3 World Series' and One Fantasy World

DId you know that Curt Schilling has designed a role playing game? Can you get a bloody sock as a relic?

Dragon Tales

We ought to try adding an adventure blog to track details of our playing. It would be interesting to have details of each to go back to down the road, but it could also be fun to see how each of us views the adventure. We could compile a look at it from each characters point of view (or at least, each player at the table). If we wanted, we could create separate threads for each arc.

It makes sense to have it separate from this feed, let this be for ideas, brainstorming, adventure building and rules discussion, and the other to be just for a log of adventures. I've started a test blog at http://fireballgulch.blogspot.com/, but haven't worked out the details yet, and figured it would make sense to think it out first.

Any thoughts or ideas?

Upcoming Adventures

I guess this is straightforward - any ideas about coordinating settings? I was thinking about fiery monsters - I'm happy with that part of it; but what kind of settings would be interesting?

I was thinking the hook might be something very simple - people report that the old watchtower on the hill has been smoking for a week. They go to find out. Thye run into trouble on the way.

Thoughts?

Daleks and Death Knights

My intent between Thanksgiving and Christmas was to revisit the Dalek dungeon. I liked the drow Wizard and wanted to create an adventure to lead into the final encounter. The story is shaping up well, though I’ve yet to finish all of its parts. I made it modular with a variety of choices on how to proceed that all led to the same finale.

While working on it, I asked Thomas what kind of magic item to use in one part of the encounter. I wanted something big and important, something unique. He suggested a palantír and a light went off in my head. I’ve wanted to run two kinds of adventure since reading The Lord of the Rings, one involving a quest for the seven lost palantiri and the other to defeat the Witch King of Angmar. When he made his suggestion, the two snapped together perfectly. The artifact is one of the lost stones, and the Witch King is desperate to have it. Unfortunately, the drow armies have long been battling with the Witch King for dominance of the ice realm of Angmar. The drow Wizard has been gathering supplies and support to combine with her alliance of Frost Giants against the Witch King’s forces. While doing so, she became aware of the lost stone and its attractive appeal to the Witch King and is eager to recover it first and use it against him.

The encounter in this adventure can be resolved in a couple of ways. Either the drow get away with the treasure and it serves as an ongoing temptation to the party to continue searching for it, or the characters end up with it, thwarting the drow’s plans, but with no idea of what they hold. I don’t know yet what to make it, so it would require some activation to be useful. In any event, the stone would require a quest of its own to research and discover its powers. It would also be a lightning rod for attention from the drow and the Witch King’s forces.

The Witch King is a Death Knight, with a following of undead and similar shadow dwellers. He would be the focus of a future adventure, one connected with researching the stones. For now, he is another big monster to be concerned with. Perhaps he is associated with other kinds of giants and various dragons as well as the undead.

There is a war going on in the background between these two camps, well up in the mountains, but with constant trickle-down effects making their way into the civilized world. There are parties looking for the stones (or info on them), there are raiders seeking food, money, or slaves, and there are fugitives of the war streaming down out of the hills looking for new lives (giants, orcs, ogres, etc.,). The beauty of this is that their flight is likely to drive others out ahead of them, so an adventuring party could encounter any number of creatures in any setting.

It also makes sense to keep the big leaders alive for as long as possible, so they can recur throughout a campaign arc. They are constantly taken to the brink and driven away, only to resurface in a new way with a new threat.

This is a long-term project in the main areas, but could generate immediate casual encounters within the storyline. I like the idea of some unique magic items/artifacts. The trouble with the current system and magic items is that they're all the same, 1st level or 30th, only the attack bonuses increase. A vorpul used to be a unique and powerful item, as was a Holy Avenger, or a +5 Defender. It would be nice to reincorporate some of that element if possible.

I found some magnetic paper and made condition counters to use on a white board.

Some Broader Factions

This is less about specific adventure hooks than about factions that might be involved in events in this area. This is by no means an exhaustive list - just some of the groups, or types of groups, that influence things.

1. Githyanki have been plaguing the area, raiding trade routes, towns, mines, castles, etc. - generally, I imagine, avoiding any full scale fights, but generally making things difficult. They have brought a good number of monsters in their wake, some allied, some just taking advantage of the disorder the Githyanki have spread. We've dealt with some of them already - they might now be weakened... This doesn't change the other monsters that might be taking advantage of their presence, and might create new conflicts, especially if people start looking around for their lair.

2. We've run into Drow a couple times in our recent adventures - there might well be more of them. They might have been allied with the Githyanki - or rivals to the Githyanki - or both... and might become more prominant now. They are also likely to have other allies - giants or such... I think they would have a slightly different attitude toward things - Githyanki seem to behave mostly as pirates, raiders - DRow seem a little more likely to be looking at larger political ambitions, conquest, or at least political ambitions against their underdark rivals... (It might also be more likely for their to be Drow NPC wandering around - which can create some challenges, since not all Drow might be automatically evil.)

3. The Drow and Githyanki I imagine are both more inland - probably coming from the mountains. I think there might be other factions on the coast. I think this kind of coast would be quite rife with pirates - smugglers, raiders, of every kind. I think there could be a couple major factions there - whose feuding could involve characters at various points. (Somewhere along the line, if I ever get any energy at all, I really want to play a seaborne adventure - boats and harbors and islands and haunted lighthouses and all the rest, and pirates and castaways and the works....)

4. Politics - I think the main political turmoil is in the valley in the northern hills, which is a small kingdom. The king is missing - his brother is ruling in his place - and is fighting with his barons and their people over the taxes to save the king (or enrich the prince, depending on who you listen to.) The results are pure Robin Hood - honest men outlawed and all the rest... This can serve as background - a reason for some of the breakdown of security, maybe the source of a lot of the armed soldiers running around (outlaws, exiles, etc.) - as well as a place for mercenaries to find jobs. It could also blow up into warfare, or pull characters in for intrigues, rescues, and so on.

