Soundtrack Saturday: Diablo II

The Diablo II video game soundtrack, by Matt Uelman is pretty much a staple at my gaming table. Why? Because, unlike most movie soundtracks, you can play this music in the background without a problem. Most movie soundtracks are cued for dramatic purposes, but this soundtrack meant for easy listening while playing a video game. There's few ups and down, sudden bursts of music, or anything like that. Which is perfect to play at the gaming table for your dungeon or horror-themed RPG. 

Just listen to it. 

The only downside is that the physical copy of this soundtrack can be hard to find now, given its popularity. You can find it on iTunes. And there's a 15 year anniversary version available that contains must from the original Diablo video game. 

Oddly enough, the Diablo 3 soundtrack isn't as good. I'm not sure why. Maybe they were trying too hard to surpass the second game. It just doesn't have the same appeal. 

Anyway, here's a few selections from Diablo 2.

In Retrospect: The Rod of Seven Parts

[Obligatory Spoiler Alert]

As I've said before, I miss the days of boxed sets. I liked buying a $30-35 adventure or campaign setting boxed set, opening it up, and looking at all the goodies.

The Rod of Seven Parts, by Skip William is just one of those boxed sets. It was part of the Tomes series of adventures that focused on a powerful artifact or location. The Return to the Tome of Horrors, and The Axe of the Dwarvish Lords. These adventures are meant for high level (13+) characters.

You get lots of goodies in this boxed set:
Book I: "Initiation to Power" (96 pages)
Book II: "The War Against Chaos" (64 pages)
Book III: "Might and Menace" (32 pages)
Book IV: "Monsters"
6 two-sided reference cards
6 full-color poster maps showing locations and 1 inch grid battlemats for key tactical encounters.

(My only annoyance is really with the maps, and its something TSR did for years. The posters are unwieldy and difficult to use without showing players locations you don't want them to see).

The goal of the adventure is pretty self-evident: the adventurers must find and assemble the Rod of Seven Parts, and prevent the forces of evil from also collecting the pieces. It's not an easy quest by any means, they may not even realize they have parts of the Rod in their possession for sometime. Furthermore, the heroes end up getting entangled in the ancient war of law against chaos, the Wind Dukes of Aaqa versus the Queen of Chaos and her spyder-fiend minions.

Spyder-fiends entering via a chaos gate

The adventure itself expands upon the artifact's history and powers.  In Book IV presents stats on the Aaqa called the Vaati, the androgynous agents of law and their minions. The Queen of Chaos and her favored general Miska the Wolf-Spider get write-ups, along with the various spyder-fiends. Even if you don't use The Rod of Seven Parts as written, you can take these creatures and use them in your own game.
Wind Dukes of

Once even one piece is gathered, a character becomes influenced by it. As more pieces are gathered, the bearer slowly becomes Lawful Neutral to the extreme, but they can get lots of cool powers. The downside, of course, is that there's a chance that the Rod will break and scatter its pieces.  See, even though the Rod of Seven Parts is an artifact of Law, it's been tainted by Chaos.

The unpredictability of the rod is why the adventure itself is fairly non-linear. Skip Williams has design The Rod of Seven Parts in a more matrix-style play. Book I "Initiation to Power" features a handful introductory adventures, but they don't have to be run in order. It all depends on the goals of the party. You get a classic dungeon crawl into a naga's lair, a battle over a footbridge, an encounter at an Inn, and so on. The last adventure is really cool: a raid on a cloud giant's castle!

Book II: "The War Against Chaos" is where the adventure becomes more linear. At that point, the PCs have assembled enough pieces of the rod that the almost cannot help but partake in the War in Chaos, ending with the assault on the Queen of Chaos's citadel itself.

Book III: "Might and Menace" features side-treks and optional encounters for the DM to set the PCs back on track, usually by the intervention of a Wind Duke. There's even rules for a new card game, Dragonfire, which can be played with normal playing cards.

Overall, the material is laid out fairly well. A DM wanting to run this adventure (which is actually a campaign) has the daunting task of reading all of this material. There are some key things that might get missed if a DM isn't observant, such as the method to restore the character's world back to order after chaos as altered it.

The Rod of Seven Parts assembled!

Another caveat: a DM needs to understand this isn't just an adventure, its an entire campaign in its own right. Its one grand quest that can take many gaming sessions to complete. Some groups might not want that kind of a long slog.

 (In fact, I myself, have run parts of the first book, but the PCs strayed away once they realized they were dealing with the Rod--yeah, I know, crazy. But the characters were of mostly of good alignment and the didn't like the idea of becoming agents of law. They also didn't want to spend a lot of session completing the campaign--they had other goals in mind).

A DM also needs to be prepared to enforce the artifact's side-effects. The Rod of Seven Parts itself can really take away a character's free will. A paladin PC can lose his paladinhood because the Rod enforces law over good.

