Retro-Pixel Castles: Game Review

An interesting game I got on Steam awhile back ago and still find my self occasionally interested in. Despite the generic name the designer is making a game not quite like most games that I would consider it similar to.

It is fairly simple in some ways, you basically command a group of settlers to work and build a settlement while also worrying about food, resources and eventual attacks from monsters such as zombies and skeletons.

But unlike most settlement games this one allows you to use your godly powers to scoop up settlers and/or resources and take them to another part of a much larger map. I find this makes the game more immersive as each settler provides you with power and the fruits of his work as well as gaining levels and think skill types are being added to the game.

So I could take my people from map to map building new homes and having new children and defending from enemies until the monsters became overwhelming and then scoop up as many of people as I could and head out to new land with my higher level settlers doing better each time.

The only snag I really hit was that eventually my settlement got too big for my computer to handle and everything slowed way down. However the designer is still hard at work improving the games features and performance. I recently spoke with him over steam and it seams he has plans to remove some of the load off the CPU to the GPU by something something particle physics. That sounds nice.

But no really this is a fun game and the designer seams capable and personable. It's currently 10 dollars on steam, I don't remember if I got it on sale or not but I have played it for 16 hours and could easily see me putting in another 16.

Also there isn't really castles just fun to build walls around your various settlement buildns. It would be more aptly described as Non-Retro Pixel Rouge-Lite Settlement Sim. just sayin.


Graphics: Can't comment as they were changed in the update right after I took a break from playing.

Sound: Seemed fine to me enjoyable catchy music and no issues.

Gameplay: Great, this what I'll will be going back for someday.

Performances: I'd say 4/5 stars here I have heard of mostly only minor issues other the cpu heavy performance which the designer is aware of and working on. (Early Access and all)

Over All Score: 16 hours of fun for 10 bucks or less easily and will likely put in another 16 or more. So although it may not be the next CK2 or Terraria for me it has lots of potential and I think it could teach some other designers about innovation and game play.

Final Decision: Buy it. Hell if you got the money don't even wait for a sale just go ahead and support the developer and maybe ask him to start plans on one day making a sequel.

Link to it's website.

Thought's on Blogging

When I first made this blog it was originally intended to be about role-playing games, mostly pen and paper games but also by extension video games and projects I was working on. However it's primary success (at least back in the day) seemed to be doing reviews. Ah, there was time when I spoke directly to other authors and game designers and they were happy to be featured on my blog. I largely stopped blogging when my gaming group split up and to this day I don't have strong group of people to game with.

However it wasn't my adventure logs and gaming ideas that spurred the most interest, although those are very fun to write about.

So I think I may attempt to get back into blogging but this time instead of being worried about D&D posts or the like I will go back to writing about what ever I feel like, perhaps with an emphasis on game reviews.

One of the best decisions I made was naming the blog after my username and not naming it after it's implied content. As such I can change the direction of the blog as much as I see fit, hopefully not too much though.

But first just to clarify my own thoughts I want to go over a few things. First, I admit I tend to jump from project to project sometimes to quickly and not always finishing what I intended. Second, I do sometimes get to caught up in wanting to make things perfect or focusing to much on success. But it is despite or because of those reasons that I am surprisingly happy with this blog. At this point it has survived many abandoned projects and waves of popularity and spans of emptiness, yet I still find myself coming back.

I don't think I could ever delete this blog or completely abandon it. Not without at least having a much better replacement. I am amazed having amassed the amount of posts and traffic that I did at the time whether it is seen as alot or alittle in the vastness of the internet, I am just happy to have contributed something.

So thank you to my readers and thank you to my fellow bloggers who showed an interest in working together and also thank you to the RPGBA who I just think are awesome to know is there especially in times when not much else is going on in my viewership.

One last thing, I'm not currently planning on sharing my short stories or fiction writing on this blog as I think I will begin making better use of my writing blog for that.

