Post- Session: Player's Handbook 2024 is A Utility Driven 5.25E D&D

 Just a brief follow-up, and this is with the noted caveat that the devil is in the details, but my group last night agreed that the D&D 2025 Player's Handbook is basically a marvel in reorganization and a clear rewrite, but it also appears to be simultaneously far less invasive than we expected in terms of rules changes, and also somehow a bit more so in some very specific cases. The fact that it really does appear to be backwards compatible with no fuss (that is to say, you can run a 2014 character with a gang of 2024 characters and not miss a beat) is helpful. That makes it noteworthy as being less of a hassle than, say, using 3.0 products with 3.5 books back in the day, where there were a lot of discreet structural and design changes to improve mechanical problems. This book is far less about fixing mechanical issues then simply adding new content and revising stuff that will, while not invalidating the older PHB, make your players want the new PHB.

No one in my group had a copy yet, and as it turns out despite getting several boxes of books my FLGS sold all of them on Tuesday, and so no one in my group other than my son and myself had the new PHB yet. Still.....I am sure they will grab it on D&D Beyond or something quick enough, or when the formal non FLGS release hits on the 17th.

By the way, I have gotten over the freakishly friendly smiling phenomenon I was ranting about yesterday. After making such a big deal about it, I began to notice that this is not quite the bother it initially felt like to me.....yes, there are still about 10-15 notable illustrations where I am a bit weirded out at the maniacal joy of the expressions on these character's faces, but a disproportionated number of them appear to all be bards and (weirdly!) druids. So yeah....probably just a "me" problem LOL

Anyway! We already started using the book in actual play to look up stuff like spells and such. We did not find any surprises (yet) but there are some. Healing seems to be buffed up a bit, for one. It is much, much easier to look content up in this edition, so it is already feeling pointless to me to reach for the old PHB unless I really needs to identify some legacy content information, such as on a class that got more heavily revamped, or the poor half orcs and half elves who have lost their identities in this new edition. 

Speaking of half orcs and half elves Is it just me or does that feel like some sort of weird form of discrimination? Was WotC more worried about the kind of questions being half-this and half-that raised, and decided it was better to not raise those questions and hope no one brought up the counter point that in a world where elves, orcs and humans can all apparently interbreed that there will be people of mixed descent? Is this purged because they decided to remove the concept of races and go for species, implying everyone is genetically too different to interbreed? The entire thing feels weird to me, and like there was no right way for them to address this without offending some camp, so they just tried to dodge the entire issue instead. I feel like this is even stranger given they made orcs, as the most contentious example, far more "not evil" in this version, at least according to the lone paragraph of detail they get, which strongly implies that humans, elves and such who have a green muscle mommy fetish (damn you internet for creating these memes) would inevitably lead to even more half orcs in the world, not less. Oh well. It's like 1989 all over again, and no doubt a future book will find a way to delicately address this such that the WotC overlords don't look like they are crapping on people of multiracial descent through their fantasy game analogues.

2024 Player's Handbook Is In the Wild!

 I picked up my special edition cover of the 2024 Player's Handbook yesterday and spent a fair amount of time reading through the book. As many have already commented, this books' single greatest contribution to the game is organization....the book really is incredibly well organized, in a smart way that makes a lot of sense, and leads the reader to wonder why it took this long. I have a few other observations so far....but this is hardly a proper review as of yet, just observations. The real meat of any discussion will have to wait until I've met with my group tonight and we have formulated a plan of attack for when we will start using the new PHB in actual play. But in the interim, here are those observations....

Someone Hates Fluff

This is the least fluff-filled PHB I have ever seen. A single page for most character species (and I like that they are using the term species now) of which half of the page is an illustration seems scant at best. Most of the species and their possible subtypes are getting maybe a paragraph of introduction at best. 

Gaucho Orcs

Orcs got a reboot in this book. They have exactly one page, half text and half illustration. Gruumsh is now some sort of orcish analog for Odin or something, and orcs have a penchant for nomadic wanderlust. There's like 1 paragraph of detail, and half of it reframing Gruumsh. All of the other details can be derived from an illustration of an orc family that makes them look like sombrero and poncho wearing gauchos from the old west. In a post World of Warcraft universe I respect the idea that orcs are a thing people want to play but it is insanely weird to see all the core conceits of what it means to be an orc get completely stripped out and replaced by a vague suggestion of form in the example illustration. 

Very Clean Class Write-Ups

The classes are all reframed and reformatted, to the extent that even spell lists are now included for each class in the class description proper. Its incredibly efficient and impressively done. There are so many weird little changes to the classes that this part more than any will be where people find the most arguments for this being a D&D 5.5 or even better a 6E.

The Core Mechanics are Still The Same

There are lots of tweaks and bits everywhere, but the way the game plays remains the same. This system is arguably a bigger jump than 3.5 was from 3.0, but it all in the extraneous details such as classes, spells and species and far less in the mechanical core.

A Really Weird Number of Characters in This Book Have Freaky Open Mouthed Eerie Smiles

I don't know what the artistic intent is here,* but the number of characters smiling like they are hopped up on mushrooms or derived from some freaky AI generated model is just a tad on the disturbing side. There are, thankfully, lots of illustrations of D&D characters doing actual D&D type stuff (fighting, spell casting, exploring, investigating, etc.) but possibly better than half the illustrations in this book appear to be of freakishly weird denizens whose exact class and species is up for debate smiling like an amorphous AI generated illustration about to bite your head off, and it's frankly weirding me out, like, a lot.

The Garb of Characters is in Stark Contrast to Equipment Illustrations

Aside from the excessive use of smiling and expressions of sheer, unmitigated and possibly drug-induced joy, the art in the book is pretty solid. There is a moment of disconnect for me when you get to the nice but very mundane sample illustrations of arms and armor, and I then look at the insanely elaborate dress and garb of the sample characters and wonder to myself, "no one is wearing any of the practical gear this book is telling me the average mundane PCs will be using, they are all wearing aristocratic designer garb straight from the poshest corners of Waterdeep, the sort of things you wear to your cousins' wedding and not to a dungeon fight."

There's more yet to be gone in to. I am still soaking up the new stuff, especially weapon stunts and the enormous number of class tweaks, but overall this is a pretty solid book, and still feels very much like 5E in terms of what its accomplishing, so I can accept the interpretation of the 2024 PHB being more of a 5.5 edition than anything else, because its mechanical core remains the same solid nugget we've been using for the last ten years. 

*I once watched some Youtube videos where they talked about how adding a open-mouthed, shocked or smiling look to your image in a thumbnail was supposed to dramatically increase clicks (user engagement) with the video. So for a while every bloody Youtube video had someone in the thumbnail expressing delight, surprise and shock with a wide open mouth. Eventually, the novelty of this conceit must have worn off as people got tired of the gimmick and it stopped being useful to most Youtubers except I imagine for Mr. Beast. 

I bring this up because I feel like the art team at WotC were told by someone that people love sheer, unrelenting borderline insane expressions of joy crossing people's faces, regardless of the illustrative intent or context of the image, and that became an embedded design imperative. Luckily, as I mentioned, there's enough more conventional illustrations to offset this, but holy cats....either a few more smiling maniacs or a few less illustrations of non drugged up adventurers behaving normally and I think the art alone could have sunk this book just by crossing some uncanny valley line. (EDIT - probably not, and this is probably just me and my preference for characters "fitting the mood" better for the subject....and me being out of touch with the totality of what the mood is for D&D 2024, I suppose. But still! I can't be the only one who finds some of these maniacal smiling adventurers off-putting.....this is probably just a personal extension of why I don't enjoy Disney movies or something.)

The Myriad Ways Nostalgia Seeps In

 So I think I hit a nostalgia phase recently, and I realize now that there is a vast difference between "Nostalgia as represented by other people online," and "Nostalgia that works for me." To be more specific, I recently began thinking about what would be considered "nostalgic" for me in a sense that I understood....that is, wanted to engage with and liked in a way that felt like I was reconnecting with an old past I had all but abandoned. 

It's hard for me to feel nostalgia about D&D because, in the time I have been a gamer I have played D&D consistently across about six editions and numerous variants almost weekly now for close to 43 years. So D&D specifically isn't a nostalgia driver - its an old warhorse I can both rely on but also feel the need to give the poor old boy a break these days, as he's old and weathered.

I likewise have a lot of bygone hobbies that no longer "click" for me at least partially because the overall value of the hobby has now passed on to memory, or its dated in a unique way that makes it difficult to re-engage with. Sometimes its because the elements of the hobby that made it fun now seem a bit quaint, as I have moved on from it and developed more sophisticated tastes (for example: as a teenager I was fascinated with Transformers, but that was 40 years ago and I really don't care for them these days outside of mild amusement and perplexity at just how much that IP has polymorphed and warped over the years). 

There are sometimes hobbies I was so in to that I exhausted my interest, and now find that any rekindling of interest is mostly a mellow "reappreciation" of an old interest. I think of Star Trek this way, for example. Loved it - a lot- back in the day, will still watch any of the original movies and episodes on occasion, but otherwise have very little interest in what goes on in Star Trek now, or in seeking out, collecting, or obsessing over the Star Trek of yore. It's time has passed for me.

But, amidst all of this, I figured out what does click for me on the nostalgia scale: stuff I was really into in the very late eighties and much of the nineties, stuff I particularly enjoyed and then moved away from, often due to life circumstances, but never properly got back to. Sometimes its also because my moment of enjoyment was deep and profound, and the "thing" in question was ultimately left behind but not because I was oversaturated or done with the property, but because life conspired to take me away from it. I have managed to identify a few of these things, which I have been rediscovering lately and finding I am really enjoying getting back to these ancient, neglected interests. Specifically, here are a few:

Cyberpunk - Specifically Cyberpunk 2020, the most played game I ran in college that wasn't AD&D 2E, and easily one of the best gaming experiences I had back in the day. I moved away from it for plenty of reasons, none of which were because I was done with it, although later editions didn't tempt me back; we'll see about Cyberpunk Red which I am reading through again with an eye for seeing if it can recapture that zeitgeist of Cyberpunk gaming in the early nineties.

