A Thank You To @MassTwitFic

This is a thank you to a very special person. Without him/her I would not have gotten addicted to Twitter and thus would not have fallen in love with @dorfird/Ada. I am speaking of @MassTwitFic who has amused us with the fun little fiction games I play from time to time. One year ago today, having been inspired by #wotw2 (War of the Worlds 2) a event where we all pretended Martians where invading (s)he  started the first #tfe or twitter fiction event. In it a small group of people pretended to be trapped in a robbery. Since then there have been 2 spinoffs, many events and fun had by all. I made the very first tweet in it.”Grah, spent all my cash at the phonix, got to get more- hate paying with plastic, takes too long #tfe” What? I needed a reason to goto the bank so we could have me trapped there for a robbery.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank @MassTwitFic and informe them that they should check their email as there is a  gift card for the local Amazon site in your inbox. Thank you ever so much.

–Canageek.

More Advantages for BRP

Here are some more advantages for the BRP system, they follow the same rules as the ones I did last time. Speedholes are holes in your car caused by small objects passing through it at great speed.

Rise to the challenge.
You work best under pressure
Benefit: gain +5% if you are working at half your skill or more due to difficulty.
Limitation: cannot help with impossible (1% chance) tasks

Eyes Wide Open
Sleep? Isn’t that a totally inefficient substitute for caffeine?
Benefit: you only need half as much sleep as normal to function without penalty

Better? I don’t give a damn.
Others tell you your gun is inferior to something else. You don’t give a damn.
I’d you constantly use a weapon that is inferior to a comparable weapon that you could use and there are no other advantages to using your choice of weapon (keeper’s discretion) you gain +1 damage with that weapon.

Chairs and table-legs!
You’ve been in a barroom brawl or three
You do +1 damage with improvised weapons.

Kinky
Some call you a filthy dirty pervert, you just think you are sexually open
Benefit: gain +10% to hit when using a bondage device as a weapon. Under certain circumstances you may gain a +15% to seduce like minded people. You gain a +20% to restrain people.

Drop the fracking hammer. (Petal to the goddamn metal?)
“Great, more speedholes”
Benefit: add 10kph to your vehicles top speed provided it is under attack.
Limitation: this does not make it any easier to drive at such speeds.

It’s just a flesh wound
“see? Just a scratch…now let me outta here doc!”
Benefit: add one point to the number of HP healed whenever you regain HP.

Live for the Thrill
Yes, I am just that damn awesome
Benefit: each time you succeed on a skill check you had less then a 5% chance of succeeding on regain 1 sanity point

Anyway sorry for the short post but I’m very tired and the net is unstable, so I’m not going to add to it. On the upside, only one more post to meet my goal of one post every week all month!

Until next time, Stay Geeky.

–Canageek

You All Start In A Tavern

It is a fantasy cliche that the adventure starts in a tavern as is the tavernkeeper being a retired adventurer. The first is often derided for the randomness and the careless way it throws PCs together, the second is simply overdone. On the otherhand, if you are a midlevel fighter who is starting to get on in years, or took an injury that is ending your career (Look at football players and such, how often do you hear about career ending injuries?)

There was an adventuring company many years ago. They went by the name ‘The Lucky Bastards’ and lived life in a dashing manner, partying and fighting and saving the day. Until that last adventure. They lost the bastard’s leader when she stayed behind to give the others time to escape. They did escape, but they just couldn’t bring themselves to live as they had before. So they took there money and went to a crossroads that they’d past by many times. There where 4 members of the band left now, Randle the warrior and his new wife Emerald the ahem, rouge. They used there combined shares of the treasure to build an inn as they new this spot was far from any comfortable lodgings. Azmuth the wizard was the worst shaken by the tragedy and he constructed a small tower. While he found solace with his freinds he was never the carefree, womanizing young man he had been. Quill was the oldest of the group and had been considering retiring anyway. She simply moved the location of the shrine she had been building to be with her freinds and now provides a location for pious travellers to worship the gods of light. Dunkig the Crimson was uable to return to his Dwarven homlands (the reason he had become an adventurer in the first place) so he set up a small forge beside the inn, providing horseshoes and nails to many a grateful traveller.

Over the years Randle and Emerald have had a couple children, Azmuth took an apprentice and Quill took in a young man who she trained in the worship of the gods. In a few generations this spot will likely be a healthy young town. However as of late there have been less people passing through and money is tight. Prehappes these young adventures could go and retrieve some treasure that was cached by the Bastard’s years ago. Then a chest of coins too heavy to carry and not worth the trouble would now give the inn and blacksmith another couple seasons in the black. Or prehappes they could head down the road and find outwhy less travllers are coming? And roads go in 2 directions….4 potential adventure right there. Small adventures, but I’ve always preferred those.

Another thing: A few years back Azmuth left. Telling the others he had something to do he left and has not been seen since. Recently the group got a letter from him asking for help quickly….

So yes, I think I’d like to be in a group with this type of background. What about you?

Until next time, Stay geeky!

–Canageek

Advantages for BRP and Call of Cthulhu

So I’ve decided to do something I’ve never done before: Write crunch. Yes, I am going to write up some rules. Now BRP does not have advantages so I’m also going to add them as I want players who fail to raise a skill after an adventure to get something, also BRP characters need some chrome to keep them apart. Something one player can do that the others can’t.

