Commentary: Bill Webb's Book of Dirty Tricks Houserules

So while I just did a write-up for my houserules in an potentially upcoming campaign, I figured it might be a good idea to do some commentary on a recently released product from Frog God Games, since a chunk of it has to do with houserules!

So as the result of some kickstarters and FGG's ongoing work for the Pathfinder RPG and Swords & Wizardry they release Bill Webb's Book of Dirty Tricks.  I must say Bill Webb's illustration on the front cover is a little scary! :)

Bill is a great guy, I've met him a number of times now thanks to PaizoCon.  He has done a lot of great work as head of FGG and supporting old school gaming in a mainstream sort of way.  The book of dirty tricks includes tons of tips (and tricks obviously) for running a RPG in the 'old way'.  There are tons of devious things a DM/referee could use to spice up some dungeon crawls.  The little booklet is valuable for all of this alone.  What I want to write about today are Bill's houserules that he has graciously included in the booklet.  I don't want to 'review' it because I feel like it's a little too subjective.  I want this to instead be commentary on the houserules and talk about why I like some ideas vs others and why someone might want to use them.  I've broken down the commentary by section.  Anyway, enjoy. :)
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Experience Points

Bill goes the typical route I think most OSR players are familiar.  It's not just a matter of killing monsters, you ideally want the treasure more than anything.  Any arguments about gold = xp aside, this is pretty standard.  What Bill does that not everyone does is make it so XP is gained by spending gold.  There is a sort of common sense to it I suppose.  I think it matters on the type of campaign.  In Bill's games I assume the characters are always going dungeon-crawling.  What's the use of 100k in gold but to spend on frivolously?  Other types of campaigns however, may have the players wish to use it on building a stronghold or otherwise.  That sort of thing isn't ruled out in Bill's explanation but the focus seems to spend it on "wine, women, and song".  Bill is pretty stingy on monster XP though.  Killing even strong monsters results in paltry XP.  Even the base values for S&W are pretty low to begin with, so we're really only comparing pennies to nickels in the view of the huge XP requirements for leveling.  It takes the old school mentality of "takes forever to level" a little bit more heavily.  I'm not sure if this is a good thing but it's certainly a valid style.

Attributes and Bonuses

This section isn't terribly surprising if you are familiar with the Whitebox version of Swords & Wizardry.  In fact, a lot of Bill's houserules seems derived from the Whitebox rules, which really means it's derived from the original three booklets of OD&D.  It is nice though, keeping the bonuses restricted to a +1 or -1.  It does take the 'fun' out of getting lucky with an 18 in strength, but overall S&W favors player skill over character ability, so it's not a big deal.  I'm already used to S&W Complete so I don't see myself using this, unless I was going strictly Whitebox S&W anyway.  I suppose I just prefer degrees of 'better'.

Table Dice Rolls

This one is short and sweet.  Do you roll in front of the players or not?  It's a tough one.  I surely admire the practice.  It makes things more transparent, and the DM certainly feels more like a 'referee' in this case.  Bill points out its more often that a DM 'cheat's in favor of a player than otherwise.  I agree completely.  I've don't this more often than I'd like to admit.  I don't like ruining fun with player death, but that is a very new school mentality to get over.  I saw do this if you can be brave enough and the players understand this.  There is no safety net, play carefully.

Damage Rolls and the Value of Magic Weapons

Here is another OD&D(Whitebox)-ism.  Using d6 for all weapon damage.  I do like it, though I don't use it myself.  My players are too used to the varied weapon dice to change.  I agree, 6 damage is enough to kill someone.  The only real issue I have is that a dagger isn't nearly as dangerous a weapon to say, a dragon or storm giant, as a sword would be.  That isn't reflected well.  I have a feeling my thought process is similar to what spawned the weapon vs size table from (I think it was) AD&D and the first instance of varied weapon dice.  Still, if I were running Whitebox Bill's specific listings in this section would be apt.  I do like giving magic weapon bonuses to attack rolls AND damage.  I thought it was always this way, so go figure that.  I don't use double damage on criticals in S&W either, so I'm with Bill on that one.  