Image Comics from the Nineties - I jumped hard on the Image comics explosion in 1992 and stuck with it until time and money conspired to take me away from comic collecting following my move to Seattle in 1995. I have very fond memories of just how great, new and interesting it was to follow the various comic creators behind Image at that time as they constructed a new, interesting shared universe that was outdoing Marvel and DC at every turn. It fell apart eventually, but I only left it because I graduated and went off to Seattle to pursue some direction toward a career. I came back to comic collecting in 2012 and have stuck with it, but only recently did I begin to recollect various Image series from the nineties (all of my original comics have been long gone). Wildcats, Stormwatch, Grifter, Authority, Gen 13, Team 7 and many others are all a "best of" from  unique era in the nineties when creator controlled properties briefly made the entire industry quake in fear. Of these, Spawn alone is the one I have kept up with collecting so I don't need to bargain hunt at local comic shops and on Ebay for Todd McFarlane's angry hero from hell, but for the rest? It's proving to be a lot of fun to restore these lost collections, and even find the stuff that came out after I was forced to take a 17 year hiatus in comic collecting.

Unknown Armies - I played a lot of 1st edition Unknown Armies, and loved that edition. I was out of the loop by the time 2nd edition was released (it was too soon!) and now I've had 3rd edition on my shelf for ages. But that said, I think that either getting back to the original 1st edition or re-embracing the newest edition is another proper nostalgia itch scratcher for me. 

Pseudo-Nostalgia: Over the Edge - I actually loved reading all the Over the Edge books, and wanted to run it but never got the opportunity. I am now recollecting with exactly that intent!

Anyway.....these properties (and a few more I might write about in the future) have actually been ticking the nostalgia box for me. So now I think I understand how some people feel....maybe!

Borderlands Movie Review

 I saw Borderlands over the weekend with my son....it was, well, fine, but the movie clearly has so many weird little issues that it was doomed from the beginning. There's a lot of individual performances and moments that feel very right for Borderlands, but the film is stuck in a pre-Last of Us/pre-Fallout Series quagmire of the sort of lowered expectations Hollywood has had toward video game franchises from the time before someone started doing it right. Still better than the Halo TV show, but that's a super low bar. See if for free and be only slightly disappointed.

Pros on the movie:

--Looks really good for the most part; some nice effort was put in to give the world of Pandora its junky, trashed feel from the games.

--Cate Blanchett really puts it all in on a grizzled older Lilith, who is a gun-toting shoot-first lady version of Han Solo in this film.

--Jack Black really nailed Claptrap the Robot, enough so for me that he almost sounded like the game version.

--Kevin hart does a pretty good Roland circa Borderlands 1. Krieg is Krieg, though if you know him from Borderlands 2 he says a lot of crazy stuff this version in the movie barely touches on. Marcus the gun dealer works surprisingly well given he, like so many Borderlands characters are such distinct visual and audio personalities that that can make it tough for a live actor to live up to the more cartoonish elements of its source material.

And the Cons:

--Made years ago during the pandemic, this project clearly went through too many screen rewrites and edits, and the story is a mashup of bits from the games and "Save the Cat" plot elements jammed in by nervous screenwriters who didn't know what to do with the material and were worried it wouldn't appeal to a mass audience. It ignores or rewrites chunks of game plot in ways that The Last of Us and Fallout Series have shown you do not have to; it is an artifact of the elements of Hollywood that do not like video games and do not know what to do with them.

--The movie has three principle female leads, all in their fifties to sixties. In an action movie about a video game aimed at teens and twenty-somethings, featuring mostly characters also in their teens and twenties. Gina Gershon as Mad Moxxie is arguably the closest in age to her own character, but in the Borderlands universe even Mad Moxxie is still using some unholy biogenetic/cybernetic enhancements to make herself perpetually young looking (maybe, I dunno; its video game logic, okay?) But as I watched this movie all I could think to myself was, "I saw the perfect actress for Lilith earlier this year, and she was playing Furiosa." 

--Even Kevin Hart, despite playing a decent Roland (IMO, YMMV), felt a bit too old for the Roland from the game who I would have pegged at maybe 25-26 years old and fresh out of a tour of duty leading him to vault hunter as a profession. Plus, in the movie, he's actually portrayed as an AWOL crimson lance, which is....maybe what happens to him in a later game? I don't honestly know, I only got about 10 hours in to Borderlands 2 (I've played the first game start to finish 3 times, but never finished 2 or 3, sorry).

--What was with female General Knox (and why gender swap Knox when there was a perfectly workable actual female villain in the original game who filled this exact role?) and her relationship with Roland? Why was that not even remotely developed in a way the audience could see so it had some meaningful payoff? Was that stuff that was filmed and then cut in editing? 

--No skag attack? In a Borderlands game? Yeesh!

--A mishmashed ending which took more from Borderlands 2, but shifted who the characters were and made only a slight nod to the tentacle brother to Cthulhu that is the end boss of the original game. Okay but also not ideal.

--The biggest con with the movie was how remarkably little of it felt "right" and how those moments stood out when the movie did, in fact, occasionally start to feel very much like Borderands, only to then do something that felt ham-fisted and either the result of poor writing or poor editing/direction. 

--The fights lacked pizzazz. The director (Eli Roth, I believe) doesn't seem to know how to do satisfying fight choreography.

--For every region from the game that got an interesting facelift (such as Fyrestone or Piss Wash Gully) there was another location where it was just head-scratching as to why they changed it (the ending sequence, for example, where the Vault entrance is located).  

--Weird and ham-fisted "Save the Cat" plot moments felt jammed in to satisfy story beats or force emotional resonance. The entire backstory of Lilith, Tannis and Lilith's mom was just...unnecessary.

--Tiny Tina was a doomed choice of character from the start; no one was going to top the Animated Tiny Tina for sheer crazy, period.

--Tannis, played by Jamie Lee Curtis is the most out of place of all of the characters. In the game she is a late twenties/early thirties scheming psychopath driven mad by the planet in her pursuit of Eridian artifacts. In the movie she is a seventy-something savant on the spectrum who botched her friend's request to take care of her daughter and who hides away in some attic studying artifacts with no real agency. Curtis does fine, but this just ain't the game's Tannis, by a long shot.

--Why do none of the characters reflect their iconic abilities? How could the movie go at length without showing Lilith use phasing powers, or Roland using his turret machine gun? These were such easy gives for certain scenes, essentially the character's superpowers, and they ignored them. 

--The vibe of the movie is just completely off. It feels at moments like the art and FX team totally got the message, but the writers and director totally did not. Somewhere in this mix someone knew enough to crib material from the game, but not enough to understand the core appeal of the game that could translate to film.

So in short: I give the movie a C for trying, but also a C for somehow failing so badly. I don't regret seeing it, but I also hope the movie is quickly and quietly forgotten so that maybe now, in this post-The Last of Us era of films based on games, we can see a real Borderlands movie done right eventually. I wonder how much cash could be thrown at George Miller to make it? Seriously, he made a much better Borderlands movie earlier this year, called Furiosa. 

This is Probably too Clever But....

 In reference to my post yesterday about being confused as to why Robert Downy Jr. would return as Doctor Doom, the thought crossed my mind that if you wanted to have a big Iron man comeback, and didn't want to obviously give away your plans, this is the way to do it, through misdirection. Unfortunately a fellow I know with more Marvel lore than I do says the whole Iron Man/Doc Doom connection is a thing in recent Marvel comics, so maybe its just that. Who knows!

Let's Play: Losing the Plot or Out of Touch!

 The title of this blog came to mind after two conversations. The first one was with a couple friends who, like me, are of an older generation that remembers a time when Star Wars worked reasonably well because the oversaturation of content was restricted to comics, books and games; the core conceits of the universe were officially corralled within a handful of movies. So today my son, who should be target demographic #1 for Disney's Star Wars, had lots of scathing opinions about The Acolyte's loose effort at either mishandling or redefining the core conceits of what its universe is. In a bygone age something like Acolyte would be another random Dark Horse Comic or maybe a West End Games sourcebook that was quickly forgotten. Today....it's a TV show and sort of feels like someone has steered wildly off course on the original sparse but satisfying core nugget of the Star Wars Experience.

The second one was me reading about How Robert Downy Jr. will return to the Marvel Universe as Doctor Doom. I don't know how this works. I can speculate its more of their multiversal madness, but the reason they are not working right now is precisely due to the fact that multiversal storylines do not make for coherent storytelling, and they reduce the gravitas of the main plot. Comics use multiverse storylines to "fix" issues prior authors and artists caused for future artists. They sometimes use it to do hard reboots to clean up the myriad obscure plots that make it hard for new readers to break in to the current books. They often (in DC's case) use it to tell cool stories they can't tell any other way because the core conceits of a comic universe require things be static and not change. But the film universes of these comics clearly work differently, and the application of multiversal themes seem to be the death knell of both the Marvel and DC film continuities. You can have fun in the moment, but then you leave and realized it tasted great but was just empty calories. These is nothing to feel invested in, at the end of the day. It is a storyteller's dead end.

That prompted me to think, so am I the crazy one who is out of touch here, thinking that bringing Iron Man guy back s Doctor Doom guy....a  move I can only imagine will do no justice to either character....is just kind of digging the hole Marvel is in even deeper? Or am I Out of Touch, and if I were one of the cool kids this would all make sense somehow?

My son, who is 12, barely remembers the Avengers movies that offed Tony Stark as a character. He has seen some Fantastic Four films and found them old and out of date. He doesn't know of care why the Iron Man actor is now also the Doctor Doom actor, and has so much Marvel content at his finger tips that he gains satisfaction by refusing all of it, because his generation, to survive, must set these boundaries against the hordes of IP issued forth by the Media Overlords. So....if you feel this way does that mean you are Out of Touch too? Even at 12? Or has Disney well and truly Lost the Plot?

I guess if we're lucky my son will know how awesome (or terrible) a Downey Jr. Doom is before he's graduated High School!

Long-Form vs. Short-Form RPGs - Or, There's Never Enough Time to Run Everything

Right now my gaming group....well, I as GM anyway....have a problem, and that problem is that we are currently playing Dungeons & Dragons 5E on both Wednesday and Saturday. That's a good thing, sure! People love playing games and its nice to have had a consistent D&D group in one form or another for decades now. But here's the problem.....I''ll provide a short list:

Tales of the Valiant; Mothership; Call of Cthulhu; Savage Worlds; Pathfinder 2E Revised; Traveller; Mork Borg; Vast Grimm; Mutant Year Zero; Gamma World; Swords & Wizardry.

I could go on....but you get the point. There's a lot of RPGs I have I'd like to also be playing right now, but I keep running D&D 5E. The reason, of course, is because D&D at its heart is a long-form game experience. You can run short campaigns, sure, but D&D is built around the core conceit of forging lengthy tales of heroes who venture forth and have exciting experiences over many, many game sessions. As a result, starting a D&D campaign isn't just (for my table, anyway) a case of "go explore that dungeon," its a campaign-level "Start at level 1 and work your way to whatever level the DM can get to before breaking," type deal.

