How can someone who has ever played D&D or read a fantasy novel seriously claim "an evil, immortal, uber-wizard with crazy plans to destroy the world and an endless army of minions led by evil lieutenants" is not a cliche? HOW?

After chewing my nails and pulling out my beard scruff, I went ahead and uploaded the project: The Way of the Magus: On Lotus Magic is now for sale at RPGNow.

I'm doing something special with it, though. I'm selling it, yes, but not making any profit from it. Instead, all my would-be profits from this product will be used to fund a Kiva loan.

I learned about the Kiva program from fellow writer and graphic designer Robert N. Lee and jumped on it. I know what it's like to be poor and struggling and having ideas that you don't have the money to make work, and damnit, I know how much just a few bucks helps. And especially what the value of "a few bucks" is elsewhere (and sometimes right here at home in the US).

Feeling really down. Thinking it might be the weather: cold, cloudy, rainy. This after a week of sunshine and grossly humid heat.

Also might be that I've finally finished the layout for The Way of the Magus: On Lotus Magic, a d20 product for 3E, and NOW I'm second-guessing the heck out of myself. Are the DCs right? Are the rules clear? Do they work? Am I going to be mocked mercilessly for it or receive poor reviews? (Nah, I'll probably be completely ignored, as usual.)

I've been thinking this for a while, but playing a wizard in 3.5 is really...boring. Half the time in fights, I'm left wondering what I can do or reduced to firing my crossbow/stabbing with my dagger/running the fuck away, because my spells are not helpful, or I've already used them all up.

I'm 7th level right now, would be 8th but a zombie ate my character last game and Raise Dead eats a level. Even now, there isn't much I can do. Especially when our cleric is our tank: 4 attacks a round when he casts Spiritual weapon.

I've been thinking of multi-classing just so I have other things to do, quite possibly into monk, though fighter is a good possibility as well. I'll need to anyways at some point, because my wizard's Intelligence score caps his spells at 5th level (and, IIRC, five from each level).

This is just not enough to do much with when you're in multiple combats per session and/or game day. Especially when half your spells are defensive spells. It's very much: "use once, stand around looking stupid".

I'm thinking wizards really need magic items in order to function effectively in an adventure. Yet in most D&D games I play in their actual appearance is rare. Would it kill DMs to hand out combat-oriented scrolls and spellbooks, even a potion or two, more than once every few adventures, especially when the game is combat heavy?

I think so far I have 1 Scroll of Invisibility (5 mins), 1 Mask of Winters (still no idea what it does), and 1 Wand of Spider-climb. Oh, and a magic dagger (last resort, ie: fuck, I'm in combat). At 7th level.

I think I'll be enchanting the shit out of my crossbow as soon as I can. Or maybe cheating: I've noticed the cleric has been making multiple cure potions every game, though I don't think he's following the game rules to do it (hasn't lost XP, gold, or spent the necessary time), and the DM hasn't called him on it.

Well, I'm earning myself geek cred by finally watching Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, of which I had never seen an episode (only the campy 90's flick it was based on). Since the kids were gone this weekend, we were able to stay up until ridiculous hours of the night watching and have now almost finished Season 3.

And I'm liking it. I wasn't sure I would. Though there are bits that annoy the piss out of me, Whedon is proving capable enough with storylines and character development that things that the annoying bits end up getting changed up soon enough.

---

I also have a new 3rd Edition PDF product ready to go from Wild Hunt Studio, in "The Way of the Magus" series, titled "On Lotus Magic". It deals with using specially prepared--addictive and poisonous--lotus flowers to enhance a spellcaster's power. A lot of Conan/S&S influence.

It was a pain-in-the-ass to lay out because Adobe was not cooperating at all. No matter how I exported to PDF, Adobe screwed SOMETHING up in the document: failing to display the title font, or turning the decorative font I used in the background into rectangles, and/or completely hosing the transparencies and borders. So I spent two days piecing it together with Acrobat and Photoshop instead. Guh.

However, I wouldn't mind a pair of eyes or two to go over it before I upload it for sale. If you're interested in being such a pair of eyes, let me know.

For Judd's fantasy city-building creative exercise, the humanoids and monsters chosen are: elves, dwarves, half-elves, medusa, dragon, ghouls. Other entries can be found here.

