Lighter Reading - What I Do on Wednesdays

I'm reading for my next couple of reviews. I like to print stuff out for reading. Today, I fired off The Lake of Abominations -- Hex 17.23 by Third Kingdom Games (Todd Leback) to the printer. Since I have Mr. Leback's Into the Wild coming in the mail, I was going to use this as a model for a hexcrawling module. 

Yeah... I don't know about a hexcrawl module, either. 

Anyway, this funny thing keeps happening. My printer insists that blue is a grey scale color. 

I should have printed in color, because the whole thing is packed with color maps. But in grey scale, my printer keeps coloring the black lines of the art in blue. I couldn't do that if I tried. I actually like it a lot.  

Wacky technology. 

Anyway, back to the module idea. I'd like to revamp both my Kobold's Folly and Compass Rose Inn mini-setting maps into full blown modules. It will probably take months.

I also have a third idea for a map of Miledown, another setting placed in the middle of my Peninsula of Plenty map. Miledown is a small town in a valley. I already have the cover art ready to go. It's just a matter of writing... you know... a description, a story and an adventure.

Little things.  

Let's hope this comes out
less phallic looking.

Of course, since I am going to need maps, I am updating the Peninsula map to a standard 6-mile hex map. When I started out, I was just blue skying and didn't have the scales right. This will fix that. I have an area 150 hexes by 60 hexes planned. About the size of Italy, which the campaign is based on.

One upside to this is I now have a name for the Human Capital: "Rhoom". I wanted run with a counter-factual idea that Remus instead of Romulus survived the foundation of the city. 

Guess what? That doesn't work because Rome was named before Remus and Romulus and "Romulus" means "a man of Rome". Crazy ancient mythology. 

I decided to just steal from Shakespeare: 

That her wide walls encompassed but one man?

Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,

In Shakespeare's time, "room" and "Rome" were pronounced differently and rhymed, making the pun complete. So with a little poetic license the capital is now called "Rhoom".  

I started with the Lake Potamus area and moved out from there. This lake is squeezed between forests, mountains and savanna lands. It's named for the Hippos that live in the region. 

This detail allows me to have chains of forts and fortified houses on the plains. They are fortified against the wildlife and not actual invaders. It's kind of handy because it keeps the Rhoom Empire and Elven Dwarven Combine in a cold war in the area. It's hard to travel the savanna without encountering beasts. 

This is the valley of Miledown.  

It's less thought out right now, but coming along nicely. Since it is a hidden vale, they don't have many visitors. It doesn't look unusual to visitors but it does have several mysteries. 

That's Not New - Episode 008 - And... Ah... This Episode Was Recorded Before a uh... a Live Studio Ah... Audience

In this episode, I talk about Gemstone IV, RoleMaster, Computers, Beginnings, Endings, Changes and Connections. 

The Tek - April 2021

In April, my DriveThruRPG downloads were up. Probably because they couldn't go down. 

AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana: 8
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting: 2
Kobold's Folly: 3
Swashbuckler Character Class for D&D and AD&D: 2
These Old Games Presents: The Hex Pack: 3
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners: 2

Webstats were also up. 

Google Analytics Pageviews - 1,032
Google Analytics Sessions - 591
Pageviews per Session - 1.75 

All and all I am pleased. I need to work on updating both my products on DriveThruRPG and rethinking my next couple of series. I am afraid I won't be able to hit all of them this year. 

Review - The Winds of Mars by H. M. Hoover

Title: The Winds of Mars
Author: H. M. Hoover
Year: 1995
Pages: 192* pages
Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Mary Helen Hoover was born in 1935, in Ohio. Her family home's basement that was dug back when Thomas Jefferson was president. From that humble beginning, she hopped from Los Angeles to New York City to finally land in Virginia. From 1973 to 1995, she wrote 16 published books. 

Mary Helen Hoover moves closer to home in this novel. As the name says, it takes place on Mars. Additionally, the story seems to set itself in a reasonable close time period to now. Say 200-400 years in the future. 

