Hey, Piezans! I’ll be on Joey Royale’s Pizza Party this Wednesday, September 21, at 8p ET!
Joey hosts a monthly-ish show about all things Dungeon Crawl Classics, with a special emphasis on creativity and supporting third party publishers.
Join us on the Goodman Games’ Twitch channel!
I arrived in Indianapolis in the early afternoon and got my vaccination status verified. I wandered down to the stadium and must have passed my luck check, because I later found out I shouldn’t have made it down there without a badge. In the stadium I beheld the wonder of the Wizard Van in all its glory! Then I met some of the Goodman Games’ judges for a group photo before picking up my GM badge. On my way out the door I ran into Alexi and Leah Sargeant of Cloven Pine Games! Alexi was kind enough to sign my copy of The Great Soul Train Robbery.
I started Gen Con with a session of Savage Worlds, a game I’ve heard a lot about but hadn’t played before. It was a 1950s Stargate-esque scenario; I played a military medic escorting a scientific expedition to another dimension where we saved a some villagers from being sacrificed to a hideous beast. I found Savage Worlds very quick to pick up, but a little swingy for my taste — the exploding dice mechanic makes every roll a lot more tense than I expected.
After a quick trip through the exhibitors (where I picked up some Goodman Games exclusives) I met up with my friend Luau Lou for lunch before setting up for my session of The Museum at the End of Time. I only had three of five players show up, but they had a great time traversing the Taboo Lands and descending into the titular museum.
In the morning I ran a second session of Museum which included a woman who came with her husband — it was her first RPG, ever! In the afternoon I ran Luau Lou’s module Seekers of the Un-K’nown, a Mutant Crawl Classics romp that may or may not be based on a classic D&D module. I was a little nervous since I hadn’t run it before, but it wound up being a great session with some memorable moments including mounting spears on a hover bike and befriending the robotic security guards by tending for a damaged unit.
Saturday morning I ran a session of my Dungeon Crawl Classics module A Fairly Odd Tale. I’ve been honing this adventure for a year or so and I think I’ve got it to a solid place — enough so that I plan to publish it sometime next year. I had a mother/daughter pair at the table and they may have been my favorite players of the convention!
My Saturday afternoon game was canceled, so I took the opportunity to grab some classic fantasy novels from the Goodman Games booth and headed back to my room to get some rest.
Sunday morning was supposed to feature a session of Star Trek Adventures, a game I’ve owned for over a year but never had the opportunity to bring to the table. Unfortunately only two of us showed up, so I wandered the exhibitors hall, picked up a few more items, and then went to the Goodman Games raffle. Unfortunately I didn’t win anything, but I had fun seeing all the prizes and watching people delight at their wins.
I had a great time! I haven’t been to Gen Con in 10 years, and this is the first time I ever ran games there. Being with other DCC/MCC fans made it super easy, and Goodman Games was very supportive (they brought afternoon snacks around to all their judges!). I was also grateful that all the games I ran were in Lucas Oil Stadium — it wasn’t nearly as loud there as in other spaces, so even though we all wore masks I never had to strain to hear people.
I intentionally didn’t hang around for a lot of evening events; I tend to be susceptible to con crud, especially when I overextend myself. This seemed to work out really well, as by the end of the con I still had plenty of energy. I may ad an evening event or two in the future.
I look forward to returning to Gen con next year!
If you’re like me, and a bit of an introvert, you may find small talk a little awkward — especially when meeting strangers around a convention table. Here are 20 questions that can help break the ice and build comradery while waiting for your session to start at Gen Con this week!
