Category Archives: General

General

GUNMA!!!

We’ve finally learnt about our placement in Japan. While we don’t yet know exactly where we’ll be, we do know that we’ve been placed in Gunma prefecture with the Gunma Board of Education. This is great news and an answer to prayer, because Gunma is part of the Kanto region, which includes Tokyo. That’s excellent news for my Iaido, since I’ll be able to visit, if not train, with Esaka-dojo, with which our dojo in South Africa, Katsujinken Kai, is associated.

Gunma is roughly a 3rd of the size of Gauteng, with a population of around 2 million (compared to 10 million in Gauteng). It’s also home to Subaru, so hopefully I can pick one of those up and practice some of my rally driving skills in the mountains. And speaking of mountains, Gunma is known for its hot springs and ski resorts, so we’ll really have to give those a go.

LINK OF THE DAY

I’ve got a few links today, thanks to my contact in Japan:
Gunma Living Guide
Gunma Jets
Gunma Prefecture Site (Japanese)
Wikipedia

WORD OF THE DAY

Hajime: beginning, begin, start. We often use it in Iaido when we are practising our footwork (ashi-sabaki), whoever is leading the practice will shout “Hajime” to start us off.

And why is it the word for the day? Because it has begun!

General

Meet the Cast

Campaign Journal

Follow our Pathfinder campaign as we face monsters, dungeons and the insanity of the Wednesday night gaming group. See the first part of the series here.

The First Session

Funnily enough, our first session was scrapped as far as its placement in the whole campaign. I can’t actually remember why, but I think we spent some time going over the town and campaign setting, as well as introducing our characters. The result was that what actual story developed was insubstantial and easily discarded. So, without any further ado, we’ll have a look at the characters and a little about the players too.

 

The Setting

We are using the Dungeons and Dragons town of Fallcrest (3D Model), a town with a river running through it and a series of caves beneath it. Some of the characters have lived in the town or in the area for some time, while others are new arrivals.

 

Thorn Ravengrin

A tiefling rogue with red skin who likes to show off his white tattoos by wearing only leather pants and a cape. He carries a longsword into battle, which he wields in his right hand, since his left hand was lost in a dungeon trap, where he had to cut it off to escape. His infernal heritage is interesting, as Thorn’s father, Yawldaw Ravengrin, was a Half-Fiend with babau ancestry.

As the campaign has progressed, Thorn has shown an obsession for anatomy and wishes to re-construct the hand he lost. To this end, he has collected several hands from dead foes and studies them in intricate detail.

Thorn is played by Little Johan, who recently became a father and thus owns his very own hobbit.

 

Rapid Wind

An Elven monk wearing peasant clothing and carrying a long spear and sling. Because he’s mute, Rapid Wind keeps a chalk board around his neck (a nifty little prop to role-play with). It is apparent that something terrible happened in Rapid Winds past, which is why he can’t speak. Rapid Wind practices an elven form of unarmed combat known in the common tongue as Leaping Foot, a bastardised description derived from the elvish name for a style that looks more like a dance than a fighting form.

As the campaign has progressed, Rapid Wind has become very fast, reaching a speed of 55′ at level 3 (at level 4 he can use his ki to move at 75′). He has an old horse companion, Gunthar, that he has saved several times from near disaster during our sessions.

Rapid Wind is played by me, and is probably the most difficult character I’ve ever played. I’ve never played an elf before, except as a GM, and found it challenging to think like an elf, but luckily there’s the Lord of the Rings trilogy to help out. Also, as an introvert, playing a character who can’t speak means that I say very little at the table. Still, it’s been fun playing Rapid Wind, and not being able to speak is worth a load of laughs.

 

Stander Vrok

A half-giant cleric of the church of Torm. Raised by dwarves, Stander was the first character to have his own theme song, which was “Stander Struck” to the tune of “Thunder Struck” by AC/DC. So far the church of Torm has been an important element in the story, even though Fallcrest has only a small congregation.

Stander has had recurring visions and his focus on his quest is unswerving. Despite his size, Stander is not very strong and has often found himself in need of healing, even though he is the party cleric.

Stander is played by Willem, recently married, at who’s wedding reception we all sang along to “Stander Struck” like there was no tomorrow.  I’ll also mention that he and his lovely wife walked in to the Darth Vader theme song, so you have to give him props for that! Willem was the GM for the first few sessions.

