Star Trap Monster Manual

Here is is a link to a PDF of the monsters that reside on the first level of Star Trap Dungeon. They're presented in home brew Dungeons & Dragons style, and borrows from 1st, 3rd and 4th editions. The file is completely unformatted for now.

Star Trap Monster Manual

The Doom That Came To Tetanus

The Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts celebrated the birthday's of Robin and Monkey in style on Sunday, playing a 6 player Apocalypse game situated on the planet imperial Tetanus, which was already beset by small Ork horde and a recently awaken Necron force. However Death Guard and Alpha Legion Chaos Space Marines had plans of their own for the world, and the three mortal enemies banded together for self protection against the over-whelming forces of Chaos. Each player had 2500 points and a super heavy vehicle. For me that meant another outing of my Plague Tower, but there was also a Shadow Sword Tank, a Lord Of Skulls total conversion, an Ork Gargant, the Necron gargantuan C'Tan and last but not least, a Warhound Titan. Here are some photographs from the day.  

Star Trap Lvl 1 monster manual

The first half of the first level of Star Trap Dungeon has a whole bunch of OSR style monsters, all now written up with AD&D / Labyrinth Lord style, with brief descriptions and is over five thousand words. I used the 4e format for splitting monster of the same race up into their own entries rather than having notes in the text detailing leaders and special types. It's been a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to working on the second half of the list, although it probably won't be as extensive as some of the creatures, such as the Pig-Faced Orcs live in the further reaches of the dungeon's upmost level.

1. Angry Owlbear
2. Banshaer Hermit
3. Barghest, Juvenile
4. Beetle, Fire
5. Beetle, Boring
6. Brain In A Jar
7. Centipede, Giant  
8. Crawling Claw/Severed Hand
9. Dimension Shambler
10. Farspawn Returned
11. Farspawn Mind Worm
12. Farspawn Teeth Eel 
13. Fungal Guard
14. Fungal Herder
15. Fungal Priest Of Decay
16. Fungus King
17. Gelatinous Cube
18. Ghoul
19. Goblin Archer
20. Goblin Acolyte
21. Goblin Bully
22. Goblin Hexamancer
23. Goblin King
24. Goblin Runts
25. Goblin Skull Cleavers
26. Goblin Stabbers
27. Goblin Strategist
28. Goblin Warrior
29. Green Slime
30. Grey Ooze
31. Horrible Black Tentacles
32. Iron Hound
33. Killer Bees
34. Lesser Demon, Demonic Two-Headed Warthog
35. Lesser Demon, Grarthrax The Meddler
36. Maggot Wraith
37. Ochre Jelly 
38. Pig-faced Orc Killer 
39. Pig-faced Orc Bannerman
40. Pig-faced Orc Sticker
41. Pig-faced Orc Shieldboy
42. Pig-faced Orc Demon Warriors
43. Pig-faced Orc Murderers
44. Pig-faced Orc Heart Eaters 
45. Pig-faced Orc Champion
46. Pig-faced Orc Warlord
47. Pig-faced Orc Teeth Caster 
48. Rat, Giant
49. Rat, Swarm
50. Rot spider
51. Shrieker
52. Skeleton
53. Skeleton Archer
54. Skeleton Legionnaire
55. Skeleton, Ramshackle 
56. Skeleton, Skullspider
57. Snake, Pit Viper
58. Vile Creeper, Barbed
59. Vile Creeper, Suckered
60. Wolf
61. Wraith
62. Zombie
63. Zombie Rotter
64. Zombie, Famine

Death to the P1, only order matters!

I often hear developers and product owners talk about all the P1 issues on the board or in the backlog. They need to stop it. It is only the order of the backlog that matters. Having stories that appear to equal importance confuses the developers and encourages management to think teams can work on many parallel work streams. Worse, cynical programmers will laughingly say ‘everything is a P1, except for the other stuff which we’ll never do anyway’ and they are often right. If work isn’t worth doing soon, it shouldn’t be at eye level for the teams, so calling a bunch of stories low priority will sound their death knell.

Product owners can steer themselves, and stakeholders towards lean and agile productivity by avoiding talking about buckets of priorities. It’s hard of course, especially with product work that spans multiple teams, instead talk about how stories, features or epics relate to each other. ‘Is getting the biplane flying more or less important right now than the catch the pigeon feature?’

Z80 8-bit microprocessor & Arduino Mega

My first computer was a ZX81, and as child I always wanted to make my own computer. However I always found writing software easier, and moved away from electronics to software. The Arduino rekindled some of that delight in physically making things,
so I started to wonder if an Arduino could help me understand how old 8-bit processors work, and kickstart the process of building one.

