Star Wars and Ad Astra

I spent at least a little bit of time this weekend reviewing my Star Wars m20 document for suitability to being ported as the rules for AD ASTRA and what I'd have to change.  While the good news is that the answer to that is "hardly anything other than some proper names and labels" I also discovered a few minor inconsistencies or other things that were ripe for change, partly due to the fact that the rules were a little old.  They preceded some of the play-testing changes made to my own DARK•HERITAGE version of the m20 rules and they preceded the release of either the Star Wars: Rebels TV show or The Force Awakens theatrical release.

I've taken the opportunity to update the document from v. 1.2 to v. 1.3 therefore as part of that exercise.  It's located here:

http://jdyal.webs.com/StarWarsM20.pdf

And don't forget the character sheet:

http://jdyal.webs.com/StarWarsCS.pdf

And then, the final section, with a few minor updates, I think deserves to be reprinted on the blog.  These two sections actually originally started off as blog posts here, but they've gone through a few minor tweaks since then.  Because this is equally important to a game of AD ASTRA as it is to my STAR WARS REMIXED setting, I've tagged both.   For AD ASTRA there won't be The Force, of course, but the same concept applies to characters who can use psionics.

The Force vs. Normals: How to Strike a Playable Balance
Star Wars has often been very much about the Jedi and the Sith. Luke's discovery of his heritage as the son and later apprentice of a Jedi, and his grand finale battle with the Sith Master Palpatine, can be seen as the over-arching story of the entire Original Trilogy. The prequels and The Force Awakens even more overtly deal with the Jedi—hardly a major character exists who isn't a Force-using Knight of some kind or another, and the story is designed to be told from the perspective of the Jedi, or at least a specific Jedi. The Clone Wars and Rebels TV shows are also primarily told from the perspective of the Jedi, and are about their doings.

This focus partially obscures some things, though. In the Original Trilogy, Luke, Vader, the Emperor, and to a lesser extent Ben Kenobi and Yoda are the only knights that make any appearance at all. Many other characters are significant characters, like Han, Leia, the droids, etc. What's important here is that non-Force using characters can be pretty darn important to Star Wars, and in fact should be. You can see this in many episodes of the Clone Wars too—while overall the series is about the Jedi— especially Ahsoka and Anakin, many episodes barely feature them, or even don't feature any Jedi, Sith or otherwise at all. Star Wars: Rebels focuses on them somewhat less although it’s as much the story of Kanan and Ezra reiterating the relationships of Obiwan and Luke to a great degree, and Ahsoka and the Inquisitors play a large role as well.

Sometimes the writers (including George Lucas himself) lose sight of this, and make the Jedi both too good, too capable, and too important for anyone to stand up to them in any meaningful sense. But other times, it's quite clear that non-Force using characters can be the equal to a Jedi when they need to be. Jango Fett fought Obiwan to a standstill in Attack of the Clones. Highly skilled bounty hunters like Sugi, Embo, Cad Bane, and others showed themselves equal to the Jedi (or Sith) when they needed to be. Pre Viszla's duel with Darth Maul showed him to be highly capable, and he might have won, even though Maul was one of the most dangerous combatants in the galaxy.

Of course, in order to do this, these characters almost become superheroes themselves. It's actually easy to see Embo as an alien Captain America, and Sugi as an alien Black Widow. The Mandalorians, with their tricked out supercommando battle armor, almost seem to be Iron Man like at times.

But maybe this is the lesson in how to run Star Wars. The action is over-the-top. It is extremely swashbucklery, and borders on overt comic book like in tone and feel, quite frequently, even. It's easy to justify this superheroic action with the Jedi, because after all, they have the Force with them, which makes them superheroes. But when the plot dictates, anyone else can be just about as capable, either through intense training, fancy equipment, or a combination of the two. In reality, that means that highly capable non-Force users should be like Batman, Hawkeye, the Black Widow, or other characters, who while lacking overt superpowers, routinely are able to go toe-to-toe with actual superheroes as needed by the demands of the plot of the stories that they're in.

And aside from any meta reasons to make characters be equal, it's only good fun for everyone involved if everyone is more or less balanced with everyone else. If one character is just so much more capable than everyone else that he ends up doing everything, and the rest of the players are relegated to being his sidekicks, that's not likely to be very fun for very long (ahem, Rey.) But, the tendency can be to bring knights down to a regular character's level, when what usually works better is to bring the other characters up to the knight's level, in terms of swashbuckling action. Let your scoundrels and fighters and whatnot be Embos, Sukis, Boba Fetts and the like—the Captain Americas and Batmans of the Star Wars setting—rather than making everyone feel an "action tax" dictated by your sense of what is more reasonable for real people to do. This isn't about real people. This is about Star Wars characters. Forgetting that and making things too difficult to accomplish, or penalizing those who want to attempt them, is at odds with the source material.  Star Wars is kind of wild, swashbucklery action in lieu of a more conservative, cautious approach. The latter may be some other game, including many people's idea of D&D, for instance. But it’s not Star Wars.

When in doubt, and since it's now in Free-To-Play mode, check out The Old Republic. (Or watch some youtube videos to get a summary of the stories)  Only half of the character classes are Force users, and the bounty hunters, scoundrels, Imperial agents and Republic troopers don't suffer because of their lack of the Force. Rather, they're great examples of what Star Wars can be when knights aren't around.  Of course, by nature of the medium, none of the characters are very decisive or forceful, and they are passive agents being led along the railroad of the pre-written plot, which isn't a very satisfying or heroic paradigm, really—but don't take everything from The Old Republic as something to emulate, merely the fact that the non-force using classes are just as equally capable and dangerous as the force-using ones.

And, to add to this, Star Wars is filled with mooks. By this, I mean antagonists who aren't really meant to be terribly threatening, especially not on an individual level. From battle droids to stormtroopers, part of what makes the heroes seem so cool is the fact that they can mow through mooks with relative ease. Not impunity, but relative ease. Mooks don't have any hit points. Any hit at all and they go down. They slow down the heroes. They can threaten the heroes in large numbers. But to some degree, the whole point of mooks is to make sure that the heroes feel heroic.

Monty Haul vs. Mr. Scrooge GM: Challenges and Equipment in Star Wars
Dungeon Magazine may have warned us against the Monty Haul style of GMing, which has influenced countless games of D&D (no doubt for the better.) But keep in mind this thought...

At no point in Star Wars do I recall a character ever really needing some piece of equipment and not having it. When Luke and Ben need to fly to Alderaan, they divest themselves of their old landspeeder, and it's enough to get them there on the Millennium Falcon. When Luke suddenly finds himself on the wrong side of a chasm in the Death Star, well, voila!, he's got a rope to swing on in his belt (this isn't quite as cheesy as having bat-shark repellent handy just when you find yourself being attacked by a shark, but nearly so). When Luke needs to attack the Death Star, there's an X-wing there for him to fly. And apparently the Rebel Alliance just gives those things away to people that they like, since he continues to use it throughout the series.

The landspeeder is also an interesting case in point. At no point do the characters bog themselves down with equipment either. In a game like D&D, resource management and logistics is part of the fun (for some players. Not me, actually.) Worrying about actually having all the right equipment is important. Worrying about how much you can carry so you can make sure that you actually have what you need when you need it is important. Making the hard decisions on what to carry to keep your weight at a point where it doesn't bog you down is important.

I can't ever remember anything like this ever being a consideration in any Star Wars movie or Clone Wars episode that I've ever seen. It is a concern sometimes in Old Republic or Knights of the Old Republic because those are games that are, to some degree or another, based on the D&D paradigm. And it is in many of the Star Wars campaigns in various RPG settings that I've played in the past. Although, again, this is mostly because the D&D paradigm is hard to shake for folks who've grown up on it. But in my Star Wars d20 game, worrying excessively about equipment and money has clearly been one of those things, when we've allowed it to take over our game, has significantly hurt its ability to feel like Star Wars.

Although at times characters have been on the lookout for a ship, they never had to do anything too extraordinary to eventually procure one, or at least the services of one. This is the biggest single expense item that a character can have, but a character really needs to have a ship. Going from planet to planet, and engaging in space combat is part and parcel of playing Star Wars.

That said, you don't need a bunch of individual ships for your entire group. For most of the movies, the Millennium Falcon plus Luke's X-wing (so he can split up from the group and do his own stuff) are sufficient, with only the occasional other ship (shuttle Tyderium). Characters shouldn't be carrying around backpacks full of stuff, or need to hire a porter to bring all of the things that they might have in their ship. They don't need swoops or speeder-bikes or land-speeders or anything else on a regular basis. Let them have some money to spend on stuff from time to time, and make sure that stuff is available for them to purchase. And then don't worry too much about it. The equipment list isn't extensive enough that having nearly everything on it buried in the cargo hold somewhere would be a problem even, and realistically, characters can't use everything all at once either.

Some classes, such as soldiers, also benefit from having tricked out equipment. Especially at higher level, it's assumed that they'll have it. The Mandalorians wouldn't be nearly as cool without their armor, for instance. How would they stand up to the typical Jedi without their jetpacks, missiles, and whatever else? What's Cad Bane without all his gear?

Encourage your players not to get into gear-hoarding mode. That's not Star Wars. And then err on the side of gratuitousness with equipment. If it ends up being a problem, there are ways to bleed that off as needed. Equipment can get stolen, or broken or whatever. It's usually considered "cheap" to do this, so don't do it unless you really need to bleed off an excess of equipment. But honestly, given the limited equipment list presented here, that's not likely to be an issue. You can also bleed off excess money or loot by having players need to repair battle damage to their vehicles or droids, by wastage caused by using disposable items (like thermal detonators) or allowing them to pick up a droid cohort (start at 3-4,000 credits for a base level 1 droid, let them spend more to equip him with more stuff, and force the cohort to level up by gaining levels the same as any other player character.) Let your players have the equipment that they want, for the most part. That's part of the setting's conceit. While characters aren't rich, challenging them with resource management isn't very heroic, swashbucklery, or Star Wars like.

