, it was only a matter of time before Plagueis woke up. Luke learned of Plagueis and took his best Padawans to go shut Plagueis down for good. However Plagueis killed most of his Padawans before Luke could pull some Force magic and block Plagueis's ability to switch bodies within the Force. Ben and Luke then pulled the temple down on Plagueis and barely escaped with their lives. What Luke didn't know was that Plagueis had survived and already put his mark on Ben as his next apprentice, who was grieving from the loss of his friends and vulnerable to the Dark SIde. Eventually Ben turned evil and destroyed the New Jedi Temple, due to whisperings in the Force from Plaegus (also known as "Snoke"), and joined Snoke and helped build the First Order from an Empire remnant fleet.

(That's a lot of exposition! I know, I'm sorry. Now here I really wanted to run through a "Flashback" scene and I had the Sith Tomb map and a handful of 5th level Padawans and Luke ready to go. It would've been cool to let everyone be a Jedi and have a big battle between Plageuis (with some Sith robo-zombies) and the Players as Jedi. But the con game was already running long and time was short (only had 4 hours for the game!) so I just explained all that and moved forward.)

Luke finally explained that if he were to die, Snoke would regain his ability to switch bodies through the Force and would likely immediately take over Kyle Ren/Ben's body, which Kylo certainly wasn't aware of. So Luke had to stay in hiding to study the Jedi texts and figure out how to permanently sever Snoke's connection to the Force before he could take over Kylo Ren's body for good. But he's come out now because of where the Fleet discovered the hidden base, the Horuset system, which is where Korriban (and Plagueis's tomb) are! Luke knows Snoke's tomb is on the planet below them.

At that moment three giant Star Destroyers appeared out of Hyperspace next to the Resistance fleet! Leia commands the ships to jump to hyperspace but there's some kind of Hyperspace Jammer coming from the largest Star Destroyer, blocking their escape. Ackbar turns to the party and says "Its a Trap!" ;)

(So now we've got a Starship-scale battle to fight. I used the Fantasy Flight Armada minis for this as they look awesome. But for the actual battle we focused on the Falcon and Poe, and the other ships we rolled dice for, high/low war-style. It was a simpled D6's for Ties/A-Wings, D8's for X-wings/B-wings/Tie Interceptors. For each grouping we just rolled whoever rolled lower lost a ship (and one die) from the little 3-ship sprues. That way we could know how the general battle was going outside of the close-up battles of the PCs.)

The heroes knew Snoke was on the surface, and wanted to get Luke down there to kill him once and for all. They also knew they should probably stop the Hyperspace Jammer on the main Star Destroyer. AND the X-wings were getting killed out there so they wanted Poe to help in the overall Starship battle. So they decided to DO ALL THREE!

Poe flew out on his X-wing with BB-8, and fought his way to the main Star Destroyer. He then JETTISONED BB-8 into one of the hanger bays of the Star Destroyer! Just, out in space and through the blue shield thing right into a hanger. By himself! Then Poe just flew back into the main battle. So BB-8s goal was to disable the Hyperspace Jammer alone. Hilarious.

Luke, Rey, Chewy and Fin took the Falcon through the starship battle and down to the planet, evading and blasting Tie fighters along the way. Once there, they entered the Sith Tomb. (Chewy used quite a few Force Points on the piloting checks going down, and I just let them find the tomb rather than fight their way up to it).

So we had this three way encounter going on. Poe would blast a Tie or two. The ground heroes engaged Snoke and Kylo Ren and some Imperial Guards, and BB-8 had to bumble his way through the Star Destroyer. That was probably the most fun part of each turn, watching BB-8s player figure out how to trick a Stormtrooper into falling down a chute or electroshock him into tripping and falling. Eventually BB-8's player found a maintenance tunnel and was able to make his way to the Hyperspace Jammer (bypassing a TON of Stormtroopers I had ready to go) and disable it. He then shot himself out the garbage shute and into space. Poe had placed a tracker on him so just picked him up floating out in space mid-battle! It was pretty awesome.