5. Finally - I think all these things have drawn a good number of adventurers looking to get in on the action. We've run across a few of these already, and can keep running into them in various contexts. These can come in all types - honest heroes - opportunists - outright villains, either looking for their own advantage of allying with evil forces (drow or githyanki or pirates or whatever)... Yeomen unfairly outlawed or simple thugs... I hope over time we can start working up encounters among these people - with recurring characters....

Our gang has met Hashtag and Splat, half orc barbarian and halfling thief, who will probably turn up again... others as well - we can see how they can fit into all this.

This is a quick stretch to better fit with a 10 mile scale. A 20 mile scale doesn't look like it would work with the coastline, but if the waterways were extending inland, the day journey distances would be more useful. It might even work best with a 5 mile scale. If you think of Moosehead as the big lake, it probably should be between 50 and 100 miles inland. Augusta is probably 25 miles upriver.

Hooks and Folks

Hooks

1.               Villains have taken over the keep on the hill. Someone needs to rescue the prisoners. Do they storm the front gates or sneak in the back?

2.               There’s a plague in Willowville and someone needs to deliver 20 potions of vitality to the town post haste. There are trolls controlling the only bridge between here and there, and with word of their vulnerability spreading like wildfire, there may be more trouble on the road. Can you make it through with enough potions intact?

3.               Doppelgangers have been infiltrating the temple of [diety here], and the town cleric wishes for assistance in locating and destroying them. And what happened to the original priests?

4.               Good money is being paid out for proper potions supplies. Check the list and gather what you dare?

5.               The drow have set up a temple to Lolth in the abandoned abbey outside the ruins of Bainbridge. This abomination must be eradicated, and the temple purified.

6.               Ghosts have begun disturbing the monks of North Oakvale, and they have issued a call to town for assistance in discovering why they have become active, and who could be behind it.

7.               Many travelers have reported weird things from the old shore road between Town and Ocean Point. It’s hard to know what is true, with so many different stories floating around. Perhaps speaking to someone at the church will give a better idea. You might also try to ask the travelers directly at Whisper Inn. Someone at the church might have a keener insight into the history of Ocean Point and the paths between here and there.

8.                

Who’s Who in Town

•         Jenny Baker – raised in her father’s inn, spending long hours throughout her young life in the kitchen helping prepare everything from morning bread and pastries to traveling fare and evening desserts, Jenny more than learned the art of baking, she mastered it. Since reaching her adulthood, she has opened her own shop across the street from her father’s inn and never looked back. Bustling through a haze of flour, she is a first-class source of information on anyone in town. And her cakes aren’t bad either.

•         Wally Baker – local innkeeper, he’s everybody’s friend, everybody’s worst enemy. For years the only place in town to spend the night, find a drink, spread some gossip, or meet companions, the inn has recently found competition from a new establishment on the outskirts of town, on the road into the mountains. Still the place to be on the river, the Swallow Inn has been around long enough to develop a more family friendly environment. Wally is set in his ways, loved by regulars, but difficult to get to know. Still, he’s no fool, and will be gracious enough to good paying customers. And with four decades in business, he is a wealth of local information. The difficulty is in pinning him down to carry on a conversation, and keeping him focused on continuing it.

•         Elwyn Bowyer – the new kid in town, Elwyn has been opened a new inn on the road leading to the mines that keep the city prospering. A half-elf from the northern forests, Elwyn first came to town five years ago and opened the Miner’s Delight two years ago. He has made no friends with the Bakers, and primarily serves miners and tradesmen dealing with the mines. As such, the Miner’s Delight caters to a rougher crowd and a more dangerous client base. He knows many things about the wild and has understands the politics of the mines and mountains. He doesn’t know much about the townsfolk, but is an astute judge of character, and has formed sound opinions of many, though he is difficult to pry for info. He is a master at the craft himself, and will pick up on lazy attempts to pump him.

•         Bellamy Boys – many of the town guards come from the Bellamy clan, enough so that they are referred to as the Bellamy Boys. Owen Bellamy is the head of the clan, and the head of the guards. He’s no great shakes for info or conversation, but knows how to use his head – in a fight. There are a number of Bellamys on the guard, and all are slow but tough. Nat Thorn and his cousin Mark Janus are the exceptions to the rule. They have only been in town for the last six or seven years, and earned their way into guard duty with their skills in a brawl, but they are slick, and often follow their own agenda in any circumstance. They can outthink the rest of the guard combined, and can be bought for many reasons. Be on your guard around them.

•         Nellie Bright – runs the general store. Any supplies for hiking, fishing, or adventuring can be found in her store. She doesn’t stock any weapons beyond daggers, hunting knives and archery equipment, but knows what’s good or bad. She used to be quite an adventurer herself in the old days, rumor has it, but a bum knee turned her into a merchant. She is close-mouthed about her past as a rule, so no one in town knows more than gossip about her, but she misses the thrill of the wild and the scent of blood on blade, so she will open up to worthy adventurers. She keeps some “special” supplies in her basement (select magic items and weaponry), and will barter with the right clients.

•         Jaimie Bellamy – runs the local forge. He can create any kind of metalwork given enough time, and owns the outright patent on Bellamy brains. It is illegal to sell weapons in town, but it is common knowledge that Jaimie can construct them, and he does well supplementing his day wages by dabbling in the black market trade of arms. He lives on a farm five miles out of town, and has a forge there that he uses to craft weaponry. He supplies townspeople and miners alike, as well as anyone willing to pay his inflated prices. His wife Nan runs the farm and keeps all-comers honest while Jaimie is at his forge in town. Rumor is she’s a witch or mage, but no one alive knows the secret. They know to stay away unless ready to trade honestly. She’s also suspected of enchanting her husband’s weapons, so they carry better bonuses and powers. Few alive have ever seen her close up, and she is rumored to have survived a terrible fire at some point in her past and to be horribly scarred or disfigured. She takes great care to conceal herself whenever out in public. Of course there are others who believe she is descended from Drow.