But if you're players like epic adventures, this one has it in spades: lots of awesome locals, evil creatures to find, and the ever popular quest for a lost artifact. And lots of goodies for the DM.

Presentation: 8 out of 10
Creativity: 9 out of 10 (lots of cool adventuring sites and creatures)
Utility: 7 out of 10 (the poster maps lowered this score because they are hard to use)

Get this if... You want your characters to go on an epic quest in the name of Law, or if you want to learn more about the background of the Rod of Seven Parts, or for locals and monsters you want for your own game.

Don't get this if... You not interested in running a long term, high level, campaign or your feel your players aren't interesting in basically become agents of absolute law.

A couple of last remarks...
1. The novel, The Rod of Seven Parts, by Douglas Niles, was actually quite decent. But you don't need the novel to understand the module and vice versa.

2. There's a part in adventure where chaos starts altering the character's world. Mountains become deserts. Seas become plains, and so on. The odd thing: nobody else besides the PCs understands that things are different, and worse. Famine and inclement weather or more inclement.

I've wanted to run sort of a montage for the players, describing these changes, as their characters travel across their world stumbling upon deserts where there shouldn't be deserts, and swamps there should be mountains. And somehow, "Kashmir", by Led Zeppelin, seems to fit this weird apocalyptic motif.

VPA-2: Make New Friends

The picture itself is from "The Wonder Years."

In the last installment, I said "be a friend." In this one, I say "make new friends." You might think it sounds like contradictory advice. But it isn't, because even the best of friends can grate on each other's nerves.

Even more so, sometimes you might find yourself in a gaming rut. Maybe all of your roleplaying buddies started playing D&D 4e and you'd rather play Pathfinder. Or maybe everybody is kind of tired of you beating them at your favorite board game.

The solution: make new friends. I'm not suggesting ditching your old gaming group. But going out and discovering new game can help you appreciate what you've got at home...

...or shed light that you might be gaming with a bunch of morons and its time to move on.

Victoria Praeparatio Amat (that's Latin for "Victory Loves Preparation") is a series that explores what makes a gaming session great, and what makes them suck. This series focuses on players of RPGs, yet players of wargames and boardgames can benefit from this advice, too. Furthermore, while there's lots of advice for Game Masters out there, VPA addresses both GMs and Players. 

You might be trapped in a "gamer ghetto" and not even know it. You're miserable but you don't know why. You might be a victim of one of the Five Geek Social Fallacies, namely "Friendship Before All." You'll come to one lousy game after another because these people are your friends. Well, that's your choice.

Here's a true story:

One day a fellow GM came to me and said: "I really wish you were back in my group. You're the only one who interacted with the adventure and actually tried to figure things out. As for my players now, its like pulling teeth to get them to take action. And then they wonder why the bad guys always get the upper hand."

He was right. He had a great story going along, but none of the players were really interested in actually playing--they just, for the most part, goofed around. And, worse, every time my character did something to advance the adventure, the other players would get upset and complain how it wasn't fair. So I left the group.

I told the GM to find new players.

Three years later--
"I really wish you were back in my group..."

Gah! Find new players! Make new friends!

To hell with that kind of loyalty. Friends don't let friends attend bad games. Friends don't inflict bad games on other friends.

If you're going to be a socially mature gamer (and person, for that matter) it's psychologically healthy to go out and meet new people. Why? Because you become like the six people you hang out with the most. You pick up their bad habits and quirks because you want to fit in, even if subconsciously.

And we all know that gamers can have some pretty bad habits. There's truth in the stereotype of the terribly out-of-shape gamer with terrible body odor who gulps down a 2-liter bottle of diabetic-inducing soda who couldn't get a girlfriend even if he was rich.

But he's a nice guy, right?

Go ahead and ask your girlfriend (or almost any woman for that matter), why she doesn't like going to your favorite local gaming store. Meanwhile, I'll be laughing at Big Bang Theory when Penny encounters Captain Sweatpants at the comic shop.

If you do fit into this stereotype and don't like it, then change and meet new people. And don't do it just because I said so. Do it for yourself.

On the other hand, there's plenty of gamers out there who break the stereotype...

Still, whenever I read or hear somebody say, "I've been with the same group of gamers for the last 20 years," my first thought is: that's great. My second thought, I hope they've gamed with other people.

It's because I've known three gamers who'd gaming together for over twenty years, every week. Even though their friends had moved on long, long ago.

This is why we have conventions. This is why there's now social networking sites. There's lot of other stuff going on out there, new people to meet, new opportunities to enjoy and stay young at heart.

Don't risk getting stuck in a "gamer ghetto." Make new friends.

