ben wenham's page

cool, give me a shout on the 30th, and I will sort that out.

Hi all,

Thanks to a very silly promise made to Shane Hensley from pinnicle, I am pleased to let you scumbags know that the first two of you to let me know of your interest, will be getting a copy of a PDF copy of the Savage Worlds Deluxe core rules, purchased by me to reduce my guilt at being given a free copy as part of the Deadlands Noir Kickstarter, and because I love Deadland.

Now before I go any further, a couple of nitty gritty details. First off, it goes without saying but if you already have a copy it would be polite to let someone who hasn't got one get it.
Secondly, and this is very important, I will not be purchasing it for you until the 29th/30th of this month, for reasons of money.

So come on you skum bags let me know if you want it.

Regards,
Ben

Oh, P.S. If you haven't checked out Deadlands Noir yet....go do it.

I would very happily have it

Hey yoda. Congrats mate, i hope this turns out awesome.

Hi guys.

Had another read through of some of the feedback here.

I am ofcause very happy that a lot of people seem to have enjoyed Skeleton moon, and it saddens me that there have been people who did not enjoy it too.

Battlements:
Yes, there is a lot more of the castle that is just not mapped. I have a few rough scetchs, from doodles i drew juring the planning stages, through to more detailed maps i have drawn since. While i have no doubt mike could have created a stunning map for flint tower as i envision it in it'd entirity, i doubt that it would have complied with the restrictions we have as to space which can be devoted to maps. Especially when most of it, would have been unused space. Many of the buildings stare cases have either rotted away, or collapsed due to the passage of time. the battlements would have originally been reached by the collapsed internal stair well on the north eastern side of the tower. Sefu reached this point by using his climb skill, not difficult due to the nature of the buildings.(Here in colchester, i have seen children in hard leather school shoes climbing up some 30 feet on the walled that inspired the site, without rope or chalk.)

Sefu's escape:
Sefu needed no secret door or tunnel or even magic to escape. A knotted rope, rough walls and a little time as the PCs get themselves into trouble and then find their way inside, is really all that he needs to escape. Climbing, as already stated, is an ideal way to escape the building.

Chalaxian death chicken venom:
So why no scrolls of stone to flesh, when dangerous, non-native creatures of ill repute are being kept on site? Well the reasons are numerous.

Firstly, from a design angle. The PC's are about five miles(a little over an hours fast walk.) from one of the worlds largest cities. With even the simplist communication magic or a fast horse, a PC can be back on their feet within about half an hour.
Such a choice can be covered in about two minites of game play, and the player is back in the game before you can say fiddlesticks. The adventure would be over by the time PCs confronted the person most likely to have a magic item that would reverse the effect, and half over before they reached a place where one might logically be found.

From the point of view of the people involved. D'Aponte doesn't handle things like the day to day running of a dig. He just doesn't have that sort of mind, that has always been why he is so dependant upon Sefu. D'Aponte in his current state, wouldn't even notice that one of his staff had stopped showing up, unless ofcause it was Sefu. It is even doubtful he would stop his research to remove the petrification on one of his assistants, unless he was carrying something important at the time. That isn't to say that he wouldn't care, but such things can be handled once the ritual is over.

Sefu on the other hand, has many reasons not to buy scrolls capable of removing the petrification. He can't use them. They are expensive, and while D'Aponte has provided him money to purchase them, if no one get petrified before his plan goes into motion, he can keep the money for himself. Since it is Sefu who is responcible for having any such tool to hand, and he has no real reason to purchase it, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have them appear on site.

Dave, Sarah, rob and others. Thank you very much indeed, you did a great job.

Attended both days and was perfectly happy with playing all five slots, so I would like the game in the evening slot to be an option please :)

Haroun, I was Amrasan in that adventure and granted whilst it was the only damage I took, it was still a very good run and great fun :)

Hope to see it reoccur next year. Very enjoyable, the players all worked together and got into the spirit of it right from the get-go.