Map

This is the basic shape of the setting I have been thinking about. I don't know how far I want to fill it in - I'm more interested in giving the area a basic shape and geography, that can be detailed as needed. It's not much of a map - a sketch - some basic features noted. The bay, the city, obviously... Some of the geography - the hashmarks are cliffs, the squiggly lines generally indicate hills. The heavy squiggly line across the top generally indicates where the high mountains start. The basic geography is - the high mountains in the north, that come down into this area. The bay itself is surrounded by highlands - cliffs in the north, rough hills terrain in the south (like Maine). Above Bayport, there is a little river valley, with lakes and such, and smaller rivers draining into it. It's separated by a high ridge line and steep cliffs from a shallow estuary on the west. Everything above that, though, is very wild - jagged cloastlines, fjords and mountains and hidden coves, etc. There's another valley off to the east, with bigger lakes etc. Southeast of Bayport is probably lower, farmland and so on, probably some swamp in there somewhere. In the south, there's probably another country on that peninsular - which is probably all highlands too. The area in between can be anything, I imagine. I think there should be a lot more islands in the bay and ocean, too....

Scale is, roughly - about 10 miles across the mouth of the bay...

I've left as much of it open as I can, so that pretty much anything we come up with can be fit in without too much trouble. There's quite a bit of recycling of old maps, too, especially from the early drafts of some of the Waynesburg stuff. That whole eastern river valley that we never really did anything with is in there... Anyway - here it is.

On Preparation vs. Improv

The biggest thing I noticed from the games we played this Christmas, is that to change the style of the game, we would need to build adventures in advance. I don't think that is necessary to play - the fact is, DD4 is an excellent miniatures war game, and one of the things that makes it work so well is that it is very easy to set up a combat encounter. You take a map, you add up an appropriate group of monsters, you write down stats and roll initiative and play. It's easy to set up - the encounters themselves are fairly easy to play (at least we've been doing it long enough that it's not too hard to run) - if you choose a decent array of monsters and an interesting map, the fights themselves are usually relatively challenging and fun... I admit - I played war games before I played D&D, and have always liked those kinds of games as much as anything - I could do that forever without minding it in the least. It really is a robust system - part of what makes it easy to work with is the fact that, once you've played a bit, there's not a lot of difference between 3rd and 12th level games. There's not a lot of difference in the flavor or mechanics of playing higher level characters - you have a little more variety in your powers (and the monsters' powers), the fights last a bit longer, but you basically do the same things. All of which means you can keep playing, at whatever level you want, without really changing much.

The problem is that that is leaving out an awful lot of what makes D&D D&D. Most of the character development stuff, the role playing, the world building - the sense of a narrative, of continuity from encounter to encounter. Combat D&D is fun - but it feels like you are playing it out of a box, every time - years of playing the same characters, and they still feel more like game pieces than people. Not to mention the fact that we are leaving out whole chunks of the game itself - I mean, that last adventure is the first time, I think, any one of us has used a ritual!

One thing our attempts to change things around shows, I think, is that to make a more varied campaign, to create a strong narrative sense (which, ultimately, is probably the most important element in the full D&D experience), you have to set up the adventure in advance. We need to build dungeons. They could be dungeon crawls, outdoor adventures, towns, even just series' of combat encounters - but they need to be linked before the fact, the seams and connections have to be built. I don't think this is too hard to do - it just has to be done. I think a lot of the pieces for something like this are there already - rivalries with NPCs, encounters with a couple likely factions - Drow, Githyanki, giants and trolls - which might be working together or could be rivals themselves... Some of the relationships are already there - though to play them effectively, we do need to plan out how they work. That was the biggest problem with the things I tried to do - I didn't quite know where things should go. Actions should have consequences, but I had no idea what sort of consequences should come from any kind of action.

That's one thing we would need. Another is a bit more attention to the environment - obstacles and traps and whatnot, not to mention simple things like distance, time, etc. Moving from place to place, what kinds of challenges emerge - I think I can imagine what sort of things would do this. Like in the encounters we placed - if we played the process of getting from the river crossing with the giants to the cave with the Githyanki (follow the river? follow the giants? follow a road?), we could have worked in a number of things - more obstacles, traps, more encounters, as well as keeping closer watch on things like healing, daily powers and so on. I can imagine, after the fact, how all that could have been turned into a campaign - the trick now is to imagine how to turn it into a campaign before we play.

One more thing - I think the designers of the game meant it to work like this. I think they designed the game to work out of the box, to be scalable, modular, to allow players to use it strictly as a miniatures game. They also gave rules that you can use to do something else with - I can't say, even now, how well they work... Of course, earlier versions were built even more explicitly around the idea that someone would be preparing adventures ahead of time and running them - I suppose that hasn't changed. Just that the miniatures game has been built into the game at its core.

Setting and Situation

This is what I have been thinking:

First - I like the setting I posted about back in January - Bayport (with all the trimmings - the ocean, the deep water port, the cliffs around the bay, caves, villages and hideouts, made for piracy - etc.), plus a Kingdom (more inland, hills, valleys, lakes, rivers and so on.) Both surrounded by wilderness, lawlessness and so on - both built in old places, so plenty of ruins and dungeons and old stuff to deal with.

For immediate story purposes, and for the setting of the things we've been playing - I've been thinking about this. It's oriented more toward the kingdom than Bayport. I think it goes something like this: there is a King, but the King himself has gone on a Richard the Lionheart type jaunt, to fight infidels or something, and gotten himself taken prisoner, with a huge ransom demand. He left his younger brother in charge (like old Richard), and just like Prince John, the brother is an incompetent would be usurper. He may he levying the kind of taxes to pay a king's ransom, but he's in no hurry to pay it. This has caused the predictable resistance - the barons and other potentates are angling for power - the peasants and townspeople are resisting, which leads to the Prince outlawing them, which leads to formerly honest men running amok in the woods. All this is causing the predictable breakdown of security law and order, and making the whole place dangerous indeed.

