Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

Santa especially deserves some time off and fun before the year wraps up ... what with all the travel and list-checking and paparazzi and whatnot.

So I hope you all enjoy the season too, in whatever ways make you happy!

The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies

Just got back from a matinee screening of The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies.

A few random thoughts on the movie, in no particular order ... I've had a couple eggnogs since seeing the movie, so don't expect anything too intelligent! And please note this is not an actual review! OK, maybe it is a review ... of sorts.

SPOILER ALERT - I think we all know how it ends, but nonetheless, you have been warned. :-)

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Smaug gets killed before the subtitle "Battle of the Five Armies" appears. Wow. No preamble. They pick up right where film two left off. Smaug obviously burns Lake Town to cinders but gets heroic black spear-killed by Bard with a makeshift bow in the town bell tower, with the help of his son. I liked this early kill off, and it set a good pace for the film.

Can someone shut Tauriel up please. Whiny elf. She goes through some kind of emotional journey or something apparently during the three films. Maybe Evangeline (spelling?) Lily is just a bad actress but I couldn't buy into it at all. The whole Kili-Tauriel relationship is so forced. I hated the Tauriel character from the start and she doesn't get any better during this film. Near the end I could hardly keep from rolling my eyes when she cries to Thranduil about why it hurts so much after Kili gets ... well, killed. Because its real, Thrnaduil replies. Pul-lease! *barf*

The White Council rescues Gandalf and confronts the Ringwraiths and Sauron at Dol Guldur. Very cool scene, loved it! Saruman and Elrond kick some wraith ethereal ass for the most part and then Galadriel goes all Hot Dark Elf Chick (makes sense when you see it, remember Fellowship? But better!) with turned up to 11 magic powers on Sauron and blasts him (presumably) off to Mordor. Someone should do a Tolkien Mirror Universe movie so we can see Nasty Gladdy more. :-)

Sandworms of Dune! Oh wait ... I mean Giant Toothy Rockworms of the Misty Mountains! These big critters eat tunnels through the mountains to get Azog's army to the Lonely Mountain on the sly, sneaky-like, except when they shake the earth and bust a rock chew move and everyone goes gaga ... and then they promptly saunter back down the tunnels. Pretty spectacular visuals, but I don't recall those things from the Hobbit book. lol If I was Azog, I'd be like WTF! Hey, wormies, get the heck on the battlefield and eat the damn way into the Lonely Mountain for frig's sake! Big enough plot hole to drive a tunnel eating mountain worm through. But anyway ... It's all good and it's a pretty freaking cool moment at the start of the battle.

Dain Ironfoot leads his dwarf army into the battle riding a pig-boar beast. I loved this character. He's exactly how I (and many others) like to play dwarves in D&D. Loud, insulting and funny. He headbutts orcs in battle and kicks ass. Totally over the top, it's great!

Thorin death scene with Bilbo. Gotta admit, I got choked up a bit. Freeman and Armitage's acting is well done, with Thorin coming to grips with his regret over trying to have Bilbo killed (earlier in the film) and his impending demise, and Bilbo holding in his grief and being supportive to a dying friend but just enough grief spurts out that you really empathize with him. At least I did anyway. Good stuff.

At any rate, gotta head out for dinner with wifey, so will end here.

Overall, I like this (upon first viewing) film a lot better than the first two. It seems to hold together better overall and has a good mix of tension building, action and character moments. The Bard character plays a bigger role than Bilbo, it seemed to me, which I found a bit odd considering it's called The Hobbit, but your mileage may vary on that part. It's not so much that Bilbo is put in the background as Bard is brought to the foreground for much of the film.

If you managed to make it this far without wanting to hit me ... I give The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies 3.5 gp out of 5. It would be a 4.5 gp regular fantasy film, but considering it's Tolkien and Jackson and the writers have so needlessly butchered and re-arranged much of the good professor's works for "makes for better film and we need other characters bullspit", that I can't give any higher rating than that! :-)

But go see it, it's a rocking good film!

Bigger Even More Honking Random Monster Table [Wastelands]

Just a quick update to share today. I've expanded my Wastelands random creature encounter table to include more monsters (mostly from the Fiend Folio) and I folded the sublists (humanoids, giantkin, oozes, undead, and the like) into the main table.

I've also added in my other wilderness random encounter tables up front, which use some house rules like "scatter" dice as well as the excellent d30 Sandbox Companion (by Richard J. LeBlanc Jr. of New Big Dragon Games) for wilderness travel.

As with the previous version, the tables can be downloaded here (.pdf) should you good readers wish to use it as-is, or here (.docx) if you'd like to tinker and customize it.

Wastelands Big Honkin Random Monster Table

The Wastelands is a sandboxy hex-crawl style setting. As such, I needed to create a series of random encounter tables for the numerous geographical regions. I had originally drafted a d20-based table for each major region (Bandlands of Paj, Kreth Verdant, Steaming Jungles of Su'Janga, etc.), but soon realized that a d20 randomizer did not produce enough variation within each region to satisfy my personal Creature Feature Quotient--meaning I needed more monsters!

Artisan dice! https://www.artisandice.com/

So as I often do when pondering dungeon mastery-type things, I consulted the definitive work of Grand Master Gygax, the 1st edition DMG. Therein, as usual, I found my solution: d100-based random tables delineated by predominant terrain type. I have moved away from d100-based tables in recent years, mostly because they require a lot more fiddly maths and sometimes produce too many options for my personal tastes. However, for this purpose, and to satiate my CFQ--I wanted roughly between 20 and 40 possible random creatures for most regions--the good old d100 tables worked perfectly.