And the characters may need to come into money fairly quickly. If it's the character's conceit that he's got armor equivalent to a Mandalorian battle-suit, well that thing costs out to over 18,000 credits. If he can't get it until near the end of his career, that kind of sucks for him as a player too. He can't wait to afford a starship and an astromech at 7-8th level in a 10 level game. That doesn't mean that your fighter needs a full-fledged Mandalorian battle-suit at 1st level either.

As a rough guideline, I think characters should get between 5-10,000 credits worth of money (or stuff of equivalent value) per level, mostly. And they should spend 20-30% of that on maintenance of stuff. The fighter that wants the equivalent of a Mandalorian battle-suit should have to piece it together bit by bit over the course of a few levels, getting stuff and then upgrading it as time goes on. By 3-4th level, he should have most of what he wants.

And at some point, characters should get out of the game of worrying much about equipment or money at all. There is no wealth/level guideline. Once the characters have what they want, you should focus on maintenance with your money rewards. As always, keep in mind that logistics, accounting, and shopping are not at the heart of any Star Wars game. Use scarcity (especially at lower levels) to be a bit of a motivator, but don't be a Mr. Scrooge GM. But if your players are concerned about getting monetary rewards for their characters (unless it's in character—i.e., Han Solo) then they're missing the point and you need to recalibrate your game somewhat.

Dire Corby

I had high hopes for posting a bunch of stuff today, but work has been... well, a lot of work, so I haven't had the opportunity that sometimes I do to put together a post bit by bit a little here a little there on the side.

But rather than not post, here's a pretty cool punt for you to read today.  If you haven't seen this (and the rest of the series, although this one is the best) then you really should.

Rogue One

We interrupt this ongoing AD ASTRA series of posts to bring you this breaking news: the first Star Wars: Rogue One trailer just dropped today.  In spite of my concerns about the trajectory of the franchise overall, and this movie in particular I have to say—this is a really good trailer.

And apparently all new Star Wars movies will be about teenaged grrl power pixie-ninjas beating up men.  That's not going to get old or annoying anytime soon.

Ad Astra introduction

Author’s Note:  AD ASTRA is a role-playing game designed to replicate old-fashioned space opera.  Have you read the John Carter of Mars or Carson Napier of Venus stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs?  Have you watched the old Republic serials (or read the old comic strips) of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers?  Have you read the Planet Stories of Leigh Brackett, C. L. Moore, Edmond Hamilton or E. E. “Doc” Smith?  Have you watched Star Wars or the Guardians of the Galaxy movies?  Have you played games such as Traveller, Star*Drive or Star Frontiers?

I’m not talking about scientific rigor here.  We’ve got handwavy attempts to make artificial gravity and faster-than-light travel between the stars, and the fact that everybody looks a little bit like a man in (good) rubber mask or face-paint if they’re not just human.  We’ve got protagonists who fight with swords on spaceships.  If this is the kind of setting and game that you think you’d like, this is for you.

AD ASTRA is meant to be swashbuckling, larger than life, borderline super-heroic action.  Realism isn’t really meant to be more of an issue than it is in your average Captain America or Batman story.

Rather than tell anyone  at this point what a role-playing game is, or any of that jazz, I’m going to assume that this game is meant for a market that is already familiar with the notion.  The system I’m using is a variant of m20; a very rules-lite, stripped down variant of the d20 game, but one that relies heavily on GM interpretation, because there ain’t much in the way of formal rules.  It’s meant to be a game that relies on a few simple basics, the details of which are heavily dependent on rulings in game.  That said, the game is also meant to be fairly balanced and consistent, so that players know what to expect from it.  It does, however, specifically reject the implicit notion in d20 that the game had to be built to withstand abuse by bad GMs.  If you want to have a good game, try to find a good GM and a good group and handle it like adults at the social contract level; the system doesn’t address this at all.

The particular iteration of m20 were initially designed by me (and by designed, I mostly mean kit-bashed from existing elements designed by someone else) to be used in a custom Star Wars setting of my own design, set 1,000 years after the end of Return of the Jedi.  For various reasons, rather than continue with this particular exercise (which was mostly played out anyway) I decided to convert the whole thing into a custom setting, file the Star Wars serial numbers off, and graft some other classic space opera stuff into it as well.  Keep in mind, though, that since the system was originally designed to run Star Wars specifically, well, obviously that tells you a few things about what kind of aesthetic it’s meant to have.  The setting was meant to be more varied; my “Jedi” order was broken into multiple competing orders, and rather than Empire vs. Viet Cong-esque freedom fighters, I had a balkanized galaxy.  Many of these elements will translate into the revised system and setting.  I’ve toned down the “Jedi” as well, and made them a slightly more generic psionic warrior type that has a completely different kind of origin.  But that’s really neither here nor there—importantly, I’ve gone deliberately in the direction of minimizing their importance, or at least making sure that they’re not any more important than any other type of character.  If a typical scoundrel or soldier has absolutely no chance of ever taking on a “Jedi” in a fair fight, then something is seriously out of whack with your system, and you’re catering to the “look at me, aren’t I the most special snowflake ever?” escapism fantasy of your potential audience.  To be blunt, I’m not writing this for that audience.  I’m writing it for the audience that is made up of psychologically and socially healthy people that happen to like space opera.

It’s also not meant to be specifically original.  It’s meant to be a generic homage to various well-known and well-loved tropes.  As Vox Day once said about Star Wars, “It occurs to me that there is probably a market for books, and even films, that 'continue' the story of SJW-infested properties in a traditionalist manner. What should the Star Wars prequels have looked like? How should the post-Jedi story actually [have] proceeded? I shall have to think on this further... about Star Lords battling for power in a galaxy far, far away.”  In many ways, that’s exactly the point, but hey, if you’re going to do that, why not add in all kinds of other stuff while you’re at it?  It’s not exactly like Star Wars wasn’t just pilfering pretty much everything that they could; there are episodes of the Clone Wars that are literally carbon copies of Godzilla movies, samurai and western movies, noir movies, etc.  And, y’know what?  It actually works well for it.  That breadth of influence hasn’t made the setting any less workable; it’s actually made it moreso.

A few other notes: I’m using a system to map a part of a subsector of the galaxy that is borrowed almost entirely from the Traveller game, except where I’ve dropped detail.  This is a 2-D representation of a part of the galaxy using classic hex-maps (I'll add that attachment later); specifically a relatively tiny spur in the region where the Sagittarius Arm and Orion Spur grow close together, which makes crossing from one arm to the other possible (otherwise crossing the vast gulf between arms would be beyond the capabilities of any ship).  Rather than taking place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, this takes place a long time from now in our own Milky Way… but the galaxy is still a vast place, and most of it is comfortably out of reach forever.  The bulk drives that enable travel to distances that cannot be reached by conventional travel are still limited, and traveling more than a few light-years at a time is still unfeasible and theoretically impossible, even.  The Kalingrane subsector, which I’m detailing, is within the red circle on the map below (enlarged so you can actually see it; the red circle is way too big to be a mere subsector) and the green amorphous blob that you can see surrounding a portion of the Sagittarious Arm and the Orion Spur is the entirety of semi-known space.  The galaxy is a big place, folks!

Update to Ad Astra

I've been wondering what exactly to do with my AD ASTRA campaign seed... although I was sure that I wanted to do something with it.  For AD ASTRA I had a high concept, for my "1,000 years after Jedi" Star Wars setting, on the other hand, I had some details.  But the Star Wars game was so far removed from the actual events of Star Wars, as understood in the movies, etc. that it was effectively a completely different setting that just used the same "mechanics."

Let me take a step back for a moment before I reach my conclusion here.  I have two younger sons who are respectively, a young teenager and a tween (in the modern sense, not the one coined by Tolkien.)  Both are Star Wars fans, but both approach the franchise differently.  Alexander; the older of the two, enjoys the original trilogy and the Clone Wars.  He's the one who's much more likely to be the trivia buff, who knows all about all kinds of minor characters, locations, droids, etc.  However, he despises the Prequel trilogy, only very reluctantly admitting that any aspect of them at all was redeeming.  He thinks the Rebels show is wrong-footed compared to Clone Wars, and he's generally fairly negative about The Force Awakens as well.  The younger of the two, Logan, loves The Force Awakens.  He was really excited leading up to it, and he easily calls it his favorite movie of 2015, and one of his favorite movies ever.  Despite that, he doesn't go very deep into the franchise.  He doesn't know a lot of the details of the other movies, and probably doesn't even remember them all that well.  Although he likes the new movie better than his brother, he's much less invested in the franchise overall.  A more laid-back easy-to-please approach, vs. a die-hard fan of the franchise who can't be pleased with much of anything that it's done since Empire Strikes Back.  It's innate to them, though—even if I didn't know what they thought about Star Wars in particular, I'd have thought that that would be the way that they break just based on their personalities.

Anyway, because of that, we talk Star Wars a fair bit at home.  We've even been listening to the soundtracks straight through in chunks for some time.  And, of course, how can you talk about Star Wars without frequently waxing both lyrical and nostalgic about where it's gone wrong?  Our conclusions are, more or less, as follows:

• The prequels went wrong technically.  The stories themselves are salvageable, and the visual design is sure nice.  Mostly it's the pacing and the dialogue that sink these movies.  They're just technically poorly made movies.  But another screenwriter to clean it up and another director to get it to snap and get some chemistry out of the actors, and the movies wouldn't have been half-bad.  The Clone Wars cartoon shows to some degree what they could have been.  It also really rehabilitated the franchise to a great degree, setting it up for the honest to goodness sequels that started late last year.
• The Force Awakens had different issues.  All of the problems with the prequels were, luckily, fixed.  Good dialogue, good pacing; the first time I watched it, I felt like I was watching Star Wars again.  The problems it faces are structural and somewhat meta—and are likely to get worse with time as the series progresses.  It's actually quite offensive that every white male (excepting Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, who they could hardly recast) they're only allowed to be the villain (Oscar Isaac is actually Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada and he's a Cuban-Guatemalan).  And the character of Rey shows the feminist imperative in a cold light—for no good reason at all she's a better pilot and mechanic for the Millennium Falcon than Han Solo is, a better hand-to-hand combatant than Finn is, and with literally no training whatsoever she's a better Jedi and lightsaber combatant that... anyone in any movie ever, including Kylo Ren who's been training for years.  She's such an egregious Mary Sue that she literally made every other character in the movie superfluous.  This wasn't sufficient to completely ruin this movie, but it is sufficient to set the series off with a rocky start that's unlikely to improve (have you seen the cast photo for Rogue One?)  And it didn't help that the plot was basically recycled; this is now the third time that the Rebel Alliance has had to sneak on board a "death star" while a space battle rages outside to pinpoint the weakness in the super-weapon and blow it up.  Get a new plot already.  It was so similar to the plot specifically for the original Star Wars that it probably qualifies more as a remake than a sequel.  Except now with more Diversity, Inc.

