Ran a "rusty" DCC funnel last night

So last night our old school group got together for a game,  We hadn't played in a LONG time.  I myself haven't GMd in over a year.  It was a bit of a fiasco. 

When I originally posted about playing I had mentioned that I needed to do some prep to run the funnel.  A few of my buddies were pretty cool about "Nah you'll do fine don't worry too much". 

I made a pile of Bad gming mistakes.

I still don't quite understand the saves and how they are reflected so I made it up.
I used the "read aloud text", which I'll never be doing again.  As soon as you read it, everyone looses interest.  The problem was, I was rusty, and honest I thought the writing in the adventure was very evocative.

I totally forgot about initiative, like literally forgot about it.
I did manage to kill off a few players.

I didn't railroad anyone however. 

Everyone did have a lot of fun though! Kurt's girlfriend showed up and drew the whole time we were playing, posted below are some of her pics with descriptions.

The adventure we played was the free rules for DCC rpg from free rpg day.  There's a section in the adventure where there's this big barbarian statue and it blasts hot flames at the party when they try and leave the room. 

(Pictured below is Mike Wazowski as a barbarian statue).

I'm not sure if I read it wrong, or if I just ran it correctly.  It made sense that it would blast players trying to leave the door they came thru, but all the rest of the doors? not sure.

All of the players were allowed to have individual attack rolls.  Any checks were done with their first player in the marching order.  Which went up down, left to right on the 4 page sheets I gave them.

However with the monsters, well in the case of the barbarian statue I just rolled once to hit and once for damage.  The case in point was Josh's characters were leaving, and the barbarian shot the flame at them.  There were four characters and one blast.  It didn't make sense in my head at the time to roll 4 times for the monster's one shot.  And in the book it just said it does one attack.  However there were 4 PCs leaving the room.  Maybe I should have ran it as "monster attacks one player".  In the way I did it, I killed him off in the first room, I did allow him a save, but he failed.  The way I looked at it is

" the monster turns and blasts a stream of fire at four PCs trying to leave,  the players fail a reflex save and take damage, it's one blast headed at all of them.  Not four blasts".

Whatever the case I cocked it up. 

About a month ago I had re-read the DCC rules and the adventure and I felt like I had a firm grasp of it.  Honestly I think I'm just getting older.  Give me rules light basic DND and I'm good to go.  Even the adventure, while written very well I still felt like my hands were tied a little bit.  I've talked about this before.

I must say everyone enjoyed DCC character creation, they really understood the made up way of doing zocci dice.  (using control dice).

So here's my brief non biased review of the Free RPG Day DCC rules.

The system and the free rules are great, I could see playing a ton of adventures with it.
The adventures contained within the book are wonderfully written. 
If you are into old school, and understand 3rd ed mechanics and gonzo awesome, DCC is a wonderful system. 

It's just not for me, or at least not for my players.

I haven't decided if we will run the next adventure in the book or not.

After we were done, I had the players roll up whitebox characters for the next game.  I am on the fence as to wether to write a hexcrawl my own world or run Isle of dread.  I do have a good idea for a starting point.  As usual we used my "plausible backgrounds table", which is always good for a laugh.

I'm rambling... Here's the pics that Amanda drew.  So awesome. 

At one point someone attempted to slide under the statue and get to a door.  They rolled a 1, so I made up that they cracked their head on the balls of the monster.  

My wife decided to keep these weird ceremonial bone masks and put them on her characters.

The ceiling and been broken so one player decided to jump on this weird alien crystal ball and jump down with it.  One of the other players had a large piece of fabric as trade goods.  This was the result. 

Prep for tuesday DCC game

At some point this weekend, I need to start prepping for our first DCC game on Tuesday night.  I'm beyond excited.

My wife grabbed me a bunch of washable markers, and a large plastic grid sheet from the dollar store.  I intend to draw out the map on the table as we go.  I need to find these things, they are somewhere in our house..... ugh.

