Words That Don't Exist in Common

Whew, what a month it’s been! In addition to teaching full time for a uni that thinks instructors are free as birds to do extracurricular activities of dubious educational merit, I’ve settled into the 4 hour daily commute and somehow finished the 80 page third chapter of my thesis. All the while being a loving husband and father, but admittedly my baby boy’s smile and the wife’s support were the only things that kept me going.

And I’m spent!

Not looking forward to the final deadline for the 300+ page opus in November, but it’s got to get done.

Now it’s time to blow out the cobwebs, read some good novels (starting with Hugh Howey’s ‘WOOL’), write some fiction and gaming stuff, and hopefully do some gaming (if you’re there Sunglasses Jerk, make it happen!).

Without further ado here is my first post back in the saddle for your fantasy game.

Words That Don’t Exist In Common

DWARVISH

Fraubarbicon – The moment when your wife’s beard intertwines with your own.

“I missed the departure because of a frubarbicon, but luckily I caught up with the party just as the goblins started their ambush and bushwhacked those bushwackers!”

ELVISH

Nuquerna Laisi – Deciding to change to a radically opposite alignment and/or class due to boredom with centuries of championing the same cause.

“You think I, Alyahs the Necromancer, killed Shayla the Championess of Isis? Foolish mortals! I WAS Shayla of Isis!”

ORCISH

Chubash chubash – A leader that is inept but is loved for their commitment towards violence and hasty ill-conceived action.

“Our charge on the knights broke our ranks and killed half our soldiers, as well as Chieftess Grokilla. She was true chubash chubash –never see the like again!”

HALFLING

Firdidlong – A day spent smoking pipeweed and drinking beer in a field while getting paid to do so. Considered a high cultural ideal.

“I had always successfully avoided work with the town militia or guards until one day my uncle Figtoe volunteered me. I was right angry at first, until I learned our mission was a complete firdidlong!”

TROLL

Urk flam dang iya! – Taking so much regenerated damaged that you would have preferred the fire.

“Men women dwarf elf wizard in rain, dark. Jump down smash bash. Rain rain no torch. Stab stabbity crush crush, arrow arrow arrow missile. Thinks Urk flam dang iya!”

HUMAN

Demiposer – Inferiority complex to demihumans, resulting in weird haircuts that mimic long ears, ill fitting clothes or incongruous lifestyle choices to emulate them

“The way he cut little triangles in his hair above the ears and starved himself all the time – what a demiposer…”

THRI KEEN

T’chik chik BLAT – A human(oid) so infuriating you wish you wore shoes so you could squish them.

“Mmmmm, human female cleric, chattik, heal humans not me, chattik, screams at giant insects, insulting and lose surprise, chattik. T’chik chik BLAT.”

NEO-OTYUGH

Burble urp de livre – The euphoric feeling of bathing in liquefied feces all day while reading a good book.

“Burble urp de livre is nice work if you can get it, but most privies under castles nowadays offer only the hardest rain of excrement pellets and at best a few soiled pages of the Farmer’s Almanac.”

Bookoff Haul

Took a break from the thesis to walk around Kyoto a bit.

Got quite the rpg haul from Book Off, the big second hand bookstore.

This should motivate me to make the last spurt and get this chapter done by the deadline at month's end.

Wish me luck!

In Case You're Wondering...

Neither I nor this blog are dead, just snowed under with work and thesis writing.
I have some great posts percolating, but they'll have to wait until the final chapter of the thesis is done the end of the month and the new workplace settles into a routine.

Might also get some gaming done after the deadline this month, finger's crossed.

Unofficial Palladium Repair Kit Part II

Part Two – General SDC Combat

Here is the second installment of the Palladium Patch. As before, the houserules are in suggestive order of implementation, so try the first and work your way down if you like it.

1) Armor Rating

AR is changed to reflect how much damage a character or object can take. For living creatures, any damage up to AR is subtracted from SDC, while any in excess of AR is taken directly from Hit Points. Armor takes SDC damage up to AR then passes it on to the wearer.

Watch players get wary of hand to hand and start running from guns…

(NB: Also, use the optional critical damage tables! The risk of a broken arm or leg will force the characters to be creative and not rush headlong into combat).