Thus, I reorganized my separate regional d20 tables into one big honking d100 table broken out into predominant terrain types (arctic, badlands, forest, desert, and so on) similar to what was done in the DMG. The table can be downloaded here (.pdf) should you good readers wish to use it as-is, or here (.docx) if you'd like to tinker and customize it.

The creatures on the table include a few of the regular suspects from the Monster Manual (it goes without saying that I mean the AD&D version--but I guess I just said, or wrote, it anyway!) But with this campaign setting I wanted to mine the other monster manuals for lesser-known and/or infrequently-used critters. For example, monsters such as the crysmal, kampfult, solifugid and xag-ya from Monster Manual II, and the caterwaul and skulk (and the humanoid aarakocra, grimlocks and quaggoths) from the Fiend Folio will turn up randomly in some areas of the Wastelands.

I also included the thanoi, or walrus men, from the Dragonlance Adventures book (and DL6 Dragons of Ice). Mostly because I like the idea of warrior walrus men. I never liked much from Dragonlance, but I always thought the thanoi were cool. Coo coo ca choo! Bad puns intended. ;-)

Heroic Dice! [House Rule]

Heroic Dice in action!

HEROIC DICE

Heroic dice are extra dice you may use in place of poor or undesirable dice rolls. They represent a well of inner resolve, an unrelenting drive, a will to succeed, or simply sheer blind luck that distinguishes adventurers from everyone else.

When you make a bad roll, you may declare to the referee you are spending a Heroic Die to re-roll a single die. A Heroic Die may be any die type and may be spent in any situation—attack roll, damage roll, saving throw, proficiency (or skill) check, and so forth.

You may only spend one Heroic Die on any single bad die roll—you cannot keep spending Heroic Dice to re-roll until you get a favorable result. If a Heroic Die roll is equal to or worse than your original roll, use the original roll. However, that Heroic Die is still spent.

You gain more Heroic Dice to spend as you gain levels. Heroic Dice refresh at the start of each day.

HEROIC DICE TABLE

Character Level	Heroic Dice per Day
1-3	1
4-7	2
8-12	3
13+	4

This is a pretty straightforward house rule I've encountered in many variations over the years. Some referees divvy them up into specific pools for spellcasting or combat, and others call them luck dice, drama dice, fate points and such.

Throw Down! [House Rule]

Back in April, Chris at the Aspiring Lich blog wrote about a Save vs Awesome option for use in old-school games. I liked it.

His option started me thinking (uh-oh!) about other ways to inject awesomeness into combats a little more frequently, and I came up with this little idea: the Throw Down.

Basically, the Throw Down is used when you (or a referee's big NPC baddie) want to single-out an opponent and gain a bonus against that opponent. Think of it like the proverbial "throwing down the gauntlet" and calling out a foe. It's also meant as a means to encourage roleplaying and add drama to a combat encounter.

While thinking about it, I recalled that 4th edition D&D had a fighter class feature called mark or challenge (or something like that). Throw Down works along those lines, but provides you the bonus; it does not impose a penalty on your foe.

Eowyn throws down against the Witch King!

THROW DOWN
You single out a foe with a clever insult, flash of steel, guttural roar, or some act of derring-do. You choose one of your ability scores (appropriate to the way you call out your foe) and roll a contest against your foe, who must use the same ability score. (Depending on the game system you are using, this could be a d20 + ability modifier contest or a "roll under" ability score contest. Either way the result is the same.)

If you beat your foe on the contest roll, you gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, and ability checks directly involving that foe for the rest of the encounter. If you attack or try to harm any other foe (other than casting an area spell which includes the designated foe) after you have won a throw down, you immediately lose your bonus.

If you lose the contest roll, nothing good or bad happens to you. You throw down but your foe has better moxie.

The foe you thrown down against must have equal or greater hit dice than you. It's not very heroic to throw down against an inferior foe! There is no limit to the number of times you can throw down in an encounter, but you can only ever have one throw down bonus active and an ally cannot attack (or otherwise harm) or throw down against the same foe while your throw down is active. If an ally does either, you immediately lose your throw down bonus.

Plenty of Options: The throw down bonus doesn't need to be a simple +1 to numerous rolls. A referee might allow an extra damage die on attacks, maximized spell effects, an improved initiative bonus, temporary hit points, or other similar benefits.

Warriors of the Red Planet & d30 Companions!

It has been entirely too long since my last post!

Just a quick note today to praise the coolness of my two (well, three) most recent OSR purchases.

Warriors of the Red Planet by Al Krombach and Thomas Denmark (see the WotRP blog) is a crisp, lean, old-school rules guide for games of the Sword & Planet genre. I've been reading through this the past couple of days and I can say without doubt that this 134-page booklet-sized paperback (color cover, black & white interior, perfect bound, available from Lulu) has me all jazzed up for leaping from airship-to-airship, slaying evil Black Martian baddies, ripping the blonde wigs off Therns and rescuing me a hot Red Martian princess. Excellent work gentlemen.

The d30 Sandbox Companion and d30 DM Companion by Richard LeBlanc are both fantastic accessories for the overworked and under-appreciated referee. These two saddle-stitched paperbacks (black & white interiors with mono-color covers, available in PDF from Drive-Thru and PoD from Lulu--see links above) weigh in at 52 and 36 pages, respectively, and provide a plethora of random tables (all of the cool d30 variety!) to generate damn near close to everything you could expect to generate during a game session--random ruins, settlements, NPCs, temples, monsters, weather, treasures, even entire adventures. You name it and it's in there. These two books will feature prominently in my next sandbox game and I highly recommend them both.

That's all for today, next up will be a post discussing the sandbox game I just mentioned. :-)