This site is for a game about Kung Fu recipes in a China that never was.

Please post your character sheets or custom kung fu, or add an entry to the campaign log.

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Our Dresden Files game has been having some troubles. I think they may be due to disagreement about what sort of game each person wants to play. I bet we have different answers to questions like these:

What do you want?

1. What do you want in your RPG? Tactical conflict or resource management, with a step-on-up attitude of trying to beat the game or gamemaster? Story focused on characters, their maturing emotions, and the conflict between them (e.g., Buffy, Battlestar)? Exploration of a particular world or genre for its own sake? It’s okay to want more than one of these.

2. If you’re interested in step-on-up tactics, does it have to have any particular attributes? Must there be long-term resource management, which D4D turns out not to have? Must there be a grid or hex map, which Weapons of the Gods turns out not to have?

3. If you’re interested in story, on what time frame do you see a character evolving or maturing? What sort of concerns should a character have? His own excellence (e.g., kung fu)? Family obligation and honor (e.g., BSG)? The call of heroism (e.g., Buffy)?

4. If you’re interested in exploration of the setting, which parts? Do you want NPCs with plots, who are explored by conversation? Do you want dungeons and mazes, where exploration focuses on history and what-happened-here? Do you want a set of city-states or planets and to explore the economic structure between them?

How do we do it?

The Dresden Files books have several elements—none of which are step-on-up, because it’s a fixed book. Some people read them for the involvements between the characters: will Molly or Thomas overcome their demons? How will Murphy choose between the Force and her friends? Others read them for the exploration of the setting: what’s really going on with the black council? What was Lea’s athame good for? We’re used to getting about one novel’s worth of setting exploration per evening of engagement—an almost impossible rate to maintain in a game.

Could we, though? Could we get through at least half a novel per night of play?

What answers lead us to what games?

If we mostly want setting-exploration, then games with sort-of-generic heroes (Earthdawn, WFRP, D&D) have appeal: they keep the focus on the world as your pawn investigates it.

If we insist on map-based tactics, then GURPS (Dungeon Fantasy?) or Hackmaster Basic could work.

If we want lots of opportunity to show player excellence by engagement with the system, Burning Wheel and Weapons of the Gods are good. If we want to avoid that, something with class-and-level and lockstep advancement is better (GURPS with templates, maybe? Hackmaster Basic? FATE, perhaps.)

incomplete, more coming later

This site is for Ariel’s NYC Dresden Files game.

So far we have factions, locations, and themes to talk about, plus some notes on game-feel.

Themes

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Factions

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Locations

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The third session of Keep on the Borderlands opened with Calla and Lessowan hiring new support staff, and meeting up with their old allies: Keeva the Fighter (Kat), Olympus the Prestidigtator (Armenard, Magic-User), and Grumpi son of Bumpi (Kurgan, Dwarf). They hire Barbara, Tom, and Ron to accompany Silvio, kitting them out with the banded mail, shield, and chain left over from the last party.

The new party hikes out to the Caves of Chaos, where they camp outside the Dryad Woods—with a fire and a guard. They spend an uneventful night. The next morning, they approach the known opening to the Caves. They explore a little further up the cave wall, finding the entrance that was probably used by the flankers last time—and it smells sour and awful. Bones litter the ground outside it—and the group doesn’t know where the Big Thing went. They retreat to the known entrance with the little scaly guys, and enter there.

A few yards inside the entrance is a sign in rough common, suggesting that the inhabitants have left the area and bear the human-dominated party some ill will. Immediately thereafter, the group finds their first trap: a pile of bricks fall from the ceiling, killing several hirelings and Lessowan. Andy brings in a replacement character, Mauvebeard the Dwarf.

Scouting further, they find a pit, more brickfalls, and a number of sharp little needles set into the rocks. Those needles don’t jump out or spit poison or anything, but they seem to be placed where adventurers hunting for secret doors will find them the hard way. The needles whittle through a few more of the hirelings.

