Sir Poley's Blog, page 47
January 14, 2015
Book 3, chapter 15: Alohomora is the unlocking spell, where Colloportus is the locking spell. Though this could be an indication of their altered state of mind, perhaps?
No, that was completely a mistake. It should be fixed now, though.
Is picking Cold Weather Outfit for your free item of clothing a good idea? Can it replace a Winter Blanket?
Yes, and maybe. I usually get the Explorer’s Outfit because it is the most valuable, but Cold Weather outfit is actually the most useful of the bunch. As to whether it can replace a winter blanket, it depends a little on your DM, the weather you’re staying warm in, and whether you’re using the Frostburn expansion pack.
Did Milo somehow get proficiency in Elven Thinblade and Unarmed Strike from somewhere, or have all his attacks been at -4 since he got rid of his quarterstaff? Wouldn't he be vastly better off with a dagger?
He had a whole host of feats on an Amulet of Mirror Move (an obscure spell that lets you copy feats you see someone else use, which he grabbed via casting Heroism on Mordy) which he lost at the end of HPCC. This included Elven Thinblade Proficiency, because he could.
January 9, 2015
Chapter Fifteen Posted!
Harry Potter and the Save-or-Die: Chapter Fifteen: “The Tour Guide” is up. Enjoy! You can find it here.
January 7, 2015
Big Announcement! And a Little Announcement!
Greetings, readers! I have two announcements for you today: one big, and one little! (warning: massive wall of text approaching)
Glad to hear you’re not dead, Sir Poley! Now, what are they?
First, the little one: I resumed work on Harry Potter and the Save-or-Die today. I intend to have a chapter out on Friday, and resume regular updates from there.
Wait, are you saying that resuming work on the premiere Dungeons & Dragons-Harry Potter-Crossover-by-a-Canadian-author-featuring-an-original-character-and-a-tract-against-the-“word”-irregardless of the century—nay, of all human history!—is your minor announcement? So what’s your major one?
Why thank you, adoring italicized text. Now, for the bigger one: the reveal of my mysterious side project! The Christmas release didn’t happen, though the project is approximately 95% ready for early testing, however. I hope to have it in a usable state in a week or two(yes, I’ve said that before, but I mean it this time).
Yes, yes, but what is it?
Death-or-Glory, a brand-new Pen-and-Paper Sci-Fi/Fantasy Action-RPG. It features an innovative mechanic to—
Hold up. A Pen-and-Paper Action-RPG? I thought those required video-graphics! How many kilobytes of RAM can you really fit in a d12?
Not in this case, Increasingly Annoying Italicized Text. I call it an “Action-RPG” because it occupies a space between traditional tabletop RPGs, like FATE or D&D, and tabletop wargames, like Warhammer and Battletech. There’s a GM and each Player controls a PC, but the combat is fast-paced and heavily steamlined, and can have five times as many characters in a battle as a traditional RPG without slowing down. It can be played on a grid like D&D, or with a ruler like Warhammer, whichever you prefer.
But—
Seriously. Just let me explain myself.
In Death-or-Glory, the Players play together as soldiers in a larger squad that itself answers to the callous, uncaring High Command of a city-state in a post-nuclear fantasy setting. The High Command considers your squad to be extremely expendable, and, frankly, you are. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself having to charge a tentacled demon in hand-to-hand combat armed with only a bayonet and a tin of sardines.
However, helping you in your travails are a large number of expendable Redshirts, controlled co-operatively by the Players. With mediocre equipment and negligible training, they can’t be expected to add much to combat except in huge numbers. However, if your PC is standing next to a Redshirt and you get shot (or eviscerated by said tentacled demon), you can make a check to pass off the hit to the Redshirt instead. Failing that, if your PC bites it (or, more likely, it bites your PC), you can immediately take control of a surviving Redshirt, who gains Hidden Depths (and previously-unseen skills) and is promoted to PC status. This way, no matter how massacred the party gets by its opponents, everyone is always able to contribute and have a good time—no sitting around for three hours while your GM comes up with a plausible reason for your new Elf Thief to join up with a band of adventurers thirteen storeys underground in an undead-ridden crypt to replace your last Elf Thief.
So that’s the Death, but what about the Glory?
I’m getting there. Character generation in Death or Glory is semi-random: you roll randomly on a chart to see what kind of soldier you are (ranging from basic trooper to sniper to medic to grenadier to, at the very top, knight and wizard), and again to see if you have any special training (such as being particularly accurate or being able to repair damaged vehicles). These die rolls, however, can be modified by spending Prestige Points (PP) which are earned by performing heroic acts, such as slaying enemy leaders, rescuing teammates, jumping on grenades, succeeding at mission objectives, and the like. Dying heroically earns the most points. PP represents the fact that famous, successful units get top priority for new equipment and the most promising recruits. It can be spent improving surviving characters by requisitioning gear, getting extra training, or being promoted, but it can also be spent improving new characters if your old one dies. This means that the random character generation is self-balancing: if you end up as a conscript, you can throw your life away in as heroic a manner as possible and score lots of Prestige Points, improving the odds that your next replacement is an Officer or Knight. But if you’re lucky enough to start as a Knight, you want to play conservatively—after all, if you die, you might come back as a conscript.
The squad succeeds or fails together, but earn points individually. The game, then is a little bit competitive as each mission starts out, with Players competing to kill the shiniest enemies. However, as Redshirts start dropping and ammo runs low, it becomes increasingly co-operative, as glory takes a backseat to survival—which is never guaranteed.
Wait. If the squad dies early on, then wouldn’t the lots of GM effort be wasted on the adventure’s climax?