I'll be using d20s for any of the monsters (specifically the ones in that one room!).  As it's easy for them to say "I hit the orange one!".  Also at one point I may use other random dice.  In the case of lots of monsters, then it's "K i'm attacking the blue d6, or red d8".

I have to find my 8" tall plastic Mike Wazowski.  There's a section of the dungeon with a large head that shoots crossbow bolts.  That should be a riot

Character sheets are printed and ready to go.

I also need to re-read thru the module to see if there are any other nifty set pieces I can use.

Should be fun! 

It's been almost one year

It's been almost one year since my first FREE RPG DAY.  I picked up the quick start rules for DCC, and my wife grabbed a copy of "Vagina's Are Magic".  Which she was delighted about.  I also managed to grab a copy of the 1e DMG. 

I've been slowly planning on running Isle of Dread for an upcoming session of the "old school group", however we had a change of plans.  I messaged the group about how a "Funnel" works in DCC and they are stoked.  So that's the new plan.  Last Tuesday of June (which coincidences with my birthday week as well). 

I am still going to keep working on ideas for Isle of Dread and flesh it out.  A few brief thoughts on it.

Inspiration:  Well obviously "Lost World", but also the movies "The Mummy" and of course some Indiana Jones.  I'm going to throw in a great ape for good measure.  I'm thinking he might be a problematic issue for the Phanatlons, or alternatively the Rakasta have been proving their metal against him for years.  As well Pirates of the Caribbean.  I sort of like the idea of random undead milling about on the Island. 

Modules:  I think I'm going to include dwellers of the forbidden city on one of the near by Islands.  I am also thinking of sticking "B4 The Lost City" somewhere on the island.  As that might be fun.  I just have to draw a line with the original inhabitants of the Island, and the people who live in the lost city.

For the DCC adventure, I'm going to use a piece of vinyl my wife bought me from the dollarstore, I can use erasable markers on it.  I intend to run the war wizards funnel from the starter rules.  For monsters I'm going to use different coloured dice.  I also want to find some mini's for the statues in one room, and some very big head for another room.  I have a mike wazowski toy, that should do the trick for that, and get some laughs.

For Free RPG Day this year, I intend to grab a copy of "Eldritch Cock" and possibly Goodman games "fifth edition fantasy" module if I can.  I'm hoping to also go searching thru their treasure trove of old school TSR stuff.  See if I can't get my hands on a 1e monster manual, or PHB.  I remember seeing a copy of "Horror On The Hill".

As usual, my A.D.D. gets in the way, and I change my mind about what adventure/system i'm going to run 10 times.  I'm hoping to slowly prep the mini campaign of Isle of dread, etc for when and if we get up and running again.  I'll have to go and grab a notebook. 

It's your turn Mike! - An interview with Mike Evans from DIY RPG Productions

1. How did you get your start roleplaying? What system did you use?

I had been a fan of the RPG genre in video games since NES days and playing Zelda and Final Fantasy, but didn’t’ know there was such a thing as tabletop role-playing until I was in my teens.  I started role-playing in 1995 when I was 15. 

The first system I was exposed to was AD&D and loved it, but the game fizzled out after two sessions and I started playing in a Shadowrun 2e game.  About six months into playing, I decided to start running my own Shadowrun game.

After about a month of doing that, I was playing and running AD&D games as well. 

2. How and when did you discover the OSR?

I moved from AD&D to 3.x and played that for about a decade.  I really got burnt out by the bloat of 3.x/Pathfinder and all the munchkin bullshit that came along with it.  I hungered for quick, deadly, and rules-lite.  I started researching and delving into blogs about old school role-playing.  I started fiddling with stuff here and there, but nothing solid.

It wasn’t until 2008 that I REALLY got into the OSR and it was Lamentations of the Flame Princess by James Raggi and Vornheim by Zak Smith that it really just clicked for me.  The sheer amount of content that the OSR community generates is fucking mind-boggling and inspiring!  I was hooked.