More Recent video of my Gothic Vampire Game

I didn't realize I had already made these videos public. Please excuse the sound quality though I wasn't using a head set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljp-jmrlTms

You can also look at some of the art assets on this other post

Help Support my work by becoming a patron

New Game Project: Gothic Vampire

I recently started a new video game project that I hope to actually publish and thus am keeping it fairly simple but this time I am trying to make it alot more artistic.

It's theme is gothic and thus I hoping to keep the game play slow paced enough to feel right but that part could be difficult because it also meant to be simple like an aracde game. Which of course are usually fast paced.

Here are a few of the art assets and soon I hope to share some videos.

A screenshot just is not going to do it justice as it doesn't show any of the action.

As of now movement is working, as is turning into bat form, firing small bats. collision against walls and the coffin, as well as one easter egg.

How Dwarf Trees are used for Fairy Cities.

This was originaly a comment I left on Jason Bricks discussion about a fantasy version of Dwarf Trees.The basic premise is, what appears to be a small tree above ground is actually a huge underground tree.
I decided I would post one of my responses here as I find it interesting and wanted to save it, since I will likely use it in later campaigns.

You can view the original discussion here. Which contains more fun ideas about The Dwarf's Trees.


When dwarf trees ( or The Dwarf's Trees as some people call them) grow in a circle cultivated by fairies, the underground cone of wood that is formed becomes almost completely impenetrable due to their tough nature and the fairy magic.

One of the few ways into an underground fairy circle, which is alot like a tiny city, is to first destroy the magic of the above ground circle of foliage. Which can itself be very difficult. Its like taking on an ant colony of fairy folk.

The above ground circle may appear to be between 7 to 13 trees only 12 to 15 feet tall sometimes even appearing smaller like sprawling bushes of branches. But underneath is a cone of dwarf tree trunks going hundreds of feet down with the trees interlocking making it wider then a human house or even larger.

 It is unknown exactly how many fairy folk, gnomes or other of their kin can live inside an underground fairy circle. But it has been seen that over populated fairy cities sometimes hollow out old parts of the trunk and 15 foot thick branches to make room for more fairy residences.

Sometimes the mischief caused by such a fairy city stretches hundreds of miles away from the source.

Some fairy mounds, as the traditional fairy citys are called, is actually a circle of dwarf trees who's branches have been buried over and grass and flowers grown right on top disguising the circle as a knoll or foot hill.

This may be further evidence that dwarf trees may be able to survive without sun light.

