Spes Magna Games

Since Quid Novi? subscribers get the one-third discount, we’re looking to increase our subscriber base, and we’re asking for our subscribers to help.

Get one other person to subscribe to Quid Novi? before April 1, 2010, and you and that new subscriber will both get the new, improved Rewarding Roleplaying for free. Have your recruit email me with your email address in the body of the message to let me know who’s responsible for bringing another reader into the fold. I’ll personally ensure you both get the new, improved Rewarding Roleplaying.

What’s more, the top five subscriber recruiters will get free copies of the new, improved Fencing & Firearms, to include the one-shot adventure.

Finally, the number one subscriber recruiter will get all of the above, plus a copy of The Case of the Purloined Princess.

To clarify: If you recruit more new subscribers than everyone else who recruits new subscribers, you get one each of everything listed above for free. If your numbers two through five in the recruiting of new subscribers, you get Fencing & Firearms, the accompanying one-shot adventure, and Rewarding Roleplaying. Plus, every new subscriber who lets me know he or she was recruited by an old subscriber gets the for-sale version of Rewarding Roleplaying as a special welcome.

The contest started once this post was made, and it runs until midnight, March 31, 2010, Central Standard Time.

Well, OwlCon has come and gone for 2010. My son Giant Boy and I were at the con bright and early Saturday morning in time to play a Truth & Justice event featuring pre-gen characters that were mash-ups of comic book heroes. I played the Black Vision, a Luke Cage-Vision combo. Luke Cage was an ex-con who intervened during an assassination attempt against the King of Wakanda while he was in New York City. Cage was mortally injured. To save his life, the king’s scientists transferred Cage’s consciousness into a synthezoid body. Giant Boy played the Scarlet Spider, who gained his powers when bitten by a Gypsy witch who had been driven mad after being bitten by a radioactive spider.

The other players ran Captain Thor (Captain American and Thor), the Atomic Manhunter (the Atom and Martian Manhunter), Bat Lantern (Batman and Green Lantern), and Wolfeye (Wolverine and Hawkeye). Our mission was to save the multiverse from the machinations of the Leader (Reed Richard and the Leader mashup) and Dread Clea (Dormammu and Clea mash-up, which really isn’t a mash-up because Clea did assume the mantle of Dormammu at least once).

The event wasn’t anything terribly elaborate. It was basically three super-fights strong together with some narrative transitions. We did battle with various mash-up villains, such as the Abominaut (Abomination-Juggernaut) and Gorilla Polaris (Gorilla Grodd and Doctor Polaris). It was an amusing four hours. Truth & Justice uses the PDQ system, a narrativist RPG with a lot of flexibility and room for creative use of character abilities. I’d read a bit about the PDQ system before hitting the con. You can get a free taste by visiting Atomic Sock Monkey‘s freebies area. I’m not sure I’d want to GM the system, but I wouldn’t mind being a player using it every now and then. It has a lot of potential.

The Black Vision had two highpoints during the game. The first took place when he was mind-controlled by the Ace of Hearts. Hearts ordered the Black Vision to fight his fellow heroes. The GM explained that I could attempt to break free from Hearts’s control, but I opted to roll with the setback for at least one round after Captain Thor nailed Hearts with his mystic uru shield.

I looked Cap’s player in the eye and announced, “Mama said knock you out!”

The Black Vision nailed Captain Thor pretty good, and I got some bonus Action Points for opting to let the villain keep the upper hand.

At the end of the game, it became necessary to insert something mystical and something high-tech into the Sphere of Doom created by the villains to remake reality in their own image. Captain Thor tossed in his mystic uru shield. Atomic Manhunter, our resident super-scientist, explained that the high-tech component needed to be extremely high-tech. So, the Black Vision hurled himself into the Sphere of Doom, thus destroying the villains’ plan and saving the multiverse.

Not bad for a day’s work.

