World of Alidor » Game Design

Sometimes all you need is some dice, some legos and a colossal red dragon

shent_lodge — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 19:39:06 +0000

Last weekend on Father’s Day my son, who is six, decided it was his time to run a game. He spent an hour digging through his Legos, and my game figure box. He built a path with Heroscape hexes and then loaded it with traps, which, if we defeated, gave out lego studs for us to collect as money.

We used two d20′s, one was rolled to see how far we could move; if you rolled a 5 you could move 4 hexes and use the 5th as an action, like an attack. Yup, if you rolled 15 on the move die, you could move 4 hexes still and get 11 things to try like attack or remove traps.

Target numbers were arbitrary, to attack the colossal red dragon with a weapon we needed to roll 18 or higher. If we cast a spell at it, we had to beat a 10 to cast it, which was one action roll, with the other die 20, and then a hit roll of 5 or higher to target the dragon. Other monsters were harder to hit with magic and easier with weapons. We would roll both d20′s at the same time to cast a spell an to hit the target with the spell. You could only save against a spell if you had action points left or banked up. Fatal flaw for the red dragon was it did not bank its action points so it suffered the wrath of a blindness spell which cut its action roll result in half.

I missed a trap and the black dragon opened up a can of whoop-ass on me. I was nearly dead, fortunately, my wife still had action points, so she healed me with a couple d20 rolls.

We had a blast playing this game together as a family and we made it all up as we went. Sometimes all you need to have fun is a couple dice and some quick thinking and a ton of youthful imagination.

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Xmoniuum Lizard and Other Beasts Imagined on Road Trip

shent_lodge — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:31:20 +0000

On our trip down to our new place in Florida, my son helped me create some new monsters for Alidor. Actually, I just listened to him tell me stories of his imagined monsters, while my wife jotted down notes. They are not stat’d out, so they could be used in almost any game system, especially ones were the players think they know everything and have seen everything; just toss an Xmonuum lizard and it’s offspring their way and watch them tremble in fear as a swarm of babies envelops the party. Evil GM laugh…

Xmoniuum Lizard

Likes water
Can be any color, they can trick you.
They are bumpy
They eat grass
They are green if they are in the grass and if you touch them they turn your color
They are 5 speed but the babies can go 100 speed

Ig-mar-gar-ine lizard

It acts dead
They hop, really high, like 100 tall,
It can talk, but only if you give it a cracker.
They eat bugs and corn and spiders and hair on the floor
Looks like a Komodo dragon, but it has a snakes tongue, they are nice to kids and people. They run away from mean people they are super speedy 100 speed

Jellyfish kindfish

Made out of sheilds and swords. If you touch it, you will die the swords are poisnous & sharp.
It’s blue like the water so you can’t see them. They travel in groups of 100. They split up and move on the bottom like a shell. It changes to any color if no fish or sting rays are around. They always do things to fight because they have eyes all over their head: ratio eyes. 2 are real.

I get a kick out of my son’s stories, apparently 100 is the number to beat, if it is real fast it has a speed 100; if it jumps high, 100 is the highest it will jump. Feet, inches, meters, 100 universal units is the beast’s movement. I suppose 100 five foot squares in my game.

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Mt Laudin Dwarves

shent_lodge — Sun, 30 May 2010 17:39:48 +0000

Here are some symbols from the Dwarves of My Laudin. There are basically four groups of dwarves that can be found on or around Mt. Laudin. At one time they lived happily inside their great undermountain fortress. When the king of the kirks turned on them, they were forced to flee the safety of their halls, not entirely because of the Kirk invasion. Most Laudin dwarves say, some overpowering evil followed the human king into the mountain, something intangible, and wretched, and most definitely indestructible. The best of the best dwarven defenders fell to dust before they could wink an eye.

Most exits to the mountain fortress were watched by Kirk forces and many a dwarf fell before the swords and arrows of the men of Kirkland. The only exit not watched was the East gate, dwarves who made it out this exit, gathered, got organized, and moved forward to lay siege on Duftown who essentially let the city fall to the dwarfs with little resistance.

Here are the Green Mountain Boys:

The Black Mountain Boys:

Blue Mountain Gang:

Red Peak Ruffians

My son made the symbol on our iPad using a free Adobe app. called Adobe Ideas.

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Another Fun Home Rule for Aid Another

shent_lodge — Wed, 26 May 2010 15:25:26 +0000

I play pathfinder and 3.5e, in both systems, you can end up in a combat with beast that is nearly unbeatable, maybe, because the spell casters are unconscious, or out of spells, or are just disorganized. Whatever the case, it will take the brute force of melee attacks to down the monster, but the beast has a high AC and the party can’t hit it reliably. What do we do in this situation? In most cases, parties start to surround the foe and start aiding someone else’s attack, to improve the probability of hitting the beast; this is called aiding another.

Here is my home rule for “aid another”. It is simple, and follows from the critical hit or threat rule found in both game systems (d20 SRD, & d20 PFSRD). It goes like this, in most cases you roll a die 20 and with a result of 10 or better, you get to aid someone, the majority of the time this is for melee attacks, but it also helps with skill checks. My modification is, if you roll a natural 20, since you can not take 20 or 10 on this check, you get to confirm it, by rolling again, with no modifications added to the die, and if the second roll is a 10 or higher, your aid bonus is doubled from +2 to +4 (x2 default). I suppose exploding dice rule could be applied, if another natural 20 is rolled, but I only allow that after a table vote, or if the tension is really high, and the players are dropping like flies. I don’t let monsters use this rule, just players; I could always put that option to vote at the table, letting the monsters do the same to the party, but I think of it as more of a hero thing, foiling the plans of the villain, via some phenomenal twist of fate, like the gods are watching or something.

Outside of that, the aid another rule stands as written in my home game. This home rule adds fun and helps with morale at the table. I don’t think it is abusive either, since it only aids the next attack, and their is still a chance of a miss, and for tension to build.

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No Common Language

shent_lodge — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 03:49:18 +0000

I was just thinking about home rules. Who runs a game where there is no common language? In my home game I can not imaging this. I created a whole religion based on greed in Alidor, and I figured for this religion to really work, it would need a common language for trade among all the races, at least that is my game excuse for having a common tongue. Yup in Alidor, you can thank the church of Yol for a trade tongue. I figure, there are Yollian missionaries that go out into the world to teach the this common language to all. They do it to improve their profit and reduce paper work; multiple languages mean multiple interpreters and higher operational costs. One language equals lower costs…

I use the one common language rule for my game so the players could talk to each other. I know sometimes it is fun to role-play that you don’t know what the others are saying at the table, but I think that style of play would get old real fast. Imagine a game where everyone at the table is oblivious to what everyone else at the table is saying. How do run a game like that? I suppose if you have everyone playing the same race or enough of the players know at least one language like elven. Elves and Half-elves could adventure together without trouble I suppose, but then you get a player running a dwarf, and that dwarf does like the “elf” language and bang you’re back to some people knowing what’s happing in the game and some who do not.

Oh, and then there is always that one player that will never tell the “language challenged” player (dwarf) the true story, and you have a TPK on your hands or worse.

To me, it is just “crazy talk” to say you run a game where there is no common language in the world the payers explore. Crazy Talk.

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