If a character successfully completes an adventure without managing to raise any skills they may choose an advantage. A player may forgo attempting to raise skills to choose an advantage. The advantage gained must be related to something they did in the adventure.

I’ve been reading [setting riff] Voices From Below and the Long Stairs [Great work by the way, I’ve been drawing a lot of ideas from it, just depressing as heck. Expect a post based on it soon] and the news so these may have a military theme to them, also given the source material some of thee may have a touch of a …bitter flavour to them. Sorry about that.

Some of these are fairly unloriginal I admit, but others I think are pretty cool. I admit a number of them are to help players start off new skills, or to give them a broader skillset. Others I managed to stick to my chrome idea. If you have any ideas please post them up!

Protect Your Own

“He may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard” -some solider in Highlander TV show

Requirement: Have lied to protect someone from serious harm at least 3 times OR have been a member of an insular group (Military, British bordering school, gang) where one would have reasonably lied to protect ones mates.

Bonus: You’ve lied to cover your friends/comrades/etc so many times it is second nature to you now. You get +20% on checks made to lie to protect someone.

Should I limit this more? ‘to protect someone from the consequences of their actions’?

Inspiration: Players lying to cover eachother, the behind the back messages in The Voices From Below and the Long Stairs, ‘Buddy codes’ and ‘Bro codes’ from many movies.

Acceptable Casualties

You’ve got so much innocent blood on your hands that you can justify just a bit more.

Requirement: In the course of the characters career they must have taken san loss equal to the maximum amount for killing an innocent person due to innocents dying in the course of the PCs mission

Bonus: You no longer suffer sanity loss for killing people as long as you can justify it for ‘The greater good’ (Stopping Cthuhlhu, Demogorgon, etc)

Inspiration: The news.

Our Boys are the Good Guys

Your side is the good guys right? They must have needed to blow up that bridge with civilians on it.

Requirement: Not sure. None? All you need is the ability to ignore things which much of the public seems to have during any war.

Benefit: You don’t need to make sanity checks for acts that are committed by your team members that you don’t directly observe or participate in. Even if your allies torture people to death as long as you aren’t there you can pretend it didn’t happen.

Inspiration: Also the news.

For the public good

Some things are just to much for the public to know

Requirement: Have lied to authority about mythos related activities at least 3 times

Benefit: You have been protecting the public from knowledge for so long you have gotten good at it. You get +20% to lie to conceal mythos activities.

Inspiration: Every piece of conspiracy fiction ever written.

Shall not be killed by a bullet

You’ve been shot so much you barely feel it anymore

Requirement: You must have been knocked unconcise my the weapon you choose

Benefit: Pick a manmade category of weapons: Guns, Blades, etc. You take one less point of damage per attack when struck by such weapons.

Inspiration: There was a western where a minor character made the above claim, though I can’t remember the title.

Fast on the Draw

You know that he who draws last doesn’t get a chance to try again

Benefit: You get +1 initiative rank above what you would normally get.

Inspiration: Westerns.

Bat Out of Hell

You’ve learned to run like the devils on your heels, as last time it was

Benefit: Your move speed is one point above normal

New Learning

It is never too late to teach an old dog new tricks

Benefit: Add 10% to 3 skills that were previously at default value.

Natural Prodigy:

“Why does one stop learning till he dies when it makes all lands and place his?”- Tiruvalluvar, Tirukkural: 397

Requirement: You must have succeeded on a check 3 times with a skill at default value

Benefit: Add 20% to that skill

I know it’s weakspot

“Hit them between the 2^nd and 3^rd set of arms, its armour is weak there!”

Requirement: You must have helped slay 3 of the target creature. You must have delivered at least one finishing blow yourself.

Bonus: You do 1 extra point of damage when attacking the target type of creature.

It’s my baby

Your baby won’t let you down when you need it

Pick one specific item. You gain +15% on roles using that item. If that item is destroyed or irretrievably lost you must spend 1 adventure familiarizing yourself  with a new item. The new item may be a different type then the original. (For example if an investigators silver-plated .45 is lost they may grow more attached to their car)

Inspiration: Various places: Dresden’s Blue Bug in The Dresden Files. Various characters that are attached to one item. Players that want custom items that give them bonuses.

Master of the Muses

“The blessing of the muses inspires you” - Natania Barron

Benefit: You gain +10% in all art skills that are at default value.

Science!

Stand Back, I’m going to try SCIENCE!

Benefit: You gain +10% in every science skill that is at default value.

Inspiration: Pulp, XKCD

Disturbing Insight

But if that is true then that means….Lord above have mercy on our souls….

Benefit: Gain +5% to Cthulhu Mythos or Blasphemous Knowledge along with all associated benefits and penalties.

Eternally Cheerful

For myself I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use being anything else.  –Winston Churchill, November 9, 1954

Benefit: Gain 1 extra point of sanity at the end of every successful completed adventure. If every goal in the adventure is met gain an additional point of sanity. This benefit is not gained if player did not make an attempt to maintain an optimistic outlook.

I didn’t take nothing officer!

Wasn’t me govn’r, God’s truth!

Requirement: The character must have experience lying to such figures, either in backstory or play.

Benefit: You’ve lied to authorities so much it is now second nature. Gain +20% to checks to lie to people in significant position of authority over you. For example: Bosses, police, superior officers.

Inspiration: A number of books featuring thieves or streetkids.

