Flying Buffalo at DunDraCon 37

I went to DunDraCon 37 with my wife and oldest daughter on Saturday, and we had a great time. This is the first DunDraCon I've been to for a very long time. My first DunDraCon was #4, and unless I'm mistaken the last one I went to before this was #5!

Since then the con has moved to San Ramon, CA. I've been seriously thinking of going for many years since moving back to where it's within reach. But each year I was either already committed to something else on President's Day weekend, or didn't go because I was under the impression that it was a longer and more arduous trip than it turned out to be.

But it was just over 2 hours drive, and not so bad a drive at that, at least not when we went.

Flying Buffalo
Rick Loomis, of Flying Buffalo, has mentioned in several places online that he'd be going to DunDraCon this year. Since I'd been involved in both the Ace of Aces Kickstarter and the Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls Kickstarter as a backer, and he'd promised a free die for stopping by the booth and saying, "hi", that was more or less my first stop once we got registered for the con.

I was surprised as how small the dealer's room was, but the vendors that were there all had plenty to show. So it was sort of a small but high quality set-up. The main thing I missed was the wide variety of small startups that I used to see at cons years ago. I guess they all live on the internet now.

At any rate, Rick Loomis was there with a Flying Buffalo display. I didn't get a picture because I was too distracted at that point, and by the time I thought of it, the time had gotten late enough that the poor people manning booths had been set loose by the closing of the room.

However, I did get my free die (I picked out a black and red one with a skull), and I bought a copy of Nuclear War and a copy of Monsters! Monsters!

Nuclear War
Nuclear War was one of the first "unconventional" games I ever played. I have a copy of Nuclear Escalation, which can be played stand-alone but it works better, IMO, as an expansion to Nuclear War. Now I have my own copy of Nuclear War. When I was much, much younger than I am today, I recall that I always wanted to get the Saturn booster rocket for my warheads. Because having the biggest booster is just, well, cool.

Monsters! Monsters!
Monsters! Monsters! is the original "reverse dungeon" RPG. I had a copy years ago, along with my copies of the older versions of the Tunnels and Trolls rules. Unfortunately, MM has failed to turn up in my searches through my stuff over the past couple of years, even though everything else did turn up. So I decided to buy another copy.

Now that I have, I expect my original will turn up.

I have hopes that the success of the dT&T Kickstarter might lead to a MM Kickstarter. I'd like to see the information in MM reorganized so that all the info on a given monster is in one place, a bit more detail on some of the monster abilities, and, of course, more monsters and more art.

Truthfully, it's not hard to just play a game of MM with just the T&T rules. But it's fun and a bit easier to sell a group on an MM campaign if you've got a dedicated book for the purpose.

Nuclear War Extras
My wife wanted an "I Love Nuclear War" bumper sticker for her car (Rick threw that in for free), and my wife was extremely pleased to discover that there's a Nuclear War spinner app featuring Claudia Christian. She's a big fan of Claudia's, so she's looking forward to putting that on her new Android phone when it arrives.

DunDraCon in General
That was just the start for us. We had a great time at the con, which I'll be going into in further posts. Back home today, I'm reading my way through Monsters! Monsters! again, and looking forward to breaking out Nuclear War on our holiday day tomorrow.

Paizo Pathfinder Lite PDFs

Paizo has regularly released inexpensive PDFs of the Pathfinder rule books as a convenient addition to their hardcopy versions. Of the various major game companies, Paizo has my favorite pricing policy on PDFs. They're cheap. Which makes it a lot easier to do what I like, which is have both the hard copy and the PDF. (Even better is the practice of some smaller publishers, like Jon Brazer Enterprises, where you get both hardcopy and PDF in one package deal!)


The PDFs for the Pathfinder books from Paizo had a problem that limited their utility, though. They have multiple layers with lots of vector art. This is great for getting the best image on any display or from any printer. It's a huge load of computation, though, if you just want to read the rule book on an e-reader or a laptop.

I originally bought the PDF of the Core Rulebook to be able to cut and paste items into my own adventures--little reminders for rules that I may not use often that would crop up, and other such things. The PDF did that job great. But when I went to put it on my Sony PRS-950 e-reader, so as to have a small, light copy of the rules where ever I went, it buried the poor e-reader's processor. Page turns took forever. It was nothing but frustration.


