31 Days of Horror

Tomorrow is the last day of September, which means October is right around the corner. This is my favorite time of the year (mostly because Halloween is my favorite holiday), so I thought I'd do something a little special.

Starting Wednesday, I'll be taking the October Horror Movie Challenge. As the name implies, I'll be watching a different horror movie every day next month, posting a short review of said film here afterwords. You'll probably see me talk about the classics, but expect to see some more obscure & weird films as well.

Also, I'll be posting quasi-reviews for horror-themed games that you can play throughout the month. While I know a few that I'll have to talk about (Arkham Horror, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Last Night on Earth, etc.), I'd love to see some recommendations from you guys as well.

Finally, I'll probably post some advice for running horror-themed sessions & new monsters that you can use to terrorize your players (mostly for Pathfinder, but I might switch things up here and there).

I have a feeling this is going to be a blast. Hopefully, you guys & gals will enjoy it too.

Five Moons RPG: Fund it Now!

If you're familiar with Pathfinder, you're probably familiar with Sean K. Reynolds as well. He's worked on many different gaming products and is known to be a little abrasive at times (especially when it comes to rules arguments). However, he's a pretty good designer and he's worked on a lot of cool things. 

Recently, he launched a kickstarter for a new game that he's working on: The Five Moons Roleplaying Game. On the product's page, Reynolds says the following: 

"Do you spend more time creating a character than actually playing that character? Does the minmaxer in your group hog the spotlight instead of being a team player? Do you think spellcasters are too good compared to fighters and rogues? Does your character's dependence on magic items feel like a "Christmas tree"? It's time to reboot your playing experience. 

With Five Moons RPG, you can play a character that's fun and successful without having to focus on combat math. You can choose skills that make your character well-rounded -- without making you vulnerable. You can wear magic items that are fun and flavorful instead of just being a source of pluses. You can defeat opponents using diplomacy or intimidation, and not just with one all-or-nothing roll.

This is a game that mixes old-school simplicity with the customizability of a modern RPG." 

Although Pathfinder will remain my fantasy game of choice, this could easily find its way into the back-up fantasy game slot with 5th Edition. If you're looking  for a streamlined fantasy game, but 5th Edition isn't wetting your whistle (I'm going to regret saying that), you might want to back Five Moons. It has the possibility of fulfilling that need.

Currently, Five Moons has earned $15,557 of its $25,000 goal. Since the kickstarter just started, I have no doubts it'll actually reach its goal. However, don't let that stop you from supporting this effort and helping Reynolds' bring this to the public.

5e Musings: Aasimar Racial Traits

I've always felt bad for the Aasimar. When compared to their fiendish cousin the Tiefling, the Aasimars always seem to get the short end of the racial stick. I believe they were basically written out of 4th Edition (as far as I'm aware, anyway), and I don't believe they've made an appearance in 5th Edition yet.

With that in mind, I wanted to give these celestial planetouched some love. Using the Tiefling as a guideline, I've created racial traits for a 5th Edition version of the Aasimar. Although I'm still uncertain about certain elements of these traits, I thought I'd post it anyway and let others try it out (and possibly give me some feedback).

AASIMARS

Ability Score Increase: Your Wisdom score increases by 1, and your Charisma score increases by 2.

Age: Aasimars mature at the same rate as humans but live a few years longer.

Alignment: Aasimars might not have an innate tendency towards good, but many of them answer the call. Good or not, a righteous nature inclines many aasimars towards a lawful alignment.

Size: Aasimars are about the same size and build as humans. Your size is Medium.

Speed: Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Darkvision: Thanks to your celestial heritage, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of your as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Heavenly Resistance: You have resistance to radiant damage.

Celestial Legacy: You know the thaumaturgy cantrip. Once you reach 3rd level, you can cast the heavenly rebuke* spell once per day as a 2nd level spell. Once you reach 5th level, you can also cast the daylight spell once per day. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Languages: You can speak, read, and write Common and Celestial.

*Heavenly Rebuke is simply a reskinned Hellish Rebuke, dealing radiant damage instead of fire damage.

Three Replacement Games

When asking someone who doesn't identify as a "gamer" to name a board game, you will most likely hear one of the following answers: Monopoly, Scrabble, & Clue. Although seen as classics, there are numerous games that offer similar experiences and happen to be a lot more enjoyable to play. I feel the following three games are great "replacements" for the classics.