Hit Points vs Rolls to Hit

Bill is right to say this one gets the most controversy.  I gotta say I'm still wrapping my head around it.  I disagree that getting more hit points and better attack bonuses is "double-dipping".  Double-dipping what?  If we think leveling up means a character is more resilient, can't that also mean they are better at fighting?  I can see the merit in this though.  Having static attack bonuses that don't increase except through magic gives another level of 'grit' to the game and levels the playing field a bit.  It does favor thieves' backstab as Bill says but I feel it stifles the Fighter a bit by only giving a very marginal fighting advantage.  "It's still tough to bust through plate armor even with 70 hp", except that some monsters' attacks may be better than others.  A dragon claw is surely more dangerous than a mace.  A dragon is much more likely to pierce through that armor than the mace right?  I've tried a few mock-battles, but I don't think I've done enough to see how much it impacts the game.  Bill does allude to it making fights a little longer.  I suppose if you were righting something with a -1 AC (meaning an 18 or better for a fighter) you only ever have a 15% chance to hit it each round and you are still whittling away at a large amount of HP assuming you are only doing on average 8 points of damage.  I'd be afraid of the quick back-and-forth swing-and-miss rounds just to resolve combat.  Anyway, I may need to test it more, but I don't figure I'll adopt this in my game unless for a special occasion.  

Travel and Getting Lost

Pretty straight forward stuff.  Similar to any other 'traveling' rules you may find in another RPG book.  I suppose if you didn't already have a favorite you could use this just fine.

Food and Water

Pretty straight forward stuff here too.  I don't know how much it is needed if you follow existing rules (and ration weights).  It does seem a little more strict on keeping track, which would be useful in making the game more realistic.  I'd just be afraid of slowing the game down.  I think I'll tentatively use it in my next campaign... we'll see.

Surprise, Initiative and Melee Order, and Spellcasting in Combat

Nothing really new here that isn't already described in S&W rules.  Might be interesting for a Pathfinder group.

Hit points, Death and Dying.

First level max HP, kind of a no-brainer for practicality's sake.  No one wants a fighter with 1HP.  Bill seems pretty generous with raise dead possibilities which may or may not match your campaign assumptions.  His way of dealing with when a character dies with negative HP makes sense.  I may use it but it seems everyone has their own little variation.  I sometimes prefer that a character dies when he has negative HP equal to his CON score or half of it.  Character with 18 CON dies at -18 for instance, or -9.

Doing Things Rather than Rolling Dice

This final topic is huge and I support it 100%.  I think most OSR games support this.  It a damn shame games like Pathfinder/3.5/4E threw this out the window.  I do like that Bill describes how in the 70s he let thieves into his game by letting the thief automatically detect there was a trap, but they still had to describe dealing with it.  I may include that in my game, and leave the disarm trap skill check to be for things a player can't help.  The player may say they are using a thieves' tool to do something inside of a mechanism but to be sure they don't accidentally hit something (like the game Operation) we need a skill check roll.  I do enjoy the tables Bill has provided, showing a great number of door mechanisms to use for secret doors and the like.   Will definitely be making use of this.

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Overall, like most houserules people talk about, it comes down to taste.  Some of what Bill does is great and I want to incorporate.  Other stuff just bounces off the backboard.  It's always good to check out other folks' houserules though.  It can often spark your own ideas on how to do things.  Again, the houserules are just a part of what is in the book of Dirty Tricks.  There is plenty of useful advice and resources included that I'll probably keep my copy close at hand while running TESC. 

TESC Houserules

So it's been a little over a month since my last post.  Real life happens I guess.  Had some life stuff to deal with.  My girlfriend's father passed away unexpectedly, went to a friend's wedding, work things.  I have been able to think a little bit more about my proposed The Episodic Sandbox Campaign.

One thing for sure is that TESC is going to have some houserules.  And nearly everyone is going to be inspired by or lifted from Adventurer Conqueror King.  I just love that rules system.  A lot of modern 'enlightened' rules are in there and I took the best ones to be imported into Swords & Wizardry.  I didn't choose them because they facilitated TESC any better, but because they are just neat ways to make S&W a little more interesting.

Anyone familiar with ACKS will recognize these but here they are:

• Fighters do additional bonus damage based on level, that stacks with strength bonuses.  This is taken from the ACKS fighter table.
• Fighter (and ONLY fighters) get cleaving.  This is again per ACKS, but comes down to killing an enemy means an extra free attack, going up to the fighter's level.  The fighter may take 5 foot steps between attacks up to their movement rate unused in their turn. 

I make those changes to give fighters a buff.  They need it.  They can become truly awesome killing machines this way.  I didn't want to give it to any other class like ACKS does because Paladins, Assassins, Rangers, etc. all have other good stuff going for them.  Monster are not getting cleave, as they usually get multiple attacks anyway.