I bought two Z80s from RS Components, and after realising I was going to need a lot more digital pins than the Uno provides, an Arduino Mega. The video below shows my set-up running in test mode, which I reset at the beginning. The LEDs in the bottom right are power (green), clock (yellow) and reset (red). The reset blinks 3 times, to clear the Z80 program counter and probably it's registers. I read somewhere that 3 times was better than just once, but I'll play around with that to see if it's true.
The strip of LEDs at the top left are the low bytes of the address bus. The yellow is the 1's and the red the 128. Oddly once I hit 128 in the PC unexpected things start to happen. The LEDs at the top right are memory request (blue), read data (red) and write data (yellow).

When the processor is reset, it's also fed 0's on all of its data lines. This means that when the program counter requests each instruction, it gets a NOP  (no operation). This causes the program counter to increase by one, hence the address bus counts up in binary. Right now all the Arduino Mega is doing is monitoring the address lines and outputting the result to the serial monitor. This works, and proves at least that the Arduino is capable of limited support of the Z80, as well as making me more happy that I probably should be. One thing to love about the Z80 is that the clock signal can be manual, you can literally step through the instruction processing.

I've uploaded the very basic code to GitHub here.

The next step is to make the software recognise the memory request & read data signals to provide instructions, effectively working as a ROM. The after support RAM and IO. I plan to use a small Arduino controlled OLED display to act as an output for now. No idea about input though!

Probation periods or punishment periods?

Having changed jobs I'm currently in a probation period. I have, for a time, lost many of the advantages of full time employment I previously had, and it feels like a punishment for exiting my last employment. Recent family events have made me think quite hard about things like fitness, healthcare and pensions, none of which I'm entitled to during my 6 month probationary period.

I can, grudgingly, understand that the notice period is short during this period but withholding employee benefits feels like mixture of punishment and old fashioned 'you should be grateful for a job' thinking. When you're trying to hire clever, in-demand individuals who want to work in autonomous teams where their contribution and commitment is valued, you need to reflect those qualities in how the company treats its those new employees day one.

And as my friend Ian pointed out, it actually shows you're not confident enough in your hiring procedure to trust that you've made a good hiring decision. That makes me nervous about the company. Have you hired badly in the past and don't think you've fixed that yet? So actually, who should be sitting on the naughty step? 

  

Slave Pits Of Khasarn

Slave Pits Of Khasharn is a zero level funnel adventure for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game (DCCRPG)

Set in the dungeon arena beneath the Autocaliph’s palace, the characters are poor souls sold or captured into slavery and forced to work their way through the hideously dangerous pits for the pleasure of the Autocalph Shazoon and his guests. While the PCs fight and die in the pits, betting between the city’s elite goes on loudly above them. Those slaves who make it through alive through the pits are promised their freedom. Those who don’t, remain in the dungeon as undead warriors doomed to fight a never ending supply of slaves.

A regular dungeon, with running commentary.

The dungeon itself is built around a series of large chambers that can be reconfigured by the dwarves that maintain the underground site. The Autocaliph invites his guests to create, also known as sponsoring, chambers to entertain their fellows to show off their creativity and wealth. During the events the audience bet heavily on either the number of slaves that will fall in a room, or sometimes towards the end of the ‘show’ the odds of survival of particular slaves. As each chambers roof is open to allow the audience to watch the grisly performance, the characters are well aware of the bets place upon their lives. Worse still, the Autocaliph likes to win, and guests who are able to control the events that unfold in their chambers are known to subtly target individual slaves that are being bet against to please him. It is of course up to the dungeon master how much commentary they wish to add to game. By adding cruel comments about the players performance, and changing tone from betting on how many will fall, to who will survive the DM can bring dark humour and a growing sense of desperate success to the games sessions. If you wish however to run the Slave Pits as a more regular adventure you could have the chamber roofs covered in one way mirrors, or even having impervious floating eyeballs following the party around.   

Introduction to Khasarn, city of jewels.

Khasarn is a sprawling coastal city that sits upon the mouth of the River Of Black Pyramids. It’s fertile delta and excellent trading position has given it an enviable situation in amongst the city states that line the blanket sea. Ruled by Autocaliph Shazoon Khandiz The Golden One, who snatched statehood from his uncle as a young man, the Autocaliph is despotic, whimisically cruel and wickedly insightful. Under his rule the city has mostly prospered, thanks in part to his patronage of the slave gangs that raid across the lands far and wide. These gangs sell their wares in the market of chains and pay the ‘red tax’, sending one in twenty slaves to the palace.