As one reviewer contemptuously said of it, "The Farce Awakens gives girls what they want, superiority to men in all things without having to put in the effort men put in to be the best they can be."

And as Vox Day said about it: "It occurs to me that there is probably a market for books, and even films, that 'continue' the story of SJW-infested properties in a traditionalist manner. What should the Star Wars prequels have looked like? How should the post-Jedi story actually [have] proceeded?

I shall have to think on this further... about Star Lords battling for power in a galaxy far, far away."

I think the complaint is over-wrought.  As I tell my son Alexander, no—The Force Awakens isn't a terrible movie.  Actually, it's a rather fun one.  It's hardly perfect, and it's not nearly as memorable as the original trilogy, though.  It's merely a place-holder in the franchise, not an entry that really does anything really significant.  And that's OK.  But the idea of doing Star Wars the way it "should" or at least "could" have been?  That's intriguing.  Dennis McKiernan wrote the Iron Tower trilogy as a deliberate rip-off of Lord of the Rings not because he was particularly interesting in ripping off Lord of the Rings, but because he wanted to establish a similar baseline so he could write sequels to it without getting tangled up in IP violations and stuff like that.  File the serial numbers off, basically, but then go your own way with the stories.  That's what Vox Day is suggesting, kinda, for Star Wars.

A few years ago, I read The Secret History of Star Wars, which is actually a fascinating and extremely entertaining work (moreso than the prequel movies, certainly.)  It's quite interesting that a little bit of research into already published quotes, remarks, articles, etc. from the 70s and 80s can easily debunk the myth that George Lucas allowed to grow about his "master plan" for the series; it's quite clear that he had no master plan, or at least not one that resembled how the movies actually turned out.  Reading about some of the admittedly half-baked ideas that Lucas had after the success of the first movie, but before serious work was started on Empire really made me sit up and think to myself; "man, I would really have loved to have seen those movies!"  We get just a tiny glimpse of what they could have been like with the original Star Wars spin-off story, Splinter of the Minds' Eye by Alan Dean Foster.

That's what I'd like to explore more; an alternate version of what Star Wars—or at least a similar analog to Star Wars—might have been like had it diverged after the first movie into something more similar to Lucas' original swashbuckling serial-inspired plan, rather than becoming more tedious, more on message, more dark... in other words, if it had remained more of a Flash Gordon meets the Lensman and Dune.

And then, of course, I thought to myself, "Hey, I have this whole AD ASTRA campaign thingy that I'm not doing anything with, and I don't know for sure what to do with anyway."  And it clicked.  I could combine my concept for AD ASTRA, and my "1,000 years later" Star Wars setting, and even modify my Star Wars m20 rules instead of trying to adapt some kind of superhero version of m20 as the rules-base, and I'd be off and running.  Yeah, that means that I don't actually do anything new much—but it puts me in a place where I can actually use AD ASTRA immediately.  

I'm not actually looking to run anything anytime soon... but I'm thinking about trying my hand at writing again.  I'm always thinking of that and I've said as much many times here over the last few years, but I've actually got a plan and something that I can do with this now—it looks more promising than the vague ideas that I've had in the past.

Potential AD ASTRA characters?

So... next up, I'll give some brief backstory as to how my Jedi analogs came to be, what they are all about, and how the galaxy ended up looking like it does.  Because I like borrowing a good idea as much as the next guy, and let's face it; Star Wars was basically just a salad of pre-existing space opera elements all thrown together anyway along with some samurai movies, some Westerns, and a few other elements that were hardly original, I'll probably borrow from some other "generic"sources to some degree to add to that.

Stay tuned.  After several weeks without having anything really meaningful to talk about that motivated me to write a blog post, I've actually got a series that I think I can run with.

And, of course, it just wouldn't be "me" if I didn't add a potentially Lovecraftian element at least in the background.  Oh, snap.  I don't know what I'll do with that yet, but it'll not wander in grimdark Warhammer 40k territory, just have a bit of a taste.

Elder Evils

I've always enjoyed the concept of the D&D book Elder Evils, even though it ended up being a little too surface for my tastes to actually be usable.  I didn't re-read it cover to cover; I skimmed around and read my favorite chapters.  The ones that especially stand out to me are as follows:

• Atropus.  This undead god/planet/thing reminds me a lot of Eox, from Pathfinder's Distant Worlds.  The two are a match made in... well, deep in some horrible Lovecraftian vision of outer space, maybe.  Because both are relatively light on detail, combining the two of them is a no-brainer; if nothing else, it gives a few more places to explore.  I do think that undead in D&D are too varied and most of the variants have too many minor, and in fact even insignificant details to separate them, and many of them are only undead by fiat, since they clearly aren't the reanimated corpse or spirit of anything.
• The Leviathan.  This makes me want to re-read Book of Fiends by Green Ronin, who had an archdevil named Leviathan, based on the Biblical figure of the same name.  The version used here is a bit more like the Midgard Serpent of Norse mythology.  Of course, either archetype is acceptable.  The actual scenario as spelled out here seems to be a bit too weak to really make good use of the archetype, in my opinion.  Then again, bizarre save the world plots are hard to pull off, even in a 1-20+ level D&D campaign. 
• Sertrous. This obyrith lord in the shape of a serpent is an odd one.  Not that the concept isn't good; a serpent demon lord and his yuan-ti cultists rising and needing to be faced down; but some of the details just don't really add up.  To wit: the demon lord is dead, but not exactly.  However, there are stats for an aspect of Sertrous that are exactly like that of an obyrith lord from Fiendish Codex I.  It's in the exact same CR range (22) and has the exact same type of stats and special abilities.  It seems clear that we're supposed to assume that the Fiendish Codex stats aren't actually correct; rather, the "Demonomicon of Iggwilv" stats in the Dragon Magazine series are supposed to be correct, which are more in the upper 20s to lower 30s for CR.  Given that the only way I'd be interested in using these guys is in an E6 game, I think the lower versions are appropriate, and Sertrous should just be considered an obyrith lord, not some odd dead demon lord trying to be resurrected.
• Zargon the Returner.  Another fiendish creature of some sort; hinted to be an ancient baatorian who kills gods and whatnot, the fact that the creature only has a CR of 16 seems... kinda odd.  Beside the backstory, the rest of this chapter is surprisingly light on detail and very cliche.  And given that the backstory is heavy on D&D specific esoterica... I'm nor sure how useful that one is either.

As I said; I'm not huge on "save the world from impending global apocalypse" scenarios, necessarily, but I am really big on campaigns that feature undead, fiends, or both—which really highlights my interest in the specific chapters that I most like.  I'm also not necessarily entirely sure what to do with powerful fiendish lords, princes or archfiends,  if they're not save the world requests, of course, so I've got some work to do to figure out how to think about how demonic plots and politics work with smaller potatoes.  One of my favorite ways to do so is to think about having the game actually set in the world of fiends in one way or another.  This is the approach I'm going to take with my FALLEN SONS campaign noodling... once I actually get around to doing it.  This ends up being an exotic intrigue and skulduggery campaign, though—with patrons who are powerful archfiends rather than human(oid) crime lords.

Whatever.  I don't have a problem with the so-called issue of humans in rubber suits.  It worked OK for Star Wars, and it works fine for D&D.  

Fallen Sons

Time to sport a bit with another homebrew: this time, it's one I'll call FALLEN SONS.  I got the idea from my recent re-read of Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss and wondered to myself what a setting would look like that takes place in a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting where evil has won? What if, in fact, it was a fantasy Purgatory? Imagine the Worldwound from Pathfinder expanded to cover the entire world?  Thinking a bit more about books like Cthulhu's Reign (which I own, but haven't read yet) and this post on Goblin Punch, I decided that there was a real need for me to explore this theme, so I've created another tag—and I may yet create a Google Sites for the idea too, if I end up generating enough content, or feel like it would be worthwhile.  If the end result ends up feeling just a little bit like Dark Sun except with demons instead of dragons, that's more or less OK (to be fair; I don't know for sure what it will end up feeling like, because it's very early in the design process yet.)  Too bad I never got around to picking up Dark Legacies, because it looks like pretty much exactly what I'm heading towards... at least at a high concept level.  I don't have any details on it, of course, since I never bought either of the Dark Legacies books.

Let's establish a handful of baselines.  I'll be doing this as an m20 game, of course, with levels 1-10 only.  This releases me from needing to worry too much about rules, but also about crazy, high level threats.  Not that they won't exist, but merely that they aren't meant to be actively confronted, most likely.  m20 doesn't use CRs, but since I'll most likely adapt a lot of d20 creatures into my specific monster list for this setting, let's focus on about CR 15 as the highest level I'd worry about.

To make it just a bit different, this isn't a normal fantasy setting; I'm positing a world much like our own, with more or less the same technology and whatnot, which is suddenly invaded by demons.  The setting now is set many, many generations after the invasion, and the world (and the people left on it) have changed significantly from where they used to be.  I'll have a handful of fantasy races, but I doubt it will be elves and dwarves and hobbits and stuff like that; I think it'll be more like analogs of tieflings, dhampirs and people more like that.

