The very first of these is a customizable dice game … Demon Dice! (Created, if you must know, by legendary game designers Lester Smith and Timothy Brown.) Construct demons from spare parts and then battle against your friends! Print the die-faces on sticker paper, cut, and affix to standard six-sided (or blank-face) dice. The rules and everything you need to know are provided with the free download. Click the logo below and grab your copy!

(Front page image – Wikipedia Commons – Public domain Via Arthur Waley)

“The chance to work on Metamorphosis Alpha is really exciting,” says Jamie Chambers, President of Signal Fire Studios. “It’s a fun mix of nostalgia for those who’ve followed MA over the years, new rules for fans of D&D4e, and a chance to really embrace the ‘dungeon in space’ concept that the original game was created with.” The story of Metamorphosis Alpha centers on the Starship Warden, a massive generation ship stricken by a catastrophe. Its population of humans, plants, and animals are left mutated and unaware that the world they live on is actually a huge vessel traveling among the stars.

The Metamorphosis Alpha Player’s Guide is the first product in the series, and offers many new options for D&D players. It includes new races, from genetically-altered humans to self-aware plants. Four brand-new character classes, one for each of the game’s tactical roles, draw on the Mutant power source. Each is supplemented by paragon paths, epic destinies, and feats. The book also expands upon the skill system, adding the Tech skill and rules for discovering and understanding high-tech items. The book is tentatively set for publication in January 2010.

The Starship Warden sourcebook offers a comprehensive campaign setting for the 4th edition D&D rules. It gives the Dungeon Master an array of mutant creatures, androids, and other threats to challenge the heroes. In addition, this second book includes suggestions for ways to integrate the new rules with other settings or the creation of original campaigns that mix the science fiction and fantasy elements in exciting new ways.

James M. Ward, the creator and author of Metamorphosis Alpha for TSR, Inc. in the 1970s and designer of the classic MA’s own Fourth Edition, looks forward to this newest version of his creation. “D&D 4th Edition is bringing a lot of people back to the exploration, discovery, and tactical fun of the old days of the game,” says Ward. “In the early years of Dragon Magazine I wrote an article about how to combine MA with D&D. These new products will be the first time that idea is fully explored.” Ward is working with the MA design team to offer his insight and vision to the new products.

It’s important to the design team that this iteration of Metamorphosis Alpha offers the best of both worlds. “I want our MA books to be fully compatible and interchangeable with existing D&D4e and GSL products,” says Chambers. “If someone wants to play a Mutant Feline Enforcer in a traditional fantasy world, the rules will support that. If a wormhole opens up and drops a Warlock into the middle of the Warden, that won’t be a huge problem, either. There’s a lot of great options, so each gaming group can make use of the new Metamorphosis Alpha products in whatever way they want. It’s fantasy meeting science-fiction head on.”

The Metamorphosis Alpha product line for D&D 4th Edition is being produced under the terms of the Game System License from Wizards of the Coast. Full details and release dates for the first two products, as well as news regarding adventures, sourcebooks, and online support materials will be announced soon.

www.metamorphosisalpha.net
www.signalfirestudios.com

Contact:

Jamie Chambers
jamie@signalfirestudios.com

Artwork by Dan Bryce

Signal Fire Studios and the SF logo are trademarks owned by Signal Fire Studios LLC. All rights reserved. Metamorphosis Alpha and its logo are trademarks owned by James M. Ward. Used with permission. The use of another company’s trademarks is for reference only. No violation of copyright or trademark ownership is intended.

KoDT #150

I’ve long been a fan of the Knights of the Dinner Table comic, ever since the days of the late, lamented Shadis Magazine. For those who don’t know, KoDT shows us a group of roleplaying gamers sitting around the table. It could almost be described as a very geeky-soap opera comic strip, showing us what’s going on in the game and in the lives of the Knights.

One of the strips long ago revealed how Game Master B.A. Felton created his own RPG that was such a colossal failure that it ended up in bargain bins at game stores across Indiana. It was the chance to roleplay the lives of man’s best friend: Dawg: The RPG. The fictional game has come up again over the years, all the way up to more recent stories in which Bob Herzog uses it as a chance to run an RPG for his niece and nephew.

In a recent, kick-ass double magazine celebrating a staggering 150 of the Knights, Kenzer & Co. actually gave us Dawg. And I cannot help but be charmed with a fun little RPG that I’m very tempted to try out in the near future. In Dawg you can play everything from a pure-breed French Poodle all the way to a mongrel junkyard stray. The inspiration for games can come from Lassie to Air Bud to other crazy pooch-centric stories. Just check out this list of dog movies!

