Influences

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The Jacksonian Conundrum or Why Munchkin and not GURPS

I was going to start out by listing my history with SJG but let's be honest, it won't matter.  If you hate what a write, convincing you because I grew up playing them that it matters, frankly won't.

So Evil Stevie was at the game show I was at today.  Yup saw the new Ogre, and a boatload of stuff that was part toy and part game.  Then there were the truck loads of Munchkin stuff.  For those not playing, in essence Munchkin consists of leveling up your character to 10th level to win.  You play good cards on your self, and everyone plays crap cards on you to stop you.  Now pick a theme, rinse and repeat.  Unlike the more erudite of the OSR, I do not despise munchkin and its ilk.  SJG has hit on a theme and game design that appeals broadly.  If they don;t have your theme, wait a few months its coming...including Axe Cop.  Yup That is not a mis-print, look it up.  Don;t be surprised if Munchkin Conan does not show up (or some riff on it) as well...

I am listening to Steve pitch his stuff and I come up with 3 things:
1) Steve is Smart
2) He listens and produces what his customers support
3) He isn't afraid to try things-PROVIDED they make him $

Look at the bulk of SJG's projects and they are a lot of one off's with potential.  Let's take Cthulhu dice.  He made the game sure...now he has a Cthulhu dice bag that looks like Cthulhu...and he is coming out with a giant foam die version with Cthulhu silly bands as markers.  Clearly this is making him $. If an when any of these bomb-Steve moves on.

He showed a giant plush tentacle, maybe 2 feet long-no purpose, no game tie, just a tentacle.  If enough attendees could convince him they could sell it-SJG gets in the foam tentacle business.  If it sells maybe you get foam eyes on stalks next, if that sells, maybe wings.  Steve stops when a sales threshold is not met and then moves on.

So why not GURPS?  Unlike the last edition which filled shelves with splat books, this edition really does not have anything to show for itself.  In fact I don;t remember seeing any GURPS at his rather large booth.  What does that tell me? It is not selling. In fact it is selling so poorly, it isn't worth talking about or showing to prospective retailers.  Brother that is bad...remember the foam tentacle? He was willing to talk about that...but not GURPS...yeeech

Okay so Munchkin sells by the goat-load, and GURPS is Texas sized roadkill.  What's my point?  Should be obvious-PEOPLE WANT AND WILL BUY EASY TO PLAY AND UNDERSTAND GAMES.  Munchkin-easy, GURPS-hard.  Solution?  Already made (but need updating) Melee and Wizard.

Don;t believe me? Okay let's talk about WotC!  Yup after they had zippo at GAMA, they had 40 feet of gaming goodness at this show!

Board games 25 feet
Magic 10 feet
D&D 5 feet

That isn't a mistake either and D&D was spread out to cover the 5 feet and almost no one was looking at it.  WotC was showing what people were buying. (FYI-they have Shogun/Samurai swords reprint coming-looks sweet!)

 To be clear I am not some gilded age wanna be, back to the future, everything was better when TSR had a cartoon, my kingdom for a wood grain box devotee.  What I am is mystified by the blind devotion to encyclopedic gaming production in an age of on demand consumer. Is that a problem?  If you think it is, you need to ask yourself what the problem is?  Is it the chicken laying the egg or the egg that is getting produced? Or do we need a different bird altogether now?

Discuss...

OSR is a pilgrimage, not a destination

Hello from the road. One of the good thing about being trapped in a metal tube 35,000 ft above the planet is the luxury of time to read and think  uninterrupted. Note that only applies provided you have a window seat.

I can't say my site is OSR (Old School Renaissance) compliant particularly if by OSR you mean only D&D.  In fact its clear using that yardstick, this site is not even measurable.  For me (and yes I own and love the old stuff, D&D and beyond) I see the idea of OSR as one not about recreating D&D in some idealized form, I see the OSR movement as one of a pilgrimage.  I define a pilgrimage as a search to find deep moral or spiritual significance.  So I read, write, study and play the old school games trying to find that spark of significance that still matters to me and inspires me all these decades later.