Mini-Monday: Works in Progress

Sometimes I feel like I've got too many "nerd-irons" in the fire, especially when it comes to painting miniatures. I have the tendency to start mulitple projects, get overwhelmed, and then take forever to finish them. Recently, "real world" stuff has taken priority over painting, but I've still made some progress toward my goal of 52 Weeks 52 Miniatures for this year.

It really comes down to focus. Munnin's Brush is focusing on finishing a miniature-a-day for the month of May. Mike over at Mikeopolis can churn out painted armies like nobody's business, it seems.

Speaking of Mike, he gave in a really useful tip for rebasing. Use soap and water.

See those Hundred Years' War foot knights up there? I bought them a few years ago and they were put on individual 20mm square bases. I'd always wanted to rebase them for Neil Thomas's Ancient and Medieval Wargaming but was too afriad of damaging the figures--it appeared that they'd been glued to the base by some sort of hard cement.

It turns out I was wrong. I soaked the bases for about an hour in water with a dash of dish soap--just enough water to over the tops of the bases. Afterward, the miniatures came right off with little trouble. It turns out they'd been glued on with Coarse Pumice Gel Medium (see picture below).

Now I just need to flock the bases and they'll be ready to go.

While I'd like to claim that I painted those figures, I didn't. I don't know if I could focus my energies enough to do that great of a paint job. I don't know if I have the time.

Instead, I've settled with the Army Painter Method for painting foot knights.

These, like the ones before, come from Black Tree Design. They're going to be generic foot knights for almost any army in the Hundred Years' War. I primed them metallic and am painting on a variety of colors.

At this point I just want to get them done. 

Just like this Tiefling from the old Chainmail rules from the early days of D&D 3e.

She's almost done--just needs a few more highlights, details, and perhaps some ink shading. I had every intention of finishing her by today. But again, I got unfocused. When she's done, she might become some sort of half-demonic adversary in my Expeditions in the Northlands campaign.

Finally, here's a couple more shots of the painted foot knights:

Soundtrack Saturday: The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

The United States is filled with beautiful landscapes. Everytime I travel and see the mountains of the West or the forests of the East, The Last of the Mohicans motion picture soundtrack comes to mind. Yesterday I passed through the mountains of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, and once again I heard the music by Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman.

I don't think there's any other movie soundtrack that brings to mind most of epic wilderness adventure. Epic--there's plenty of those. Adventure--of course. But epic wilderness adventure? If it surpasses The Last the Mohicans, I'd love to hear it.

Yes, the soundtrack is that good.

It features prominently in my Expeditions in the Northlands Campaign, which is all about epic wilderness adventure.

The samples below should give you a good idea of what I'm talking about.

I'd like to post more, but I've noticed confusion between the original soundtrack and the one released by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in 2000--they are not the same. Get the original. 

In Retrospect: The Tome of Magic, AD&D 2e

Looking back, I remember trying to get more use out of this book, with emphasis on try. There's all kinds of neat stuff in the Tome of Magic, published in 1991, but I think it serves (at least for me) that supplements beyond the core books of an RPG stand a good chance that they won't get utilized.

The introduction states that the book is for both Dungeon Masters and Players, but in reality a DM has to approve of the material herein. What you get is fairly eclectic, which should come as no surprise since the book has six designers (and that's David Cook, not Monte).

So what have we got?

Wild Mages and Wild Magic, Elemental Wizards, new spheres of influence for priests, new spells for both priests and wizards, and new magic items. All in all, there's some good stuff here, and other stuff that I'd rather not bother with.

Like Wild Mages, for example. I like the idea of magic being wild and crazy with a chance of random effect. I really do, its part of magic's unpredictable nature.

Yet the Wild Mage character class is rather cumbersome and even harmful to other characters They're like specialist wizards, gaining and learning and extra spell slot for Wild Magic spells. But every time they cast a spell they have roll 1d20, consult a chart, and see if they're spell functions higher or lower its normal spell level. There's also these boldfaced results on the chart, which indicate a Wild Surge. The player or DM then rolls 1d100 on a chart that's basically a Wand of Wonder on steroids.

The results vary wildly, from the annoying ("Caster smells like a skunk"), to the incredibly annoying ("Cause Fear" within 60' Radius"--including other PCs). Fortunately, most results effect either the caster or the target. Still...

I like the Elemental Wizard. They basically specialize in either Air, Earth, Water, and Fire. Once per day, they can cast a given spell in their element 1d4 levels higher. Some may find this a bit over powered. But they can't cast spells from their opposing element and have a -25% to learning non-elemental spells.  It's a fairly straightforward class.

Priests aren't left out. But I've never been fond of quest spells and some of the new spheres of influence (That's old school for "Domains") Numbers and Thought are highly philosophical. The War sphere got nerfed because its primarily meant for Battlesystem--TSR's rules of mass combat.

