Gam3rCon Gam3day February 9th-10th

Well Well, Gam3rCon mini-con coming up.

Come on down and help me celebrate my Meaning of Life birthday...the Big 42, by playing in my alpha play-test for Unleashed Role-playing.

I'll also be running my last RPG demo for Mongoose, as their new support is miniature based Demonstration teams.



Judge Dredd (Traveller) Hot Dog Run [4 hour time slot, 4-6 players]

You're an Academy of Law Cadet in Mega-City One, You're Academy of Law tutor is taking you on the Hot Dog run. The Hot Dog run is the trip into the Cursed Earth that every Cadet makes. Here the cadets are expected to become acquainted with life beyond Mega-City One, and to demonstrate their skills in handling the various hazardous conditions of the Cursed Earth.

By this time in their life, Cadets have been in the academy for a decade, now as teenagers they are expected to prove themselves. The hazards of the Cursed Earth are many, and entire Hot Dog runs never return, do you have what it takes to survive?

Unleashed RPG Playtest [4+ Hours, 4 players]

The Unleashed Role-Playing Game brings you cinematic role-playing using streamlined rules with an old-school feel. Utilizing an explosive 2d10 based system, it allows you to simulate fantastic combat. Few constraints are imposed in what you can attempt, heroic aspects allow you to accomplish amazing feats of heroism, even at first level. Declare what you want to do, then roll to see what your margin of success was.

At the core of the system lies the OGL of the World’s Most Famous Role-playing Game. But its buried pretty deep, having been re-built based on 28 years of gaming experience. A combination of Old School and Indie design, this game brings you something old, something new, something borrowed, something woo!

Come help Alpha Test Unleashed and you will be included in the Playtest credits upon publication. You can also sign up for continuing playtesting of Unleashed.Brought to you by EpicRPGBlog, San Diego's RPG Blog.

SDGC Saturday

Saturday
San Diego Gam3rCon 2012
Saturday was pretty good, Got the Traveller game run, unfortunately, it was just one player, so I had the boys jump in again to fill the gap. I think for my next events, I'll just run a prepared Mongoose Game from what I have ready, whatever people want to play, sweet lets do it. My Traveller player also showed for the Paranoia game, but...You just CAN NOT run Paranoia with 1 player, even if the boys jumped in 3 players isn't quite enough to have it be the level of Mandatory Fun required by the Computer! So the boys went down to the Video Game Lounge, and I talked to the USAopoly people about the risk games they've been releasing. I hadn't really looked into them too much, just kind of glanced at them, but once I had the Solid Snake version and the new Halo Legendary Risk explained, I must say, there are some pretty slick mods in there to speed up play, and make each game different, because let's face it, normal Risk is normal Risk, once you past the first few turns, your single preferred strategy usually takes over, and the rest is up to luck.    

     I wasn't able to get Luke to spill the beans on what the new edition is coming out, but he did say there's going to be a big announcement soon. This is pure hopeful speculation, what if there was a Game of Thrones Risk...now that would be sweet. I thought that after I saw a map of Westeros at SDCC....

The new USAopoly Halo Legendary, with Achievement victory conditions, and a ship that moves from port to  port making things really interesting.

New Starcraft Risk map for the soon to be released StarCraft Risk

   After talking Risk for awhile, I decided my Paranoia game wasn't going to happen so I decided to look for something to play, well at the Game Day in January, I played DCC RPG, and it was a blast, this time, I was given a pre-gen, and Steven told me NO CHAOTIC Character (due to the near TPK that my chaotic character created in January.) ...This was a play-test for a module that's in development currently. One of the actresses and the guitar player from Spider Baby the Musical were in the game as well (and another of the actors joined us later.). The module was fun, I had a blast with Smalls the halfling, a haberdasher by trade, who did carry his shears, and actually killed one of the goblinoid creatures with them. Steven Thivierge ran the game, and ran it well. Well enough that I'm pretty convinced I do need to pick up DCCRPG.
Thanks to everyone who played, I had a blast! And thanks to Steven for running such a fun game.

You can even see "Small's" prop scissors where I was sitting!

Traveller Elegance of the 2d6 system

The 2d6 system for TRAVELLER seems to be a very simple system, and you would be right, it is. The beauty of it is, that a skill of 1 can make a huge difference on the roll, for example, it makes a normal difficulty action go from 8+ to 7+, which of course is the average roll for 2d6.