Annalyn Court is the daughter of the President of Mars, a man she has never met. She has been raised to take her appointed place in the elite upper class of Martian citizens. The question is, does she want that? 

The answer is not very clear. Starting with Court's earliest memories and progressing into young womanhood, she carves a path against her planned fate. Adventure and horror await and she clashes those who would make the average Martian subservient to the immortal upper class. 

This is one of my least favorite of Hoover books. First, it delves into YA horror and shock. Second, it has slightly dated itself through no fault of Hoover's. The fact is, Mars is now well known territory and her outdated information is rather glaring. There are fights, gunfire and bombings which is atypical for Hoover but handled very well when compared to most YA books about war. People die. Important people die. It's rough for a Young Adult title but nothing compared to the crap that is put out today. 

All of this running against some very child-like scenarios and characters. One of the standout characters in the book has a punny name: Hector Protector. He is the droid bodyguard of Annalyn Court. Almost three decades ago, such things were probably innovative; but now "Hector Protect Her" doesn't stand the test of time. It seems like a very fairytale addition to a book about a young woman coming of age and into her own on her own. It doesn't make sense. 

I happen to love the character Hector, but my daughter declares that he sucked. If only he had his own book because he is conceptually interesting but misplaced in a story about a woman growing up. It cuts the ending off at the knees. 

It is a quick and enjoyable read. Books by H. M. Hoover on AbeBooks.

Review - Invasion of Theed Boxed Set

Happy Star Wars Day! 

Title: Invasion of Theed Boxed Set
Design: Bill Slavicsek
Year: 2000
Pages: 2 32 page booklets, and 16 page character sheets folio.
Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Theed is the capital of Naboo and this adventure runs contemporaneously with the end of the film, The Phantom Menace. The party of up to 8 players fights to help the Queen free Naboo from the threat of the Sith Lord.

This set is a modification of the rules that appear in Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars: Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook. These "simplifed" rules cut out everything not necessary to run the adventure. It is heavily combat orientated, but other non-combat situations are addressed in a limited fashion. Characters star at level one and have the potential to level up several times during play. 

This set features 2 game booklets, one for the rules and second is the module. Players are given gloriously detailed 2 page character sheets which also include activity prompts and a rule guide focused on their particular character. There are 2 maps plus 2 sheets of tokens. 0

The adaption of the 200+ page d20 ruleset from the core book to simplified adventure game is more than adequate. As a fighting system, it is rock solid. Many items are pre calculated, such as experience. This takes a load off the Gamemaster and places it on the characters. Everything runs extremely smoothly. 

Being an introductory set, there will be situations the players could ask about that is not included. A season GM would have immediate answers but a newbie would invoke "That not possible" for these few situations. 

Being run alongside the events of The Phantom Menace, the players will notice that they don't really meet too many of the characters in the film and definitely don't interact with them in any meaningful way. It seems their insertion into the game was driven by IP consultants trying to sandwich in all of the content from the movie. 

If you look at the cover of the boxed set, you can see that the artists were free of this concept. Not a single major character is featured there. But the created characters fit wonderfully with the theme of the film, like a second batch of heroes in this titanic battle. The premade characters sheets include a very minimal backstory, usually only to account for their abilities such as being a soldier or Jedi. They can be made into whatever the player has in mind for their character. 

Lost on the back page of one of the booklets is a one page character sheet. This is a nice addition as it allows someone to roll a completely new character for the set. 

There are only two flaws to this set. First, major film characters are shoehorned into the end of the adventure in a way that can never be canon breaking, which will give the players a sense of being rooked in victory. 

The other flaw is only apparent if you have the Core rules. Scale is reduced to "squares" in this boxed which convert to a standard 2 meters in the core rules. So, when switching from this set to the main rules and back, invariably new players will screw up ranges by a factor of two. This isn't too bad, in my opinion. The Core set lists unrealistically low ranges for virtually every weapon. The idea that an energy rifle only covers "40 meters" or "20 squares" is somewhat ludicus. Forget the scale and just have fun. No one will notice. 

 

All and all this is a great introduction to Star Wars and d20. 

Sadly this set is out of print and not available in pdf.