I imagine a highly balkanized world, with lots of kingdoms ruled by demon lords.  I like the idea from the Demonimicon of Iggwilv series of articles that put demon lords at 30+ CR range, but realistically, I don't need anything that powerful.  Besides, I don't mind the concept of a Cthulhu-like paradigm where there are certain threats that you simply cannot, under no circumstance, expect to defeat in combat.  I expect some handful of refugee states, but mostly, people in the setting are on the run; not terribly unlike the humans in The Terminator except without the high tech.

Anyway, over the next little while, I'll start exploring more of this concept over time.

Am I more OSR than I thought?

The title is a little bit tongue in cheek; I know exactly how OSR I am, of course.  I, at one point quite a while ago, decided to "rebut" a lot of the "How to play OSR style" advice from Matt Finch associated with Sword & Wizardry because although he said some of the right things, he generally took it in directions that turned me off of the OSR rather than turned me on to it.  Read that earlier reubttal here.  However, Randall S Stukey (I'm using his spelling, including lack of period after S), the author of Microlite74 has a slightly different take on the same advice, and... well, I find myself quite more or less in agreement with most of what he says.

Microlite74 is, as you'd probably guess, part of the Microlite family of games (which I'm already adopting in a big way and have been pushing for years here as the preferred system for any of my settings).  His version of the basic chassis is specifically designed to be a conversion of OD&D into Microlite, so it's a hybrid, if you will, of OD&D (or Sword & Wizardry if you prefer) and Microlite, using mostly the rules from the latter to attempt to reach a result much more like the former in feel, if not necessarily in every detail.  Microlite74 comes in three varieties: Basic, Standard and Extended.  As you can imagine, they get progressively more "rules heavy"—although only relative to each other and other very rules-lite games.  The Basic Game is meant to be a conversion of Microlite into the LBB version of the game, while Standard is meant to incorporate a more robust, full OD&D game, with the supplements and whatnot added in.  Extended incorporates a bunch of house-rules of indeterminate provenance; some house rules of the author's, stuff from The Dragon and even third party publishers of the late 70s.  Although not meant to shade into 1e specifically, by the time you're using Extended, I feels much more like AD&D than using the Basic or Standard would.

I'm happy enough with a more traditional(ish) interpretation of m20 as a very stripped down d20 rather than a conversion to another version of D&D, but I did peruse the Microlite74 document for monsters, spells, and other material that I could potentially use.  What I either missed before, or cruised over without it making an impact on me, was that there's a section that mimics Matt Finch's advice.  And that I like it a lot better.

Let me get more into the details a bit:

Heroic, not Superheroic: Old school play, especially at low to mid levels, is about fairly normal  people put in situations where they can be heroes, not about extraordinary people doing things that would make a four-color comic book superhero proud – and at first level yet. Just like in the real world, the more a character improves his abilities, the harder it is to improve them further, while new characters may advance rapidly, the higher their level the more effort and time (and XP) it takes to advance to the next level.

While this isn't really substantially different from what Finch said; it's better said, in my opinion.  It's not only more clear about what exactly it means, but it also doesn't use examples that kind of subvert its supposed intent.

Achievement, not Advancement. Many modern games are often all about what special feats, extra classes and special game mechanics the players wish to obtain for their characters as they increase in level. In old school games, a character’s abilities are generally predetermined by his character class, so old school games focus on the things that the characters wish to accomplish in the game world rather than on what game mechanics they want to acquire. Level advancement is often much slower than in modern fantasy RPGs which makes in campaign achievements even more important as a measure of character success.

And this adds a bit more to the concept.  I'm not sure that this is "old school" because it's not how I played it when old school wasn't old... but I certainly agree with the gist of this concept.  That said; it also has shades of "class as straight-jacket" which is, admittedly, an old-school concept, and one that I've very definitely eschewed.  While your abilities are certainly determined by your class (and race) they're also relatively modest in any game that I've kit-bashed out of m20, and therefore tend to be the opposite of a straight-jacket; anyone can do (or attempt to do) just about anything.  Members of certain classes will probably be more successful in the long run, though.  This also contradicts a point further down to some degree, but I'll save that until we get there...

No Skills: Unlike in most modern RPGs, there aren’t any skills in Microlite74 -- not even the streamlined four skills of Microlite20. Players are intended to have their characters act like adventurers. So don’t search your character sheet or the rules for the perfect solution in Microlite74. Instead, you just tell the GM what your character is trying to do. Note that you are assumed to be competent with all common activities associated with your class and background. If you need to keep a door open or shut, you might tell the GM your character is using a spike to keep the door open or closed. A ten foot pole is your friend for checking for traps. Searching a room means looking inand under objects, not rolling a skill check. While this may seem strange at first, you will quickly learn to appreciate the freedom it gives you. No longer are you limited to the skills and feats on your character sheet, you can try anything your character should be capable of trying. You might not succeed, but the rules generally will not stop you from trying.

I really don't understand the old school's almost allergic reaction to skills.  Skills are a useful tool.  While they're usually quick to point out that skills have been abused by some GMs to create a game that is nothing more than rules interacting with each other, that's no more true than any other aspect of the game.  Skills are merely a slightly different shade on abilities; they give you bonuses to attempt things.  Skills don't substitute for playing the game.  It's curious that nobody makes the same complaint—although it would be just as fair—about combat actions.

I think that the reason this is such a sore point to OSRians is subconsciously revealed in the examples that Finch (and Stukey) use; it's all about "pixel bitching" the dungeon.  Now, to be fair to Stukey, he specifically condemns pixel-bitching later on in his advice, but his example is still about searching a treasure chest for traps.  Blegh.  Boring.  I think that right there is my biggest fundamental disconnect with the OSR: the whole paradigm of playing in a dungeon and telling the bizarre (and tiresome, in my opinion) story of D&D.

Limited Magic Items: Modern fantasy RPGs often assume that magic items are easy to buy and/or to create. In most old school campaigns, magic items are relatively rare and hard to create. Only potions and scrolls are generally relatively easy to create or purchase. Other magic items are seldom found for sale (and are very high priced when they are found for sale) and are usually very expensive in money and time to try to create – often requiring rare ingredients that the characters must quest to find. Therefore characters are generally limited to the magic items they find in treasures or take from defeated enemies on adventures.

Keep in mind, that the particulars of my setting (and most other settings I'd care to dabble in) are such that magic is rare and scary—Cthulhu-esque, even.  But part of that is ingrained in me from the notion in older games (and most fantasy stories, for that matter) where magic is neither ubiquitous nor banal, and it's not supposed to be.  I do like one of the conceits of Eberron, though, that in a world that actually follows the D&D rules for magic, low level magic can be expected, to some degree, to mimic what technology has done in our world, though.  Things like magical streetlights, for example.  But that's a deliberately special case.

No Assumption of “Game Balance”: Old style game sessions aren’t about carefully balanced characters (who are all able to shine equally at all times) who only run into situations carefully designed by the GM to be beatable by the characters presently in the party and to provide treasure that fits their current level. Instead, part of player skill is learning to evaluate situations so situations well over the party’s current abilities or which will waste the party’s resources for little gain can be avoided. Don’t assume that you can beat every monster that you encounter, running away from monsters too tough to handle can mean the difference between character survival and character death. You can also get creative in how you defeat monsters. Perhaps those goblins you bypassed could be talked into (or tricked into) attacking that giant you know you can’t beat, perhaps killing it for you or at least softening it up so your party has a chance of defeating it and living to tell the tale. Also remember that treasure can be turned into XP, even if you can’t kill the monsters, perhaps you can still acquire some of their treasure. Part of the skill of playing “old school” style is coming up with creative solutions when a direct attack is likely to fail.

Here I certainly agree with the sentiment... but I'm not 100% sure that this is an old school paradigm or not.  Certainly old school games didn't have the tools to carefully balance your encounters—but one thing I've noticed frequently among OSRians is that they condense the entire RPG experience down to D&D—often down to 1e and other associated rule-sets vs. 3e and later.  3e's encounter balance rules are really an unusual rule that has very little precedent in the industry (not saying it leapt fully formed from the heads of Jonathan Tweet and Monte Cook like a modern day textual Athena, of course) so calling this an old-school vs. new school interpretation only makes sense in a very narrow context.  Outside of D&D specifically, there's very little that looks different than "old school", and "modern" is very specific to two (maybe three; I don't know 5e well enough to say) editions of D&D.

It’s Not All About Combat: Many modern fantasy RPGs have made combat the star of the system, combats in these systems are time-consuming and very crunchy with rules for everything. Microlite20 avoids this by having a fast-playing abstract combat system. Microlite74 takes this one step further, combat isn’t intended to be the main source of fun in the game. The game is as much about exploration and treasuring finding as it is about combat. Sure, you are going to have to fight things to explore and find treasure, but always remember that combat may not be the best or safest way to handle every situation. Think before you rush into combat. After all, it’s not the only way to earn a good pile of experience – and monsters don’t have to be killed to be defeated (and get XP for them).

Of course, this was true to a great degree for older games too; but the rules imbalance between combat vs. non-combat mechanics has gotten an order of magnitude more out of whack even since then.  Despite that, it's probably a poor straw man to suggest that new school games are all about combat.  That depends on the group more than the game, of course.  And even if you run published adventures, non-combat encounters and challenges are quite well represented.  In fact, you could fairly argue that newer games are considerably less combat oriented based on adventures published than site-based dungeon or hexcrawl games are.  A focus on combat is demonstrably old school.

He's completely right about the rules themselves, though, and the degree to which combat has become the centerpiece of the system.  Again; I don't know who he's kidding about "many modern fantasy RPGs" when clearly what he means is "3e D&D and it's derivatives and sequels."