But that has been escalating recently, because our friends the Githyanki have set up some kind of a lair somewhere that they are using as a base for raiding in the area. And that has further broken down the security and law and order of the area - especially since the Githyanki aren't thinking of any of this as conquered territory - they aren't making any effort to keep others out. So the place is overrun with monsters of all kinds. I imagine that the edges of this kingdom would always be hazardous - a frontier - but the Githyanki's presence has changed the monster population from the old days of Orcs and hobgoblins and gnomes and such to Trolls and Giants and Yuan-ti and the like. At the same time - because Bayport and maybe the kingdom as well are significant trading points, there is an endless depth of wealth to be plundered, so the monsters keep coming - probably not looking for conquest - more looking for victims and plunder.

And - along with all this - comes the inevitable parade of adventurers. NPC parties looking for plunder of their own - as well as adventure, fame, jobs, maybe, in their case, political power. THis is on top of a culture that's already fairly edgy - even in good times, there is a lot going on - pirates, outlaws, raiding parties, exploration of old ruins, etc. All this stuff is just a bit more volatile now than it was a couple years ago (so to speak.)

As for playing it - I kind of imagine a few types of locations: 1) you would have fairly stable central places - Bayport, the big towns in this kingdom, where you likely wouldn't find monsters, but you could find quite a few NPC type villains (as well as monsters that can pass as NPCs - vampires, undead, etc.) - and probably the Githyanki and their ilk, though sneakily. 2) You would have towns, villages, roads that are close enough to civilization that monsters might be rare, though not unknown - society still functions, but it's been undermined... 3) areas that are almost completely overrun by monsters - including towns, castles, monasteries, mines, etc. that might have been abandoned, or might be operating under constant threat, etc. - as well as plain howling wilderness, dungeons, etc. This might not be all that far from the other places - might be underground....

What I think this can do it provide a framework for adventures, especially the kinds of somewhat improvised adventures we've been doing, though it would be easy enough to work in more structured things as well. I hope it's loose enough to allow more or less any kind of adventure to be worked up from it, while setting up a frame that can connect anything we come up with. Hopefully, we can come up with a number of different kinds of situations - and use this kind of an outline to connect them, to rationalize them. I think if we want to develop the role playing elements and story elements, I think it helps to have a kind of background to work off. Something like this - an absent king, a semi-legitimate usurper, a bunch of other power centers (other nobles, the church, the towns, outside adventurers, plus the monsters themselves), and the external threat of the monsters - seems to me to create a situation you can run almost infinite variation out of.

NaNoMo Postscript

I tried this this year - not officially, just in word. I did all right - I hit 40,000 words, more or less, a pretty decent showing, writing nights and weekends (and rather intermittently at that), taking a week off for Thanksgiving. I suppose the results are full of the problems you'd expect - rambling and repetitive and discontinuous, and bogged down by endless dialogue scenes, that would put Quentin Tarantino to sleep - but not too terrible. I tried to give myself a decent chance of getting to 50K - using very familiar material, running out a simple, but loose-limbed plot line - accomplished by shamelessly rifling all the things I've played with, written about, what have you, for the last 40 years. A mashup of the Hardy Boys, D&D, west figures, every western movie with ranchers fighting farmers and sometimes each other - which is about 95% of them - plus Deadwood, with locations imagined from real places (gram's house in Vermont, the hill behind our old house, the hill behind the house now) or swiped from books (got a "Witch's Hollow", imported directly from The Screeching Owl Mystery!) I hoped it would write itself - that if I could come up with a reasonable plot line, that gave me an idea what was going to happen, and where people would be, and what they would be doing, I could just start and go until I stopped. I knew all the characters before I started - Hardy Boys stand-ins, West Figures, D&D characters, though those three things overlap extensively; knew the settings - the physical layouts were stolen from real places, the general lay of the land worked out in D&D games through the years, the towns - Waynesburg, Hillsburg, as expected... it worked, reasonable well.

It's an appealing project. It has that one great advantage - a clear target, 50,000 words in 30 days - which gives the blessing to not stop - just keep typing, leave anything that works at all alone, and move on. It's a license not to over think the story, not to keep doubling back and refining things, not to worry over the words for any length of time. Just make the green lines go away. And add words. That's my difficulty usually - second guessing myself, constantly doubling back, changing things, revising... I know, of course, that writing is rewriting - that real novels (any kind of real writing) is made in editing - but that's not the problem I mean. You need to get the material down before you can refine it - and all my attempts at fiction bog down on the stories and people, and never come close to being in a place where I can think about the words, or the structure and form of the tale. I am pleased to see that this scheme did a pretty good job of overcoming that.



The results, of course, are, in story terms, nothing resembling finished - those 40k words get me - I don't know - half a story in... When I left it, Freddy Archer was riding fast to find Johnny West's crew, somewhere on the open range - thus touching off a long bout of exposition regarding Johnny West, and bringing Johnny and company into the story for the first time - Johnny being, presumably, one of the figures near the center of any broad conception of the plot... but that's okay. I might try to keep it going - it will be hard, I suspect, to maintain the same momentum, the same forward motion even - but I can hope. And, freed from the demands of those 50,000 words, the story can migrate to other media, other formats - that might improve things, actually. All this, this idea particularly, is rooted firmly in my youth - I quite deliberately tried to come up with a story like the kinds of things I made up on the fly when I was a kid with those toys - chases and searches and gun fights with Sparky West and his Mexicans in the rocks and hills of the wilderness... That stuff was always more than just stories - it was tactile - objects in space - visual - it was closer to film or comics or theater than to prose, and this stuff might do better in those media as well. It might make a good radio show - "When last we left them, Freddy and the sheriff were anxiously awaiting news from Heidrich's Strike!"



Anyway - the story itself, for what it is worth: set against a range war, between Johnny West, a big rancher, and George and Bruce Carter (played by my two general Custers), owners of an even bigger ranch. They are fighting each other, and the farmers and small ranchers of their valley - the railroad is coming, and the Carters want complete control. Against this, two kids, Frank and Josie, are kidnapped by the gunfighting son of one of the farmers - everyone starts looking for them. That's basically it, actually - once the kids disappear, the other characters start reacting, and things sort of roll along, with the forward motion of the kidnap plot augmented by the flashbacks, and wider scope of the fights over the land.

