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Posted by Hawke at September 24. 2014 Brian's The One Ring TOR RPG Group (Fridays, every-other, 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm) - Running in Third Age 1947 (a few years after the Battle of Five Armies, using Cubicle 7's / Sophisticated Games The One Ring Role-Playing Game. Hosted at Brian's house in North Spokane. The group currently consists of 8 players ages from 12 through 46, with 4 female and 4 male participants. The first session was Friday, September 19th. They are not currently looking for additional participants at this time.

Posted by Hawke at February 13. 2013 Originally posted January 09. 2013 Joe spotted dark figure in the night on horse. He kept shooting at it. then they fled. They left north overland, rather than the road. Cutting north, parallel to the King's Road. Then north east, trying to cut across land.

wke at February 17. 2013 Session #5 adventure notes:   They have just arrived at “The Lady's” home after being confronted by her guardian, Sir Karn of the Golden Helm.   They walk into the house to meet The Lady for the first time. Dimly lit with candles.   She is very comely, with long raven black hair, and pale skin, but with a tint that indicates she would normally tan very well. She is of Middle-eastern descent. She keeps the bangs of her waist length hair covering the left side of her face. She is taller than average.   Her clothing is of quality workmanship, but very plain and unadorned. Speaks very softly,though not timidly.   She explains that the Mordredian forces destroyed her homeland and capital city a number of years ago. She explains to them that her father's seer told her she was going to play a role in The Great Tale. And the players were not to play their part. Far north at the borders of the Great Ice, is The Oracle in self exile. She reads the letter in the scroll. The letter mentions the far Eastern island nation, ruled by Toranago-sama, is so far the only country to repel the forces of Mordred to date. The scroll case has a puzzle that reveals a map that leads to the Oracle's hidden abode to the north. She is not the most important part, but an important small link in the chain. If the chain is broken, then all the world will fall under the rule of Modred's forces, and forever be enslaved. She is some small link in the chain that will find those that can stop the forces. The Oracle will finally tell her, the part she is now to play.   She uses her signant ring to unlock the spring loaded puzzle. Sir Karn does not believe she needs strangers to help, but she believes they are critical to her survival, as does the Lord that sent her the scroll.   They rest, and the following morning, the villages at the base of the hill, bring   The lady insinuated she can heal, and can take care of herself in combat and wilderness situations.   Will take several weeks to reach the border of the ice.   Initially the land is farm and rolling hills ,until the northern end of Sapientium. Gentle wavy fields, much of it farmland.   Has helped the crops and trade flourish. She speaks Sylvan. She is 6' tall. She is of royal line. Her entire family, as far as she knows, has been slaughtered by Mordred. She is the last of her line.   Sir Karn is 6'4" tall, muscular, white haired (close cropped) and clean shaven. He is 67 years old. Very well disciplined. He is not of the same ethnicity as Lady Drunara.   Unknown which side the Drow are allied with. As far as they know, the Mordredian forces have not attacked or allied with the Drow, but they don't really know. The lady has not seen a Drow I a long time. He ran into one in the wastes near the base of the Dragonspine mountains. Before Sir Karn finished him off, they did get information that they the Drow are slowly building their forces deep underground.   They noticed Sir Karn was tense when discussing Drow. Joe's character, illicited great prejudice against humans. Denies the existence of Drow as a Human lie, and claims all Elves that trade with Humans, are traitors.   This might be a problem. The Southern Elves have been open to trade. The Western Elves open to political negotiations, but not trade. The Northern Elves, she knows little of. They do not trade or deal politically. She had healed a wounded Northern Elf. But she does not know if they will welcome them with open arms, or if they should traverse the boundary.   Joe's character wants to cut through the Northern Elves Woods directly, he will deal with negotiations with the Elves if necessary.   Drake's character (NPC'd by hawke) “what's in it for us”, “I'm broke”.   “Lord Torschalan promised there would be something at the end”   She admits that Lord Torschalan has given her a small map of emergency cache of scrolls, weapons, treasure, and other wealth.   Only guarded by Wards, and The Lady knows the words to disable the Wards. The treasure is only a half day journey from The Oracle.   Desslock, “If you're not prepared to kill your way through this, then you should go home” to Andrew Gaunt.   After hitting the road, very well equipped by The Lady and the villagers. The villagers will look after the house. Specifically the farmer that Deslock and Andrew harrassed earlier.   Sir Karn and The Boy travel with Lady Drunara.   They saw one rider following them a few days into their journey. The rider galloped away when Desslock saw the rider.     It became colder each day, and actually snowed by the end of the first week?   Map of the encounter area.   They fought successfully against the 3 Mordredian horsemen. 1 swordsman (low rank), and 2 bowmen (low rank, but higher than the swordsman). A fourth turned back south before heading towards the ambush.   The party was gorily victorious. They killed the bowmen, and captured the swordsman. Lady Drunara healed him just enough as she ripped out the arrow from his lung, with flesh and bone still on the barbed tip, to keep him alive along enough to intorrogate. Desslock relished the human soldier's suffering.   Between gurgling blood, he indicated he was sent by Sergeant Harden.   Desslock -2 to Will check to resist killing the guy. Would normally be -4, but since already killed some, he had a little more self control, and for the reason of interrogating, otherwise would have been -4 to his will check to resist killing the guy. He threw a tantrum but didn't kill him.   Kol ended his Rage.   Kol did not recognize this guy as one of the three soldiers back at the tavern outside the South Pass Keep tavern at the edge of the cleared area.   His mission: The Sergeant said that some “hoity toity lady left the village, and to capture her and bring her back for questioning”.   Desslock accused the Lady's humans of selling her out (from the village). She disagreed that they did so willingly. The soldier indicated their troops razed the village to the ground. In anger, Joe then jammed the arrow into the soldier's eye into his brain.   Joe and Company loot the corpses.   And everyone gets XP. They took cloaks, and lots of other stuff as loot. Will make it easier for Mordredian wizards to track them.   They then quickly hit the road. This means it took them about 30 minutes from the end of the battle to loot everything and hit the road.     Kol's discussion with Sir Karn regarding Drow? I need to email him.   Lady Drunara thanks Deslock for killing the soldier after he confessed the village was cinders.   Everyone will be level 2 by next session.   1200 xp total.      

