Finding the Wargate

Today's Community piece comes from Home Regiment's newest member, King Arthur!  He wanted to share a little about himself to our members, as he is also our youngest member and his experience with games is a little different.  A bit of a writer himself, it's likely that he will continue to contribute material here.

An eruption of memories reverberates through my mind as I begin to recall the many imaginary fantasies I undertook in the prevalent distorted daze that I dub my youth.  Adventures of evil magi threatening my land, and I, the eager hero ready to battle the waves of enemies in my mission to save the realm.  Post- apocalyptic worlds, filled with strife, as I, the curious scavenger, weave my way through the treacheries of the land on a very strange quest for love and glory.




My favorite was traveling thru dark and stormy skies, mounted upon the beast of flame himself, Asminoth, as I purge the world of the wicked spider-born and claim my title as a true Dragon Rider Hero.  I lived countless adventures in the free-roaming imagination of my young worry free life.  Consistently diving into novel after novel, to gain further inspiration for my own delicious tales.  The day did come though, and sad it was, that I lost the drive for the free and careless structure of my fantasies and I began to crave a more adequate design.

I began to write small stories, an aspiration to achieve the ability to let my stories unfold into something more, to give them the same pull and allure that so many authors writings had done for me.  Not only that though, I wanted to also employ a way to play the stories, and delve more into the deep universe I would eventually create around them.  My knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons and other similar table top games at this time was limited.  Merely that is was a roleplaying game, played with dice.

At this time I had established a small group of friends with an interest in roleplaying great fantasies.   So to entertain our ridiculous drivel, I bought a set of dice, and with that we commenced a journey into a small universe we had been expanding on.  We rolled some characters to undertake the feat of exploring our new world.  Rolling entailed of us describing our character, and what fantastic powers he/she might of had, then rolling to see if we qualify for our pick.  If the roll was too low to satisfy the majority of the group, the group would then harshly mitigate the roller's character, allowing him/her to keep their looks and origins, but attacking any special abilities they might of given themselves.   From their we would run random roleplaying scenarios, battles, and other random higlibliggs, with one of us deciding the general foes we faced and towns we encountered, or what really happened in the tale at all.

 I should note ,that member was still part of our party, and had his own character in the tale.  I encountered my first actual game of Dungeons & Dragons at the ripe age of 14 and don't recall much enjoyment from the endeavor.   The DM wasn't terrible, (an uncle of one of my compadres and of a much older generation of gamers), but perhaps due to the youth of his group, carried a look of boredom and presented our surroundings in a lack-luster fashion.  Though disappointing, the experience did introduce me to a way to add a slight bit of structure to our fantasies.

We introduced stats, as well as a fighting and interaction system that relied more on the dice rolls.  This was thus dubbed Role Playing with dice… Life moved forward and to my dismay, I lost my inspiration, distracted by the social overflow of our youth, my group of friends and I lost interest in our distinguished hobby.  I suffered a terrible lag in my world of fantasy as the old group of friends went there separate ways.

Years have passed now, and I find myself in a new town, a new state even.  The hills must have connected with my desire to lose myself in a world of fantasy, for the glorious pass known as The Wargate has thrown open it's barriers and let me have a peek inside.  A peek that turned into being served at the Warlords own table, and inducted into his personal regiment!   Among this regiment, I at last encountered a real taste of table-top games.

I have seen a beautiful display of structure, made true by adventurers with many years of experience, and a good Warden of the games to boot!  I will journey with these adventurers as I seek my fantasies once again, and given time, perhaps I will break my own barriers and show these experienced hounds a torrent of youthful vigor.  The bud of my inspiration has been found, and with this, combined with my own desires for a fantastic world, I will allow it to blossom into something fulfilling, I hope.  All in all, this is the best introduction I have received to table-top dice slinging, and has me eagerly awaiting what other inspirations I can find beyond the Wargate!

Old-School Lethality

In the last few years, we've used our time machine to resurrect some of the Old School games that laid the foundation for the industry that has made our hobby what it is today.  Most of us never got to experience these old modules in the proper light, due to our late emergence into gaming.  For most of us, this was the early 1990's...and for the most part these old games and modules were in severe disuse by that time.

So, in order to qualify ourselves as "experts", we've decided to relive some of the old campaigns.  To better understand gaming's evolution, we've focused mainly on Dungeons & Dragons.  All of this, you already know.  Today, we're going to talk about something that's become apparent in playing these old adventure modules.  Namely, the sheer lethality of the old games versus the "new school" of game design that started in the 1990's.

Just to very quickly bring you up to speed, the "new school" tends to focus on character development rather than combat and adventure.  Your characters tend to last a lot longer with much less effort.  I think anyone who's been playing at the Wargate for long enough to have played games in both "schools" can see this is very apparent.  Yet no game has been more punishing to our intrepid Gatekeepers than the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons.

The old modules we've played have been designed to a different tune entirely than what we're used to with playing newer games, even Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd Edition.  Designed for challenge, rather than story, these old modules are serious about how you can die.  Moreover, this is just the basic module series, nevermind the modules actually designed for competition (such as C-Series).  The competition modules are designed to destroy everyone to the point that it's about how much of the module is finished before the party is destroyed or forced to retire.  It's an entirely different style of challenge.

A movement associated with Old School gaming, appropriately calling itself the "Old School Renaissance" has come about in the last decade or so.  The movement has created new games that are "clones" of these older versions of D&D to make sure this style of game stays in print.  We have a couple of sites dedicated to the OSR in the link list on the right.

