An epic map of Westeros

I don't own the edition of A Clash of Kings that featured this epic fold-out map of King's Landing, the largest city in George R.R. Martin's Westeros, but I ran across a decent high-res photo of the map on Awful Books (which criticizes not the content, but the presentation of various books. Eh.).

I'm hosting the image here on the outside chance that it disappears from Awful Books, because I love this rendering of King's Landing and plan to use it in my own games one day.

Puzzles: The one part of old-school gaming I could do without

Last night's Dark Ages game with Chgowiz featured some problem-solving as we tried to deal with an enchanted wizard's tower that refused to let us go in a straight line and kept buffeting us with wind whenever we tried to walk down the hall toward our destination. We eventually triumphed, but only after a ton of dice rolling and frustration.

The episode highlights a part of old-school gaming (and new-school gaming, I guess, but it's emphasized much more in old-school play) that doesn't appeal to me at all: puzzle solving.

For a style of play that focuses so much on real-life concerns—ration tracking, paying hirelings and taxes, orienteering in the wilderness—there's just nothing real-life about granular puzzle solving. It seems out of place in an otherwise coherent fantasy medieval setting.

Perhaps it was because last night's puzzling situation didn't yield much by way of a payoff. I guess I'd be fine if the puzzle led directly to a treasure room or a magic sword or something. But in last night's case, we "beat" the puzzle by rolling fistfuls of dice, then blundered into another room where two players died and the rest of us got our clothes burned off.

Wargaming on the cheap: 1/72 plastic soldiers

A couple weeks ago I picked up a big pile of 1/72 scale plastic medieval soldiers and cavalry on eBay for $5. I've dabbled in 1/72 scale figs before, primarily for WWII wargaming, but these guys look pretty sharp (and the price was definitely right). Check out my preliminary color schemes above. I could drop another $30, I think, and get all the miniatures I'll ever need.

So that's got me thinking about rulesets for medieval wargaming. I don't necessarily want to do full-on ancients, because I'm not interested in the historical stuff whatsoever. That rules out De Bellis Antiquitatis, but I'm still keen to take a look at Hordes of the Things, the fantasy spinoff ruleset.

But really, I think my search is at an end, because I just found out yesterday that Games Workshop's Warmaster rulebook is available free on the Web. While the magic stuff and esoteric races probably won't hold much interest for me right now, I think Warmaster's core mechanic is fantastic. It really reflects the ebb and flow of battle on a strategic scale, and it doesn't bog down with tactical minutia (which is better handled by other rule systems). Instead, it's a clean-flowing game that simulates the movement of hundreds of troops on a battlefield.

Plus it's free.

And while it's designed for 10mm scale gaming, I'm guessing it'll scale up just fine for 1/72 (which is 20mm in scale). And I've got a fair collection of terrain for my kitchen table.

What I'd really like to do is use this ruleset to play out some grand battles in George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire setting—his books were full of such clashes. To that end, I'll be painting up my 1/72 dudes in generic-looking paint schemes that might pass for the noble Houses of Martin's Westeros.

Grenadier's Fighting Men take the paint pretty well

I finally started painting up the box of Grenadier Fighting Men I picked up at last year's gaming auction. It wasn't without pitfall, I'm afraid; I snapped the frail lead leg off the first guy I picked up. But the next three fellows ended up looking like they walked right out of the old AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide.

My favorite part? The beards. They're all different. Not sure why, but that just tickles me.

Here's hoping I can avoid destroying the rest of these miniatures. They really are quite soft.

Curious what the originals look like? Here's a pic of the boxed set as it appeared when I bought it four months ago.

Rookie Gamers Have Old School Intuition

I'm still half a country away at the in-laws' abode, and we played our second game of AD&D 1e today. Having played through a bit of the first module of Against the Giants (The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief), we proceeded to the second module - The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl. These modules are classic old school, and I DM'd for my two brother-in-laws, who have very little gaming experience.

It turns out that they have some pretty solid old school intuition. Without any prodding or suggestions, they came up with a few classic old school moves. Needing a light source but not wanting everlasting light, the two debated how best to use the continual light spell. Eventually, they figured that they could cast it on the tip of a sword and put it in its sheath when they didn't want the light to show.

Even better, after taking a couple steps into a dark cavern without light, but not wanting to be seen and afraid of pits in the ice at the same time, they fashioned their own tapping pole from a giant size barrel they found before. Yes - they came up with the idea of a 10 foot pole by themselves. I was impressed.

Still, this intuition didn't stop them from dying. One particularly notable death occurred after being chased onto an icy ledge with 2 frost giants and two wolves in front, a huge boulder blocking an exit behind, a cliff face on the right, and the deep, icy rift on the left. The wizard cast a cone of fire, instantly creating crazy steam and significantly limiting visibility. The other charged through the steam, slipped on the increasingly slippery icy ground in the steam cloud, and careened off the ledge into the rift (for 10d10 damage, on top of the damage already taken). It was good fun.

