the Blood-Clans of Jorikk

a review of the project so far

Introduction

Whilst this will eventually also be eventually released  as a PDF or PDFs and a Hard copy background supplement  at the moment the work consists of the web site alone.  Which is in itself a work in progress.

In more detail 

The site at the moment is split into several sections which seem logical and is crammed full of beautiful evocative and mostly custom art work and maps.

The only sections which have any content in them so far are the introduction and the artist lists the three books sections are at the moment place holder pages, al be it gorgeously decorative ones. However dont be dismayed this is as I said a project in progress and more content is being added all the time, indeed during the time that I have been writing this there have been several updates, and its author is very good at passing on update information. They are posted on the Kingdom's of Kalamar Face book group the Kenzer forums and on the Google plus HackMaster community and the author maintains a face book and a Google plus page.

The content so far is beautiful, I cant stress that too much and whilst the presentation is not yet perfect the Author is taking and responding to feedback on this and tweaking it when necessary.

Screen shot of the Intro page showing menu's

Screen shots of the menus

The Montage of screen shots showing all the menus as well as a good selection of the variation of artwork in the slide show behind themas all the screen shots thus far in this have been of what amounts to the same web page taken at different times as I have had the chance to work on this review.both the slide show and the header image cycle all equally evocative images of the region at differing rates over time.

Going beyond the into page 

Here there are only there items on the menu which lead to further content at the moment the first is to a general introduction to the world of Telene, HackMaster and even role playing all of which I will pass over lightly as whilst they are well done and lavishly illustrated as the whole site is they cover as I would expect nothing new or unique and I want to concentration on the cool new stuff 

The second cover the physical geography of the region with articles maps again there is so obviously much more to come and even with the odd layout glitch but pretty much nothing detracts form the quality of what has been posted so far and its borderline awesome potential. 



By way of conclusion

Plastic People a preview

Some thoughts on the use of Historical Miniatures in general and plastic ones specifically in fantasy role playing games 

Victrix

Perry

Aegema

Warlord

Gripping beast  

Wargames Factory 

Fire Forge

Conquest Games 

Amongst others and I am looking to develop this into a full article with examples in the near future so watch this space

the Blood-Clans of Jorikk

 Website update

This goes live tomorrow  Saturday 6th of September  see the site here  and I will be posting more about it on Sunday when I have had a good nose round it 

Review - Legacy of the Elm King Adventure

A review of  the Legacy of the Elm King reposted form the Kenzer forums

PDF Cover

"I'm gonna be pretty purposefully vague so as not to give away too much info as spoilers, but still if you're not remotely likely to GM this, and much more likely to just play it, probably don't read any further. Just know that you can recommend this adventure to your GM unreservedly. It'll be a lot of fun to work through from both sides of the table.

If you are a GM this adventure will fit in perfectly with a story set in the Frandor's Keep area. It's built upon a previous adventure "In the Realm of the Elm King" but can be run without any problems by parties that missed that first leg. It can also be imported without any problem into much any other setting, as long as there's a likelihood of Kobolds living around and a somewhat pastoral farming community. It'd probably take a pretty long session or 2-3 smaller sessions to get through.

Generally, this adventure is fun and easy to read. Important for GM's! Stats are laid out in a precise and easily understood manner, and I rarely found myself confused or flipping back and forth to remind myself of what was what. Fun to read, should be pretty straight forward to run.

I don't usually look for straight dungeon crawls because I often find them rather one dimensional, repetitive and rather broken from a story-telling perspective (I often find myself asking "why are these creatures even here in the first-place and why the heck is there all this valuable loot lying around unattended?"). LoEK does a great job of building homegrown plausibility that fits right into its regional setting (Vew, near Frandor's Keep). From the hooks to the setting descriptions, I found myself right in the lay of the land, believing what I was hearing and ready for more. In now way did I feel the setup to be contrived or out of place, as hooks sometimes can feel. That's important to me cause I try to keep players involved in a consistent setting-feel, which can be broken, and thus belief unsuspended, so to speak, if setup is "off."

While the dungeon crawl itself is "just another Kobold lair" for me it wasn't "just another Kobold lair." It had a really neat unique feel to it, largely thanks to the well thought-out layout of the warren and the interesting little descriptions (rocking-chair thrones and a scepter fashioned out of a yarn-festooned ladle is awesome). From a technical encounter standpoint, this crawl (literally) will likely have your players feeling claustrophobic and paranoid (with a little bit of skilled delivery) and ready to get through the dam thing so they can get the erf out. The layout makes this crawl a potential meat-grinder. Complacent players and those expecting "just another Kobold lair" will find themselves in some tight spots, and pay some penalties. I wouldn't be surprised to see a PC kill or two. Awards are pretty straightforward and pretty generous too for parties able to take full advantage. That's another cool aspect, as there's lots of stuff that PCs might easily miss if they're just running through rough-shod (or scared).

