The Silent Warrior

It's been a while since I posted to DNDkids. This is partly because I hadn't actually got to play much this month what with all the holidays, and partly because G+ is slowly becoming my main outlet for short ideas and I hadn't had many long ideas this month. Also, promoting IST has been taking a great deal of my internet time. There is a big announcement coming on this front soon, but let us not ruin it by invoking the evil eye. Suffice is to say, it's gonna be awesome. And yes, I am that superstitious. I have an obreg spirit guarding my room for god's sake!

However, because I am that superstitious. I don't want to make the blog feel all lonely and unwanted. You know how blogs are, or to be more precise, how their spirits are. You don't want to mess with these guys, oh no! So, since I don't have anything constructive to say, I'll just post pictures drawn by weekend players, who are usually bearded and totally old school.

This is a picture of me DMing, drawn by my fellow silent warrior, Yan, with whom I'm playing Fading Suns (presently on hiatus because I'm a lazy ass).

This is a picture of a group in which I play a heavily armored cleric who drinks and fights like an Irishman. Art by the most old school gamer EVER, who asked to remain nameless. Sort of.

This is just a couple of general impression by Stav from a 4th edition game I ran for several friends who are also terribly old school, but wanted to taste the new game Stav is not a regular gamer, but shows a remarkable degree of tolerance to our strange kind.

And another one from the same artist. Guess what's the story of each NPC...

And there are so many awesome drawings by other gamers I didn't scan yet...

I guess today's main point is: invite artists to your games. Whether they want to or not, they will draw and leave awesome doodles on the table

DND...Kids?

Because this issue keeps coming up, there is one thing I need to clarify. This blog is my personal blog, used to speak about anything important to me at the moment. While it originally started with the purpose of sharing experiences from my job, it had since grown to be a general outlet for fantasy and gaming related ideas which are too long for social networks. Furthermore, since its inception, this blog was never meant for kids, but was merely about them, the implied audience being adult gamers who want to play with kids or are curious how is this different from their gaming.

So, I realize many of my posts these days have nothing to do with playing with kids and some of them are not even about D&D, but about fantasy or old games I'd run. I'm growing old and nostalgia begins to hit hard. Other posts are about my current project, Israeli Storyteller, which I am very excited about and hope to make you excited about as well.

In order to help folks find exactly what they want, and to avoid confusion of what goes where, such as wandering how come one of my players has children of her own... I will add the tag "kids" to any post directly about playing with kids. I hope this will sort out the confusion.

That being said, rest assured that more funny table talk and adventures will come soon. I'm not done with you yet, good folks!

To show you how diverse are the subjects discussed in this blog, I will now show you a picture of a cat:

This is my cat. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Remembering the Orcs

Many years ago, when I was still young and innocent, I ran a campaign called ORCZ! Despite the name, it was a very serious and spiritual game that lasted for almost two years. I rank it as my second best game ever, closely following my chef d'oeuvre, Muscovian Dreams.

Because at the time I had a lot of time to read, but my creative capacities were greatly diminished (army does that to you), I decided to just use Pre-Columbian America as my setting. Imagine 16th century Inca Empire... but with orcs. The Orcs were based on Chechens, but their religion resembled Roman animism. As I said, I read a lot at the time and wanted to use it all.

An almost perfect presentation of the PCs

My initial plan was for a game of blood and mayhem, but the players ruined it. And I’m ever so thankful for this. The main group included the following characters, all siblings to an ancient and honorable clan:

Nature’s Daughter – the youngest sister. She was attuned to nature spirits, she lived in the wilderness and fought with her claws and teeth (I actually let her take monster feats). Despite her wild side, she was quite social and got along well with most tribes.

Justice Healer – the middle brother. He was a fanatic defender of the Orcish traditions and obsessed with honor and maintaining the old ways. Religious clashes with his sister and the generally irreverent society were a major aspect of the campaign.

Lazy Rhino – the oldest brother. A big dumb brute played by one of the stupidest and most unpleasant individuals to ever roll a die, you know, a classic Orc. He believed in nothing except rape, pillage and toilet humor.

Other players came and went, but none stayed long enough to make an impression. They were not true Orcs!

Perhaps the most curious aspect of the game was the interaction of the players with the spiritual world. Instead of spells, this game used contracts with various supernatural beings. There were no set contracts, every time you needed to achieve some supernatural effect, you had to contact some being and make a deal with it, often under fire. The same deal could cost the sacrifice of two bugs, or going to the end of the world to water a dying plant – depending on the spirit.