Even the version of the rule book that has the chapters as separate files didn't help. The files are smaller, but the computational overhead was still just too much for my e-reader. Even when I threw it on my Eee PC (a "netbook" style laptop computer), it was just too slow to use. I was reduced to extracting the text from the PDF to rather ugly text files.

Lite PDFs

Fortunately, Paizo has now released Lite PDFs of the Pathfinder books.

I downloaded them this weekend, then tried them out on my e-reader and Eee PCs this morning. What a difference! They read smoothly and well, even on the Sony PRS-950's little processor (little by current standards--it's got far more power than my primary software development workstation from the '90s!)

I'm not the only one loving these new streamlined PDFs. Have a look:

The Iron Tavern Mini Review: Pathfinder Lite PDFs
The Earthen Ring comments on Pathfinder Lite PDFs
Paizo Messageboards: PFRPG Lite PDFs

Phraints for Pathfinder RPG

For those of you who aren't getting enough Arduin in your gaming, I've done a conversion of the Phraint for Pathfinder: Saundby's Phraint for Pathfinder. Let me know what you think, there are a few things I think I may be able to clean up about it, but I think this pretty well captures them in a Pathfinder way without losing any of the fine Arduin cheese flavor. If you give them a go in your game, drop me a note! Enjoy.

Cat Races for Pathfinder RPG

I've been looking at bringing the character races from the book Mythic Races over to Pathfinder lately. I've got no immediate need for them, but I've like many of the races in this book for a long time.

It was originally written for D&D 3.0, and my first pass on the idea a couple of years ago was that I could just adjust the CL (Character Level) for the different races to put them more on a par with Pathfinder. A more recent look, now that I've got more experience with Pathfinder, shows that this won't do. It still leaves the races, and their prestige classes, underpowered or poorly balanced for Pathfinder.

One nice thing is that a lot of the races that were CL+2/CL+3 before come in at something more like CL+1 or CL+0 now. That's nice because it makes them easier to start in a new campaign alongside the standard races.

But they pretty well all require a rewrite in order to make the ones I want to bring over fit the way I'd like (though going with minimalist conversion is certainly possible.) So I'm looking at stripping each one back to its basic idea, then rebuilding from there in a rewrite, possibly under a new name to avoid stepping on anyone's rights. The prestige classes will need an even bigger overhaul than the races themselves.

Using some of the existing PFRPG stuff that fits can reduce the overall work, too.

Trying Not to Reinvent the Wheel

But, I decided to see what else is already available before I knock myself out writing up new classes inspired by Mythic Races. Starting with the Artathi (a feline race with several specific types), I did a look at some cat races for PFRPG that are already out there. Here's what I found:

• Agathions, not exactly cat people, but they can be.


• Maftets, sphinx people.


• Catfolk, brought into PFRPG thanks to the Bestiary.


• Bah'it, scientist cats


• Puuf, or should we say "Puuf in Boots"?


• Pantorum, another anthropomorphic cat race of classic style.

If there are any out there you know of and like that I've missed (especially if you've played them or had them in a campaign), drop a comment!

Thanks.

Pathfinder RPG: Advanced Player's Guide Quick Look

I just bought the Advanced Player's Guide for the Pathfinder RPG (from my favorite shop, see above. Chris loves to do phone and internet orders as well as walk-ins like me.)


I wasn't originally planning on buying this book, at least not for a few months. To be honest, the preview material sort of put me off. The art is part of that. The technical execution of the art is as good as Paizo's art has ever been, but the character design has veered deeper into the kewlio. I kvetched about the art a bit before, in my Pathfinder RPG review, but this is just a bit too much for me. It detracts from the material of the book. I hope we won't be seeing a whole lot of these characters in future materials, the way the original characters have been used over and over and over again (Paizo does get their mileage out of their art and their character designs, that's for sure.)

So why did I drop the hardback retail on this book?

The first thing I was looking for from a new book is well designed player classes.The Alchemist, the Summoner, and the Witch are all classes I like. The Cavalier, Inquisitor, and Oracle don't do it for me. While new classes was the main thing I was looking for from this book, there turned out to be some surprises that finally tipped the balance for me to get this book. First, a look at the classes.

