Kickstarter - The Strange final hours.

The final hours of "The Strange" kickstarter are upon us.

I finally decided to back it last night, as I knew I would be picking up the core rulebook regardless and effectively I get "ALL THE PDFs" for an additional $20...that's a good deal.

So let's push toward that final Conversion guide, letting you use Numenera and The Strange together through conversion....nice.

Machinations of the Space Princess - S3 conversion Part 3

Additional S3 baddies, in this one I tackle the Displacer Beast and the Phase Spiders

One thing I have to mention is that these conversions are always rough, they are being hammered from a freeform creation of the old school into a modular system of the OSR.

Void Strider XP 25 (Beast) 
Close Defense: 12
Ranged Defense: 12
Armour: 1d4
Hit Dice: 3 (14hp)
Initiative: +1
Movement: 10m
Attacks: 1/+1
Damage 1d4+poison
Saves: 5
Skills: Stealth 1, Climb 1
Traits:
Selective Intangibility (see below)
Venomous (1d4)
Chitinous Shell (1d4 armor)

This was a Phase Spider

Selective Intangibility: The Void Strider can escape become intangible as an action, allowing it to attack, and escape quite easily.


Shadow Hunter XP 150 (Beast) 
Close Defense: 12
Ranged Defense: 14
Armour:None
Hit Dice: 6 (27hp)
Initiative: +1
Movement: 10m
Attacks: 2/+1
Damage 1d8 Natural
Saves: 5
Skills: Stealth 2
Traits:
Predator Natural Weapons (1d8)
Stealth
Pounce (15m leap)
Tentacles

This was the Displacer Beast Effectively I took the 'displacement' ability and translated it to a ranged defense increase.

Machinations of the Space Princess - S3 conversion Part 2

A Couple more baddies converted from S3. (Updated the SIF after I found the engulf trait)


Screamer XP 25 (Beast) 
Close Defense: 12
Ranged Defense: 12
Armour: 0
Hit Dice: 2 (4hp)
Initiative: 0
Movement: none
Attacks: 1/+1
Damage 1d6
Saves: 5, Toughness: 7
Skills: none
Traits:
Sessile (Can Not Move)
Fungal (No Vitals) Half Hit Points, only 1 pt of damage from physical attacks, normal from energy.
Exotic Attack (Sonic Scream) 1d4 Cone Effect

This was a Shrieker The exotic attack is based on 2 advances of Sonic Boom instead of making it 1d6, I made it 1d4 and  added an area of effect; just like upgrading a weapon...this is fun!

SIF (Sky is Falling) XP 75 (Beast)
Close Defense: 12
Ranged Defense: 12
Armour: 1d6 (exterior)
Hit Dice: 4 (18hp)
Initiative: +1
Movement: 10m ground
Attacks: 1/+1
Damage 1d6
Saves: 5
Skills: Ambush: 1, Stealth: 3
Traits:
Engulf
Camouflage (+2 Stealth)
Echolocation
Shell
This was a Lurker Above. The SIF is a pure ambush predator, it hangs from high places, camouflaged, then drops its 500lb body on top of any opponents below, crushing them, and then constricting. While it's heavy armored hide protects it from outer attacks. This is a young version. The SIF can continue to grow, with many reaching 40 feet in width, the largest on record was 75 feet in width, weighing over 3000 pounds.

DCC RPG WORLDTOUR #6

So, I got over to Pair-a-Dice Games to play the first part of the conversion of my favorite old-school module: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. Now having had architectural training, I looked at the original map and thought, wow...fireplaces going up into the floor and stopping...so I updated it in AutoCAD, quite a lot.

How these Floorplans aren't perfect, as I rushed them the first day I tried to run the adventure, but they're close. There should be a door between the scullery and the kitchen, and there's a bit of overlapping hatching...but not too bad.

Here's some pictures of us actually playing

My next door neightbor was at the store, and he brought his almost 5 year old over to watch!!

Before Sean and Ian actually made it inside, they waited for morning outside the walls of the garden...and we best by goblins at 4AM, the fight ended with back to back crits from Ian's halfling, and a critical hit from Sean's wizard as well!!!

The two mighty level 1 heroes stand over the poor goblins, slain before they could give insult or injury (3 crits in 2 turns will do that.)

Machinations of the Space Princess - S3 Conversion Part 1

So a couple weeks ago I posted that it would be fun to run a Machinations of the Space Princess game as a n exploration mission to recover a lost science vessel. This excursion would be to the downed spacecraft on a backwater planet that had a high psion population, however, they think it's 'MAGIC'...

So instead of a lost science vessel, the sleazy gits will find info on an Exo vessel...the cargo could be priceless. First they're going to have to locate the exact location and then brave the vessel....encountering all the nasty critters onboard.