I know that seems rather un-original for choices, but I tried to do something interesting and different with each of them. Note that most of this is old material I've retyped in shorter form, some of it is old material I've finally expanded here and now, some of it is almost entirely new or changed. All is taken from a campaign I developed and ran in the early-to-mid part of this decade, and it is part of the base setting I use in Wild Hunt Studio's 3E products.

Some of the names are placeholders I'm at varying levels of happy with.

---

( ...shaaratlar... )

So the kids are out of school for the summer as of yesterday...and Jen and I stayed up waaaay too late last night. I was up until around 7am. Oops. Then I had a doctor's appointment at 1pm. Gah. Add to this that Rainman had a friend stay the night, and so they were all up ridiculously early. Still feeling a little tired, honestly. Going to have to go to bed early tonight.

Based on a review from Kobold Quarterly, I ordered Secrets of Pact Magic and Villains of Pact Magic from Radiance House, because I like the subject matter, and figured I could plunder it for both our 3.5 game and our Sorcerer game. I also received The Spider God's Bride and Other Tales of Sword and Sorcery from Xoth.net Publishing, which arrived a few days ago.

I have plenty of game-related reading in store for me in the near future.

Also, having a great discussion about Sorcerer over on the Forge (starting here). It's ridiculous how much I had blanked about play in the years since I'd last played in a game, but it is starting to come back, and (as usual for everyone, I swear) I'm still finding out new things about the rules as well.

That conversation made me realize something that made me kick myself. Remember back in the old days when the GM rolled all the dice so that you could concentrate on just playing your character? That's...Sorcerer!

The players just play their characters, that's their only job, and the GM deals with their dice -- not in terms of "rolling everything for you", but the same idea: he keeps track of what you need to roll when and lets you know. That's his job, not judging what dice you should get.

See what I mean? He doesn't give you dice, you don't earn them from him, he handles the dice so you can concentrate on playing, not whoring for bonus dice. That's a huge thing.

I know that I'd been viewing the system for a while as a "earn those dice with narrative chops (the GM decides if your chops earn you dice)", both because that's what the book makes it sound like (having been written pre-Big Theory and struggling to convey ideas that hadn't been formulated yet) and because of my highly Gamist leanings which make me look at the system as something to be utilized to win challenges.

...

...and my sink broke. Blondie went down into the basement to get a towel from the dryer, and shouted upstairs, "The pawice arere!" Which made no sense, so I went to see what was going on, and she says, "Wook! It's weaking!" Water is pouring through the ceiling from the kitchen floor above...Jen's doing the dishes, draining the sink...turns out the drain seal broke.

All fixed now, but bleh. Stinky dishwater everywhere.

(Some Editing Done Post-game)

One annoyance for me in playing D&D is (and nearly always has been) the way damage is based on the weapon used, because it makes certain choices of weapon optimal and leads to only certain weapons being chosen.

I would rather see weapons chosen on a basis of Color than mechanics. So you get things like pikemen and axemen and club-swinging warriors and archers and other such currently sub-optimal choices occurring much more frequently (if not as frequently as the currently optimal and usual choices).

(Why? Because of Zobal and Cushara, ala The Black Abbot of Puthuum. And many more like them. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, go read some CA Smith, you unlearned heathen.)

The best way to solve this issue is to strip weapons of their damage rating and make base damage ratings dependent upon class.

If I were doing this for 3rd Edition, I would handle it this way:

Fighters should do d12
Barbarians, Rangers, and Paladins should do d10
Clerics, Druids, and Rogues should do d8
Wizards, Monks, and Sorcerers should do d6

Note: I'm giving Fighters d12 because they're the mundane base class, so to balance that, they should hit hardest. I'm giving Monks d6 because weapons aren't really their forte, and their hand damage will be what they mostly end up using. But I'm iffy on making d12 the top. It might work better to shift them all down one die step (ie: d12 = d10, d10 = d8, etc), so that fighters have a die to step up to later via feats or so forth.