Also note I am referring to myself, although I don't think I am the only OSR Pilgrim.  Between my starting in the RPG hobby in 80-81 and to where RPG games are now, something to my mind has been buried and lost.  Well at least to me its been lost.  The fun and joy I had in playing RPG's which numbered 64 or fewer pages became buried in tomes of rules.  The free form, figure it out style of play where every DM did something different became homogenized, ruled, and dis-spirited.  Somewhere along the line, "it's not in the book" ceased to be an opportunity, and instead became a problem.  In the end the more advanced and detailed rules have become, the less free and enjoyable I have found gaming.  In fact it is to the point where I simply gave up playing driven away by encyclopedias of rules, their vocal adherents, and attendant rules lawyers.

Then I realized if what I enjoyed were the more free form, more flexible, less layered rule sets-they were still available.  Sure not in a store, but in my garage and in my closet.  I began my journey by reading and re-discovering what thrilled in the past, and how little enforced structure was actually there.  That lead me to the net to see if any other journeyers were on the road as well.  Sure enough the road is packed with travelers.  There are the outbreaks and cries of truth and heretic, but I keep right on walking.

In the end D&D is not a bible, Gygax and Arneson are not saints, and Tekumel is no temple.  Even so they all have something to say to the traveler on an OSR pilgrimage who stops to read, ponder, and look for enlightenment-not an answer. I hope to see you on the OSR road, and I know that whenever I stop, others will keep going on their own pilgrimage, and that is as it should be.

In the immortal salutation of Marc Miller of Traveler fame, "Bon Voyage!"

Happy Easter!

Creatures in Roguish

The "name that game" poll on this site and on the Roguish RPG site turned out about as mixed as I was on the title.  Even so, Roguish did get the most votes, so it stays as the game title.  For those who took time to respond thanks!

Here is another brief look into Roguish with creatures and stat blocks.  As with everything Roguish I try to skin it down to what's most important, at least as I see it.  You may see some things missing that you feel are important, and if so let me know what and why.  Is treasure important? Number appearing? Habitat? I did not think these critical and they could actually be limiting, but you still have chance to tell me I'm wrong and explain why.

Animals and Monsters

Fantasy worlds of legend and literature are filled with all sorts of dangerous creatures. Herein you will find all sorts of challenging foes for your characters to overcome. In Roguish, animals and monsters are represented by seven Categories:

Type (TY): This broadly defines the category of creature in Roguish.  Some spells or special abilities may only affect certain creature types.

Animals-this includes insects, dinosaurs, dogs, bears, oozes, slimes, and other similar creatures.

Enchanted-this broadly covers magical beasts like dragons, demons, and living statues.

Humanoid-creatures which have a human like appearance and traits from goblins to giants.

Undead-creatures which have returned from beyond deaths pale veil like Zombies, vampires, and ghosts.

Skill level (SL): This represents its ability to make physical and magical attacks whether with claws, swords, bows, fangs or spells.  The SL is added to all attacks or spells cast of any kind made by the creature.

 Second the SL can serve as a guide for the Referee.  It can be used to help determine if the creature is strong enough or too strong for the characters to face.  As a guideline a monster’s SL is roughly equivalent to a player character’s level.

Defense Value (DV): This bonus represents how well protected or how much armor the creature wears.  Add the creatures DV to its die rolls to defend from physical attacks. If using targeted combat rules the number in parenthesis is the target number you need to exceed to hit the creature.

Movement (MV): This represents the number of spaces a creature can move on the ground in one 5 second turn.  Multiply the score by 5 to get the number of feet that represents. If you see a slash the number after the slash is the creature’s speed flying.

Damage (DM): The letter after shows how much damage a creature does when it makes a successful attack.  This will be L, M, V, X, or Z.  If you see a + and a number (#) after the letter, it means you should add that number to the total damage rolled.   An Asterisk means they creature has a special attack like fiery breath or magical spells!  See that creature’s description for more information.