So I will be creating an entire adventure over time, INSPIRED by S3, but not fully S3, I will recreate the maps in AutoCAD and eventually have a complete adventure. But in the meantime, I need to start slow...so here's the first Monster for ES3 - Excursion to the Broken Peaks


Fungusfiends (These would take the place of the vegepygmies from S3.)
First I will start off by analyzing the original creature.

Plant creature that is a meat eating hunter and scavengers. Piercing weapons only do half damage. Electrical attacks do no damage. OK that's a bit odd for Machinations mobs...so I'm going to use the following traits to represent them. Their coloration allows them to surprise 50% of the time

Fungal (No Vitals) Half Hit Points, only 1 pt of damage from physical attacks, normal from energy.
Hunter (Warrior) +1 close and ranged attacks.
Scavenger (Tough) Increase Toughness Save score by +2

They range in Hit Dice from 1-6. As hunters we will consider them 'trained' so 3 hit dice

Fungusfiend XP 50 (Goon)
Close Defense: 13
Ranged Defense: 12
Armour: 0
Hit Dice: 3 (7hp)
Initiative: 0
Movement: 10m ground
Attacks: 1/+2
Damage 1d6
Saves: 5, Toughness: 7
Skills: Sneak Attack: 1

Fungusfiend XP 10 (Fodder)
Close Defense: 11
Ranged Defense: 10
Armour: 0
Hit Dice: 3 (2hp)
Initiative: 0
Movement: 10m ground
Attacks: 1/+2
Damage 1d6
Saves: 5, Toughness: 7
Skills: Sneak Attack: 1

Fungusfiend  Sub-Leader XP 100 (Hard Bastard)
Close Defense: 15
Ranged Defense: 14
Armour: 0
Hit Dice: 3 (12hp)
Initiative: 0
Movement: 10m ground
Attacks: 1/+3
Damage 1d6
Saves: 6, Toughness: 8
Skills: Sneak Attack: 1

New DCCRPG Houserule

So after playing through the entrance to my modification of Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, the boys and I were talking on the way home, and through that discussion, I came up with a modification to the non-proficient weapon rules. (Though I re-read the rules and realized half of the rule was already done...too many funnels without penalty.)

Alternate Improvised Weapons/Non-proficiency Rules
Attacks with improvised weapons do not use a lower die on the dice chain but still may not score a critical however, they so fumble on a 1 OR 2, and increase the die used in the dice chain, so the fumble die is a bit more spectacular.

I haven't play tested these rules yet, let me know if you try them and they work for you.

Kickstarter - Advanced Bestiary by Green Ronin Games

Green Ronin Games is bringing back the ADVANCED BESTIARY updated to the Pathfinder RPG Rulese with the Advanced Bestiary Kickstarter 

While I'm not actively playing Pathfinder, I'm backing it because it is the BEST book of the d20 era. I own all three of the books that Chris mentions below...great books one and all.

In 2005 Green Ronin Published the Advanced Bestiary for the d20 System. It was a monster book that took the idea of templates and ran with it. The Advanced Bestiary featured over 100 new templates and sample monsters built using them. It was a terrific toolkit and added value to every monster book GMs already owned. For years people have been asking us to do a Pathfinder version of the Advanced Bestiary and with your help, we are going to do it!  

The rules revisions are already well under way. The question is, what will the book’s final format be? We are starting with the assumption that the book will be a 264-page hardback with a black and white interior like the original, and that we’ll keep the book’s existing art. Really though, we want to give you a full color hardback with all new art! That’s built into the stretch goals of this Kickstarter, so the final format is up to you all!

You Can’t Eat Accolades! 

The Advanced Bestiary got great reviews as soon as it was released. This was in the later days of the d20 era, when it was harder to impress people and much harder to have a hit book. The critics loved it and sales were solid. Mission accomplished, right? Well, no, as it turned out. The Advanced Bestiary and two other titles (The Black Company and Egyptian Adventures: Hamunaptra) had the misfortune of coming out when our fulfillment company (Osseum Entertainment) was dying and stealing money from our sales to stay afloat. Those three big, expensive-to-print products all sold pretty well—and we saw not a dime of that money. We were, of course, still on the hook for all the associated bills: writing, editing, printing, art, etc. What should have been a triumph thus turned into a disaster. I remember figuring out at one point that for every dollar we paid the designer, Green Ronin lost three dollars. The “Osseum Debacle,” as we came to call it, nearly killed Green Ronin Publishing. We managed to survive though and slowly paid down all of our associated debts. 
The fact that the Advanced Bestiary became a cornerstone book for Pathfinder development has thus always been bitter sweet. We were certainly flattered that Paizo used the Advanced Bestiary in so many of its own books and we were glad players and GMs got so much use out of it. You can’t eat accolades though, so for years I had hoped we could bring this book back and actually turn a profit on it. 
Earlier this year we did a highly successful Pathfinder Kickstarter for our Freeport city setting. Last month I hired Owen K.C. Stephens to be our Pathfinder developer for Freeport and more. I believe now that the Stars are Right for the return of the Advanced Bestiary! Let’s make it happen, Pathfinder fans! 