d by Hawke at October 12. 2014 One of the comments on my youtube channel put it succinctly regarding our shared attitudes about what has happened to cantrips: "cantrips are the role playing spells". More wonderfully entertaining clever stories have been told and retold generated from a creative use of "firefinger" and other "useless" cantrips than ever have been with the extremely over powered zero level spells.

Posted by Hawke at October 14. 2014 My philosophy, for what it is worth, regarding party balance, is that the party is balanced by the variety of character personalities, backgrounds, skills, equipment, etc. allowing opportunities for at least one PC to have some exceptional ability for different circumstances. Of course players can choose what they like, I generally do not restrict the choices the players make, I just try to encourage a lot more of a ROLE-playing approach than a lot of D20 players these days seem to consider. In some situations some characters will have a chance to shine, while others will have to hold back. I don't want players and scenarios to be limited to cliche's and archetypes, but I'll use a few to illustrate some points... When in the High Elven royal court, the barbarian half-orc should probably remain silent while the party's Elven Cleric or Diplomat or other characters with similar negotiation skills does most of the talking. When confronted with complex trap-puzzles, the rogue-types and/or thinkers should probably step up rather than the hack and slashers. When trying to sneak in and steal the Prince Kadakithis's royal sceptre, the stealthiest and quietest members would be best engaged in the activity, and the other party members will have to either act as back up or stand down and wait When someone needs to wade through ancient tomes of forgotten lore, finding key clues that will change the course of the party's goals, maybe even impact the future of the entire kingdom, what backgrounds, connections, abilities, and skills do you want brought to bear in such a situation? Though there might be combat solutions, that is probably not the optimal approach. What the 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition successive increases in combat use of cantrips does is completely change the attitudes of spell casters, especially novice players, to use less creative and thoughtful approaches, and act more like a hack and slasher. Which, for hack and slash players is just fine. That just isn't my style. The original use of the "role-playing spells" known as cantrips, in 5th edition become just another bashing combat tool, diverting that much further away from the desired R-O-L-E-playing and focusing more on R-O-L-L-playing's emphasis on combat capabilities rather than much more varies non-combat capabilities. If you want a lot of combat and action in your campaigns, and are bored with complex character interaction, lots of dialogue, diplomacy, politics, puzzles, riddles, avoiding combat whenever possible, etc, then you will be bored with what I have lined up in most of my campaigns. There are lots of opportunities to get into fights, but that will likely be suicide in either in the short term or longer term if that is the approach you want to take (looking for trouble). There _is_ combat, but that is probably only about 10-20%% of my campaigns at most. So for every 10 hours of gaming, there would only be about 1-2 hours of combat (about one combat per game session with game sessions averaging about 4-5 hours each). This varies of course, but seems to hold up in general. The "spellcasters" have the visible powers of their great magics, but should also have many other abilities based on their Intellect, Wisdom, Charisma, including persuasion, herbalism, knowledge, professions, lore, lore, and more lore. PC's aren't limited to this approach, but neither are they limited to just being spell-casting hack-and-slashers. They don't have to become "dead weight" just because they are out of combat spells. Quite the contrary, many of the greatest solutions to challenges come from ideas, not brute approaches or even necessarily magic approaches, and typically spell casters have either superior intellect, wisdom/intuition, or charisma/persuasiveness on their side beyond their spell casting to help come up with creative solutions to stay "in the action". I recently played a spell caster, and I went with zero combat spells, and I was more actively engaged in helping the party, then ever the other spell casters were that used combat-focused spells. They "ran out" of blasting spells, and didn't have much to fall back on due to that mentality. I was able to keep constantly contributing to the good of the party, some with magic, but often through other abilities, ideas, and actions. All of