Being a dog-lover and dog-owner, I immediately thought about how my best friend, a golden retriever named Vegas, would translate into Dawg: The RPG. I read through the rules and gave it some quick thought, so here we go!

Vegas

Vegas

Breed/Type: Golden Retriever/Hunting Dawg
Lifestyle: Pet
Size: Medium
Traits: Brawn 40%, Hustle 55%, Dodge 50%, Alertness 55%, Human Handling 40%, Animal Magnetism 45%
Tricks: Beg, The Mighty Sniffer
Disadvantages: Canine Compulsion 30%, Happy Tail, Neutered

Vegas is a golden retriever who’s been with his current family for years. Though he’s entering his doggy middle years, he gets as excited as a puppy and still has lots of energy when something interesting is going on. A complete pacifist when it comes to humans, he dislikes arguments and conflict and is known to bark and try to get in-between people who are fighting. Vegas is friendly and agreeable with others dawgs, but will defend himself if pushed too far.

Though content with his family, Vegas is extremely curious and has little caution when it comes to wandering off with other dawgs or to follow the sound of children playing. He loves to play fetch but isn’t always great about actually giving the ball or toy back to the owner once he trots back with it.

Maybe I’ll get together a little one-shot game of Dawg sometime in the future. It would be fun to make my players deal with situations without opposable thumbs to fall back on.

We’ve got our initial plans in place for traditional book releases through hobby and book distribution, eBook/PDF products to be sold online, and bonus game content that we’ll put online for free. We’ll be using the D&D 4th Edition, and new sets of rules that we’ll be announcing soon.

So come in and make yourself at home. There isn’t much here yet, but soon there will be!

It’s fair to say that I’ve played in a lot of games over the years—local campaigns, conventions, and even online. But the time logged playing a single character are far overshadowed by the hours I’ve logged in crafting stories and adjudicating the rules. In other words, I was always the DM.

Back in Georgia I’d beg one of my friends to run a game and let me just play. I’ve always loved being able to just show up with my character and some dice—Doritos and Mountain Dew are totally optional—and just play. Being a Dungeon Master (or Game Master outside of D&D-land) means you’re a host, storyteller, referee, den mother, and semi-omniscient/omnipotent being. In other words, it’s work.

I got burnt out. While I never hated it (I was still playing my favorite type of game, after all!) I definitely was ready for a break. And once I joined the hobby game industry it meant I was looking at this stuff all day long! Even after I moved to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin—birthplace of D&D, don’tcha know?—there was plenty of eager players, material that could use a round of playtesting, etc.

Eventually, though, I got my break. Several friends and co-workers moved away or simply moved on. The game group I had going collapsed, and with an overcomplicated life I was ready to let it go without much of a fight. I briefly tried to pull a new game together but half of my players went and had children on me. I took it in strike, probably because I just hadn’t been away from beind the screen quite long enough.

In the midst of all this, my friend/partner-in-crime Cam Banks decided he wanted to run a D&D game for us. I threw together an Elf Wizard named Dante and just showed up with my dice to have fun. And fun we did have!

Then I got the itch.

Oh, I ingored it at first. That’s all I needed was more work, right? But I was a life-long Dungeon Master, a card-carrying RPGA Network judge, and a story-teller that didn’t just love to write … I love to see stories happen to me before my eyes, in a magical meeting of my ideas, the player’s choices, and the roll of the dice. There wasn’t any soothing cream for my itch. I needed to return to my rightful place behind the screen.

Cam’s normal game night was off while he attended a family function on the other side of the planet. But instead of breaking one of my fourteen trillion board or card games, I suggested I toss together a short RPG session. I happened to have a hot-off-the-press game of my own creation, and I thought it would only be proper to run a game using the Cortex System Role Playing Game. That, and it’s just about the easiest game system when you know you’re gonna have to wing-it.

I told my players (Digger, Liz, Renae, and Dan) to create modern-day cop characters, while I figured out what to do about a scenario. There’s a fun series for the d20 System called Crime Scene, and one of them had an adventure in the back! I read up, made a few notes, and we were ready to go in half an hour. Soon the TRACE squad was tracking down the disappearance of several teenagers in a backwater Pennsylvania town.

It was fun. It was easy. I was back, baby!