Khasran is beautiful to behold, with a thousands of coloured glass minarets gleaming in the relentlessly sunny skies. Beneath though it is a dangerous place for those who cannot defend themselves or show a relationship to the many trading houses that make the city their base. While exotic slaves from far of places or strange races command the highest prices, local smaller gangs are not above selling their own neighbours or even family at the market.     

Autocaliph Shazoon Khandiz, The Golden One

Shazoon is a now a fat aging man, who seeks more and more to indulge his primal fantasies and his love of the gambling. He was once an aggressive expansionist but he isn’t the strong military strategist he thought, and although his political acumen is beyond compare he could never trust his warlords enough to let them led. He employs a number of wizards to provide him magical toys, devices, illusions and auguries, although it is rare that they receive the title of palace mage as Mecalca Nhoul has. Under his rule the slave pit games have grown in both frequency and creativity. He politically favours those of the city elite who large sums of money on the creation of interesting scenarios for their sponsored chambers.

I love everything about this article.

Ken Hite has written an article that shakes every one of my mythos fantasy bells, and it makes me immediately want to throw down everything I'm doing (work, breathing, etc,) and go run a weird tales fantasy game. Since I backed 13th Age, it would be unforgivable to do it in anything but that. The article is just littered with idea seeds any one of which would spawn into a twisted bean stalk whose pods bear horrible fruit and that leads to a non-euclidean realm, home to a giant both octopus and bat.  

http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=12008

Great shot kid, that was one in a million

I'm officially a Veteran Of The Long War. I have a certificate to prove it. I think my surprise and disbelief is palpable in this photograph. I won the accolade by being the top placed Chaos Space Marines player at Throne Of Skulls in theGames Workshop HQ in Nottingham. I won 4 of my 5 games. This is by far the best I've every done in any of the campaign weekends I've been at, so to say I'm pleased is an understand statement. To temper that a little, two of my games were against other Chaos Space Marine players, which meant by winning them, not only did I raise my score but lowered theirs. One thing that is nice to be able to say though is that I never felt particularly lucky. The dice swung back and forwards, as they should and it was my decision that help win me the games. The game I lost was against a 9 Missile Broadside, 18 Missle Drone Skyshield Tau list.

For those interested here is my list.

Bile Lord Metaxus. Chaos Warlord on a Bike with Mark Of Nurgle, a Powerfist, Aura of Dark Majesty. Blight Grenades.

5 Chaos Spawn with Mark Of Nurgle

10 Plague Marines, with a Meltagun, Plasma gun and Champion with a Poweraxe in a Rhino.
10 Plague Marines, with a Meltagun, Plasma gun and Champion with a Poweraxe in a Rhino.
11 Cultists with a Heavy Stubber.

5 Havocs with 4 Autocannons
A Forgefiend with Hades Autocannons and an Ectoplasma Cannon

A Helldrake with Baleflamer.

1500pts.

A lot of work

After the fantastic roller coaster of running the Owl Programmable Pedal Kickstarter, I've been preparing and starting my new job [Development Manager @ Gamesys] and have been pretty exhausted. This weekend however I'm at GW's centre in Nottingham for Throne Of Skulls. I decided to take a similar lists to last year but with a Helldrake and more MoN Chaos Spawn, so I've been busy painting them. Here is a picture of the Plaguedrake, made from a bitz from a Vampire Counts Zombie Dragon, Daemon Prince and Forgefiend. I'm very pleased with it, although the painting needs a lot more work, it's 3-colour ready.

I'm getting a really strong itch for some roleplaying again though, after our Inquisitor game finished. While I really want to run the D&D Slavelords campaign, with A0, my group isn't so keen on fantasy, so I'm tempted either by The Armitage Files ToC or running GUMSHOE Inquisitor using Bleeding Rim Ashen Stars rules.     

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons using Warhammer 40K rules, part one.

On the plane from Denmark home I had a bunch of ideas, some about Star Trap Dungeon and quests which I’ll talk about another time. One was around using my many fantasy miniatures in wargaming. While I have some old TSR books on D&D wargaming I seem to remember not liking them much. Since I’m most familiar with Warhammer 40K rules, and I know my wargamer friends seem rather down on fantasy Warhammer I thought I’d have a go at converting the D&D universe to 40K. This isn’t meant to be statistically correct by any means, but is more about the flavour of the creatures.

Baseline.

Human guards Average intelligence, Neutral alignment, AC 5, HD 1, D/A 1-6.

Ws Bs S T W I A Ld S

3 3 3 3 1 3 1 6 5+

Close combat weapon, shield, chainmail.