Possible Combinations on 2d6

2  1+1  1 in 36 or 2.78%

3  1+2,2+1   2 in 36 or 5.56%

4  1+3, 2+2, 3+1  3 in 36 or 8.33%

5 1+4, 2+3, 3+2, 4+1  4 in 36 or  11.11 %

6  1+5, 2+4, 3+3,4+2,5+1  5 in 36 or 13.89%

7  1+6,2+5,3+4,4+3,5+2,6+1  6 in 36 or 16.67%

8  2+6,3+5,4+4,5+3,6+2  5 in 36 or  13.89%

9  3+6,4+5,5+4,6+3  4 in 36 or 11.11%

10 4+6,5+5,6+4  3 in 36 or 8.33%

11 5+6,6+5  2 in 36 or 5.56%

12 6+6  1 in 36 or 2.78%

So a character with a 0 skill, and 0 stat modifier will succeed a standard difficulty of 8, 15 out of 36 times, or 41% of the time. Bring that character up to +1 modifier in either Skill or Stat and that becomes 21 of 36 successes; or 58.33%. The same character with a skill of 2 and a stat of +1 brings the chance to 30 of 36 chance or 83.33% chance. This system requires very little math, making it very simple, a game that can be learned in one sitting. The system scales well with more difficult or routine tasks. Say, a simple task requires a roll of 4+, most characters will succeed at this roll most of the time as there's only a 16.67% chance of failure (6 in 36), a skilled character will typically only fail under adverse conditions.

Every roll in  TRAVELLER  uses the same mechanics.
a 2d6 roll using positive and negative modifiers against a target number.

Very Simple, Very Elegant; a tried and true method for a role-playing game.

Check out Traveller by buying Book 0: Introduction to Traveller PDF from DrivethruRPG.com only $2.97 at time of posting. This is a 32 page rulebook, that contains the core rules.

Traveller Free Trader Map

I used created a Map for the Free Trader Type A I'll be using in the "No One can Hear you Scream" scenario. I'll be printing this on 24"x36" and reusing it for various scenarios, so it's not super detailed as far as room numbers. It's designed to look like an image off a hand held computer unit. I also modified it, so the "crew commons actually has an area to eat at, and there's a head in the passenger's area...(I know there's not one in the main crew area....shhhhh. I also added a cargo elevator in the cargo hold, cuz I never figured out how they actually get cargo into a Free Trader. I made the hull double skinned as well. (note, there are access hatches to the outside in the engine room, but for some reason, they aren't airlocked...I know what I would do with a few grand if I were a Captain. Low Berths are modified to show coffin type sleeper units, rather than whatever the circles represented.

Feel Free to use this for your own TRAVELLER games. Obviously you can't sell it since it Belongs to the  TRAVELLER owners, not me.

Review - Traveller (MGP)

Traveller RPG

This is a review of the core rulebook for Traveller RPG. Available in both print and PDF format from Mongoose Publishing.

First Glance: If you’re familiar with the GDW (Game Design Workshop) version of Traveller of the past, you instantly recognize the simple black trade dress with the red TRAVELLER logo. It’s a 181 page hardbound book with black and white interior artwork.

Main Review: The rules are pretty simple, based upon 2d6, or the d66 variation, the rules are updated but mostly the same as the old rules from GDW. Character creation is fun, with the ability to choose and change careers, your character’s life is in your own hands, random rolls determine what happens as your proceed through the different terms, for good or ill, nothing is set in stone, not your stats or skills during creation, you could easily start as a dirt farmer and end up a Duke.

Artwork: Decent, some of the figures have a bit of a proportion issue. The old ship artwork appears to be recycled into the new edition, which forges yet another bridge to the past.

Replay Value: Excellent, as any RPG, there’s always good replay value. With Traveller it’s even more so, as it’s a core ruleset, around which nearly anything could be emulated. The character creation is so randomized that no character should be exactly the same.

Comprehension Level: Excellent, The rules for Traveller are pretty simple as I’ve already stated, by using d6s, That automatically makes it simpler for some, since everyone is familiar with a 6 sided die. Combat isn’t too complex, easily picked up in 1 or 2 sessions.

Humor: This is a stripped down basic rulebook, not a lot of humor, or humour as the Brits say, involved.

Game Mastering: Gamemastering can be challenging, not for the sake of complicated rules, but the fact that they game spans galaxies and each session may see two or three different worlds. Though there are various settings based in Traveller, most notably, is the Judge Dredd Campaign Setting. No matter what you want to do, you can probably find a place to do it here, you could recreate other settings, from movies or anime, perhaps an exiting RPG doesn’t quite fit your vision of how the game should run. This is an easy system to convert it to. If you can find old adventurers, conversion should be simple as the stats are the same, just a few minor tweaks and you’re done. Plenty of online support exists for adventures as well. Including articles in the Free Signs & Portent eZines that Mongoose publishes (available on their site or on DriveThruRPG).

Family Rating: 10+, it’s a dangerous world out there, violence is sure to happen. However it is a simple system compared to many of the systems out there, but when you have a simple game system, it’s easier to focus on good gaming.  

Price Tag:  $39.95 or $23.97 for the PDF on DrivethruRPG.

Value: Pretty Good. For the Basic system you’re getting a 181 page book that covers everything from Character Creation, to World Creation to Game Mastering, it’s a bit pricey for the number of pages, but it is on par with other comparable systems, and this one you don’t need to buy a Game Masters Guide. There are plenty of supplements already published if you wish to go deeper down the rabbit hole. Earthdawn was the same price, but it was a much larger book.

Overall Rating: Mostly Epic! As a core setting it lacks an in depth setting, and for the price it could have been a bit meatier.