Ladies Man/Seductress

“The names Bond, James Bond”

Benefit: Gain +15% to social roles when interacting with the opposite sex in a social setting or for other appropriate purposes at the DMs discretion.

Inspiration: Do I REALLY need to say?

Fast Learner

To look for something meaningful is the beginning of a life long search.

Benefit: Count all skills as 5% lower when rolling to increase them.

Blasphemous insight

Knowledge is power, power corrupts.

Requirement: At least 20% in Cthulhu Mythos/Blasphemous Knowledge

Benefit: At the end of any adventure you may sacrifice 5 sanity to attempt to raise one skill that you did not already attempt to raise.

So what does everyone think? Do you like the system? Are there any that you think are over/under powered? I am thinking of cross-posting this on RPG.net since I enjoy the discussion there, and would like more people to see it then the few who visit my blog. Heck, some might even visit my blog. Does anyone know rpg.net’s policy on such things?

Alignment/Alligences

Ok, so I really like the alignment system from d20 Modern.  Very flexible…and horribly under used, and down right misused in the core book. So I wrote up a basic description of it from memory, and fiddled with it a bit. I figured I’d ask all of you for your opinions on it. Here is my write up from the last game I ran, my ongoing play-by-post.

Ok, since no one used this system last time I’m making it so you default to having an alligence to your aliment, Good/Evil first, then Law/Chaos. This can be changed at any time once it comes up.

I’ll lay out that system now: Everyone picks at least one guiding principle to which they owe alligence. Example: Justice, Law, Good, the teachings of Pelor, the Queen, Self, Money, Pleasure, Power. You can pick more then one (and most people do). You cannot pick mutually elusive allegiances (ie Good and Evil, the teachings of Bane and Pelor).
You then put your allegiances in order form most influence over you to least influence. Example: If a character has 1: Justice, 2: Law he will first do what is the just thing in his opinion, then the lawful thing. Note this is not a hard and fast rule, but an RP guideline.
Clerics & Paladins must have allegiances to the god they worship, as well as anyone with a cleric or paladin paragon path.
Allegiance can be added/removed at any extended rest since they represent your characters beliefs which can change over time.

So what do you think? Suggestions? Comments? Criticism?

Until next time, Stay Geeky

–Canageek

Help me make rules for my games

I want you all to help me make rules for my roleplaying games. For the players I mean, not rules to use in game.

When I set up my last PBP (Which is still ongoing at DnDorks. Oh and I’m looking for a new player if anyone is interested.) I wrote the following. (Warning: Spelling errors ahead)

Player Rules:

Player Rules:
Please refrain from:
-Be evil
-Be chaotic stupid
-Work against the party for no reason
-Be lone wolves unable to work with a group
-The character must confirm any preexisting mental disorders with the DM. I can tell you now: Serial killers will not be allowed. Star pack warlocks are encouraged to be creative.

Self interest is allowed, but downright evil is not. Your character can be an infernal warlord looking for power. You cannot however steal children in the night and sacrifice them to get it.

And after a couple of bad experiences….if you go around randomly murdering NPCs thats your choice. However there *will* be appropriate in game results.

I should also note that I don’t like cheating, but for the most part will trust players to tell me the right rules and such.

Basically all this can be summed up as: Be a team player, Don’t be a dick and I expect you to be a hero or antihero, not a psycotic murderer

Now I’m not trying to be a tyrant or anything I’ve just had players ruin a game in past, when they got bored with it or whatnot. If your bored then TELL ME WHY and I’ll do my best to fix it. Don’t light a dry field that the party is standing in the middle of on fire, lure more undead to them, and dive into wells looking of a major artifact. (Yes these are all things I’ve seen….by one player) And these are all pretty flexible. If you want to roleplay a character thats secretly evil talk to me, we can prob work something out. Same with mental disorders. If you want it for RP reasons, talk to me. Just seen a lot of players us ‘becase I’m CRAZY’ as a reason.

But I felt I didn’t quite get my point across. I had a similar bad experience yesterday and was hoping people would help me refine these so I could write them up for my next game. Now, most of these will have to be altered from D&D to CoC but I want to know if the base rules make sense before I work on them more.

Oh and I’m adding another one: No Rape. It goes under no evil really, but I thought I’d make it clearer.

Thank you for your help. Until next time, Stay Geeky.

–Canageek

My Blogs Theme

I’m finding that my theme is too thin and is making my posts look intimidatingly long. Given then I almost never update this thing (though that may change as I’m now on a coop semester & thus am working set 8 hour days) and am on a students budget I can’t really justify $15USD/year for custom CSS just to make the blog wider. Though I suppose if my lady-love learns CSS it might be worth it to give her practice, for one year at least. Anyway, I want your feedback: Should I switch to another theme I like less to make the blog wider, or is it fine how it is? Ideally I’d like a variable width theme, but there are almost none of those on wordpress. Someday I’ll have to get a private wordpress and make my own theme. You know, when I have a steady job, after gradschool.

The Wyzard’s XCrawl posts: The Players [Part B]

I’d like to thank The Wyzard for allowing me to post all of this, its gotten me back into the habit of writing here again. I’ve marked my comments in blue as always. So without further ado, The Wyzard’s posts on XCrawl. Oh and the creator of XCrawl has posted a comment back on the first post in this series if you want to check it out. This is taken from the Wyzard’s RPG.net thread if you’ve just joined us.