| d20 | Question |
|---|---|
| 1 | What are you most looking forward to at the convention? |
| 2 | What’s been your favorite thing at the convention so far? |
| 3 | What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen at the convention so far? |
| 4 | What’s the coolest character you’ve played at the convention? |
| 5 | What’s the coolest thing a GM has done at the convention? |
| 6 | What is your “holy grail” RPG or RPG item? |
| 7 | What swag did you miss out on that you wished you had gotten? |
| 8 | Who has the coolest booth in the exhibitors hall? |
| 9 | What’s your favorite die (d20, d12, d30, etc.)? |
| 10 | What’s the most expensive RPG item you’ve ever purchased? |
| 11 | If money were no object, what RPG item would you purchase? |
| 12 | What media property do you think deserves a table top RPG? |
| 13 | In case of an emergency, what one RPG item would you grab on your way out the door? |
| 14 | If you could have lunch with someone in the RPG industry, who would it be? |
| 15 | If you could play an RPG with any historical figure, who would it be? |
| 16 | What fictional character do you think would be the best GM? |
| 17 | Which RPG setting would you most like to live in? |
| 18 | What would you most like to change about the gaming hobby? |
| 19 | If you could only equip a RPG character with three pieces of equipment, what would they be? |
| 20 | If a horde of zombies were to attack right now, what’s your escape plan? |
At this point it’s common wisdom that the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons is the worst. It’s certainly the most maligned edition, with a general consensus that it parrots video game mechanics, straightjackets PCs with predefined abilities, and eliminates much of what makes individual classes special.
And I love it.
Which isn’t to say I don’t have criticisms (lengthy combat and lack of support for the epic tier being two of them), but I also think there’s a lot to recommend a second look at 4e. Over the next few months I’ll be posting some of the things I think 4e got right in its changes to the fantasy RPG formula.
For instance, 4e is the edition that was made for Dungeon Masters — literally. Not a lot of people seem to remember this, but one of 4e’s explicit design goals was to make running the game as easy as possible. In the Worlds and Monsters promo, Matthew Sernett writes:
“It’s going to be a lot easier and more fun to be a Dungeon Master in 4th Edition. You’ll have to do less work to put together and run great adventures. The time that you used to spend on math can be spent on coming up with cool ideas for encounters and adventure plots instead… Making being a DM easier (and making it easier to be a good DM) is going to get more people to try running a game.”
One place this mindset is reflected is in the layout of adventure modules. Almost every encounter is laid out as a two-page spread, meaning the DM doesn’t have to flip pages back and forth while running an encounter. All the information needed is in those two pages: environmental descriptions and effects, monster stats, traps, tactical suggestions, etc. By contrast, I’m constantly flipping pages in WotC’s 5e adventures between the encounter description, the map, and the monster stats in the Monster Manual, and any spells used by the monsters in the Player’s Handbook just to run a simple encounter.
4e also featured fantastic advice in it’s 2 DMGs. The Dungeon Master’s Guide 2, in particular, is a great resource for DMs of any edition. It has advice on crafting long-term campaigns, including story structure, avoiding dead ends when PCs fail to overcome an obstacle, and integrating flashbacks, transitions, and even third-person teasers into a session. It also has great examples for creating more interesting encounters, building traps, customizing monsters, and offering alternate rewards. Anyone interested in RPG design would benefit from the DMG2’s insights.
In the end, the focus on DMs is probably one of the things that worked against 4e. Since most D&D players are, well, players, they weren’t as invested in the upgrades to running the game and didn’t see the benefits. Which is a shame. While 4e isn’t perfect, it did a lot to lift some of the burdens on DMs — a fact for which I am grateful.
Jon Peterson has made a name for himself as a gaming historian. His rightly lauded and fastidiously researched Playing at the World may well be the definitive treatment of the historical antecedents of modern role-playing games across the centuries.
Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons (MIT Press, 2021) tackles a more focused topic: the creation of D&D and the first 12 years of Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) from its founding to the fateful evening when Gary Gygax was removed from direct control of the company. Peterson is particularly interested in divining credit for the game’s creation, sifting through the competing claims of Gygax and Dave Arneson, and detailing the (mis)management of TSR which led to Gygax inadvertently placing himself in danger of losing the company he co-founded.
Like Playing at the World, Game Wizards is well-researched with 30 pages of endnotes citing various trade magazines, columns in Dragon, and other sources. But what makes the book more readable than, say, Playing at the World is that Game Wizards has a compelling narrative on which to hang the various financial figures and convention numbers. No one thought Dungeons & Dragon would be an especially profitable idea (Peterson regularly reminds us that Gygax and Arneson thought it might be a “$300 idea”). So when the game takes off, what had been built on nebulous contracts and verbal agreements quickly becomes the focus of intense legal battles as various players seek their piece of the pie.
Those battles seem to have been exacerbated by the interpersonal conflicts that inevitably arose when a bunch of hobbyists tried to run a business. Broken promises, poor HR policies and procedures, and the lure of wealth and fame seem to have taken its toll on those who initially banded together to bring D&D to life, leading to the sad but inevitable climax of Gygax’s reign.