Themed Dungeon Dressing

	Mine	Cave	Arcane	Ruins	Dungeon
Wood Door	Timber Supports Archway or just a wood door	Roots	Polished Maple Door	Planked Door	Wooden Portcullis
-- Locked	Door and Keyhole	Overgrown	Alarm Spell	Barred	Lever on other side
-- Stuck	Cave In	Petrified	Hold Portal Effect	Rusty Hinges	Rusty Gears
-- Trapped	Tripe Wire drops rocks	Pit	Animated	Spikes or Darts	Tile drops Portcullis on you
Iron Door	Vault Door	Boulder	Reinforced Oak Door	Sliding Hatch	Jail Door
-- Locked	Combination Lock	Cave In	Wizard Lock	Mechanical Lever	Key Hole
-- Stuck	Rusted Turn Crank	Jammed in place or Transmuted Stone	Open/Close effect Re-shuts door	Rusted Gears	Rusted in Place Could be bars or hinges
-- Trapped	Gas Trap	Slime	Spell such as Magic Missile Or Fireball	Animated Dead	Chute to another cell
Small Chamber	Alcove, Break room or storage area.	Partial Cavern	Sitting Room, Bedroom or closet	Partially collapsed room	Cell or break room
Medium Chamber	Ore deposit, Loading zone or barracks	Cavern or serious of Caverns	Library, arena, Master Bedroom, Dining Hall,  Treasure room,  or workshop such as Apothecaries or Artificers	Storage room or old room with decayed furniture maybe bugs rodents or bones	Torture Room, Barracks, cafeteria or waste/body disposal
Large Chamber	Cavern or Rail Station, With Support beams	Serious of caverns and drops offs or underground stream or lake possibly a lair for creatures or a large monster	Cafeteria, Menagerie,  Statue room, garden, Music Hall,	Series of rooms with collapsed walls, ancient temple or throne room,  crypt or burial chamber such as for mummification or ceremonies	Execution chamber or common room for many prisoners to be locked to benched or walls
Passage Way	Tunnels with or without rails usually with support possible natural caverns	Tunnels usually natural and varying heights and depths	Hallway, possibly with pillars or statues. Sometimes chairs and small tables.	Sometimes hallways other times just holes in the wall or crumbled rooms.	Cramped or dark halls torch scones maybe skulls
Archway	Timber Supports	An odd shaped passage or crawl way	Carved Archway of stone or fine maple usually with many patterns possibly faces	Collapsed door or wall, possible a ventilation shaft	Door frame or bars on both sides
Stairs	Dug steps or a rope ladder	Sudden cliffs or drop offs	Spiral stairs or an elevator system	Damage floors or ceilings, old stairs sometimes a sudden collapse or a pile or rumble to climb up or down	Stone stairs, possibly chutes or pits
Secret Door	Concealed or caved in	Strange twists and turns make a passage almost unnoticeable	Illusion or finely crafted secret door such as a sliding wall or rotating bookshelf	Collapsed wall covers a door or passage, or an old sliding door.	Usually concealed construction or masonry such as an emergency escape route or hidden armory.

Review of Project D. An 11 year old plays retro games.

This post is another one I wrote for my school.

Do you think Dylan’s dislike for Contra was because of it being a challenging game or flawed design?

Was the difference in technical attributes (i.e. graphics, sound, controller) a significant detractor from Dylan’s fun experience with the games?



Dylan clearly showed through out the series that he could have fun despite older graphics and sounds. He not only enjoyed some of the games but showed an interest in playing them more and nearly beat at least one of them. He also plays games like halo either alone or with a friend but not online, so it is likely he would feel fine playing on an older system that doesn't not have the ability to go online or play DVDs.

However he did not like Contra at all and felt no desire to get better at the game. This shows a flaw in design, a lack of reward for effort. I had a similar experience playing the same game and grew up in the era that game came out.

In the article “6 Steps to Play with the Players Mind.” It speaks about not only giving player feed back and rewards but also lots of rewards. “You don’t punish faults, but reward every little effort with small rewards, but instant ones” (Attianesi, 2011).

In Contra there seams to instead be almost no reward at all. Killing enemies gets you nothing except the ability to go further. You are not even rewarded with additional story line only more levels to go through. The only feedback is when you die from getting hit once, thus the only way to know you are doing well is by not dying. Contra has a following of fans but it is not a game that encourages new players to care anything about it.





Citation

Attianesi, T. (2011, December 17). 6 steps to play with player's mind. Retrieved from http://www.scirra.com/tutorials/188/6-steps-to-play-with-players-mind/page-1

D&D Next: Future of Edition Wars.

For Many people the ideas behind D&D Next were exciting and appeared to be a chance to bring together many different play types and maybe bring a change to the conflicting world of Dungeons and Dragons editions. Most of this however was based on various promises by the development team.

“We saw an audience that had been divided by differences in editions and play styles, and wanted to design a version of D&D that all players could experience and enjoy” ~Mearls

I have been following D&D next as closely as I could as soon as I heard about it. I have joined in on the play test, read the blogs, and filled out the surveys and polls. Here is my opinion of what is going on in D&D next.

Wizards of the Coast Spoke very highly of these three things; finding what was common in every edition, establishing a strong and simple core and then adding in modularity.