Meanwhile I gave Poe's player Luke to play (the original plan was to allow BB-8's player to play Luke in the final scene, since anyone who had to be BB-8 for the whole game deserved a break, but BB-8 had his own infiltration adventure going on). Luke faced off against Snoke and Kylo with force powers while Rey, Fin, and Chewy took down the imperial guards and robots with their blasters. The Sith Tomb was full of traps and they were careful to move to safe spots during each round. Kylo started throwing Chewy around and so Rey ran up to Kylo to face him one-on-one. This would also allow Luke and Snoke (who were busy throwing pillars and stone coffins at eachother) to face off in lightsaber combat. Unfortunately we ran out of time at the Con and had to leave it on that cliffhanger...

What a game! I have to say, it was so much fun, and the players at GaryCon were some of the best folks to help re-write The Last Jedi into a Star Wars story worthy of the Saga!

Lego Heroica

RETRO GAMING!

I learned a short time ago that Lego actually released an rpg-themed boardgame back in 2011 called Lego Heroica, but it was discontinued just a year or two after release because it didn't sell at all. When I was told this I did not believe it, because I both consider myself to have a finger on the pulse of all things D&D, and I can't image Lego actually making a marketing mistake these days as Lego-enthusiasts will pretty much buy anything. Yet this guy (who we'll call Charles) would not be discouraged in convincing me of this attempt on Lego's part to cash in on the Geek and Sundry-style D&D mania that was going on (remember how good Geek and Sundry was in the early 2010s?), and he actually hunted down copies of three of the four main sets on ebay for us to check out. So we opened them up, built and combined all the various maps from the itsy-bitsy lego chits, and commenced  questing.

Holy smokes was this game fun. The rules were much more intricate compared to what I expected. Clearly someone put some major love into this over in Lego-Land. Its too bad it wasn't marketed well, because its pretty damn fun to play, especially if you're a kid just getting into gaming. Or a drunk adult.

All melee combat occurs with the same dice, and the same chances to hit and be hit by creatures, regardless of what they are or your character class. But the meaner monsters hit harder, which is pretty much the only difference between minions and bosses. However one face of the special attack/movement die has a shield on it, and if rolled it activates the special power that each character class has. Depending on your class it could be activated when you roll to move (as a ranged attack) or during combat (as a melee attack).

The Wizard, for example, moves and attacks in melee like everyone else. However if he rolls the shield during his movement phase, he can Magic Missile any monster within 3 spaces (even around corners). But if he rolls the shield during combat it just represents a successful hit as normal. On the other hand if the Barbarian rolls a shield during combat he can hit and kill all monsters within melee range around him, but if he rolls it during movement phase he can just move full distance, no special power.

Its intricate enough to keep your interest, but easy enough for kids to learn and play. It would be quite a gateway into D&D for any gamer parents, its just too bad its made by Lego and therefore was marked up 6000% upon release, and is even more expensive now on the black market.

All in all though Lego Heroica gets 4 pointy-lego-bits-hidden-in-the-carpet out of 5!
And I don't even really like Legos. ;)

What else can I say, its just easy fun. 
Game on!

No Last Jedi - An RPG rewrite of Episode VIII

  Hi there! I know its been a while. Long story short I've moved the blog over to my own VC domain so I can store and post pics and videos and stuff far more easily without google and blogger getting up in my craw about ownership. Plus it will be nice to not have the Google folks sending endless unnecessary G+ notifications and constantly pinging me with "tips" on how to get likes and shares and other busybody messages I don't really care about. But it'll post here too.

So without further ado, let's talk about my upcoming Star Wars "Elseworlds" RPG game to replace The Last Jedi movie (because, as we all know, its a terrible movie). I'm not going to explain too much why The Last Jedi is a terrible movie, because you all already know deep within your souls that its bad. It ignored ALL of the previous movie's tantalizing plot hooks, invented "Force Snapchat" to justify sending interstellar shirtless snaps between the Force kids, made Luke Skywalker the dumbest Jedi who ever lived, and broke the entire reason to have lasers in space with that "hyperspace-is-ship-go-fast" magic torpedo nonsense. Even the Snoke apologists secretly know his death was dumb and unfulfilling, deep down.

So at GaryCon this year (2019), I have decided to run a "replacement" game for the movie The Last Jedi, re-imagining how it could've gone if Disney had hired some writers who actually LIKED Star Wars to make the movie following The Force Awakens. And my GaryCon players will help me bring a NEW Last Jedi story to life, which I'm super excited about.
As I love the Dead Games Society, I have decided to run the game using my favorite Star Wars ruleset, Star Wars Saga edition. (I like FFG's mystic dice version well enough, but I think WotC's Saga edition was a thing of beauty.) So the game is under the "DGS Presents" banner at GaryCon (Thursday at 2pm).

