Allan T. Grohe, Jr (aka, 'the grodog')

[Kersus]

The original thread is posted at http://tripleoakleaf.myfreeforum.org/All...ut510.html and continues here.

The last question for Allan was:

Hello New here. I recently got a copy of Swords of the Middle Kingdom which I have been reading over preparatory to running. One thing I read has me intensely curious; there was reference made to a Kumite event at Gen Con '98 that pointed up certain weaknesses in the HKAT combat system. I have not been able to find any info on that event so I was wondering what the issues were and how SMK fixed them, as I hope to run some HKAT soon as well and knowing the pitfalls (and how to steal from SMK to fix them) would be helpful Thanks

~ Allen Shock

[Kersus]

How are things with Black Blade, why did you pick Bottle City for GaryCon VI, and what products are on the horizon for you?

[Kersus]

How do we acquire the small size edition of OSRIC and why was it made?

Why hasn't SMK been re-released? When is the last time you played it?

[grodog]

The last question for Allan was:

Hello New here. I recently got a copy of Swords of the Middle Kingdom which I have been reading over preparatory to running. One thing I read has me intensely curious; there was reference made to a Kumite event at Gen Con '98 that pointed up certain weaknesses in the HKAT combat system. I have not been able to find any info on that event so I was wondering what the issues were and how SMK fixed them, as I hope to run some HKAT soon as well and knowing the pitfalls (and how to steal from SMK to fix them) would be helpful Thanks

Unfortunately, Allen, I don't recall any details about that. My old partner John Phythyon worked up the Kumite tournament for GenCon IIRC, so he would be the one to ask for more specifics.

---

How are things with Black Blade, why did you pick Bottle City for GaryCon VI, and what products are on the horizon for you?

We selected Bottle City to reprint since it seemed like there was quite a bit of pen-up demand for the book, and since it was the only reprint title by Rob that was stand-alone.

We'll reprint Cairn of the Skeleton King and Tower of Blood later this year, and have a fiction collection coming out, as well as perhaps one of my castle levels. We'll see....

How do we acquire the small size edition of OSRIC and why was it made?

The A5 OSRIC edition was put together by Jim Kramer at Usherwood Publishing; Jim did all of the layout work on the OSRIC rulebooks. BBP sells the A5 OSRIC directly at conventions. We could probably add it to our web site as well: I'll talk to Jon about that, thanks for the suggestion.

Why hasn't SMK been re-released? When is the last time you played it?

Matt and I haven't talked about reprinting SMK in quite awhile---just not a lot of demand I suppose. I haven't played the game since 1999 or perhaps even 1998 (IIRC we published it for the GAMA trade show in March 1999).

[Kersus]

How are things with Black Blade, why did you pick Bottle City for GaryCon VI, and what products are on the horizon for you?

We selected Bottle City to reprint since it seemed like there was quite a bit of pen-up demand for the book, and since it was the only reprint title by Rob that was stand-alone.

We'll reprint Cairn of the Skeleton King and Tower of Blood later this year, and have a fiction collection coming out, as well as perhaps one of my castle levels. We'll see....

Why did you choose to run it at GC? Mostly to help sell it or other interests? How did your games seem to go? I recall you mentally listing some changes you wanted to recommend to Rob.

[grodog]

Why did you choose to run it at GC? Mostly to help sell it or other interests? How did your games seem to go? I recall you mentally listing some changes you wanted to recommend to Rob.

Yes, I had submitted the events to GaryCon with the idea that we'd have the book available at the convention, so the events were to support sales and awareness of the adventure.

The games went well, although the module can be a somewhat frustrating one at times, when players get mired in some of the choicer encounters.

For running the game at conventions, I was considering three main changes (none of which did I implement this year, and I've run BC ~5-7 times or so now, in total):

1. Change the starting locations from the key #1A-G locations to the cavernous key #A-G. That makes it less likely that the PCs will end up mired in some of the time-eating encounters from the get-go. I will probably test this out sometime when I run the adventure next just to see how it affects the flow of the session, since it would be a very different environment at its onset.

2. Distribute as many as half of the paintings from key #4 The Gallery to the environs of the rest of the level. This would serve a few different purposes:

a) people would actually get to encounter them (the Gallery is hard to find)
b) it would break up some of the less-populous areas of the rest of the dungeon level
c) it would break up some of the encounters in the Gallery itself---that way not every painting location is an automatic encounter, for example; the larger monster encounters would still be located there (since the Gallery is a very large room), as would ones that need to relate to other paintings in the Gallery, but the more-standalone encounters could then be deployed in locations throughout the level (probably with some random generation behind it too: perhaps as many as 26 standard locations could exist, with a random range of paintings being moved, and then they may end up in variable locations each time PCs visit the level)

3. Create a WM table

Some encounters would be drawn from the fixed encounters in the level, while others could hint at other encounters from outside the level, rival NPC parties (of potentially varying levels---remember that the BC entry point appears on level 2 of Castle Greyhawk, so it's entirely probably that some of the NPCs would be hapless low level types desperately trying to get back out!), other monsters, and some monsters/traps/tricks that would only be encounterable as WMs (whether for good or ill would remain to be seen, of course! ).

[Kersus]

Very cool. It was fun to game with you and see BC in action.

What advice would you have for someone wanting to run a game at the next GC?