In my opinion they are not doing this at all. First I’ll start with an example of not doing what is common in every edition. In at least three versions of D&D skills were optional, you could play completely without out them, with the exception of the rouge/thief. Currently in D&D next every class gets skills, every background gets skills and there is a skills specialty.

However maybe you could just cut all that if you wanted, right? Well that brings me to my next point every melee class gets Expertise Dice and practily every class feature is depend on these Expertise Dice, so to cut them would be cutting everything they currently have for the Fighter, Rouge and Monk. What makes it even worse is the Rouge is touted as being different from the fighter because he has Skill Mastery. So now skills are being used to balance classes against each other.

Sure maybe you could cut skills from all classes except the rouge and let them have skill mastery. But then lets not forget a lot of the rouges skills are not just “Rouge Skills” it could be Knowledge or Profession or Track it’s basically a complete list of 3.x skills with specific stat dependencies.

Well lets move on.

So what about these expertise dice, don’t like them and now every melee class doesn’t have their class features. Maybe you could play with no class maneuvers. Lets see you could rework sneak attack as that is now a maneuver and then remake the entire monk class and be left with a fighter who has no ability to cleave or precise shot. But that’s ok right not every fighter has to have maneuvers right, surely they even have an option for that. Nope every fighter has Expertise Dice if you don’t like it then rework the system yourself. Many people on the forums just say “well assume you use deadly strike every time.”

So for a straight and simple melee attacking fighter your either juggling when and how to use these special dice or at least assuming your spending them on Deadly Strike so for damage you’d be rolling something like 1d10 + 1d4 + Your Strength. That’s not too bad but certainly doesn’t look like a common thread throughout editions or a strong simple core.

Maybe you disagree with me though, maybe you think skills are a common thread and the Expertise Dice are a new way of handling common abilities. So lets move on again.

How about a very common thing like flanking or surprise, well in D&D Next this would give you advantage so Roll 2d20 and take the highest…..? Seriously roll 2d20 is a core rule for flanking and such. In what edition was this common? How about if your in a situation that’s bad were you would normally get a penalty; roll 2d20 and take the lowest. So unless your combat has nothing interesting going on your more then likely rolling two dice to hit. Sure you could just ignore it but as it stands that’s a core rule and has been for multiple playtest packets. I have seen no evidence that it will be bumped to being an optional rule, so you can’t just assume that either.

There are many examples of things like this but I’m going to give just one more. As it stands every current clerical healing spell works at range of 50 feet away. So cure light wounds is not a touch spell it is a power word that lets you heal your ally 50 feet away and still lets you attack that turn. This is the default option.

I have not seen any of these presented as optional or modular or any discussion from the development team saying that this is not their strong simple core. I see no common, strong simple core, and very little modularity. Even their critical hits are strange.

Maybe we will get lucky and by the end of the play test they will have a core that shows the common threads and simplest forms of D&D with options to adjust it to be what you want to play. But as it sits it is nothing more then an entirely new edition for which people will Edition War about!

My best judgment tells me this new edition will do nothing more the splinter the player base even further. I could go on with reasons why but this post is long enough already.

I wish the Development Team luck and hope the playtest goes well.

Unfortunately my players no longer want to play test D&D Next as they don’t want to deal with a new game or edition with new rules. We will likely be playing other editions of D&D and/or our own games. You can expect some future posts about Adventures Dark and Deep as well as a few custom content posts.


P.S. If anyone is interested in play testing the new edition I strongly recommend it as the more people play testing and sharing their opinions then the more likely it will become what the community or a larger community wants.

Tekpersona website is complete, and my current status.

Last Time I blogged it was about J.C.Kendall's website Tekpersona. At the time some of the links were not yet set up as the site was under re-development. Now the site is finished with more articles (in the articles and docs section) coming soon.

In case you didn't read my last post Tekpersona is a company with many years experience in social media and web presence advertising.

As for me, I haven't been blogging much lately as first I was distracted playing minecraft and running a multiplayer server. It was alot of fun but alas has died down and now there is little activity on the server, maybe we just need some new players. I then spent awhile trying League of Legends. Which I enjoyed more then I thought I would considering how much I don't like pvp typically and that is what League of Legends is all about.