So first we must consider, what would a movie/game that replaces The Last Jedi need to have in it?

1. It must have a good reason Luke is in hiding. Not just because he's got baby boomer depression. He should be protecting a super duper secret that is too powerful for anyone to find out to justify his abandoning Leia and society like he has.
2. Snoke needs to actually have a history and a purpose. That purpose should be clearly Sith-related.
3. Rey should have a parentage that is revealed by the end of the movie. She doesn't need to be a Skywalker either. There are at least THREE other great Force-user families from the movies to link her to besides Skywalker.
4. The Chrome Storm Trooper lady should be totally badass. And her chrome armor should be shown to be able to deflect lightsaber attacks (I mean, obviously. Why else is it chrome)?
5. Its gotta have at least ONE of the Knights of Ren in it.
6. And you should be able to play at least one combat with Luke Skywalker involved.

Any others I missed? I've got a plotline made up for the above already that I am super excited to run the players through, so I won't spoil it now. I WILL spoil it after GaryCon (March 7-10, 2019 in Lake Geneva, WI), so check back here for how it went after the convention and more Star Wars discussion. And if you're going to the GaryCon, sign up for the game!

Thankfully, you don't have to be an artist to love Star Wars!

Poe, Fin, C3PO and BB-8 land on Luke's Island are coming to warn R2-D2, Chewy, and Rey (who has been training with Luke for the last six months) that the Knights of Ren have returned and are laying waste to the last remaining resistance planets searching for her and Luke. Suddenly, a First Order ship that was tracking them will land and attempt to eliminate the players and take Luke prisoner.
--> ROLL FOR INITIATIVE!

Strahd Von Valentines Day

In honor of Valentines Day I'd like to talk about a subject most near and dear to my heart, my unrequited love for Ravenloft and all things Strahd Von Zarovich!

On the Dead Games Society podcast #38 we talk a little about the tragic romance that is Strahd Von Zarovich's origin story.

In the original AD&D Ravenloft adventure from 1983, known among collectors as "I6," we are introduced to a most cunning Vampire Lord that harries the Player Characters throughout their journeys within the Transylvania-like realm of Barovia. The villagers name him as "The Devil Strahd," and that he lives in the mysterious castle that perches above the village like a waiting vulture. This mysterious Strahd expertly performs guerilla-like attacks on the PCs as they travel and camp at night, striking only once or twice before fading back into the shadows. Eventually the PC's may explore Castle Ravenloft and find Strahd's personal journal, wherein he describes in his own hand (and point of view) how he came to become obsessed with his younger brother's fiance as well as his own creeping mortality, and made a pact with some dark entity to the blood-drinking master of Ravenloft.

"With words she called me “brother,” but when I looked into her eyes they reflected another name – “death.” It was the death of the aged that she saw in me. She loved her youth and enjoyed it. But I had squandered mine. The death she saw in me turned her from me. And so I came to hate death, my death. My hate is very strong: I would not be called “death” so soon. I made a pact with Vol, a pact of Blood. On the day of the wedding, I killed Sergei, my brother. My pact was sealed with his blood, his…divinity.
I found Taryana weeping in the garden east of the Chapel. She fled from me. She would not let me explain, and a great anger swelled within me. She had to understand the pact I made for her! I pursued her. Finally, in despair, she flung herself from the walls of Ravenloft and I watched everything I ever wanted fall from my grasp forever."

-Tome of Strahd

During the adventure, the PCs are tasked with protecting Ireena Kolyana from Strahd's affections (who he sees as the reincarnation of Tatyana). He constantly tries to separate her from the PCs and whisk her away to Castle Ravenloft to woo her into loving him. However he thinks the best way to do that is to charm a PC into attacking her and then swooping in to destroy that PC in front of her. He's not a super lovey-dovey dude. Based on that diary passage above, I don't think the Strahd fall from grace is about love so much as obsession with her youthfulness and rebelling against his encroaching mortality. When Strahd says that he "Loves" Tatyana (Ireena), its really more about his obsession with her youthfulness and carefree life. Love is reciprocal and pleasant, Obsession is more one-sided and lustful. I think it could be argued that obsession may be a stronger emotion than Love, and I don't think Love is really a power that would create vampires, after all. So when Strahd is chasing after the PCs in I6 and trying to capture Ireena, I think he subconsciously understands this lost cause, and knows that she will never actually love him, no matter how much he whines about it. He doesn't expect to actually get her. He simply desires a justification to feel persecuted again, to be perceived as a martyr as much as possible. Of course, once he achieves that goal of being rejected and again proving the injustice of "love", he'll he'll happily rip the rest of the party to shreds. Happy Valentine's!