When it was all said and done, we played on and off for about 6 hours, which is much longer than I usually game for these days. By the time we finished, the two of them had gone through 5 characters (the last two of which died deep in the rift fighting a rare and legendary remorhaz, which is basically a massive, 30ft long snow worm). We then retired to play Puerto Rico with my wife, who was otherwise set to watch Law and Order reruns all night.

It turns out that my one brother-in-law is hooked on the old school but now has no one to game with. If you game in the temecula/murrieta/wildomar/lake elsinore region and are looking for an enthusiastic rookie addition, let me know...

Against the In-laws (uh, I mean, Giants)

So, I'm hanging out at the in-laws place for the holidays, across the country from home, and my brother-in-law (let's call him Pear Bear) asks me if we can play D&D. Wow. I've taken crap from my in-laws for so long for my geek habits, and now, after some bonding over a skiing trip, he's ready to get down. He had never played before. We gather my other brother-in-law, who's played with my geek buddies once before in Chicago (let's call him Fartin Martin), and my 78 year old Dad (who's also in town, never played before, but has seen my play since I was wee).

I had just DM'd Against the Giants the night before I left town, and I had sufficient equipment with me to rock the game again. And rock it we did.

After using some pregenerated characters and a *very* brief explanation of their stats and items, we started the scenario. Against the Giants is a classic D&D module that kicks off a series of modules, and it's very "old school." Pear Bear, Fartin Martin, and Dad started at a cave entrance overlooking the Steading of the Hill Giants. They were basically supposed to check it out. After I described the scene, they automatically slipped into classic D&D mode without any prodding: Bickering over plan of attack. This lasted for at least 25 minutes. Persuaded by some of Dad's military tactics (he was in the army back in the day), they decided to let Pear Bear (the thief) skulk around to gather intelligence. He successfully did so, and upon returning, the group decided to have Pear Bear set a diversion with a fire to let the group sneak in. And somehow work in a pincer movement to trap the giants. Shit quickly hit the fan as Pear Bear climbed a wall, terribly missed a pack of dire wolves 4 times with flasks of flaming oil, and was then spotted. Pear Bear eventually used some dust of disappearance on himself, snuck around the other side, and opened the back door.

By the time we quit for dinner, giants and dire wolves were swarming everywhere. Pear Bear was still invisible but retreating. Dad was getting his butt handed to him by a horde of hill giants (especially after I rolled a couple crits), and Fartin Martin was levitating 25 feet up in the air and blasting down spells but pretty trapped.

The final reaction: Dad was completely engaged by the planning but bored by combat (and fell asleep in front of the tv shortly thereafter). Fartin Martin had fun, but longed for the fast insanity and character-based decisions that he experienced before with my buddies (we played a fast indie game called Cold City, which is about monster hunting in creepy post-war Berlin). And Pear Bear was hooked. I mean completely hooked. He couldn't stop talking about it. He desperately wants to finish the scenario, and he told me to bring my dice to our football fest tomorrow (which isn't happening, because the Eagles are playing a big game across the Broncos. Go Birds!!!!). So, he's now trying to schedule some time for Friday. And he even started talking about the possibilities of gaming in, say, a 30 story building with aliens.

Wow. I mean, Pear Bear is one of the most grounded people I know. It was pretty cool to be part of such a quick conversion. If we get a second game in, I'll keep you updated.

And I'll definitely post a picture that Pear Bear's wife took of gaming. Good times.

Gaming a Villainous Bank Robbery

For many moons now, I've had the idea floating in the back of my head to play criminals engaging in a down and dirty bank robbery. As of late, our gaming has been somewhat sporadic, and due to player flux, we've been playing a handful of short, random games instead of our Savage Worlds fantasy campaign. Perhaps the time is now right to put the villainous bank robbery game into action.

The question now is: What setting or existing content (if any) and system should I use?

My first thought is to use the system A Dirty World, which has some neat little mechanics to model Film Noir. I picked this game up at GenCon a couple years ago, and it's just been sitting on my bookshelf. As Greg Stolze, the author of the game, explains:

"Your ability to get things done fluctuates depending on your mood and circumstances. Instead of a series of temporary modifiers, everything is in play all the time. If you want to retain your purity and courage, you have to work for them. If your character undergoes experiences that are going to turn him into a rat bastard, he gets rat bastard abilities whether the player wants them or not. The result is a game where character is always critical, because explaining your character's reactions to events is what builds his ability to change events. His struggles and discoveries impact your character directly. Drama and mechanics fuse."

That sounds pretty cool. But I'm still left at a loss for how to structure a game focused on a bank robbery, and because I don't want to devote the time to build a one-shot from scratch, I'd love some great published materials (in any system) as at least a starting point.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?