However its one of those supposedly free to play games that I just can't stand. Basically it's free but if you want more then just whatever champions are currently free to play, that costs money (although some can be unlocked just by playing alot) All the skins cost money anything you can buy in game can also be bought with money.

I just can't play a game that constantly wants my money.

Also I am going to be moving soon, we have a house in mind and are likely to get it, and also got on housing which is going to be a pain dealing with all the paper work, but could pay about 30 % of my rent or something. It's a nice house though, in a sub urban area very middle class which is way more then I am use to.

So I haven't been working on any of my game design projects at all. I'm not even sure how I intend to move forward on them. I might just start from scratch using game maker. I found an old copy of game maker 7 on my computer so maybe I wont have to deal with yoyo games bull crap this time. Yay, lol.

A blog worth following.

I stumbled across The Doglion today and first read an article on viewing games as art rather then stircly breaking them down and giving them scores. Something I find very valid especialy when comparing games like Terraria and Minecraft. Sometimes you just can't even compare things. His example being The Mona Lisa and that one with the screaming guy.

So I decided to see what his most recent article is, and it was a look at the Mongolian educational system (I guess that's where he is from) and it too was very in depth and well thought out. Heck I forgot he was talking about Mongolia for a second and thought it sounds exactly like my schools.

I find most things on the internet to be random spewing but it looks like this takes his time to think thing through. Also I'm looking to follow more indie game blogs which I think his kind of is one. Hopefully I can one day re-create my success I had as a D&D blogger by getting more thoroughly into the Indie Game blogging sphere and finding good blogs to follow.

More on The Castle Ravenloft Board Game.

Yesterday, I bought the Castle Ravenloft board game and posted about some of the contents, at that time I hadn't yet played. Now I have played about two and half runs throughs and I have to say I'm loving it. The combination on the event cards and the different adventures has me never knowing what is going to happen yet.

We had a player randomly led deeper into the dungeon, encountering some spiders one of which ran even deeper alerting the main villain. There's blood mists and illusions and adventure specific artifacts. One of my favorite moments was drawing a card that revealed my ally was just and illusion and he was somewhere else in the dungeon. I thought I was fighting side by side with him but instead it was a swarm of rats about to jump me.

I recently read that the other D&D board game adds even more elements like chambers and villagers, and also a Legend of Drizzt game is coming out this month. This will be the first time in a while I have been waiting for a D&D product from Wizards of The Coast.

Today I am suppose to be running a Sibra1 campaign but I bet we will be pulling back out Castle Ravenloft again.

Dungeons and Dragons Board Game.

Yesterday, I bought the Castle Ravenloft Board Game. I read through all the rules and punched out all the tokens and generally just rooted through the whole thing. I haven't played a complete game of it yet but I gone over it enough I think I could without referencing the rule book.

Since I had no idea what the game would be like when I bought it, I figured I might as well write a post about it. Maybe someone out there is thinking of buying it but wants more info.


Characters:

The characters look like 4th edition characters but they lack the base statistics as well as fort, ref and will. They only have HP AC and surge value. The party gets two healing surges to share, which are used when you are unconscious. The cleric also has healing capability.

If you are knocked out and not healed then on your turn you use a healing surge if you don't have any you die.  Damage is not random and is very low like 1dmg or 4 for a daily ability. So the HP is likewise lower then 4th edition with characters having around 8 or 10.

You start with some At-Will powers, one daily and one utility. Your can level up once if you roll a natural 20 and have killed a couple of monsters, you only need l 5xp. Becoming level 2 grants one more daily power and a bonus to AC and HP and that's about it. There are no levels beyond level 2.

The Monsters:

The monsters have HP and AC but also have tactics. Each player will end up controlling different monsters at the end of their turn, by following the monsters tactics. Interestingly if two players are moving the same kind of monster then those monsters both act on both of the players turns.