 

Densharr Tailchaser

Densharr is a Catfolk who loves to sing (practically all the time). Our party bard, and composer of the epic ballads “Stunder Struck” and “You can’t stop the rod”. Densharr comes from nobility within his clan and is rather well off, and thus supports most of the party. He is often seen taking notes which he hopes to use in composing a major saga.

Densharr has often exhibited the cunning of his kin, and although he seldom gets directly involved in fighting, he has directly influenced the course of many battles and bolstered the resolve of the rest of the team.

Densharr is enthusiastically played by Francois, who I hope will be releasing a sound track of the campaign near the end of the year. Francois keeps track of our wealth and maps out any locations that need mapping, thanks to the power of grid paper!

 

Gimp

The Blue wizard, this little goblin kin is small for his race, making him quite hard to spot. He focuses his magical skills on support magic rather than combat spells and creates many of the items the party uses.

Gimp is the most learned member of the party, and often knows something on any given subject. He has recently been spotted talking to  something over his shoulder.

Gimp is played by Big Johan, who is also the current GM at the time of writing. Johan also GM’s another campaign that Francois and I play in, a D&D 4th Edition game, which is why let Johan get away with more than any GM really should.

 

Serisia

Serisia is also a tiefling and an assassin in the making. She is the only female in the group, and possibly one of the most level headed. Not much else is know about her, but that’s what you get when dealing with these shady types.

Serisia loves her sneaking about, and her acquisition of a magical ring of invisibility means she’s pretty good at it.

Serisia is played by Andries, the local mathamagician. The force is strong with this one, or else he just knows a lot about Star Wars.

 

Conclusion

Other players brought their characters into the game at different times, I’ll introduce them during the relevant parts of the story.

General

Hurry up and wait!

Well, we’re now in June, meaning there are 53 days left until we ship out to Japan, with no news of placement yet. Which makes it pretty difficult to plan and prepare because we have no idea what to prepare for. Will we be in the cold north, or the warm south? Will we be teaching primary school level or high school level? Do we need to save money for a deposit on our flat? Right now it’s more questions than answers, and on top of this the repairs to my car are exorbitant, so hopefully when I sell it I can make that all back.

It can be quite frustrating making life changes like this when you have little information to go on.

WORD OF THE DAY

Origami: Literally means “Folding Paper. And why is it the word of the day? Because, when you’re waiting to hear about placement, it helps you pass the time :-).

LINK OF THE DAY

The JET program’s site is here: www.jetprogramme.org/ The site has loads of information including language tests and useful links. Unfortunately they don’t say anything about placement on the site.

General

Information Overload

I just collected a stack of books from the Embassy regarding the JET program, which is great because I now have answers to many of the questions I’ve had.

The Stack, as we’ll call it, includes a General Information Handbook (In Japanese and English) that covers everything from preparing to leave to returning home. I’m busy going through it now in preparation for the Q&A session in June. The second book is Japanese for JETs, a book I’ve been able to go over for a few months thanks to the friendly staff at the embassy. This book includes the poster I have on my study door and two CD’s of language lessons. Japanese for JETs specifically targets JETS by using common situations as examples. The last book is an insurance policy guide, at 71 pages, so we’ll hopefully be covered if things get shaky.

So the task now is to read and learn like there’s no tomorrow. Luckily I finished my role-playing module writing commitments for the year yesterday, so I can now focus on preparing for Japan. I’ll still be blogging and you can follow my role-playing blog here.

WORD FOR THE DAY

Nihon: The Japanese word for Japan. Also “Nippon” if you want to be more formal. The fact that there is a formal and less formal form of the countries name should tell you a great deal about the country and the levels of formality and etiquette.

LINK OF THE DAY

The Embassy of Japan is most helpful and friendly and I’ve had many opportunities to deal with them, both through Iaido and the JET program. You can find out more here: www.za.emb-japan.go.jp/.

General

Starting a New Campaign

Campaign Journal

In this series I’ll be taking you through our bi-monthly Pathfinder campaign that began at the start of 2011. Mostly I’ll just focus on the story, but will also point out some of the lessons we learnt and fun ideas that came up. Unfortunately, it looks like I will be missing the last half of the campaign, but I’ll see if I can organise someone else to continue the story where I left off.

In this post I want to focus on how we got started and all the ground work that was laid before we started playing, which I hope will give you some ideas for your own game.