As for spells, well, there's plenty of new spells to choose from for your AD&D 2e game. My only problem with them is that quite few have limited uses. Conjure Holy Symbol enables a priest to summon a holy symbol, which really would only come in handy if a priest has been capture and stripped of his holy symbol. Hornung's Guess is really only useful to count the number of enemies in an army on the battlefield. There's spells here that could the the ancestors to the metamagic feats in D&D 3e.

When it comes to these spells, your mileage my vary. Back in the day I tried tantalizing my players with them, but they didn't bite.

The same goes for the magic items found in the Tomb of Magic. You've got the Wand of Corridors, which only functions on the Elemental Plane of Earth or the Quasi Elemental Plane of Minerals. Some are meant specifically for Battlesystem. Others are just bad jokes from some body's campaign--like the Ring of Bureaucratic Wizardry, which is a cursed item that forces a wizard to fill out forms every time he casts a spell (yeah, har har, funny funny). Many seem just overly complicated, such as the Ring of Fortitude, which gives the wearer a random bonus to an ability score, but only for the purposes of spell resolution. For example, getting a constitution boost doesn't grant extra hit points, but raises the system shock and resurrection percentages.

Is that Johnny Cash?

In retrospect, Tome of Magic is an okay book. There's lots of interesting ideas here, but many can't be used "out of the box." Many of the spells and magic items suggest use for a high magic campaign like, say, The Forgotten Realms. As the name suggests, there is nothing here for non-spellcasters. Yet even priests get short shrift in my opinion.  

The artwork inside is decent, but I've recognized many of it from other sources. (But I do miss the days when RPG artwork looked at least somewhat "realistic," instead of this cartoonish/anime/spikey-bits/steampunk/Final Fantasy stuff often featured post-D&D 3e.)

Presentation: 7 out of 10

Creativity: 7 out of 10

Utility: 4 out of 10 (I honestly didn't get much use out of the book--and I've had it for over 20 years!)

Get this if... you want a bunch of ideas to mine for your games or if you want to complete your AD&D 2e collection. But I don't recommend using much of this stuff "out of the box." In fact, its kinda hard to do given many of the items and spells have limited uses.

Don't get this if... you really don't need another RPG book full of spells, magic items, and classes. Aside from the Wild Mage and the Elemental Wizard, not much else stands out. 

VPA-1: Be a Friend

Being a friend and gaming with friends...
(from Big Bang Theory)

Wil Wheaton says, "Don't be a dick."

I say, "Be a friend."

At first glance, both seem similar, when it comes down to it, "Don't be a dick" is passive. After all, if you're not going to be jerk at the gaming session, what are you going to be? Simple. Be a friend

Because the game really isn't about you--It's about the players around you. And you know what? They'd rather be playing with friends, too. Are you prepared to be a friend?

Victoria Praeparatio Amat (that's Latin for "Victory Loves Preparation") is a new series from d20 Dark Ages that explores what makes a gaming session great, and what makes them suck. This series focuses on players of RPGs, yet players of wargames and boardgames can benefit from this advice, too. Furthermore, while there's lots of advice for Game Masters out there, VPA addresses both GMs and Players. 

The whole "game with friends" has been passed around for years. I first read it way back in Dragon #216. Monte Cook himself  has said something like don't game with people you wouldn't invite to dinner. 

It's a good rule of thumb. My only problem with it is that I've had dinner with gamers who seem okay but end up being jerks at the tabletop.

When I say "be a friend," I mean approaching the game with the idea of helping the other players have a good time. Therefore, you'll have a great session, because everybody enjoyed themselves. Remember what I said last week: there are no mediocre sessions, either a session is great or it sucked for somebody.

"Be a friend" means going into a gaming session...
--establishing relationships with other members of the group.
--asking: "what can I contribute?" instead of "what can I get for myself?"
--making a great time happen, rather than passively letting the GM provide the entertainment.
--having the learned the rules so you can help the GM and newbies so the game can run smoothly.
--giving up a certain sense of entitlement for you and your character.
--helping everybody "win."

All of this, of course, begins with a certain mindset before the session starts. If you go into a session thinking only of what you and your character can get out of it, you'll likely have a bad time. Your desires will conflict with the other players. Even worse, if you have a great time, the other players will feel a certain kind of resentment.

Being a friend happens before, during, and after a session.

Being a friend can happen even in tournament play (though I admit, it can be difficult). 

All of this sounds like common sense, right? Yet I think we've all experienced so-called friends suddenly become jerks at the gaming table (and we've probably been that jerk at one time or another). It's the guy who plays a chaotic evil thief who tries to steal from the rest of the group. It's player who deliberately plays an outlier character with no meaningful skills. It's the player who shows up late, or not at all, and doesn't notify anybody. Its the mooch. Its the chronic rules lawyer. Its the cheater.

So "don't be a dick..." 

...be a friend.

 Being a jerk... see the difference?
(from Big Bang Theory)