Some of the other games work much better with a more short-form experience, where the game can last 1-3 sessions or maybe a mini campaign arc of 5-10 sessions followed by a satisfying conclusion. Savage Worlds does this well. Horror games are particularly suited to this format and I run Call of Cthulhu and Mothership usually with the expectation that a campaign will rarely go past 5-10 sessions. I did once run a CoC campaign that went 18 sessions, but even that one had to end spectacularly and with a measure of finality that was quite satisfying and is still talked about years later.

The problem is: I love running long-form campaigns but I really thrive on short-form campaigns where you can remain more focused on a specific concept space. And right now, I am running essentially two long-form campaigns because when it comes to D&D and its clones, it is all too easy and natural to slide in to the lengthy campaign format, sometimes without even realizing it. Now, luckily for me the Saturday campaign has a definite potential closing point. For whatever reason, my "secondary campaign" night (which is Saturdays) is always easier for me to eventually tire of and want to bail on. So I expect we will get 2-3 more sessions out of it before I am proposing something new. This is unfortunate for my players on Saturday who would like a long running campaign, but necessary for my sanity, because deep down these days I am full of 20 ideas at a time, but have room for exploring only one and a half-of them at a time. 

Wednesday is the real problem for me: I want to try out Tales of the Valiant, but we're hip deep in our ongoing D&D 5E campaign with no end in sight. Tales of the Valiant is meant to be a 5E replacement ruleset, so in theory I could cheekily just start using it and gradually shift the campaign over but....nah, that wouldn't be as satisfying as starting a new campaign aimed specifically at using Tales of the Valiant by itself. So yeah, I remain stuck there for a bit.

Meanwhile, I have loads of new ideas for other games, including Mothership, Cthulhu, Savage Worlds and some more obscure ones such as Dreams & Machines and Gamma World (the 4th edition of the game from the nineties, no less!) that I want to entertain. I feel like I could have done this more efficiently twenty years ago. Ah well! We'll see what I can do.

Tales of the Valiant is here! Let the 2024 Edition Wars Commence

 I finally got my Tales of the Valiant Player's Guide and Monster Vault books, along with the very nice GM screen. Together these two books comprise all the core you need to play the game, so I am intrigued to see all the useful (but non critical) content in the GM's Guide coming out later this year.

The new books are sturdy, standard Kobold Press style, with gorgeous Kobold Press artwork that "feels like D&D" which is the best compliment I can provide to the game. Given that the Kobolds have essentially positioned Tales of the Valiant to be to D&D 6th Edition what Pathfinder 1E was to D&D 4th edition, this is a good place for them to reside.....whether that is by accident or design I cannot say. If D&D 6th edition -and go look at all the release details so far if you don't think the new D&D 2024 isn't a full-out new edition!- does not grab as much attention and go over as well as it could or should, then Tales of the Valiant could provide a more than suitable alternative. 

TotV will most likely remain niche no matter what, as its the kind of thing you sort of know about and get interested in if you're already hip deep into RPGs, while D&D has cornered a different kind of market with a more casual crowd who's overall interest is less obscure and more trendy. But if it turns out that D&D shed too much of its identifiable crust in the remaking, then we could indeed see people start looking around for alternatives (or maybe even just stick with their old books). 

I can see this happening: D&D 6E seems to be caught between two markets right now. The general perception of the new class and rules promotional details coming out strongly suggest a mechanical rework designed to appeal to a more hardcore crowd interested in a bit more mechanical rigor and tactical acumen. Simultaneously we are being told the game is being revamped for "how people really play" and there seems to be a strong push toward friendlier and less violent art, character focused development that leans hard into the "start as a super hero, not super zero" thematics that 5E was already noted for, and a broader sense of inclusion for game tables which eschew the rigors of mechanical combat in favor of pure role playing. These are interesting and very opposite demographics to appeal to simultaneously in a product....and I will be interested in seeing if WotC can pull it off.

There's also an entire segment of modern D&D gamers who have only come in to the hobby with 5th edition, and have never had to experience an edition change. For many, a perceived increase in mechanical rigor (or even just a moderate level of changes for change's sake) could be more than they want to deal with. I could be wrong....who knows!

Even if D&D 6E takes off and also succeeds via D&D Beyond and Roll20 (which, correct me if I am wrong, seems to be substituting for D&D Beyond's original goal of making the online experience more video-game and microtransaction driven), it's okay, because Tales of the Valiant clearly has the "I like physical books" crowd covered, and even better if you do want to go VTT with it, Shard Tabletop is a damned fine product. If TotV can manage to make Shard or something similar provide an easier set of tools to desgn and subsequently print out for live table gaming, they will manage to cater to both live and virtual crowds easily. With D&D Beyond.....I feel like maybe D&D is not as poised here as they had originally intended. But hey, it's not September yet, we shall see how that goes.

Amidst all this are other game systems, but I think they all suffer in odd ways that prevent them from getting to be the next Pathfinder 1E to D&D. Pathfinder 2E, for example, shed so much OGL identity that it is functionally a different sort of game now, one with few to no identifiable "D&Disms" left. At least Tales of the Valiant wasn't afraid to include an owlbear, for example! It retains a lot of stuff that firmly plants it in the realm of "D&Dlikes" which means its comfort level will be more familiar to many players now than PF2E. PF2E, meanwhile, is poised to be a good alternate for people who want a D&D inspired experience but also really want a lot more mechanical rigor and very tight math. There is a crowd for that, and they are already playing their preferred game (PF2E). 

Other potential contenders lurk out there, but each offers a niche experience. Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised is my favorite OSR experience next to OSE. OSE is also cool. Shadowdark is out there, and it seems like people do like it. None of them are poised to become the next Pathfinder 1E, though, because each is catering to a specific playstyle subset of the broader population.

Anyway, the last six months of this year will be a fun roller coaster for D&D and now Tales of the Valiant. I'm developing a new campaign (well, an old one set in a new -or old- era) for TotV and will start posting some details here soon. I think I have buy-in from my group, so I'm excited to get a chance to try it out before the D&D 6E madness hits in three months.

One Month In! The Book Standoff Continues - On Carbon 2185, Rokugan and More

 Well it's been a month since our move-in, and the vast majority of my book collection now has ample shelf space. I am still clearing out some books, several boxes to be specific, and eyeballing all the other stuff I have. I'd rather get it all to fit on the shelves I have rather than watch every ounce of free wall space be consumed by shelves of books....we'll leave that to my study, and of course my son's room, which increasingly growing in book volume as he absconds with my collection into his own (or adds new stuff). Some of this is just kizmet....turns out for example I was never likely to run Fallout RPG, but my collector's penchant made it super easy to simply give him the books I had on hand so he could then run it. I had a spare Call of Cthulhu Keeper's Book which is now his, too. Drew the line at the Malleus Monstrorum set, though. He made off with it, but in exchange for its safe return I promised him I'd snag him his own copy. 

This is the delicate tet-a-tet we have in house. As a gamer dad I have All The Books and All The Money and as Son of Dad he has to figure out how he can best whittle All The Books and All The Money away from me. Luckily for him I am fine with this! Now I just need to narrow down our understanding of what is definitively up for grabs vs. what I am using. For examples....

Carbon 2185 - a 5E-powered cyberpunk RPG I snagged in 2022 during the abominable Florida Expedition, has been lounging around in the collection for a while. I like the premise, but never could find the right time to try it out. Now my son has it, and is running games in it, and I have even gotten to play in one. It's fun stuff! So my buying this book then has profited for me in spades.

Rokugan - Off limits! Well, sort of. This book provides copious setting content and rules for the Japanese themed campaign in 5E I am running on Saturdays now, and as such I need the book very much. But my son has extracted much from it in the process for his characters, too.

Malleus Monstrorum - we solve this by arranging for him to work off and earn his own copies. He's drafted up a prolific Gaslight campaign for Cthulhu, and I expect we'll be playing in it sooner or later. My son is obsessed with Tarot and the Simon Necronomicon so it behooves me, as his father, to try setting him straight on his mythos lore by making sure he has copies of these books, at the very least. Must avoid summoning unintended things, right?!?

GURPS - For reasons perhaps caused by me talking it all up too much, my son wants to learn and run GURPS, too. Fine with me! As one oddball youtuber commented, GURPS is now "D&D, but for nerds" and that has never been truer than now in the zeitgeist of D&D becoming so mainstream. 

Anyway, the point of all this is that I am finally, at last, getting a chance to really let my collection breathe, watch it get more synergy thanks to my son, and also allow me to eyeball what I have and make realistic assessments of why I have collected some of the stuff I have, and whether or not it may be better suited elsewhere. We'll see! The new place has engrained a satisfactory sense of "no rush, I can take my time on this" that I hadn't felt before. 

I've written a lot but no pictures. Time for some! Here's our dominion (walking on a nearby trail):

My Son's disaster of a room (it's gotten better since this pick):

Some true order at last in my study:

Moved In!

 So we have a nice new house in the middle of the desert, in a development underway in west Los Lunas. This is the closest I can get to leaving Albuquerque without actually leaving Albuquerque. It's a 30 minute commute to work (my in-town commute was previously 15 minutes) on the highway but it's a very nice change of pace. We're the first owners in this branch of the new development so its laden with partially constructed and unoccupied homes. Fun! I am going to have to rewatch Poltergeist, the best movie about buying and moving in to a new development for new homeowners.

Even after securing 10 new book shelves I don't have enough room for all the books. Time to open up the Ebay shop again!

More to come...

Imminent Closing!

 Closing on the new house, that is!

Many of you have had this experience like me: renters instead of buyers, never finding the right time or opportunity to feel like settling down is a good time, or never having the right job or the right level of job security. Maybe life just catches up with you (as it has with me) and you realize one day you're getting too old to move every few years, and the idea of not having to uproot and displace every now and then no longer feels liberating, it feels like maybe, to quote the old saying, "I'm getting too old for this S***!"

And so it is.

I'll have internet up at the new house next week....will blog post post move then! For those interested, this is a brand new house....so new that Google Maps shows an open plot of land where a house currently stands. So new that the local realtor and HOA contacts indicated we are literally the first people to move in to the new neighborhood. So new that we get to do a walk through tomorrow with the contractor who built the house! So...yeah, pretty new.

It's also the largest house I'll have occupied in many an age. We have had large rentals in the past, but at 1550 square feet this house has enough room that my wife and I are contemplating the need for more furniture to fill up the copious extra space we will have. I am debating the possibility I may have enough space for as many book shelves as I need to get the entire collection out of the 150 boxes and on display. I still want to cut that total down by half, but....yeah I could totally do that at the new place if I wanted to. 

