Vehicle Mayhem: Play Area

The fancy board I use for playtesting

As I work to complete my Vehicle Mayhem rules, I'll be posting previews & details of the creation process. 

When I started on my DCC vehicle rules, I knew I wanted to keep it simple and fast paced. The old Milton Bradley board game Thunder Road was a big influence. I love the simplicity- a never ending road, with the old section cycling to the front as the cars move forward.

Vehicle Mayhem is more condensed and slightly more abstract. The play area is used to represent the relative positions of the cars as they race ever onward. Cars shift as their respective speed changes; cars moving too fast or slow leave the race. The action follows the pack, with the center vehicle as the "Pace Car". If cars exceed the pace, they may move forward on the board; if they cannot match the pace, they must move backwards. Fail to meet the pace too many times and you'll be left behind. I think this gives the action a cinematic feel.

The road is divided into lanes & zones (think of them as columns & rows). Initiative progresses by zone from front to back, in initiative order within a given zone. This gives the cars in the back a chance to react to cars acting in front of them. I'll talk a little more about actions in a future post.

A public playtest at a local game store

Folio Character Sheets

The character sheet I currently use for Labyrinth Lord evolved from one simple desire: the ability to easily take away a character's equipment. The PC is taken prisoner & stripped of goods; a tournament is entered, where only special gear can be used; a character dies & their stuff is passed on. Plenty of times over the years, I've wished I could just pull off that part of the sheet. So, I made my Folio Sheet.

The outside page contains character basics- Stats, AC, Saves, & HP on the front; languages & skills on the back. The inside contains space for notes, character sketch, and a place to draw scars & distinguishing marks. Loose sheets for equipment & spells are held inside. 

Print double-sided (flip on short edge). Printing the whole thing will yield 1 character folio, 2 equipment inserts, and 2 spell inserts.

Labyrinth Lord Folio Character Sheet 

GM Screens

For my GM screen, I use the Savage Worlds customizable screen, primarily because I like to make my own panels. They're pricey, but I've gotten almost 10 years out of mine, so I guess $30 isn't that bad? Just be sure to keep packing tape on hand for when the seams split.

I've made custom panels for the three games I most often run (Labyrinth Lord, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Marvel Super Heroes). The links below are for these three sets of panels. The pages are in the order I put them in the screen (starting from left-most on the GM side, to right-most on the player side). For LL & Marvel, the center player side panel will be art based on the adventure. For the DCC screen, it's all art on the players' side.

Labyrinth Lord GM Screen Panels

DCC Judges Screen Panels
Marvel Super Heroes Judges Screen Panels

Critical Hit Table

Critical hits are great. I love the idea that any character, no matter how great or small, can deal tremendous damage with a lucky blow. Every player has stories about "that one crit"- folks I played with 20 years ago still remember Three, the kobold who felled a stone giant with a natural 20 using a Javelin of Lightning. Even when behind the screen, I love the players getting that big crit at the right time.

Do any experienced DMs not have house rules for critical hits? Unless you're playing something like DCC, with a deep and robust crit system, I think it's a must. 

Here's how I handle them in my Labyrinth Lord campaign. On a natural 20, the number of damage dice is doubled (so a sword that normally does 1d8 damage does 2d8 on a natural 20: note that bonuses from strength/magic are not doubled). The player rolls a second d20 on my homebrew table to determine location. Each location has some special effects, such as further penalties which will persist until the critical hit is healed. Most locations can be severed and some can cause instant death. In these cases, the attacking player rolls d100. If the result is equal to or under the total amount of damage inflicted by the hit, sever or death results. 

*Full disclosure: as I’ve gotten older and my taste in play has grown steadily simpler, I’ve used less and less of the options on this table. Nowadays? We just roll the 20 to find location & make the % check for sever/death. I kill enough characters without adding hit penalties from a crit to the thumb. That being said, I’ve had a blast in the past with these extra flavorful crit results. It’s up to you what you use- never a wrong way to play.  

I’ve modified this table from one my high school GM created. It's evolved quite a bit over the years, but I still keep his name on it in honor of George’s original creation. I present to you, the Wakulik Critical Hit Table. 

DCC Vehicle Rules

The big gaming project I've been working on recently has been cleaning up my vehicle rules for DCC/MCC. This is the first thing I've tried to sell or publish, so it's pretty new ground for me (up til now, my players have been the only victims of these whims).