3.  Tell me about DIY RPG Productions how did it start?

DIY RPG Productions really just started as an homage of the “damn the man” punk mentality that I hold dear. 

My wife drew what I now use as my logo.  At the time, I had no aspirations of starting a publishing company, it was just a rallying cry I wanted to put on my blog.  I was so fucking tired of the ceaseless wars about which edition is better, who’s dick is bigger, and all that BS- so my symbol is there to say, “Fuck it!  Do what makes you happy and what allows YOU to have fun.  Don’t give a shit what others say or think about your fun time.”

Eventually I started writing Hubris for Dungeon Crawl Classics and Jez Gordon suggested I stop just doing the blog thing and publish the setting.  That’s when I started pondering if I wanted to submit it to another publisher or do it myself.  I realized very quickly I wanted to do a publishing company that would allow myself and others to publish on their terms and unapologetically.  

4.  Tell me about "Death is the New Pink"

When I was pondering my next project, I was really wanting to run a Mad Max/Fallout-style game, but nothing out there really vibed with me.  I like silly, I like stupid, I like quick and dirty rules.  So I stated kinda mulling what to do.  Several things were going on at that time: I was reading Tank Girl and thought it would be fun and hilarious to run a game that was of that style, I was playing Borderlands a bunch with my friends, and I was watching shit like Dredd and listening to a bunch of punk rock (I love punk rock- pretty much my go-to music).  All this shit was mulling around in my head.  I had read Chris McDowall’s Into the Odd rules about six months previous and really loved it; they are quick, easy, and fun!  All that shit merged together and lit a fire under my ass. 

Death is the New Pink is a gonzo beer and pretzel game that is great for one shots and good for long term play.  It’s doesn’t take itself seriously and players take the roll of Meat Bags going out into the wastes or into the Catacombs (a huge dungeon beneath the last remaining city, Scratchtown), to kill Nefarios (bad guys), find Doodads (high tech gadgets), and get drunk before dying a wonderfully epic death!

You can get Death is the new pink here.  

5.  What are you currently playing?

Currently I am playtesting Death is the New Pink: Going Medieval on Yo’ Ass, which is a fantasy version of Death is the New Pink.  It’s inspired by the above mentioned stuff and I took inspiration from Earthdawn, Warhammer, and Adventure Time.

I’m running my group through the Forever Dungeon, which is inspired by an episode of Adventure Time where there was a ceaseless dungeon on a train that just kept going in circles.   I’ve run two sessions thus far and it’s been a bunch of fun!

6. If you could campaign in any world which would it be?

I guess it would be self-serving to say Death is the New Pink or Hubris, but I’ll do that anyways.  I wrote those two settings because they are the type of things that interest me. 

Not cranking away on myself, I’d happily campaign in Feral by Jez Gordon (I love TMNT and think Jez is nailing the feel), Trey Causey’s Azurth (who doesn’t want to go to the Candy Isles?!), go through Operation Unfathomable by Jason Sholtis, flounce through Hot Springs by Jacob Hurst, or a horror game in Demon City by Zak Smith.  Those are the campaign settings that have really caught my eye recently (or for awhile in the case of Feral and Project Unfathomable).

If I had to choose official D&D stuff- I’d be Dark Sun or Ravenloft all the way.

7.  Tell me about Hubris?

Hubris is definitely my labor of love.  I started writing a horrific gonzo setting and, as I mentioned before, Jez Gordon really egged me on to publish it.  So I figured DCC would be perfect fit for the rules!  DCC is so wacky and crazed and heavy metal, I was excited about it!

I took inspiration from stuff like Conan the Barbarian and Lovecraft, but I also am heavily influenced by John Carpenter’s The Thing, Evil Dead 1&2, Army of Darkness, and heavy metal bands like Slayer, Anthrax, Marilyn Manson, TOOL, and Pantera.

I threw in a healthy dose of the weird/gonzo like Alice in Wonderland, Tetsuo Iron Man, and other shit and figured out my world.