Alchemist

I have a soft spot for Alchemists. A friend played a very interesting Alchemist in the first campaign I played in. The character class came from The Strategic Review (or it may have become The Dragon by the time the Alchemist appeared, I don't recall.) He did a great job with that character, and when he lost his arm--only to have it replaced by a tentacle due to a botched regeneration--it made the character more interesting. I added the Alchemist to my campaign, and I've had the class ever since. Here's my latest version for OD&D. So far, the Alchemist in the PFRPG APG looks good. The power level looks good for the overall level of the game, and it's a flexible enough class to be good for a lot of adventuring. I'm sure I'll have more to say about it in the future.

Summoner

The Summoner is another type of class I like. Ever since playing Metagaming's Microgames Melee and Wizard (both part of a larger game called The Fantasy Trip), the idea of a mage who acts mainly through indirect spells that call up minions and items has appealed to me. I've tried designing several such classes for OD&D, but haven't been happy enough with them to use them in my present game (largely because it takes a lot of time to balance such a class.) The Summoner class of the APG seems a bit limited, since it's mostly monster-type summoning so far as I can tell at first look. I need to spend more time with the spell list to see if there are any of the "summon a mondo weapon for your buddy" type spells as well to round out the class a bit. What I've seen so far looks good.

Witch

The Witch is also a class that goes back a long time. There were two of them in early articles of TSR and The Dragon that I recall. I also built a pretty good Witch/Warlock class myself that I ran for many years in my game. The Witch class here looks like a sort of arcane druid class. It looks like a good option for players who want this sort of slant to their character, when one of the other caster classes doesn't appeal to them.

What Didn't Work for Me

I'll try to be brief about the three new classes that don't appeal to me; Cavalier, Inquisitor, and Oracle. Cavalier and Inquisitor look just too limited to be of general use. It's too early in the game's publication cycle to start putting out such limited character types, IMO. And where the appeal is for the Oracle, I don't know. It's a pretty blah looking class, particularly next to the extremely well designed Cleric class for this game. The Inquisitor looks like it's as much of a party pain in the tookus as the old-style AD&D Paladins were, possibly worse. And the Cavalier just looks like a gimped fighter. I'll look at them some more, there's plenty of possibility I've missed what the magic is to these classes. Right now I consider them dead weight.

The Surprise

What I wasn't expecting but was pleased by is the additions to the core classes from the original Core book. I wasn't expecting much but fluff, but from my brief look so far, it looks pretty meaty. It was enough to get me to lay down my cash, along with the three classes I like.

The Downside

The BIG downside is that there's now another book to be rifled through at the table. "Which book was that in?" will become a common question. It drives me crazy. One of the things I really liked about PFRPG was how great a game it is with just two books. If this was just one more GMs book, it wouldn't be that big an issue. But it's a player book. Which means it'll be getting passed around the table along with the Core book. "Where was that ability?" "Where was that feat described?" Sigh.

As it is, I don't plan on rolling the new rules into the game until some time down the road. If someone has to roll up a new character, I'll let them draw from this book in the meanwhile, but otherwise I'll wait a bit until my players have more of what's in the core book well known to them. In the meanwhile, I'll be reading and familiarizing myself with this new book.

One More Factor

Another thing that pushed me toward buying this book now is my 15 year old daughter. She really got excited by this book. She gives it two thumbs up, with no reservations at all. She likes everything she's seen in it.

PFRPG Roll Call

Here are the books I've bought so far and what I think of them:
Core Rulebook: Five Stars. Paizo has made d20 really smooth and fun to play.
Bestiary: Five Stars. The best monster book I've ever had, bar none. And remember, I was on the waiting list before the original Monster Manual came out back in the 70s. It makes a GM's life a good one. Get it even if you're doing some other d20 game. You'll wish they were all this good.
Gamemastery Guide: Three Stars. Only get it if you're a new GM, or if you see some material in it you think will be particularly useful to your campaign, like the NPC generation rules or the city material. If you're a new GM, it'll help get a campaign rolling quickly.
GameMaster's Screen: One Star. Total Fluff. Well made physically, but the reference charts on it aren't the ones you really wish you had. Avoid unless you want something really solid and really expensive to tape printouts of the charts you actually use to.
Advanced Player's Guide: (Ranking Awaiting Further Looking) Get it if you want to spice up your campaign past the core material. Otherwise, wait until your campaign has matured a bit. I like it pretty well, but I think they should have put in four really killer classes rather than three good and three specialty classes probably not for all campaigns.