A few rooms in, the party finds an abandoned guard room. In its far corner is a secret door—hammering on it wakes up whatever Thing is on the other side, which shouts back in common. The party tricks it into coming through by behaving like the goblins, gibbering back and forth and promising gold, but waiting with weapons drawn and ready.

When the Thing comes through the door, roaring and ready to fight, Olympus releases his memorized Sleep spell. It fails (apparently a GM error; sleep isn’t supposed to get a saving throw). This matters little, since the Ogre falls quickly to the blows of Mauvebeard, Grumpi, and Olympus’ dog. Keeva is mortally wounded in the fight.

The Ogre is worth 215 XP directly, divided among five heroes and four half-share hirelings.

The Ogre’s loot includes: 287 sp, a hard cheese, 182 cp, 91 ep, 289 gp, a keg of brandy (worth 50-100 gp), 303 cp, 241 fake gp, 250 gp, 6 magic arrows +1, a silver potion flask (full of potion #22), and a scroll with two cleric spells: cure light wounds and hold person. These are collectively worth about 700 gp, divided among four surviving heroes (down Keeva and Lessowan, up Mauvebeard) and one henchmen.

Name	Previous	New Total
Calla	96	283
Olympus	0	187
Grumpi	0	187
Mauvebeard	0	187
Hireling Tom	0	93

I love the header up there: “borderlands/ creating gods”

Cosmology: there are the surface kingdoms, miles of dungeon, and somewhere deep below the Dark, home of evil, spawn of dragons and orcs, mother of dungeons. Its attempts to break to the surface leave dungeons. It is evil, if anything is. The surface creatures and the shallower dungeon-dwellers are good, or say they are.

Alignments: law and chaos. Gods come from each of these, but none are nice. Lovecraft was right: mankind is an aberration. The gods are part of the natural order of things. What is Lawful? Heirarchy, power and the use of it, truth even when it hurts, justice, and the good of the group. What is Chaotic? Violation of rules, tearing down of systems, misrule, deception for good or ill, the good of the individual over the group. What is neutral? A rejection of the cosmic balance, a focus on the small and local and mundane—the self and human things. True Neutrality is its own side in that cosmic balance—no less inhuman than Law or Chaos. Ideas like Liberty and the American Way are inherently human: off the alignment scale, and so not important to the great conflict.

What then are the gods? Well, there may be nice simple gods of peace and liberty and love, but they don’t tend to grant miracles to priests. The gods we can prove exist hand out Earthquake, Resurrection, Blade Barrier, Flame Strike, Protection from Evil, and the ever-popular cures. So who are the gods? Let’s look at their spells:

Healing

1. Cure light wounds
2. Bless
3. Cure Disease
4. Cure Serious Wounds

Death

1. Resist Cold
2. Resist Fire
3. Animate Dead

Beasts

1. Remove Fear
2. Snake Charm
3. Speak with Animal
4. Animal Growth
5. Create Food and Water

Purity

1. Purify Food and Drink
2. Silence 15’ Radius
3. Remove Curse

Fortress

1. Protection from Evil
2. Hold Person
3. Dispel Magic

Heaven

1. Detect Evil
2. Light
3. Know Alignment
4. Continual Light

Seeker

1. Detect Magic
2. Find Traps
3. Locate Object

Pantheon

So we have six gods: the Healer (C), the Corpse (L), the Beast (C), the Citadel (L), the Stars Above (N), and the Seeker (N). They grant spells, they fight for their side of the alignment war. They take priests and initiates from any race that can worship them—the Healer heals orcs as well as humans, and the priests of the Corpse and the Beast can turn dead as easily. Heaven is intended as a sort of anti-Dungeon god: it’s the opposite of the dark at the bottom of the dungeons. The Citadel is the god of cities, both human and drow.