When writing Hubris, I knew I wanted it to be different.  Too many RPG settings have that “fight against the darkness and be heroes and find the light!” and that shit doesn’t interest me too much.  I like street level superheroes and street level adventures (which is why I like Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser so much).  I wanted to emphasize that hopeless battle and that even IF you do stop the darkness, people aren’t going to give a shit.  They’re too busy worrying about their own asses. 

I also knew I didn’t want it to be filled with fluff.  Too many settings try to be special unique snowflake books filled with histories and plots and characters and none of it really impacts a table’s campaign or even comes into play.  I wanted the book to be useful to a GM.  When developing the world, I created d100 charts for random encounters and interesting locations that can be used on the fly. 

I wanted the book to be hackable for those who had no interest in playing in a bleak world like Hubris, but wanted a nasty swamp territory for their world.

Thus far the people seem to really dig Hubris. 

There will be more released for Hubris in the future!

Editors note:  Mike one an award for this awesome book! 2017 Ennie for best electronic book. 

8. Who is your favourite artist and or author?

My favorite artist is Mike Mignola.  I love his style, it’s so evocative. 

RPG artist wise- I love Zak Smith’s art (both his RPG art and non-RPG art), Matthew Adams, Kelvin Green, Jeremy Duncan, David Lewis Johnson, Gennifer Bone, and Jeffery Call.  They are all fantastic artists! 

My favorite local artist is Cordell Cordaro.  I love his use of colors and style. 

Here’s his website. https://cordellcordaro.com/

Favorite authors…?  I love Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Lewis Carroll, J.K. Rowling, and Wiliam Gibson.

9. What is one of your favorite adventures other than something that you’ve released (or worked on)?

Vornheim by Zak Smith, Scenic Dunnsmouth by Zzarchov, Death Frost Doom by James Raggi, and Sailors Under the Starless Sea by Harley Stroh are my favorite adventures I’ve run for my players.  They are fun, unique, and easy to use.

editors note: It's amazing how many people say that they really dig Starless Sea, I must get it. 

10. When you get a chance to play a character, what type of PC do you like to play?

I tend to play warriors, rogues, or rangers.  Not huge fans of wizards and clerics.  I fucking hate bards.

Editors note:  Apparently no one in the osr community likes fucking bards.

11. What are you most excited about in the RPG scene currently?

Hands down, it’s the DIY community.  The ideas and collaborations that come out of it are truly inspiring and awesome. 

12.  Would you rather be a dwarf or a gnome?

Dwarf.  I can be a grumpy “get off my lawn” kinda dude at times- oh and I love good craft beer- so it makes sense. 

13.  What are your plans DIY RPG Productions for this year?

2017 has been a good year for me as a budding publication company.  I released two of my own books: Death is the New Pink and The Starrunner Kit: The Black Hole Edition.  I signed David Lewis Johnson to my label and we released Gathox.  And Hubris won a Silver ENnie for Best Electronic Book.

2018 is going to be busier!  For my own projects, I’ll be releasing Barbarians of the Ruined Earth, Death is the New Pink: Going Medieval on Yo’ Ass, High Noon: A Gritty White Box Western, Orcs: A High Octane Adventure for Hubris, and am working with Kelvin Green on the Forever Dungeon module for DitNP: GMoYA, and a DitNP comic book.

I will be launching a kickstarter for Zak Smith’s awesome Demon City RPG, Donn Stroud is writing a Hubris module, Kane Cathain is writing a DitNP module, Dan Domme is writing a module for DCC called The Temple of Laserface and the Kung Fu Masters of the 4^th Dimension, Zzarchov has written a DCC module called The Ghoul Prince, and David Lewis Johnson is working on a Gathox adventure!

Thank fuck for coffee and booze!

editors note:  Holy Cthulhu your a busy dude!  and ahmen to the coffee and booze. 