So that's a bit of my take on Strahd's personality, but developing your own understanding of Strahd's motivation is key to playing him as interestingly as possible if you dare take your players through the original I6: Ravenloft.

You can listen to me ramble on and on about how much I love Ravenloft (with tangential references to Valentines Day) on the DGS Podcast #38!

Delving through Undermountain on DGS #36!

Welcome one and all to the Yawning Portal! Grab your iron rations, silver mirrors, and tinderboxes because it’s time to descend into the dreaded Undermountain! 

We’re talking convention-gaming Undermountain, that is. On episode of the DGS Podcast I take the DGS mic on a solo adventure down into the cold dark to explore the depths to which one can go when creating conventions based around old-school Megadungeons. I interview Brando of the annual megadungeon-themed convention Brandonomicon, and we discuss hyper-deadly Undermountain, Ropers, Twitch-style technical setups for multi-room gaming, making mystic treasure props and cards for the players, side-betting on adventurer deaths, dungeon-themed geocaching, and for some reason, pizza roll eating contests! (Plus a special return edition of the Vorpal Chainsword Quizblast!)

Quick bases for rocky terrain

As promised, here's another quick-n-dirty tutorial for the busy painter. When you've got a horde of monsters/soldiers/whatever you just want to get through in short order, then look no further!

So as outlined in the last post about painting hordes of minis by the dipping technique, we've now got a horde of goblins painted. Problem is, their bases look bare and boring. 

Its time to base 'em!

Dippin' Minis - How to paint a horde of gobs

Sometimes you've just got to get through a backlog of minis. Get them painted, get them done. Well, I finally opened up my Games Workshop Hobbit Strategy Battle game starter set box.

(Americans can probably find this guy in the "50% off bargain bin" of your FLGS like I did, since no one actually plays the Hobbit in the U.S.)

I opened it up and found myself faced with thirty-six little goblins to paint. 

Oh for the love of... GANDALF!

The hobbit and wizard minis were cool, but I didn't really want to paint a bunch of goblins, I don't really have an idea for where to use them for any upcoming games, or any reason to have them done, but it always behooves a dungeon master to be ready for anything. Especially ready to field a horde of monsters at a moment's notice. But how do you get them done in a short amount of time?

Why, you DIP 'EM, of course!

Dipping minis is perfect for giving a horde of models a decent tabletop-ready look without using up a lot of your precious painting time.

I took pictures at each step of my painting process I did for these guys this morning and am posting up a quick-n-dirty tutorial, to help others get their hordes of goblins or skeletons or whatever done and off the painting table.

If you've never heard of the "dipping" technique to speed up your mini painting, then this post is for you!

VCP: Jen Page

Today on the Vorpal Chainsword Podcast, we speak with the Gamer Queen of the Unseelie Court:

JEN PAGE!

Jen Page is a Dungeon Master, Actor, Model, Artist and Writer who loves all things fantastic and weird. A life-long fan of Role-Playing Games, Jen is often recognized by die-rollers everywhere for her acting roles in Gamers: Dorkness Rising and Gamers: Hands of Fate. Jen's other recent acting projects include the dystopian Mecha-punk adventure Project London, as well as the Kung-Fu action comedy series Chop Socky Boom! Besides acting, Jen is also known for her captivating fantasy artwork and photography projects, which feature unique costume designs and awe-inspiring settings. Even with all this going on Jen still finds the time to run the occasional Call of Cthulhu game, and hang out at awesome conventions with her fellow gamers.

 Check it out!

The Marmoreal Tomb Kickstarter is Here!

