Feelies

When I was seriously into gaming, I made feelies.

This document was made in 1988 or so. It references the Castle Amber module, The Order of Light from Gemstone III, and Louise Cooper’s Time Master Series, plus the city of Charn from my home-brewed campaign.

(2024 update - Back in 2015, I didn't mention Charn is from the Chronicles of Naria. I have no idea why, that is my favorite book in the series.) 

The punchline to many of these references was that the characters AND players were aware of all of these references as works of fiction. The characters had copies of the Time Master Series and Averoigne stories. Each character has ring of wishes to enter the stories themselves.

When I was in high school, this seemed like a great hook.

Right! Now we are going to have company again! (Vampires)

What do you do when vampires show up? The old classics are garlic, holy water, and crosses.

What do you do if you don’t have those things?

Looks like I wasn’t the only one who got lucky last night.

Get creative or die. If it all goes to hell, you die creatively and that’s something to be written on your tombstone.

Remember the basics. 

Vampires can’t enter a home uninvited. Should this happen, a quick exchange of money can fix the situation. Stables, churches, and other areas are not homes. Don’t hide there without a backup plan.

Holy water is great, but grease and oil are surprising. Lock the door, grease the floor, and upturn a table in the middle of the room. When the vampire smashes his way in, down he goes, ready for a nice stake.

Variation two involves spraying oil under the door as the vampire attacks it. This keeps him out for the short term.

Both of these tricks make vampires respect locked doors.

Water is another great benefit, as are small boats. Packing a rowboat full of characters in the middle of a body of water is an impenetrable barrier to bloodsuckers. Should they turn to gas or a bat and attack the boat this way, it can be capsized and hidden under.

Fire on a larger ship is a nightmare, but doubly so for vampires. Always burn the ship before it gets dark and well out to sea, just in case.

Seeds. Vampires have obsessions and counting is one of them. Throwing seeds is a great delaying tactic. Make sure you are not holding an envelope full of seeds labeled “144 count”. This never works.

Tying is another obsession of vampires. Braiding or unbraiding your hair can be of use. However, half of this is the delaying action and half is emphasizing your neck as a target.

Many rule sets allow for knockouts if the damage is high enough. A wand of fireballs can turn a flock of vampires flying over a moat into fish food quickly. Fireballs do more damage in confined spaces. Fireballs do not have to be fired directly at a target to do damage, so fire them behind the target to knock them forward. Or in front of them to force them back.

Always remember the game mechanics that allow you to move other characters. You can’t hurt a vampire barehanded, but boy does the sun sting if you shove them outside.

There are myriad ways of dealing with vampires. Let me know if you have any favorites.

Quick Doodle - Stave Church

I’ve been doodling to get back in the habit of drawing. Tonight’s offering is a Norse-themed church.

2024 Update - I have more than a few posts about Stave Churches. Click the link to read them all. 

Rifts on Google Plus

I haven’t played Rifts since 1995. One of the key elements of play is simplicity, and the highlight of the rules is the artwork. Palladium has been producing quality works for decades. 

I am tempted to pull out my old books and give it a roll again. But for now, I'll content myself by watching others in the Rifts Google Plus Community. 

The 2024 Update that should have come in 2019. Google Plus is gone and didn't even say, "Sorry for the inconvenience". 

J5T - Classical Hack

The links below are paid ads and will take you to DriveThruRPG, respectively. Funny that my site is missing a reference to Classical Hack.

Classical Hack is a full gaming system created and published by Lynne and Philip Viverito. As a kid, I watched epic battles play out in my living room, dining room, basement, garage, and bedroom. At first I was an outsider, then I was a participant.

My parents engaged me in creativity and gamesmanship from a very young age. Castles and knights lurked in every corner of our home. Every house and every apartment we ever lived had a game room. And if it didn’t, any room and every room could be transformed into one.

One of my earliest memories was of a convention in Lockport, New York. My dad had constructed an amazing castle of incredible detail, complete with a custom table to hold it. The whole construct seemed amazingly tall, I couldn’t reach the top standing on a chair.

I recall sitting on the edge of tables as dice were rolled and Romans met barbarians with swords and spears. People played, laughed, and cursed late into the night.

Which brings me to Classical Hack.

ClassicalHack.com is a website dedicated to historical miniature gaming, created by lifelong gamers.

The game system is very period-specific. The series includes:
Holy Hack Hacking by the Book Biblical Warfare,
Homeric Hack Warfare in the Age of Homer,
Classical Hack Warfare from 600 BC to 250 AD,
Hack In The Dark Warfare in the Dark Ages 250 AD to 1000 AD,
Knight Hack Warfare in Middles Ages 1000 AD to 1450 AD,
Pike Hack The Road to Dunbar Warfare in the Age of Cromwell.

To support these rules there are two scenario books:
Classical Hack Rome
Classical Hack Macedonia.

All books, even prototypes were written on Macintosh Computers typically using Adobe for editing and page layout.

You can check out ClassicalHack.com for updates to this great gaming system, or get it from DriveThruRPG.

The Strange Chromebook XFCE Glitch

This morning, I had some trouble with my version of XFCE on my Chromebook. Tab-Alt stopped working, the menu bar had vanished, the programs opened would not keep focus and the cursor was either X or invisible.

How I hate messing with a perfectly good distro. The solution is rather easy. Delete your ~/.cache/sessions directory and the functions come back after logoff/reboot. How simple.

Of course, I forgot you can't rm directories and needed to try three times before I remembered the rm -r modifier. So the actual command is above.

Whew! Thank god for Ubuntu and XFCE's easy of use. If this was Windows, I'd be screwed.