GLOGgin' Frostgrave 'n' Shit

i AM SADDENED THESE DAYS BY GENRE PURISTS. I don't know why I need to keep saying this. The same thinking that lead to Dragonlance. The same thinking that took all the fun out of Rogue Trader and turned it into 40K 8th edition, where none of the figures/characters have much in the way of personality but many of them have skulls and pointy bits.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I picked up Dungeon Crawl Classics almost totally since Daniel Bishop's The Thing in the Chimney impressed me so much with its sacred reverence of Dentist Elves and disregard for hard-fantasy tropes. Since then, it's (I mean DCC) spawned a whole lot of great stuff, but I still see a trend toward (in the DCC community on G+ anyways) new folks clinging to 3e and PF ways of thinking, and also maybe can we just agree that a Warforged or whatever the fuck it is could just be an android or a robot (total non-sequitur I know)

It's actually made me shrink away from the DCC people, whereas I am fully aware that I ought to dig in and prevent the steady slide that MCC will surely prompt into (even though the book explicitly says to mix it up) THIS IS FANTASY and THIS IS SCIFI camps.

Anyways, trying to drift away from G+ gaming (keeping a tenuous hold on friendships which are the parts of Google that I do value) and move more toward a face-to-face gaming existence, even though I don't have much in the way of time these days. Joined a local club where we've had a Blood Bowl tournament (Blood Bowl, by the way, has kept its sense of humor for almost the entirety of its run), and this weekend we're starting a Frostgrave campaign.

A nice thing about Frostgrave is that it's relatively inexpensive, totally modular, simple, and nicely incorporates skirmish rules and roleplay-type advancement. And it hints that although the magic system upon which it is based (totally simple BTW) is fairly comprehensive, it also is open to much embellishment, even in the scope of its own add-ons. I mean, every so often in the official add-ons a new school of magic in addition to the regular available ones pops up. Astromancy, for example, is described as a "lost" school of minor magic.  I like this way of thinking, and I will tell you why. It's because MazeRats, Into the Odd, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and a couple of other systems sort of do away with "official interpretations" of comprehensive magic, and sort of let you fiddle with it.

A really good guy in this regard is +Arnold K, who is not only a Muscle Wizard but also a very novelly-thinking and creative dude. He's got a RPG system that is great, but his Wizards system really shines in that it gives one much much leeway in terms of weirdness.

I'm thinking of adding several minor schools of wizardry to Frostgrave, including weird spells and side-quests and such.

Taffimantics
Sewage Enchanter
Sciencology
Coffeetologists
Dentitrics
Black Sous Chefery
The Thousand Paths of Ukulele Magic

I mean, whatever. It doesn't matter as long as it's fun.

I feel like none of these ideas are worth sharing anymore. It's this shitty snow. Snowomancy. That is definitely a thing. Constructs that are snowmen. Depression Magick. Malaisorcery

More later maybe if I can get a salad in me on my break

O! The Places You'll Delve!

Reading in bed: very bad for eyes. Staying up until 4 working on layout: same

As the dad of a kid who loves bedtime stories and is learning to read, I read a little bit of Dr. Seuss almost every day. Frog and Toad, also (Frog and Toad are better stories, IMHO, and my Frog and Toad voices are SWEEEET). There is something a little bit comforting and sinister about all of them, no matter that they are excellent ways to teach a kid to read. The rythym and memorability is the thing. Right now, we've got

1. HOP ON POP
2. THE CAT IN THE HAT (metaphor for some weird perp shit, IMHO, by the way Sally and Nick you should tell your mom.)
3. THE CAT IN THE HAT COMES BACK
4. DR SEUSS'S ABCs
5. I CAN LICK 30 TIGERS TODAY
6. ONE FISH TWO FISH RED FISH BLUE FISH
7. TO THINK THAT I SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET

We also got The 50 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins and I Had Some Trouble Coming to Sollaw Sollew from the library. These are my current favorites. In the first, a kid faces the prospect of beheading owing to a no-fault-of-his magical curse in the form of a reproducing hat, and in the second a youngster travels many miles through adverse conditions to find the object of his quest shut tight (the fabled city of Sollaw Sollew where they have no troubles, or at least very few). Nothing makes much sense, but then - that's not totally the point. It got me thinking, that these books could be nicely approximated by a board-game board, and that got me thinking about that thing that +Wayne Snyder did with his kid, and also (more importantly for our purposes) the way that +Kabuki Kaiser did his linear/procedural thing in Castle Gargantua. Lots of complexity from fairly simple rules, and (if you don't know it) then each specific square on the Chutes and Ladders-style play track has a more or less random theme, in addition to the golden squares representing terrific set pieces.

I believe more in not-railroading, but this could make/has made for a fun night's entertainment

This would be easy to set up for a Dr. Seuss story approximation, say for kids, with nice pastel colors, little threat of violence (but some feeling of danger to wrap up nicely at the end), and simple rules. The Seussian monsters are, for the most part, somewhat silly but sometimes really and truly spooky. Fu Fu the Snoo seems to even make a Young Cat uneasy, for example.

I think I like those OZ rules that I always harp on about, or maybe something easy like I ROLL FOR SHOES (which seems to be going around my circles these days on G+)

Make it fun and distinctive: add a die to your roll if you explain your action in rhyme.

Make it awful and terrifying: Use DCC, and add corruptions and XP for critically failed Action rolls. Nobody can die but it can Always Get Worse

A Little Fuzzy Guy DCC Microclass: like a hobbit, but people can always spend Luck and burn stats for the little guy/gal. Hirsute and Cute, plucky and Lucky.

If you wanted to really do a brain bender, it could all take place in the Dreamlands. Grinches, Skrinks, Whos, Star-Belly Sneetches, and all the monsters (there's the Gak and the Gox, for example) from Dr. Seuss's The ABCs, and Hop and Pop. Once your SAN is down to 0, you switch into Seussian mode (or maybe even a temporary insanity). Everything is in 4 colors, and everything Rhymes - you have to speak clearly and rhyme at all times

I'm particularly terrified by Skrinks and the other various monsters from IHSTIGTSS. Perfect 0-level irritants. Seems to me that the Seuss books eschew acquisition of material wealth, and focus on cleverness and resourcefulness, and The Cat in the Hat makes for a terrific example of Picaresque hero/antihero

Speaking of which, check out The Archzenopus' +Zach H's OD&D resources - in particular his 1 HP monster thing for things you could use in a Seussian game

What's this? Funnel, did you say? I love to grind low-levels through funnels!