Picking The Team
The biggest question when we set out, and in most RPG groups, is who is playing. There are always people with different levels of commitment or difficult schedules and finding a time that suits everyone is a bit of a logistics nightmare, especially when everyone is working and has a family. I missed the 2010 campaign because of my busy schedule which left me with only Wednesdays and Fridays open during the week, and Thursdays nights were more convenient for the rest of the guys.

So, we set up a meeting for all interested parties to discuss times. Some of us have played together since meeting on-line, (www.rpg.co.za for South African players), others were relatives or friends of other players, and so on. We drew up a grid of each day and who would be available when. We decided that we would choose one week day and play every two weeks, which would also mean that the impact on our weeks would not be too unmanageable. Wednesday was chosen and we keep our game days to that, although busy schedules and wierd holidays have meant that we’ve played less that twice a month, it does mean that people try and keep Wednesday open.

A number of potential players have not yet pitched for a game and some players have only played a single session, but our core of six players has remained pretty solid. Instead of choosing one person to be the GM, we are taking turns that span a few sessions. This method worked well for the guys in their last campaign, and lead to some interesting results, including a multitude of villains that had it in for the party, each villain the brain child of a different GM.

Picking The Rules
Our next decision was picking a games system. In the 2010 campaign the guys used Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, but there were many other possible available now with our collections of books growing as they have. In the end we chose Pathfinder because it is 3.5 and lets us use all the 3.5 stuff we have.

Picking Pathfinder meant that we didn’t need to learn new rules. This is worth mentioning because, although it is 3.5 compatible, Pathfinder does make some changes. The key though is that when we look up a rule, we look it up in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, and we haven’t really needed to invest much time learning.

For interest sake, some of the other games that were listed as possibles included Mouseguard the RPG, Call of Cuthullu, World of Darkness, Warhammer Fantasy Role-play and Dungeons and Dragons 4, which at least 3 of us are currently involved in a campaign of.

House Rules
At this point, let me just mention that if you do have a session like this to plan your campaign, be sure to order pizza. In fact, if you remember nothing else from this post,remember the pizza. Good friends and good food makes all the admin seem like fun.

With the rule set chosen we defined a number of house rules, some more bizarre than others:

We use a critical fumble table for 1’s rolled in combat. If you fumble, not only do you miss, but now bad things happens to you, such as loosing your weapon and so on.

Each play must bring a white board marker, since we use a glass pane over a grid map to mark out encounter locations. If each player brings one, we always have a choice of markers and it’s not an issue if someone forgets. You could easily do the same thing with bringing map tiles or maps.

Halflings have hairy feet. This was an odd one, and I brought it up, because I’m a Tolkien nut. Discussing the world makes it more immersive, in my opinion. If you imagine the same things, you share the experience more deeply.

Keep the beer lids. We are keeping beer lids to make into a suit of scale mail. The Yaya Sisterhood have their jeans, we have our scale mail.

Story points. Players can accrue story points both in game and out of game that they can then use to affect the game in a way not normally available to players in Pathfinder, such as to get a re-roll on a dice, changing something in the story or bring in an NPC. You may only ever have 3 story points and you can spend 1, 2 or 3 points to get various effects:

One story point: Re-roll a dice, make an acrobatic move you could not normally make or get extra information from someone.

Two story points: An extra attack, an automatic crit or convince an NPC of something.

Three story points: Avoid death, invent an NPC or change the story.

Character Creation
We decided that any Humanoid character was legal, resulting in a party consisting of a Catfolk, two Tieflings, a Giant, an Elf and a Blue. We discussed the party make-up to try and get a balanced party, and ended up with a multi classed rogue wizard, a wizard, a bard, a monk, a ranger and a paladin. I’ll be introducing the characters in the next Campaign Journal post.

Many other aspect of character creation were decided after the meeting. In fact, nothing was actually decided regarding characters on the day, but the first GM requested that each player send him an email with class, race, name, a short description and a backup character class. We could then go ahead and create a level one character.

In Summary
I think the planning session was very valuable, and our games would probably not have gone as smoothly as it has without the planning meeting. It surely saved us a great deal of email. It was also fun, and we got to shared many war stories and got to meet other role-players, have some great pizza and just laugh about our adventures.

Have you had a similar planning meeting for your campaign or group, please tell us about your experience.

General

From the ashes…

Welcome to the blog of Rising Phoenix Games! The aim of this blog is to be accessible to both new and experienced role-players, and not just the Game Masters out there. We’ll be sharing tips, giving advice, having a laugh and going on a few adventures together. Join us, it’ll be a blast.