Prestige Classes:
The APG has prestige classes in it, but I don't mention them here because they don't get used in my campaign except for NPCs. I tend to top out the characters' lives before they become too über, at about tenth level or so.

Pathfinder RPG by Paizo

Paizo's Pathfinder RPG is a game that I just keep liking more and more. Until now, I haven't had much use for d20 games. But Pathfinder really seems to hit the balance just right. As a DM/GM/referee I really like the Paizo books.




I started playing role playing games with a friend who started running a game based on photocopies of photocopies of Gary Gygax's hand-written notes. I'd been playing war games for a few years, and enjoyed D&D a lot as well. Over the years, I've run or played in games using all sorts of systems. Most of that time I've run a game based on the original D&D 3 book set and pieces taken out of its supplements and the very early D&D magazines. Other than original D&D (OD&D), the original Runequest has been my favorite set of game rules.

When D&D 3.0 was being developed, friends of mine were play testers. The revamp of the game sounded very, very promising. AD&D had become far too Byzantine for me, I skipped AD&D2 entirely. When the d20 rules for D&D3 came out, I started a game using them. I was excited, I was ready for the change and wanted to have a game that'd roll along as easily as OD&D but be somewhat more fleshed out.

Unfortunately, things never really gelled. The game just didn't run all that well for me, and my players were ready to give up. About that time 3.5 came out. Hopes high, I checked it out. Unfortunately, it took what wasn't working in 3.0 and made those things worse, not better. It was more complicated and institutionalized the power creep that had already entered the game. I went back to OD&D for my fantasy games (for SF I was using the original Traveller rules I bought in 1977.)

The appeal of what d20 represents was still there, but at the table the game just wasn't working for me or my players. The system made it about impossible to bring in new players, the life of any long-running game. With OD&D I could get a new player in the game making confident choices for their characters in an hour or less. Yeah, I was writing my own adventures and content no matter how little time work and the rest of life left me. Yeah, players never quite knew how things were going to go when they were outside combat and I was making up resolution systems for their actions on the fly. But we could jump in, play, and have fun easily and quickly at the table. I could write really simple software to help me generate encounters and otherwise prepare for a game. I had over 30 years worth of notes backing up my game.

Then came the announcement of D&D 4.0. No big deal. I'll just keep rolling along with OD&D.

But some folks weren't ready to give up on d20. It had worked for them. The "ecosystem" thing that the OGL promised had actually happened. That ecosystem thing was something I wanted part of, in spite of my problems with d20. Then leadership happened. The folks at Paizo decided they weren't just going to give up the stake they had in d20.

I downloaded the Pathfinder RPG beta document, and immediately liked what I saw. Non combat skill rules were simplified. The rogue/thief class had some power back. d20 rules problems were settled with sensible corrections. As a beta document, it didn't have all the introductory material that would be expected in a finished product, but it definitely was a big step toward closing the gap between me and d20. I ran some skirmishes with small groups of players and played around with the rules solo. It was encouraging.

Another plus was that the core rules would be published in 2 books, a rulebook and a book of critters for the game. Getting soaked by the tradition of putting things in 3 books was getting old, especially when five hundred add-on books follow, and other systems were regularly coming out with a single core book. Add to that that with border art, incidental art, and other foo-foo each page of each book dedicated less than one third of its space to actual rules, and it was time for a revolution.
I picked up the Core Rulebook as soon as it was available at my friendly local game shop. I bought it to read, not to play. I had an active Traveller game going using the new rules from Mongoose. But, as with the beta, I ran some solo stuff to sort of try out the rules and I ran some simple skirmishes with my daughters just to get some experience with live players.

 I liked the changes Paizo had made a whole heck of a lot. The changes are few, and subtle, but the effect on play are tremendous. It's what d20 should have been.