Reality/Common Sense Trumps Rules: Old-school games use loose and simple rules that cover average cases and the GM and players are supposed to apply common sense and their knowledge of how reality works to cover the unusual and edge cases. “Reality/Common Sense” as interpreted by the GM always trumps the written rules if they conflict. For example, a character has a magic weapon and the rules for that weapon say it always causes its target to fall prone if hit. The character hits a gelatinous cube moving down the corridor toward them with the weapon. The rules say that the target should fall and be in a prone position. Reality, however, says otherwise. Gelatinous cubes don’t have a top and bottom (so prone penalties make no sense) and a 10 foot cube can’t fall when it is moving through a 10 foot corridor. In some modern games, the rules would be applied anyway and the cube would suffer the effects of falling prone no matter how little sense that makes. In an old school game, the GM ignores the rule because it makes no sense in the specific situation.

This is really more a question of good GMing vs. bad GMing.  I don't disagree with this at all, except to note that—as Matt Finch did in his "advice for would-be OSR GMs"—it's the conflation of "good" with "old school" and "bad" with "modern" that is a just-so story and simply not true. Of course the site-based combat focused old school paradigm is obvious in his examples.

Forget “Rules Mastery”: As some of the above differences have hinted, player skill in “old school” style games isn’t about mastering the game rules so you can solve any problem by knowing the right combination of rules from 20 different rule books. Microlite20 is designed to be rules light and Microlite74 tries to stress this even more by encouraging GMs to make rulings on the spot taking into account specific circumstances instead of trying to hunt up special cases in the SRD or a stack of optional rule books. This is faster and helps players immerse themselves in their character and the game world instead of in rule books. GM rulings will be based on specific circumstances and common sense, not just on the written rules and prior rulings. Just because it requires a certain roll to jump one 10 foot pit does not mean all 10 foot wide pits will require the same roll. After all, all sorts of variables can affect the roll (terrain, weather, lighting, pressure to jump quickly, etc.). Players need to remember that these rules are merely a tool for the GM. They are just guidelines for the GM, not something written in stone that the GM must obey. If something herein does not work right in your campaign (or the GM just does not like a rule), the GM is well within his right to change it. Microlite74 is not a game for rules lawyers or for those who believe that the game designer always knows what is best.

Rules Mastery is a function of how complex the rules are.  In order to accept this premise, you have to accept the absurd premise that 1e is not an old school game.  1e is an extraordinarily complex game.  It's also a poor game, with many holes, bizarre subsystems, and difficulty in even understanding, in many cases, exactly what the rules are that need to be applied (gasp! Burn the heretic! St. Gary wrote 1e!)  It also requires divorcing D&D from its history, in which the oldest of old school was more of a solo war game rather than a true RPG as the term was later understood following a bit of continued development, or the idea that tournament play is an old school paradigm.  Although I agree with this preference, it's really more to do with rules-lite vs. rules-heavy and is not something that is particularly associated with "old school."  Stukey in fact talks about both of these old school paradigms in gaming, yet somehow doesn't appear to suffer from cognitive dissonance; you can't have those paradigms without rules mastery.  I suspect he didn't play that way when old school was just "current school" (and to be fair, neither did I) but it's a mistake to assume that this is not an old school feature.

No Script Immunity: In most old school games, player characters do not have any form of script immunity. Player characters can die, lose equipment, suffer strange magical effects and other often unpleasant consequences if they are not careful or are just very unlucky. On the other hand, there are no rules limiting their success. If they take on an adult red dragon as first level characters and miraculously manage to win, there are no rules about level appropriate wealth or level appropriate magic items to interfere with their becoming rich and probably flush with magic items from the dragon’s hoard.

Ironically, it was the increased focus less on war-gaming and more on role-playing as old school started to evolve into what came next that led to the implicit assumption of script immunity in the first place.  Again; this is a play style preference that has more to do with who's playing the game than it does with what game you're playing, though.  I've been in old school games where script immunity was fairly obvious, and I've been in modern games where characters dropped like flies.  This is also another question that makes much more sense if you have a context where the entire industry is D&D and you don't actually know much of anything about other games and other styles out there, though.

Finally,

Not Mentioned does not mean Prohibited: Many people seem to read RPG rules and come away with the idea that anything not specifically mentioned in the rules as allowed is prohibited. While this really doesn’t make much sense given that no set of rules could ever cover everything that characters might attempt to do in an adventure, it seems to be a very common way to view RPG rules. In an old school game like Microlite74, this is specifically not true: the millions of possible activities not mentioned in the rules are not prohibited, they are up to the GM to allow or disallow based on his knowledge of how reality works and how his specific campaign world differs from reality. Unless the rules specifically prohibit some action, players should ask their GM instead of simply assuming it is prohibited because the rules do not mention it.

I've never played in a game, except with really bad GMs, who ever thought that not mentioned meant prohibited.  It has nothing to do with old school vs. modern.  Also; and ironically again, the notion of not being able to do something that wasn't specifically clarified that you could do?  I first saw that with rogue abilities prior to the release of AD&D.  What he calls a "modern" problem is one that I see as firmly rooted in old school games.  Also: and again, ironically, "modern" games have developed a robust tool whereby this problem is specifically side-stepped, allowing any character to attempt any action: the skill system.  Which Stukey explicitly rejects, and in fact believes, as per above, to be the cause of limitations and prohibitions on what a player character can do.

While Stukey's analysis is easier to read than Finch's, it's mostly for two reasons: 1) it's much less smug and pretentious, and 2) I'm on the same page about what my preferences require of a system.  Ultimately, though, he makes the same mistakes: 1) conflating "good" with "old school" even if there's no good reason to do so, and 2) conflating "rules lite" with "old school" even though there are very good reasons not to.

Anyway, there's a fair bit more, but I've quoted and analyzed enough; I'll give it a rest.

Druids in Dark•Heritage

I've been pretty up-front about some of my pseudo-borrowings that I've adapted into my setting.  One such is the notion of a very wild, dangerous and frightening approach to nature, as opposed to the hippy silliness that pervades many fantasy campaigns.  This may seem odd coming from a guy like me, where one of my main hobbies is wilderness backpacking, and I absolutely love spending time deep in the remote Rockies.  Then again, I've been exposed to dreadfully frightening inclement weather—heat in the desert in the summer of West Texas and southern Utah.  Hailstorms when there's no shelter to be had above 10,000 feet in the mountains.  The need to come down off of ridges and peaks as storms roll-through because lightning strikes are suddenly no longer sufficiently statistically anomalous to take that chance.  I've hung bear bags to make sure that they don't disturb my campsite at night.  I've hiked for miles wondering if my next water source was going to be there, or usable, when I got there.  I've even limped back to my parked car, defeated, exhausted and frustrated in my designs before, due to minor injury, exhaustion, weather, or just plain "I'm done."

So yeah; I've seen transcendent beauty, marveled at nearly park-like peacefulness, and lounged for hours in perfect bliss staring at a beautiful lake, meadow, or shore.  But I also know the implacable, irresistible danger of the wilderness... I've had just tiny tastes of it, but it's enough that I can imagine our continent before it was tamed and settled by Man, before the greatest extent of the Pleistocene megafauna went extinct.  And that's what I want my wilderness to represent.  The fear of wild places that inspired fairy tales in our ancestors, like Hansel & Gretel, and which were reflected quite well by a very astute Tolkien in his descriptions of the Wilderland; especially Mirkwood—which was an Anglicization by William Morris and Tolkien (possibly independently) of a variety of folkoric sources: Myrkviðr, Kolmården and even the Schwarzwald itself.  Along with that is the folkloric belief in the woodwose, or wild man.  The Dark Forest inhabited by savage, hairy feral near-humans has been hypothesized by some, at least, to be an ancient racial memory of anthropophagic Neanderthals.  Nice idea.  Great story potential in that.

Even before I'd heard of the Neanderthal Predation Theory, I'd been attracted to wild man archetypes and rules for such.  I'd early made the easy choice to adopt shifters from Eberron into my setting, and I later adopted Neanderthals from Frostburn in as well (back when my setting was more overtly d20.)  These Neanderthals weren't the predatory primate version of them, but the more mainstream very human-like interpretation.  But I gradually started getting a darker and darker vibe towards this whole idea.  Incorporating a lot of the vibe of the Tharn and other worshipers of the Devourer Wurm from Iron Kingdoms, and a lot of stuff from the Beastmen army of Warhammer, I ended up with woses, and thurses, rather than shifters and beastmen, but the concepts are similar.  The woses are more likely to be hospitable, at least among some populations, but I wouldn't ever count on it for others.  They are still a major problem in the Shifting Forest, at least.

But what I really want to add is the notion of incredibly hostile human peoples living among them; maybe even ruling them, as druids.  I don't imagine druids as being the pseudo-hippy new age clap-trap variety of druid.  I imagine druids as being almost feral creatures who run naked through the woods, kill (and eat) trespassers with their bare hands and teeth. run in packs not unlike wolves (and occasionally gather for various reasons, not unlike grizzlies at a salmon run) who are so completely and thoroughly hostile to any form of civilization that they make the massacre of the XVII, XVIII and XIX legions look like a friendly rebuke.

The druids may (as in the Circle Orboros faction of Hordes) recruit monstrous wildlife of the primal wilderness to serve them in times of need, as well as chthonic spirits made flesh.  They also handle extremely powerful (albeit often subtle) earth magic, all of which tends to be great and terrible; more akin to the tornado, flash flood, or forest fire than the more pin-point, localized magic of sorcerers and witches.  Remember; this is dark fantasy, and my interpretation of dark fantasy is somewhat like classic fantasy that features the tone (and plots and many of the conventions) of a classic horror story.  What you would get if Dracula, The Wolfman, or Woman in Black were set in Middle-earth, so to speak.  So if you make your druids more like Beorn than like R. A. Salvatore's Mielikki worshipping neo-fantasy-hippies, and then make him even darker and scarier, you'd be on the right track.  It's maybe more a combination of Pan's Labyrinth + The Wolfman + a bunch of feral people stories.

I would use the "expansion rules" for m20 (the ones called Microlite20 Expert Rules) with the Druid class; but I wouldn't allow players to use it.  Druids, by definition are fey-touched, or wild-touched—insane, in other words—and serve only as militantly hostile and bizarre, scary opposition.