Beings that could grant spells included: nature spirits, animals spirits, ancestor spirits, Mesoamerican deities, the Abrahamic God and a mysterious force called “The Four”. Militant disbelief could not affect magic, but could function as a counter spell. Just about everything had a spirit – at one point the PCs were saved by the spirit of a little waterfall that hid them from giants in return for cleaning the area.

Because every spell required a contract, every spell was memorable and some had interesting long term consequences such Justice Healer getting a quest to tell the High King of the Mountain Orcs that the ancestors are displeased with him (you know how orcs are with criticism...) or Nature’s Daughter getting pregnant with a spirit child.

So many cultures to rape and pillage...
this is not one of them.

In addition to the animist magic system, the game also had an honor system based on tattoos telling one’s exploits and granting various bonuses. Now the cool part was that each player had a blank image of an orc on his character sheet and could draw the tattoos himself as his honor grew.

In addition to honor, there was also a purity rating, which was like honor, but used in interaction with spiritual beings. Being an evil bastard, I made many points of the orc honor code contradict the spirit purity code, bringing down even more dilemmas on the heads of the PCs.

I actually wrote down the whole campaign, but it was long ago and I never bothered to proofread it and my English back then was perhaps a little shaky, so, some other time maybe.

Anyhow, it was an awesome game and I had fun remembering it. I hope you will find this old man’s bout of nostalgia at least moderately useful.

I had the strangest dream today...

I had the strangest dream today. I dreamed that I had re-enlisted for some reason. Discipline in our platoon was extremely lax during training. Our drill sergeant was a drunken Russian who kept saying we don’t have to train because we’re Odin’s chosen. We laughed at this stupidity but didn’t object because it left us time to read, play D&D, steal from the warehouse and generally goof around. Then, one guy slipped and spilled orange juice on a big screen at a shekem store and the TV buzzed and turned down. After a few second the image of Odin, looking inked on ancient parchment, appeared on it and urged us to honor him for we are indeed his chosen. Then Thor appeared and confirmed this and added that he will be watching over us as well. After this brief message, the TV fell down and shattered on the floor. We were all shocked and couldn’t decided if it was a freak occurrence, the smartest trick ever played, or if Odin really talked to us. The entire base was a-roar, officers were speechless and the Rabbi of the base was frothing at the mouth with anger.

I should really get a new night cap...

Being the 0.004%

I don't usually play computer games, but when I do, I play games that stopped working on my PC about a decade ago. This three day orgy of red-eyed gaming left me with a profound understanding of the late King Kalak. So...

I have finished Master of Magic and can now become a productive member of society again. I wanted to rule the races of the two worlds as a benevolent sorcerer-King, but they kept supporting other wizards, so I killed them all and burned their beautiful cities to the ground. Yes, to feed my insane quest for magical power, I had carried out the genocide of more than a million dark elves, draconians, humans, halflings and orcs. Not even my most loyal subjects were spared. By the time I finished, the civilian population of the world numbered 176 dark elves, who are now extraordinarily rich since the wealth of millions was divided between them. Just to make my crimes even more audacious and self-centered, I will assume all these elves are employed in the entertainment industry, are hot chicks or, better yet, both.

My four horsemen of the apocalypse about to obliterate the keep of yet another wizard. None were spared.

Studies in Underage Vampirism #2

As previously stated, the game we normally run in schools is 4e D&D (orders from above), but one day only half the group of Crimson School (real name!) showed up, so I decided to challenge them with some Vampire. They loved it. So, being the considerate and magnanimous storyteller that I am, I decided to indulge them with another Vampire session. Just like last week, I told the kids that there are no limitations in this game, everything they want to do, I allow. However, consequences would be more dire than in your average game of D&D.

This is how it went:

After the PCs passed the first test, they were told to wait until Mr. Madjerovsky and Ms. Isabel contacted them again. Being immortal and quite ancient, it took the pair more than a year to come up with a test. A year is nothing for an elder, but an eternity for a child. I asked each kid what his vampire did in this period. I regret to say, that with the exception of two kids who said they steal blood from the blood bank and play games on their iPhones, the rest of the kids were quite beastly about it. They abused their disciplines to the max, using Dominate and Presence to lure people into abandoned houses and bleed them dry. One kid, who was lucky enough to get Koldunism (a form of elemental magic) said he sets houses and cars on fire for fun. I blame GTA.