The Tiles:

The dungeon tiles in the game are different then the dungeon tiles you can buy separately. They are all exactly the same size except the start tile, and they interlock on all four sides. The pictures on them however, show you where walls and such are. The tiles are used similar to how cards are used, with their backs face up and you not knowing which tile is about to be placed.

The Miniatures:

You get alot of hard plastic and not painted miniatures. Which I actually like, to me they are more durable then the typical Mage Knight like miniatures. They will certainty hold up against my kids alot better. With the exception of the skeletons they are not very flexible. Also, I think they are color coded.

The Counters:

There are all sorts of counters, for things like conditions and traps, monsters, items. Personally I think there are too many counters and don't know which way to store them is best.

The Learning Curve:

I'd say the learning curve is small. I think I could teach four people how to play the game without even opening the rule book anymore beyond my first read through.

One more thing though, the game actually runs out of an adventure book and not everything in the adventures are random. However they are simple enough and can even be played one player. I think you could make up your own adventures if you wanted but the game in general is far simpler then even basic dnd.

I think War Hammer Quest is far more complex. I don't know weather to play ADD tonight or try out the board game. Maybe both.

Age of Fable

I recently began playing Age of Fable and it is alot of fun. I think anyone who enjoy fantasy rpg's will like it. Especially if you want to play something like D&D but don't have any players or Dm's around or only have a short amount of time.

Basically its alot like a choose your own adventure but with stats and die rolls. So far I have saved a talking frog, visited a kingdom in the clouds and floated back down for two days. Become an apprentice to a creepy gypsy and gotten a raven familiar and lots of other interesting things. Its very fantasy based with occasional joking references to table top rpg's.

Its free browser based and you can save you game. Its made by James Hutchings of teleleli.blogspot.com/

You really need to check it out even if just for five mins to see what its like. I don't know if everyone will like it since its mostly just reading and choose actions but if your into table top rpgs and reading or writing blogs then I'm sure you'll enjoy this reading. It also has some great artwork to go along with it.

Soon I am going to be reading and reviewing James' book "The New death and Others" But if Age of Fable is any indication I think I am going to definitely enjoy his books.

Announcement of BRW Games.

Joseph from The Grey Hawk Grognard has announced his new company, BRW Games. You can now get the playtest version of Adventures Dark and Deep from the new website and there will also be a new product release in October. A necromancer class compatible with any game that is compatible with the first edition of the worlds most popular roleplaying game.

The site also mentions plans to make board-games, war-games, novels, and a new campaign setting called Erseta. I can't wait to see what else Joseph makes, so lets wish him luck.

The Announcement was made on his blog and the ADD forums.

Simple but not Basic

I have ran a game for awhile now that my players loved to play and it was great to DM but what I think is surprising in some ways is that I did by basically cutting everything.

The game used the basic six stats from dnd str, int, wis, dex, con, cha.

but in some ways that was it. I didnt let the players choose classes or races they were all just human people, their equipment was chosen based off of what matched their stats and they were kept rather poor. Such as someone with high int might be dressed as a scholar and maybe have a scroll and/or some writing material. Someone with high str might make sure too keep a good pair of boots and maybe own a weapon.

Anyone could use weapons without penalty and anyone with a good int could cast from scrolls. (at the time I didn't have them vanish either) Despite being poor it wasn't hard for the characters to quip themselves with quickly made clubs and sharpened sticks as spears.

I told all the players they could pay for further training and maybe gain some kind of proficiency (or even 3rd edition dtyled feat) but that the amount of training they could have would be limited by level.

And that was basically it each player could quickly roll new characters if one died and those with a good wis score might receive divine help. The players were ran through some old TSR adventures and they had a great time.

There was no need for skills (which I think hinder role play) or even to hit charts or saving throws. It wasn't hard to balance the adventures either and once PC's got some feats it equaled everything out pretty well when compared to the to hit bonus and such that they weren't getting.