Note: Yes, this means fighters can pick up a rock or a pointy stick and kill you with it. Good. That's what they're trained to do, in terms of class -- use a variety of weapons to hurt a variety of people. Fighter should equate to "professional warrior" not "run of the mill conscript". Just like a monk is a "professional martial artist" not "a guy who took a Tae Kwon Do class".

There are a number of options to help further differentiate and restrict weapon choices.

Class-favored weapons get the favored damage rating for the class (the one listed above).
Untrained weapons have the untrained damage rating for the class (step one die down).
Exotic weapons simply can't be used without training. (Which, on reflection, is nonsense. You can use them, because you can still swing them about and such, though badly, so they only do...d4 I suppose.)

Note: The only question here would be what to do if d4 were the damage rating for wizards, etc. Untrained weapons do what? 1 hp each strike? Ouch. That's why I'm flopping back and forth on whether to open the bottom category (ala d6 being the lowest favored) or the top category (ala d10 being the highest favored).

Proficiencies and feats can open up new damage ratings for a character, or allow them to use different weapons with their favored damage rating.

Certain (exotic?) weapons may also have minor damage bonuses, or shift the regular damage rating in one direction or another, or function better (or worse) under certain circumstances, modifying the damage in some fashion.

That's the basic thought, but right now I'm off to my weekly game.

I have a new, short addition to The Way of the Magus series -- WHS' 3E-focused supplements on magic and spellcasting -- entitled "On Lotus Magic". The focus of the supplement is on the use by some spellcasters of poisonous, addictive lotus flowers as an aid to magic, how they do so, and their dangers. But I need some playtesters to try it out (or some experienced rule-mongers to at least look it over). I'm especially concerned about the DCs for the saves and creation and such.

(I'd write more, but I hate my frakkin' keyboard!!!)

I've been reading over various information about Carcosa recently, a supplement for retro-clones of OD&D. (If that sounds like gibberish to you, it is. You'll be far more interested in the discussion of morality further on down in this post, this part here is all about gaming.)

I've read the entirety of both the Grognardia review of Carcosa, by James in four parts, and the response to that review, by Geoffrey in three parts. I have to say they both make excellent points, and in some cases I side with James, and in others with Geoffrey.

( ...sorcerers... )

( ...moving on to the morality part... )

I don't know why, but the last few days I have been suffering intermittent bouts of severe dizziness. I'm off the meds the doctors tried because they weren't doing anything good for me (big surprise--hah, typical) and have been for a week, so I don't think it is an issue of withdrawal.

The dizziness is not fun, though; makes it very tough to do anything and especially get any work done. Worse, it suddenly spikes and dips, so I'll be sitting here feeling just a little woozy, and then suddenly, BAM! I'll nearly fall over, as though someone just tweaked all the cilia of my inner ear.

Seriously, WTF?!

I have, however, also been having the most freakingly in-cred-ible dreams lately.

On the artwork front, I've finished two more illos for Duncan. I've been holding off on putting any of them up in my gallery because we're/I'm still tweaking a couple of them, so the current finals for a couple earlier attempts may not be the finals at all (though they aren't far from it).

I'm also concerned I've lost one of the finals, as the low-res final I sent to Duncan does not seem to have a corresponding high-res copy on my drive. PANIC! CHEW NAILS! GIANT WATERING EYES OF VULNERABILITY! Eh. I can recreate the final easily enough from the earlier versions and guidance from the low-res copy, but WTF?! Clearly I had it at one point, and then it...walked off my hard drive?...hid in some electro-magnetic crevice?..or what?

Finally, I found this amusing: I Googled into a copy of Dragon #10 (circa 1977) and therein immediately saw an article entitled D&D Options: Orgies, Inc., which I discovered was all about how to get characters to want to part with their vast adventuring wealth. Ok. The title is shock-value, right?

Nuh! There is an option that reads as follows:

5) Orgies. Fighting Men (excluding Rangers and Paladins), Bards, Thieves, and all Chaotics (excluding Monks). Lusty indulgence in wine, women, and song. Maximum expenditure is 500 GP per level per night (250 GP if recuperating and under 50%). A player may orgy continuously as many days as he has constitution points, but then must rest for as many days as he orgied. (For effects on Psionic Powers, see Appendix II.)