Sorry, we forgot to clean the "living" room...
Art by Kare3078

Amusingly, since I told kids the Community gave them a generous pension until their next test, some kids went into great detail describing what gadgets and appliances they purchase. This included such gross expressions of gross consumerism as:

“Let’s buy a Mercedes!”

“What are you, poor?! Let’s buy a Ferrari!”

“But none of you can drive...”

“Yeah, but we can dominate adults, no?”

“Ferrari! I wanted a Lamborghini!”

And so it went... I suspect that if I didn’t interrupt them, they would have enjoyed spending the whole session making a multi-million purchase list. Ah, youth!

In any case, because this behavior (the careless killing, not the shopping) was deemed unacceptable by the powers that be, the second test was a harsh one. One day, Mr. Madjerovsky came to visit and found something that looked like a scene from a horror movie, with a bunch of feral creatures barely recognizable as the cute kids they were last year feeding on a stunned hot dog vendor right in the middle of their living room.

“You fools!” the old man shouted, shattering windows and causing doors and windows to shut and bolt. “I tell you to keep a low profile and you start treating unlife like it’s a video game?! You are not predators, you are idiots! So here is a test for you. One of you is weak and stupid, more beast than person, cull him! Decide which one of you is the most useless and kill him, then come to me. Should all seven of you leave the house, you will all be destroyed!”

Last time Madjerovsky saw the sun, this was the latest fashion...

Amazingly, what I imagined would lead to difficult social dilemmas and bitter arguments, was solved in second.

“Oo! Oo! Do me! I volunteer!” One boy shouted enthusiastically.

“No, I want to do this!” Another kid selflessly offered himself.

“What? Why are you so eager to die?” I asked, quite dumbfounded.

“Well, this is for the good of the group, right? And you said players shouldn’t be selfish.”

Grrr... I knew I should have made this a Sabbat game. All these years of D&D had produced a right proper pack mentality. Oh well.

Next came the actual killing, which turned out to be a bit of a challenge, since none of the players had any idea how to kill a vampire. Exchanges like, “Do we have a silver knife?” “No you idiot, this is for werewolves!” were quite common. One boy kept feebly suggesting they should just wait for the sunrise, but the rest of the group ignored him as they indulged themselves with increasingly horrid things they could do to the doomed vampire without killing it. The player of the doomed vampire, meanwhile, was overjoyed from being the center of attention.

Eventually, one kid remembered vampires should be decapitated and the whole gang cheerfully went to Mr. Madjerovsky, who waited outside in a black Lincoln (“what?! Why not Rolls Royce?!”) and announced they were ready for their next test.

“You truly are beasts!” the old man exclaimed, perhaps proudly and perhaps disappointedly, and then added, “but perhaps it would aid you in your next test...”

The group hopped into the car and drove to a spot in the desert where a circle of crates and a number of strangers waited for them. The strangers were all adults or teenagers, ranging from a nerdy looking accountant to a hardcore punk couple. The crates were marked, “DO OPEN.”

What would YOU place inside?

“Gentlemen, this is quite simple,” the old vampire said after everyone assumed positions between the crates. “These crates contain gifts. Anything you pick up, you can keep. However, the winner is not the one who ends up with the most toys. The winner is the one who rescues the damsel in distress over there.”

At this point the group heard Isabel say, “Help, help” ineffectually as she sat on a bench about a mile away and listened to mp3 on her mobile.

“Any questions?”

“Yes. Can we kill the other guys?”

“Of course, and so can they.”

“Are some of the crates trapped?”

“Is a trap not also a gift? Do you question my generosity?”

“I suppose it is... Com’on let’s start!”

At this point, we sadly had to end the session.

So, the last test is next week. Any ideas for cool things to put in the crates? Any fun “surprises” to put on the way to the rather undistressed damsel? Any ideas for a grand finale for this three session vampire adventure?

The Hunters vs. The Phantom Lover

What a glorious Hunter session! The setting is a misty English mansion owned by what Tywin Lannister would have been if he lived today and had business interests from Morocco to Japan. His niece, a grieving war widow, finds solace in the hands of a mysterious spirit of the dark. Seeking to rescue her from the clutches of the entity, our heroes enter a battle of wits with the influenced girl and the alien being. But are they fighting because they want to save the girl, or because they are addicted to fighting anything supernatural?

Find out in the next installments of Uri's game!

Spot what's wrong with this picture :)