My only constructive criticism is that there were a few sections where I wasn't totally clear on what Kobolds should be where in certain circumstances (want to leave this vague ala spoilers) ... for example, should there be 6 behind the barricades if A happens, or none? If none, then where are they and what are they doing? But really, these details should be pretty easy for the GM to extrapolate and make decision on without exact guidance.

I'm quite looking forward to hooking my table in the mouth with this little adventure! I'm thinking I might even offer it as a detour to their present mission, though I doubt they'll bite right now cause what they're after is vitally important and they know it. Still, some day! Cheers"

Original post is here

Get it from here

Review of Kingdoms of Kalamar - Fantasy campaing setting

The Original version

the cover

Initial impressions 
the book comes as a PDF of the original work and would seem to be natively a PDF rather than a scan of the herd copy as may PDF's of books this age are. The pages are clear and easy to read as a result and are devoid of annoying scan artefacts.

It comes in two parts book one which is in black and white covers the Geography of the Sovereign lands both political and physical and the first impression at least is that unsurprisingly quite a bit of this material found its way into later source books, such as the D&D 3e Kingdoms of Kalimar - Campaign setting Source book.. The PDF is navigable and you will be familiar with this if you have any other Kenzer and Co PDF's Book two is in colour and covers a grid of large scale relief maps of the whole area again much of this was likely reused in latter products but the lay out here makes it much more usable than say the large map jolly did for roll20 or the fold out maps form Kingdoms of Kalimar - Campaign setting Source book.

In more detail book one

Sample page form book one

The sample illustrates the points I mad about book one in the preamble and allows me to continue in more detail here the The book starts with a brief introduction to the world of Telene and its history focusing on the events which occurred from the Migrations of the human ethnicities from Svimohzia to the northern continent in particular the period from  the formations of the precursors of the current nations to the present day. Most of the gist of this material will be familiar to any one who has any of the latter d&d source books as it seems  formed a basis for similar sections in those.

There will be a proper review here very soon but at the moment this is more of a reminder for the blog Author to get on with stuff as soon as he can. I will also be including a couple of sample screen shots of the product to give the reader an idea what the thing is like inside

A review in planning

I plan on reviewing this latter.

Initial view

It is now downloaded and it took its time over the local steam powered internet ,I have skim read it and when I have given it a through read I will report back in detail however the initial skim read looks more than promising and the maps in the appendix in particular are more than worth it on their own.

Indeed when I have a chance to study them just the thing I need to tie the Company of Fools Campaign into the official setting  which is something I had wanted to do form the start, but couldn't get a clear enough map to tie it down in any of the published sources I had at the time.

AD&D 5e after action report

Have now been to the session and to be honest I had a great time, but then I often do when I am not the one being the GM as its nice to be a cat not a cat herder for a change but that aside the meat of the matter is what do I think of the system. 

First things first I find the proof of a system is often in the character generation  as it gives you a feel for how all the basic and core stuff inter relates, however as we where playing the starter scenario in the new starter box and this did not feature any character generation rules we did not do this instead playing three of the pregens  the box includes The pregens seemed to be an interesting and fair selection allowing for plenty of choice we ended up playing as a fighter a thief and a cleric irritatingly they still call thieves rogues but that's a minor peeve of mine and not a flaw in this particular version.

The first things I noticed are the skill set is a little thin and is even more generic than 4e but there is one so its not back to 1e/2e the core mechanic for most game actions is roll a d20 & add to beat a GM determined target or a pre set value such as the enemies armour class critical successes and  fumbles appear but neither are major in effect as far as I could tell there where some nice die roll mechanics such as the concept of advantage and disadvantage where you roll two d20's and must pick the best of the worst respectively.

Hit points are back to pre 4e levels and fighters are rather vanilla as is traditional so none of this fighter being interesting nonsense that 4e introduced and made them at least as fun as the rest of the character classes, especially the spell using ones  but in a different way.