• Thieves use the skill chart taken from ACKS instead of S&W Complete.
• Assassins similarly use the skill chart taken from ACKS but now get move silently, hide in shadows, and backstab at the same level as Thieves instead of two levels behind.  To be more clear, Assassins ONLY get move silently, hide in shadows, and backstab from the Thief class.  Other skills are not included.  They do retain their expertise in poisons.  

I want this because rolling a d20 for skills is easier than the different scales in S&W.  I also buffed Assassin skills because in S&W behind 2 levels behind never sat well with me.  They don't get the other skill monkey abilities, but stay good at what they are supposed to be good at.

• Clerics and Magic-Users now have repertoires, as per ACKS.  Quick summary is that a spellcaster can cast any spell in their repertoire up to their spells per day.  They don't need to memorize each spell for the day.  They can choose like a sorcerer would in 3rd edition of D&D.  A Cleric has all spells in his repertoire the DM decides (default spell list).  A magic-user's repertoire is equal to his spells per day plus extra based on high intelligence.  A spellbook can contain many more spells than a repertoire can have, but if a spellcaster wants to put in a new spell, money and time is required.   

Vancian magic is sort of funky.  Always has been.  ACKS found a good compromise, so I'm using repertoires to make spellcasters less OCD about spell selection.  I absolutely love ACKS's flavor explanation about why a spellcaster can only have so many spells in his repertoire.  I recommend reading it!

• On character generation, instead of wealth and initial spell selection, the class templates from the ACKS Player Companion will be used.

This one may or may not work out.  It's still fundamentally rolling 3d6 for wealth, but it's taking away the options of the player in favor of a more flavor-driven gear-set.  I think they are neat so we'll see how it goes.

•  Mortal wounds and tampering with mortality charts from ACKS to be used

Another one of those 'neat' things from ACKS.  When you are brought to 0 hit points or incapacitated in combat the mortal wounds chart is consulted to determine how bad you really got it.  Lots of cool results here.  Tampering with mortality is the result of raise dead and resurrection spells.  Also fun stuff.

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Now I think that may be it.  The campaign isn't near happening so I can change this if I need.  It's very much a "peanut butter in my chocolate" set up, but ACKS does so many things right.   You might say, "why not just use ACKS?"  Well, trying to have my players learn yet another system would be annoying I'm sure.  They have the PDF or print version of S&W so giving them some houserules is a lot easier than having them buy new rulebooks and relearn some things based on the mechanics of ACKS.  I don't need the proficiency system or any other frills.  I'm just taking what I think is the best of the best and grafting it onto my S&W.

Anyway, if any of my players read this, I'll have a single page handout with all the applicable rules for you.  Should be good stuff. :)

GAGP's Solution: The Episodic Sandbox Part 3

Continued from Part 2

The Episodic Sandbox Campaign (which I may refer to as TESC for my personal campaign when I run it) relies on the shorter independent adventures for ease of drop-in-drop-out of players and on the evolving sandbox to retain player agency and a feeling of a living changing world.  The last important piece of the puzzle is allowing for player flexibility.

Going back to player attendance, there is always the chance that the only guy playing a Cleric can't make it.  Who wants to go dungeon delving without turning or healing right?  To deal with this, I will allow players to have more than one character.  I'm not quite sure what the limit might be, but there would be a restriction that a player can only take ONE of their characters on an adventure at a time, except in maybe dire circumstances.  There are pros and cons here.  If Phil plays 4 different characters and changes them up, he will take longer to have a higher level character than someone who focuses on a singular character.  The option does allow for players to try out different classes, so they don't get bored of always being the Fighter, for instance.  This also allows for newer players to fit into a group.  If Kim joins the group and starts with a level 1 magic-user (and needs time to get used to that class's capabilities and how to play in general), the other players can use their lower level characters and go on less dangerous adventures.  This means the group can bounce between high-level giant lair jaunts, and the more classic, low-level goblin slaying as needed.  This may also create interesting scenarios.  A particular dungeon may call for a magic-user to open a door.  The party that day didn't  have it's magic-user.  The party could go back and get him/her.  That magic-user may be much lower level, and now the adventure takes on a more "protect the VIP and get them to the important location safely" shade, than just dungeon clearing.