Hit Point (HP): This is the amount of damage the creature can take before it dies.

Behavior (BE): This will give you an idea of how and why the creature acts. Below is a brief list of possible behaviors, feel free to add your own.

Cowardly-attacks with surprise or in groups, flees if things go badly

Territorial-fights if attacked or to defend territory or property it claims as its own

Aggressive: Will fight and pursue those who retreat

Creature Example

Goblin

TY: Humanoid SL:1 DV:1(11) MV:7 DM:L* HP:6 BE: Cowardly

These small 3 foot tall pale green or gray skinned creatures are thin wiry and not too smart. They breed like rabbits and are notorious thieves with a hideous love of humanoid flesh.  Dwarfs have tired for eons to destroy them, but like rats they simply scurry away.  Usually they are armed with knives, short bow, javelins, and small shields.  For every 30 goblins, one will be a shaman knowing how to cast 1-3 different spells.

Playtest Character sheets for Roguish

Well, sort of a character sheet...except they are bookmarks!  As I work on my Roguish RPG I thought I'd share with you the play test character sheet.  A bookmark may not be the hardiest of character sheets to use long term, but it is definitely a familiar, friendly, and simple way to get people started playing.  It does not intimidate a new player, it has a little picture to help fire the imagination, and it is not covered in big gaping blank areas to be filled in, nor lots of little boxes and stats to be filled out.  The other cool thing is it is a neat takeaway that can be used as a bookmark after the adventure, and might keep a play tester thinking about the game.

Not sure if the final character sheet will remain in bookmark form, or if I'll have a bit more detailed option ...but getting 5 character sheets from one piece of paper is pretty sweet!

TFT Basic Set that was and wasn't: Dragons of Underearth

A while ago I wrote a rambling missive on my strange fascination with TFT and it's status as the biggest "just miss" in role playing for me.  Late in the life of Metagaming Inc., a new boxed set was released call Dragons of Underearth.  This was a basic and trimmed down FRPG based on Melee, Wizard, and TFT.  Strangely, Dragons of Underearth was apparently tied back to another Micro Game Lords of Underearth.  Lords of Underearth is a fantasy war game that has some ties to TFT, but it's definitely not a FRPG.  You control companies of fighters and battle using a CRT. More odd? Apparently the never published follow up to Dragons, Conquers of Underearth, served to expand and tie Dragons of Underearth and Lords of Underearth together into a "company based" FRPG solitaire play war game.  What would THAT Frankenstein monster of a game have looked like?

The Lords of Underearth is a unique and fun war game, and I suppose if your gaming style consisted of parties of adventures battling hordes of goblins, orcs, or other beasts in company sized units then a mash up with a FRPG is certainly a lost treasure.  Perhaps this sort of thing could have been invaluable to say an avid Birthright player or to the players who wanted to run their own kingdoms and have their party of characters involved in mass combats.  I never understood that need myself, but I'd never turn down another tool in the old gaming toolbox.

Back to Dragons of Underearth, while it is a basic FRPG based on TFT, its' pretty clear it's goal was to serve as a bridge to the Conquerors of Underearth product.  This again seems like yet another Metagaming mistake.  Where TFT became too complex and rules/ exceptions heavy, Dragons scaled back (too far mind you) to the core basics of the system presenting a simplified (and unfinished) core FRPG system.  Yet it's apparent goal was only to set up the basics needed to get into playing Conquerors.  I make this assumption based on two sources: The Dragons of Underearth rules which mention Conquerors multiple times for reference and rules expansion.  Second, from the designer himself commenting on it.

What a waste.  As Thompson did not like the direction Jackson took TFT, and Dragons seemed like the potential product Howard originally envisioned TFT to become, it's sad to think of Dragons as a bastard "son of TFT" meant only as a bridge to some other game. I created my own version of what a basic game might have looked like with Heroes & Other Worlds.