Alrighty then! Next blog post on the other side.

Moving and the Plight of Owning a Large Library

 I have now in my garage 120+ boxes just of books, all banker box sized because anything larger than that is a pain to haul (though I do use larger boxes for board games and lighter weight stuff). It's a lot of stuff! At 53 years of age I realize I have more books to read than I have time left on this planet, more games to play than I have any free time ever. I need to figure out what to do with this, or my family will be cursing my name at the wake. 

One fun exercise was establishing what not to pack before the time to move (later this month, presuming all goes as planned and we close on the house purchase around May 17th). Sometimes you get that moment of insight on what "really matters" when you are forced to consolidate and think carefully about what you both need and want access to in the coming weeks. For me, I effectively left out the core D&D 5th edition books, a copy of Cypher System, the Call of Cthulhu 7E core book, BRP,  Dragonbane, and the Traveller books. I had Savage Worlds out but ended up packing it, as it is very unlikely I'd be running it before I am fully moved in. I also now have the glorious deluxe boxed set of Mothership in hand (it arrived Monday), so that's staying unpacked for now while I absorb it. All of these are going into boxes for moving soon enough.....but not until mid May.

So if these aforementioned systems are the "core" of what I need to sustain gaming, then what the heck is going on with all those boxes? About 2/3rds of those boxes contain games. Many of them I know I am holding on to them purely for purposes of maintaining a collection, especially my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition D&D books and Pathfinder 1E tomes. I have collections I probably won't ever use, even if I enjoyed reading them at the time (Numenera comes to mind, as does most of what I have bought from Free League). I have a vast collection of Pathfinder 2E stuff which I think I have no further use for. I continue to play and enjoy the game, though less because I am enamored with the system and more because I enjoy gaming with my friends and the GM in question. For me....I kinda like the new revised PF2E but as a result I am not sure I need more than those core revised books now. All the rest of it? Probably best to find new homes for it.

Finding new homes for such a large volume of books is a pain in the ass, though. The hassle of assembling and shipping them anywhere is a nightmare, especially if selling it all on Ebay, though I did do that one summer a several years back and could do so again. I have thought about calling up local used book shops and inquiring if they purchase large volumes, such as an estate sale, and how they would go about doing that. 

I guess what I am trying to say is that while I know I will never reduce the collection down to zero (do not want to do that) I think 40 boxes would look a lot more realistic right now than 120 boxes. For the interim, though, I am stuck moving it to the new house when that time comes.....and who knows, maybe the much nicer, newer and more spacious house (it's a brand new house, too) will embolden me with its copious room for shelves and space. We'll see.*

*All of this is of course without considering the reality, which is that my son will likely confiscate a nontrivial chunk of my collection for his own purposes. He most recently absconded with my copy of the Fallout RPG and is now running it for his middle school group, and I think he has designs on my Alien RPG collection, too.

The Ambernic RG556

A while back I concluded I was settled on the handled PC/console gaming cycle, with a Steam Deck on the one hand, a Switch OLED in the middle and a Asus ROG Ally on the other. Well, I lied. Since then I have acquired an Ambernic RG556 and a Legion Go. Oh yeah, I have also had access to a Logitech G Cloud, about which I have some thoughts as well. Why? Well I have at last concluded that, as a kid, I had a deep fascination for the concept that one day you could have handheld devices that did all the cool stuff. It explains my obsession over tablets and e-readers, and now of course handheld console and console-like PCs. It is not a healthy obsession, and the only good news I have is I regularly see guys on Youtube posting videos about their own obsessions, from their recording rooms laden with dozens of such devices. Admittedly, they probably get some revenue from Youtube or freebies from the manufacturers and can subsidize their bad habits accordingly, but many of these guys have maybe a few thousand subscribers at most, so I doubt they are benefitting from the views....only a handful have very popular shows. 

Anyway, to add to the pile of what has been discussed before, here's my quick takes so far on the Ambernic RG556 and its unique gateway into Emulation-based handhelds. I'll talk more about the Legion Go and G-Cloud soon.

Ambernic RG556

This is the first emulator handheld console I have purchased.* I snagged this one based on the plethora of reviews suggesting it had a high level of functionality, a nice OLED screen, was easy to get in to without having any real prior emulation familiarity, and would potentially stave off my son's recent obsession for collecting relics and antiques from The Before Times, what he sees as ancient gaming history and I see as "stuff people played when I was in my 20's and 30's." Like Gamecube, PS1/PS2, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance, PSP....that sort of stuff.

When you get a device like this, its power determine how much you can emulate. The 556 can mostly emulate on up through Dreamcast and PS2 without issue, but Gamecube and Xbox seem beyond its scope of ability (although I've learned the Xbox emulator crowd is much smaller than for other consoles). It works out of the box. Emulator enthusiasts will give you lots of seemingly useful advice, on the surface, but it is bad advice for a novice; the onboard emulators are just fine to start, and you can gradually learn to mess around with other, better emulators at a later date. I may write more about how to do this.....but trust me when I say that if you don't know a lot about emulation to start, be very careful of the advice from the pros, they are not writing for people with no real knowledge of how to go about doing emulation, and it will lead to a fairly useless or limited device quickly if you are not careful.

Part of this is probably due to the tricky issue of emulation and piracy, although the vast majority of the games on these old emulators are essentially unattainable by any other means, short of trawling through garage sales or occasional retro game stores for used copies. Not even products such as the Evercade offer most of these games, and many are consigned to oblivion due to licensing issues (as an example, I was completely unaware of how many 2D arcade side scrollers from the 80's and 90's existed for the Aliens franchise until the Ambernic showed up). I am not entirely sure how Ambernic can do this, but assume its because they are A: under Chinese law and don't sweat lawsuits from Nintendo and B: are selling a piece of hardware, and presumably the "loaded stuff" that comes with it is just a courtesy? No idea, but if someone knows I'd be interested in details, as the emulator community dances around this subject constantly.

That said, the device out of the box, with me adding more ROMs from specific sites for my favorite specific games from back in the day (mostly PS1, PS2 and Dreamcast) have almost all worked great,  and the Ambernic RG556 screen is a very nice device, super comfortable and easy to figure out. I got one for my son and wife as well, and they play these things constantly now. It hasn't quite solved my son's desire to keep collecting old games, and may if anything have backfired a bit as he is now even more interested in finding the original cartridges just for bragging rights to his Zoomer buddies, but overall this product was well worth it. It's not bad an an android device, either, though it is disappointing just how few android games are really worth any time or effort these days; the modern landscape of mobile gaming is just a repulsive sea of grifters, con artists and pure garbage, with only a handful of gems floating in the murk. As such, the Ambernic shines best as an emulator, reminding us of how, not too long ago, games were made to be actually fun and complete experiences, and not as pure cash grabs using predatory tactics to part consumers from their money. 

*I do also have a couple Evercades (the original, the Vs. and the remake from a year or so back) but those are licensed products with new releases of classic games, most of which no one has ever heard of or remembers, with the gimmick being that you can buy collections of games on cartriges for the system. It's a cool system, but I stopped collecting after a while when it became clear that any genuinely interesting games were unlikely to get licensed out to Evercade. A few exceptions have happened, but the Evercade does not have analog thumbsticks which means its a limited experience outside of a specific era of gaming; their Duke Nukem collection, for example, borders on unplayable without an analog stick. 

The Slow Roll Gaming Show of 2024 - Swords & Chaos, Comae Engine, and More

 This is a remarkably quiet year for a D&D 50th Anniversary. Some stuff is coming out, which is cool, but the key new edition books are all delayed to the end of the year and in the case of the Monster Manual, next year. But luckily I expect to have Tales of the Valiant in my hands in maybe just a few weeks? We shall see!

Part of me acknowledges I am just getting old, but even DriveThruRPG's picking have been....weird....lately. A disproportionate amount of content over on DTRPG seems to have either an intentional or unintentional lack of polish, as if the idea is to throwback the product to a bygone era when your only art resource was you high school buddy who doodled a lot, but meanwhile the rest of the products all have a pristine AI generated polish to them that has that "uncanny valley reality, tinged with anime thematics" look to it that is a grotesque turn-off and an immediate warning that there may have been less actual effort put in to the product. But hey, interesting stuff does slip in the cracks. I am debating ordering the brand new Smoke and Aces BRP book which looks interesting, and I just received my print edition of The Comae Engine, a rather unique reductionist redesign of the BRP/D100 system, and I also ordered a copy of Swords & Chaos RPG, a non-Troll Lord published SIEGE engine RPG heavily flavored for traditional Swords & Sorcery; barbarians only need apply, no pesky hobbits here!

So far, of the two Comae Engine looks a little heavy on the "storytelling mechanics" approach to play which for me is the equivalent of telling me that you can substitute any meat in any meal with an impossible burger patty and it will be just fine. I am not yet decided, and plan to try running it before I make any determination. Some elements such as the skill system approach are pretty cool.....and in terms of trying to make a condensed, modest system that can quickly be skinned for any genre or feel it seems like it might work pretty well in many cases. I think the book could have benefited from about 20 pages or so of examples of how to use it, and example genres/scenarios. 

To contrast, Swords & Chaos RPG from Blackspire Fantasy is a SIEGE engine powered RPG, a sort of updated version of Castles & Crusades which refines the experience to a distinctly classical swords, sorcery and sandals approach to RPGs, with humans as the only species to play, classes that fit Hyboria, Atlantis or Mu, and an excellent roster of monsters that only poaches a handful of classic OGL familiars that best fit the darker S&S vibe (e.g. cloakers, darkmantles), then fleshes the list out with a lot of more traditionally pulp fantasy beasts. No orcs, elves, halflings or dwarves here! 

Put another way, Swords & Chaos is for better or worse more my cup of tea these days, a known quantity my old brain, suffused like a marinade for decades with the swords & sorcery genre, can wrap itself around....like a tasty spinach wrap, maybe. Hmmmm now I'm hungry.

What I like most about S&C is that it is a "all in one" book laden with exactly 100% of what you need to run the game. I am sure you can swap stuff in from Castles & Crusades if you want....but you totally don't need to. This book has it all. I am really big on "one tome to rule it all" lately. I will grant systems where the rules are dispersed over 2 or 3 tomes a pass, so long as those 2 or 3 books combined are 100% complete together.

Despite this, I am still extremely keen to explore the other slightly more traditional yet nonetheless totally cool Dragonbane. I really have too many flavors of classic and pulp fantasy floating around (see also ACKS). I need to wrap up the current D&D campaign so we can get to the other fantasy games all waiting in the wings. Conundrums!