The goal here is flexibility.  I want the players to make decisions about their party composition.  This may not always need to be an important decision, but it could be interesting to have the players need to make the decision on whether or not to bring a Cleric to hunt the vampire, as the Cleric is a neophyte and may not last long.  The opposite coin being the stronger characters must contend with the vampire without divine assistance.

In addition to some extra house-ruling (like adding the cleaving mechanic from ACKS to Fighter abilities and ACKS's mortal wounds and tampering with mortality charts) one idea I am also toying with is restricting starting classes to Fighter, Thief, Cleric, and Magic-User.  More of the advanced classes like assassin, demi-human races, etc. can be "unlocked" by completing certain adventures that are presented.  This gives a feeling of progression for the overall gaming group.  In one adventure, the party may end up with a choice of supporting the Assassin's Guild and gaining an uncertain ally, instead of some other action of consequence.  After this adventure, the group has the option of creating assassin characters for the party.  They will start at level 1, so advancing these characters means taking time off their original character.  I may or may not be clear about which adventures might unlock more races/classes in the adventure hook descriptions, but if for instance Dave really wanted to be a ranger, I may specifically create and advertise that particular adventure to the group so they know it's there to tackle.

This means the longer the campaign goes, the more it grows, and the more options that players have.  If eventually they wish to create stongholds or keep new bases, I can support that as well.  Some high level characters may retire and become NPCs with occasional player control, while allowing them to continue playing their lower level characters.  If the sweet spot of DnD is level 3-7 or similar, there will always be an option to play in that sweet spot, while retaining the familiarity of the setting sandbox they have been developing with me.  In the mood for low-level, spring the trap and you're dead? Play your new level 1 assassin, ranger, bard, and druid.  Want to deal with expanding your strongholds?  Play your level 12 fighter, cleric, thief, and magic-user.  Or anything in between.

I think that does it for describing the solution to GAGP, or my planned implementation of it.  I may make additional posts if there are other things I feel I can expand upon.

Let me know what you think in the comments below!

GAGP's Solution: The Episodic Sandbox Part 2

Continued from Part 1

So the idea of an episodic sandbox is predicated on episodic adventures that can stand alone and be enjoyed by players in attendance, and those that can't make it that week won't feel like they are missing a big part of the story.  The setting and sandbox the players interact in SHOULD be familiar though.  When you are adventuring, certain elements should be familiar.  The town the players live in is the one that is attacked.  The same lonely mountain that the player's delved into for treasure may have a hidden bandit fortress somewhere on the other side.

Though the adventures are episodic, I want player agency to remain important like any other sandbox campaign.  If the players are unable to finally hunt down and kill that manticore, they may find a few friendly NPCs have gone missing at the start of the following game session.  If the bandit leader escapes death and flees his fortress, he may come after the players with assassins to get revenge.  Choices during the episodic adventures still matter.  The consequences of the player's actions will spawn new adventures down the road.  If the players discover and take over control of a borderlands fort, their adventures may include defending the supply lines to the fort, defend it from attackers, etc.  If the player's start acting more evil, they may have to contend not only with other villainous creatures, but also the forces of "good".

The next question is, how do player's get hooked into these adventures?  When we accept this type of campaign, we must give up notions of some save-the-world story.  Things are more local, gritty, and since we'll be playing swords & wizardry, deadly.  The player's will operate out of some sort of base.  To start, this will probably be the cliche'd tavern in town.  We can accept cliches because it facilitates the campaign style needed.  In typical fashion, the players will begin their adventures here but also end them.  At the end of each episodic session, they will return to the tavern to rest up, count treasure, etc.  When the characters in drinking ale, they will become privy to adventure hooks.  There may be a bulletin board with rumors, ads for 'heroes needed', etc.  May also include the occasional bursting in of a troubled NPC with an immediate problem.  This will be summarized to players by me describing what's new or current on the bulletin board, what they have heard around town, etc.  Either at the end of the session or via email between sessions, the players will vote on which lead interests them most.  This will allow me to make sure I have time to properly prepare.  The player's can then prioritize what they want to do.  Dave really wants to hunt down that hydra but can't make it next week.  The others decide to leave that trail alone for now and instead look to take down the slavers' operations down the river.  That hydra can wait for Dave, though it may ravage a few farms in the mean time.