3. The Empire: The NAE created XCrawl under a national charter for one purpose: To keep the populace entertained and distracted. It does that very, very well. It has also turned out to have a variety of other economic (and quasi-military) functions, and it has been turned to the end of social control in a number of other arenas. Potential dissidents, both citizens and inhabitants of NAE-controlled areas of the underdark, are channeled into XCrawl. There, they can safely be turned into being more supportive of the establishment by buying into it, or maybe you get lucky and they die. Hey, accidents happen. The official rules of XCrawl are set up by a Senate subcommittee, although the Emperor himself is occasionally involved. His consultations are taken, of course, very seriously. They also take testimony and suggestions from Referees, DJs, and the occasional Adventurer, if it’s deemed appropriate. Or if they just want a chance to invite him to their kid’s birthday party. He *idolizes* them, you see, and it’d mean a lot to the family…

The gist of this is: There are people in the political sphere who want to keep their finger buried deep in the pie. They don’t do this for fun, they do this because they have an agenda. If a politician has expended resources in making a team or a DJ into his highly-placed pawn, you can hurt him by cutting that finger off.

The only problem I see with this is that I’m my experience players that love long dungeon crawls will be bored with Machevialian politics and vis versa. That was one of my big complaints about the xcrawl books actually, too much time on the world not enough on xcrawl itself. I’d be more interested in the local politics of the arena and the bookies and whatnot myself, but could see this working. I do want some non-combat stuff to break up the crawls as I get bored after 40 min or so of combat or a couple hours without roleplay. I want to do some long crawls like XCrawl but am still looking for a way to do so. I will keep your ideas in mind if I ever actually run this.

4. The Refs: The Refs are, undoubtedly, the cleanest part of the whole XCrawl machine. They must avoid both impropriety and the appearance of impropriety. They make sure that the rules are enforced. However, XCrawl being a game of high complexity and constant innovation, they also have many discretionary powers. They make sure that a dungeon and the tactics used in it are “fair,” and appropriate to the level at which the competition is rated for (Sure, “level” as in the 1-30 number the PCs are at isn’t an in-game concept, but there are relative levels of badassery, and we assume that there are people in the game-world whose business it is to judge those and make decisions based on them.) They can declare Adventurers or the DJ to be out of line, they can assess penalties, etc. They are almost always Lawful personalities, and their organization is rigorously self-policing.

However, they are allowed to play favorites, just a little bit. That’s what discretion means, after all. If a monster gets loose and the PCs risk injury or loss of points to save audience members, guess what? Refs remember that. What goes around comes around. Does a DJ pull a fast one and use a last-minute switchup designed to screw the party? Sometimes that’s fair, sometimes it’s bad for the game. The Ref may not do anything about it, but then again maybe they mark it down in the ledger for later. Oh yeah, and the Refs talk to each other. It is possible for an Adventurer, a party, or a DJ to get on the bad side of the Refs as a whole, and then hoo-boy look out. Referees answer to the organization as a whole. And they watch the games. If there is too much blatant favoritism, they’ll teleport a guy out there and jerk the acting referee during a commercial break. It happens every now and again. Or maybe it doesn’t. Your call.

So we are talking Hockey refs here, not football (By which I mean Soccer). That might be an interesting variant where the DJs are not unbiased and the rules are very fast & loose. No, I’m not referencing that Irish/French game at ALLLLL…. (actually I don’t follow soccer but it made the news and came to mind reading this). Carrying on with this idea it would be an interesting change if there were very few rules in XCrawl but a lot of traditions. For example in soccer there is no rule that play stops when someone is injured but it is tradition to kick the ball out of bounds. A player or DJ could get a nasty reputation for breaking these traditions just a little. A rift forms in the fans who love the blood this creates and the traditionalists who long for the old clean days.

5. The Sponsors: XCrawl is money. Big money. The pay-per-view guys make a fortune, the networks make a fortune, the merchandisers make a fortune, the cities that host the crawls make a fortune, the monster-wranglers and summoners and so forth make fortunes, even the guys that design traps and summon the cameras can make tidy sums. The people who are just in it for the money come under the wide umbrella of sponsors. Sure, NBC and Budweiser don’t exactly have the same interests, but they’re in the same bed together enough that I’m going to put them all here. What you need to know is this:

Cities like to have either their own pro team, have arenas that host XCrawl events, or preferably several of the former and at least one of the latter. NYC has an official XCrawl team for each one of the Five Boroughs, and a dozen more that just happen to be from/based in the area. They compete for this, and they can generally provide you with lots of lovely little amenities, like tax breaks and speaking engagements and God knows what. (This umbrella-group can include the Mayor, city councilpeople, aldermen, major organized crime figures, philanthropists, really rich people who just love the city, and any other local figures you can imagine. They can offer some pretty nice inducements.)

I found this one of the least realistic parts of XCrawl: Not enough corporate involvement. Crawls wouldn’t be named after cities anymore then sports arenas are. Look at the names: The Air Canada Center, The Rodgers Center (nee Skydome), I think there is one named after Bell now….

You’d have the Labatte Blue crawl, the Ford crawl, the Air Canada skycrawl (everything takes place on a giant cargo jet), the FedEx Crawl (Revolves around safely moving a package from point A to B…..by 8am the next morning with no damage), and so on.