the above said, I don't usually require the party to have any "required" archetypes, I've had groups of all Elf-rangers, or a gang of rogues, or a band of warriors, though each had distinctive backgrounds that gave them some unique history/abilities/perspectives that would be of use. How they ROLE-play is more important than their mechanics. I totally understand those who do not agree with my approach, and there is nothing wrong with the differences they have for those DM's and players that prefer to implement the D&D; rules as written, and don't mind generally more hack and slash approaches to RPG. Personally, after playing 3 groups through 5e, the cantrips issue totally changed the dynamics in (my view, for what it is worth) a negative way, encouraging spell casters to become "blasters" rather than "thinkers" or "intuiters" or "persuaders". I hope this helps explain in an effective way to you why I take the proposed approach with the house rules. My goal is to encourage as much ROLE-play as possible, without using a completely different system. There is no problem with disagreeing, I welcome it (as long as in-game it doesn't interfere with game-play) and I do intend to make additional "tweaks" to the house rules (Especially the combat crits) as game play sessions provide additional information to help guide the process. What do you think? Happy Gaming!

Posted by Hawke at October 15. 2014 Just a reminder to those new to 5e, it includes ritual casting now (I've used that for years thanks to Thieves' World campaigns), so be sure to read about how that works when weighing the variables.

Posted by Hawke at October 05. 2014 D&D; 5th Edition House Rules – Hawke Robinson * If the number of players gets around 6 or more, then I implement rules to keep the game play flowing quickly, I use little egg-timers (mini-hour-glasses) ranging between 30 seconds to 90 seconds, that is the time each player, when it is their turn, has to declare and resolve their actions (of course that is more during combat and structured times, not so much during dialog/role-play situations). This works out fine because you can be preparing your actions while other players are taking their turns, and it keeps the game from bogging down with larger groups. * I award more experience points for R-O-L-E-playing over R-O-L-L-playing. You will still get your standard XP for combat. Since 5th edition is so great at developing a rich starting background for characters, better than any previous version of D&D;, I expect you to play your characters in line with that background. The better you do so, the more fun everyone will have as an automatic reward, and you get the added XP bonuses for taking actions directly appropriate to ROLE-play over ROLL-play. For example, if your background includes avoiding combat and trying to find other solutions, you will not lose out on XP for properly playing your character in the right circumstances. * I use a hit location and critical details modification to combat (still only the same single d20 roll and damage roll, but with specific details). This just requires me to do some quick, simple, math calculations and a chart cross-reference, but does not require any additional rolls. This has minimal impact on game play speed, but greatly enhances the detail, and also increases the riskiness of combat. This includes giving (and receiving) stuns, bleeding, detailed injuries, etc. * I do NOT allow a full HP recovery from one Long Rest. Short rest recuperates as many HP as your level. Long rest recuperates as many HP as your level plus your CON. Specific injuries (broken bones, damaged cartilage, etc.) may have to be healed separately either by magic, herbs (I provide detailed lists of healing herbs available in the world), or longer (days) rest periods, to heal up such criticals. * Cantrips are modified to be more inline with their original intent, I bring back the 1st edition cantrips, and for those classes that have unlimited casting you get to do so, but the 5th edition cantrips that should be 1st level spells, are moved back to where (I belive) they belong. In running several groups now, the current 5th edition cantrip use, rather than balancing out spell casters, actually makes unbalanced in the other direction. My approach (I believe) is better balanced, and allows more creative use of cantrips, which is what made them so great when they were first introduced long ago. * Inclusion of the Comeliness (COM) attribute. Appearance and charisma are two very separate factors that impact how others react. I use the AD&D; 1st Edition Unearthed Arcana rules for COM included CHA factors and racial modifiers. For 3rd through 5th edition, I double the modifiers from +/- 1 to +/- to allow for those systems point inflation issues.