Below posted are the Dragons of Underearth designers notes from Interplay #8. 

Pocket Full of Peril #8: Ruins of Rhee-Suh-Uhs

Rhe-Suh-Uhs' tentacles of power once stretched over the land.  Slowly he lost power as others arose to challenge his rule.  In the end he fled into the southern ruins and caves of Mount Lepos with his family and retainers.  Rumors abound of fabulous wealth stashed in his tomb but its been hundreds of years surely there is nothing left to loot...or is there?

Tip of the cap to Tim Ballew over at Risus Monkey for the geomporphs edited and used to create this Pocket full of Peril.

Download the PDF version in the PfoP repository on the right side of the page!

Pocket Full of Peril #7: Lair of the Lunartics

 

People in the small  villages around Mount Lepos have an ongoing problem, their folk are disappearing during nights of a full moon.  Worse, occasionally they come back with a misshapen neck and back, gaunt, stumbling and feeding on the flesh of any they find.  Mount Lepos is a notorious site filled with caves, ancient mines, hives of goblins, and strange creatures no man can name.  What is abducting the villagers and can it be stopped before the next full moon?

I ran this using my Roguish RPG system and its become something of a "Hive Crawl" at this point.  For now I'll post this first level PFoP version.  All the wicked cool hive geomorphs were made by Stonewerks and you can find them by clicking the link.

The Lunartics
The Lunartics in my game are an alien species that have been stranded for ages inside of Mount Lepos slowly growing in numbers.  They are now venturing out and using hive leaches to create zombie workers to dig new areas, or food for this brood.  The lunartics themselves look like pale gray/white upright walking ticks.  Huge bloated abdomens that are inches above the ground. The top short arms are used for feeding and grasping things up close to their poor vision eyes. The longer middle arms are used to hold tool or weapons, and two large power full legs propel their bodies uprightly like a humanoid.  The lunartics feel vibrations in the air via antennae,  through their feet, and through millions of small spiny hairs more than they actually see things.  So things like invisibility or hiding in shadows serve no purpose if the person doing these things is also moving.

There are lunartic workers who use a bite or claw to defend themselves.  Their carapace is equal to hardened leather or scale armor. The lunartic warriors use spine throwers which are sort of a shotgun firing d6 darts. These are fueled by a strange spiney larva.  In addition they use spore "grenades" which are a fungal growth that when broken does one of 3 things: Fails, creates a choking gas cloud, or creates a poison gas cloud.  This is determined by the age and moisture richness of the spore. They fall back on using dual wielded sharp dagger like knife hooks which grow from their claws and mark them as warrior caste at birth.  Their armor is also harder, like chain mail when young and plate mail when veteran.

Hive Leaches
The hive leaches are slow moving centipede like creatures which glow faintly in the dimness.  They range from a 12 to 18 inches in length.  They bred as food by the lunartics and secrete a mind altering fluid that effects humanoids by turning them into zombies.  A hive leach when attached to a humanoid well first paralyze, and the slowly feed off the victims spinal fluid until the back breaks and the victim is crippled.  This usually takes a few months.  In the meantime the victim is kept alive an nourished by the hive leach producing a protein based saliva that keeps the subject alive and also "zombifies" the victim.  The lunartics turn these victims into simple miners.  When threatened the hive leach secrets an adrenaline into the victim causing the fight or flight reaction in the host.

Spore Flies
In the hive players can also come across spore flies. These look like bat-winged grub insects with glowing abdomens. They bite and leach onto victims drain 1 hp per turn they are attached.

Mushmoons
These are strange yellowish mushrooms that glow in dark and give off a candles worth of light for up to 30 days even after being picked.  When eaten by humanoids it can create various effects depending upon the age of the mushroom.  Dried mushrooms can be eaten like an iron ration and fill like a full meal.  Young ones are deadly poisonous, and full grown ones can induce madness.

What lies lower in the lair?  Time will tell...