Thieves seemed to be equally vanilla beyond possessing the expected thief abilities however I was not the one playing it so I could not really be sure. The thinness of the skill set seemed to be of a particular issue to thieves as most of their traditional skills boiled down to a stat roll with a fixed “proficiency bonus” this is something every one gets in a small subset of class skills and abilities.

None of the concepts in the mechanics seemed all that complex, or in many cases that innovative if I am honest and the most interesting ones seemed to be related to spell casters which as I was playing the fighter I did not get that much of a look at the cleric however seemed to have a good range of spells and the ability to cast quite often form a preselected pool how often he could cast his major spells was limited by his concentration which meant that once he fluffed a roll he lost his levelled spells until he had at least an hours rest he had a fair selection of minor spells which where not so limited and which seemed to be of a higher power level than previously. Changing ones spell selection entirely required a long rest and prayer rituals amounting to the traditional eight hours as far as I can tell.

The game which was part one of the adventures in the starter box flowed well and was reminiscent of a well written D&D4e encounter in that it was largely combat orientated with minimal role playing style interactions though we made an effort to role play our socks off I have to say as its just more fun that way. It ended in a near perfect TPK which only the thief survived and only after cheating death by a whisker and backstabbing to death the wounded boss before running off with the loot intended for all of us.

This is where the one major flaw I found in the game was discovered. He levelled to second level as a result of one session of four combat encounters and a similar number of other challenges and this is not just because he survived we would all have levelled had we also survived, levelling is cool however I don’t feel that we earned it. Levelling is also of the Ping your levelled type but that it was so easy was the major issue especially as the game appears to be planed to have the same level cap as 4e It did address the moaning about the limited role playing systems in 4e, mostly from the lowest sort of bottom feeding power gaming rules lawyer types who couldn’t role play there way out of a wet paper bag with comprehensive instructions, and there would seem to be a wealth of choices in character generation which would give you a good feel for the character you are building however as I said we did not get to experience this first hand just read the text derived form it on the Pregen character sheet.

All in all I would have to say so far it’s a good game rather than a great one and I think not as good as 4e when it came out as a lot of the system has the taint of the essentials fiasco about it, that however might just be another of my peeves.  

Would I play again yes particularly if I got to roll up my own character, would I ditch any of my current games for it no I wouldn’t .

Episode Fifteen Preview

Episode Fifteen Preview 

The plan for Episode fifteen which will be part two of "an urban interlude" is to introduce characters for those who  have not yet got one for this  including the two new players and send them off on a nice little gentle beginning character type quest into the bowls and neither regions of Vayham almost literally we will have to see how this plan survives contact with the enemy (players) as ever there will be a full after action report posted here as soon as I can beat what actually happened in the session into any thing like a coherent narrative. supported by digital art maps and diagrams.

I have the Maps done now & some of them I am really chuffed with so I will be posting them just as soon as they no longer constitute a spoiler to the next session.

I am looking froward to it.

Project for Tommorow update

Project for Tomorrow update

I have done some more on the combat balancing article I posted some time ago but its still a work in progress in that I feel I need to give more examples form my game in order to illustrate quite why I have drawn the conclusions that I have.

I am working on some thoughts to expand the slavery article to cover Pel Brolenon which is very much a special case as a result of it being a theocracy run by the church if not the god directly of slavery and as part of my project to get the players to do some home work I am going to be doing a short Biographical piece on Heradrin  my dwarf fighter mage. as well as my two characters in the companions frandors keep game even if that will have to wait till after Thursday when I get to see the gm of that one.

After that I will not do another project until the post session updating frenzy has passed.

Session filming - final call

 Session being filmed a reminder

Just to remind every one that next session XIV due to run on the 27th of March will be filmed as it happens and  the subsequent Video will be posted here as soon after as I can manage it.

I will also be writing the usual extensive session report with illustrations as needed and other supporting articles  to go with the session

Article Update

Article Update

I have now updated the following article, because on re reading them this morning I rather felt that the article I had posted yesterday whilst extremely tired did not do the subject of the review justice, particularly when expanding on my first impressions form more extended experience of use.

Hackopaedia of beasts - Review 

Read it Here

HackMaster Players handbook - Review

Read it here

I have also posted a couple of links on the HackMaster basic article to the download and to the HackMaster Basic free downloads page.

HackMaster Players hand book a review

HackMaster Pl;ayers handbook 

 Initial view 

A solid tome with really lovely production values takes the concepts laid out in the basic version and expands on it with more character races, gnomes half elves half orcs and half hobgoblins as well as the murderous surface dwelling fallen elves the Grel, More character classes Ranger, Rogue, Barbarian more in game religions for clerics expanded sections on gear spells a couple of advanced fighter options Knight & Paladin. Rules on character advancement up to level 20 expanded magic rule more Talents for all classes including class & character race specific ones & probably much more but I have not delved into this trove enough to find it yet.