Which is followed at the end of the article by said appendix, the idea of which just makes me giggle:

APPENDIX II:EFFECTS OF AN ORGY ON PSIONIC POWERS

Each 20 GP spent on an orgy will reduce psionic point level by one. Every 100 GP spent will have a 10% cumulative change of eliminating one special ability secretly determined by the referee. The psionic points are regenerated normally, while a special ability is returned with each 100 psionic points regained (or all lost points are re-generated, whichever is least).

EXAMPLE: A 4th Level could spend 2000 GP in one day, gaining 500 experience points and losing 100 psi points and two special abilities. For convenience, start regeneration the next day at 6:00 AM. Assuming only one day was spent orgying, the character must spend the next day resting quietly. With a regeneration rate of 12/hour, the character will be completely recovered psionically in just under nine hours, though his hangover won’t disappear completely until the next morning.

Seriously, right? Plus there's a big, raunchy, 70's high-school notebook-style cartoon illustration of orcs and elves and whatnot going at it in a giant fit of debauchery, including showcasing bared elf boobies.

I daresay you wouldn't find any of that in today's weeniefamily-oriented corporate-gaming culture terrified of offending anyone in the least with even the very idea of imaginary people doing things with their naughty bits.

(But somehow, in comparison, talk of chopping things into bloody bits with sharp objects is A-OK!? One would think sex would be more family-friendly, since sex creates families and violence destroys them...oh you crazy witch-burning Puritans, still influencing our modern culture with your wacky social mores from beyond the grave! Get outta here! No, seriously. Get out.)

How I pine for the lost innocence of yester-year's gamer geek, who was free to look at badly drawn elf boobies and create rules detailing the effects of debauchery on character stats and have both published in an official game magazine.

Oh, for the days of yore when we actually wrote serious, complex, convoluted rules for every possible event that could ever, no matter how remotely plausible or uncommon in play, take place in a game and put them into a monthly subscription format that people paid real money to await like Christmas-in-their-mailbox and read!

I know, I'm sick of D&D. I am. But that's what the group played last night, so that's what I played. Put together a 3.5 edition LN half-orc wizard who is much stronger than he is smart. He wields a heavy crossbow and a dagger. No combat spells (other than defensive ones): mainly utility spells (read magic, mage hand, etc).

In fact, he's much more everything else than he is smart -- it's just the way the dice fell, and I couldn't swing rolls around to make it any different (though I could have made him significantly less smart). So, he has the highest INT he could have.

We're teaching the DM from our Cthulhu game how to play 3E, as the last edition he played was basic D&D, so a chunk of the game was spent with he and I deciding on and rolling up characters (everyone else has another day they game together on, so they came forewarned and prepared). Not really a big deal, we all had fun.

It was an interesting game. We're the Chosen -- marked by fate, literally with a tattoo -- who will save the world from the Dark Lord who has arisen from his imprisonment, raised his mighty generals from death, and assaulted the civilized lands with a massive army of goblinoids.

That part is pretty bog-standard. What's interesting is that I didn't bother giving my guy a personality or background, since it never came up or appeared to matter. The game was entirely combat, and "role-playing" (ie: acting/immersion) was rare to absent.

Our characters were helping to defend the city they were in from siege, cutting down ropes, pushing down ladders, and killing goblin skirmishers who made it over the wall. My wizard used his crossbow and dagger more than his spells: a clever Daze and a wasted Shield spell were the only ones he used all evening. There were also a couple of amusingly failed Spot checks (personally, I think I would have sent the failing players out of the room before revealing the information).

It was also interesting in that I ended up being the rules-lawyer for the group, flipping through the book for information, reminding folks (inc. the DM) what rules to apply where and how to apply them (such as injury and unconsciousness), checking and reporting on spell descriptions, etc.

I'm not sure how the whole "Chosen" thing is going to work out with the necessary threat of dying that makes D&D...well, D&D. Getting whacked kind of makes you non-Chosen, right? Guess we'll see. But at least I'm on the other side of the DM's screen.

Seen the 4th Ed OGL announcement?

"We are making the OGL stronger by better defining it. We’re rolling certain elements that used to be in the d20 license into the OGL, things like community standards and other tangible elements of the d20 license."

Here they go being the content and morality police again. Fuck it. I'm done with D&D.