Download Pocket Full of Peril #7 PDF  in the PFoP Repository link to the right. 


Also note my first dozen COLLAPSE RPG Administrator kits are now for sale!

Roll your own dungeons

I saw this new Dungeon Morph Dice kickstart project and wanted to call it to your attention.  in essence each die face is a different dungeon geomorph, and they intend on producing a set of 5 different dice!

The goal is $6500 to produce the sets and there are a range of different pledge levels to see them get produced.

One thing I'd like to see is a firm pledge for everything: dice sets, battle maps the whole works.  As is if you add $80 to the top level you get the works, but that seems a bit of a gray area.  Just add a firm pledge level for "the werks!" Note, i did make my pledge today!  I hope they also use geomorphs from Stonewerk's Blog as he has produced some great geomorphs I have used in my Pockets full of Peril adventures.

I have a couple large sized D12 that have different dungeon halls and rooms on them so you can roll your own dungeon, and they have made some cool on the fly dungeon maps.  Maybe I'll roll up a couple and post them at some point.

New dungeons crawls await

UPDATE:  My copy just shipped (3/23) from The Warstore.  I have bought lots of stuff from Neal, his selection, service, and shipping are tops! Get yours there today!

I am a huge fan of dungeon crawl boardgames.  Note that does not mean I think they are all good, just that when good they can be a fun way to spend a couple hours.  Often times getting someone to sit down and try one of these types of games has led them down the forbidden and dark path to full blow role-playing! (Insert our own sufficiently diabolical laugh here-go on, I'll wait...)

There are two new dungeon crawl games coming soon that you might be interested in.  One is sufficiently dark and brooding and the other is refreshingly cool and unique.  Note neither is really out yet, but you can get minis and in both cases the full blown games should be coming soon.

First from Mantic Games- The Dwarf King's Hold: Dead Rising.
It looks very Space Hulk like in that it is simple to learn, easy to play, and will probably (unlike GW) include future supplements like Orcs as villains.  I could go on about it, but the video below does a swell job of outlining the rules and demoing game play.  The only problem I'd point out in the video is that in demoing, the Scottish host gets a bit too caught up in playing and trying to win rather than just illustrating the game play. Well I can't blame a fellow for wanting to win.




Next is a decidedly anime styled crawl called Super Dungeon Explore from Soda Pop miniatures.  While the full boxed game is not out yet, the miniatures supporting the game are.  Some will hate the designs, but I think they rock, it's nice to see sculpts outside the usual range of fantasy archetypes.  The demo game is a free down load and although I have not had a chance to play it yet, I have purchased all the minis in hopes of doing so.  With my luck the boxed game will be out before that happens, but in the mean time, here is a look at the minis.

GAMA 2011 Report: When the king abdicates the throne...who will rule?

Well at GAMA this year, the RPG throne was noticeably vacant. Last year I wrote a bit about my take on the GAMA trade show. This year, it was both better and worse. Note, working for a game company I had access to the show floor yesterday while MFG's were setting up so I got to see it all and talk to folks before the show officially opens today.

Of note it seemed like the number of retailer attendees was up. That's good although whether it was due to increased freebies at the show, the timing of the show this year, or a strengthening of the hobby market overall is not clear. Attendance was strong in the “new retailer” presentation by distributors so that is a good sign. In speaking with some retailers, they have seen sales remain strong in the first quarter this year up from same time last year. What categories are strong? Boardgames lead the way in the strength of sales, card games second, then minis, then RPG's a distant 4^th. Now that is not a blanket statement for the industry, only the feedback I got from ten different retailers in different parts of the U.S. Mostly west coast and mid-west stores. Distributors I spoke with concurred with retailers on a category by category basis. RPG's were as an average less than 20% of overall sales. Of that 20%, roughly 90% would be split Paizo/WOTC, with everyone else dividing up the last 10%. Again that's not biblical, just a breakdown of hearsay conversations from multiple industry distributors and from retailers.