14.  Tell me about Gathox Vertical Slum?

GathoxVertical Slum is written and illustrated by David Lewis Johnson.  David created a gonzo city setting that rests atop an inter-dimensional world-hopping godling that travels for inscrutable reasons.  David was inspired by Kowloon Walled City and created some awesome classes and tables that ooze flavor. 

One of the shining points of Gathox is the gangland mechanics.  It’s really easy to create gangs, fight for control of territories.

Here’s the page description in David Lewis Johnson’s words:

“Welcome to Gathox Vertical Slum, a far out, gonzo science fantasy campaign setting for Swords & Wizardry White Box Edition and other classic tabletop role playing games.

Aliens, mutants, spellslingers, and hardened criminals struggle for dominance in a lawless city built upon the back of a wandering, world-hopping godling. Inside this tome you’ll find:

* A fully mapped and fleshed out Vertical Slum, stuffed to the gills with greedy factions, hook-laden NPCs, and seedy locations.

* A new gangland system for running domain-level games at level 1.

* 43 fully illustrated strange and inimical monsters to spring on unsuspecting players.

* New classes, skills, ability checks, hirelings, and gear for players to work their will across the mean streets of the Great Spire.

* A vertical dungeon introductory adventure to test the skills and resourcefulness of new and seasoned players alike.

* Over a hundred lavish interior illustrations by D.L. Johnson.

* Five pieces of interconnected chapter fiction contributed by Josh Wagner.”

 Link- http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/220062/Gathox-Vertical-Slum

15.  Chips or cheezies?

Rum. 

16. Where can we find you on the web?

Several places, actually!

My blog, Wrathofzombie’s Blog- https://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/

DIY RPG Productions Store- http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/9599/DIY-RPG-Productions

DIY RPG Productions G+ Community Page- https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/110590430291755615037

Editors note:  Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me Mike! I appreciate it!  
If you liked this interview, I've posted a bunch on my blog as well as 2 compilations of them on drivethru (For free) 

Old School Interviews V1
Old School Interviews V2

#freerpgdayleads to some awesome loot and ideas!

Which I think is the point right? Well that and getting people into games that haven't played before.  I will start off my tale with this, I noticed "Vagina's Are Magic" pictures cropping up on saturday morning, and prior to that I had heard about it. My first thought was "there is no way there will be any copies in Winnipeg".  My second thought was "my wife is going to love this".

After a brief discussion with +Dyson Logos I learned that stores participating in the day get a case of stuff, and it seems to be all the same stuff going out all over the world.  That awesome fact combined with the fact that OSR is nonexistent in this city, meant there was a real chance that I could get a copy.

Saturday afternoon we headed out to a Comic book collectable store first, as I knew they had some old school D&D books for sale, and I thought I might be able to pick up a module or two for not a ton of money.  Turns out the store sold all their DnD stuff to the next store we were going to!  Which was Game Knight in Winnipeg. (Very cool store BTW, and it was first the time I checked it out, must go back).

So we wandered in, my wife grabbed a copy of VAM, and I grabbed the DCC starter rules (which I'm quite excited about as well).  I asked a dude if they had an "old school DnD" and he pointed me to a stack of orange spined books.  (F**k yah).

I managed to pick up a copy of the 1e DMG (now I own 3 DMGs! more on that later).

*note: this maybe a bit of a long post, but I am making up for being a bit quiet latetly.

I should note that the store was running pathfinder. And If I knew about DCC before hand, and If I had a "in" with the place I totally would have ran DCC.  I do plan to talk to the good folks at the store.