So maybe you're at GenCon right now, knee-deep in orcs, reaving your way through a bloody slaughter of Red Bull-fueled carnage and glory. Well, once the corpses stop twitching and you have an opportunity to recover your arrows, drink a healing potion, and take a short rest; I ask that you set your Battleaxe aside for a moment and consider the parchment fragment you found amongst the Chieftain's horde, and realize...

THE LOST DUNGEON OF GYGAX HAS BEEN FOUND!

Lost for decades, this temple complex of the Great Ones was relegated access only to the Wise Few. Those fortunate Masters of the Realm who personally knew Lord Ernie of the Genevans, the Elder Son of Gygax. But those secret treasures hidden deep within the famous Hobby Shop Dungeon can now be sought by brave adventurers of the Current Age. That's right! Today Ernie Gygax and Benoist Poire of GP ADVENTURES have revealed that the hidden location of the entrance to the lost Marmoreal Tomb of Garn Pat'uul (amongst other Wonders of Adventure!), is only a short distance away...



So I ask thee, Good and Noble Warriors of the Realm. Donate a bit of your hard-earned gold to this Kickstarter, and once again let the Songs of Glory ring throughout the land! I have personally interviewed Benoist about this project, and both spoken and gamed extensively in the upper levels with Ernie, and I can promise you from deep in my soul that these are Wizards of Truest Integrity and Grace. These Noble Maesters are dedicated wholly to bringing us forth to the Dungeons upon which our forefathers tread, and allowing Glory and Honor to once again be the hallmarks of Our Great Hobby! Your gold will be well spent, the Kickstarter Completed, and the Spoils from this Adventure will be Beyond Limit!

Game On and Kick Butt! Huzzah!

BrandonomiCON 2015

Interested in learning how to host a small convention that features one of the greatest AD&D megadungeons of all time, and one that your attendees will never forget? Come on over and watch the PC testimonials from an annual convention that focuses on distilling all the Glory of Undermountain into a single three-day weekend:

BRANDONOMICON

The Wall of Dead PCs after the 2015 Undermountain Mega-venture!

Talking with Benoist Poire

In a new episode of the Vorpal Chainsword Podcast I spoke with the Master Cartographer of old-school gaming and the non-Gygaxian half of GP Adventures, Benoist Poire! I talk with Benoist about the Hobby Shop Dungeon, the old-school gaming style, and running great dungeon adventures regardless of system!

Come check it out!

Carnage of the Blade Demons! - Behind the Screen

So last Saturday I wrote up and ran my first 5th edition D&D game, set in a new Sword and Sorcery world. I mentioned in that post that since I only had a couple hours to write it that I'd be utilizing the charts in the new DM guide to get the brain-juices flowing by randomly rolling up the dungeon adventure bits. I also said I'd let you guys know how it turned out. Well, here's the beef on how I went about creating the adventure from the random-generator charts.

Chronicles of the Vorpal Chainsword begins!

When it comes to D&D, I haven't run anything other than an over-the-top one-shot games in a long time. Its just so easy to keep on prepping terrain and painting minis and never stop, as the ideas keep rolling in even as the original stuff you wanted to make for the game gets finished. So often I'll just keep building and prepping for a one-shot until something actually forces the stars to align and I finally admit its ready to run at a convention or wherever.

However, a couple of my local gamers talked me into actually starting the 5th edition campaign I've been thinking about, and against my instincts of saying: "I want to play 5th, but first let me build the village and orc keep, should only take a couple more weeks..."

Instead I said: "Sure! Come over at noon. Here's the title of the Adventure we'll be playing..."

Chronicles of the Vorpal Chainsword, Episode 1:

Carnage of the Blade Demons!

...the thing is, I don't actually have an adventure written yet (nor have I completely worked out what the 'Blade Demons' are going to be). But I believe that the first step of writing an adventure is coming up with an epic title, so I randomly put three words I thought were cool and mashed them together, which I think sounds pretty solid. Step one completed.

So now I've got three hours, the new DMG and its random dungeon-building tables, and all the terrain and minis I've built/painted over the last ten years. We'll see how it goes. In my next post I'll let you know what I rolled up using the DMG, how I interpreted those results into the adventure, and how it ended up working out.

But for now ...I'd better get rolling!

Game On!

