A Monstrous Heartbreaker, Part II: The Warrior

 Now that I've started pondering the goals and structure of my own highly derivative "core" rules for fantasy roleplaying, it's time to start getting the details down.  (Yep, this is just my way of taking notes...)

The first class I'm set on is the Warrior.  I'm keeping this one simple...just using the one I presented for Glaciers & Glyptodons, extended upward a couple of levels.  It's a pretty noncontroversial take, I'd think, and should serve me well across genres and time periods.

Warrior

You are skilled in combat and tough enough to withstand the hardships of battle.

You can use any weapons or shields and wear any sort of clothing or armor.

If you drop a foe with a melee attack, you may immediately make another melee attack.  (EDIT: I'm gonna have to make this scale with the Warrior's level, I think...)

Level    HD    Attack    Save

   1       1+1      +1         16

   2         2        +2         15

   3         3        +3         14

   4         4        +4         13

   5         5        +5         12

And just like that, I have a working document!

As for an example Warrior...those are probably pretty obvious, but I think I'll simply stat out a miniature I'm hoping to work into some tabletop playtime (not even a fantasy-based one)...

Dewey Shaw, Checkmate Knight

Level 2 Warrior
Checkmate's first appearance:  Action Comics #598 (1988)

STR 15(+1)     DEX 17(+1)     CON 16(+1)     INT 13     WIS 9     CHA 11
2+2 HD (9 HP)     Saving Throw 15
AC 14 (Checkmate armor)

Attack:  Checkmate lance (telescoping) +3, 1d6+1 damage; bodysuit strike +3, 1d6 damage

If Shaw drops a foe with a melee attack, he may immediately make another melee attack.

EDIT:  I realized there may be some WTF reactions to the "bodysuit strike" attack...it's from this scene (from Checkmate #1) really registering with me as a kid for whatever reason...

(I thought the knights of the DC Comics intelligence agency Checkmate looked pretty freakin awesome from the first time I saw them in comic book ads, which must have been back in 1987.  While I didn't keep up with the comic very well, I do remember picking up a couple of issues and definitely enjoyed seeing their introduction in Action Comics, which I did follow at the time.  The look of the Checkmate knight definitely invokes a certain nostalgia for me, which means I was also happy to see that the "retro" appearance made its way to HeroClix years later - Dewey up there is actually a Checkmate Medic figure.  Oh!  And his name came from the great generators over at Masterpiece Generator...I think that's what it's called, anyway...)

And I guess because the universe loves a little chuckle, here's a song that just came on my YouTube mix while I'm writing this post...

I do really like this song.

Next up:  I figure out which, if any, classes to include beyond the "big four"...and maybe go ahead and steal 'em/write 'em up...

One more trip to the Paleolithic...

Last weekend, the gaming group I have recently infiltrated finished up our first little trek through fantastical Stone Age Earth (Glaciers & Glyptodons).  I'm obv biased because I GM'ed the adventure, but I really do like some of the details I'm left to think about with the game.

Before that, though, let me note some of my own shortcomings as a GM and adventure designer that became obvious during play...

As someone who feels like I take a fairly combat-centric approach in understanding what RPG rules (especially old school rules) are meant to provide for us, I think I might just not be very good at combat!  There was at least once in running a skirmish that I was ready to jump right back to the PCs' acting a second time in a row, without even giving the enemies a chance to move, attack, etc.  Possibly related to this:  I think I tend to load up combat encounters with way too much same-yness, so that they just amount to slogging through attack rolls until we see how the numbers allow things to play out.  I say it's possibly related because I also think that part of my issue with running combat is realizing how monotonous they have a chance of becoming and immediately trying to compensate for that by speeding things along as quickly as possible - even if it means I lose control of the order of battle in the process.

Ah, well, lots to reflect on in that rambling...

The game had some huge positives for me, though!  First, as a setting I'd been wanting to tackle for a while, the Paleolithic holds a lot of promise for further adventures.  The PCs were set up as inhabitants of a region known simply as The Valley, which I intro'ed with this image...

Stolen from HERE...

...and which hardly got any attention except as the background for the adventure's setup.  The Valley has a lot left for exploration...and coupling this notion with another area I need to improve on as a GM (the balance between sandbox play and railroading), I would really like to work out some hex crawl guidelines for Glaciers & Glyptodons that go beyond the few wilderness encounters I prepared for this first adventure and provide players with more of a chance to feel like they're interacting with a truly open and dangerous world.

With that said, I do like the high points of the story that was told with this adventure, as the PCs were summoned by the Hidden One (read: Denisovan and/or Elf) Drelon to go on a quest to investigate and possibly destroy a metal(!) ring found near the coast to the west of The Valley.  Here's Drelon...

I definitely went as LotR-esque as possible with this setup to emphasize the Stone Age Earth/classic fantasy connection I wanted to see in G&G (heck, "Drelon" is just a barely-rearranged Elrond...😐).  However, I was also able to work in another trope I've kind of obsessed over for years at this point...Atlantis!  In this adventure, the players were ultimately led (read: railroaded) to the nation of Atlantis, named as the "Island Home" of a dying race of Saurians who possess magic and metallurgy beyond that of the mammalian humanoids that existed during the era.

The end result was a small party of Hidden and Sturdy Ones (Elves and Orcs) helping to defend Atlantis from an invading band of Humans, which nicely set up an invitation from the Saurians to the adventurers to bring more of their kind to the ancient city.  This fits into a little mythology I've worked into my headcanon in which explorers/escapees from a multispecies, magical Atlantis serve as an origin for other fantasy realms.  It's all stretching, I know, but I don't get a chance to run this kind of stuff very often, so I pulled out as many stops as I could in satisfying the stories I've been telling myself for years...!

Finally, my biggest takeaway from G&G is probably how happy I am that I tried the combo of races in the style of 5E and classes at a LightBox power level.  I can't quite put my finger on why I like it so much.  Maybe it's that extra bit of flair that 5E races give a character, compared to the...ahem, lighter treatments they're given in Swords & Wizardry Light.  Or maybe it's because it lets me look at all of those 5E race options out there in a new...er, light...or even just because it makes Ravnica easier for me to visualize running.  Whatever it is, I'm excited to explore it more moving forward, and it seems like an approach that could unite a number of the mini-projects that I've thought about and then ignored on this blog over the years, from running Ravnica, to Light City, to Underground Elemental Beastfighting, to Project 5.5.  I'm even tempted to cobble together my own little Fantasy Heartbreaker to ground the other projects.  Hopefully more to come on this...!

Glaciers & Glyptodons

 One of the very first things I blogged about (more than five years ago...geez...) finally got its shot on the videoconferenced tabletop last night.  The awesome online gaming group I've fallen in with took on the setting I've wanted to try for quite a while now...fantasy reskinned and shifted around a little to resemble our own prehistoric world...

I've had a blast putting this together and hope the crew are truly enjoying it, as well.  They SEEM to be, but they're all really kind people who would probably never let on if they hated it. ;)

At the very least, the group really seemed to embrace the mashup of classic fantasy tropes and prehistoric humanity.  When the Neanderthals in the party (called Sturdy Ones in the game) are named Smashpunch and Blork! (with exclamation point), I figure the Orc-ness is coming across decently.  (Of course, they really are just reskinned Orcs...)

If you think you'd enjoy seeing what I provided to the group for character creation and the tiniest core of the setting, you can check out the doc HERE.  It's pretty basic and could use a lot of editing, adding, and testing, but I'm glad to have something to work from.

It also makes use of the 5E race + Old School class approach that I mused about HERE...and it actually worked pretty well so far.  I'll have more on that at some point soon.  Well...hopefully...