Monsters & Villains

Well, it's now well past midnight as I write this on Halloween and this year's holiday has not been a good one this year. On a personal note, I spent a good portion of the day at the Veterinary Hospital and my little siamese cat who is normally by my side when I do all matters of writing is in their care tonight. The evening was quite sedate as some of you can imagine.

My evening for the most part was spent in watching a few movies in the comfort of home. Being the time of year, there are no shortage of interesting films. Some are more gore... others with a hint of the fantastic and horrific... and then there are others which offer a nice dash of suspense. This year, I watched movies that I had seen many times before and, much to my better half's delight, we started off with "Interview with the Vampire". This was followed by the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and the evening closed off with the original "House on Haunted Hill". It was watching these movies that gave me the idea for this particular post.

What I would have liked to do, and others have probably done, was sit down around the table and do a bit of gaming. I'm sure some have chosen to pull out "Tainted Lands" and give that a whirl since that boxed set includes a scenario that's ready to go. Others will pull out some old favorites -- maybe revisit the original Ravenloft module or just have some sort of session with more undead... more gore.. and more atmosphere. I think that's pretty cool. It was watching the movies though that I was reminded what can make a good 'horror' scenario worth remembering.

You see it doesn't have to involve a lot of 'supernatural elements', the 'living dead', or anything demonic. If it does, it certainly doesn't have to be legions of them. Interview with the Vampire is a good tale but, how many vampires are there? For the most part we are dealing with 2-3 interesting characters. Rocky Horror certainly has an interesting character portrayed by Tim Curry but on the other hand, no character was really all that memorable in the House of Haunted Hill. Then again, Vincent Price is always fun and awesome to watch. A single vampire or interesting character... a single element of the bizarre... or a single twist can go a long way. Horror in your game doesn't have to resemble an 80's slasher flick. There is also no need to go on and on trying to establish a certain atmosphere for everything the players interact with. Finally, if you feel that some of these things are toned down too much, then a single but fun twist can make the whole experience come alive.

In other words, sometimes less is more.

One idea would be to have a 'monster hunt' which has the characters chasing down a single but unknown creature. Have the characters piece together clues to what this thing they need to eliminate might be. Keep these clues vague enough to have experienced players stumped or make incorrect assumptions. Make reliable witnesses difficult to find ... though maybe some remains of some could help with a more grisly feel to the game. Provide options and allow the players to follow up on these. When the chase comes down to what appears to be a natural conclusion, feel free to throw in another twist or an intriguing Villain.

Incidentally, a good C&C conversion of an older d20 module is available for free and does start off with a 'monster hunt'. For those who haven't tried it, the adventure titled Lion In The Ropes is worth checking out.

My own holiday gaming tribute will be a bit belated due to unfortunate circumstances but it will happen. In the meantime, allow me to wish all of you a happy Halloween!

M

What is this 'SIEGE Engine' anyway?

Some people who have heard about Castles & Crusades may not know much about it. Others may have read a reference about the 'SIEGE Engine' but not actually know what this is referring to. I'll be honest and admit that I haven't tried to systematically try to explain what it is very often and usually I explain the concepts to a new player during character creation. Most of it is quite intuitive and I haven't had a player who didn't understand the key concepts. However, a basic explanation and background might be beneficial to those who stumble upon this blog.

Basically, the SIEGE Engine is the underlying system and mechanic which the game is built up on. Now C&C has many similarities to what I refer to as 'classic D&D' and AD&D. It is a level-based game whereby you choose a character archetype to play and each character has six key attributes to help quantify their strengths and limitations.