The Temples like to have their God represented. Maybe prominently. But only by winners. They tend to encourage their young, attractive, martially-inclined clerics to join XCrawl teams and represent. They really like it if they can get XCrawlers to be seen in their temples, wear their holy symbols, and talk to kids about how they must venerate the gods to lead a virtuous life.

Broadcasters, whether major networks or Pay-Per-View, want to have a really badass Crawl, so that lots of people will watch it and they can charge enormous fees from advertisers. There is frequently some consternation on their part when the people who would like to buy advertising time become upset that the teams are sponsored by (and wearing the logos of) their competitors.

Direct Sponsors pay you to drink their sports drink during short rests, or wear their shoes, or put their logo on your armor, or whatever. DJs and Broadcasters consider them a pain in the ass, but haven’t so far been able to do much about it, since they don’t have the right to control the Adventurers that much. They lobby, though.

Yeah, have a look at TV: How much do you think Coke pays American Idol to have the judges drinking coke every episode? I respected Mythbusters for a long time in that they covered the labels on every product they used but even they are now shelling for some car company. Think about the opportunities in XCrawl. All the furniture in the break rooms is from either Ikea or Idomo.
Next Post: Factions!

To date this is the last post he has written which means that I have to start writing my own posts again. I googled around and bumped into this review which is a nice summery of the good bits, however I find it is not critical enough of the poorer bits (The number of pages spent on background to the world & the lack of examples of the crawl).  Oh, I may do a review myself as I saw the total line of XCrawl books on Pazio for huge discounts and bought the whole line. However I will not be getting it till Feb due to having to ship it to a friends due to the fact I’m moving & don’t want it going to the wrong place. Anyway, I’d like to here other peoples opinions & ideas, either here or in the original thread.

His post giving permission:

————————————————————–

The Wyzard
Re: Do you mind if I mirror your posts?

---

Quote:

Originally Posted by Canageek I’ve been doing a blog series on televised dungeon crawling: It’s not XCrawl, but its in the same genre. I’m going to link to your posts at http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?p=9795841 but was wondering if I could mirror them? RPG.NET has been known to lose threads from time to time and if I run a game I’d definitely be referencing your posts when explaining the world to people. I’m NOT a high traffic blog, its just a personal indulgence of mine, but I’d be willing to link to any blog or website you have in exchange for the privilege

I’d like credit and a link back to the thread in any post mirroring it, obviously, but as far as I’m concerned you can go to town.
I’d also like a link to your blog, in case there’s any interesting discussion. Get some interest, and I might even go back to working on the idea in-thread.

————————————————————–

The Wyzard’s XCrawl posts: The Players [Part A]

Ok, time for the 3^rd post in my series of posts where I get The Wyzard to do all the work and just add commentary. This is the start of his final post in the original thread, however due to the length of it with my comments (Over 6 pages) I have split it into several parts. If you think this is too long (or that I should have left it as one post) let me know.

Re: It’s time for the big XCrawl/4E conversion thread

Okay, I’m going to vastly expand on my ideas in the above post, because it doesn’t really seem to follow from anything, and I need to fix that. XCrawl is a funny beast. It’s both a cultural phenomenon and also a massively useful political tool, and also a source of people who are extremely dangerous on a personal level. There are guys in XCrawl who can through personal force of arms take down dozens of normal soldiers. A party of them could spearhead a small military coup.

So, a lot of people are interested in it, and a lot of people want to have influence over it. For that reason, I’m going to go into a typology of the players in the XCrawl world, which hopefully will be inspirational to you.

XCrawl: The Players

1. Adventuring Teams: Also known as parties, or athletes. These are the PCs. Each team has a name, must be registered, may have an agent or a publicist, etc. They may have endorsement deals or sponsors, they may parley their success into non-XCrawl jobs such as shilling cream cheese and canned soup, or more…exciting work. Low-level XCrawlers will probably have to have real jobs, and for them XCrawl is mostly just a ridiculously dangerous hobby. High-level teams May well make enough money from their winnings and endorsements that they can just train or do whatever in the off-season. XCrawl adventuring teams can often end up with personal animosity (rather than merely professional opposition) toward the DJs.

I’d also be interested in seeing adventurers getting involved with politics like Ken Dryden that ran for the liberal party leadership. Xcrawlers are also probably like movie starts are look at all the stuff they get mixed up in. Tom Cruise? Arnold Schwarzenegger aka The Govonator? That NRA guy? Charlton Heston? Chuck Norris using Chuck Norris Facts to help a friend’s political campaign?

2. The DJs: These are the opposite sides of the coin from the Adventurers. To become a DJ requires a lot of things. You have to have both a carefully crafted public persona to display to the fans and media types. You have to be quick-witted and able to improvise on the fly. You have to have an artistic directorial sense, to make sure your crawls are something people want to see. You have to be a broadly capable administrator, able to handle everything from monsters going rogue and eating the audience, to making sure monsters don’t go rogue, to dealing with unions and teamsters and logistics and the financial end of running a crawl.

DJs have to be able to design a satisfyingly watchable and appropriately dangerous dungeon that will pass Referee inspection, get prize support and sponsorships, get a “slot” for it to fit into, cut deals with broadcasters and/or pay-per-view, stock the dungeon with monsters and traps (which is infinitely more complex than it sounds, with ritualists, wranglers, and others required), and…the list just keeps on going. Oh yeah, and you have to build a personal rapport with a fanbase, so that the networks and sponsors consider you to be a draw.