Speed of Play

I brainstormed with Karen for 250 miles. We thought of a couple of ideas to aid game play. First, during game play, resolve parts of the battle as mini encounters within the overall initiative order. Hank acts, then the troll he's fighting, then Perry against the same troll, then Fighting Eagle against his, Vjarne against his, their troll, and so on. It's not a big thing, but it might help keep the flow more focused during game play.
Secondly, I wondered about using a Boggle timer. Roll initiative, set up the battle map with everyone in position, then flip the timer. This should give 3 minutes for everyone to look through their sheets, read one their powers, suggest flanking maneuvers, strategy, etc. and decide on what they want to do. Then, when the timer runs out, all the powers have been chosen, and the round is resolved according to initiative. Oliver goes first, he's already decided to use Lance of Faith, so he moves his guy and casts. Then when it's Fighting Eagle's turn, he uses his chosen power with Oliver's bonus added in, and so on. As we played this week, each player in turn stopped to review his options, bringing the round to a halt. What the Boggle timer does is collect this time into one period at the start of each round to allow quicker resolution of the round itself. This should have the added benefit of keeping everyone focused on the game board during the resolution, and allow the chance to role play more as things unfold.

Red Sox Post-Mortem

Well, Terry Francona is gone. I suppose I should offer a post-mortem on the season. I don't know how Francona got to be the scapegoat for their collapse - I believe someone mentioned during their last game that the starters had averaged 4.2 innings a game in September - you aren't going to win doing that. ESPN collects some stats - 7.08 ERA, the worst month ever for their starters - Andrew Miller leading the way with a 11.70 ERA... right. There's a lot of sniping and backbiting going on - Francona complaining about the bums in his clubhouse, which I suppose the team will blame on him - lots of sniffing about conditioning and attitude - but the thing about those awful pitching numbers is that there was nothing surprising about them. The team ran Lackey, Wakefield and Miller out there all summer, and none of them were all that good to start with. Or - especially in Wake's case - they were clearly operating on borrowed time. You could see this coming - once Buchholz got hurt, you could see doom waiting on the horizon. I suspect a big part of the team's downfall was that the team kept winning through June and July - Lackey looked like he'd stabilized a bit; Wake was effective; Miller even had a couple decent starts. I suspect Epstein and company looked at them and thought they'd be okay - the team could slug its way out of any slumps it fell into, they were holding their own, they could tweak here or there, bring in Harden or Bedard and prop up the back of the rotation, and they'd be fine. Oh god.... Watching them - they did seem likely to hit their way to the post-season, and I could imagine Bedard getting hot (though I would hardly have bet anything on it) - but - I can't say I had many illusions about the post-season, by the middle of August. Wake, as is his habit, ran out of gas somewhere around 100-120 innings... Miller lost what little trace of effectiveness he had... Lackey appearances were a nightmare all year - Bedard was Bedard and kept the trainer busy... And so? when Beckett and Lester began to run down, it was over - the bullpen was run into the ground (and always overworked - the back of the rotation wasn't exactly soaking up innings before the collapse.) In the end - they crashed and burned, and frankly - other than the (worn out) bullpen, and the mediocrity from Lester and Beckett - nothing about it seems remotely out of order. The back end of the rotation performed exactly as I expected them to.

The thing is, they had nothing else to go to. They didn't have options in place of letting Wakefield try yet again for that 200th win - other than maybe putting Aceves in the rotation, though I don't know what that would have helped as it is, he threw the second most innings on the team (per that ESPN article.) And that ought to be a hint as to what I think about Francona leaving. The team didn't fail because he lost the clubhouse - the team failed because they had 2 major league starters. Now - Lackey has been good, and probably will be again - if Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon can rise from the dead, why not John Lackey? And Wake was, as usual, pretty good through about 120 innings. But past is past, and in the present, neither was worth a damn. Bedard was sort of okay for a while, but he's pitching with the same arm he's been occasionally pitching with all his career, so the results are predictable. Andrew Miller - may be a worthy project, but not one you put in a game when there's anything on the line. And again I say - none of this should have been surprising. And - something should have been done. And if it wasn't done - I kind of wish the team, or Epstein, would say, we ran out of pitching, we didn't have the arms to contend. Because that's the truth - even if they made the playoffs, they would be easy pickings, as things stand now.

So - I suppose it is obvious what I think they have to do in the post-season: they need to get a reliable starting pitcher. They probably should resign Papelbon and Ortiz - they should find a decent right fielder (better if they can, but that may be easier said than done) - but most of all, they need a proper starting pitcher. I do not think they can afford to assume, or hope, that Buchholz will be healthy (though I expect he will be) and Lackey will remember how to pitch (though I imagine he will, sooner or later). Even if they do - they need more assurance than that. Now - the real problem is that they need to start developing their own arms again - they seem to leave themselves short a few years in a row. They could use Justin Masterson right about now... But that aside - they need to have a lot more in reserve than they had this year.

And finally - losing Tito strikes me as being a very ominous sign. The sox went decades - I mean, decades - without keeping a manager more than 3-4 years at a time - including some very good ones. The job eats them alive, here in Boston, with its rabid sports press and fans and its sometimes - unrealistic management. In the old old days, they tried to do it on the cheap - in this brave new world, they try to spend like the Yankees - but the Yanks have managed to keep a remarkably stable organization over the last 15 years, with obvious results. I don't know. Tito gave them stability in the dugout, on the field - now that he's gone, I suspect they will soon have the managerial revolving doors spinning. They spend a lot of money - they won't have the loyalty and commitment to any new guy they had to him. This is going to become a habit, I fear. I've become a soccer fan in the last couple years and I dread that they will decide to adopt the Chelsea method - pour in the money, run out a new manager every couple years, watch Man U/New York run up 3 championships to every one of yours. Which, to be fair, has plenty of baseball precedent - the Mets, the Dodgers - I suppose it is not surprising that Bobby Valentine and JOe Torre - Mets and Dodger alums - are being touted for this job.