With both D&D and AD&D, you had certain differences aside from one of them being referred to as 'Advanced'. The only reason I bring this up is that AD&D also led to the introduction of a proficiency based system. This was basically the introduction of a more complete skill system to the game. At first it was introduced as an option, but with the advent of AD&D 2nd Edition, it became recognized as a core concept. Classic D&D on the other hand didn't have this kind of itemized skill system. It kept things relatively simple but in no way was this inferior. Both games had their strengths and people preferred one over the other as more of a matter of taste. Both games also had certain classes with key skills (notably the Thief) and resolution for these special skills were built into the class. They both used a similar system of Saves -- a five category system to answer the needs of a Fantasy role playing game. However, the game also had different methods to resolve different sort of tasks. Some things required a high roll and the dice and others a low roll. Some used a d20 and others used percentile dice.

WOTC changed the shape of the game when they bought TSR and put out what they called 3rd Edition. No longer was there a differentiation between D&D and AD&D; it became one line which clearly progressed from AD&D 2nd Edition. They took the various ways to resolve saves, skills, and abilities, and unified the manner in which these were resolved. Only one die-type was needed -- the d20.

Now, what does all this have to do with Castles & Crusades? Well, 3rd Edition also introduced a new style of play and a level of book keeping that some just didn't like. Suffice to say that some gamers longed for an older style of play and something that was considered 'rules-light' to better achieve this. There was no doubt that key improvements had been made with the advent of 3rd Edition but there already existed some some great, foundational material.

Work on Castles & Crusades began and the SIEGE Engine quite simply was the attempt to reconcile certain features from the newer 'd20 based' system but be in keeping with the older style of games that came before it.

For skills, it adopts the philosophy found in Classic D&D -- there are no itemized skill lists though certain classes (like that Rogue again) had skill-like abilities built into the class. However, one key difference exists. This is the designation of certain abilities as 'Prime'. These Primes represent an additional advantage the character has with regards to those specific abilities for the purposes of task and skill resolution as well as saving throws. The designation of a Prime means that the associated ability need not be high score for the character to be competent at doing certain things. A fighter may naturally be strong because of his stats but may also be modeled as an intelligent or wise tactician because of which stats have been designated as Prime stats.

One way to perhaps illustrate this concept would be an example of a character who knows how to use a particular ability to their best advantage compared to someone who doesn't. In this way for example, someone who knows how to best use their strength to complete a task may end up doing better compared to another character who doesn't even if they happen to be the physically stronger of the two.

As briefly mentioned these primary attributes will also affect saving throws. C&C links different saving throws to each of the six main attributes which hadn't been the case. Though it means that there is no 'dump' stat for each character now, the selection of primes can make a significant difference and help offset a low ability score. The game rational is that the character has probably 'worked' to compensate for this shortfall.

Each attribute will have a modifier attached to it, which will also factor into these die rolls as will the actual level of the character. In this way, a 8th level character will be much better at accomplishing the sort of tasks or making his save compared to what he was like at 2nd level.

The inclusion of these Prime Attributes helps to provide an additional level of 'customization' than what Classic D&D offered but without adding the complexities that AD&D only began to introduce. Finally, it also uses the d20 to accomplish all these things but remains consistent in how it's done.

I guess that rounds off the basics on what the Siege mechanic represents for C&C. I'm just hoping I did an adequate job at trying to explain it.

M

Yet another Blog...

It's been a little less than two months since I decided to focus my efforts and form up Arcana Creations -- a design studio of sorts with the purpose to help produce material for my favorite hobby. With the efforts made on 'The Secret of Ronan Skerry' about to go to print and into distribution, and with the recent release of a digest-sized conversion of 'The Ruins of Ramat' for the Castles & Crusades role playing game, my friend John from Brave Halfling Publishing had another idea.

'Why don't you start up a blog?'

Well, I gave it some thought. The idea on one that also dealt with C&C, the Siege Engine, and some of the things I'm doing didn't seem to be a bad one either. However, I realize that some of the regular bloggers do so successfully with dedication and effort. Since my focus would also gravitate towards C&C and the Siege Engine, I thought that 'Under Siege' might be an apt name for the blog.

Hopefully, this will prove to be a enjoyable experience -- both for the reader and the writer.

M