After Truth & Justice, I ran an event featuring The Mad Monk’s Revenge. Giant Boy and two friends, Eric and Angela, were part of the event along with three folks I’d never met before. I repeated the event Sunday afternoon for six other players, including the fellow who ran Wolfeye in the Truth & Justice event. Both playtests went well. It looks like my basic set up is pretty solid. I identified a few gaps in some NPCs’ motivations that I need to plug. I also noted a few areas where I need to offer some DMing advice. The adventure has a definite goal, but it’s structure is pretty flexible in terms of how the players go about accomplishing that goal. Consequently, the two groups took different approaches (in a few instances, very different approaches). I think this is a definite strength of the module, but it also makes writing it more difficult. It’s impossible to prepare for every possibility even in a scenario that is a hardcore railroad in terms of plot structure. The looser the plot, the more complicated laying out the plot becomes.

I also used both events for more playtesting of Fencing & Firearms and Rewarding Roleplaying‘s Action Point system. In both cases, the rules seemed to work well. All in all, I’m pleased by the way these products have shaped up. Best of all, everyone who played in the events seemed to enjoy themselves, and isn’t that what gaming is really all about?

While I was running my second event, Giant Boy ventured off on his own to play in a Draw! event. Draw! is a wild west RPG that uses poker chips and decks of playing cards for action resolution. I’m not real clear on how this works since I wasn’t there to watch, but Giant Boy had fun playing the game. I gave him some handy westernisms to help him out. He managed to work “vittles” and “varmints” and “slap leather” into his in-character dialogue.

Next time I get to do the con scene, I’m going to have to keep an eye out for Draw!. I’ve also liked the western genre, and I had loads of fun with the original Boot Hill RPG back in the day.

OwlCon was a good time. Now, it’s back to work to get caught up on my writing. Busy, busy. I’ll type at you again in a few days.

It’s starting to look like March will see the release of two for-sale products. The editing process for the next iteration of Fencing & Firearms is almost complete. Thanks to playtesting and feedback from readers, a number of areas were fixed, improved, clarified, and/or added. The quick list of changes include these:

* Fixed some errors in Table of Contents. Due to incorrectly formatted headers in a few places, the ToC was incomplete. This will also fix the bookmarks in the PDF.

* Cleaned up terminology to be more internally consistent and consistent with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. For example, I replaced references to Tumble with Acrobatics.

* Changed Expanded BAB rules to be more in line with conventions of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Now the rules work more like Combat Expertise, Deadly Aim, and Power Attack.

* Added and clarified some feats. This was especially important since I didn’t hit every feat in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game that had attack of opportunity effects. For example, I rewrote Combat Casting and Disruptive.

* Cleaned up the language for modified feats. For example, feats previously listed as General that were available as fighter bonus feats have been redesignated as Combat feats.

* Clarified the rules for 10-minute rest mechanic.

* Reverted size modifiers to combat maneuvers to comply with standard rules of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. In retrospect, I really didn’t see a reason to complicate things by changing what really is a pretty solid rule. I also fixed some of the combat maneuver verbiage and math in the text and examples.

* Modified firearms rules, removing accurancy and penetration as unnecessary complications. Standardized reload times. Adjusted damage, prices, and range increments. Changed critical threat ranges for matchlocks and flintlocks.

* Added rules for grenades, for crafting munitions and gunpowder, and for special alchemical gunpowder types.

* Added skill use options.

* Clarified nonlethal damage, et cetera, to better comply with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

All in all, F&F is a much more solid product now. The basic goals and framework remain the same, but the cleaner engine ought to run with fewer hiccups.

In addition to finishing up The Mad Monk’s Revenge (I’m still not sold on that name.), the editing process for Rewarding Roleplaying is a go. F&F and RR are going to be bundled into a single product along with a fully-realized Five-Room One-Shot adventure written to highlight the Pathfinder-compatibility of the products. We’re looking at putting the entire bundle on sale in March for $7.50 US (or $5.00 US for Quid Novi? subscribers).