Back to the Future RPG Part II - Multiple Martys

So I've decided to go with the multiple-versions-of-Marty route for my Back to the Future RPG game. The reason being that I think it'll make for a really fun opportunity for players to all be Marty Mcfly, but have different abilities that are emphasized (and costumes, of course). The explanation for multiple Martys I'm still working on, but is going to involve a lot of technobabble and bad science, you can be sure. Essentially I'm going to say that, due to a quantum flux microcosm singularity, all the Martys that have ever traveled through time will come into individual existence at the same moment in New Time(tm). And will have to work together to find a way to fix things.

Back to the Future RPG I - What Characters to Use?

So its 2015, year that the Cubs win the World Series and Griff runs his PitBull powered hoverboard into the Hill Valley Clock Tower. That's right, its the year of Back to the Future II!

I have an annual convention each March and always have some sort of themed game built and run for a select few attendees. This year it makes perfect sense to run a game based on Back to the Future, but I'm already behind on planning and building so I've got to kick it into gear. In the next couple months I need to create, build, and run a single-shot rpg (with props/terrain) based on Back to the Future. I figure for rules I'll just use the newest 5th edition D&D rules, just to have that decision made and move on.

Podcasting: Questions for Ask the Bastard!

The Vorpal Chainsword will soon be launching a new gaming-related Podcast, which we are currently in the process of generating and editing content for. But as fate would have it, we've just landed an interview for mid-next week with the Dungeon Bastard himself, Mr. Bill Cavalier!



While I will be doing the interview in just a few short days, and I want to ask him a thousand questions of my own, I've decided to spread the love and find out if any fans of the Bastard have any questions they'd like me to ask for them. Since he specializes in answering important D&D-related quandaries, this is a good opportunity to finally get a certified Dungeon Bastard answer to controversial topics, such as which polearm is best for tackling a horde of Vampire-Gibberlings, or whether Blink Dogs should be a standard playable race in D&D. Also: Anything related to Flumphs.

So let's hear 'em! Who's got a question for the Dungeon Bastard?

AD&D vs. D&D5: Class Prerequisites

Ever since the turn of the century in The Year of Our Lord Two-Thousand, Dungeons and Dragons (starting with 3rd Edition) has dropped the Class Ability Prerequisites that were so prolific in previous editions. They also took away racial restrictions for classes, so now Halflings could be Paladins and Dwarves can be Wizards. This was done all in the name of game re-balancing and a general movement in the industry towards "game balance." Now any shlump with all 6s and 8s could be a Paladin or a Ranger! Isn't that great?!

Right in the Heals II: 5th Edition DMG Update

As longtime readers of the Chainsword will know, so far I've been really liking the new 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons rules from the Player's Handbook (PHB) for the most part, but with some caveats. I take issue with the 5e PHB's coddling approach to Healing. I won't re-hash it all here, but suffice it to say that has far too generous healing to actually allow truly noteworthy battles to occur at the gaming table, because death is almost never going to be a threat to the players.  They can always just take a 'long rest' (overnight) and be at full hit points the next morning.

Just sleep it off, Boromir.

Black Friday Dungeons

Normally I avoid other people like the plague. Other people have things you don't want: Responsibilities, questions, germs, morals, opinions. I prefer just staying inside with my can of Easy Cheese and my 100% Ancient Aliens Netflix queue and let other people stop around under the burning sky orb. This goes double for those places where other people tend to congregate: the DMV, "Downtown," Grocery Stores, Malls. Yes, even with the advent of the internet, Malls still survive, and they still seethe with endless masses of humanity. And the dreaded worst day of all one could be at one of these Malls, be they 'West Gate-' or 'Strip-', is on Black Friday. They call it Black Friday because if you dare go out into the world on Black Friday, the sheer amount of forced human interaction will make it seem as if the very sun has been blotted out into an unholy eclipse, and will crush you under and endless parade of Ugg boots and flat-brimmed hats with the stickers still on them.

Dark Dungeons: The Movie

Had movie night last night and watched the D&D-is-Satanic 1980's-Parody movie "Dark Dungeons" with a couple of buds. Its a brought-to-life adaptation of the old Jack Chick anti-RPG pamphlets handed out by concerned Churchgoers back in the 1980s. You know, the ones that promised you eternal damnation in hell if you dared to roll up an elven cleric under the watchful gaze of Jesus (who evidently hates Gamers, but loves Jocks). It was made by the crew who made "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising" via Kickstarter, so you know they take a firmly tongue-in-cheek approach to it.