#1. Lords of Vegas

Lords of Vegas completely replaces Monopoly in my mind. Published by Mayfair Games, the players take on the role of powerful developers in Las Vegas. You start with nothing but empty parking lots, but you quickly start building bigger and better casinos along "The Strip", earning money and victory points along the way. However, you better be ready to gamble because those little Mom & Pop shops you've built won't be as profitable later in the game. Are you willing to risk it all to become a Lord of Vegas? The game offers a similar experience to Monopoly, allowing you to claim areas of the board to build different things & manage money. However, I feel Lords of Vegas' rules are much tighter and it really sticks to its theme.

#2. Word on the Street

I almost went with Bananagrams as my Scrabble replacement, but I feel like Word on the Street from Out of the Box Publishing is the better choice. When setting up the game, seventeen letter tiles (all the consonants in the Alphabet besides J, Q, X, and Z) are placed in a strip down the center of the of the game board. On each turn, one player (or team) is presented with a category and that player has thirty seconds to come up with an answer in that category and move the letters in that word towards their side of the street. The first player to claim eight letters wins. The reason why I like Word on the Street better than Scrabble is because I like how you can work in teams, everyone uses the same pool of tiles on the board, and its much quicker. 

#3. Mystery of the Abby

While I still enjoy playing Clue from time to time, I feel like Mystery of the Abbey from Days of Wonder (one of my favorite game publishers by the way) offers a much more enjoyable experience. Mystery of the Abbey is a deduction game where a monk has been murdered in a Medieval French abbey. Players maneuver their way through the Abbey examining clues and questioning each other to find out who is the culprit. While the game possesses similar elements to Clue, Mystery of the Abbey offers a little more depth due to you having to figure out the different traits of the killer (is he fat or skinny? bearded or clean-shaven? Benedictine or Templar?) and the game looks great. If you love deduction games, this is definitely a must buy. 

What about you? What games would you use as replacements for Monopoly, Scrabble, & Clue? Leave your replacements in the comments below. 

5e Musings: Ability Checks & Effort

I've been re-reading Numenera recently, preparing myself to run it at an upcoming convention. While looking through the book, I found myself really thinking about one specific mechanic: effort.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Numenera, I'll elaborate. Each character possesses three stats (Speed, Intellect, & Might) with a pool of points associated with it. Players can choose to apply effort when making a stat check, expending a point from the appropriate pool to reduce the difficulty of the check.

I really like this mechanic. Its relatively simple and represents the growing fatigue of a character rather well. I'd love to see more games utilize similar mechanics. With that in mind, I thought I'd create a version of this rule for 5th Edition. Since requiring players to lower ability scores is not very feasible, I've created two different versions.

Like the Numenera version, this application lowers the DC of the ability check. However, the player expends their character's hit points to do so. Since hit points also represent a character's stamina, I think its works as a resource pool for this. Unfortunately, I haven't decided on the actual cost for apply effort yet. My gut wants me to make the cost 2 for -2 DC, but I might keep that in flux until I discover a nice balance. The second, and easier to implement, application allows the player applying effort to receive advantage on the ability check. However, they will receive disadvantage on the next ability check to represent lingering fatigue.

While I prefer the hit point expenditure of the first application, I like the simplicity of the second one a little more. Maybe I can combine the two, allowing players to spend 2 hit points to receive advantage on the check (cutting out the additional math). I might give all three versions a test run at the table, see which one I prefer. Feel free to do the same and leave constructive criticism in the comments below.

A Saturday Night at the Hideaway

Sorry for the past few days of silence. I had all my wisdom teeth removed Monday and I've spent the last few days relaxing, eating A LOT of yogurt, and sleeping. I had planned to post this on Monday or Wednesday, but that obviously didn't happen. Since I'm feeling better today, I thought I'd go ahead and do it today.

Now, on with the show.

On a regular basis, my friends and I make the incredibly short trek (well, for most of us anyway) to our local FLGS (Halflings Hideaway Games). Usually, this is due to me running the next session of one of my campaigns. However, due to the collapse of my recent Pathfinder game, the past few Saturdays have mostly consisted of my group playing random board or card games into the wee hours of the night. This time was no different.

Blurry Cellphone Images for the Win!

When we arrived, one of the store's owners was playing Cover Your Assets with her child and two other customers (one of which happened to share the same name as me. Some confusion ensued). Once they were finished, we quickly gathered a few people and played a game of 7 Wonders. Although I have a few friends who are absolutely in love with this game, I had never played it before. While it took a few rounds to really get the hang of it, 7 Wonders was a lot of fun and possessed a great amount of depth. No wonder it won the Spiel des Jahres in 2011.