Game Wizards is a treat for RPG fans, especially those (like me) who came to the hobby well after the events it depicts. I highly recommend it.
Welcome to Eastwood presents a clever sandbox location — a mysterious Old West town that, through the vagaries of magic or technology, can be dropped into any campaign — for players to explore and interact with.
Like Museum at the End of Time, combat isn’t the only danger in the town of Eastwood. Without giving too much away, PCs can become enamored of the various opportunities and encounters, failing to realize (until it’s too late) that they’re trapped in the town. The more they attempt to peek behind the scenes, the more bizarre — and perilous — the situation becomes.
This includes a clever resource management component the Judge must handle concerning PCs’ ability to leave. Normally I’m not a fan of putting additional work on the Judge, but the module comes with a handy tracking sheet, making the task less onerous. The adventure also comes with an appendix detailing various features of the “town,” including random encounters, new artifacts, and new creatures.
The module is well laid out and illustrated throughout, giving Judges a taste of the town’s atmosphere and inhabitants. The map is especially nice and makes a good handout to give the players once they have the lay of the land.
I’ve had the opportunity to both play the module with the author and run it for my regular MCC group. Both times we had a blast as the PCs came up with theories as to what was happening and who was puling the strings of Eastwood.
Welcome to Eastwood is a 28-page 1st- or 2nd-level module compatible with both Mutant Crawl Classics and Dungeon Crawl Classics. It was written and illustrated by C. Aaron Kreader of Studio 9 Games.
Event tickets for Gen Con Indy go on sale this weekend! I’ll be running four games:
I hope to see you in Indy!
This past Saturday I drove to Decatur, Illinois, to attend Heroicon, a small convention supporting Games For Troops, an Illinois non-profit delivering board, card, and other games to the men and women of the US Armed Forces.
I was supposed to drive over with my friend Luau Lou, but he had to back out a few days before, so it was a solo mission. On the plus side it meant I didn’t have to leave so early in the morning, as the game I was scheduled to run was in the afternoon. I arrived about 2 hours before my game so I checked out the vendors and got my wife some dice earrings for Mother’s Day.
While in the vendors area I was invited by designer Keun Ahn to play his game Shadows: Heroes & Monsters, a PvPvE (Player vs Player vs Environment) CCG that recently completed it’s crowdfunding campaign. At first I thought it would be a little fiddly due to the number of counters and stats to keep track of, but after a few rounds I got the basics. I even managed a pretty great feint, causing Keun to prepare for an attack that never came, for the win.
I was a little apprehensive about my Mutant Crawl Classics game as I only had one person signed up. Fortunately the player’s father had an open slot so he joined us for a round of Museum at the End of Time. Since it was just the two of them I gave them each 6 zero-level characters; in the end, only 5 left the museum. They really enjoyed the game (both were new to DCC/MCC).
Afterwards they invited me to try Dungeon Draft, a clever card drafting game with a fantasy theme. It went a little slow because several of us were playing for the first time, but I can see it being a nice filler game.
All things considered I had a good time and, while attendance seemed very low, I wouldn’t say no to attending Heroicon for a day again!
My first Kickstater project, The Gongfarmer Militia, is now live on Kicksarter!
The 20 page, saddle-stitched black & white digest-size zine expands on the Dungeon Crawl Classics rules for hirelings and includes:
I’ve got some exciting stretch goals lined up that could add up to 8 more pages to the zine, including additional hireling archetypes by Luau Lou of Dandyline Games and Matt Robertson, author of the DCC module A Conspiracy of Ravens.
I’m really excited to be getting this zine out into the world. Check out the project today!
The key to drawing upon your personal likes and interests for adventure fodder while keeping the players happy and responsive to your scenarios is moderation. Role-players pursue this hobby because it provides them an outlet for their imaginations, exploring and experiencing places and events they might not otherwise ever perceive. If every game session involves exploits into the complex world of art and art history, for example, and the players are looking for dungeon crawling hijinks, nobody is going to be happy. The players will become bored with the repetition and the game master will be frustrated when no one seems interested with the adventure.
Michael Curtis, “Know (and Love) What You Write” in How to Write Adventure Modules That Don’t Suck (2017)
