The Biblyon Broadsheet

I’ve just added Pocket Gods & Monsters, a very simple web app, to the reference sheets section of Gods & Monsters. It currently only has two screens: one for ability modifiers, and one for difficulty levels/obstacle size penalties. I expect to add one or two more reference screens, and, assuming I can figure in-browser SQL storage out, the Spirit Manifestations database.

I’ve tested it on a first-generation iPod Touch, and on desktop Safari and Firefox. It should work in any “HTML 5” browser. If you use Javascript it will remember which screen you were last on, so that if you have to quit and go back in it comes right back to the table you were previously referencing.

You can add Pocket Gods to your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad application screen by choosing the bookmark icon (probably a “plus” symbol) and choosing “Add to Home Screen”. Since iOS supports HTML 5 manifests, it will download all of the required files, allowing you to use Pocket Gods while offline.

This is a web app designed by a Luddite. I’m still a big fan of paper maps, real dice, and hand-drawn character sheets. Pocket Gods is meant to be a quick reference; it will never replace the rulebook or real dice, nor will it ever create a character for you. The only thing it might replace are the three-fold reference sheets; however, paper remains more versatile than mobile devices, so I’ll continue to update the three-folds for the foreseeable future.

For the same reason, I expect to continue using physical adventure books for quite a while. Until the immediate visual cues of paper bookmarking across multiple pages and multiple books are matched by ebooks, it’ll still be easier to run an adventure from a physical book.

I can almost see replacing paper adventures with ebook adventures on a large screen; a 27-inch iMac has enough space to keep several pages open at a time, all visible. But I don’t think I’m going to be carrying a 27-inch computer to gaming sessions. When will we have our promised holographic projectors? That’s the point where I’ll start seriously thinking about replacing all of my paper manuals with ebooks.

Of course, it’ll have to be a holographic projector that can’t be seen by the players…

Quick access to common tables from the Gods & Monsters rulebook. This is an HTML 5 web app, so it should work on any iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. It’s set up as an off-line app, so you should be able to bookmark it and then use it on your laptop or mobile device even when you don’t have network access.

In Dungeons & Dragons, there was a “neutral” alignment; there is no equivalent moral code in Gods & Monsters.

It is possible for a player to choose to be “unaligned” or “unaware”. These mean, respectively, that the character does not adhere to a moral code because they haven’t made that choice yet, or because they are unaware of any need to do so, respectively. At first level, most characters without a moral code are likely unaware.

Because being unaligned is not a halfway point between two poles as it is in D&D, Druids are not unaligned: “Prophets must have a moral code.”

What does it matter?

For purposes of the rules, there is no difference between unaligned and unaware.¹ On a normal character sheet, the way to show that the character hasn’t chosen a moral code is to not write anything about moral codes down.

What are the practical effects of not having a moral code?

There are several spirit manifestations that operate according to moral codes; for example, protection from morality and ethical invisibility. These will have no effect on characters with no moral code. Other spirit manifestations, such as unravel spell and earth shot are more effective if the victim’s moral code opposes the prophet’s—there are penalties to the reaction roll, or bonuses to the prophet’s ability roll. If the victim has no moral code, these penalties/bonuses can never be applied to spirits manifesting against them.

Sounds like it might be nice to have no moral code!

Eugene Ritter of the Cave of Chaos has a couple of rules for what can constitute an old-school game. One of them: can you start from scratch and create a character in 30 minutes without much knowledge of the game? He puts Gods & Monsters through the sieve and it comes up 2 minutes ahead of schedule.

His second test is whether or not a player can create a character in 15 minutes if guided by someone who has already played the game. I’d add that it also should work if that “expert” is also currently playing a game: does the game have to stop while a new character is rolled up. Results are currently mixed, but I’m working on it.

I’ve got another test, but this isn’t about whether it’s old school but whether it’s playable. Can someone who hasn’t played under the writer understand the rules?

Close. Eugene’s character is fine. But his article about verve, survival, and injuries seems to read as if a character’s last heroic effort is about staying alive. I went back to the rulebook, and damn if it doesn’t sound exactly like that:

When a character’s time runs out, they will die by the end of the scene they’re currently in. At any point between when the character starts dying and the end of their final scene, the character can make one heroic last effort. The player will gain a bonus of their level on that roll; their injuries will not apply. They may bid any remaining mojo on that roll. Other players may also contribute mojo to that player’s roll, regardless of whether it is archetypal for those characters.