Yeah, it would be. It’s entirely possible for the whole squad to be massacred early in an adventure, which would mean that the all effort the GM put into the plot after that point would go to waste. Further, with death on the line in every mission, the Players might simply choose to run home rather than continue the mission if losses mount up. This is why the game comes with an optional random mission generator built-in, so that the GM doesn’t have to put in any work to begin with. It determines a foe for the squad to be battling (such as insane demon cultists, hordes of undead, enigmatic fae, and human scavengers living on the fringes of society), a mission objective (such as defending or assaulting a strongpoint, protecting or ambushing a caravan, scouting out a forest, and the like), and provides a huge selection of randomly-generated encounters and dilemmas, all topped off with an epic climax, with little-to-no pre-planning on the GM’s part required. Death-or-Glory is built from the ground up to be able to go from “Hey, guys and gals, want to try playing this Death-or-Glory game?” to “twenty cultists with bolt-action rifles and bayonets, led by a sorcerer, charge at you. Roll for initiative.” in under 30 minutes at the maximum. Of course, random mission generation is optional—the GM can choose to create an adventure manually, like a traditional RPG.
That sounds great! Sign me up! What’s done and what’s left to do?
Here’s what’s done (barring tweaks from playtesting, of course):
Nine squad types to play as, from infantry to dragoons to mechanized infantry, each resulting in a very different play experience.
Sixteen character specializations, including knights, wizards, medics, sergeants, snipers, and heavy weapons operators.
Twenty different types of special training, such as First Aid, Fearless, Shield Wall, and Sharpshooter, which makes each character unique.
More than fifteen different weapons, ranging from swords and spears to shotguns and rifles, as well as rules for dozens of different kinds of equipment, from silencers to banners to minesweepers.
A fully fleshed-out (and streamlined) vehicle combat rule system, and a wide array of vehicles, from light scout cars to APCs to tanks, to choose from (if you can shell out the Prestige for them).
All the combat rules, from moving to shooting to charging to falling back to ordering redshirts to jump on grenades.
Four enemy teams: Fae, Feral Humans, Demon Cultists, and Undead. Each enemy team includes basic troopers, elites, scouts, a siege weapon of some description, and several leader and villain-type characters to choose from. Every type of unit includes strategic advice for the GM on how they should be used.
Four Random Missions: Recon, Strongpoint Defence, Strongpoint Assault, and Convoy Escort.
Character record sheets, Vehicle record sheets, and a checklist for the GM to keep track of Prestige Points
Here’s what still needs some work:
More enemy teams: Rogue wizards, Rival City-States, and Goblins. Probably more.
Random, Unaligned Monsters, such as Dragons, Hydras, Giants, Giant Spiders, and the like.
More missions (Bodyguard Detail, Assassination, Sweep & Clear, Rescue, Dungeon Crawl, Escape, and others)
Lots of fluffier text (chapter introductions, explaining the role of the GM, background and story explanation) is missing
General layout (charts wrap between pages awkwardly, etc.)
Index and Glossary
Copyright information
An original short story set in the world of Death-or-Glory included with the rules (~60% complete currently)
Some of the balance is a little wonky. Powerful monsters tend to be a bit on the fragile side, and weak swarms are a tad overpowered.
When the rules are in a state that they can be read and played without myself being present, they will be released on the internet in Alpha. Afterwards, I will update them as new features are added and feedback is received.
That said, all preliminary tests (including the last week I spend playing this game with friends and family) suggest that it pumps pure fun directly into the bloodstream. A Mission from start to finish takes between two and three hours most of the time and needs no prior preparation, so organizing a game is relatively easy.
P.S. I’m really not dead! You can stop asking! I was just deeply buried in the development of this game the last few weeks. Next time I’ll try to do a better job of announcing breaks on the internet.
December 9, 2014
Side Project Week!
Hey, everybody!
This week, my writing time is going to be largely dedicated towards my Super Secret Side Project(TM), which is rapidly nearing completion. My tentative goal is to have an early, Alpha-version of it available to the wider world by Christmas.
However, this means that working on Harry Potter and the Save-or-Die is bumped back down to priority two, again, for a little while. There won’t be a chapter this week in all likelihood as a result.
December 5, 2014
New Chapter!
Harry Potter and the Save-or-Die: Chapter 14: “The Hogwarts Express” is up! You can find it here.
December 2, 2014
Could Milo craft magic items with wanded magic spells built in? The magic item creation rules state that a caster can create items that contain the effects of spells he can't cast, as long as he has the appropriate caster around to actually cast the spell
It likely wouldn’t work, because HP spells don’t have levels. As a result, trying to slot them into the established formula, which requires their level to calculate price, would throw up an error that could only be resolved by direct DM intervention. Milo doesn’t like pushing into territory where the DM has absolute say, and where Milo doesn’t have a solid argument to back up his side, because DMs are unpredictable and, in some cases, petty. Sure, it could work—but the DM might instead rule, for example, that now that he/she/it had really thought about it, Milo shouldn’t be able to make magic items using HP-world raw material at all.
As such, he’d only turn to such an option in the direst of circumstances.
Could Milo craft magic items with wanded magic spells built in? The magic item creation rules state that a caster can create items that contain the effects of spells he can't cast, as long as he has the appropriate caster around to actually cast the spell
It likely wouldn’t work, because HP spells don’t have levels. As a result, trying to slot them into the established formula, which requires their level to calculate price, would throw up an error that could only be resolved by direct DM intervention. Milo doesn’t like pushing into territory where the DM has absolute say, and where Milo doesn’t have a solid argument to back up his side, because DMs are unpredictable and, in some cases, petty. Sure, it could work—but the DM might instead rule, for example, that now that he/she/it had really thought about it, Milo shouldn’t be able to make magic items using HP-world raw material at all.
As such, he’d only turn to such an option in the direst of circumstances.
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