I agree with DigitalMage above that there was an issue in one of our games but on the whole we did not let it detract from the con simply because the other four games were right on the money :). Therefore can I say a big thanks to:

Phil (perils of the pact), Dave (Divine Glory - especially for letting us drop in last minute), Andy B (Prince of Augustine) and Ben (Skeleton Moon)

Really enjoyed your games, your company and your style of DMing was spot on. Thanks to all the players I journeyed with for a good time and for working together in all aspects.

I will also point out that the Skeleton Moon was a great adventure and it was a distinct boon to have Ben run it personally.

Thanks

Drac. (Amras lvl 2 Elven Fighter)

I am right in thinking you where the trip machine of doom correct?

Thank you and I am really glad you had a good time as a whole. Even more so that my weaknesses at the table did not detract to much from your enjoyment.

The atmosphere and the way that everyone played was superb. It was a treat to see so many old friends again and to get people wanting to play at my table.

Although having a 13 year old McGee girl at my table made me feel old, especially when I can remember DMing her parents with her in a cot nearby.

Also it was a bonus that Richard Pett lead us through his Styes, the girallon-flesh golem was a touch unnerving but when you rarely get to play, you really want it to be special and it was. Thanks.

Lastly I want to thank Dave and Sarah and Rob (and any other organisers I may not have been aware of) because I took two friends who had never been to a Con and they are converts. You did good.

To Paizo itself, thank you the prizes, getting the Jackal's Price after the raffle was nice, but I would have liked the opportunity to meet and game with one or two more of you staffers too. Maybe next time.

Cheers

Hey, thank you for a very very fun stay of execution, which, suffered greatly due to being in the last slot, but which represented on of my high points in the weekend. I must remember however to buy an official taldoran t'shirt so that next time i find myself alone, in a room full of gnolls....i can avoid having the revilation of my pure awesome, spoiled by rotten fruit ;)

Hopefully next year we will get another opertunity to destroy on of richard Pett's beauitfully constructed toweres of doom together. This game was ofcause one of the other best bits.

Thank you so very much for your kind words here and elsewhere, and may the death chickens be with you.

Charles Evans 25 wrote:

Made it to the afternoon session, and I witnessed a PC death in the Styes....

Obituary:
Name of PC: Merisiel
Day Job: 'Pathfinder Iconic'
Cause of Death: Poison arrow trap, whilst chasing 'The Monkey' home to the lair of The Organ-grinder
Real Cause of Death: The twisted genius that is Richard Pett
<Cut>

Alas poor Merisiel, she died as she lived... obliviously, stupidly and spectacularly. At least Ezren couldn't taunt her about growing a second head any more, and I got to play a conveniently-hanging-around Amiri (who would probably have died too, from a building collapsing on her whilst she wildly attacked a huge fire elemental, if it hadn't been for Rich rolling a one at just the right time; for a save against a highly-unlikely-to-succeed dismissal attempt from the cleric).

And I hear that, whilst the adventure was never published, it may well become available at some point :).

Fantastic weekend, special thanks to Wintergreen and everyone else who helped with the organisation, all the players I had the honour of adventuring with and my wonderful GMs: Ted, Rich and Frenchwolf (twice). Oh and to Ben for writing a scenario that truly made me fear for my character's life :P.

I'd agree with Paul that I'd prefer to have something more social/light/drop-in-drop-out in slot 3. I'll freely admit I dropped out of slot 3 because I just can't hack 12 hours of nothing but D&D, especially after the rather intense Styes game; if there'd been some light board-games or other silly and not too taxing activities, I could definately have gone for that rather than just sneaking off to the pub :).

Oh, I can't remember who was asking for a link now, but Pete's aborted diary of my CotCT game can be found here.

Here's to next year!

It was really nice playing a couple of games with you Illessa.

I especially loved the atmosphere of the Styes.

I am also very glad you enjoyed Skeleton Moon.

You have clearly forgotten the foremost reason that it will be better, tought you have alluded to it. So...

Reason 6: Tea. You'll be able to get a decent cup of tea. It is a well known fact that it is entirely impossible to get a decent cuppa anywhere in the states. Given that i require fortification with earl gray atleast once an hour, i personally am happy that it will be possible.

Congrats Larry.