I still think my favorite part was how quick and easy it was to roll up a new character but It still felt to everyone like they were playing dnd. And if a character died then we didn't even need to pause while a new one was rolled up.

Character Creation Idea

Yesterday I talked about Adventures Dark and Deep from the Greyhawk Grognard. Today I'm mostly going to talk about a new way I might try to make characters that I am going to play test using ADD.

After showing Thaylie the books and layout she was almost as excited about them as I am (although I think she is a little more excited about "The Secret of Fire". Which does sound pretty cool especially for the price. I might write about that game but maybe after I play it. Although I was amazed by its testimonials from people including Monte Cook and Gail Gygax.)

So Far with ADD I have gone through most of the Player's Manual and making a character was fun and I actually am new to some of these classes so I am finding them kinda interesting. I don't exactly know what it means that some are sub-classes but I think its basicly just that they are related but harder to get into such as a paladin compared to a cavalier.

Also it was great being able to discuss my opinions and such on the play-testing forums. I think I managed to help out a little and also got what I wanted sorted out, lol.

So anyway here is my idea I might try out on my players for making some characters: (This idea basically has nothing to do with ADD except that I'm going to try it for an ADD game.)

1. Each player is going to choose how old their soul is without knowing what that is going to effect but it will determine their base race. Their options are:

• Ancient (Elf)
• Very Old (Gnome)
• Old (Dwarf)
• Mature (Half-Elf)
• Young (Halfling)
• Very Young (Human)
• New (Half-Orc)

These are based off of the maximum age of each race.

Once I know what their base race is I am going to pose them each two questions which will determine their starting alignment and then I will give them the sub race that best matches. I will most likely ask the questions in a much more dramatic and less predictable way.

The basis of the questions are:

1. You see a light do you move towards it (lawful, look around(neutral) or run back(chaotic).
2. You realize you are being born into the world, do you choose a family that will give you comfort (good), discipline(neutral) or do you not care (evil)

So once I have their base race and alignment I am going to use this list I made to determine their actual race.

• Gray Dwarf = Evil or Lawful Evil
• Hill Dwarf = Neutral or Good
• Mountain Dwarf = Lawful
• Human = Any
• Drow = Chaotic Evil
• High-Elf = Lawful
• Wild Elf = Chaotic
• Wood Elf = Good
• Gray Elf = Neutral
• Half Elf = Any
• Deep Gnome = Good
• Gnome = Neutral
• Hairfoot Halfling = Chaotic
• Stout Halfling = Lawful
• Tallfellow = Good
• Half Orc = Chaotic

2.  To figure out their stats I am going to start with all 1d6 randomly and then based on my campaign settings solar system ask them what was visible in the sky when they were born. I am then going to roll another set of 1d6's and assign the highest ones to the corresponding stats of what they choose. They will able to choose any configuration of the following being in the sky at the time of birth.

• Yellow Sun (STR)
• Blue Moon (Int)
• Green Moon (Wis)
• White Moon (Dex)
• Red Sun (Con)
• A special event like an eclipse (Cha)

3. Then I am either going to DM them through their childhood or ask more questions to simulate what they might have done in their youth. I intend to bend it too match their race and such. Depending on what they choose or do during their childhood I will assign the final group of 1d6's.

It will basically work like this I will role 6d6 and then put them in a situation. if they choose to respond in a way that corresponds to strength then the highest d6 will go to str but no other situations will have a strength way out. eventualy each d6 will be assigned.