What in that description indicates that their last heroic effort is about dying heroically? Nothing. Let’s try again:

When a character’s time runs out, they will die by the end of the current scene. At any time before the end of the scene, the character can make one heroic last effort to do anything other than stay alive. The player can have the character try to attack the enemy one last time, try to assist their comrades in some way, make a stirring speech to influence the senate—or stir the mob to riot¹.

The player will gain a bonus of their level on that roll; the character’s injuries will not apply. They may bid any remaining mojo on that roll. Other players may also contribute mojo to the dying character’s heroic last effort if they wish to do so. For all purposes, a heroic last effort is archetypal for all player characters who contribute, and each character gains experience and possible skill/field bonuses as if they had spent the full mojo, not just what they personally contributed.

Eugene Ritter’s Cave of Chaos blog is named after the encounter area in Keep on the Borderlands. He describes it as “an old cave filled with thoughts on old school fantasy RPGS and their simulacrum like Dungeons and Dragons and Labyrinth Lord.”

Some of those thoughts involve Gods & Monsters, so read up.

He also has some interesting PHP notes.

Wow! This is a very nice adventure generator! You’ve got to try it to believe it. Generates some very nice maps, with room keys that include both encounters and dressing for you to use or modify. It also generates nice names for the dungeon, such as “The Tenebrous Sanctum” and “The Strange Tower of Madness”.

“Your nostrils are overwhelmed by a sulphurous smell. There is a pile of dung here.”

(Hat tip to James Maliszewski at Grognardia.)

“I (tragically) don’t have much in the way of secret paths, sub-levels, or non-Euclidian spaces, but even in this simple structure we can see multiple midpoint entries and looping paths. I think if you take a moment to consider the architecture of the world around you, you’ll discover that linear paths are the exception and not the rule.”

Justin Alexander takes a look at dungeon design using Paul Jaquays’s work as an example. You could definitely do a lot worse than looking at Caverns of Thracia and Dark Tower for inspiration.

(Hat tip to Jeff Rients at Jeff’s Gameblog.)

When I started writing Gods & Monsters and looking at what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to change from D&D, the biggest issue was the cleric. Just looking at the rules, the AD&D cleric is mechanically just a fighter/magic-user with a unique spell list. Later explanations made this clear—they even allowed clerics to use magic-user spells under some circumstances.

I went with sorcerors being the kind of “scientific” wizard who does research and pores over old books; and with prophets being people chosen by divine powers to change the world. In Spotlight on: The Prophet, I described them as:

… based on the active holy man or woman with divine power, such as Moses, David, Jesus, Joan of Arc, and Joseph Turner. Some of them could fight, but their warrior skills were secondary to their religious zeal.

Over on Grognardia, James Maliszewski mentioned that D&D clerics are partly inspired by Peter Cushing’s van Helsing.

That’s cool enough in itself, but the comments section is where it gets interesting. The discussion moved quickly to the notion that clerics should be “men of science and faith”.

Chris Tichenor writes:

I think there’s something to be said for seeing the cleric as a Van Helsing-ish (or Roger Bacon-ish) man of science and faith to distinguish him from the purely supernatural magic-user, though that may be hard for us of modern sensibilities to reconcile.

Specifically, the cleric in this formulation is a “monster-hunter”, like Peter Cushing’s van Helsing, “particularly when monsters are understood to be sin personified” (FrDave).

Brunomac replied sarcastically, “Might as well tell people to run their cleric like Fox Mulder.” But while meant as a putdown, it’s a good example. Mulder is a man on a mission, who believes in a higher order and is on a mission to protect a vulnerable people from the other world. Mulder a cleric? Not a bad idea.

Taking this idea all the way, some of their powers would be knowledge of how to trap and outwit the monsters that haunt the world. Some of that knowledge is divine, such as turning, and some is scientific, such as sewing their mouths with salt. This could definitely be an interesting way of making the cleric class unique.