#RPGaDay 2015: No.s 25-31—Conclusion

#25. Favorite Revolutionary Game Mechanic.  Using a Jenga Tower instead of dice.  I'd love to figure out a good way to get Dread out of the one-shot mode and usable for campaigns, including with character advancement of some sort, but even without that, it's a very, very nifty (and very revolutionary) mechanic.

#26. Favorite Inspiration for Your Game.  The Black Company books by Glen Cook, probably.  Or, at least he has the most of the same inspirations thrown in: some horror, some amoral protagonist characters, intrigue and paranoia.  It's the closest thing to a one-stop shopping source of inspiration.  Other than that, the Five Fingers book for Iron Kingdoms does a great job.  I also really love browsing the Monsternomicons for inspiration.  I could build an entire campaign around ideas found in there; especially given my "monsters are set pieces for an entire smallish module" philosophy to keeping monsters from becoming banal.

#27. Favorite idea for Merging Two Games into One.  Obviously for me, Call of Cthulhu meets Dungeons & Dragons.  Otherwise, I've long toyed with outlandish and bizarre genre Frankenstein's; but I tend to see them more as amusing one-shot materials, rather than something I'd entertain on a long-term basis.

#28. Favorite Game you No Longer Play.  Although we'll probably eventually come back to it, d20, 3.5 Edition Dungeons & Dragons.  We haven't played it in... literally a couple of years now.  But it's probably not truly accurate to say that we don't play it; we just aren't in a campaign that uses it now.

#29. Favorite RPG Website/blog.  Y'know, I don't actually really follow many gaming blogs anymore.  It's been quite a while since I really paid attention to what was going on in that sphere.

#30. Favorite RPG playing celebrity.  There aren't any celebrities, unless you count c-list guys, as far as I'm concerned.  I guess I have to pick Vin Diesel, as he's the only one that I kinda sorta even like that I can think of.  Pick for least favorite is much easier: Wil Wheaton.  Every time I see anything from that loser, it makes me want to punch him in the face.

#31. Favorite Non-RPGing thing to come out of RPGing.  That's actually surprisingly easy for me, at least this year: Jeffro's detailed and lengthy discussion of the Appendix N:  https://jeffro.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/the-first-draft-of-my-appendix-n-book/

#RPGaDay 2015 No.s 19-24

#19: Favorite Supers RPG.  Mutants & Masterminds.  It was really quite well done, and is a lovely, lovely book.  Granted, I bought the first edition, and because I've played it very little, I've never gone for the updates/upgrades.  I'm a little irritated, actually, by games that update too often (d20 Star Wars is another really bad example), but I don't know that the upgrades are really significant in terms of major shakeups to the rules.  I'm a little unclear on what the settings for the game ended up being produced and by whom, but that's OK—as much as I like settings, I don't actually need them, and I almost never use them as is.

#20: Favorite Horror RPG.  For one-shots: Dread, absolutely.  For campaigns, Call of Cthulhu.  I'm not actually a fan of the BRP system, though—it works well enough if you can get past the bizarrely Byzantine chargen activity, I suppose.  The d20 version is (surprisingly, at least it was to me when it was new) quite good.  I think it's important to limit level advancement either via slow advancement and time-bound campaigns, or something like E6, though.

#21: Favorite RPG Setting.  Assuming that home-brews aren't meant to be picked here, I'll probably say Iron Kingdoms.  There's a few things about it that I don't like, but not that many.  It really hits most of my high points without much in the way of low points, and I really love the tone of the setting especially.  For second favorite, I'd probably have to pick the Warhammer World.

#22: Perfect Gaming Environment.  Ideally, I'd game in a large conference room without windows.  Dark wood paneling on the walls, decorated with large prints of fantasy art (the Larry Elmore BECMI covers, or some big Wayne Reynolds, or some big Frazettas, etc.).  A big, round, hard-wood conference room table in the middle, surrounded by large leather-upholstered chairs.  Maybe some stuffed animal heads on the wall.  A wi-fi environment where the GM can play music and/or sound effects from his laptop during the game.  Flickering faux candles for lighting.  Imagine a classic Victorian British gentlemen's club, like the Drone's Club, but with a fantasy twist.

#23. Perfect Game for You.  This is an odd question, because I imagine anyone who blogs has already talked—probably ad nauseum—about what the perfect game for them is.  For me, it's m20.  And, ideally, I'd be running it, or playing in a game with a GM that runs just like me.  In my home-brew dark fantasy setting, played as a swashbuckling/horror pulp hybrid.

#24. Favorite House Rule.  Probably gotta be Action points.  The way that I run them, though—the original incarnation of just adding a d6 was too weak to be meaningful.  Make it a d10, and make a healing surge one of its applications; and make them reset every session instead of every level—and you've got something that really works.

Call of Cthulhu update

Our Horror on the Orient Express had its third session this last weekend... and it was really, really interesting.  We spent the entire session in a "flashback scene" with characters that the GM gave us.  We started that about halfway through the second session, so we've now spent about as much time in our flashback in the 1890s as we have in our "normal" campaign with your normal characters in the 1920s.  To be honest, I'm enjoying the latter more than the former, and the "Blood Red Fez" side-story is a fascinating one that I think I like better than gather and assemble (or destroy) the various components of the MacGuffin quest that we're on the verge of starting with our normal characters.  Maybe the scenario just feels a little more tight and compelling; the main storyline seems to suffer a bit from reaching; I'm not quite sure why we're all doing this other than that the module requires it.

A handful of notes about our play:

• Interacting with compelling NPCs is always one of my favorite parts of any good campaign.  And a GM that's willing to roll with what you're trying to do in this interactions rather than simply shut them down just because makes the game a lot of fun.  This may be part of the reason why I'm finding this flashback module within the module a lot of fun.
• There comes a point in every session (at least with our group) where we get tired of careful pacing and talking, and something... rash happens which has the potential to turn the module on its head.  The recovery from the consequences of something rash is another one of my favorite parts of any session.  We've got some great stories from past campaigns about something that seemed really stupid, but which ended up being really awesome.  Added another notch to that particular belt this last weekend.
• Some players struggle with the role-playing meta-concept of knowing things that your character doesn't know.  Getting a mental whammy "Jedi mind trick" pulled on you and having to accept that your character believes something that you as a player know to be untrue can be hard.  Even if it only lasts about an hour or so of real time before its sorted out.
• Similarly, it can be hard to get your head around concepts that are separate from us in time and culture; even as some of them are coming back around again.  Watching too many spy movies can leave one with the assumption that there are resources and infrastructure to do things that in the 1890s you simply can not do (but nor can your opposition.)  Decades of multicultural indoctrination make the notion that Westerners traveling on the Orient Express would be wary of dealing with Turks, and could use that innate wariness to their advantage was another hard thing for our group to really wrap our heads around to some degree.  Most, even, of the authors working in the genre have a hard time getting this into their heads (I actually think our group was better at it than the authors would most likely have been.)
• Some in the group drew (obvious) parallels between the blood red fezzes and the whispering, biting sword that was needed to get past undead DR in a dark fantasy game I ran in a Mk. II version of DARK•HERITAGE (we're now on Mk. IV, so it was significantly different.)  I do love the notion that "magic items" are, by default, cursed items from the perspective of reasonably normal people attempting to use them—that sword was necessary to fight a particular monster; but it also actively and aggressively attacked both the body and the sanity of anyone who used it.  I borrowed the concept of my sword from my friend "barsoomcore"'s past setting, but I've also had analogs of other cursed/magic items that I've borrowed, including "the Colt" from Supernatural and now... I can add the Blood Red Fez to my repertoire.  After changing it to some other kind of hat, no doubt.

#RPGaDay 2015. No.s 13-18

#13. Favorite RPG Podcast.  I haven't listened to an RPG podcast in about three years, so I'm unqualified to answer this particular question.  Good thing I'm not actually doing this one per day, or this would be a really lousy day!

#14. Favorite RPG Accessory.  A home-made custom GM screen.  I'd like to actually make another one; or modify the one I have, or something—but I don't need to.  I don't really need rules info on the screen; especially playing a really rules-lite game like m20.  But it's great to have things like: a mini-map of the setting, a list of names so I can actually name NPCs on the fly as needed, custom picked pictures for the front end, a list of things like tavern and inn names, etc.  Stuff that any self-respecting player-led GM needs to keep the game feeling smooth even without all of that creativity stifling over-preparation.  It would probably be nicer if I bought one of those folders that are already designed for this, and then put in my own inserts, but that means spending $20-30 for something that I don't really need... and I'm really cheap.

#15. Longest campaign played.  Age of Worms; the 21 or 22 level d20 D&D game that started at 1st level, and ended with us fighting the reincarnation of Kyuss, in Greyhawk.  A lot of good moments, but it actually really soured me in general terms on adventure path style campaigns, and very long campaigns in general, as well as higher level d20 gaming.  Lots of things I learned not to like in that campaign; fewer things that I decided I liked... but I still had a good enough time.

#16. Longest game session played.  I don't really do the marathon sessions.  I've never been involved in any session, actually, that I don't think fell outside of the 4-6 or so hour window.

#17. Favorite fantasy RPG. To avoid saying one or another iteration of m20 over and over again, I'm going to pass on that and say: a house-ruled Third Edition d20 with the E6 tophat would be my favorite, I think.  Favorite commercial fantasy setting, regardless of what game it is (and I've never seen the new in-house system) is either Warhammer or Iron Kingdoms... probably the latter.  Both have house systems (at least now) that I'm not very familiar with, however.  After all, I don't want to eschew just naming off one m20 iteration after another only to fall back on doing the same thing with d20...

#18. Favorite SF RPG.  I think actually playing in Star Wars is my favorite, but there's a lot of systems for that, and I've done so much homebrewing to the setting that I'm not sure it counts.  So, rather than go with that and deal with the problems that that entails, let's call Traveller my favorite SF game, eh?  The original rules.  I'd probably never play them as is anymore... but I love elements of it, especially the space hex crawl generation rules.