TANGENT ABOUT BRICKS & MORTAR 

Alright, I'll admit it.  I'm just as bad as the next guy when it comes to shopping on amazon, in big box stores.  I hate myself for it, and I try not to do it as much as I can.  For almost all the rpg stuff I've purchased its either been online, or at a local gaming store.  For other things I've went to big box stores.  Come to think of it, I think I only bought one thing on amazon, and it was a hard to find thing.  Whenever I get around to buying some more new 5e stuff I'll be going to a FLGS (specifically gameknight as its a cool store), rather than saving the $3 and buying it on amazon.  Now I am aware that I'm a publisher, and I've been cutting out the local store and selling directly online.  I am however going to change that, when I have something nice and decent sized, well packaged to try and sell them.  From a marketing standpoint (I've thought about this for awhile).  The only way that I sell an OSR type product in this city is to have a set of rules that come with the product.  And of course be priced in a reasonable range.  For a few reasons.  1.  If someone is going to buy something they will buy a brand they are familiar with (or something compatible with that brand) especially when they have limited funds to do so.  and 2.  The city I live in is notoriously cheap.  haha.  Anyways, that's that tangent.  The gist of which is I need to get something completed to put out there.  And then maybe get a few other titles together for down the road perhaps.  Or write for that audience.  Or get a OSR thing happening.

THOUGHTS ON VAM
I've had a bit of a cursory read of the book, and it's pretty cool.  The layout is awesome, the spells are cool, and the art is NSFW.  (but also pretty awesome).  The whole point of grabbing this book was for one reason (okay two, I wanted to read it as well).  To get my wife to read an rpg thing, and take ownership of an aspect of the game.

The fact that it states on the back of the book that it's for female characters (not females in general, dudes can use the book, they just got to play a female character).

What I'm hoping is, she reads the book and get's excited about the spells.

Then she can go ahead and create a character with them, and light whatever adventure I plan on fire.

THOUGHTS ON DMGS

Okay, the first edition DMG is awesome.  It is a bit of a mess layout wise, and how some thing flow into completely "what the heck?" things. And in some spots it might be a bit "ranty".  (large swell of gygax fans crucifying me in their minds).  This book has some really great advice, regardless of what version of the game you are running (or what version/clone osr game you are playing).  It has some awesome fun tables.  I cannot wait (I repeat) cannot wait to use the table for mixing potions!  I was telling this kid in the store about it.

It was rather funny, after I grabbed the DMG and our loot, I went up to the counter to pay.  There was this young dude working the till and when he saw the book he had this moment of AWE.  "WOW! I didn't know we even had this!!! WOW, just WOW!".  I proceeded to show him a few of the tables (including the potion one) and then explain OSR.  He had started with D&D 3.5 and was now firmly entrenched in pathfinder.

Anyways, of the 3 DMGs I own (wow I own three), this is one of my favourites!  The fifth edition DMG is also very awesome, and handy.  I have to admit, the 2nd edition one is about my least favourite and least helpful.  Although there are some nuggets of cool in it.

DCC RULES & ADVENTURE IDEAS 

While I have no idea if using VAM and DCC together will blow up the game (I honestly don't care, I intend to do it), if my wife, or someone else creates a character with vam they can try it out.  The DCC rules came with 2 adventures!  And the basic rules.  Which I've sort of read, atleast the beta rules which are online right here.  And here's a quickstart guide.

One thing that's not yet straightened out for me (and I can't find anywhere.. help?)
Where does a player find their initial reflex, will and fortitude.

Anyhow, if someone could let me know about that.  With the 2 adventures that came with the startup rules (one of which is a funnel) and the trolls of mistwood that I grabbed awhile ago. I have more than enough DCC entertainment for awhile.  When I first read DCC I didn't quite get it.  I think mostly because I never really played 3 on.  That and the funky dice threw me for a loop.  (they still do).  But reading the starter rules again with fresh eyes, it makes sense to me.   As well I think my group will really like it.  Because it's just about having fun in the dungeon really.  We tend to drink a lot and act like goof balls when play rpgs.  Plus they are all metal heads.

DCC seems just crazy enough for me, and it looks like it will be fairly easy to DM (as far as checks, combat, etc are concerned).  I just wonder how many times I'll be looking up tables.  I might have to dog ear them.

So whenever we want a one shot that could become a few more adventures, I'm totally prepared.  (Once I read the rules of course).

PS I need to take an RPG shelfie.   It's grown by leaps and bounds in the last year!  I am honestly enjoying collecting and reading some of these long forgotten books.