Pirate adventures and pirate codes

Piracy is as popular in RPGs as it is in the rest of mass-media - perhaps even more so.  A semi-criminal or outright criminal band primarily loyal to one another and devoted to acquiring wealth could describe a pirate crew about as well as it does a Gygaxian adventuring party.  The wealth-sharing agreements of most adventuring parties, where the principal figures (the Player Characters) receive a greater take than their subordinates has a parallel in the pirate's code as well.

Review: "Cave of the Spiders" by Skip Williams

Time for another review of Wizards of the Coast's Original Adventures.  For a while it seemed like Owen K. C. Stephens had been holding the series up single-handed, but now Skip Williams (one of the D&D 3e designers) takes the reigns with Cave of the Spiders for 9th level characters.  Originally designed for D&D 3.5, the Cave could be played under the Pathfinder rules or another D20 system without too much trouble.  The window of opportunity to pick this adventure up free has closed, but $0.99 will get you a copy of Cave of the Spiders.

Alignment on leafworld: The four poles

Not so long ago, I talked about a strange flat world floating through infinite air.  The idea is still roaming around my head along with thoughts about alignment. Inevitably, that leads to thinking about how people align on leaf-world.

Gamebook regrouping: "Seas of Blood" by Andrew Chapman (Fighting Fantasy 16)

This is a spoiler-free recap of how I feel I'm going with Andrew Chapman's Seas of Blood.  The book beat me on five attempts (if you don't mind the spoilers, you can read my summaries of attempt 1, attempts 2 & 3, and attempts 4 & 5) before I decided to take a break to let my memory get foggy and extend the experience.

Platinum pieces

One of the many oddities of D&D is the role of platinum pieces.  In the game, platinum pieces are usually highly valued as readily portable currency, but they are far more problematic than most groups assume.

Review: "Lest Darkness Rise" by Owen K. C. Stephens

This is another installment of the Original Adventures series reviews.  Once again, the author is Owen K. C. Stephens, but this time I'm reviewing his Halloween special for October 2004, Lest Darkness Rise.  The module was designed with a party of 7th level characters and D&D 3.5 in mind.  As the module doesn't make use of exotic sourcebooks, conversion to other D20 games (especially the Pathfinder RPG) is possible.  Although no longer available for free on Wizards' website, DriveThruRPG has $0.99 copies of Lest Darkness Rise.

Exporting the effect of AD&D ability scores: Intelligence and Wisdom

Previously, I've discussed a rationale for ability scores as potential rather than realised ability.  I'm trying to expand on that idea by looking at how one might export the functions of AD&D 1e's ability scores to character class and level.  (Briefly: the idea here is to keep the game more focused on these latter qualities because of verisimilitude and fairness.  It makes sense that skill is decisive and reducing the impact of random factors in character creation has long had an appeal.)  I chose Strength to start the discussion because it's the first in the book, but also because its functions in AD&D are widely spread.  In this post, I'll consider Intelligence and Wisdom.

Review: "The Day the Kobolds Ruled the World" by the GagMen

The Day the Kobolds Ruled the World is a pay what you want module written by the GagMen comedy RPG podcaster collective.  As with their other modules, it's written for Basic Fantasy Rules but can be used for other light-weight D&D type rule systems without much trouble.  The adventure is aimed at a party of beginning characters in the fragile 1st to 3rd level bracket.

Arguing Alignment

It's hard to set foot in an online forum for discussing RPGs without coming across an on-going alignment argument.  I doubt that anyone has heard a sample of every position advanced in such debates, but it seems to me that the problems mainly boil down to a fairly simple system from the early TSR years being partly re-purposed as the objectives of D&D changed.  I'll mainly be advocating going back to the interpretation of alignment in AD&D 1e, as this interpretation can be used in any D&D (or successor game, such as the Pathfinder RPG) that uses the "3x3" grid.

A world that floats like a leaf

It's a strange thing that fantasy world-builders will happily allow for biology that defies reason, but when it comes to the shape of the world they stay shackled to the globe.  Suppose that there is a world that isn't a sphere.  Suppose that it has a different shape, but that the logic of that shape still gave its creatures a day to day experience that is easily imagined.  Where would imagining such a world take us?