Pathfinder Monster Core is Out - Some Thoughts

 I snagged the new Monster Core for Pathfinder's 2E revised series, and have to say this is a nice, robust tome with a larger page count and content than the original. Like the new ORC licensed editions it expurgates as much OGL styled content as it can, which is to say that you won't find any distinctly D&D-brand level monsters anymore, not even the ones which served some general purpose. Owlbears - gone. Mimics? Gone. Darkmantles and other oddities such as the Chuul? Gone. Some of these monsters may be repurposed or renamed....ones which had already been given a distinct Pathfinder identity (Allgholthu, caligni, and xulgath for example being faceless ones, dark creepers and troglodytes) still lurk in these forms, but if you take a look at the section on demons and devils: whoo boy, this is where the identity of Pathfinder now feels more defined by what is absent than what is present. 

Amidst this are the many monsters out of myth and folklore oddly untouched, even the poor Medusa who deserves to be properly renamed a Gorgon, but oh well. 

I haven't decided yet if this is a good thing or not. Sure, the old Bestiaries work fine with the revised rules and provide those old OGL stats, but I'm a bit of a purist and want to look at the current state of the game for what it is trying to be going forward. Right now it is....interesting. A GM with this book will want to take some extra time to start looking for what will be the new oddities players come to associate with PF style fantasy, and what will be the useful staples for impromptu encounters. They are definitely not going to look like the old D&D stuff.

On the plus side, this actually makes the experience of reading the Monster Core feel a bit novel and different. There's effectively a new and different experience here, and the excision of so many OGL elements makes it feel more distinctly its own thing. On the negative side, it really does feel less like "something new and different" after a while and more like something defined by an absence, probably because ultimately Pathfinder really has always been the "Other D&D" for all practical purposes. What is a fantasy world (or Golarion) like without so many of these monsters that used to define it? What is everything in Pathfinder now, a game which was originally the de facto flagship for the D&D 3rd edition game system, now that it has been rendered neuter by corporate chicanery and a need to brand one's IP more distinctly? It feels a bit.....hollow, almost performative. 

Despite that criticism, I am still keen to explore this book in depth and see what sort of ideas for a campaign it may bring me. We shall see! I have to reconcile my deep dislike of Pathfinder 2E as a player against my deep appreciation for it as a GM. I haven't quite managed to resolve this internal schism in my feelings about the game yet. 

ACKS Has Arrived!

A brief note! My ACKS (Adventurer, Conqueror, King System) core book, Playe's Companion, Heroic Fantasy Companion and Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu tomes have all arrived. I just wanted to point out that I often order from NobleKnight.com, and for exactly this reason: the books were all rated in EX/NM condition and that is exactly what showed up, in fantastic shape. 

I'll be bringing these along to show off to my game group next Wednesday. We're currently in a D&D 5E campaign in my Pergerron/River Kingdoms of Anansis setting, but it is heading to a finale soon and we will have a good opportunity to break if we want to try out something new. I actually have a campaign setting designed around a very gritty old-world theme, the Lands of Selentar, about which I don't think I've posted much on the blog (come to think of it, I need to get back to posting more on the other setting I ran PF2E adventures in, Oman'Hakat, as well). 

Selentar is a fictional analog to Europe around 60-90 AD if it turns out the Roman Empire analog collapsed abruptly after the totally-not-Nero like Emperor of the Eorma was killed in a vicious civil war driven by germanic-like people who realized that the aristrocracy of the empire was riddled with demon worship. All of the gods and beliefs in this setting are derived, at core, from what is known of the various peoples around the equivalent historical time period, albeit with some extra sword & sorcery twists. So...it might be an excellent fit for the ACKS system, in other words.

As long as I am posting something I just wanted to comment that Mothership Kickstarter just charged me for shipping so it looks like we may finally see the giant boxed set soon! I will in the interim continue our bi-weekly weekend Traveller games, which have been the polar , opposite of Mothership, especially this weekend's session when the group pulled off a Star Trek style rescue of stranded ships captured on an ancient asteroid turned into a relic defense weapon by a lost civilization. Not a shot was fired and yet everyone was gripped with excitement at the mystery and task at hand, followed by success in their rescue. It was a fun turnabout from games involving high levels of death and violence, and does reflect the fact that Traveller is above all else a multifaceted system reflecting the many  concept spaces in science fiction, allowing for a vast swathe of the genre to be represented. In other words....what I am saying is it would be hard to pull off such a pleasant and optimistic (yet still exciting and fun) mission in a system like Mothership. Even if I ran a completely straight mission in Mothership like that the entire party would be constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, for mayhem and murder to ensue. But in Traveller? They can take it at face value and conclude that there was no need to assume a xenomorph analog around the corner. Next session they get invited to an Aslan wedding of high importance, and may discover a trafficking ring of non-spacefaring species who are being exploited by a local Evil Empire. If you are one of my players forget you read that sentence!  

Adventurer, Conqueror King System - My PDF experiment failed

Not too long ago I dived in to several systems, one of which was Adventurer, Conqueror King System. ACKS as it is known is an OSR-adjcent RPG from Autarch Publishing which has an interesting fusion of mechanical aspects from B/X D&D, AD&D 1E and AD&D 2E. It uses "class as race" for example but does so by constructing unique classes that are custom focused on the race. You don't play "elf" for example, you pick from elven spellsword or elven nightblade, with each demihuman type having a couple base classes in the core rules and lots more in the expanded companion books. It's a decent happy medium between simpler class choices that are also meaningful in flavor and style. "Spellsword" sounds cooler than elven fighter/mage, after all, or even just "elf!"

Anyway, lots of other things in ACKS appeal to me - proficiency systems, cool subsystems, a distinct sword & sorcery flavor that leans heavily into early pulp fantasy more than later post-Tolkien fantasy, etc. etc. But...ACKS is still ultimately another OSR variant, even if it is dolled up and more original than most. As such, I decided to try an experiment: I snagged all the ACKS books I wanted on PDF through DriveThruRPG.com and decided to see if I could engage with the system purely in PDF format. Could I, in fact, read, learn, and plan for a game with a system entirely held in electronic format?

As it turns out, months later, I have decided that the answer is a resounding no. While having the documents in PDF format is handy enough, actually sitting down and working with them on a tablet or big screen is far more utilitarian, and the horrible truth is that, at least for me, the tactile element of a physical rulebook I can flip back and forth through is more useful and honestly quicker than trying to do the same with a PDF. The only true advantage of the PDF is you can search fairly quickly (as long as it is indexed and your search parameter is correct). Beyond that, books hold the decisive advantage in that you can mark and annotate more easily (if you like defacing your books!), you can bookmark more clearly, you can search about as quickly but also with more intuition because you have a measurable quantity in hand and can know roughly where to look. It's just a more visceral, intuitive experience. Some may have adapted well to electronic documents, but for me? Nope. A lot of people I think feel this way.....it is evident in my son and his friends (of those who do read or play games) that the physical book is far more valued than a PDF. On the other hand, they are all playing D&D 5E, and there are no searchable PDFs out there, but they do use D&D Beyond for character generation in their middle school group, so whadda I know.

This is all a long way o saying I decided to buy the phsyical ACKS books instead with the idea toward running a campaign soon. I grabbed some decently priced copies on NobleKnight.com and the rest in POD through Drivethru. I will write more on ACKS as soon as I have the real books in hand! It is a very interesting system, managing to hew close to OSR norms while still innovating and achieving its own distinct flavor, and I like it. I may be able to blend it a bit or at least utilize it for some of the OSE modules I have accrued, too.....there's a lot to like about OSE, which takes a different and equally neat approach to consolidating various early OSR editions of D&D together, but its flavor is incredibly vanilla as a result, and I am really loving the sort of "Howard/de Camp/Carter/Wagner/Lieber" style that ACKS exudes. 

Dreams & Machines - Some First Thoughts

 This is a very brief post to mull over a couple odd thoughts about Dreams & Machines, the new 2D20 powered RPG from Modiphius. I snagged it yesterday, and am still ploughing through it so this is not a review, but this game evoked some immediate comparisons and observations to me. 

First and most interestingly when I read the back cover text I got this "exploring the unknown, Gamma World style" vibe but the books were sealed in plastic wrap so I bought them sight unseen based on this.

Second, on opening the book I was surprised that the books had a lot less art than I was expecting. Some of the art and the text blurbs are evocative of a kid's observations, and indeed there is some subtext to that effect.....but the game is, unlike its closest obvious influence (Tales from the Loop) not necessarily about rolling up kids in a world of abandoned giant robots. It's about rolling up adults in a world of abandoned giant robots. 

The Tales from the Loop comparison is inescapable. The art is varied in D&M but the best color pieces evoke people (sometimes kids) walking around giant robots. Some of the images look fairly menacing, but mostly its due to the spartan "shadows on shadows at night" style of the artist. The actual text of D&M is a lot more whimsical and youth-friendly; I haven't encountered anything (yet) that would suggest to me you couldn't hand this game to a 12-14 year old and regret it. 

I also felt like there's a slight bit of Numenera evoked in this book, but mostly Tales from the Loop. 

There's a lot of expository text setting up the world, how humans got there, and how and why robots are everywhere. The foes book is not all robots though. All told so far its an interesting read. 

The layout and style of the book is weird, though. It is not nearly as art-heavy or evocative as I thought, and the book barely manages to capture any style of its own; it feels too easy to draw comparisons to other RPGs that already occupy this same niche-within-a-niche genre. It feels to me like maybe an earlier draft of D&M really did focus on kids and robots, and someone midway said, "That's too on the nose, lets make them adults," but a lot of the sample text remained narratively from this kid. 

All that aside, I am still reading and it is quite interesting. A lighter side apocalyptic exploration book is cool enough, and there is ample room in the market for this kind of take. I could not dig the Tales of the Loop "kids on bikes" adventure theme anyway, I spent all my life trying to get away from being a kid, so I am content with D&M focusing on a broader picture. 

I'll post a more proper review soon enough, but wanted to share these initial thoughts!

EDIT: Worth mentioning, the book is starkly white pages with line drawings (meant at times to look simple or childish deliberately, I think), and it is so stark and simple that I feel this is the consequence of Modiphius being overly sensitive to the complaints about prior books (especially Star Trek) having white text on black backgrounds. Now it feels somehow....readable but almost plain and undercooked? Not a real critique, just a comment on how the layout feels to me. It still works for its intent.