2) Combat Momentum

Since most characters have multiple attacks/actions, a different style of adjudicating combat is suggested to make the game run faster and build excitement. Roll initiative as normal, but whichever character gets it keeps on attacking until one of the following occurs:

1) they run out of attacks, 2) they fumble (roll a natural 1) 3) they run out of actions (also means no dodging or piloting rolls to dodge), 4) they decide to stop attacking and use their remaining actions later. Note that if you run out of attacks/actions using the CM system, you become a sitting duck and can only parry. This makes burning an action to dodge behind cover essential.
Implementing Combat Momentum made the game much more cinematic and sped up combat immensely for us, but other groups found it jarring after D&D style one attack/player rounds. Give it a try and see where you stand.

3) Target Values

Target values reflecting difficulty to hit, and attackers most roll equal or over the Target Value to hit. Use judgment and be fair in deciding Target Values.

Target Value	Description (Apply the most appropriate descriptor to find the row for the situation)
0	Unmissable – Immobilized target, automatic hit
5	Easy - Huge, slow moving, close range, or no cover targets
10	Average - Large, walking, medium range, or in 1/4 cover targets
15	Challenging - Small, slow vehicle/dodging human, far range, or in 1/2 cover targets
20	Difficult - Tiny, fast vehicle, extreme range, or in 3/4 cover targets
NA	Not allowed - Impossible to hit

4) Automatic Fire & Recoil

When firing a burst from an automatic weapon, decide the number of rounds fired and roll to hit as normal. The first round takes the number rolled (after modifiers) as its hit number, while every subsequent round takes a penalty equal to the gun’s Recoil Value, which is equal to the number of dice it rolls for damage.

For example, a .45 automatic does 4d6 damage and thus has a Recoil of four. If a character is firing a burst of 3 rounds and the player rolls an 18 to hit after modifiers, the first round uses 18 as its Hit Number, the second uses 14 (18 minus the Recoil Value), and the last round’s Hit Number is further reduced to 10 (14 minus Recoil). Firing two-handed, braced, or using a stock reduces Recoil by 1 each, and effects are cumulative, although Recoil can never be reduced lower than 1. Recoil can also be reduced by PS bonus. Beam weapons have no recoil.

(NB: When firing on multiple targets, the space between them requires one round to be shot into it. In the above example of the .45 auto pistol, the player could try to hit an assailant with the roll of 18, sacrifice the roll of 14, then try to hit another foe with the roll of 10).

5) Dodging Missiles

When dodging missiles, apply the following penalties:

 – 1 vs thrown, – 3 vs arrows / spears, – 4 vs guns & rockets, – 6 vs beam weapons, – 9 vs invisible weapons.

6) SDC Damage types

Different weapons have different effects. Blunt weapons doing HP damage also have a 50/50 chance of knocking out or breaking bones. Victim gets a PE save to avoid. Bladed weapons doing HP damage also cause blood loss of 1 HP per minute until the bleeding is stopped. Bullets do damage as blunt and bladed (i.e. KO or broken bones plus blood loss). Burns cause 1 point of PB reduction whenever HP damage is done

Enjoy!

Altar of the Machine

An Altar of the Machine is a squat black monolith filigreed with silvery and multicouloured neon veins that look like circuits to modern viewers. It hums of eerie machinery (think Lou Reed’s Machine Metal Music), making sleep impossible within a mile radius.

The altar comes from a Demiplane of Machines, sandwiched between the Plane of Unlife and the Plane of Metals. An altar is sent imbued with enough energy to break into our reality, then make one of the following machinelife monsters.

Roll 3d6

ROLL	MATERIAL	SHAPE (special ability)	STRENGTH*
1	Silver	Floating Eye (freeze ray & flight)	1 man
2	Gold	Doppleganger (mimic)	2 men
3	Quicksilver	Skeleton (missiles have 50% chance of missing)	4 men
4	Chrome	Hook Horror (leaping ability)	6 men
5	Steel	Golem (deafening handclap)	8 men
6	Crystal	Mek (high speed)	9 men

* Use as Hit Dice for D&D, adjust accordingly for other games.