Ben,

great job writing the adventure! Hope you like what I did with the final cartography. :)

I recently started producing the maps for Paizo's Pathfinder Society Scenerios so let me know if you have any crits or suggestions about the finished work.

Thank you Mike.

I have now seen the final thing. You managed to capture the character of the site perfectly, i hope my sketch wasn't to hard to work from.

It was a very pleasant suprise to see your very recognisable and awesome cartography style putting flesh onto Flint Tower.

Ben Wenham

Dude, awesome!

Thank you oh mad genius.

Thank you three.

I haven't seen the finished it yet, but I really can't wait too. I am especially keen to see the finished cartography.

I hope you all enjoy it at much as I enjoyed writing it.

congratulations guys.

Well done all of you.

To say i am profoundly dyslexic, is a little like saying 'some people live in london'. I literally couldn't read much more than 'the cat sat on the mat'(in truth, i couldn't even read that, i just recognised the sentence and cheated pretending that i was reading it.) until i was 12ish.

I am also a little bit lazy by nature. A bad combination to be honest. Learning to read was very, very difficult and i didn't have a reason to want to try a lot of the time.

I had started to play wargames and roleplaying games very early (7ish), they didn't help much but they did mean that i was atleast trying when i was at home.

Then at 12, a combination of three influences came together.

1. most importantly, i went to a new specialist school which made use of a system called 'Icons'. Icons gave me a tool to help decode written language.

2. I started playing vastly more RPG games and wargames through school clubs. This lead to me reading game books and magazines during the evenings in my dorm as my language skills blossomed.

3. I discovered terry pratchett and started read his work, as my reading improved.

Within six months i was reading as expected of someone my age and within a year i was consistantly reading at a level of some a year or more older than me. That trend continued to the end of my schooling.

So yes, i think what the character is doing is an exilent idea. Though probably only for children at a primary level.

Congrats guys.

*Levels a long gnarled finger and points at Amiri of the Six Bears.* "Fear...Fear...Fear."

I think that would make an excellent project. Many of the items submitted this year are good ones, both the general ones and some specifically aiming for Pathfinder flavor.

I'm about halfway through the entries at this point, and I admit I'm more impressed by the quality of this year's crop. I suspect that a number of people have raised their bar based on last year's.

And hey, if you have a SET of related items (as I know some of you do), please consider submitting them to Kobold Quarterly. Writer's guidelines are available.

Having a brief glance over the writer's guidelines I noticed this

KQ is taking queries from all Open Design patrons, from subscribers, and from established freelancers in the tabletop RPG field.

Now, I do not really qualify under any of these criteria to my, limited and rather tired, knowledge. With regards to sets of related items, should we just try our luck and let fate(aka Wolfgang Baur) sort it out?

Them there kobolds are trixy.

Hey Steven,

I've glanced at you blog and it is looking good. Just one thing, I'd really like to be able to comment on the Kobold Love Project. But I do not seem to be able to view the sneaky little Gits.

Its quiet funny to me, but late on Friday night/early Sunday morning, I was preparing to jump the gun and post my 'failed' submission in the as yet un-started list rejected of sub-missions as I wanted to wake up to some possible feed back. I would have too, but i saw, not ten seconds from doing so that Google mail believed I had new mail.

It took two reads of the email to believe that my eyes where not playing cruel tricks on me and until the next morning when some one else read the email for me to shrug of the feeling that my lack of sleep had caught up with me after many years of insomnia, and that I had suffered a psychotic break.

Hi guys,

Thank you again, Mr. Frost.

I hope you will all enjoy Skeleton Moon when it is finished. It should, I hope provide an interesting twists on one of the classic gaming tropes, use a wonderful but under-used (in my opinion) monster from real world myth, play around with one of the schools of magic and dip its toe into mysteries.

As a sort of semi-public service notice; to all those who didn't get chosen to write this, please, please, please continue to submit in future open calls. If I can do it, you can too.

Regards
Ben

P.S. Please, for like anything other than a credit or my bank statement, it's Ben. I abhorrence my full first name with a passion only surpassed by my hatred of my middle name, which none of you shall ever get.