Skyrim the RPG?

Like many people I suspect, I spent most of Thanksgiving playing the new Elder Scrolls computer game Skyrim. The Elder Scrolls has always had an interesting skill based system that I thought might make a good paper and pencil RPG. This time they have boiled the stats and skills down to the mere essentials. Only three stats Magicka, Health, and Stamina. Eighteen skills broken down into three categories
Combat: Smithing, Heavy Armor, Block, Two handed, One Handed, and Archery
Stealth: Light Armor, Sneak, Lock picking, Pickpocket, Speech, and Alchemy
Magic: Illusion, Conjuration, Destruction, Restoration, Alteration, and Enchanting

I think 5 schools of magic much more wieldy than D&D traditional eight, and most of them seem to be well balanced in power. I need to remap the spells into a more d20 format.

I like that each of the paths has its own route for making things. I think the alchemy part is the one system I enjoy most although its a lot of book keeping for a pen and paper game, perhaps I just need to pass out reagent points as treasure. Enchanting runs a close second, although I'd just give out charge soul gems as treasure rather than having to charge them. I have yet to put together the evil little axe I used in Morrowind to conquer the world, it gave the damage it did back as health for me, the Gaulador Black blade seems similar but it does only 10 health per hit, and is constantly running out of charges. Smithing is O.K. but maybe not as powerful as the other two (or perhaps I haven't got the knack yet). I do wonder who makes all the pots and pans, clothing, wooden bowls, cups ecetera since all you can make is armor, perhaps I'll go back to 3rd editions craft. I will NOT be using 4th edition's "yeah you can make that, just mark of the gold you would spend to buy it" system.

Rather than use a check every time you use a skill (due bad experiences with Runequest) I think I'll go with using experience to buy skill levels. Skill checks will be done by rolling a d20 and adding you skill to beat a difficulty (not sure how the computer does it). I have to reserve judgement on the skill perks system until I understand it better. Playing my traditional battle mage wearing heavy armor and swinging a one handed axe, while throwing spells with the other I ended up with my perks scattered all over the map, including a few throw into enchanting and smithing. A more optimal character would be focused in a few skills and just buy stuff from NPCs, but who'd make the Fortify two handed while having 13% weakness to frost, and 4% barter increase potions then (Strangely enough the NPC seem to pay extra for the extra properties, and I'm more than happy to sell it to them 'cause I sure as heck ain't drinking it). Well I think the big computer is done rebooting, so its back to the land of Nords for me again. Unfortunately, either the graphics card or the sound system is a bit unstable cranking out the horse power needed for Skyrim, so its save early, save often and reboot as necessary. Fortunately I have played many such games before and am patient, I figure its just the computer saying "O.K. its time for a break to do other things".

Every man a once and future King

Finally made it through King Arthur the truth behind the legend  by Rodney Castlon. I have had an interest in the real King Arthur since writing my high school research paper on it, using a different book by Geoffry Ashe for most of the facts. Chock full of interesting facts and tid-bits. Chapter one boils the hard evidence down to two mentions in the Easter Annals.  Chapter Two is a very thorough going over of the literature we do have, including stone markers, genealogies of Welsh and Irish Kings, and poetry,  as well as books. An 1120 manuscript is the source  for both The Easter Annals and Nennius's Historica Brittonum. Although Nennius wrote his part in 830 A.D it is proposed  that the Easter Annals were added later, about 960-970 A.D.  Nennius draws from several earlier documents and has been somewhat discredited in that he already including some of the more mythological elements in his descriptions of Arthurs life. Gildas's Book of Complaints written about 540 AD does mention the battle of Badon, Arthur's victory over the Saxons, but fails to mention Arthur. Even more troubling is that Arthur  may actually be a nickname (Welsh for bear = arth). Gildas does mention one of his contemporary kings as "the driver of the chariot of the bears stronghold". The Anglo-Saxon chronicle written by the other side is most notable for a lack of  much expansion during the 50 years of the supposed time of the battle of Badon. It of course fails to mention Arthur or even the battle of Badon itself. All of this may seem like skimpy evidence, but given my experiences with histories of this time period I am inclinded to give Arthur the benefit of the doubt (After reading an interesting book on the battle of Caane, you know the famous battle battle where Hannibal whipped the Romans, which points out the main record we have of it is a history written 80 years after fact by the grandson of one of the generals, I am inclined to examine ancient history with a lax view to the documentation). The rest of the book dispenses with trying to further verify the existence of Arthur and launches into a description of what we do know about Sixth century Briton. She-who-must-be-obeyed has promised a battle map of one of the hill forts proposed as a location for Camelot complete with hall (know from the post hole pattern). Unfortunately since Camel is Briton for windy, there are a lot of river Camels in Cornwall and Wales. There are also a great many kingdoms, apparently the Britons didn't have mayors, sheriffs, or village elders, just kings. Gildas points out that if the Briton kings had spent less time fighting each other, they might have done a better job of beating the Angles and Saxons. One of my favorite parts of the book is its description of Tintagel, part Castle, part Christian Church, and part pagan ritual site. I especially like the carved foot print in the rock, that book speculates was used by ancient Kings to swear allegiance to the land. There is also the tunnel carved in the rock leading nowhere, a grave that is purported to change size periodically, and numerous other oddities. All in all an interesting dive into the historic Arthur. The back has a bibliography of numerous other books on the historical Arthur,  apparently British scholars have been at this subject a while.