#RPGaDay 2015, No.s 7-12

#7. Favorite Free RPG.  This is easy.  Microlite.  In theory, this is multiple free RPGs, but y'know—let's not nitpick.  I've managed to turn this into my ideal, probably Holy Grail system, and I can make minor modifications to it to account for setting; I've already got complete and ready to roll DARK•HERITAGE, CULT OF UNDEATH and STAR WARS versions of it, and partially complete AD ASTRA pseudo-Guardians of the Galaxy superheros in space.  And no doubt, I'll have more eventually.

#8. Favorite appearance of RPGs in the Media.  I'm not 100% sure what is meant by this.  If it's referring to something like the kids playing D&D in E.T., well, stuff like that doesn't really do much for me.  I'll have to punt and say that the movement of RPGs directly into other media; i.e. tie-in fiction novels, is my favorite.  Granted; I don't like very many tie-in fiction novels, but I really like the idea of them, and some of them do manage to actually be pretty good.  Some of the earliest D&D tie-in fiction (first few Salvatore and Weiss/Hickman novels, I suppose qualify) are kinda classics, and there's some great Black Library material.  It's arguable to what extent Black Library qualifies as RPG (vs. miniature wargame) fiction, but most of the stuff I've read feels more like WFRP than it does WHFB.

#9. Favorite Media you wish was an RPG.  Honestly, I don't wish for conversions of media into RPG for various reasons.  And if I do, I just whip up some conversion of some system I already like anyway (i.e., my m20 Star Wars.)  And in many cases, the media I wish was an RPG is an RPG... although not necessarily one that I like or really want to play, because I'm not interested in its system.  So this is a harder question to answer than it sounds like it should be.  What I guess I really would like to see is a good Middle-earth game that feels less like swashbuckling sword & sorcery and more like the actual writings of Tolkien.  I've been intrigued yet ultimately dissatisfied with both Iron Crown and Decipher's offerings in this field, and I've never even looked at Cubicle 7's current game... although given that my requirements in this regard are very particular, most likely it's not what I want either.

#10. Favorite RPG Publisher.  Paizo, I suppose.  They've kinda lost their way (or to be more accurate; I've gradually lost interest in various of the directions that they're going) but I still think I'm more likely to be interested in something that they're doing rather than anyone else.  Part of the problem with this question (and many of these lines of questions in this #RPGaDay survey overall) is that I'm fundamentally too much of a DIY gamer with a system that I already like and can hack with ease, rather than the kind of guy who is interested in really buying a bunch of pre-fabbed gaming.  So some products catch my eye because they offer me something interesting... but my tastes are fairly eclectic.

#11. Favorite RPG Writer.  Oh, good heavens, I don't know.  I've liked a lot of stuff by Wolfgang Baur, Doug Seacat, and Rob Schwalb before.

#12. Favorite RPG Illustration.  My favorite illustration of all time for any RPG ever?  Ooof.  That's too tall an order.  I can't pick that.  A handful of my favorites, then—the final Dungeon Magazine cover by Paizo by Wayne Reynolds with Demogorgon kicking the iconic characters' butts (granted; that was a very strange collection of iconics at the time.)  The original Player's Handbook cover art; with the statue of the efreet and the guys trying to steal its gemstone eyes.  Almost anything published by Privateer Press. Most of the cover art from Freeport, Eberron or Pathfinder by Wayne Reynolds.  The BECMI boxes cover art by Larry Elmore; especially the Expert and Companion ones.

#RPGaDay 2015: No.s 1-6

I should have guessed; there's another #RPGaDay challenge.  I did this in 2014; here's the 2015 version (suitably late.  Shows how well I pay attention to trends in the gaming blogopshere.)

As with the prior one I did, I don't think each question truly merits a full post.  I ended up doing the 2014 challenge in a series of 4 posts, with 6 questions answered each post.  I'll do that again.

Here's the list of questions:

#1: Forthcoming game you're most looking forward to.  Ugh.  Tough question right off the bat for me, given that I don't really pay attention to what's forthcoming.  Gulp.  One question in, and I'm already asking for a pass!

#2: Kickstarted game most pleased you backed.  I've never backed a kickstarter game.  That said; two guys in my group backed the Horror on the Orient Express kickstarter by Chaosium, which we're now playing.  So does that one count?  I'm enjoying it so far, but admittedly, we're only on our third session.

#3: Favorite new game of the last 12 months.  I haven't gotten any new games in the last 12 months.  That said; I'm interested in running down the brand new, huge and hugely expanded Freeport book, which I think is now only compatible with Pathfinder these days, to update my excellent systemless Freeport book of 7-8 or so years ago—or however long its been.  Although I don't actually have it, that came out in the last 12 months, and it's one of the few products that has that I'm genuinely interested in checking out.  Other than that—one of these days, I really would like to try out 5th edition.  At least one guy in our group actually bought it, but I don't think he runs.  None of the usual suspects in our group even bothered picking it up.

#4: Most surprising game.  I have to say that I've probably been most surprised by Dread—because it's so unusual that I'm not sure that I believed it could really work.  It does; in fact, it's tons of fun.  I'm not quite sure whether or not it can be turned into a campaign or not... I'd like to see someone try it, though.

#5: Most recent RPG purchase.  I'm pretty sure it'll have to be Pathfinder Bestiary 5.  I simply can't pass up a good monster book, and Pathfinder has done a good job with them.  Their pdfs are cheap enough that they're worth buying for the artwork alone.

#6: Most recent RPG played.  Call of Cthulhu.  We're in a campaign of it as we speak.  Granted; we don't play all that often (once a month seems to be more or less our speed) but as it happens, we're playing this coming Saturday.

Horror Adventures

http://paizo.com/products/btpy9jcx?Pathfinder-Roleplaying-Game-Horror-Adventures-Hardcover

There are things that dwell in the dark places of the world, deep beneath the ground, in long-abandoned crypts, or in musty attics; terrible things that can destroy your body and shatter your mind. Few sane individuals would ever think to seek out such nightmares, but those that are drawn into the darkness often find it infecting them, corrupting them in ways both subtle and gross. Some think that those who die facing off against such horrors are the lucky ones, for the survivors are forever scarred by their experiences. Horror Adventures gives you everything you need to bring these nightmares to your game.

Well; except the actual things; most of which, no doubt, have already been featured in one of the Bestiaries published by Paizo (up to five now!)  I've got them all in pdf, but they sell for cheap in pdf (at the price, they're worth it for the art alone) and I love monster books.

Horror Adventures includes:

• Corruptions that can turn your character into a monster, from a blood-drinking vampire to a savage werewolf. The only cost is your very soul!

• Character options to help heroes face the forces of darkness, including horror-themed archetypes, feats, spells, and more!

• Rules for sanity and madness, giving you all the tools you need to drive your characters to the brink and beyond.

• Tips and tools for running a scary game, along with expanded rules for curses, diseases, haunts, and fleshwarping to bring your nightmares to life.

• New templates to turn your monsters into truly terrifying foes, from creatures made from living wax to the stalker that cannot be stopped!

…and much, much more!

In other words... it mostly contains a bunch of stuff that's already readily available in open content, included as part of the SRD thanks to the great book Unearthed Arcana; one of the greatest rules books of the 3.5 era.  Of course, as I've embraced the more rules-lite approach of m20, much of this is not necessarily important to me.  But I will admit that I really like the Wayne Reynolds cover art, at least!

I've talked before a bit about how to make d20 play more like a horror game, and since my tag-line is "D&D Rules, Call of Cthulhu play paradigm" maybe it's time that I take some time to talk about how this would apply to my current rules; or any other rules-lite approach, including games such as B/X, Swords & Wizardry, etc.

Some of this isn't really applicable at the system level (although some of it is)—much of the success of any purported horror game (or dark fantasy game that plays like horror, as is the case for me) comes from the skills of the GM in presenting the game, and managing to get people on board for the concept of a horror game.  In my experience, that latter task is much more difficult than it sounds, or than you'd expect it to be.  Some players naturally do well with a horror game, especially if they're fans of the genre, but many simply struggle.  If you're playing D&D or a D&D variant, many will simply be unable to shift their preconceived notions of what the game is to be like, and simply play it like it's D&D.  Many others have different preconceived notions, and struggle not to just be silly, expecting that their characters are too disposable for them to ever really take the game very seriously.  How, then, can you get your players on board, both with modest system changes, and with presentation changes at the table?  How do you get D&D rules (regardless of what iteration of those rules you're actually using) and a Call of Cthulhu play paradigm, and for that matter, how do you successfully execute a Call of Cthulhu play paradigm anyway?  Here's what I think.  Much of this applies to any system, but I'm especially thinking of rules-lite D&D variants.

