Land of Phantoms

I jest but this is the first thing a player asked me when investigating the classes during a play test of Transylvanian Adventures . "The Redeemable? What is he? A coupon?" The Redeemable is the rogue with a heart of gold. These swashbuckling ne'er-do-wells fly through life on a chandelier, leaping from adventure to adventure inspiring admiration and envy among all those who cross their paths. You've Met This Guy/Gal Before The Redeemable is ubiquitous in almost every genre of fiction. From Han Solo to Flynn Ryder to the Dread Pirate Roberts. He (or she) is the rakish rapscallion out to clear his name, right a wrong or party hard and have his name writ large in the book of legends. How Does One Buckle a Swash? The Redeemable is VERY lucky. The Redeemable climbs better than the DCC Thief. In fact, her Climbing Class Feature is called "Like a Spider Monkey". Yeah, I'm rocking that. Just when you think the Redeemable is down, she can pull

About a month ago, I stumbled upon a very good post by someone on the intarwebs that goes by the name of Melan. It gave me a lot to think about and I'm sure anyone interested in Transylvanian Adventures likely would find his post interesting as well. Melan may not know (or remember) me but I know of him. We've communicated a bit on various RPG forums, including the Troll Lords forums during Castles & Crusades' early days and whatnot. So I would not think that his post is directed at me (or my game) specifically. But I think it raises interesting points. Transylvanian Adventures , in the Setting chapter, points out explicitly that what it deals with is the pop-culture representation of Transylvania -- which has no basis in reality. None. Zip. Zilch. Even vampires are more Slavic than Transylvanian. Look it up. I can wait. Here's a few other things that TA/TG does that maybe will help Melan and those who share his viewpoint feel a bit better about  Transylv

Last Friday, we did another playtest of TA/TG. It went well but I felt it dragged in spots. Here's some notes from what went down: The Good I made a point to put the characters (all 1st level at this time) into a really tough fight that might've dropped a typical 1st level party. One did get dropped (which illuminated a couple of other issues I've noted below) and the party all rolled terribly. They made it through the encounter but just barely.  I felt this was important because I didn't know how much more powerful characters in TA/TG were compared to DCC. The answer? They're roughly the same. I wouldn't say it's a 1:1 sort of thing. But a similar party of characters in DCC would've had about the same amount of difficulty with the encounter as the TA/TG group had. Leveling up was a love-fest. Everyone liked it. A couple of options were identified that deserved another look-through. But everyone commented on how simple and awesome gaining a leve

In response to some suggestions from Liu Jen Hao over on the Goodman Games TA/TG forum, I posted a lengthy response detailing how to work with disruptive players in a game of Transylvanian Adventures. In short, TA/TG is much like any other roleplaying game. I don't know of a single game where the nightmarish nihilism of Chaotic Stoopid couldn't derail an evening of play. A lot is covered over on that lengthy response. And I suppose a lot can be gleaned from it that's completely unrelated to the matter of disruptive playing styles. I'll try to summarize here: Transylvanian Adventures does not have any "genre enforcing" mechanic outside of the default awarding and penalizing of Luck as described in the Dungeon Crawl Classics rulebook. Alignment is expressed (usually) by a character's position in relation to ruling elite of the time period. Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic can have different applications to each of the classes with the chief concerns o

Gloria Gaynor FTMFW! The Survivor’s life has been shaped by tragedy and misfortune. These individuals are pariahs among their own kind, possessing an oddness about themselves formed by their encounters with the most primal and ancient of horrors. You Got Something Against Beyonce? (No, not really) The Survivor has sparse (yet prominent) representation in Gothic horror. I mean, she's there in the biggest of the big influences (Mina Murray in Dracula ). But you don't see her much anywhere else. There always seems to be someone that's victimized by the guy in the black and red cape. But they aren't always as super-charged as Mina was in the end of Bram Stoker's Dracula . And this Survivor is really freaking super-charged. Okay, Make Me Care The Survivor is a class (perhaps the only class) I gave considerable thought to pulling out of Transylvanian Adventures for good. It just wasn't inspiring me. And if it wasn't inspiring me, then how could I sha

It's hard to imagine that the marketing blitz for Transylvanian Adventures began over on the DCC RPG forums . It seems a long time ago. I suppose it was. Just since that thread started a whole lot has happened in my personal life. But that's a blog for another time. I still seem to be doing okay, even with a rough 6-8 months behind me. And TA/TG keeps rolling along. The interest in TA/TG, meanwhile, has been inspiring and humbling. I do appreciate everyone who takes the time to follow that gargantuan thread on the DCC forum and reaching 5000 views is amazing. In gratitude, I wanted to share something out of the books and asked over there what you all would like to read about.  grald_the_hunter was the first on the scene and asked about multi-classing in TA/TG. So here goes... Talking about multi-classing in TA/TG is complicated. It's slated to be included in the Grimoire -- which is still in development/ideation/awaiting draft. So I'm putting to pix

Introducing the Theorist... On the cusp of the new trends in Metaphysics and Science, the Theorist experiments with all manner of alchemy, steamworks and revivification to test the boundaries of what is known. Fhtagn? The Theorist isn't easily found in movies and fiction upon which Transylvanian Adventures is based. Much like the Charger, the Theorist attempts to fill a role for the sake of making the game fun. In short, the Theorist is the magic-user of Transylvanian Adventures . The Theorist is the only class that casts "spells" in a similar manner to how a Wizard or Cleric might cast a spell in more traditional fantasy roleplaying games. But that's not all. The Theorist is more versatile than a traditional Magic-User. While the types of magic in Transylvanian Adventures is anything but set, The Transylvanian Grimoire will likely present Theorists with the capability to cast world-shattering Rituals, concoct recondite Potions and create arcane fabr