Long Time No Blog! Deathbat Updates

 Man I have fallen off the blog wagon this year....even my efforts to do twice a week quickly fell to the wayside. 2024 may be the year I just learn to blog when I feel like it, rather than try to maintain any schedule. It probably doesn't help that I have been generally more relaxed on my RPG focus lately.

Mainly what I've done so far in the first quarter of this year is: reduce the amount of time I spend in VTT gaming, due to developing a general aversion to wanting to run games in the medium. I just burned out, and I am no longer afraid to admit it. VTT GMing is not as fun for me as live gaming, and I now have managed to get my Wednesday night and every other Saturday game into a live environment which is great. I'm running D&D 5E Wednesdays, and Traveller (MGT2E) on Saturdays. 

I am still playing in some VTTs as a player, though. On off Saturdays a friend of mine started Pathfinder 2E. We are all horrendously rusty at it, and for the first time ever I felt like maybe we were all getting a bit too old for the needless complexity of Pathfinder 2E, but really I am just peeved that they nerfed the PF2E skill system so much.....for god's sake, why does Society and Perception cover everything???? If you aren't going to lean in to skill diversity then just cut them. I really dislike it. I think I may be ready at last to cut the cord on Pathfinder 2E, time away from it has not made it age well (and that includes the revamped edition).

Aside from that I am in a very infrequent D&D game, I got an invite to another which I am considering, and we may start another online Call of Cthulhu game tomorrow. I'm a player in each, which is fine with me.....I need a prolonged break from GMing in VTT. Maybe I can pick up the mantle again next time we have a major pandemic. I kid! But not really. 

I am, of course, putting all my eggs in one basket....a Kobold Basket, to be precise: Tales of the Valiant is what I am talking about. Nice to know it will be out before the 50th anniversary D&D totall-not-6th-edition, too! I am looking forward to playing this.

I am also planning to run Dragonbane, which I have grown even more fond of with the new hardcover core rules and Bestiary. This book does for me what I wished Magic World would have done.

So for 2024, I have very few plans to buy in to new books or expand. I have a collection which is quite robust and --honestly?-- probably needs to shrink. I was in talks with a gentleman las year about handing some of my collection off before I lost track with him, need to see if I can find his email. Indeed if you're reading this and still interested drop me an email!

Anyway, maybe I can get more on track with posting, but no promises....who knows!

Oman'Hakat - The First World - Introduction

 In 2019 I devised a new campaign setting that was initially focused on the region of Osinre, a sort of analog for Egypt and north Africa during the late bronze age. I used it for a couple D&D 5E games, but the campaign rapidly evolved into the setting I used for my first Pathfinder 2E and I have stuck with using PF 2E for it ever since. Here at last I'm going to post details on this world I devised so it can rest along with the other campaign settings I have archived on the blog over the years.

OMAN’HAKAT – The First World

Part I An Introduction and Overview 

Themes

   Oman’Hakat is a setting which focuses on a world steeped in old-world, archaic traditions and mysticism. Although there is evidence of past civilizations, most of the memory of these older empires is lost to myth and folklore. Oman’Hakat is dominated by three major lands: The river kingdoms of Osinre, the island kingdoms of Caelde, and the northeastern Empire of Harkuum. South of Osinre is a wild and untamed wilderness split between the grassy wilderlands of Adantos and the vast southern jungle kingdoms of Omsetar. The people of all these lands collectively refer to the world at large as Oman’Hakat, derived from a common word shared between the lost empires of old to mean “The First World.”

The Ancients

Thuln and the Giants of Caelde

   Caelde is nestled on an island northwest of the Osinre mainland. The people of Caelde believe they descend from a fabled northern empire which sank beneath the waves during the last war of the dead gods, called Thuln. The people settled on the isle of Caelde and have dwelt here for over a thousand years now. Caelde is dotted with a mixture of ancient ruins believed to have been built by ancient giants, men who stood 8 feet tall and left behind wordless relics of an enigmatic past, and younger ruins of the wood elves of the Caelwood (who call themselves the Cael) which suggest a greater elven civilization at one time. The wood elves claim they arrived on the island two thousand years ago, and the ruins of the giants were old even then.

Kadt of Osnire

   In Osinre, the people of this land believe they are descended from the fallen empire of Kadt which was once nestled in the vast region now called the Kal’Osinre Desert. Kadt erected vast and impressive ancient monuments and left behind impressive cities of architectural design impossible by modern understanding, suggesting they were powerful sorcerers, but it is believed these humans, possibly the first men, were all slain in the Deluge created by the War of the Dead Gods. The ruins have been dormant for at least three thousand years, which is the time most scholars believe the War of the Dead Gods took place.

Lost Khesht, the Black Lands and the Edge of the World in Harkuum

   In Harkuum, a large inland empire stretching to the east where it meets the Bowl of the World Mountains, this ancient land shows dotted remnants of pre-deluge empires of old, all likely drowned by the Dead Gods in their lost war. In most of the civilized territories of the Empire these ruins are normally attributed to the lost empire of Khesht, a quasi-mythical era of history after which the Emperor himself aspires to reforge a modern empire.

   Along the edge of the Bowl of the World Mountains are immense statues erected to the Titans, believed to either be the victors in the War of the Dead Gods, or the monsters created to win that war, now returned to slumber. Amidst all of this lies an immense stretch of desert comprised of black sand called the Black Lands which reaches right up to the mountains of the world’s edge. Here lie the tribes of the minotaurs which protect the land and stand in remembrance of the Titans, both worshipping and fearing them. The lost ruins of this region are sometimes called the Belinrai, though that is a modern Harkuumish word which means “the lost” and likely not from the language of Khesht.

Western Kres-Ma-Tek

   While the ancients of Khesht seemed to expand across the entire continent in their ancient times, and may in fact have been several empires or kingdoms united as one culture, some time after their fall around three thousand years ago there was a second empire, though situated only along the coastlands of the western provinces called Kres-Ma-Tek. This empire lasted a little under fifteen hundred years before falling apart around 1,800 years ago. The reasons are unknown to most, but some believe they fell to predatory chaos cults, insinuating their way in to the weave of thought and corrupting the people of Kres-Ma-Tek from within. The ruins of this old empire are most prominent in Sardonte and Akeros but extend as far as the coast of Charasca to the south.

Maheruun and Mythic Kamura

   Somewhere to the far west, beyond the continent of Osinre and the island kingdoms of Caelde is a semi-legendary land called Maheruun. This land is believed to be a place where the last of the ancients of Khesht may have traveled to seek refuge, though whether they survived the ordeal is unknown. Stories in ancient tomes of the era speak of a time of exodus when entire kingdoms took up roots and traveled west to escape the wars that would destroy the old gods. For long ages this land has been defined as Maheruun, somewhere beyond the realm where there be monsters.

   Beyond even Maheruun is Kamura, a legendary land spoken of in only the most ancient of explorer’s tales about a place at the edge of the western world, a vast an uninhabitable coast at the end of the world where an island kingdom forever staves off the encroaching monsters which seep in from Khashar, the Outer Darkness.

Scrutinizing Systems for 2024 - or "What to Play While Waiting for D&D Totally-Not-6E" - Dragonbane, Traveller, Cypher System, Tales of the Valiant and More

 I guess Wizards of the Coast is A: not selling to Tencent (good), and B: not releasing their books in May, which seems like a good time to do it, but apparently they said they will still be working on them in May so now the holidays seem like a stretch too. This is good news, though! It means we should all be trying other things while cooling our jets on trad D&D experiences so we can be ready for whatever the new thing is going to be.

For me, it sort of boils down to a handful of games which have my attention, and not all of them are "unlike D&D" since Tales of the Valiant is in the mix, but hey, you know what is coming out in May? Tales of the Valiant, that's what! So yeah, going to be playing some of that for sure.

I have in my hands Dragonbane Core Rules and Bestiary, the expanded books that will nicely replace or compliment their initial Boxed Starter Set from last year. The Starter Set was a fine product on its own merits, but there is additional content in the new Core Rules for GMs to make it worth checking out, and the Bestiary is a no-brainer whether you stick to the Starter Set or get the Core Rules, it's full of good stuff that is all new content. Dragonbane manages to sit in a hard to achieve sweet spot for me. I like to call this zone the "point at which a game can work to power one or more of my campaign worlds without requiring me to simply ditch said worlds and revise them to match the game's setting and rules expectations." Secondarily, it also fits the category of "alternative fantasy systems which are unique or interesting enough to explore on their own merits, but close enough to D&D in terms of content and accessibility to be an easy sell to players." 

I could go on and on about Dragonbane like this, but it boils down to some simple facts: the game provides a robust system with enough content that you won't find yourself wishing something was in the game that isn't; it offers a setting but does not demand you use it; it provides enough content that you feel like it could substantively replace D&D for a protracted campaign without you feeling like you wish you had access to all the D&D stuff when running or playing. For me, Dragonbane accomplishes all of this, and in the smallest form factor in terms of content for a "robust fantasy RPG" that one could imagine and still fit it in to a single carry bag. 

A lot of other fantasy games out there fail at these requisites I set. Some of my demands are more specific to my tastes; for example I like the Dragonbane skill system (and I also like the D&D skill mechanics, especially once you get back to 3rd edition), but I dislike game systems that eschew skills entirely without good reason. I can forgive an OSR emulator like Swords & Wizardry Complete for this, as skills weren't a thing in the 0E era of D&D, but it means that the S&W experience will forever be limited to merely emulating that style of play, afterwhich there will be no further modifications to the game system. I was modding skill systems in to Tunnels & Trolls and AD&D back in 1982 after experiencing Runequest, so for my experience in a hobby that was at the time a venerable 8 years old I will forever see skills as OSR and necessary to a proper gaming experience. 

Anyway, aside from Dragonbane, which looks to hit the sweet spot in a unique way few other systems have come close to, we have Traveller, which is getting a renaissance of upgraded rulebook editions as well as more content of a general sort of use beyond running Imperium Campaigns. I have a real keen interest in more Traveller soon, tempered only by the fact that I know Mothership will finally be released soon as well, and Mothership is the very genre-specific Traveller counterpart.

Monte Cook's Cypher System is also about to finally release more books, too. Rust & Redemption is the one I am specifically keen on, their Cypher sourcebook for post-apocalyptic tales. I feel that Cypher System works best when you can have weird settings that cater to improvisation, and I expect their post-apoc genre book will prove to be well worth it. 