I will be looking to craft a sandbox out of the steps shown in the ACKS rulebook, but I will allow for "Schrodinger's Dungeon".  That is, a particular adventure site may or may not exist until I need it.  Sure the player's have been to hex 1016 before, but the wizard's tower wasn't really "there" until I had an adventure set there.  Perhaps it was illusion'd.  No, the player's did not notice the cave in hex 2034 until they had the treasure map leading to it.  The large amount of square mileage available to me means the players will never truly explore every nook and cranny.  I can fill the sandbox as much as I want.  Goblin hordes move in from the north and set up new villages, earthquakes unveil new cave structures, etc.

So far I have explained facilitating adventures and making the sandboxes feel alive.  In the next post, I'll discuss how player flexibility will keep things interesting and allow for progression of the campaign over time.

GAGP's Solution: The Episodic Sandbox Part 1

In today's previous post I talked about the Great Adult Gaming Problem.  It is not a new problem by any means, but I think I have a solution that will work for my future campaigns and maybe it can help yours too.

First and foremost, I must give credit to Beyond the Black Gate, as most of the underlying concepts are taken from the blog author's series on episodic play.  You can read them here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

The essential bits to be taken from that post series, is that episodic play relies on bite-sized adventures that can be done in 3-4 hours and are relatively compartmentalized from each other.  Al, the author of Beyond the Black Gate, gives a short list of adventure types: Relics & Ruins, Tiny Dungeons, Monster Hunting, Megadungeons, and Random Generator Travel.  For my purposes, I ideally want to narrow this down to basically three types of adventures: Small dungeon delving, monster set pieces, and multi-terrain objective.

Small dungeon delving is essentially Al's Relics & Ruins and Tiny Dungeons categories combined.  These would be micro-dungeons with 5-10 rooms, able to be explored within a session.  They would probably include typical dungeon denizens inside, typical treasure, but the reason for being there is clear.  There is an artifact to be found, a bounty to be collected, a hostage to retrieve.  These areas need not be underground, but it is the idea of a multi-roomed structure to explore, possibly clear, with a goal in mind.

Monster Set Pieces are much like Al's monster hunting.  I don't like to use the word hunt because the situation could be that the players are reacting to monster attacks, not specifically hunting them.  The monsters serve as set pieces, wherever they are encountered.  An entire adventure is dedicated to a specific monster.  This monster is probably much stronger than the players, and thus each encounter will be dramatic.  For example, the town and country-side is being ravaged  by a roaming manticore.  The player's must find a way to eliminate the threat.  This will include tracking the creature, fending off the creature when it attacks the town, and possibly going after it's lair to neutralize it.  I've been looking at numerous monster books, thinking about which ones make great singular monsters for these types of adventures.  They should be monstrous, iconic, and be something that requires proper preparation by the PCs.  I fortunately have many monster books to use and select unique monsters from, especially ones the players have never encountered before (standard trolls are too easy!).  For old school rules (including Swords and Wizardry and OSRIC/1E) see: Monstrosities, Tome of Horrors Complete, Tome of Horrors 4, the Teratic Tome, and Monsters of Myth(free!).  Since OSRIC is so close to Swords & wizardry Complete, I will be able to use any of those monsters pretty easily in my S&W games.

Multi-terrain Objective adventures are the catch-all for anything else I can think of.  Perhaps it's an urban investigation, diplomatic role-playing story, hexcrawl of discovery, etc.  The idea here is that the player's should have a clear goal to accomplish, but it is neither a dungeon crawl or pure monster slaying.  Perhaps the characters must race to find the location of a lost city or temple.  This in turn might lead to further adventure possibilities.

Al does some great write-ups about these general ideas, so again I recommend reading his posts as well to get a deeper understanding of how to prepare these adventure types.  Supplements like the Tome of Adventure Design and the D30 Sandbox Companion provide tables and ideas for creating the episodic adventures.

Now, so far this has all been based Al's work, but here our my personal plans.  These individual episodic adventures are more like episodes of the X-Files rather than Game of Thrones.  There will be the one-offs, but also some possibilities of several of these episodic adventures be connected.  Like the X-Files' overall plot about government conspiracies, certain things will be recurring elements because they are parts of the sandbox world that exists around the characters.  More on this in the next blog post.

The Great Adult Gaming Problem

Look another blog post!  Unfortunately I don't have the Part 2 of the Slumbering Tsar Saga conversion done yet.  I have made some progress on it though.  Today I wanted to talk briefly about something many gamers are familiar with, what I call the Great Adult Gaming Problem (GAGP).  I think most gamers have encountered this in one form or the other, I'm just giving it a name so I can talk about it more easily.  This problem, and how I am going to try to tackle it, will be covered in the next few blog posts.  I will break them up so they are easier to consume.