And then the Adventurers come in and wreck your shit, and you have to pay them for the privilege of killing off your expensive monsters and blowing your traps to smithereens (There was a way to disarm that! All they had to do was go up and solve the little puzzle and it would have stopped shooting at them! Now you have to buy another one, and it was expensive!) Fortunately, you are allowed to (try to) kill them. To some extent, it’s even good for your rep.

Man, I would have rather had more pages of stuff like this then all that background on the world before the historical collapse of everything. Again DJs are one of the best ideas in XCrawl and they are rather original and distinctive, so I didn’t feel comfortable stealing them for my setting. Make sure to play these guys up. Each one should have a distinctive style and personality. I don’t mean dramatic themes all undead, all the time for DJ Necropolis (though that is an option) but things like one DJ doing historical themes (The tower of London, The pyramids, the French Resistance during WWII), another likeing placing his crawls on converted ships. You can vary things up stylistically: One DJ might like a crude feel for his crawls, all cinderblock, sheet metal and plywood. Like a paintball arena but more solidly built. Another would make his dungeons with as little modern technology as possible so that it exactly resembles something out of D&D. This is one of the aspects I’d like about XCrawl is you can have each dungeon totally different without any justification needed. No I don’t like that just because I can steal maps & dungeons from lots of different games…though it is an upside. I should write up my Televised Dungeon Crawling setting for SF so I can have space stations, underwater complexes, Warhammer 40K style hulks on which the XCrawlers are dropped on one part and must simply survive and get to the ship waiting to pick them up. The sky is the limit: Push it.

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The Wyzard
Re: Do you mind if I mirror your posts?

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Canageek I’ve been doing a blog series on televised dungeon crawling: It’s not XCrawl, but its in the same genre. I’m going to link to your posts at http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?p=9795841 but was wondering if I could mirror them? RPG.NET has been known to lose threads from time to time and if I run a game I’d definitely be referencing your posts when explaining the world to people. I’m NOT a high traffic blog, its just a personal indulgence of mine, but I’d be willing to link to any blog or website you have in exchange for the privilege

I’d like credit and a link back to the thread in any post mirroring it, obviously, but as far as I’m concerned you can go to town.
I’d also like a link to your blog, in case there’s any interesting discussion. Get some interest, and I might even go back to working on the idea in-thread.

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Sorry it took so long to get this up, I was bogged down in exams. The next part shouldn’t take QUITE so long.

Anyway until next time: Stay Geeky!

Inorganic Chemistry Study

Study Notes for Inorganic Chemistry:

Part 1: All the d block elements can be found in nature except for Tc which is highly-radioactive. Of the Lanthanoids only Pm is not naturally occurring. However of the Actinoids Only Thallium (Th) and Uranium ARE naturally occurring.

The noble metals are named such as they don’t react with H⁺ under normal conditions.

Lanthanoids must be separated via ion exchange chemistry since they are too similar & hard to react to separate via physical methods.

In general the size of atoms goes increases as you go down the periodic table. The size of an atom decreases as you move from left to right. (1^st year chem.) This is because of increasing attracting from the nucleus pulling the electrons closer. This causes the orbitals to contract. Ionization energy increases as a result (though there are many spots the don’t follow this trend such as places with full shells or full half-shells). Electronegativity also increases, with F being the most electronegative atom.
p orbitals tend to be comparable in size to s orbitals, though are a touch smaller. This allows for large amounts of sp mixing. d orbitals are much smaller then s orbitals, but are large enough to participate in bonding. f orbitals are much smaller then even d orbitals, and are generally too small to participate in bonding or to mix with other orbitals.

The Lanthanoids decrease in size from La to Lu, this is known as Lanthanoid Contraction.

Note that the AUFBU principle doesn’t work very well for the d & f block elements. In the d-block elements will get a half filled shell one element early by moving a s-electron into the d-block. In the f-block atoms will hold onto a half filled shell one element longer then normal by placing the new electron into a d-orbital rather then an f-orbital.

In complexes all the electrons are in the d-orbitals.

<Skipping over a ton of stuff he will not ask about)

Early transition 3d metals prefer oxidation state 3, late 3d transition metals prefer 2. 4d & 5d transition metals prefer higher oxidation states. f-block elements mostly will take +3, but no trends.

Due to steric effects the highest oxidation states are achieved with oxygen.

Part 2: Coordination Chemistry

A complex is a chemical entity consisting entirely of metal atoms or a metal center surrounded by ligands.

A ligand is an ion or molecule that binds to a metal.

A coordination complex, also known as a Werner complex is a complex that does not contain carbon-metal bonds

An orgometallic complex is one that does contain metal-carbon bonds

The Coordination sphere is the arragment of ligands around the metal center

The coordination number is the number of ligands that are directly connected to the metal center.

In VB theory the ligand uses its lone pairs to form bonds to the metal center. The metal center provides empty orbitals.

A chelating ligand is one that can make several bonds to one metal center. (From the greek word for claw)

Monodentate: 1 attachment, Bidentate =2, etc.

Larger metals allow higher coordination numbers, as do smaller ligands.

CN2: Always linear (in transition metals), almost exclusively observed in d10 complexs

CN3 is very rare. d10 with strong steric effects will form trigonal planer (most common), d0 will form trig pyramidal w/ strict sterics.