Posted by Hawke at October 05. 2014 As per questions from participants: Character Sheets: We will create new characters at our first gathering (that usually takes up most of the session). All character sheets will remain with the DM between sessions. If you want a photocopy of your character to take home, you are welcome to do so (There is a copying machine on the premises). I will also provide scratch paper, pencils, and other documents. Miniatures: Miniatures are used to help keep track of locations in combat situations, but are not stressed, remember I focus on ROLE-playing over ROLL-playing, but maps and minis help to reduce confusion about "who was where" when it matters. You are welcome to bring your own miniatures if you wish, however the DM does have more than a hundred of his own miniatures (mostly old-school 1980s lead-based) so you do not need to bring minis unless you wish to. Player's Handbook (5th edition): It is preferred that you bring your own copy, but if you do not have one, it is not required, the DM has spare books that can be borrowed during the game sessions. Drinks & Snacks You are welcomed and encouraged to bring food, drink, snacks, it is preferred that everyone helps contribute by bring food and snacks to share with the group, but it is not required. The office will provide water, tea, and coffee (the receptionist prepares this before the sessions). Dice: You are encouraged to bring your own dice, but if you do not have dice of your own, the DM has plenty of spare sets he can loan to players during the sessions.

Attached PDF of Code of Conduct document that everyone must read, agree, and sign at the beginning of a new group's formation.

As far as the beginning of the adventure: You will each have been sent, or arrived, at the location for individual reasons, with an over-arching common cause. You will be meeting initially in a typical cliche tavern setting, this will begin the actual role-play part.  After the characters and their backgrounds are created, we will start out the initial adventure in an a land that is a quasi-Aurthurian style setting (specific part of the world). This particular area is very unfriendly to non-humans, so you will want to be sure to have at least a hooded cloak or disguise skill/kit/item/magic if you are a non-human race. You won't be strung or run out of town, but most human folk won't have anything to do with non-humans, and are especially fearful of the haughty Elves. However, any Drow and similar "Dark folk" will trigger physical hostility and likely bring the law in to try to capture. Once you have all gathered bit by bit at the inn, the actual story will begin to unfold. At the port city of Balcoth An unseasonable heavy fog, and lack of winds has been worsening for days without breaking, all but stopping the shipping lines. Boats without oars (or other means of propulsion) have been rescued in recent days by other ships. The docks are packed full, with many ships wanting to leave, but waiting for the weather to improve. Everyone is talking about threatening armada and forces building from Mordred across the seas. Recently a portion of the dread armada encircled the seas around the port, and have cut off all traffic in the past 2 days. The players are meeting at the tavern. Numiens Inn & Tavern. At points you will likely travel through lands that are quite the opposite of this human-dominant area. we will then rapidly transition through a variety of areas (and likely more friendly to elves but inversely unfriendly to humans). If all goes well, you will also end up in locations reminiscent of the ancient Middle-east, ancient Grecian and Roman cultures, and potentially fully Oriental/Eastern Asian areas. Those are all in more "local" areas. During your travels you will very likely cross into other planes and worlds, where the laws of the physical and magical behave in unexpected ways. You will begin in a sea-port setting, then likely travel cross-country. Your party will likely rapidly experience many terrain types; plains, high mountains, vast deserts, dense jungles, underdeep, underwater, and many other environments. This means everyone will have opportunities to shine in different ways. There are some specific issues depending on your backgrounds, so each of you may have come to the port for different reasons, while others may be there for similar reasons. I will meet with each of you privately for a few minutes to go over the more private aspects of your backgrounds. Remember, every character should have something in their background that they would almost rather die than have others find out about, and this issues likely drives the character in specific situations to react certain ways that the other characters may find surprising.