I should also mention Pathfinder 2E v2. They have more tomes on the way, including the ever important revision to their Bestiary series, and the Player Core 2 to complete the class range my group is used to dealing with. Although my group understands that the backwards compatibility is 99.5% they still seemed more interested in waiting for the rest of these core books to release so we haven't done anything with Pathfinder 2E yet. I personally am more interested in playing it at the game table; Pathfinder, along with D&D 5E and others, can easily devolve into "Find a battle map, populate with virtual tokens, watch encounter turn in to fight because the players have hammers and see nails all over the map" kind of experiences. I guess what I am trying to say is that VTTs work really well on average when you are focused on a map and minis, and are at times terrible when trying to just enjoy the game for its more exploratory and discovery/role play based elements.

I have other games, too. Vast Grimm still commands my attention and several new books released for it, making the world of Vast Grimm a more comprehensive and interesting place to explore. Mork Borg continues to fascinate me, and I think a live campaign should be in order; I am intrigued to experience t least one deliberate attempt to play the game for multiple sessions to see how it works for long hauls. Finally, I still have a shelf full of Free League Titles I need to explore in actual play, especially and in particular Alien RPG, Blade Runner RPG, Forbidden Lands and both CY_Borg and Pirate Borg. 

Don't even get me started on the brilliant 5E reimagining of D20 Modern in the form of Everyday Heroes! Ever since I snagged it last October I've been obsessing about what to do with it, and the array of weird cinematic properties they have congealed around the game to provide support is impressive. That I would even contemplate a campaign in the universe of Universal Soldier, Rambo or Escape from New York is a testament to how engaging and interesting the EH team has been with these sourcebooks. It does crack me up, though, that each sourcebook seems to start with a "I never even heard of or watched the movie this book is based on until I was hired to write it," followed by a thoughtful and engaging approach to taking a wildly dated action film from thirty years ago and turning it in to a must-play setting. 

As always, the problem is too many cool games and not nearly enough time! 

Eridu: An ancient Sumerian Campaign Premise and Scenario for Mythras, BRP and other Suitable RPGs

 I originally used this with Mythras a few years ago for a short campaign. One of many things I have not posted to the blog before as far as I can tell! 

   When I originally ran this it was before Mythic Babylon had been announced for Mythras. This campaign takes place roughly around 2400-2300 BCE so it can stand on its own, as the Mythic Babylon book handles a more "contemporary" era during the height of Babylonian power, and this mini campaign is about Sumeria during its heady early days of power-jockeying city-states. 

   Though I used Mythras at the time (and it works well for such), I would probably just use BRP 5th Edition for it today. As written this is a "notational" overview and I also had a lot of book references at hand. Some especially handy tomes include "Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City" by Leick (Amazon), and "Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia" by Black (Amazon), a nice categorical reference. One of the more useful online resources I like is located here (Facts and Details), that site alone is practically a campaign guide unto itself. Many of the details below come from one or more of these sources. 

The Eridu Campaign

We'll start with a discussion on the pantheon of gods and then move on to the regional gazetteer.

Mesopotamian Gods of Note

Enki – god of Eridu

Deity of the rivers and men, giver of life and protector, civic deity. Eridu is described as a god who walked from the waters and brought civilization to men. His temple at Eridu, the Abzu, has rested for thousands of years.

Enlil – God of Magic

A ghost and demon to some, wizened sage to others, Enlil is the god who will one day seek to wipe humanity from the earth. Both wizened and capricious, Enki keeps him at bay. He is the purvue of sorcerers and maddened shamans in the desert.

Inanna – Goddess of Uruk

The three-fold goddess of birth, fertility and death, she manifests as three different images in life from the whore, the mother and the crone. She is the patron goddess of Uruk where she has given birth to a pantheon of goddesses and gods who are her children. Her temple is magnificent.

Nanna – god of Ur

The goddess of the moon, night cycles, women’s  menstrual cycles, bulls, male fertility and astronomy also is valued by navigators. Ur, resting on the mouth of the Euphrates, is home to fishermen and sailor alike who count on his guidance. He is also associated with change…including lycanthropic change.

Utu – God of the Sun

Revered everywhere but noted for his temple as Ashur, Utu is the god of the sun and the deserts, a wizened and ancient man who is the seat of power of the very universe itself.

Nisaba – Goddess of Writing

As the mother of Enlil she is given special prominence in the lands of the world, but she is also seen as the goddess of most importance to record keepers and the budding community of scholars who have become so important to the records of the kings, priests and their gods.

Assur – god of the northlands

This deity is revered in the north among the nomads and settlers in the region, a rowdy and wild lot known for their capricious and mercenary ways.

Ninkasi – goddess of beer

The goddess who is patron of brewing has a profoundly quiet but respected cult among the brewers of the land.

Nergal – god of war and death, Lord of Kutha

With the aspect of fire, war and death his to command Nergal rules the underworld with his wife Ereshkigal. He is revered in the remote city of Kutha, which bows before none. Rumor is there is a direct gate to the underworld in Kutha, the domain of Irkalla.

Demons of Mesopotamia

Anzu

The bird-demon is a ferocious beast, a god in its own right, and it seeks to steal the Tablets of Destiny from Ninlil. The tablets are kept in Enlil’s temple in Uruk.

Lilitu

The serpentine demon goddess who harries men and reflect the darker aspects of women. Known to steal babies and seduce men, sometimes kidnapping or murdering them.

Pazuzu

Demon king of the wind, bearer of storms and draught.

Asakku

Vicious spirit demons which kill by plaguing the head with fevers.

Asag

A demon so terrifying it boils the rivers where it wades. Accompanied by rock demons.

Edimmu

Restless dead, ghostly spirits who possess the living and make them commit criminal acts if not appeased.

Lamashtu

A goddess demon with the head of a lioness, a hairy body, donkey’s teeth and ears and eagle claws. She is served by the lilitu, and steals children in childbirth.

Kur

Serpentine dragons which plague the land.

Lammasu and Shedu

The animal-spirit protectors of men and their households, with the bodies of bulls, heads of men and wings of eagles. They are benevolent spirits and good magi can call upon them.

Rabisu

Vampiric spirits, these malevolent demons are sometimes men transformed, or perhaps fallen divinities. The Rabisu can be repelled with sea salt, or trapped in inverted magic bowls with sacred inscriptions written within. The Rabisu are violent and very dangerous vampires otherwise.

Humbaba

A great giant, after whom other giants are also named, who guards the celestial guardian of the gods.

The Major Cities of Mesopotamia (ca. 2,900 BCE, give or take)

Eridu

Ruled by Alulim, Eridu is the center of power and the other cities in the region either are perpetually at war with Eridu or seek to buy it off by tribute. Alulim is said to be tens of thousands of years old, and possibly given immortality by Enki himself. The temple Abzu is here, dedicated to Enki. The city is largely content with its prosperity but a local noble named Alalngar is among those who have been plotting wasy to overthrow Alulim, after a discovery they believe proves he sacrifices innocents to extend his life. Eridu is also considered to have the finest magi and healers in the land.

Kish

Ruled by Aga, who is at times friend and enemy to Lugalbanda.

Ur

A coastal port, ruled by Mesh-Ana-pada, a wizened sage and priest-king of Nanna.

Uruk

The great city of Innana, and the home of King Lugalbanda, father of Gilgamesh, who’s decades have shined as the servant of the goddess Ninsun, who walks as his mortal wife.

Kutha

Ruled by Naram-Sin, this city is reverent to the gateway to the dead.

Sippar

Western and Eastern Sippar are two united cities on the banks of the Euphrates, ruled by En-men-dur-ana, a benevolent lord deducated to Utu, the god of the sun.

 

Other Regions

Assur, to the north

These nomadic barbarians in the north are constant trouble for the region.

Elam, beyond the Zagros Mountains

Beyond Zagros are nomadic tribes who call themselves the Elam. The Elam are nomads who revere three great kings in Ansham, Eawn and Shumaski. The largest capital is Susa, along the river Karun, which pays tribute to Kish. Susa worships Insusinak, the god of the city (Lord of Oaths, Judge of the Dead, Symbol of the Serpent). Other gods worshipped included Ismekarab (the infernal goddess of oaths), Lagamal (the goddess of no mercy, the judge), Humban (god of the sky), Pinigir (goddess of heaven) and Manzat (The Great Lady).

Ebla is the western empire and the men of that region are effectively civilized but the Canaan are barbarian the coastal tribes who worship Dagan. (Yes, that Dagan, alias Dagon). Whether he's really an early proto-semitic god of grain and fertility or a vile fish god from the deeps is up for you all to find out.

Dilmun

Distant trade empire to the east. Beyond them is Indus, which has no direct contact with Sumer. It may be the home of the immortal Ut-Napishtim, and is a major source of copper trade. In some regards, Dilmun supplies Sumer with the metal needed to wage war. Dilmun is located on an isle deep in the great Abzu Sea.

Egypt (Khemit)

Ruled by Pharaoh Qa’a, Egypt is a remote land but hostile to foreigners.

Magan

This distant kingdom is located in the region of contemporary Oman. Little is known of it, but they are a major supplier of copper.

Meluhha

This may be the most distant kingdom known, and is one name for distant Indus. The closest trade port is Sutkagen Dor.

Kassu in the Zagros Mountains

The men of Zagros, the Kassu, who are raiders and dislike the Elam and Sumer of Ubaid alike, are difficult to deal with. The bandit warlord culture of the Kassu make travel through the mountains dangerous.

West of the Two Rivers: Hamoukar of Canaan and Ebla

The region of the Levant is prehistoric at this time and influenced by the local nomads and the Sumer-influenced cities of Hamoukar and Ebla. Hamoukar was known for its obsidian quarries while Ebla was known for its limestone quarries and aggressive trade network. Both provided coastal trade routes to the western sea. Ebla is ruled by Hakume, a shrewd and dour king. Other settlements in the area include the township of Chagar Bazar, Nagar and Arbid, all along the Khabur River Basin.

Hamoukar is also known for its weird local cult to the “God of a Thousand Eyes,” and is known to produce eye effigies in his worship. This worship is considered profane by the men of Uruk and they have sieged and razed the city at least once in historic memory….but the cult always retuns. Hamoukar is preliterate and does not use any writing system.

Amartu

The nomads of the west are distinct in their uncouth and simple nature as pastoral herders with limited grasp of civilization. The Amartu will one day grow strong but in this era they are a nuisance to the western deserts, raiders who seek to take the riches of Ubaid for their own.

Player Guide

Barbarians can come from Assur to the north. Nomads would come from Elam to the east of the Zagros Mountains (though civilized Elam dwell in Susa), and the Elam do have their own developing language with simple writing inspired by the Sumer. You will also find barbarians in the Zagros Mountains: the Kassu, a rough and simple folk prone to raiding. 