Chambers Sunday Dungeon

But like an addict falling off the wagon, one fix just wasn’t enough. While my wife was stuck at work on Sunday, I resurrected our old D&D campaign but upgraded both the characters and the existing adventure to the new 4th Edition rules. I justified this as good practice for some upcoming design work, but I’ll confess it was just fun to dive into some game prep again.

For the first time in over a year, Walter the Fighter waded through the dungeon cleaving foes. Only eight years old, my son Xander really got into the use of his powers and figuring out what time he should use Sure Strike (minions, since damage is irrelevant) or when it was time for a Cleave (when two goblins were dumb enoiugh to stand next to each other when his greatsword was in range). Lizzy reprised her role as Lidda the Halfling Rogue and enjoyed doing sneak attack damage with throwing daggers while looting various treasure chests in the dungeon. Melanie abandoned her old character entirely to play a Tiefling Warlord, and she enjoyed her role as party leader and quickly figured out how to best use her powers to pound the enemy and keep the rest of the group fighting. I threw in a Human Wizard (who I named Winston, in homage to my original D&D character from 1982) as an NPC helper so the group would have at least the major roles covered.

Chambers Sunday Dungeon

The kids had a blast in the dungeon. They bashed skeletons, horded gold, solved puzzles, and even briefly attempted negotiation. (Lidda ended that one by throwing a dagger at the goblin sentry to whom Melanie was trying to speak!) They high-fived each other for clever moves or high rolls, and laughed when they screwed up or fumbled.

After it was over, my children all thanked me for running the game for them. They really enjoyed themselves. Little did they know they were simply feeding a lifelong addiction. Enablers.

That was yesterday. It’s safe to say that I’m once again fully hooked and looking for my next fix. The grownups only got halfway through our murder mystery and would like to play through to the end. (One teenage girl was found dead at the base of the Ferris Wheel, the other locked in a shed in the abandoned amusement park.) The kids are ready to get through the last few rooms and defeat the young dragon they know awaits them at the end. Xander also wants to make 2nd Level so he can re-train, buy new powers, and spend gold on some new gear. My boy has his priorities.

There are so many RPGs and so little time. I’m going to be heading out to a bunch of conventions this year. Anyone up for a game?

Walter, Akharia, Lidda, and Winston battle the undead!

"Jamie & Felicia" by Lindsay Archer

As a young boy reading Dragon magazine sitting in the kudzu patches of North Georgia (okay, I never actually did that, but it sounds good) I knew that one day I had to go to Gen Con. I had been playing D&D since I was seven years old, running as a DM since age 11, and attending local events since my early teens—including a little show called Dragon*Con that I will blog about at a future date. But Gen Con was my gaming Mecca, all the more ironic because for years it literally was in a Milwaukee building called MECCA. I finally made it up there at the age of nineteen, and my adventures there are lost out on the Internet somewhere. Maybe one day I’ll dig up my old journal post.

Years later, I’m writing as a jaded game professional who has attended Gen Con 15 times. I live right next to Horticultural Hall, the original site of Gen Con here in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Gen Con is now an incredibly stressful time of year, where our most important releases premiere and our sales throw important cash into the coffers. But I manage to have some fun, nonetheless. The following are two of my favorite moments from Gen Con ’08:

PSI Game Night

We setup the booth, and after putting on a fresh shirt and cleaning up as best I could, I headed over to the Westin in order to show off our games to the retailers participating in the Gen Con Trade Day event. We had two tables going, one to demo the Dragon Lairds board game hosted by co-creator Tom Wham, and one for the Demon Hunters RPG in the capable (if tipsy) hands of Cam Banks.

On a normal day, Cam is an enthusiastic Game Master. Give him a few Kamikazes and the odd glass of wine and you get über-Cam, a force to be reckoned with! At one point I walked by and he gestured, wildly, declaring “Okay, this is awesome!” before describing the crazy outcome of the battle scene in which the Demon Hunters were currently embroiled. Tom is game industry legend, and the Dragon Lairds session had lots of good-natured arguing and backstabbing.

With things going good and the free drink tickets all distributed (with only one lonely glass of merlot) for myself, I decided I’d like to try out a game. I sat down at the Playroom Entertainment table and played several turns of Portobello Market—a great German-style game that looks a little like Ticket to Ride but plays quite differently and has some nice variable decisions and strategy that go well with the theme. Even more fun than the game itself was making friends with Elisa and Phi, the former of whom was familiar with some of my work and the latter knows a very close friend of mine here in Lake Geneva.