First I'm starting with birth order

•  Middle Child (Str)
• Youngest (Int)
• Second Born (Wis)
• Orphan (Dex)
• Only Child (Con)
• First Born (Cha)

As they are growing up their family as a whole runs into troubles do you

• Do as your asked too (Str)
• Help when you are able too (Int)
• Watch how other families are getting by (wis)
• Ask your family questions about their problems (Dex)
• Run Away (Con)
• Try to fix all the problems (Cha)

Your favorite class while being educated

• Dropped out to Get a Job (Str)
• All of Them (Int)
• Alchemy or Herbalism (Wis)
• Never Went to school (Dex)
• Weapons or Fighting Training (Con)
• The Easy Classes (Cha)

How did you handle Bullies

• Join Them (Str)
• Fight Them (Int)
• Ignore Them (Wis)
• Trick Them (Dex)
• Tell on Them (Con)
• Bully Them (Cha)

What do you want too be

• Mercenary (Str)
• Scholar (Int)
• Sage (Wis)
• Rich (Dex)
• Knight (Con)
• Good Person (Cha)

The Final d6 gets assigned to whatevers left.

So by this point they should have stats similar too 3d6 randomly and they were assigned based on hopefully fun choices and also know their race. I wil then let them choose their class by offering opportunities to go get training in them.They also should have a good idea of who they are and what they have been through, especially if I do Role Play all of this.

And then to top it all of I will probably have these questions come up once the campaign is actualy under way. I did not come up with these next questions but I forget where they came from.

• Who are you?
• What do you want?
• Why are you here?
• Where are you going?
• What do you want?
• What have you left behind?

Looking back at all this I wonder if it will appear to be a complete mess to someone reading it, but I am going to see how it goes, what kind of stats and characters come out of it and what the players think.

Justin Alexander over at TheAlexandrian has recently announced that his creation Legends And Labyrinths has been set up as an 8-bit funding project.

Although I haven't Personaly seen anything in this book I am excited about its release for two reasons.

1. it claims to "take 3rd Edition and strip it down to its most basic components. It removes everything non-essential, leaving behind a simple, fast-and-loose, easy-to-use system."

2.The Author has written numerous articles on his blog that has helped me as a DM and keep my interest in 3rd edition. In fact if it weren't for his D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations article, I might have quit playing 3rd edition all together.

I am hoping to be paying for 2 of the 50 dollar perks.

Update: I ended up only funding one $50 perk.

Adventures Dark and Deep

Adventures Dark and Deep (ADD) is based off of 1st edition AD&D but under the premise of what would 2nd edition have been like if Gary Gygax had made it. I believe it was made by Joseph of the Greyhawk Grognard, and there is a great review of it at Classic RPG Realms.

It is currently in a play-testing phase and free to download.  (It is no longer in play testing and can now be purchased from BRW Games.)

I highly recommend reading the review because it does a great job of explaining what the game is and even taught me a little more about it. But what I'm going to talk about is what the game is too me.

I played alot of AD&D when I was younger but by the age of 12 3rd edition was out and since that was the edition I played for the next 13 years I am not exactly a veteran too old school gaming. I recently tried to get back into the earlier editions.

First I tried playing 1st edition since I still own the core books for that edition. It was fun for awhile but gave me head aches and my wife didn't like the edition at all, mostly I think it was because of things like font, organization and that touch of riddle Gary seams to be able to write into almost any paragraph.

When then tried the retro clones which simply felt too bland for me, and then even began playing basic D&D. Eventually switching too a version of my own that stripped alot of various aspects of charactor generation too speed things up and make them less confusing but I did it in a way as too not lose flavor at least from the players perspective.

This essentially left me playing AD&D adventures with a completely house ruled game.

Then I saw ADD, which as far as I can tell collects everything from 1e and lays it out in a format that is clean and useful but without taking anything away from the game. For example it includes many classes such as the Cavalier, Mystic and Jester I believe 17 in all.

The races chapter includes many popular subraces and the bestiary is divided into sections like Wilderness/Dungeon, Prehistoric and Extra-planar.

I can't quite explain it but it appears ADD is exactly the game I have been looking for I just hopre Joseph continues to support it for years too come.

Tomorrow I will talk about some of my experiences play-testing it and how I am going to have my new players role up their characters in what will hopefully be a very interesting way.