Okay so RPG's are the weak horse in the hobby industry currently, but what did I see from the RPG companies at the show? Not much at all.

It was a bit of surprise here as really only Green Ronin and Indie Press Revolution showed anything. No Paizo, no Fantasy Flight, No Steve Jackson Games, No Goodman Games, and WotC was only an INFORMATION BOOTH! So in terms of the RPG market, for all intents and purposes NO ONE was showing! All the gorillas who OWN the market did not show a damn thing. Is it arrogance? Laziness? Cost cutting? You make the call on your own as I think its a stew of all of the above. Furthermore in discussions with a Paizo person, they believe WotC has ceded the RPG market to Paizo at this point. It's a statement I can't argue against.

You see WotC is cutting back on all D&D RPG because it does not earn enough revenue for Hasbro to invest resources in. Regardless of what you or I consider to be “enough revenue” current D&D is NOT meeting Hasbro's goals. The scuttlebutt with distributors was a potential D&D 5.0 announcement this summer. D&D 5.0 may print only core books (and or boxed sets) and then everything else goes PDF. Apparently Hasbro is happy with the online revenues generated by D&D, but print is dead and not worth the expense to Hasbro. So the edition wars may have one edition less to deal with, but a new one could be on the horizon. Now 5.0 is one possibility, alternatively-they could sell it off to someone else and divest themselves of the brand. I think that is less likely unless someone overpaid Hasbro for it.

You see the D&D lines of board games are successful, and that could be the way Hasbro chooses to represent and sell the D&D brand going forward. This would not mean a death of the Original RPG, only a reduction in stature to possibly a tertiary brand treatment. Anyway you look at it though, the king is at least grievously wounded and no one is looking for a cleric to save him.

So enter Paizo, with it's version of the grand old game. I never liked 3.0 nor 3.5 when I worked for WotC, so my own interest in the continuation of Encyclopedia Gamika books and manuals is nil. Regardless a HUGE amount of RPG players love it and actively play it. Game shops sell the heck out of it, and I can't see an end in sight as D&D continues to weaken, Paizo continues to pick up steam. Plus there is an interesting, though overdue, Pathfinder product coming. I am not sure the target audience for this product will be interested, but the market will decide.

If RPG's are less than a 2% showing at GAMA then what's the rest of the show? Well trading card, and constructable card games are huge. Board games remain big, and miniature games continue to hold their own. Here is an odd thought. As the RPG market declines to a no show status at a major retailer trade show, will dice manufacturers sink as well?

RPG's require a large commitment in terms of time and energy from individuals to play. A card game can be over in as little as 10 minutes. A simple board game, maybe 45 minutes. Sure on average a card game or a board game (depending upon the game) can be much longer, but even at an hour or two hours, it is much less time investment than an RPG and you can play it and put it away with no further commitment. .

My point being the barrier to entry on an RPG is substantial compared to a card game or average board game and the notion of campaigning is fairly central to playing an RPG. Character leveling and improvement over time of playing means campaigning IS a central tenet to RPG's. They system itself assumes you will be playing for a long time to come. If I win or lose a game of Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, or Memoir 44, there is no expectation that it will have any impact on my playing the game again, whenever I chose to do so. With RPG's that is not the case. In an age of on demand, twitch gaming, is there any room for RPG's in the long term?

Absolutely.

Just because it will never be the golden age, nor the silver age, nor the cubic zirconium age, does not mean it isn’t still a viable and potentially strong game format. It's about adjusting your expectation and accepting and building upon they way things are rather than how they have been in the past.

SO here is a perfect opportunity for one or more small press RPG companies to steal the show-there really is no competition on the show floor, you have hundreds of retailers, every major distributor at the show, and you are...maybe reading this blog and hopefully kicking yourself in the ass. Next year you may not be so lucky to have the floor to yourself, but maybe you will?