Then the Bestiary hit the streets. I picked it up, too. The free previews had spurred my interest, plus this way I'd have a full set of core rules in case I wanted to play for real someday. Not that I couldn't have used any other d20 book of critters, like my D&D 3.0 Monster Manual. But among the other things I'd liked, a set of sample stats for a typical critter is a part of each listing in the Bestiary. If you don't want to have to roll dice for each random encounter, now you can just use the prefab creature straight from the book.

Finally, my daughter decided to take a sabbatical from running her Rules Cyclopedia based OD&D campaign. Her players wanted to keep their characters going, so I agreed to pick up the game. My little skirmishes and pseudo-encounters had given me confidence that I could run Pathfinder, so I converted the characters and started running a Pathfinder campaign.

I took advantage of the d20 ecosystem and pulled "Hollow's Last Hope" from the internet, touched it up, and put it into play. The first session I used a few OD&D mechanics to keep play rolling (my players didn't even notice.)  I looked up the rules I was fuzzy on between games, and the second session went even better, and hewed closer to the rules as written as an extra added bonus.

By the third session it was as easy for me to run the Pathfinder RPG as it is for me to run OD&D. This is as opposed to D&D3.X, which was still a rough struggle for me even after a year and a half. Granted I have the D&D3.X background as I'm coming to Pathfinder, but really that's not the issue. Any more than my Runequest experience affected my ability to run Lejendary Adventures or any of the other skill-based systems. Rules either run well or they don't.

By itself that's good, but what really sells me on a game system is how it affects the players. That's what sold me on Mongoose's Traveller after over 30 years of running "Classic Traveller" (which I still stir into my Mongoose Traveller game.) The players felt more empowered by MGT, they got into the characters and adventures faster and more deeply. Classic Traveller is still great, and it meshes well with MGT, but when I run a science fiction game it's Mongoose's rules that are the core now.

Pathfinder had the same effect on my players relative to OD&D. The non combat skills set now assisted the players, rather than confusing them. There is enough definition to make them feel empowered, but its simple enough they aren't overwhelmed or confused. It's enough, and not too much. That's hard to do. Paizo did it.

A word on the art. Art has a pretty strong effect on me when I'm reading those rule books. I try not to let it happen, but it does. As much as I like the Mongoose Traveller rules, the art puts me off. I end up covering it with my hand so that I can read the rules on many pages. I roundly hated the art in the TSR d20 books. The border art, the character art...I hated it all.

I dislike the Paizo art a whole lot less. It still comes across as kewlio, but it's not oppressively so. The technical execution is definitely a big step above the TSR book art. Hackneyed as the characters and scenes are, I roll my eyes at it a lot less than I do the TSR art. It's decorative, rather than obnoxious. The TSR d20 books would be better as nothing more than black text on white pages. The Paizo books would be diminished by the loss of the art.

In a world where over the top, overly embellished fantasy art has become de rigeur, the Paizo art  is the best of the breed I've found. It's not my cup of tea, but it doesn't make me grit my teeth and cover half the page with my hand as I try to get some rule into my head.

Bottom line, I like Paizo's Pathfinder RPG. A lot. I like it more the more I use it. I feel like the money I've spent on the game (aside from the GM screen*) is well spent. My players are having fun, even the one that doesn't like fantasy games. I can run a smooth game that swims along nicely. The power levels are high compared to D&D3.0, but at least they're well balanced and so far appear pretty well stable. Thumbs up.

I can also recommend the Game Mastery Guide, though it's not essential by any means. I got it strictly as a luxury, and it's been a good read. If I ever feel the need for adding a bit more structure to my cities, I'll probably use the material in it. Most of the material in it is aimed at a newer DM, or one moving from using prepublished modules to buillding their own campaign. Even as a DM with over 35 years of experience I'm enjoying it, but it hasn't really affected my game yet.

Speaking of art, the cover almost put me off buying this book. The guy on the cover looks like he's the Munchkin Your Mother Warned You About. Again, the art's technical execution is excellent, but the subject it trite and overworked. But you know what they say about books and covers.

* Now that I've said that I don't like the GM Screen, I guess I'd better explain it. The construction and materials of the GM screen are top notch, but as a game reference aid it sucks rocks. The Paizo people would do well to go back and look at the contents of the GM screen for "The Classic Dungeons and Dragons Game" box set. It's the most useful GM screen ever made, bar none.