The game night was a success, even though I ended up ending the game in order to lose catastrophically. But Tom’s and Cam’s tables both went very well. I’m already looking forward to next year!

Screening of The Guild

At Comic-Con I was lucky enough to meet producer, writer, and actress Felicia Day. (She’s apparently also a violinist and a mathematician and fellow displaced southerner.) I was already familiar with The Guild, remembered her from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, and had loved her performance in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, But when I met her in person and found that she played D&D I knew that we’d get along just great. For those wondering, yes, she is that adorable in person and is very gracious with her time and extremely appreciative of her fans.

After Comic-Con I told Felicia that I would be happy to bring The Guild to Gen Con with me this year and we could sell it on her behalf from the MWP Booth since she couldn’t be there this year. I also managed to wrangle a late-night screening with the Gen Con film room. Felicia and I deluged the Internet with postings about our plans at Gen Con. Unfortunately, battle plans never survive contact with the enemy.

Thursday night I was running late. (Those who know me well would fake their best “surprise face.” Just ask the aforementioned Elisa!) We rushed over to the Westin to get set up before midnight. I sent Christy and Danielle ahead to scout out our location and let any folks waiting know that The Guild was on its way.

Felicia and friend/co-star/Legend of Neil-creator Sandeep Parikh recorded a great opening message for the Gen Con audience that I had on hand, but she and I were really hoping that we could figure out a way for her to address the audience live. So I rushed into the lobby, hoping to talk Internet connection issues with the hotel staff. After all, I was hosting an event in a meeting room! I knew exactly what to say to whatever unlucky hotel employee awaited behind the front desk. Too bad there was no one there!

I opened up the chat program on my laptop and engaged video chat with Felicia. I wasn’t sure how far the free hotel lobby WiFi would reach, but thought we could give it a try. So I picked up my laptop with her face on fullscreen and walked down the hall toward the film room. People shot me strange looks as I walked by holding the electronic disembodied head of Felicia Day.

We reached the film room! Completely empty. Not even a projector or a passed-out gamer or couple making out. Christy and Danielle explained to me that they couldn’t get a straight answer out of the Gen Con staff in front of the room.

Felicia’s disembodied head looked so disappointed. Not a single fan turned out to see The Guild? I knew better, having talked to folks all day at the con. “Is anyone here for the screening of The Guild?” I shouted down the hallway. Suddenly the dozen or so people milling about the Westin all were heading my way. Turns out they were just as confused as we were!

I set Felicia’s disembodied head down on the table and said, “Why don’t you chat with your fans for a minute? I’m going to go yell at some people.” Then I marched down the hall to the Westin’s Gen Con HQ booth. Turns out that no yelling was necessary. They had moved the room three doors down to the Animé room, and were waiting for us to show up and give them the disc!

I assembled the troops and recovered my MacBook, and together we marched into the Animé room—instantly zapping some big eyed, small mouthed character about to give a tear-filled speech before killing a hundred ninjas with a sickle or whatever was up on the screen. “Who’d like to watch The Guild?” I asked, to the grateful applause of the two dozen or so people who were already in the room.

We were already running way-late, so there was no time to figure out hooking up the projector to my laptop. But I am the master of rolling with life’s punches, so I just walked up to the front of the room and introduced myself. “Hi, I’m Jamie Chambers, a writer and game designer with Margaret Weis Productions. And this is the disembodied head of filmmaker and actress Felicia Day.”

So with Felicia in the palm of my hand (or her digital head, at any rate) we proceeded to do a short intro and Q&A session with a live audience. It was bizarre and fun, and the screening that followed filled with laughter and cheers. I’m pretty sure that a dozen gamer-guys decided to take the “+5 Sexterity” line and use it at the local Indianapolis bars later that night.

Despite everything, we managed to make the screening work. Later that night, I stole WiFi from Steak-n-Shake and logged in to let Felicia know how the screening itself went after she logged off. The e-mail from her read “AWESOME!” in the subject line and she had Twittered about the experience as well. She’d really like to come to Gen Con next year, but she’d almost give it up for the chance for me to carry her disembodied head around the convention in ’09.

When I was seven years old, living in north Georgia in the year 1982, my older friends Matt and Scott asked me to sit in on a game. I would get to play a warrior in a fantastic setting battling monsters while taking treasure and glory. My father, much to my mother’s displeasure, had taken me to see Conan the Barbarian earlier that year — so I could hear the music of the Anvil of Crom ringing in my ears and could recite the “best in life” speech at a moment’s notice. I was ready!