Ok, that’s simple. Dungeons & Dragons is less descriptive about combat than W40K. This means that most creatures combat prowess are defined by their hit dice, and there is no such things as a high strength, low weapon skill combatant. That’s a little problematic has 40K’s scale is all about d6. So you have to split hit dice into weapon skill and strength.

So lets look at weapon skill like this.

2+(lvl/2 : rounded down). That gives HD 1-1 critters Ws 2, orcs Ws 1, ogres Ws 4, trolls Ws 5, medium red dragons Ws 7. Seems good.

Ballistic can be the same, so that’s easy.

Strength is a tough one. Again, it’s a mixture of Hit Dice, but also damage.

2+(lvl/3 : rounded up + 1 for maximum damage over 10 pts). That means any creature that’s total attacks do over 10 points adds one.

Giant rats S 2, orcs S 3, ogres S 4, trolls S 5, red dragon S 6.

Toughness is a mixture of hit points and armour. For armour in the normal range (10-0) should be dealt with using the Sv attribute, but below this it starts adding to Toughness.

2+(lvl/3 : rounded up + every two points below AC 0, rounded up) e.g. AC-1 is +1, AC -3 is +2.

Giant rats T 2, orcs T 3, ogres T3, trolls T 4, red dragon T 6.

Initiative. Dungeons and Dragons has almost no sense of initiative bonus when monsters are concerned. Therefore we’ll have to take what limited information we have. Characters are easier, but I’ll deal with them later. So bugbears surprise on 1-3. Sounds like they are sneaky, so let’s give them a +1. Zombies are slow, so let’s make them I 1. Elves gain a +1 bonus to their Dex, so let’s include that, making them I 4.

Attacks are thankfully simple. Each attack counts as +1. Orcs A 1, trolls A 3.
Wounds are HD / 2 rounded up. Giant rats 1, orcs 1, ogres 2, trolls 3, red dragons 5.

Leadership is complex in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (it’s easier in B/X D&D) as monster have no morale. Hit dice and intelligence is a good indication, but also alignment. Of course some creatures are fearless, such as undead and slimes.

Ld 6 + (HD / 3 rounded down). -1 for low or below intelligence, +1 for highly or more. -1 for chaotic alignment, +1 for lawful.

Giant rat ld 5, orc ld 7, ogre ld 6, troll ld 6, medium red dragon ld 9

Armour saves. As seen before, very good armour class improves toughness. However normal ranges are converted like so.

AC 0 AC 1-2 AC 3-4 AC 5-7 AC 8-9

2+ 3+ 4+ 5+ 6+

So that rounds off the basics. The fun stuff comes next, spells, characters and special effects to make the game more fun.

Agile, ideal or ideology?

The word ideology has a string of negative connotations. It’s used to describe nightmare government regimes, disastrous processes and blind loyalty. When I first thought about writing this article I wanted to describe Agile as an ideology, but swiftly realised that would worked against what I was trying to communicate. So, I’m turning to the word ‘ideal’. The Oxford English dictionary defines it thus,

adjective

• satisfying one’s conception of what is perfect; most suitable:the swimming pool is ideal for a quick dip, this is an ideal opportunity to save money
• [attributive] existing only in the imagination; desirable or perfect but not likely to become a reality:in an ideal world, we might have made a different decision
• representing an abstract or hypothetical optimum:mathematical modelling can determine theoretically ideal conditions

noun

• a person or thing regarded as perfect:you’re my ideal of how a man should be
• a standard or principle to be aimed at:tolerance and freedom, the liberal ideals

Which sounds like a good thing. Agile is an ideal. It is not a process, and just following Agile methodologies will not be satisfactory to those that think of Agile as an ideal. Many of the Agile ceremonies are easy. It’s easy to run 15 minute daily stand-ups and it’s easy to have a retrospective every two weeks and pick apart the low level details of the completed sprint, but neither of those things are going to make a team Agile. The tragic beauty of Agile is that even doing just those things will improve most software teams performance, and will convince managers and other stakeholders that they are a successful Agile organisation. They probably aren’t but they have benefited from it already. The issue is that the steps they have to make to become Agile are hidden to them, they don’t know they haven’t reached it. It's fearful for them too, as it relinquishes micro-management for unproven quality gains. The problem comes when the Scrum team starts ‘grokking’ Agile, while their managers see it as best another process and at worst just another fad. It’s understandably tough for the management stratas who are above the day to day to understand that Agile is an ideal, as they aren’t seeing it every day, and I suspect Agile courses rarely effectively teach that side of it. However once the box is opened for developers they'll want in, they want to embrace Agile and they’ll move further away from the managements worldview, causing friction and probably leading to dissatisfaction.  