The root of the problem is one that I'm sure the founders of the hobby encountered many times.  As opposed to when you are a teenager or kid, when you are an adult you don't have the luxury of summer breaks, free weekends, etc.  Work, spouses, errands, and all those other things we adults worry about keep us from having a consistent schedule for gaming.  I may have weekends off and can make time, but maybe some of my players have to work weekends.  That sort of thing.  You can't guarantee everyone is going to be at every session.  You sometimes see players bring friends for a one-off occasion, which may not mesh with what is going on in the campaign.

In addition, longer adventures (including modules, megadungeons, and many story arcs) can't be completed in a single session.  It seems these days, 8 hour long marathon sessions just aren't possible.  I'm typically able to have 3-4 hour sessions or the sometimes 5-6 hour session.  If a dungeon, module, or what-have-you takes longer than a single session, people begin to forget what is happening when we get back to playing.  My last SWN game ended this way.  We are in the middle of a dungeon area.  If we sat down to play again we'd spend half the session trying to figure out why they were there, what had they done so far, and what room they were currently in.  Even with my notes.  If schedules get out of whack, it could be weeks or months until the game could be picked up again.  Long stories with numerous variables is too much paperwork to keep if attendance is so variable.  Dave can't make it to the session, guess his assassin is in drone-auto-pilot through the rest of the dungeon.

Relying on adventure path modules won't work, they are too "on-rails" to maintain unless you have a super consistent group

So how do you insulate your campaign from these problems?  How do you make every session enjoyable, no matter what the attendance is, or how often you meet?  How do you continue to make the players have agency and let the world feel alive?  I believe the key is in a particular form of sandbox gameplay.

I've spent sometime reading other blogs and pondering solutions to the problem.  I think I may have some solutions.  They aren't novel ones, I must admit I will be using the ideas of others.  I'll post links to those sources as I explain it.  I hope that the solution I use, plus some liberal house-ruling, will allow for an interesting campaign that will be hard to derail.

Links to Solution Series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

For readers, how do you address GAGP in your groups?  Leave your comments below.

Back? Maybe.

Hello readers.  If there are any of you out there.  I know my last blog post got some traffic due to my Slumbering Tsar conversion project.  And YES, it's been a year since I last posted.  I hate being one of those folks that writes plenty for a month or two and then dies off, but alas I am/was.

So what have I been up to?  Well I found a wonderful lady to be my girlfriend, moved to a new place, dealt with some career stuff (good stuff), and tried to keep a regular RPG group going (to little success).

The Slumbering Tsar project ground to a halt.  However I've been noticing some interest on the Google+ communities and the FGG forums for the conversion.  I may try to give it another go, complete what I started.  I had a hard drive corruption awhile back and lost a lot of my notes and work from before.  I still fortunately had part 1 saved to google docs.  We will see what happens in the coming weeks.

Gaming wise, I ran a group for awhile.  We did Swords & Wizardry for bit, ran +Matt Finch's Grimmsgate for a bit, but due to player attendance problems things sort of fell apart.  I was able to run a great session of White Plume Mountain and I have to say I really enjoyed it.  May need to make separate post about that day.

And even more recently I had revived my group to play +Kevin Crawford's awesome Stars Without Number game using his Hydra Sector as the setting.  We played two sessions, and my move caused the gaming to halt and now I'm in a gridlock.  I am pretty burned out on DMing.  Even though I haven't actually done much of it over the past year, I miss being a player.  I've been the DM for so long I have forgotten what it is like to play.  Whenever I really want to play RPGs, it's always up to me to get the group together.  I have discussed with a consistent player of mine the possibility of him DMing a game, and I offered to trade off DM duties from week to week.  He is still thinking about it.  Lately I've been very interested in playing or running Adventurer Conqueror King and I have the books for it.  I imagine my friend would run Swords & Wizardry though, unless convinced otherwise.  In order to prepare for those games I may be spending some time creating a new sandbox compatible with ACKS's systems.  Would need to balance that against the Slumbering Tsar conversion.

Anyway, thanks for reading.  Here's to hoping I get off my ass and starting working on stuff again.  Would be good to see the Frog God Games folks at PaizoCon and let them know I got a reason for more people to buy Slumbering Tsar.