I’ve been busy…

January 28th, 2010

Bestiary Today’s offering is a virtual zoo. There are a dozen small pictures of creatures from the Monster Manual and Monster Manual II first edition books. Visit the Bestiary page and scroll down to find the following: Buffalo; Camel; Dog, War (2 images); Dog, Wild (2 images); Eagle; Elephant; Giant Eagle; Manticore; Phoenix; and Rhinoceros.
But if that weren’t enough, I’ve added matching icons for each of the creatures portraed above. You can find the icons on the Surface Dwellers icon page. All sizes correspond with AD&D first edition Monster Manual and Monster Manual II.

Spells in DC

January 18th, 2010

I’ve heard the argument before that humanoids need more magic to hold their own… I say it depends on your setting.

Let’s talk about the standard AD&D setting as used in the Forgotten Realms, since that it what DC and FRUA use.

Ideally, the costs and balances of each class will more or less equal out with the others. I.e. an average thief can do as well as an average fighter can do as well as an average mage can do as well as an average cleric when adventuring in an average adventure. That doesn’t mean that 1st level mage and 1st level fighter have an equal chance when being dropped solo into a room full of skeletons…one can come up with examples that show any class to be superior over another in a particular situation. The point is that on average they are balanced.

But, the races are not balanced in the same way. An average human and an average elf and average kobold and an average ogre are not equal to the others. But that’s okay, because that was the way it was designed to be. If all “humanoid” individuals were essentially interchangeable, there would be no point in having anything other than humans, unless your focus is only the role playing - which the spirit of this discussion shows is not the case.

Now I realize that we are not talking necessarily about individuals, but about parties of adventurers versus parties of monsters. 6 human and demi-human companions take on 6 kobolds, who wins? This set up is not about being equal. 5 human and demi-human companions take on 6 ogre magi, who wins? It is still humanoid versus humanoid but quite possibly a very different outcome. How much does it matter that in the first example the companions are all 1st level or all 10th level? What about in the second example?

If you compare the various races on a cultural level, they are even more unequal. Let’s say a village of 1000 humans comes into direct conflict with a village of 1000 kobolds, who wins? what about the same village of humans versus a village of 1000 mind flayers?

How much of this inequity is due to magic? I wager that you will find the larger the scale you examine, the more you will find magic playing a role. If all humanoid species had the same access to magic would things be different? Probably, but I still don’t think we’d find kobolds being the dominant race on Faerun. What about if we made all humanoid races of equal capabilities? What if kobolds were as smart as as humans and ogres were as strong as halflings? What if the various races were homogeneous? Well, if everything were equal, then guess what, everything would be equal. ;)

AD&D was not designed for all things to be equal, it would be a very, very different game if it were.

But, if a designer wanted to create their own game world where things were this way, well that would be okay. You could have some really good role playing situations if “lowly” kobolds were the equals of elves and humans. But, it wouldn’t be the Forgotten Realms.

For purposes of Dungeon Craft I am only concerned with the Forgotten Realms, that is in my capacity as the project manager. For sake of the “Default” DC spell list, I consider the spells available in the AD&D core reference books and the books devoted to the Forgotten Realms.

Others are interested in the Greyhawk setting or the Dragonlance setting. I fully support that as a community member and as the project manager, but I won’t be adding anything from those settings to the default DC spells list. I will however, fully support alternative spell lists and find a place to host the completed ones on SourceForge as an alternative or supplement to the default.

This whole topic comes up because of discussion on whether or not to include a particular spell in DC, one that is in FRUA but feels out of place, and in fact it because it was left in the editor by error.

Specifically, this whole discussion is about the Iron Skin spell. How does this spell effect the game balance in a Forgotten Realms setting? Well, it shouldn’t effect it at all. Iron Skin is a spell made up for a computer game that didn’t take place in the Forgotten Realms. I don’t know if it was a good spell in that game, but it doesn’t seem very good for FRUA/DC. Ah, but it is in FRUA - how many designs use it? It is highly unlikely that any of us will open each and every design and check each and every monster to see if they have the Iron Skin spell. But it’s not impossible to look at all of the monsters in the FRUA database for vanilla FRUA. The answer is that none of them of the monster have it. Now, this is not the same as saying that Iron Skin never influenced the outcome of a battle, it very well may have. But, I am only concerned with how it effects FRUA, and it doesn’t appear to. You must also know, that I am fairly certain that there are no FRUA mods that hinge on the use of the Iron Skin spell. But, even if there is I find it highly unlikely that anyone will be importing it into DC. But, even if I”m wrong about this, the spell will still be right there, just commented out.

I am far more concerned with how DC works than how FRUA works because the programmers forgot to remove a spell. :)

Elven Sage

December 6th, 2009

NPC portraits From work I was doing for my contest entry for the manor/house/castle contest, comes this elven sage. This elf is in his middle years and has devoted his life to the study of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Of course, an elf of middle years is four or five times older than the oldest human in Dungeons & Dragons.
There will be more elves to come, of all kinds, shapes and colors.

Forget the King, Here Comes the Queen!

November 11th, 2009

NPC portraits Forget the king of all barbarians, if you need something done and done right, you want the Barbarian Queen. Loosely inspired by the classic movie “Red Sonja”. Loosely. Obviously I went with a different hair color, and mad her more muscular and more attractive, which is the artists prerogative. She’s the perfect companion for the Barbarian King, or should I say, he’s the perfect companion for her?
Check out her amazing muscles in all their glory! Visit the NPC Portraits page and scroll down to find the Barbarian Queen.