Ian Livingston on Tricks & Traps

Inspired by a post by Jim at Carjacked Serpahim I began thinking about tricks and traps.  Note Jim's article is not specifically about tricks and traps, but the lesson gleaned from his post is a great one!  Anyway I half remembered an article in an old Fighting Fantasy magazine.  It is a simple but good one and was originally presented in Warlock Magazine #4 (oh for the heady days when the term Warlock had nothing to do with Charlie Sheen or his brain.) WINNING!

Even hardy adventurers often have a difficult time overcoming all the monsters they encounter on their quests. But I am sure that many have suffered wounds caused not by monsters, but by the devious traps that are set inside the Gamebooks. How many have bad memories of the portcullis levers in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, or the deadly devices riddled throughout Deathtrap Dungeon? Traps are the perfect obstacles to thwart even the toughest adventurers, since overcoming them often requires brain instead of brawn. Traps can be simple – for instance, if you walk through a left-hand door, something unpleasant is going to happen to you, but if you walk through the right-hand door, you will benefit somehow. Or traps can be complex, requiring more thought than simply choosing one of two options. Visual clues in an illustration of a trap can be spotted. Simple mathematical puzzles can be applied to tricks to make them more challenging, as in the Statue Room in Deathtrap Dungeon. There is obviously plenty of scope for tricks and traps. Traps can be applied to doors, floors, tunnels, rooms, stairs and passageways, and feature arrows, daggers, spears, teleporters, chutes, rolling boulders or iron balls, gas, acid, fire, poison – the possibilities are endless. As an example, a common trap is a stone which falls down from the ceiling when triggered by the opening of a door. Another example is the floor of a room which pivots at its centre and deposits the unfortunate adventurer down into lower rooms/pits/ cellars. Wounds may be received as a result of the fall and, even worse, escape may not be possible if the adventurer does not already possess a pole or some rope.

Tricks can be presented in the form of riddles, rhymes, illusions, animated objects, dialogue, unseen messengers, puzzles and anagrams in or on scrolls, walls, etchings, paintings, carvings, doors, pillars, idols, fountains, ashes, ceilings, floors, chests, chalk, etc. A passageway appears to come to an end at a doorway. The adventurer may be given the options of trying to open the door or walking back down the passageway. The door is in fact an illusion which has been placed over a pit. If the adventurer tries to open the door, he or she will fall down the pit and lose STAMINA points. However, the adventurer might have found a ring of illusion-detection
earlier in the adventure, and will be given a chance to see the illusion should he or she opt to open the door. Another example might be that the adventurer walks into a room where there is a lantern. The door slams shut behind the adventurer and a genie emerges from the
lantern. The genie asks the adventurer a riddle which, if answered correctly, will benefit the adventurer, but will cause injury, if answered incorrectly.

The Name Game (and art update)

The whole idea behind using "Roguish" as a game title stems from my love of roguelike pc games.  The endless dungeons, random things you find, and always different dungeon maps fit well with my experience playing pen & paper games.  One of the most popular roguelikes is Diablo. In essence Diablo is nothing more than a super chrome job and "real time" combat version of classic roguelikes.  So while Roguish as a fantasy RPG name brings up that classic exploration and combat connotation to me, to others it could mean:

a) nothing
b) non-rpg based reference
c) something thief based only 

None of those is an accurate mental pigeon hole for my game.

As I work for a game company, I am familiar with branding and how important it is to successfully marketing and creating interest for your product.  While Roguish may catch the concept to me, as a name it's not really working.  The more I write and work on the game the more I feel it's a miss on a number of different levels.  To that end I have come up with a few possible names to replace Roguish.  Your vote is important so let me know what you think of:

Peril & Plunder
Sword & Shield
Tombs & Terrors
Adventurous
Roguish (hey I could be wrong)

UPDATE
Also I thought it worth noting (and posting with some pride) my wife will be supplying some of the art for my (TBD) Fantasy Role Playing Game, below is something I might use either as introductory pages or possibly as inserted chapter break pages for added "feel" in the game.