This is the second installment of the Keep on the Borderlands game. We had only four players this week, one of whom was late. We doubled up characters onto the three players present to start, and had one of them handle the three hirelings as well. The session started in the grove of the friendly dryads near the Caves of Chaos. Hireling Silvio approached the PCs to mention that with Ron dead, he had greater responsibilities. These should cause him to receive commensurately greater pay. The PCs made clear that they’d offer 1 sp per head, no more and no less—exactly what they’d been paying Ron. This revelation of the proletariat being screwed by the bourgeois adventurers (and Ron) caused an immediate morale check, plus a drop in hireling morale of 1 for the session. Past that, I can’t be bothered to remember it, so neither can the hirelings (note: this will soon not be a problem).

The party rested in the grove of the dryads, but were awakened just before dawn by a drunk and hairy humanoid (a hobgoblin? he was singing in hobgoblin, anyway) dragging a dead hairy humanoid past their campsite. Young Hardbottle climbed a tree, lit a torch from his coal-in-a-jar, and dropped it on the poor sot. Then the archers skewered him. Somehow Faldor talked the dryads into believing that it had been the drunk humanoid carrying the torch, but we’re not sure how long that story will last. On the advice of the dryads, the party left before senior spirits of the woods showed up to investigate the fire—with 30 sp from the humanoid’s pouch.

They returned to the known entrance to the Caves of Chaos, close to where they’d met small scaly humanoids before, but made it only five paces inside before setting off a bell trap. The party quickly retreated to the open air, setting up a close-combat team near the door and a ranged team 40 yards back. A team of six little scaly guys with spears showed up—the party’s The ranged team did great work on the little scaly men with spears who showed up, mowing down three of them in the first few minutes of the fight. The scaly spearthrowers took out Tim and Bruce quickly.

In the second round, five more scaly guys flanked the party from the West—and they brought with them a giant, a drab nine-foot tall Thing wearing a grizzly bear skin. In one hand the Thing had a tree trunk it used as a club, and in the other it had a bag of jingly metal bits. Could this be the party’s first real sight of gold?

The party was down two henchmen and now facing roughly even numbers: about seven little guys and the Big Thing. Even numbers and no way to concentrate fire mean it’s time to leave. It took a few minutes to pick up some of the fallen, arrange bowmen and slingers for covering fire, and start the mules moving towards the dryad grove. In that time Faldor died to a thrown spear—more of an accident than anything else, since the little guys seemed to be concentrating fire on the mules loaded with rich stuff.

Holy Liberator Gibson charged in against the Big Thing, shouting at the rest of the group to run while he held it off. His allies did not desert him, and they died at his side: Young Hardbottle, Mariel the Cartographer, and Gibson himself fell at the feet of the giant. Only Lessowan and Calla survived to tell the tale in the Keep.

Lessowan’s withering longbow fire finally drove the scaly-men off, after which the giant himself fled. Calla snuck forward to burn oil and brush at the mouth of the cave, and covered by this and Lessowan’s longbow she loaded what she could of the party’s resources onto the surviving mule. Leaving their comrades’ bodies scattered amid the fallen foes, Lessowan and Calla returned to the keep.

Loot and XP: 220 cp, 26 sp recovered from the little guys, 15 javelins, 9 small and smelly chain shirts. 30 sp recovered from the hairy drunk. Recovered treasure glory value: 7.8 GP plus the goblin armor and weapons (7 GP for the javelins, 180 GP for the armor), for 194.8 XP for loot. 15 XP for the hairy guy, 45 for the 9 small scaly guys, for 60 direct XP total.

The direct XP is split directly among those who participated (8 to each PC, 4 to each hireling), but the loot XP is divided among the survivors: 84 XP to each of Calla and Lessowan, and 42 to Silvio, wherever he is. Since many of the PCs are now dead, that leaves the totals at:

Calla and Lessowan: 96 XP. Silvio: 48 XP.

My regular Tuesday night gaming group is spending a few weeks trying out old D&D—well, Labyrinth Lord. The first session ended very quickly in a total party kill. Four first-level player characters camped out next to the mound of the lizard men. When attacked by a hunting party of six lizard men (each with 2HD+1), the four adventurers stayed to fight. The fighter, the only character with more than 3 HP, lasted into the second round.