New DC art

November 6th, 2009

Recently there has been a lot of new art in the Dungeon Craft community. As usual, some of it is posted here, Dinonykos continues to post at his site and Uatu had even managed to get another couple of portraits done which are available at his site.
But, that’s not what I want to draw your attention to, kind DC supporter. In the last month, ProphetSword has added a Dungeon Craft Artwork forum to his FRUA Community forums. This has really lead to an explosion in the amount of available artwork for the community. There are a few original works by Uatu and myself, while most remain the ever popular conversions of existing art from various fantasy source, including Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and several collectible card games. Most of the art has been small pictures and portraits, but there have been some lovely combat walls by Suzanne Ferree, as well as some amazing walls by the late Jörg Weber, which are no longer available through his site. In total we’re around the 400 mark in new images in just a month. So, if you haven’t stopped by to get some new artwork, stop in and take a look. And of course, feel free to contribute. :)

New NPC portraits

October 17th, 2009

NPC portraits There are a whole host of NPCs for use in Dungeon Craft. This update adds 6 new NPC portraits and removes 6 old ones. The new NPCs offer several options including a pair of shopkeeps, and several ’seasoned’ gentlemen to popuulate your town.
These NPC portraits are larger versions of portraits created for THe City project. I thought poeple might like to be able to use some of the images I’m creating for this project, and maybe be inspired to take on a part of The City themselves.

The 6 new NPC portraits can be found on the NPC Portraits page. Because I am replacing images with these, they are right at the top.

All hail the King!

October 16th, 2009

NPC portraits Say hello to the King of all Barbarians, at least if you ask him. These portraits were inspired by the barbarian made famous by a certain governor of California.
Check out his buffness in all it’s glory! Visit the NPC Portraits page and scroll down to find the big guy.

I’ll be making some changes to this page soon. Some of the images are going to be taken down because I’m not happy with the quality compared with newer work that I’ve done.
I think it’s only fair that I replace the images though, so expect to see a whole new group of NPC portraits that I’ve been working on.

Here come the Half-orcs!

October 14th, 2009

PC portraits For quite a long time, I’ve been thinking about adding half-orcs to default Dungeon Craft. Our first and most important goal is to emulate FRUA, but a secondary goal is to implement as much of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as possible, particularly First Edition, as this is what FRUA uses, but also to allow customization to Second Edition.
I’ve finally gotten all of the databases configured to allow half-orcs, but before they become an official part of the game, I had to get a couple of portraits done. They’re done!
I’m still working on getting a couple of icons to match these portraits, but am sure I will have them ready by the next release. Stay tuned to here for an advanced glimpse.

View the new portraits on the PC Portraits page.

Agriculture in AD&D CRPGs

August 19th, 2009

Do you ever wander around your favorite Dungeons and Dragons Computer game and wonder how everyone gets their food? It’s okay to admit it, you’re not the only one. Though, I think this might not be as big of a deal to people playing the old school GoldBox games and all of the many Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures modules, since food is not part of the game.
I can think of lots of reasons why agriculture may have been left out of those early games, mostly lack of space. But, I’m not sure why rations and meals were left out. If there is one thing that computers are good at, it’s keeping track of minutia, such as whether a PC has eaten in the last particular amount of time.
There are lots of CRPGs that track when the party has eaten and when they have rested, it seems it should be part of all CRPGs unless it’s not applicable, such as playing a robot or some other type of PC that doesn’t need to eat.
But, even if you don’t need to eat, you will like see food production except in the most extreme conditions. I’ll grant that you may not see crops growing in the city or in the dungeon (but you might), but what of the spaces in between?
Typically, Dungeons and Dragons games take place in a world more or less modeled on Medieval Europe. This means that relatively little processing is happening to the food, so food sources must be close to population centers or the food will go bad before it gets to market. It seems ‘logical’ that in a world full of magic that there may be some means for preserving food.
NeverWinter Nights has livestock and gardens, though the party never needs to eat. I love the flavor this adds.
From a game design standpoint, the use of agriculture and food in general provides many possibilities for story hooks. Someone is stealing the livestock… The fields supporting a small hamlet have been destroyed by orcs a week before the autumn harvest…

I encourage other game designers to incorporate food and agriculture in to their fantasy games. It’s time that our players stop going hungry. :D

Lycanthrope - Weretiger

August 4th, 2009

I’ve always been fascinated by the way AD&D handles myths from the real world. One of the most intriguing is there handling of werewolves. In the game, werewolves are a sub-set of lycanthropes, which is the general term for people who transform into animals, usually against their will and often with quite negative effects, such as going on killing sprees, etc. But, unlike popular myths about werewolves, not all lycanthropes are evil monsters, some are neutral and even some good (like the the werebear).

One of the literally more colorful sub-sets of lycanthropes is weretigers. These creatures a sight to see. You can find an icon and 2 small pictures on their respective pages.

For your convenience, here are the relative stats according to the 1e Monster Manual.

AC = 3; Movement = 12; Hit Dice = 6 + 2; # of attacks = 3; Damage/attack = 1-4, 1-4 and 1-12; Magic Resistance = 0; Intelligence = 10, Alignment = true neutral; Size = Large; XP = 525 + 8/hp - so around 950 to 1025.