• I think the overtly competent character classes of many modern D&D variants work against the feel of a horror game.  These characters are designed to "win" D&D, quite clearly, and broadly speaking, they do so at all levels except perhaps the very lowest.  Older versions of D&D actually work much better; with the level caps of B/X, for example, your characters get powerful, but only so much so.  B/X also has much more modest characters at the same levels as, say, 3rd Edition characters.  If you're already playing an old school game, then you probably have already taken steps to address the power inflation that later editions engaged in, but something that addresses the rampant, exponential growth of characters is welcome too.  Whether its some kind of "bounded accuracy" house rule that keeps stats (especially hit points) from running away, or simple level caps or campaign time frames that by design exclude the higher available levels, something has to be done.  Players instinctively and subconsciously lose that feel of horror if their characters feel too competent.
• This can go overboard, though.  Few people enjoy playing for very long with characters that they feel are incompetent, and the classic meat-grinder type of campaign is not really associated at all with horror—it's actually associated with the very tactical, gamist, "skilled play" paradigm of the game.  To feel any degree of horror, the player has to feel at least some sense of attachment to his character, but also feel that it is possible, and possibly even easy if he's foolish, for the character to die.  But if the characters always die, and especially if its arbitrarily so, then there won't be any sense of attachment to the character.  It's a fine line to walk to keep the perceived threat of death always in the players' mind, yet not actually kill characters all that often, but that's integral to fostering a successful horror tone.  In my games; I have both a slightly dampened hit point escalation scheme, as well as level caps at 10th level.
• PC death isn't the only thing that suffers from over-familiarity.  Monsters in a D&D like fantasy game are not really horror icons, even if they are, actually, horror icons.  This is because of the way that the game is traditionally played.  If you have your characters wander through a dungeon "stocked" as if it were a fishing pond, with monsters, then the monsters become routine—not scary.  More and more, I think its important to actually minimize the presence of monsters in my fantasy games.  They should be more unique, more rarely appearing; they need to be significantly foreshadowed before they show up, it's desirable that many are not meant to be defeated in a straight up fight (and probably can't be), etc.  In other words, a monster encounter should be more like a set piece than a routine experience; the equivalent of a small module, even in and of itself.
• This also means that monsters should be somewhat mysterious.  There's nothing quite like having a well-known monster, who's strengths, weaknesses and basic abilities are very familiar to the players, being dragged out and described quite simply in terms that make it prosaic and routine.  Even for those who are hyper-allergic to anything other than player controlled sandboxes and hexcrawls or the like have to admit that there is always going to be an element of story-telling to these games, because if nothing else, a GM has to describe the scenario.  This is where you need to take the time and effort to create some mood and tone.  Don't go overboard, or you'll sound like Lovecraft on a bad day which is more laughable than scary, but there's a real opportunity for you to create tension at the table over the course of the session if you do it right.  
• Along these lines, some other ambiance can be helpful (although in my opinion, less so than many think.)  If there's anything you can do to influence the tone via the setting in which you actually play; i.e., lighting, decor, spooky background music, etc., it helps.  Yeah, yeah—I don't know anyone who's going to create a gaming room with dark paneling, decorations bought at the Halloween store, and creepy sounds and soft music playing in the background, with dim candle-powered lighting, and a GM that can speak with the voice of Orson Welles or James Earl Jones or Vincent Price.  But if you could; wouldn't you?  And some of that can be done easily; I prefer playing in a more dimly lit rather than overly bright room, and spooky music and sounds isn't exactly hard to find; I've got an entire library of movie soundtracks, which aren't hard to pick up for relatively cheap on CD or mp3, and you can also get really cheap sound effects CDs if you really want them.  I actually think tinkering around with tracks in Audacity or some such app is kinda fun; I'd love to make an actual entire CD for the soundtrack of DARK•HERITAGE or CULT OF UNDEATH that takes movie music soundtracks and adds a light layering of Halloween sound effects to them.  And even if you don't want to go to that much trouble, maybe something more simple, like some of the music tracks by Sonic Legends¹ would be right up your alley.  Keep the music low, quiet, almost on the edge of being noticed—its easy to overdo this kind of thing.  Subtlety is the key to success. 
• Also along the lines of creating tension and dramatic tone via GM presentation, the session is such an obvious unit of measure to do this, and it is ignored at your peril.  The ideal way to do so is to create tension without giving a lot of opportunities to relieve it during the course of a session.  Let it peak near the end of the session, but leave plenty of unanswered issues dangling so that the campaign overall retains a tone of unreleased tension and scariness.  For those who play in a more sandboxy environment, you may think that GM control of things like pacing and tension is Verboten, but that is actually not true.  You need to be more skilled to do it, of course, compared to a more railroady game, but it is absolutely possible to do, and the more you can learn to do so, perhaps via on the fly adjustments to what (or when, or how) PCs discover the contents of any given hex or whatever, the better you will be as a GM.  In fact, in my opinion, the only truly good GMs are the ones that allow the PCs to feel in control of the game while successfully delivering tone, pacing, descriptions and environments that play out more like an episode of a scary t.v. show like The X-Files or something.  Besides, all that said; I'm hardly a sandbox purist.  I'm almost rabidly in favor of having the players drive the game rather than the GM, but there are lots of ways to accomplish that, and hexcrawls may be a "purist" approach to that question, but certainly is not the only answer.
• I think the templates referred to above in the Paizo book description are over-rated.  Templates are a fun idea, certainly, but in an older school, rules-lite game, they're not needed.  Monster stats are pretty sparse to begin with; making some minor adjustments to them, adding a special ability or two, changing minor features, or even just swapping a new description to go with a known monster.  It really is much better if your players aren't quite sure what it is that they're fighting anyway.  Just describe it and run it; don't label it.
• Some kind of fear and/or sanity rules are nice, but in the past, I think they've over-taken their usefulness by being too clunky, too clinical, and too cumbersome.  These kinds of rules can never bog the game down; they need to be very quick and easy to implement, with relatively simple effects.    For this reason, I recommend against doing anything too much like the now open content sanity rules from Unearthed Arcana; which are really just the original Call of Cthulhu rules all over again.  Not only are these way too clunky to use, but they're also "non native" to d20, so it always feels weird using them, like they don't really belong in the rules system that you're using.  The authors of the original d20 version of Cthulhu claimed that this is good, because it gives them a feeling like they're weird and unnatural, but that's just a really stupid cop-out.  They take the player out of the game, and therefore sabotage their intent—to ratchet up the tension in any given session.  I prefer something much simpler, and my m20 rules reflect that.  There are other open content sanity rules that have been floated around over the years: Green Ronin did some good ones for their Freeport system that I quite like.  I recommend searching for an alternative and just taking it as is, with only minor modification, unless you really like writing your own rules.  No need to reinvent this particular wheel.
• Not every horror or dark fantasy game really needs some kind of corruption or taint mechanic—but if that's a feature of the fiction of your setting, you better have some kind of alternative in your mechanics.  I don't really have any recommendations, since I don't use this type of mechanic myself, but again—I'd echo my comments on fear and sanity; keep the system simple and easy to apply at the table without bogging down the game with tables, major changes to characters that have to be recalculated on the fly, etc.

¹I have "Ancient Archives," "Arabian Bazaar," "City of the Dark Elves," "Country Village," "Forest Journey," "Magical Spell," "On the Open Sea," and "The Summoning" from Sonic Legends.  You can probably guess pretty well which ones are most appropriate for dark fantasy or horror games.  There are a few others that I'd like to try out, but honestly—I don't use the ones that I have all that much; I have too many movie soundtracks.

What's missing by Paizo

Although I've long since kinda stopped paying attention, I still pop in every so often and see what Paizo is doing with their setting development (they lost me a long time ago with rules development; they kind of took what was wrong with 3.x and made it worse).  They've started doing repeats; there are new(ish) books out for Osirion and Cheliax, for instance, even though I also have older books dedicated to those two areas of the setting.  That said, there are a few areas that really could use some more development.  All of these areas have been mentioned in, at least, the campaign setting book, Distant Worlds, or some other source, but none of them have sufficient development that they're ready to use in any meaningful sense, at least not without a lot of homebrew to get it ready (hence the use of that tag.)

So, what would I specifically want to see, and where would I decide to focus?

• Realm of the Mammoth Lords.  No relationship to my own long-running (although little has been done with it) setting tag MAMMOTH LORDS which actually more closely resembles the Savage Worlds setting Totems of the Dead, this is a polity or region with lots of prehistoric La Brean and similar megafauna, including warm valleys in the mountains inhabited by dinosaurs.  This, naturally, is sufficient for adventure in and of itself, but there's more: the region is surrounded by enemies.  To the north is the path over the crown of the world to Tian Shan.  To the west is the hostile Witch-Queen Realm of Irrisen.  To the south is the Hold of Belkzen, who's orcs often raid their southern reaches to capture their own megafauna for war platforms, and to the east is the Worldwound—once a kingdom that culturally, if not politically, was closely tied to the clansmen of the Mammoth Lords, but which is now a beachhead for a demonic apocalypse.  It also borders a small part of northern Varisia, and is very close to Ustalav, and the ties of Kellid blood cry out from all of those areas, as well as Numeria.  The Realm of the Mammoth Lords is kind of the last redoubt of Kellid culture.
• Akiton, the Red Planet, and the Pathfinder equivalent to Barsoom.  This is actually very sparsely described, but there seems like a lot of opportunity here; sword & planet romance all through the surface, but with strange Lovecraftian horrors buried in the ice at the poles, and other unique and unusual settings for adventure that are very different from that found on the "Hyborian model" design of Golarion.
• Nex.  Normally I'm not a huge fan of over-the-top high magic areas, but I'm a little surprised that this hasn't been further developed, given that it's the place in Golarion for high magic wahoo.  Geb too, I suppose.  Maybe the two of them can't be done separately, which means that the Paizo folks aren't quite sure what to do with it.
• Varisia.  What, you say?  There's tons of material for Varisia!  Well, yes and no.  There are sourcebooks for several of the cities in Varisia, including Magnimar, Korvasa, and the Pathfinder Burning Man analog, Kaer Maga.  There are several adventure paths set mostly in coastal, semi-urban Varisia.  But most of the rest of this vast area remains a big cypher.  I'd love to see something in the Varisian hinterlands above the Storval Rise; a kind of Pathfinder Old West almost, with Shoanti barbarians standing in for Indians and Huns or Mongols as the case may be.  Of course, Paizo would screw this up with the "Avatar Myth" which is just an expression of anti-white racism.  And I'd love to pretend like I never heard anything at all about Kaer Maga.  Blegh.
• Eox.  I've been fascinated by the concept of Eox, which —in many ways—reminded me strongly of the Atropus section from Elder Evils.  The two could be easily combined.  Not sure why the concept of an entire world of undead is so interesting to me, but it is.  I wonder; maybe this could also be combined with Thanatos, as described in Fiendish Codex I?  Sure, why not?
• Arcadia.  Sure, I can adopt my own MAMMOTH LORDS or Totems of the Dead to some degree to give me material that works as Arcadia, but why hasn't Paizo given us more than a single chapter on a single city?

A lot of what I'm interested in is extraterrestrial—either in the planes or the planets, which are virtually indistinguishable from each other, both being exotic and often hostile environments for adventure of similar esoteric provenance.  I've actually just about finished re-reading for the first time Distant Worlds and I'm finding that my old REALMS TRAVELER setting idea is one that I'm missing right now.  I might have to put together a hex map of the Realms as a next step.