I originally started to develop this as part of our ongoing DCC game. The group jumped through a magic portal and ended up on a post-apocalyptic wasteworld. They came to believe that there was a way to escape this hellish world, but the path lied across a desert wasteland. To reach this promised land, they stole some cars from the local waste gang (The Disciples of the Wheel). Of course, a Mad Max style chase ensued. In the years since, I've been slowly refining those rules, playtesting with local groups.

A big part of the rules is the Vehicle Record- your car's character sheet. One of my goals was to keep the rules simple enough that they felt like they "fit" within DCC. So very basic stats and tables to resolve results.

Outside of formatting, the rules are done. Once cleaned up, I'll be submitting to Goodman Games to get licensed for third party publishing. In March, I'll be running a "Disciples of the Wheel" tournament at GaryCon- I hope to have a stack of printed copies to bring with me. Up until then, I'll be sharing bits of the rules & explaining my thought process here.

Legacy of Lethality

When we started our current  Labyrinth Lord campaign, I decided to keep details on every character, adventure, and death. The "Annual Report" of all these stats has become a popular feature with my players. I'm currently compiling the stats for the end of 2017, but thought I'd share here a few tidbits from last year.

A few notes about the campaign for background:

• This campaign started in December of 2011 and we play every other week (alternating with other games).
• We're using the Advanced Labyrinth Lord rules, with all options in place (including increased hit dice and multi-classing). So we have the "Dwarf" class and "Dwarf" race as options.
• All characters are rolled using 3d6 in order and start at 1st level. I allow Hit Point rolls of 1 to be rerolled.
• Characters are dead at 0 hit points No negatives hit points or bleeding out rules. You hit 0, you die. 
• Most of our adventures are pre-written TSR Basic and AD&D modules (they're currently in the Vault of the Drow).

Stats as of Dec. 2016

Sessions Played: 111

Total PCs Played: 112

Total PCs Deaths: 112

Kills Per Session: 1.01
Mortality Rate: 100%

Now, at a glance, you'll be thinking "holy hell, this guy's a killer GM". Well, yes and no. Yes, I don't hold anything back- when the players finish an encounter, they know they've earned it.  But typically, every player has 2 characters going and every time they lose party members, they're quick to replace them with new 1st level characters. Most of the deaths are from those newbies. There is a core group of PCs currently in the 7th level range that have survived for a very long time (only a couple vets died during the Giants series). When one of them dies, the party will typically go out of their way finding a way to bring them back (they've developed a very good relationship with the Paladin Lords of Verbobonc...). 

Most Survivable Race/Class Combo: Human Thief

Least Survivable Race/Class Combo: Multi-Class Halfling

I'll talk a lot more about survivability when I post the updated 2017 stats, but a few comments on last year's numbers. Humans have consistently been among the most survivable races, due in no small part to their pervasiveness (48% of the total characters are humans). Thieves have been seeing a resurgence of survivability due to a couple tenacious characters- prior to 2014, they were one of the least resilient classes. Halflings have been on an inverse path: once one of the most survivable races, the last few years have been very hard on them. And multi-class characters have never had much luck. 

I'll post the 2017 stats in the next few weeks (after I get a chance to present to the Fiend Club, of course).

Introduction...

Welcome to my place for stuff about gaming. First off, a little about myself.

I'm a longtime gamer, playing RPGs for closing on 30 years. I started out, like most, playing 1st & 2nd edition D&D and never stopped. Since about 1991, I've pretty constantly had a gaming group. Outside of holidays, vacations, etc, I've gamed every week. Most of that time has been spent as the game master, running D&D (1st-3rd editions), Marvel Super Heroes, James Bond, Hackmaster, Deadlands, Labyrinth Lord, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and a few others I'm sure I'm forgetting. Currently, I'm running LL & DCC campaigns. Outside of that, I'm an avid comic book fan (mostly Marvel- I co-host a podcast called Marveling at Marvel's Marvels) and halfway decent miniature painter. I'm married to an amazingly patient woman and father to two wonderful children- even though this blog is focused on my gaming side, the three of them are my life and center. 

I've played with some incredible people over the years and they've all taught me a great deal about life and games. The name for this blog, Tuesday Night Fiend Club, comes from my current group, who I've played with for about 7 years. My plan is to share here the experiences I have with them, along with rules and resources I develop for our games. I'm currently working on converting some of the stuff I've come up with for my DCC campaign into 'zine format to release as third party products under license from Goodman Games (so there will be a lot about that here). 

So, yeah, thanks for reading & hope you find something interesting here!

-Jon