All right - that's enough of that. What about the playoffs, huh? the teams that are in are pretty interesting in themselves....

AL: I say - Tigers are going to beat the Yankees. Yanks are obviously a pretty good team but - Freddy Garcia? Bartolo Colon? Ivan Nova? Course I said the same thing at the beginning of the year and look where that got me... I do think the Tigers are going to win. In Texas? TB has pitching, yes, and a decent team, but Texas is really good - all over the place really good. They are, I think, the real team to beat in the AL - I don't think TB will do it.

NL: Should be the Phils in something like a walk - all that pitching, and some real hitters... the Cards aren't bad, have Pujols plus Berkman and Holliday - I don't know. I don't think they have shut down pitching, and the Phils do, so... The Brewers should beat Arizona, though it wouldn't be impossible for the Snakes to win. Just very unlikely. Then - The Brewers aren't too far off the Phils - offensive punch, very strong rotation, strong bullpen - just that - if the Phillies' pitchers are hot - and they usually are - they won 102 games for a reason.

A lot of neat World Series matchups can be generated by this - Phils over Texas is the most likely I think; Tigers over Brewers would be the most entertaining, I suspect. With the sox out, I find myself without too strong feelings - I rather like quite a few of these teams (Phils, Rangers, Tigers; the Brewers and Rays to some extent) - the Diamondbacks are a fun story. As always, though, I know who to root against - the Damned Yankees and Tony LaRussa. I haven't forgiven him for using 7 pitchers in a meaningless midsummer game I attended in Baltimore in 1994 - the damned idiot had to know the season was only going to run another week! it was 99 degrees of Baltimore heat - and he's running 7 pitchers out there? I will never forgive him.

Baseball 2011

We seem to have stalled a bit - so let's branch out a bit... Time for a baseball preview - the surest sign of spring, the start of the baseball season. (Cross posted from the Listening Ear.)

AL East:
1) Boston - There is obviously a lot of hype this year - they had the most active and successful offseason - and they were not far off last year, a game worse than Texas even with all the injuries, the underachievement (Beckett, Papelbon, Lackey), and so on. I think if they had brought back last year's team, they would be favorites - even without Beltre and Martinez, they would be contenders - but getting Crowford and Gonzalez is a lot more than that. It's hard not to pick them - they didn't have anyone really playing over their head last year - if the breakout players (Buchholz and Bard, notably) regress to the mean, you'd think Beckett, Lackey, Papelbon coming back to their mean would more than balance it out.... and I don't think the kids are all that likely to regress - Buchholz and Bard have been top prospects all along - they didn't overachieve last year. The team bolstered all their options - they have depth almost everywhere, including pitching... So - if they stay healthy - they should be formidable. If everything clicks, they might be awe inspiring.

2) NY Yankees - not exactly slouches, though. The team on the field is still pretty good - they also are more likely to get bounceback years from the likes of Jeter and Granderson than any regression from Cano or Gardner. They might be carrying some defensive holes - Jeter has been bad for a long time; A-Rod is getting old and slow as well - but the rest of the field seems pretty well covered. The pitching is another story though - Sabathia is a horse - Hughes, like Buchholz, has been a big prospect for a long time, and one imagines he'll continue to be an asset for a long time.... But then you get AJ Burnett - who seems to me a lesser version of Beckett and Lackey - not as good to start, and less likely to turn it around. And then - Bartolo Colon? Freddy Garcia? Ivan Nova?? I'll take Dice-K, thanks...

3) Tampa Bay - still a strong rotation, still the likes of Langoria and Upton, maybe Zobrist will bounce back - there's Manny and Damon with a lot to prove, but no real expectations - so they are still relevant... They should still have strong starting - they certainly have lots of good options to choose from, behind a very good ace in Price. The pen? Probably keeps them safely in third.

4) Toronto - they have a mob of good and intriguing young pitchers; they have some interesting players on the field - if Lind or Hill come back, if Snider continues to develop, if Bautista doesn't revert to the mean - they could be dangerous. A couple breaks and they could be fighting for third.

5) Baltimore Orioles - they have what - 3 good young players - and a mob of has-beens; and some promising young starters, and Jeremy Guthrie; and - Kevin Gregg? really? They might score some runs - they might not be embarrassing. Showalter might still be on the upward slope of his inevitable rise and fall... but fourth place would be an upset.

Central:
1) Detroit - I think - assuming Cabrera stays out of jail and all. They have some nice pitchers, especially at the top - Verlander and Schzerzer; they have decent players on the field. I think it's a fine line - they have to stay healthy, stay out of jail, stay out of the old folks home - if they do, they should be in contention. Truth is, I don't have a clue who will win this division - the top three teams all have some real stars, but some gaping holes as well - any of them could break in either direction.

2) Chicago - Why put them 2? call it - strong pitching, Dunn, etc. If Peavy were healthy, yeah, maybe... they have Juan Pierre still, though, and that has to be a major point in Detroit and Minnesota's favor.

3) Minnesota - No - actually, I expect them to win the division, as usual. Mauer and Morneau (if he is healthy) are too good - the Cuddyer Span Young Kubel Thome etc. supporting cast is decent - the pitching is decent - Joe Nathan is back, and the pen becomes deeper for it - so... I should put them first.

4) Cleveland - sooner or later something good might happen; though probably the best thing that could happen is they get enough of of Sizemore or Carmona to peddle them off to a contender at the trade deadline.

5) KC - wait til next year! actually - literally - wait til next year - they have some guys on the farm just waiting to shine - hopefully they will be more Johnny Damon, Carlos Beltran, Billy Butler than Alex Gordon. Who's still around too, isn't he? The organization keeps running out stiffs like Francouer and Melky Cabrera - but maybe, this time next year, all those kids will start to make a difference...

