Use This - A Hero and his Squire

This encounter could fit into most fantasy systems but is presented here for the recently renamed The Adventurer's Tale (formerly Underworld and Overworld). 

Flash Zubnatz - Goblin Hero

The words Goblin and Hero might not be seen next to eachother too often, but even these wicked creatures have folk heroes that would even inspire humans.

Flash has spent his life travelling from one goblin settlement to another, establishing his legacy by slaying threats to goblinkind. He shot the cave-drake at Biterzpeak, drove off the ghouls of Foulnut Forest and protected the goblins of Scummer's Bay from a rampaging sea giant. All with his crossbow and winning smile. Indeed, there has rarely been a goblin as charismatic as Flash. Even orcs have been known to be impressed by his presence.

Flash Zubnatz (Rogue)

Body 4

Shooting 7, Grace 4, Awareness 2, Melee 2

Dodge: A goblin that rolls a 5 or 6 on a combat roll will never be hit. Critical Hit bypasses.

Precision: Adds an extra two points of Damage on Critical Hits when using a weapon with Damage 3 or less. 

Crossbow (Damage 3), Two Daggers (Damage 2), Light Armour.

Flash is rarely seen without his squire and travelling partner, Bontukz. Lacking any of the charisma of Flash he mostly spends his life carrying Flash's crossbow, pointing out targets and patching up his wounds. After a few drinks he might mutter about how his spells are the real power behind Flash.

Bontukz (Scholar)

Body 4

Wisdom 5, Craft 4, Awareness 3, Grace 3, Melee2

Dodge: A goblin that rolls a 5 or 6 on a combat roll will never be hit. Critical Hit bypasses.

Spells: Guidance and Hold.

Staff, Dagger and Spyglass.

Upon spotting their target, Bontukz will hand Flash his crossbow and try to hold the enemy in place with Hold. While Flash lines up his shot, usually aiming for a Vital Strike, Bontukz will use Guidance to help him achieve a killing shot. 

Flash's reaction to adventurers will depend upon their reputation. If he doesn't know of them he'll greet them cautiously, from a distance. However, if they are known goblin killers he'll see them as potential kills to add to his heroic legacy. 

Dwarfs in a Sandbox Update

I'm getting very excited about the sandbox game I'm starting next week using Underworld and Overworld. 

There are some great resources out there for running a sandbox game. I've summarised the three most important considerations for this game below.

Create Situations not Plots

In preparing for the game I've planned out a chunk of a world where the dwarfs can roam. There are some hooks here and there but no "main plot" planned out. Most hooks come in the form of places to explore and looming threats rather than an innkeeper asking you to find his hat some goblins stole. I like the tip I heard somewhere, "plot hooks not plot hammers".
A hook can be ignored or saved for later, a hammer is going to be much more focused on pushing you in a particular direction. I'm hoping the map I've provided is already suggesting a hook or two before we've even started.

I Cannot Control the World Fully

Sure to be a contentious point. I've poured my heart into creating the world and have tried to design it in a way that will give the players a great experience, but once they step into it I'm not going to have complete control of it. It's all laid out, populated with threats and scattered with hooks and treasures. Many of these will appear when the dice decide, rather than I. If the players wander into the Underworld and are finding it too hard or too easy I have no intention of tweaking it on the fly. I also know there are some random encounters noted down that will be dangerous stuff.

By no means will I try and kill the characters but I won't tone them down the hazards when things get tough. I'm hoping I've planned such places in a way that they'll be sufficiently aware of the threat, though. One thing that always bugged me about Oblivion was that monsters would scale their power level to however powerful the player character was at that point. I'm standing on the other extreme of the scale with this game. 

A Good Map will provide Hooks

I always love a game with a great map. I want to see interesting looking locations and see some intriguing places named. I remember when I first played Link to the Past I opened up the map and decided I wanted to go and explore the Swamp Ruins. They weren't relevant to the main plot until later in the game but I still headed there and took a look around because what's not to like? Swamps are cool and Ruins are cool. 

I'm hoping the map for the starting area of my campaign will do the same.

A larger version can be enjoyed here. Good old Hexmapper.

An All-Dwarf Adventure and Dave's Legacy

A quick edit here. It seems reports of co-creator of D&D, Dave Arneson, dying weren't true. However, it sounds like he's still in a weak condition, so I'm going to leave the links to blogs posting their tributes here, as it's still a great time to learn about the man. Certainly no need to halt the further spreading of his legacy. 

Now onto the game I'm currently preparing for. An all-dwarf sandbox using Underworld and Overworld. Today I want to talk about the decision to make it all-dwarf.

I think the non-human races in fantasy often get a hard deal. It's no secret they tend to be little more than single-culture archetypes and anything differing from that often gets its own race. Look at the short folk of D&D and most generic fantasy. Gnomes, Dwarves and Hobbits/Halflings. You've got your magically-inclined excentric gadgeteer race, the gruff, underground miner-warrior race and the peaceful pipe-smoking but brave race with the odd burglar.

I'm mashing them all into dwarfs for this game and I think the race will be better because of it.

All of the traits mentioned can fit onto a dwarf with no problem at all. Now instead of a race where everyone's an ale-drinking axeman you have a race where a settlement is likely to include all sort of characters. Not to mention a race where different settlements might play more to certain racial tropes than others.

Of course, we still have the usual good-evil seperation that plagues non-humans in fantasy. I don't want dark-dwarves, deep-dwarves, derro or whatever you want to call them. Of course there might be settlements that have a reputation for being greedy but it's not part of their DNA. Perhaps it's just a stereotype or perhaps something about that settlement attracts the greedy type. On the flipside even your peaceful pipe-smoking dwarf hamlet might have one or two dwarfs that... well, are just dicks.

This is a theme I want to carry through to the rest of the races in this game. Orcs, Hobgoblins, Uruk-Hai, Half-Orcs... bleh. An orc that lives underground, an orc that's part of a well trained army and an orc that's trying to fit into civilised society can all be part of the same race. And now they shall be.

Anyone that wants to see more of this upcoming game can find more here. You could even join in if you grab the last slot quick enough. Next time I'll touch on why I've gone for dwarfs in particular.

The Game I Thought I'd Never Write

Well, it was bound to happen. After working on games with relatively original concepts for so long I've finally given in and designed something where your fighter or wizard kills orcs for treasure, under the temporary name Underworld and Overworld. It took a while for me to decide what exactly I wanted out of this project, but I finally found the answer below.

What is this game?

There is nothing new or shocking in this game. It is intended to be a very simple base system for a GM and group of players wanting a game with deadly monsters, huge armies and characters that gain fame and become Kings. It is perfect for a group wanting to quickly have a fantasy adventure as there are very few rules to learn and the document is free.

From this foundation a GM can create their own monsters to break from the classic examples given, using them to populate a world straight out of his imagination. It could be as simple as a one-off dungeon crawl or it could be a full world with empires and warring gods. With this in mind the rules are intended to be as straightforward and open to modification as possible to aid creation of new content and keep the amount of calculating, memorising and paperwork at the game table down to a minimum.

The game is mostly inspired by my happy, younger memories of Fighting Fantasy books, playing Ultima Underworld and enjoying board games like Heroquest and Dungeon. 

You can see the game as it stands here.

Enjoy!