CN4 is very common, usually tetrahedral. D8 metals will sometimes for square planer.

CN5 is also common. Trigonal bypirimidal is the most common, but is very close to square pyramidal, so much so that you will sometimes see both at once.

CN6 is also very common. Octahedral is the most common form of it (and the one we deal with the most in this class), trigonal pyramidal is also possible but quite rare.

CN7 is relatively rare. Can be observed w/ very small ligands or early 3d & 4d transition metals (due to high acidity). Much more common with Lanthanoids however & Actinoids however. Forms 3 strange shapes.

CN8 makes a bunch of odd shapes.

CN9 is relatively rare, try d0, Sc, Y, & f-block elements.

CN10-12 are all f-block elements and we don’t really care much about them.

Summary: CN4:Tetrahedral, CN5 trigbyipyramidal or square pyramidal, CN6: Octahedral.

UNLESS: d8: often square planer, d10 often linear, d0: Strange stuff.

Isomers

Ionization Isomers are when an anionic ligand from outside the coordination sphere swaps with an anion from the coordination sphere.

Hydration isomers happen when water swaps with a ligand outside the coordination sphere.

Coordination isomers happen when you have a complex ligand with multiple metal centers, and ligands swap between them.

Linkage isomers occure when a ligand has more then one point by which it can attach to the metal center. The isomers occure when you swap between these points. Ex: CN, NO2, SCN.

Diasteriomers: Same as organic. Cis/Trans, Mer/Fac.

Enaintomers: Same as organic but Δ and Λ instead of S/R.

K_f is the formation constant. Formed stepwise, K_f = [complex]/[metal][ligand].

β  is formed by multiplying each K_f together.

Chelate effect: Less entropy loss from chains binding to metal centers then free ligands. Therefore binding chains is favoured.

Macrocycle effect: Same as chelate but comparing cyles & chains.

Part 3:

Crystal Field Theory:

Ligands are modeled as point charges.

Purely electrostatic forces: Therefore ligand:Metal interactions are repulsive.

Therefore orbitals that point at ligands are higher in energy then ones that don’t.

Δ_o values are the difference between the upper and lower d orbitals in an octahedral feild. No clear trend across the table, higher oxidation states increase it, as does moving down the periodic table.

Crystal Field Stabilization Energy: (0.4* e_g electrons – 0.5* t_g electrons)Δ_o.

If CFSE is lower then the pairing energy then ‘high spin’ state generated and electrons moved to the t_g orbitals.

If you have the right set up in the t_g orbitals you can get Jahn-Teller distortion. Moves xy orbital up, xz, yz down (this doesn’t matter), moves x² orbital down, x²-y² up: This can stabilize the complex.

D orbitals of tetrahedral complex’s are opposite of octahedral. (3 up, 2 down). Δ_t is 4/9Δ_o due to inefficient splitting.

Part 4: Molecular Orbital Theory

Molecular Orbitals are formed from atomic orbitals through a linear combination of atomic orbitals (LCAO)

The number of molecular orbitals formed is the same as the original number of atomic orbitals.

Mixing s & p orbitals is known as hybridization, increases bonding & antibonding character. Can only mix if they have the same symmetry.

Electronegativity lowers the relative energy of the bond.

Bonds become more ionic as the difference between the orbitals it is made of increases.

This is just a general example, CO disproves.

In octahedral feilds:

• there is no spd mixing.
• t_2g is nonbonding (unless π donating/accepting is involved)
• 6 lowest orbitals are mostly on the ligands

Tetrahedral:

• t₂ orbitals interact with ligand orbitals of the same symmetry.
• e orbitals are nonbonding as there are no ligand orbitals with the same symmetry.
• d orbital order is reversed.

The amount of splitting at the frountier orbital depends on the different between the electronegativities.

π-bonding in octahedral complexs: Δ_o is increased by π-donation, decreased by π-acceptation.

MO theory can explain the spectrochemical series, with good π donors having weak splitting, σ donors having strong splitting and π acceptors having very strong splitting.

Metals also contribute to splitting: higher oxidation state splits more. Splitting increases down a group. However no trends within a given oxidation state among transition metals.

d0 prefers cis, d2 prefers trans.

Octahedral complexs prefer 18 electrons, tetrahedral prefer 16 electrons.

Part 6. Metal-Metal Bonding and Transition Metal Clusters

Atoms are considered bonded when they are closer then the atomic radius or the metallic radius.

A polynuclear or polymetallic complex contains more then one metal center. 3 types exist: Chains, Clusters (Closed structures with metal-metal bonds), and Cage Compounds (Closed structures with bridging ligands between the metal centers)

To form these metal-metal complexes the metal atoms must have partially empty subshells (so they can accept electrons), have a low oxidation state (To prevent repulsion between cations), and posses the ability to form strong metal-metal bonds (No DUH).

In metal-metal bonds the σ bond is the strongest, followed by the π bonds, then of course the δ bonds.

Metal-metal double bonds exist, though are surprisingly weak: many non-metal bonds are stronger then them. This is due to small overlap, especially with the δ-orbitals, and heavy inter-ligand repulsion.

A Quintuple bond has been formed. That is just wrong. Moving along….