West:
1) Texas - they are somewhat weaker, without Lee, but the division is not strong - they should be safe favorites. They did more to improve their offense than pitching (adding Beltre), but they actually have some nice young pitchers - they should be all right.

2) Anaheim - an offseason which saw them fail to get any of the players who could impact the team, then trade for the worst contract in the game - but they have enough that they could be back in the mix. They should have a pretty good rotation (potentially a very good one, with Haren and Weaver in front of the likes of Santana) - they have enough hitters that they should survive... They are soft, though - getting old in kay positions - they are rteading water at best.

3) Oakland - If they had a little more offense I would be more optimistic - they have some great pitchers. The danger is getting too excited about a good young rotation that isn't backed up by much of a team on the field. Sometimes it works (last year's Giants) - usually, it regresses (last year's Mariners.)

4) Seattle - quite hopeless, until some kids develop. The encouraging thing is that the best player on the team is barely more than a kid himself - King Felix has been around forever, has become the class of the American league - and he's not 25 yet.

National League:

East:
1) Phillies - another superteam, it seems. That is a heck of a rotation, I won't deny it. And a good team, as well - though Utley's absence is bad - and they aren't getting younger. This is the baseball equivalent of the Celtics of the last couple years, I think.

2) Atlanta - they were pretty good last yearm and I suspect they will be better this year - as Heyward and Hanson develop, adding Uggla to hit home runs - they should be solid, a wild card contender.

3) Florida - there's quite a bit of talent here - starting with Hanley Ramirez and Josh Johnson - with nice younger players, some interesting veterans - will Javier Vazquez do his usual NL thing? will Nolasco come back? they never seem to catch all the breaks - but they seem a little stronger coming in than usual - maybe they will move up...

4) NY Mets - this is with Bay & Beltran & Reyes all year. Without them, they go to fifth.

5) Washington - there's actually quite a bit to like here - I think Werth's contract was ridiculous, but he is a good player to have on a team like this - he and Zimmerman are a nice middle of the lineup. They have quite a number of good young pitchers, too - though they also have Livan Hernandez (and may for the next decade, for all I know.) I think if the Mets run into their usual health and sanity issues, the Nats could get 4th...

Central:
1) Cincy - they have a lot of players who seem to be on the rising slope of their careers - Bruce and Stubbs and quite a few pitchers - I'd worry a bit about some of their pitchers maintaining their success - but not too much. They look like a pretty good team, on balance.

2) Cards - without Wainwright, they are nothing special. They aren't bad - though the pitchers may find Lance Berkman's stylings in right field something less than optimal. They will never be out of it - but...

3) Milwaukee - Greinke's out already? there's a degree of hype about them, too - and certainly if things were to work out, they could be a breakout team - Greinke and Marcum at the front of the rotation could be very very good - or - could put in a lot of time on the training table... I think they're more uncertain than the teams I have ahead of them - not necessarily worse, though.

4) Cubs - I have no idea what the Cubs will do. I rather like the chances of Garza and Zambrano mounting nice comebacks - I suspect Pena will get back over the MEndoza line and whack 35 or so bombs - but how it all fits? So stick 'em here...

5) Houston - in fact, I don't know if I believe this. They are a boring pointless team, actually. Even if they stay ahead of the Bucs, who cares?

6) Pittsburgh - that is to say - though the odds of getting out of the cellar aren't great - they are actually sort of an interesting team. McCutcheon is an exciting player - Tabata, Alvarez, even Jones are intriguing. if they find any pitching at all - htey might start moving. If they somehow get some pitching before McCutcheon hits arbitration, they might even approach .500 in a couple years.

West:
1) SF Giants - that is one hell of a pitching staff. As for the offense - they have a hell of a pitching staff. Though any kind of recovery from Sandoval, a full year of Posey - they should be okay.

2) LA Dodgers - they have a pretty good staff as well. Kemp and Ethier are first rate hitters, too. The rest fo the team does not thrill me.

3) Rockies - they tend to walk a tightrope - they too have a pretty nice staff (strange thing to say about the Rocks) - and some great players (Tulowitzki and Gonzalez, particularly.) And are thin behind them...

4) Diamondbacks - they are actually not half bad themselves. Need to get Young and Upton both playing well at the same time - and the young pitchers (Hudson, Kennedy) need to come through. They oculd be quite respectable...

5) Padres - another team with a fine staff and not much offense. Older mediocrities and promising youngsters who have not yet done anything... I imagine as the organization reloads, people like Heath Bell should probably keep a bag packed...

OKAY! Predictions!
AL: Boston - Detroit - Texas & Yankees for the wildcard. Boston comes out, I think.
NL: Phils - Reds - Gints & Atlanta - Phils should win it, but this is harder to predict - Giants will be hard to beat with those arms.
Leaving the Sox winners, though - I hope.

AL MVP = I'm gonna say Carl Crawford - watch him use that center field tringle as a triple machine! watch him steal 40, drive in 100, his .325!
Cy Young: make it a Red Sox sweep - Lester!
Rookie - oy - Hellickson seems like the safest bet.

NL MVP = default of course is Pujols. If not Pujols - Tulowitzki or why not Matt Kemp? AT least until the Marlins make the playoffs, which will give it to Hanley.
Cy Young = Halladay and Lincecum are the default choices there - my money would be on Lincecum.
Rookie = do I know? Belt in SF? could be.

Anyway - off we go! games tomorrow! all is well!

My Two Cents

I've actually had something in mind for a while that I've tried mapping out a bit. It involves a rocky, mountainous coast, a fishing village plagued by sea demons, some tidal caves, a brackish marsh, and another town in the foot hills. I suppose I just have to work on it.

I was also thinking about how to actually start using skills and roleplaying. I started thinking up a town with a couple different places-barracks, shop, blacksmith, inn/tavern, etc. with various people who would act differently or have different problems/quests. Maybe the blacksmith needs mines cleared out, maybe there's a pickpocket who tries stealing from a character, maybe someone could join in on a card game and be caught cheating. The more things I think of, the more it sounds like Baldur's Gate.