Afterwords, my group decided to make the drive to Pizza Hut to get some late lunch. Since we had a fun time playing with him and wanted to repay him for teaching us how to play 7 Wonders, we brought the other Cody along. While eating eating some pizza and cheesesticks (except Scott, who likes to be the odd man out and get pasta for some reason. Weirdo), we chatted about comic book movies and gaming. You know, as you do. 

David & Scott look excited to be building train routes!

Once we returned to the shop, we cracked out Other Cody's copy of Ticket to Ride. Neither David or Scott had played it before, so I was excited to introduce them to joy of the building trains across North America (its more interesting than it sounds). Due to the streamlined nature of the rules, both of them seemed to grasp it rather fast and had fun. That's two more people converted to the Ticket to Ride fandom. 

After taking a quick break to player a few shorter games (like Kittens in a Blender and Sushi Go!), we finished off the night with one final game of 7 Wonders. Unlike the first game, we decided to use some of the expansions. Now that we all knew the rules, the game moved at a much quicker pace. 

Lee pointing out another player's leader.

All in all, it was a pretty fun night. 

The Literary Origins of Science Fiction in Fantasy Settings

I guess I should explain why there isn't a normal post today. Well, I decided to take the post I scheduled for today and move it back to October (I'll explain why later). Because of that, I really don't have anything to talk about and don't feel like slapping something together.

Thankfully, I found something that I'd like to share with you guys. Yesterday, Owen K.C. Stephens posted this little piece on Paizo's blog. Inspired by the release of the Iron Gods Adventure Path (which blends science fiction tropes with their fantasy setting of Golarion), the blog post traces the literary routes of this particular brand of genre blending.

While its a short piece, I found it to be an interesting read. I've always liked blending genres in my games, and I love celebrating the literary routes of our hobby. If you have some spare time, give it a quick read. 

5e Musings: Skill Specializations

Like previous editions, 5e possesses a list of skills that players can choose to help further define their character's specific training and areas of expertise. The list is rather short, only possessing 18 broad skills with multiple applications. While I personally prefer shorter skill lists like this, I understand why others would want a more detailed one.

With that in mind, I started to toy with ways to create a nice middle ground between these two camps. After some serious brainstorming, a light bulb popped on inside my head: why not create a way for characters to specialize within certain areas of their skills?

Keeping with the spirit of 5e, the rules for this should remain relatively simple. During character creation, players may choose to expend one of their skill proficiencies to gain a specialization in another skill they are proficient with. The specialization is created by the player from scratch, with the Dungeon Master possessing the ability to veto any specialization she feels doesn't fit the nature of the game's setting.

When making an ability check that deals with on of the character's specializations, they receive advantage for that roll. My reasoning for this is that a specialization represents you possessing an advantage with a certain aspect of a skill. Thankfully, 5e has the advantage/disadvantage mechanic and it feels like a natural fit. If you'd prefer another kind of benefit, you could reward a flat +2 bonus or double the character's proficiency bonus. Either would probably work fine.

Here's an example of how this house rule would work. Let's say you're trying to create an elf ranger who has sharp hearing. You decide to expend one of your skill proficiencies to give him "Hearing" as a specialization associated with Perception. While he can make Wisdom (Perception) checks as normal, he is especially adept at hearing things and receives advantage when doing so.

I feel like this'll be an interesting compromise, allowing those who want more detail to have that while letting those who prefer the more broader skill list to ignore it. Yes, those who choose to select specializations will get advantage, but only in specific situations. The next time I run 5e, I'll probably be implementing this rule and seeing how it works. Feel free to use it as well.

Happy Labor Day!

What game should you play on Labor Day? One where you
herd sheep, chop down wood, & build settlements of course!

Labor Day is a strange holiday. Held on the first Monday of September in the United States, Labor Day is supposed to be a celebration of the American labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of workers. However, most use it as an opportunity to have one last hoorah before the school year really kicks into full gear and the summer season ends.

With that in mind, I'd like to wish everyone a happy Labor Day. Hopefully you can get together with some friends, play some games, cook some great BBQ, and maybe indulge in some alcohol (responsibly, of course). 

My personal celebration pretty much consisted of me traveling down to my FLGS, playing some Catan & Betrayal at House on the Hill, and finishing off the day with some delicious ribs and a glass of hard cider. Definitely a good day in my book. 

Have fun and be safe, everyone! See you all on Wednesday for something a little more normal.