Zatoichi versus Yojimbo

***Warning Spoiler***
Re-watching one of my favorite samurai flicks "Zatoichi versus Yojimbo". I keep thinking the'res got to be a D&D adventure in there somewhere. Zatoichi after a harrowing escape in the rain decides to head for a peaceful village of the beaten path, which he remembers for the smell of plum blossoms, the babbling brook, and the cool breeze. When you see the dead body floating in the brook that Zatoichi doesn't see being blind, you know things aren't going to go well for Zatoichi (they never do). Turns out some crumb bums are stealing gold by clipping coins at the Shoguns mint, and hiding it here in this out of the way village. Unfortunately it seems that every villain within a hundred miles has heard the rumors. Plot is driven by strong characters: Zatoichi the blind swordsman who keeps trying to do good, but usually ends up cutting everyone to sushi. Yojimbo who pretends to be a drunken mercenary, but is actually a secret agent for the Shogun, and then there's the third guy who's sent by the Shogun to see whats taking Yojimbo so long, he's got his own secret army and a two shot pistol for when he doesn't feel like slicing people in half. The main plot problem I encounter for samurai flicks is of course rather than working as a team like a good D&D adventuring party the main characters end up squaring off to see who's the better swordsman. Zatochi and Yojimbo both draw blood when fighting but avoid killing each other. Unfortunately Yojimbo kills pistol guy so no sequel for him.
"Incident at Blood Pass" is another of my favorites with a somewhat similar plot, but this time the gold is just passing through and no blind swordsman, only the drunken samurai. How about you? Ever figure out how to convert a samuria flick into an adventure? How'd it work out.

P.S. One thing I like about samuria flicks not many reoccurring villians. Once the two guys draw swords, usually only one of them is walking away.

Mega Dungeon Format

Comments on the Megadungeon format question posed by a fellow blogger at Grognardia a few weeks ago:

My favorite megadungeon format the "Ruins of Undermoutain" boxed set:


Large poster map for the dungeon

Book of special keyed encounters

Book of random role-up encounters to fill in the rest

It's pretty close to all you need.



My least favorite megadungeon format "Return to Undermountain"

Everything in one book so you have to flip back and forth between the maps and the encounters

Map arted up to make them unreadable and CROPPED!?

No non set piece encounters, as matter of fact everything off the linear railroad plot blocked off with rock falls to ensure no "sandboxing" ever



As my friend refers to this module "a little tiny crappy piece of Ruins Undermountain"

The second edition large boxed sets remain some of my most favorite adventures the "Ruins of Myth Dranor" is a close second to "Ruins of Undermountain" although it is not a classic megadungeon. The one thing Myth Dranor adds to the repertiore is the mini-dungeons on cards which gives the DM some flexibility, however I recommend against printing the key on the back as this leads to a lot of card flipping. 

Ultima Underworld 2

So I have lost a month playing an old computer game. My son quite frequently decides that we need to play '90s Dos games, and we had a two-for sitting around which included both Ultima underworld (which we have played a great deal already) and its companion Ultima Underworld II (which we have not played much). So of course we got the dosbox and dfend out (two great little programs for running '90s games which do a much better job of handling the weird memory gyrations of '90 dos than Microsoft) and began to play. Since my sons approach to playing involves slaughtering everything that moves and letting Dad figure out the clues and puzzles. I have long ago swallowed my pride and realized that the way though most games is to use the cheats and walk-throughs available on the Internet (This is especially handy when all the creatures who were supposed to give you clues are dead, or angry at your attempt to cut them to pieces). So I have been spending  a lot of time listening to this German guy as he works his way through.