Setting Idea

I am thinking about settings. I think having a more defined setting helps crete continuity in games - we have been playing encounters, mostly, with some attention to connecting them, but without binding them into a larger scheme. I don't know how much luck we are likely to have, with our particular gaming habits, of putting these encounters together into any kind of narrative - but I think a more coherent setting might have some of the same effect.

We had some of this in the old days - the towns, Hillsburg, Waynesburg, Farmington - had fairly distinct characteristics that we could use... though they were all pretty loosely defined. They were also all rather made up on the spot - which left me with a couple details I regretted. When we started playing, I stuck Waynesburg and Hillsburg - which were always going to be the main centers of our games - in the middle of the woods, up a big river - nowhere near the ocean. That didn't matter much at first - but over time, it trapped us - it became an inland game - when we wanted to do something on water, the characters had to march off across 3 kingdoms and 7 mountain ranges to see the sea. A rather strange state of affairs, for us kids growing up on the coast, and certainly for me, with my Hardy Boys and Treasure Island obsessions.

So: there are a couple things I would like to do with locations. I want to create a setting that can be used to generate a number of story lines, conflicts and the like; and I want to make up a setting that is more comprehensive and compact than the old ideas about Waynesburg and such. Smaller, more manageable, but also more detailed. (Though part of the problem there is just that several decades of thinking about D&D and its worlds without much playing gave me lots of chances to embellish Waynesburg to the point of being too big to play...) I have been thinking about a place, with the following characteristics:

1) a city
2) on the ocean - or possibly a very big lake (the truth is - this could work with Waynesburg and Hillsburg as well as anything...)
3) on a plain, that is surrounded by hills, mountains and so on - the coast itself should be mountainous, with cliffs and caves and inlets and fjords - places providing lots of exotic settings, as well as shelter for villains of all stripes.
4) which is organized, politically, into some kind of entity - maybe independent, maybe a province of a larger place, maybe something in the middle...
5) All of which is next to another entity - ideally, a kingdom, but a very small, insignificant kingdom -
6) Separated from the first city by natural boundaries - mountains, a big waterfall might be ideal - and surrounded by similar mountains etc.
7) though the kingdom itself is essentially a valley - with a full range of geography in a small space - rivers, lakes, farmland, swamps and marshes, hills, forests, and on the edges, mountains, or maybe high cliffs to the ocean, something like that.
8) this place should be organized around 1 or 2 towns - plus a scattering of villages, strongholds, manors, abbeys and such...
9) and all of it should have been overrun often enough in the past that you end up with layers of history, ruins and so on...

Basically - the first town is a transparent rip off of Bayport - its geography, it's endless supply of crooks, it's deep water sea port, etc... The valley/kingdom is something like the little duchies and kingdoms you'd see in, oh - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or all those Christmas specials, or maybe the Castle of Cagliostro. Though the real point, I think, would be to create a place that would suit the basic Robin Hood type plot - a town - surrounded by villages and farms - interspersed with semi-wilderness that people can move in and out of easily...

Now - thinking about it - this is pretty close to how we used Waynesburg and Hillsburg back in the day (though with a different notion of geography and politics). A large city with strong ties to the outside world; a smaller town/stronghold, surrounded by farms and woodlands and so on - the two having a cooperative, but slightly distant relationship... The main change is explicitly putting them closer to the ocean - and, I suppose, I think of both of them as being a bit smaller scale than I imagine Waynesburg. I think, within this framework, it should be possible to generate a host of incidents, basing them more on the possibilities of the setting than on the necessity of coming up with overarching story lines....

My test

I wanted to check this out to see what was already here. I was thinking about making something, but I drew a blank about what to do or even where to start. Well, test done anyway.

Story Arcs

Goblin Raiders Attack

The town is threatened & someone needs to take action. Track the raiders into the hills, then flush out their lair. Features 2 wilderness encounters, an ambush/overtaking of the raiders, and a lair.

The Dead are Alive

Something unholy is taking place at the abandoned chapel. An evil cleric is reanimating an undead army & needs to be stopped. Features zombies roaming the hills, skeletons guarding the church & a mad cleric.

Rescue the Maiden

The Lord Mayor's daughter has been taken hostage and ransom demanded. She must be rescued and the villains brought to justice – but will it be a full frontal assault or a sneak attack. Features 3 town adventures, 2 wilderness adventures and a fortress with a gang of hired ruffians.

The Mad Mage

The reclusive wizard in the Valley Tower has lost it & is threatening the safety of the surrounding farmers. Trap him in his tower & fight your way through his magical defenses to end his threat. Features fearful villagers, arcane traps and defenses, and a tricky wizard foe.

Open the Pass

Trade with Waynesburg has dried up. No one can get safely through Mason's Pass since the orcs came down from the mountains. Whispers say the real threat is what they brought with them. Features 2 outdoor encounters, an ambush, a defended base of operations, and a big scary monster. Easily scalable to accommodate bigger threats – ogre, hill giant, ettin, etc.

Find the Missing Gem

Everyone knows of the great treasure halls of the dwarves… and that they're lost. Now, word has reached town that part of the complex has been found in the Northern Hills. Rumors abound that it is the Great Hall of Dain, and the lost Artic Gem of Balin may lie within. Beat the rush of treasure hunters to explore the lost caverns and gain the treasure of the dwarves. Features 2 wilderness encounters, 2 run-ins with rival treasure seekers, and a sprawling complex of overrun dungeon ruins.

The Mad Dwarf

As you make your way through town, an anxious citizen runs up to you begging for assistance. Though wildly excited, he manages to convey that the pub on the next corner has been emptied because of a raving dwarf who’s gotten drunk and started smashing tables with his axe. He’s been at it for nearly twenty minutes, and no one has been able to get him to calm down or leave. The pub has been emptied except for four patrons who are trapped in a booth at the back, unable to get past the dwarf. Several other passersby plead with you to intervene, restrain the dwarf and save the trapped patrons.