You could have a civilized foreigner visiting from Dilmun, as well. Dilmun was East of Elam, along a trade route to Indus.

Languages you can learn (spoken, not written): Sumer, Assur, Elam, Dilmun, Egyptian, and Kassite

Character Generation: Use the 80 point build.

Cultures:  Barbarian, Nomadic, Civilized and Primitive are all fine, but there's almost no written language at this time....written systems are basic counting and markers, and have little recognizable language structure as we think of it. Cuneiform is in an early developmental stage at this time....and paper does not exist. Clay tablets and clay balls with beads, counters and figurines are how information is conveyed. So one "Language (Cuneiform) skill will suffice to understand all writing known to men in this region of the world.

Humans can be from Eridu, the capitol city of the kingdom of Ubaid. If you're from one of the rival city-states at Kish, Uruk, or Ur you will need to be a responsible profession with a trade appreciated abroad to justify your presence, or have a decent social class....wanderers of little means or skill are looked at as thieves and robbers.

If you are from Eridu you at least pay lip service to Enki, the god of the kingdom and benefactor of men. If you are from Uruk you respect Innana, goddess of life. If from Ur then you revere Nanna, god of the moon and bulls.

For magic: folk magic is "sorcery" as men think of it in this age and a magus would know the art, but common men rarely do....and if you know the art, then you are no common man. Magi also know of animism. Sorcery is so rare no one can start with it and only those who figure out dark pacts which teach them the marks of power have a shot at it. Mysticism is possible to those who pursue it....in this age when some men claim to be divine in origin, mysticism is possible. Theism is practiced by the cults of Enki, Innana and the other gods, but like other magic it is very rare and only a few prominent priests know of any theistic miracles.

Also...if you want to play a barbarian (like all out) but want to be a wanderer type who's visiting Ubaid (but Not to officially siege a city and take it's stuff), Assur to the north is a good choice, as is Amartu to the west, or coastal Canaan. Ebla is the western empire and the men of that region are effectively civilized but the Canaan are barbarian the coastal tribes who worship Dagan. (Yes, that Dagan, alias Dagon). Whether he's really an early proto-semitic god of grain and fertility or a vile fish god from the deeps is up for you all to find out.

And don't forget the men of Zagros, the Kassu, who are raiders and dislike the Elam and Sumer of Ubaid alike. 

Silver as Coinage: (the below is quoted but I forget the source, might be from this useful site: here)

In Mesopotamia, silver became the standard of value sometime between 3100 B.C. and 2500 B.C. along with barley. Silver was used because it was a prized decorative material, it was portable and the supply of it was relatively constant and predictable from year to year.

 Sometime before 2500 B.C. a shekel of silver became the standard currency. Tablets listed the price of timber and grains in shekels of silver. A shekel was equal to about one third of an ounce, or little more than three pennies in terms of weight. One month of labor was worth 1 shekel. A liter of barley sold for 3/100ths of shekel. A slave sold for between 10 and 20 shekels.

 

Adventures in Ubaid:

 

Part I: The Witch and the Heart

Ur-Nisu has a son who died in battle, and his loss drove him to a greater evil. He hires an adventurer group to go with Ur-Nisu (or on his behalf) to find the witch and take his son’s heart back. Then paid to take the heart and his daughter to Haiadi to see if he can put the heart to rest!

 

The Witch’s Lair: located in a small encampment of huts deep in the Red Desert where loyal nomads seek her out for healing and seances, Emiska is in fact protected by her followers but also by the lilitu demon which she has struck a pact with. Having his heart, she can also summon the vampiric rabasu Hamattu and call upon him for protection….wise heroes will know sea salt, purified, will drive him back.

 

Emiska will negotiate with the heroes if they try to reason with her. She will offer the heart in exchange for a deed: go to the high mountains of Zagros and bring her a different heart, that of the warlord of the Kassu named Ninhadda. Kill Ninhadda, bring her his heart, and she will exchange it for Hamattu’s.

 

If the heroes try to take her out, she is protected by the lilitu, which initially manifests as a spirit seeking to possess….Emiska’s followers willingly supplicate and the demon will take control, transforming them as it does (use the Lamia stats). Even if Emiska is slain the lilitu will seek to stay, not wanting to let go of it’s host, and will seek to kill all witnesses.

 

Emiska will also call upon the power of the heart……but even if she does, Hamattu will not come if it is daylight, or if the adventurers thought to consecrate the hut with sea salt. If they did not and it is dark, he will arrive but reluctantly….he cannot face his father if he is there. If not, he will attack with a vengeance, but will recoil from fire.

 

Warlord Ninhadda: if the PCs cooperate with the witch, that takes them thirty miles in to the western mountains where a warrior who spurned the witch’s advances works with his small army in a long series of dug-out caves in the mountains. He plots to siege Hadoukar and become king of Ebla. A year ago he went to the witch and ask her to speak of his omen, to learn if he would be king. She said payment was his infidelity, and that she wanted his seed for a child. He was deeply offended, being loyal to his single wife Atane, and he rebuffed the witch. Emiska was enraged. She sent an assassin to poison him but he killed the assassin and sent the body to her village with the warning that if she tried again he would raze her village to the ground.

 

Going to Ninhadda is a huge risk, actually…he is a tough fighter and well protected. But if the PCs tell him what they were asked, he will agree to raze the village and give them the heart. If they try to substitute a heart of someone else, the witch will know and then curse them before summoning the vampire to hunt them. If the group somehow does kill Ninhadda, it creates a power vacuum among the Kassu tribes.

 

Part II: Journey to Susa

Ur-Nisu needs men willing to take a shipment of goods into the Zagros Mountain Highlands. He needs the goods taken to Susa, to a merchant prince named Haiadi, and for the hired men to escort back the payment. Ur-Nisu is too frail to make the journey which is close to 100 miles distant and requires transport by river boat for much of it. The journey will take the hired crew from Eridu to the gulf, to the river passage to Susa…..not difficult, but the possibility of river pirates is a risk.

 

Ur-Nisu promises 1,000 silvers to the group in exchange for this service, no questions asked….the adventurers were previously hired by him to go to the Red Desert and take the reliquary from the witch Emiska then he will hire them based on loyalty. For those who did not… He tells them that they are not to listen to his daughter, that she has had maddened ravings since being exposed to the malignance of a Asakku demon who came to her in the night when she was serving as a temple priestess to Inanna.

 

The goods it turns out include six clay vases filled with copper ingots, a large layered clay pot (a cold-storing pot from Meluhha) sealed in wax that contains a blackened, beating heart. Finally there is Ur-Nisu’s daughter, Ur-Erishti. She is seventeen and appears to be very unhappy with this journey, or the fact that (if pried later) she reveals she is to be gifted to Haiadi, and she will tell the adventurers that she think Haiadi is actually a necromancer who worships Nergal. She claims her father has saved the heart of his eldest son, Hamattu, who fell in battle last year during a siege in Ebla. His body was returned, and her father purchased a substance….a black tar like substance from the Red Desert sold to him by a witch, to coat on his son’s body. His son is now kept in a cool subterranean chamber, but her brother’s heart has been taken out and is to be transported to Haiadi for a ritual to retore him to life. 

 

The stories are all half true……Hamattu did die, and his body was preserved, but the story her father told her is not quite the reality. The witch in the Red Desert, named Emiska, called upon Erishkigal for the power to revive his son, but his son returned instead as an insatiable vampiric Rabisu. She removed the heart, which beats blackly, and kept it for her own purposes. Adventurers who aided him in this task in Part I will know how that all went down.

 

Pursuit of the Rabisu: Hamattu is growing increasingly corrupted, a vampire in truest form, as he descends into madness and darkness driven by Ereshkigal’s curse. As the crew makes its way on the river barge each night evidence of the vampire is present, as he shapeshift’s in to a demonic lion and follows the barge along the waterline, or turn in to an eagle and follow by air. During the day he can only manifest as an eagle, or sometimes as a vaguely humanoid shape in the recessed shadows along the river bank. He unerringly can appear in shadow near the region of his heart no matter what.

 

The journey is going to take about a week upriver to travel 100 miles. So long as the heroes stay on water the rabisu will remain at bay. If the river raft stops at one of the many villages along the way, it gives the rabisu a chance to board. Once aboard, he will seek to slay everyone and then coerce a risen dead to take the heart to a remote location in the desert for safe-keeping. Each slain foe will rise as a zombie to aid him.

 

River Pirates: during the fifth and sixth nights river pirates will try to take the ship. Led by a bandit named Unhaka, they have been told by a rival merchant that a valuable bride and wealth rests on the boat. Hidden inside the copper ingots of the hold is silver….lots of it. They will try to board the boat, about 16 men in total, during the night using river boats to steal aboard. If they capture the boat (and they will take prisoners for ransom to sort it all out later) then when they dock that is when the rabisu attacks. Each foe slain by the rabasu will rise as a zombie to aid him.

 

Arrival at Susa: assuming the group survives travel (done easily by warding the boat with sea salt) then arrival at Susa requires bribing guards at the docks with good coin to allow safe passage in to the city. Here they can find the Black Tower of Haiadi, located adjacent to a dour temple to Nergal, which allegedly holds a capstone to one of many passages to the underworld.

 

Haiadi will perform a ritual to lift the curse of the heart. Unknown to Haiadi he is doomed from the get-go…unbeknownst to all, Hamattu had prior to his battle at Ebla a year before gone to the witch Emiska for magical aid, and she gave him protection from all weapons in exchange for his seed. He gave this to her, promising to return and even take care of the child with her…..but he lied, and after sleeping with the witch he beat her soundly until she miscarried, then went to battle. So it was that he survived all weapons, unblemishing his skin, until he was doused in burning oil and died (ergo the blackened heart).

 

Now his evils have caught up to him….as Haiadi beseeches the Annunaki of the underworld to restore him in the name of the evil of the witch, winged demons erupt from the ground and take the black heart….and the vampire if he is present….dragging them in to the darkness of Irkalla. As this happens the chamber is filled with terrifying death spirits….any who star upon them must make a contested POW roll or succumb, souls ripped away to the afterworld.

 

When all is done Haiaidi….warded against such contingencies….flees in madness to the temple of Nergal to beg forgiveness. The merchant’s daughter Ur-Erishti has a profound revelation in her madness and flees to seek out the cult of the infernal goddess of oaths, Ismekarab, and to renounce her evil family.

 

The adventurers are left with an empty urn, and possibly a lot of silver that Haiadi has abandonded. When they return to Eridu they find that Ur-Nisu’s house mysteriously burned down the same night of the ceremony, and his body as not found.