The Ultima underworld series still has my most favorite set of skills for roleplaying. I am totally stealling it for my roleplaying game (don't hold your breath kiddos, I have been writing my own roleplaying game for over years and not published anything yet).

The Grid, the Grid

The nice map posted at the City of Iron got me thinking. You see Gavin, the artist, decided to draw his map free hand without a grid, and that got me thinking. If your going to show to the players when I don't see a problem of no grid. If you need to sketch in on a battle map, or describe it verbally for me at least a grid is quite useful. Of course these days drawing the map and adding a grid later is pretty simple (It could be done in the old days but required gridded chartpak and some skill with an x-acto). I usually tried to grid the room floors and leave the walls blank, the opposite of the artists at the White Dwarf and Judges Guild who tended to grid the walls and leave the floors blank. I'll not comment on his choice of red lines with purple shading,as that is a matter of personal preference. Although, if you are running "Old School" and not showing the map to anyone else, I would not spend a lot of time trying to make the map look "pretty". I would however grid it for the reasons already mentioned.

Substistance Farming and the Man

As a complement to my map of village densities in 11th century England, I have been working on a map of village densities in the Old Northwest territory (which Ohio were I live happens to be part of) during the 18th century. I have nice map of village locations in 1759 courtesy of the Atlas of Great Lake Indian History, Helen Hornbeck Tanner ed. University of Oklahoma press 1987. However, I have run into to issues. First, the Old Northwest territory is too big to map comfortably with five mile hexes. Second, after over 200 years of warfare and smallpox, village densities are measured in hexes per village rather than villages per hex. As such I had set this project aside for a bit.

My recent posts on the Aztecs have let me back to thinking about Native Americans once again. While researching Aztec farming techniques at the library, I peaked over at the Native North American section right next door and obtained The Miami Indians of Indiana, Stewart Rafert, Indiana Historical Society. The Miami, a small tribe, feature prominently in Atlas of Great Lake Indian History for their control of the portage (now Fort Wayne, IN) between Lake Erie and the Wabash River (a substantial short cut to the Mississippi River if you are traveling by Canoe). Since Miami Indians of Indiana was an easy read and allowed me to procrastinate further on the turgid but important sounding Cultivated Landscapes of Middle America on the Eve of Conquest I read it cover to cover. One of the most fascinating parts of it is the tribe continuing to live its lifestyle of the men hunting and fishing, and the women growing a little corn and a little squash on a mere 10 square mile reservation IN INDIANA  from 1847-1872 (a population of roughly 148-250 people over the time period). I am a bit surprised since 10 square miles (6,400 acres) is only a little bigger than one our modern factory farm which will have 10 people living on it if the farmer has a big family (not sure how many people it feeds I'll have to look that up). The legal manoeuvrings which allow them to stay in Indiana while the rest of the Native Americans forced west at gun point are also quite interesting (a lot of it has to do with the local non-native American tavern owners and lawyers liking the tap into the yearly U.S. Government hard currency (silver dollars) payment the tribe collected as a treaty settlement. It unfortunately also lead to only the Miami who moved to Oklahoma being recognised as a "tribe" by the U.S. Government. In 1873 the reservation was broken up into 63 farms and divided amongst the residents. Many Miami being brave soles prompt tried their hand more conventional farming. Unfortunately this involved borrowing the $1,000 from the bank to equip a conventional farm and selling the farm to the bank when the inevitable "bad year" hit and bank could not be paid. The 1994 U.S Government wrangling that the guy who ruled in 1895 that Indiana Miami were no longer a tribe was wrong, but since it had been too long (mostly because the Bureau of Indian Affairs ruled in the several lawsuits since the ruling that because the Miami were not a tribe no lawsuit could be brought) is also a prime example of why people of my generation have a great distrust of government (also known as "the Man). There is an interesting corollary between the treatment of Native Americans and the "screw job" conducted by the enclosure of 16th century England, as well as the Oklahoma farmers during the dust bowl, but this post is long enough already.