Silver – Need magic weapons to hit

Gold – Splits into half strength miniatures when hit

Quicksilver – Unharmed by metal weapons

Chrome – Reflects beams and rays

Steel – Attacker must save vs strength or drop melee weapon on a successful hit

Crystal – Blinding ray when fighting in daytime

The created machinelife sets out procuring victims to sacrifice on the altar. Once it has sacrificed a dozen men’s worth of life it can create a new machinelife and both will try to carry out its mission, sacrificing more living creatures and summoning more machinelife to the world until it is overrun.

Oh My Zod It’s Full of RPGs ‘March Madness’ Days 30 & 31 Finale!

Other blogs can be found HERE. It is over a dozen now, so I am pretty happy with that.

The questions can be found HERE. They’ve proven not to be perfect, but they are stimulating some good discussions and sharing of experiences.

It’s funny that although I started this blog challenge, I have fallen the most behind in it. If you know what kind of a hellish ride life has been this month, you’d probably be surprised I finished it at all.

I’d like to thank all the participants – their responses have made me laugh and add quite a few entries to my future gaming list. Personally, this challenge has served its purpose of learning about various games from people with a similar interest in, so I’ll also be watching their blogs in future.

On with the last hurrah!

30 Which non-D&D supplemental product should everyone know about? Give details.

Back in the day, Palladium used to produce a range of ‘complete guide’ books that every GM I knew had on their shelf. Want to see the difference between a voulge and a Bohemian ear spoon? The Palladium Book of Weapons & Armor is for you. Want to know the difference between a H&K 9mm SMG and a Skorpion? You need the Compendium of Contemporary Weapons. They were great for players to thumb through when the DM was in the can or working through some issue with other players.

I see that in addition to the old favorites such as the Compendium of Exotic Weapons, they have put out some newer titles, such as Weapons & Castles of the Orient. If they’ve kept up the art and research quality, definitely pick up a dead tree version at your FLS or PDF at DriveThruRPG.

31 What out-of-print RPG would you most like to see back in publication? Why?

Tough, tough question as usual due to my narrow repertoire of played games. I have seen people take PDFs of older games and print them through a POD service such as Lulu, so I guess the question is moot, but I would pay for a reissue of the Games Workshop version of Stormbringer. It was the revised Stormbringer 2e plus all the material from the first Companion stuffed into one heavy, gorgeous tome with an iconic cover image of Elric at the end of his world. 

I am sure there are better games that deserve a reprint more (Unknown Armies springs to mind), but I can’t help what I want.

And that’s a wrap! Far from being a chore, this challenge has diverted me at a time when I sorely needed diversion and made me feel far less lonely ensconced in my ivory tower where I pump out questionably useful academic writing. Thanks to all who wrote, replied, and read.

It has been a hoot as writer and reader, and inspired me with a dozen or so post and game ideas to work on the coming months. Since I am getting up 6 am for my 2 hour commute to the new workplace, in addition to fatherhood and an encroaching phd deadline, I am sorry to say the blog will be slowing back to its weekly or less pace.

Cheers!

Hobbit 2 Review

Just saw The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

Good time, great film. I’ve heard some negative reviews and honestly I don’t agree. I thought it was heaps better than the first one and its plodding scrotal chinned goblin king section.

The barrel ride has been described as overlong, but I wonder how short of an attention span do you need to think so. PJ turned a short, boring page in the book into tense, action packed ride followed by some humour and subterfuge. There was a hint of rubber leg CG Legolas, but on the whole actors and CG flowed well.

One minor flaw that came later was a bit of CG lingering. CG effects work best when the camera spends little time on them, like the great dragon chase. The CG lingering on the gold king felt overlong and muddled the meaning, but didn’t ruin the film at all.

If there is one complaint, it is that in making characters and dialogue out of whole cloth, PJ sometimes doesn’t know when to stop. Case in point is Tauriel. I am all for adding in tough female characters in Tolkien – in LotR, we get tough women like Eowyn, who gets promised action and agency only to get cut off at the knees figuratively and relegated to a handmaid.

Tauriel seemed about to break that mold. She did her own thing, turned away love from a friend, then saved an enemy because it was the right thing to do. When this dwarven enemy deliriously remarks that she shouldn’t be there, this would have been a great place to end the scene. Instead he asks, “Would she have loved me?” and marks the return to the sappy chains of womanhood. Didn’t ruin the film, but made me wish PJ had taken a chance and let one strong woman stand alone.

My Report Card:

Hobbit 1 = B

Hobbit 2 = A minus