Now a bunch of examples of 1-4 bonded complexes. Not sure what to learn from that. Wasn’t feeling so hot that day, didn’t pay much attention. *sigh* At the start you just pull off the δ electrons, but after they are gone you have to add antibonding electrons.

d⁴ metals can make double bonds. That is Re(III), Cr(II), Mo(II), W(II), Ru(IV), Nb(I), Despite the fact it is d⁴ no known quadruple bonds of Mn(III) exist.

Multiple metal-metal bonds tend to be reaction centers.

Alright, moving on to more useful (& thus testable things): Structures of clusters with metal-metal bonds:

We name ligands that bridge atoms μ_X, as in μ_1. The subscript is the number of metal atoms the ligand bridges.

A closo cluster is completely closed, convex, and single shelled. The atoms in it will form a polyhedron. If the polyheadron only had triangular faces it is known as a deltahedron.

There are 4 general bonding types in closo clusters:

1. Electron precise clusters have exactly 1 electron pair per polyhedron edge.

For a transition metal the 18 electron rule should be followed. μ₁, halogens, hydrogen atoms, and groups such as SiR₃ all supply 1 electron. NH₃, PR₃ and CO each supply 2 electrons. Bridging and such will change all of this.

To get the number of metal-metal bonds simply divide unpaired the electrons by 2. As a formula:
M-M bonds = (18*metal atoms –the total electrons)/2
However this only works for metal-metal single bonds.

1. Clusters with one 2 electron, 3 center (2e3c) bond per triangular face
   If a deltrahedra with no more then 4 edges/faces meeting at any   one vertex does not have enough electrons it forms 2e3c bonds at        the faces.
   The number of 2e3c bonds is: (18*metal atoms – total electrons)/4
2. Clusters that follow the Wade Rules
   If you have even less electrons then above then you use Wade’s               rules.
   Wade’s Rules: You need 2n+2 skeleton electrons to form a stable   closo compound. n = # of metal atoms. Does not work for     tetrahedral compounds, they only need 8 electrons instead of 10.
3. And of course: Special Unique Snowflakes, I mean none of the above.

Polyoxometallates: Oxo complexes have no metal-metal bonds, but use an oxo (O^2-) ligand as a bridge. They are a result of acid/base chemistry. In 3d cations the coordination number must be 4 and only 1 oxygen can be shared between any 2 atoms. In 4d & 5d metals the larger sizes open up coordination number 6 and allow multiple oxygen per 2 metal atoms, allowing for highly complex structures.

Part 7: Orometallic chem. of the transition metals

Hapicity is the number of atoms in a single ligand bonded to one metal center. Denoted by superscript η^x. If no superscript then the maximum # of atoms is being used. Note this may be different then the number of bonds.

CO bonds w/ carbon, not oxygen. 1 bond w/o back donation, 2 with. σ donor, π acceptor.

Phosphines are not officially orgometallics but we will treat them as such. σ donor, π acceptor. Electrons transferred from metal in σ* bond.

Hydride directly bonds to the metal. Can serve as bridges.

H₂ can bond to metals. The stronger the π backdonation the weaker the H-H bond until you have 2 hydrogen lignands instead of one H₂ ligand.

η¹ hydrocarbons are all σ no π.

η² alkenes & alkynes will change to alkanes if there is enough backdonation.

η⁴ alkenes that are nonconjuated act as 2 independent double bonds.

Benzene on the other hand donates via 1 σ donation and 2 π donations. Dontes electrons back via δ orbitals.

Common orgometallic reactions:

1. Ligand substitution. Thermally or photochemically activated. Preceeds in steps that each have 16 electrons, problems with solvent competition.
2. Oxidative addition: Turn XY into MX + MY. Are common for 16 electron species. Ligands usually add cis. Reverse = reductive elimination
3. 1-1 insertion. Atom one away inserts between ligand & metal.
4. 1,4 insertion: η² ligands become η¹ ligands w/o oxidation state change on the metal.
5. Reverse of that, β-hydride elimination.
6. α-Hydrogen abstraction. Removes hydrogen from C, adds a bond to metal.

Electron counting:

Neutral-Ligand method: all ligands are nutral, you count how many e- then donate to get this way.

Electron count: Metal valance electrons + Donated by ligands + charge of complex

Ligands donate 1 or 2 electrons.

Is fast an easy, but overestimates character of bonds. However it overestimates covalent character, underestimates charge of metal, makes it hard to find oxidation state of the metal.

Donor Pair Method: Ligands donate electrons in pairs. They are either neutral or charged.            Oxidation # of the metal = total charge on complex – charge on ligands.

Number of electrons form metal is group # – oxidation state.

Total electrons is sum of electrons on metal and donated by ligands.

Oxidation numbers easy to get, however overesitmats charge, assumed reactivity might be wrong.

So sorry I don’t have any more gaming posts yet: I’m busy with exams. I might get some more of  The Wyzard’s stuff edited on the weekend. I’ll update this post as I do more study, so I don’t have a stream of ichem study posts. Anyway, off to get food now. Until next time Stay Geeky

–Canageek

Post updated as I head to bed: I’d better get a lot more done tomorrow! Ah well, I think I can be ready.

Updated with another section of notes.

Update: I’m now done this exam, but will leave these notes up for interests sake. Until I get embarrassed by how rushed the notes near the end are, or the fact I never got through all of them.  Anyway, I’m going to see if I can get some RPG posts up latter tonight before Quantum comes and eats me alive.