It means those dev managers who see Agile as an ideal have to go to their CEO and say ‘this is what we are striving for, you’re going to need to understand it and we’ll have to find you an inspired Agile trainer to make that happen.’ That takes bravery.

‘Agile’ Bob Hartman, who trained me and my teams in Agile effectively said ‘the harder the project, the more you must strive to be Agile in it’s execution’ and it was great advice. My advice is, if you are thinking of moving to Agile, and you’re a small or mid-sized company, you’ll need to train everyone who sits in the tree above the developers too, or expect the developers to seek greener pastures where Agile is seen as an ideal and not just a word.

Dungeons Masters (working title) in play.

This photo was taken in the late stages of a game, where much of the dungeon had been cleared. Since it was taken I have coloured the doors red to make it easier to identify exits. We're going to try a variant where the players hold a hand of dungeon tiles during play rather than always drawing from the pile and playing immediately, as I'm concerned the players don't have enough control of the game.   

Using AD&D for 3rd age Middle Earth roleplaying – a quick and dirty guide.

A short collection of thoughts on running a Middle Earth campaign using AD&D rules.

Character creation

• There are no clerics, except for elven magic-user/clerics, who are restricted to magic-user weapons and armour usage, but may also wield longswords, shortswords and bows.
• Pure magic-users, illusionists and druids must be human and derive their powers from the same source, given to them by the Valar and is spiritual in nature. They are nominally lead by the 5 Istari Wizards (Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast, Morinehtar and Rómestámo ) who train all types by tend to favour certain classes, Saruman favouring magic-users, Gandalf favouring magic-users and druids, Radagast favouring druids, Morinehtar favouring magic-users and illusionists and Rómestámo favouring illusionists.  There is no magic-missile spell!
• There are no gnomes or paladins.
• Half-elves are considered High-men and half-elves are usually elves.
• Half-orcs are considered Uruk-hai, evil by all other races, and maybe challenging to play unless the party are in league with Sauron or Saruman. 

Bestiary

• Goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, bugbears and ogres are all types of goblins and orcs.
• Undead of all types. Nazghul are fighter/magic-user spectres.
• Will'o'wisps.
• Wyvern's without stings are fell beasts.
• Giant spiders of various sizes. Shelob being one of the largest.
• Hill giants are trolls.
• Stone giants.
• Balor demons are Balrogs. Other demons are hinted at throughout the books.
• Were-creatures.
• Dire wolves are worgs.
• Treants are ents. They can be used for evil or angry tree spirits.
• Faerie spirits are related to Tom Bombadil, and can be dryads, nymphs etc,.
• Creatures like carrion crawlers are hinted in the dark caverns of the world, and should be used as singular entities.
• The watcher in water could giant squid or even a hydra aka cold drake.
• Dragons and dragon like giant lizards.

Magic items

• These should mainly be arms and armour, often of elven manufacture and all individually named.
• Avoid very D&D themed miscellaneous items. 
• Herbs, properly harvested and applied can count as healing spells of various sorts.  Rangers, druids and elves are able to recognise such herbs on a % roll of 5x their level.

Birthday AD&D game

As part of my birthday celebrations I'm running N1 Against The Cult Of The Reptile God [spoilers] for a group of about 8 players on Saturday from 12pm-6pm (ish). I've not run 1st edition AD&D in a very long time and want to use some of the improvements that have come along with later editions. On top of that 8 players can be slow, even in 1st ed, so I've streamlined the combat even further, particularly around initiative and player order. Effectively what happens now is the following:-

• Optional surprise d6 roll based on class, with Thieves, Monks and Assassins being surprised on a 6+, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, Clerics and Druids on a 5+ and Wizards and Illusionists being surprised on a 4+. Monsters such as Bugbears add to this roll. 
• The initial roll is made by the player who's character is unsurprised and has the highest dexterity rolls d6 and adds their reaction adjustment, as do all the monsters in similar fashion. Which ever team scores highest goes before the whole of the other team.
• Players take it in turns to do their move around the table. The starting player is the whoever is sitting closest to the DM's left or right, alternating left to right between each combat.

Other rules changes include positive Armour Class values, so that they are target values (e.g. Chainmail is normally AC 5, but is now AC 15 and therefore the base to-hit is 15+), spell mastery so that spellcasters can substitute their memorized spell with the spell they have chosen to master. (Often Cure Light Wounds or Magic Missile).

I've worked up a single page rules explanation cheat sheet with many of these based on the character sheet PDF, which can be downloaded here.