The OSR movement has members that are linked and focused on various aspects of the old school games, but today we are talking about lethality - that is, the propensity of player characters to perish permanently.  Whether it's "save or die" situations, murderous combat or simply "die no save" attacks, we've found that player characters tend to buy the farm much quicker in these old modules - if the modules are played the way it is suggested.  The way the modules are written is very deadly, indeed.

You know us...we like to play the way it's dictated.  We feel it gives us a better handle on the way the module was meant to be played in its native ruleset.  We have been very surprised with just how insidiously deadly all of them have been so far.

At this level of lethality, the game is very hard.  At low levels, there are precious few spells each day to recover hit points or fight magical threats.  Even worse, the spells that are available very seldom include any spells to revive dead comrades.  The rules for recovering hit points naturally are very strict, and very slow at best.  Long dungeon expeditions are not recommended for parties of less than 30 levels total.

One of the true killers is the 0-hit point mark.  Hit Points are low, even for fighters.  Hit Dice are called Hit Dice for a reason:  Hit Dice are how many dice worth of damage you can be expected to take before you die.  Once you hit 0 in AD&D 1e or D&D (BECMI), there's no coming back.  So, once hit points are low, the party has to head back to safety or risk death at every turn.  Some characters do this anyway, such as those with d4 or even d6 for hit dice.

The challenge provided by these strict rules on death will start to change the way your players approach the game.  We can definitely see D&D's wargame roots, and you know, we like it.  A lot.  Now, accomplishing modules is something the club can be proud of.

Another advantage gained by the mortality rate is a certain sense of verisimilitude.  As new characters come into the game, their stories interact with the older crew and create something entirely new.  As a Dungeon Master, I have really enjoyed seeing my players create the roleplay aspect among themselves, rather than let an overly scripted adventure dictate it.

The main drawback of this level of lethality is that it can create despair in a player group.  If the module is too hard, or the player's approach is consistently putting them on the receiving end of a pain train, then it can happen that the players revolt and demand another game.  This happened to us with The Temple of Elemental Evil - the players were generally dismayed that they had made little progress, and the terrors of the temple only got more ridiculous.

Fend off that despair by turning things only slightly in favor of the party by dangling a new clue or resource that's already in the module.  Soldiers, magic, a place to rest...just be wary.  This is a fine art, as you should not give them more than what they need to make it on their own.  Just as important is to not give anything away for free, but if the players need a break set them on a course for one.  Make them work for it, though.

In this manner, you can balance lethality without compromising the rules of the game or scenario.  All the dice still fall where they may, and the players won't feel you as the DM are holding their hand through the module.  Most modules have their own set of rules that supersedes the basic rules in some way, and each one has a variety of resources the players will be heartened to find amidst their horrific journeys.

All in all, the old modules have been a huge hit with our game group.  We've got several more to play with in several different rulesets, and they are all going to be a blast.  We'll keep a lid on what modules / adventures we're going to be playing, but if you plan on GM'ing a game you should check with the Project Coordinator and make sure that he knows what modules are on your list.  We keep a big ol' spreadsheet to make sure nothing overlaps, so you don't get a module that someone else runs.

Yet that doesn't mean we don't write our own adventures here at the Wargate, just check out the second schedule Palladium game!  Even in D&D, there will be a few curveballs that aren't modules in our upcoming campaigns.  Entire campaigns are even being designed to stitch into the larger narratives we'll experience as we continue on our journey through D&D history.  See you on Game Day!

Introduction to Miniature Painting, Lesson 1

We've started an irregular class at the Wargate designed to teach novice painters how to begin in the hobby from the ground up.  These introductory lessons will impart all the necessary techniques needed to begin painting gaming miniatures, and we've had a pretty decent turnout so far!  Today's article also begins a new section of the website:  the Paint Guide!

Some of our Gatekeepers hard at work during the class.

Lesson 1 - Base Coating and Flow Control

We began today on a set of old archers for medieval battles.  The models were cleaned and basecoated, and provided to the students to practice on.  They are old sculpts, and very "open" as it were.  Not a lot of hard to reach places and very straightforward color areas.

The most important thing you will learn painting miniatures is that the water on your brush tip can drastically affect how your paint behaves.  It is very important to learn this at the very beginning to avoid silly mistakes that almost all of us make when first starting.  It was a very simple session, designed so the students could practice applying the paint more than anything else.

The entire class painted one (or two, if slightly more experienced) of these archers to practice basecoating.  Flow control (using the water on the brush) was the watchword of the day, as all the students had to do was follow an easy, step-by-step order for applying each color.  Here, the class learned that sometimes light colors go on thin over darker base coats, and that multiple layers of thin coats of paint are how to achieve opaqueness in the color.

Hey bro, do you even camera?

Forgive our blurry, out-of-focus progress picture.  We'll have more updates on the class as it progresses, and we'll see what our students generate for some awesome games!  You can bet you'll be seeing these archers again...this time, finished and based by our staff.  The picture will be much better, I promise.

Introduction to Miniature Painting is held on Monday nights at 6pm.  The weather here might actually stop our progress, so the classes are informal affairs and attendance is not required.  We're going to make sure we have the best materials for you to practice with and learn the ins and outs of painting miniatures.

In addition, there will be some nifty opportunities coming up for painters around the Wargate, and if you're a brush for hire in the Ada area let us know.  We will soon announce we're looking for contractors to paint an endless stream of models, so get a jump-start on it!  That's it for today, and I'll see you for the next lesson soon!