Never mind that my warrior was horribly killed by a black pudding in the third room, I was hooked and and ready for more. The bigger kids only wanted me to fill a seat, so I didn’t always get to play when I wanted. But within a year I had the gorgeous Elmore-cover red box set and probably went up a grade or two in reading level trying to unlock all its secrets. I became a better D&D player, and finally got to roll up my own character.

Warriors were bad-ass, thieves were good at sneaking around and stabbing monsters in the back, clerics could heal … but the power to wield magic and fling magic and fire at your enemies was not to be matched in my young mind. I wanted to be a wizard. I rolled up a character, old-school. Three dice and that was it. He was pretty much useless except for his high Intelligence and mediocre Constitution and Charisma. I named him Winston.

Flash-forward twenty-five years. I’m 33 years old now, and I have a seven year old son of my own, Alexander or just “Xander.” But he didn’t have to wait until his current age to be exposed to gaming. I’ve been indoctrinating him since before he was even born. I have, in my possession, the same red books from that very same early-80s D&D Basic Set that are signed by both Gary Gygax and Larry Elmore to “Alexander.” Signed while he was still in the womb at the Gen Con two-and-a-half months before he was born. There is a picture of him (check my MySpace album) of him holding a d20 in his hand and miniature AD&D rulebooks under his arm. Once he could hold dice in his hand, I would let him help me roll. (He got his start playing the Warlord CCG from AEG.) I could not wait to get my son interested in games! When Xander his four, I was able to score a copy of the D&D Board Game that you can only purchase in Great Britain (for reasons that defy all the sense I have as a game publisher myself). For those of you who haven’t seen it, the game is an excellent intro to the hobby that uses symbols instead of numbers and complicated game stats. All Xander had to do was roll the right colored dice and count sword-symbols to know his attack.

He loved it.

About a year ago we graduated to the new D&D Basic Set, using the pre-made characters that came along with it. Xander stepped up and played Regdar the Fighter, Lizzy grabbed Lidda the Halfling Rogue, Melanie the Elven Wizard. It was great fun! But after a few sessions, life and work and everything else put a halt to the game. We haven’t touched it for a long time … until today.

My son came up to me and announced that he was tired of us not playing Dungeons & Dragons. But, he told me, this time he’d like to create his own character. Being the man I am, there was no way to refuse him — so we sat down the D&D Player’s Handbook and a set of dice that once belonged to my good and much-missed friend, Richard Wilhite, and began the work of rolling up a custom-character.

The resulting character creation was a pretty kick-butt human fighter. He’s strong, fast, tough, and wields a greatsword (improved with the Weapon Focus feat, supplemented by both Power Attack and Cleave for my curious fellow geeks). This guy wears scale mail armor and has a dagger tucked in his boot. Way better rolls and choices than I made twenty-five years ago on my first character.

But as I went to enter his information into the computer so we could print out a character sheet, I realized that there was no name for this human tank. Xander wasn’t quite sure what to name him, so I whipped out my Extraordinary Book of Names, a handy resource for both Dungeon Masters and writers of fantasy. We flipped to medieval English names and I let him read the list for himself. “Well?” I asked.

“Walter,” he said. “Walter the Fighter.”

The grin that split my face probably could have taken off the top portion of my head. I immediately decided that it was the best name for a D&D character in the history of the world — and it wasn’t until an hour later that I remembered my own Winston (who was later crushed under a 5-ton granite slab in some dungeon or another). James Alexander Chambers really is a chip off the ol’ block.

My brother Digger was so excited by this story that he decided we had play — today! So he, Mel, and Liz were armed with characters and they hit the dungeon. There were goblins, locked doors, trapped chests, an orc mauler, and a shrieking harpy. Through it all, Walter the Fighter waded through his enemies in a sea of blood and gore as my son rolled his orange d20 and looked so excited I thought his head would explode. They made it through two major areas of the dungeon and everyone lived, earning some healing potions and a pair of magic boots, along with 400 experience points.

Xander had a good time, but I don’t know if he could have possibly enjoyed it as much as me. There is something about being a father to a son where you see everything through his eyes. It was like being seven years old myself and discovering the keys to the kingdom all over again.

I’ll play backyard catch with my son, like I did with my Dad. I’ll take him to the movies. But I don’t think anything is going to compare to this. I just hope we’re still gaming together when I’m a toothless old man.

No matter how senile I get, I don’t think I’ll ever forget Walter.