In more detail,

As the above was written rather as a first look, as I have since played in and run a HackMaster game I feel that I have been proved right in my first estimation. Indeed the book is more even better than I guessed as the rules are well written and despite appearing at first sight rather complex quickly become   intuitive and more over produce the most fun game I have played in or run in years. 

I find it gives all the feel of an old school D&D style game with some of the most robust and understandable game mechanics I have yet seen in that sort of game. 

I would recommend it to any would be old school player or indeed any one who wants a good FRPG system.

Hackopedia of beasts

The Hackopaedia of beasts

 

Initial View 

A solid tome with really lovely production values again it contains rather fewer creature listings than you might expect but it covers each in considerable detail allowing a GM to fit each into his campaign in a way where it seems to be a natural fit not something cast in the players paths as something to fight & kill ten move on. The monsters included cover the whole range of challenges as far as I can see especially given the viciousness of the combat system & each feels unique even those like goblins orks etc which we have met before in so many other systems. An appendix covers rules for leaders of monster groups further allowing the GM for whom this book is intended to shape their encounters to properly challenge the players.

 In More Detail

Having now run a HackMaster  game and having as a result used this book quite  extensively as you can see from the blog on which this appears  I would like to add a bit to my first view.

The detailed entries for each creature give you a good feel as to how you should best use each in a game so that it fits and not make it seem as to the player as  if they are just hacking your way thought a random menagerie. The thought put into the monster entries is a great help in characterizing monsters something which is particularly important in HackMaster where balancing encounters is so much easier to do when you know what a monster is for in the greater scheme of things. The games mater can as a result play the monsters plausibly and as a player you can actually learn how a particular monster will likely react to your actions, from the outcomes of the previous encounters.

I will still admit to not having used all of the material presented in the book or to having mined all of its possibilities I find it lives up to its initial promise and I would not be without it.

Good stuff indispensable for a GM interesting if not essential to the player.

Hackmaster Basic a Review

 HackMaster Basic

It covers every thing you would expect of an old school D&D style game four core character classes Fighter, Magic user, Thief, Cleric. as well as four character races Elves Dwarves Humans and Halflings. it also includes every thing else you would need to play the game. Rules on character advancement, player gear and equipment a selection of monsters to get you started a brief but through guide to encounter creation & the truly amazing chapter on dice. Every thing exempt for an adventure 

however one of those & a couple of shorter encounters can be downloaded from the Publishers website as can the index for the book. The game uses a combination of d20 & d100 based mechanics systems with d20 being for combat & d100 for skill resolution both systems are well thought through and appear to work as intended as far as I have yet been able to test them out. Combat is however rather bloody & despite starting characters having hit point totals that look like those of starting D&D 4e ones that all damage uses an exploding dice roll mechanic means that characters can go down easily. Armour & shields work by reducing the number of damage points you sustain & can actually make you easier to hit. Surprise is harsh & combat sequencing which uses a derivative of the rolling strike rank with no round structure imposed over the top fighters are your best combatants with Thieves & clerics being significantly less capable though Thieves under the right circumstances can be almost as good. 

 The Rules on Magic have all the features one would expect from this style of game, spell books spell memorization etc, but with a number of nice twists such as being able to cast spells you have not memorised, ability to alter spells by increasing the spell point cost of spells & each in game religion having its own spell list. All adds up to a rather gity moderate to low fantasy style game where the characters are expected to rise from the common heard to become true hero's in the end. Truly epic....

Note that the Hard copy of the rules is currently unobtainable but  they can be downloaded for free from Kenzer and co along with a free adventure and some sample encounters.

Get HackMaster Basic here

More free Support for the new player here

HackMaster Product Reviews

HackMaster Product Reviews 

I intend as time allows to do some reviews of the Hackmaster Products I have and to post them here, I will warn you that I am a borderline fanboy of the system and will not therefore be concealing that bias. However I will seek to be thorough and as balanced as I can be that not withstanding.

On my list at the moment are 

Hackmaster Players handbook

Hakopaedia of Beasts - The Hackmaster "monster Manual"

Frandor's Keep
A Plague in Cosolan

As well as useful stuff from the previous edition

Particularly the Kalamar campaign setting sourcebook