The Stretch Goals 

As I mentioned, we want this book to be full color and featuring all new art. We’ve baked that into the stretch goals and we are revealing them all so you can see what we ultimately hope to achieve with this campaign. We are also keeping expansion of the book fairly limited by design because we want to have the finished product out to backers next July. The more we might add, the longer this would take, so we are capping the new material at 32 pages. Note, however, that there were originally five web enhancements to the Advanced Bestiary and we’ll be including all of those in the new book. 
$25,000: We will commission a new piece of cover art for the book. 
$30,000: We will add 16 pages of new content to the book. More templates! More monsters! 
$37,500: We will print the book in full color. 
$45,000: We will commission all new interior art for the book. 
$50,000: We will add another 16 pages of new content to the book.

Kickstarter - Corporia

Kickstarter for CORPORIA 

Knights in Shining Armani...Knights of the Round CONFERENCE Table.



This is a pretty unique concept, and it does have a low-end buy-in at $15 for the PDF. But upgrading to Hacker gets you into the playtest as well as additional digital rewards.

What is CORPORIA?

Corporia will be a limited edition, graphic novel-sized, 208-page, full color, signed & numbered hardcover, urban fantasy role-playing game set in the near future. It’s not based directly on any existing property or rules set, but if I had to compare it to other themes you might recognize, it’s what happens when you mix reincarnated Knights of the Round Table with a spoonful of Torchwood, add a pinch of cyberpunk, a dash of Joss Whedon's Angel season 5, and a sprinkling of a corporate-focused Shadowrun. If you enjoy these, you're going to love Corporia.

• "Fascinating, and a breath of originality in a space where it seems like you've seen everything. The mix of ideas is exciting and intriguing, and I genuinely look forward to seeing where it goes!" ~ Sean Patrick Fannon, Creator of Shaintar, Writer/Designer and Publisher, Evil Beagle Games 

In the near future, corporations control the world, and Order is the rule of the day. New technologies clean the environment and raise glittering skyscrapers in outwardly utopian cities, but at the cost of personal freedoms and liberties. Humans toil in wage-slavery to powerful mega-corporations, pacified by drugs, cheap food, and free internet access. It is surely the time foretold in legend, when the Knights of the Round Table would return in the hour of mankind’s greatest need.

Yet the knights are scattered, their memories fragmented, and King Arthur nowhere to be found. Worse, the return of the knights breached the barriers of reality and opened portals to the extra-dimensional realms of Chaos. Now every day brings new horrors as magical anomalies bestow either superhuman abilities or horrible mutations on the populace, monsters lurk in alleys and underground malls, spirits return as electronic geists, and software becomes self-aware. The mega-corporations outwardly dismiss these outbreaks as effects of cosmic 'Flux' radiation (supposedly caused by the former government's meddling with the ozone layer), even while they wage secret wars to master this new energy source. Only you and your allies stand for justice in the struggle between corporate Order and magical Chaos.

Fortunately, you have powerful benefactors: Sir Lancelot (awakened as a megacorp CEO) and his allies Sir Percival, the sorceress Nimue, and the artificial intelligence known as M.E.R.L.I.N.  As a member of the Knightwatch, Lancelot’s secret special operations team, you battle magical monstrosities and augmented humans, dive into living computer networks, infiltrate rival mega-corporations, and more. The only limit is your imagination!

Paizo Sale - Judge Dredd minis.

Paizo is having a sale...Including some Judge Dredd minis...pretty big sale... 50% off the OLD box prices. The new box sets are $10-15 more per box set!!!

Judge Dredd Miniatures

Angel Gang... $12.49!!!! That's half off the old price
Sky Surfer Gang $14.99
Ape Gang $14.99
Fattie Stampede $19.99
Holocaust Judges Box Set $19.99 (that's a little more than the HS/2 unit costs now!!!)
Cursed Earth Desperadoes $14.99

Another Exciting Week!!!

Well over the last week, I've had 10 hours of overtime. Combine this with playing catch-up with around the house things last week, and the hours just slip away.

This week I have to finish the Roman Empire Chapter, I have around 2,000 words written for the 3-6,000 needed; though I could probably write 10-20,000 for a comprehensive Roman Empire chapter during 801 AD; there's just so much information out there.

That's the plan of attack this week, in addition to working out.