We started again with six PCs, who hired four men-at-arms and torchbearers to accompany them. The hirelings (Ron, Bruce, Tim, and Silvio) were being paid 1 silver piece per day, with Ron running some sort of scam where he paid the other hirelings only 5 coppers a day and kept the rest. With Ron dead, maybe the PCs can get a deal. The adventuring heroes are: Faldor the Elf (Leader), Kalla the Thief, LessoWAN the Thief, Mariel the Cleric (Cartographer), Holy Liberator Gibson, and Young Hardbottle, a halfling on the run.

The party spent a night in the Keep, then traveled a day east along the road to find the Caves of Chaos. They had a few small encounters along the way—a giant rat in a tree climbed to scout, for example. They avoided the marsh and fens as dangerous, then camped in a dryad’s grove. By chance they had no axes and by paranoia they lit no fires. The dryads reacted well to them, speaking in Elvish with Faldor. The dryads tried to keep the party from messing with the Caves, expecting these nice people to get killed.

The next morning they rose early and followed a narrow trail into the box canyon containing the Caves. Picking the first cave on the left, they walked in with their mules.

Note: assign morale 8 for mules in the next fight.

A messenger team of tiny scaly humanoids ran headlong into the party; it didn’t long survive. The party has moved further in and found a guarded room with more of the scaly little men with spears. After the guards went berserk and butchered Ron, the party retreated back into sunlight.

The party has killed one giant rat (6 XP), one team of four messenger goblins (5 XP per is 20 XP), and one of the guard goblins (5 XP). Total party XP is 31, divided into 7.5 shares (six PCs plus three hirelings), for 4 XP per PC (and 2 for each of the three hirelings; Ron takes the extra 1 XP ).

The party also took 12 sp, 2 bags of high-quality vegetables (4 fresh rations), a bag of masonry tools, and a bag of messages from the message party. They have four sets of goblin leather clothing and four short spears. Recovered treasure glory value: 17 GP (accounting the tools at 15 GP sale value, and the messages as not very glorious).

Missing most of our regular D&D4 participants, a few of us tried Hackmaster Basic last night. Chargen was simple (using the quickstart rules rather than the full-on point-allocation knapsack problem.) We had a dwarf fighting-man and a racist halfling-supremacist with a loose affiliation for private property. They got a job. They went out to find a ruined caravan, picking up anything that wasn’t nailed down. They chased off some wolves, killing one for a huge XP bonus—the fighter was horrifically lethal.

We had a bit of a delay remembering that the Thief is all about skills, not backstabbing damage. He was hitting for a point or two of damage, net, most of the time. The fighter was doign 2d6p+5, where “p” means “penetrating,” roll-again-and-add. So the wolf died to a blow for 6+6+6+6+5+5 damage.

They found a trap, a basket of snakes in a tree. …when it fell on them and poisoned them. They had a couple social encounters, fought the snakes, wolves, and then some kobolds in a cave. The kobolds saw their torch coming down the cave entrance and had cover and drawn bows when they walked into the room. It was mercifully quick. The thief went down howling in pain from one arrow. The fighter got himself surrounded, in a system where facing matters an enormous amount. And that was that.

If they’d had a few more people, they might have covered for the downed thief and charged the archers, giving him 30s to recover. Or if they’d had a Magic-User, he could have used his big spell (burning hands, sleep, whatever) on the kobolds. But without that? Pretty hopeless.

But still: two social encounters, two puzzle encounters, and 2.5 fighty encounters between 7 and 10. Oh, and character creation as well as those 6.5 encounters. It did provide nice evidence that we can do more than one encounter a night, if we want more story and less fiddling with powers and less grinding through a zillion hit points. There might be yet-further benefits to something like WFRP2 or Earthdawn, which trade off a bit more tactical game for simplicity—one player still found this tactical game daunting, with lots of tables and confusion.