Review: Royal Blood - A Game of Cards

tl:dr; a fun tarot-based heist game, great for whipping up vibrant characters and an intricate challenge for a punchy one-shot.

I got to play this as part of the forever-DMs support group - and it turned out it was on my drives so great chance for a review. Royal Blood is from Rowan Rook and Decard of Spire and Heart fame. I think I got this as part of a bundle and had given the blurb a read but it did not click with me - but now after playing it I have a lot more time for it, I could see this being useful for folk as a world-builder even for other games.

The high concept is that you are a 'Royal' - one of the court cards from the tarot deck - with magic flowing in your veins. Above the world are the Arcane - those who managed to claw or trick their way up to quasi-god-hood, recognised as one of the major arcana of the tarot. The game is about pulling off the heist that tears our the heart of power of one of the Arcane - to ascend yourselves potentially.

Art by Banana Chan

Mechanically it resembles Blades or Spire - not dice thrown but the minor arcana drawn and success depends on the value of the card - yes but, yes and, etc. The design is riotous - great evocative writing set over some bright pages - zine-sized, not a huge amount on each page but punchy and does what it needs to.

Own Personal Blorb/AntiBlorb

tl;dr: I like Blorb because it anchors on the concept of the oracular dice, that the DM facilitiates, guides the odds by writing the tables to be rolled on, but the dice decide fate. I like Anti-Blorb because it reflects how engaged players paint in the world too.

I read the original Blorb article and thought 'yes, of course' then I saw quite a lot of dismissiveness from commenters I otherwise respect that made me question had I missed something. After further digging I figure that the reasons they disagree is the portrayal of the principles of blorb as iron laws as opposed to a neat heuristic to make a GM's life easier. For that I find Blorb is great.

Hacking Technoskalds summary of Sandra's original model we have three tiers of in-world truth when the group sits to table and the curtain raises on the session:
Explicitly-noted facts are in the GM's binder to be uncovered as play begins
Rules or mechanics (including random tables) which generate truths about the world through play and how the dice fall
Improvised facts are things the DM will create in the moment to fill in gaps not covered by the first two

I find the toughest challenge over long form campaigns is keeping things consistent in-world. Everything reverts to the mean fantasy land mulch in my brain if I do not have some big hooks to hang a seperate world off - and things that remind me of the random little stuff I thought up that would be cool at some point. Setting it out in tiers helps me because it recognises the practical reality of some big set pieces get written up that you are going to use once the players find them, some stuff you are going to make up as you go along - but the intermediate tier is little systems and encounter tables is what helps keep things consistent.

I am fascinated by the description of 'blorby' by Fail Forward as a 'highly detailed pre-written setting' because it is to me one of the ways of *minimising* the detail you need to write into your setting. You generate some reasonable principles for the world - a good encounter table permits the players to wander wherever in a hex crawl for as long as they like. Combine that with mechanics like an overloaded encounter dice to allow any given encounter table entry to serve multiple duties - the encounter, the spoor, the lair, etc.

I like the specific expansion of anti-blorb - which again, weird name - because it maps to my table experiences over the long run.

Per Liches Libram Antiblorb follows the hierarchy:
explicit GM notes and overwise established truths, and if none exist
if the facts would be known to PCs, established player headcanon, and if that does not exist or is inapplicable,
if the facts would already by known to PCs, player fiat, and if that is not applicable,
procedures like random tables for generating truths flagged by the GM in advance, and if none exist,
GM fiat

My first read of 'player fiat' was very character driven 'my back story says' but when I think about my tables with longer running campaigns then it is much more the "I figure that..." of players deducing elements of the world that the DM simply had not yet considered. The DM may have arrived at a different answer if they had come to it alone but with the players here creating perfectly world-coherent answers, why not write it down and make it canon.

Pure unstructured improv for me runs the high risk of me whacking into some inconsistency that players will latch onto and either burn time on something that is not there or require immersion-busting back pedaling. The least wild improv I do the better because things getting generated off pre-thought-through procedures ought to be in-world consistent and support the players general vision of the world. Ideally this then sparks more player headcanon and player driven fact-making which then gives me more world-coherent material to riff off.

I like how Knight at the Opera talks through this approach and the benefits of this 'selective prep'.

It is also helpful as anything after long, draining days or weeks when the creativity within any given thing I am improving might be trying to draw from a dry well.

It helps me structure my creativity and keep the worlds consistent and different from each other, especially when there are gaps between games and switching between worlds.

Godspeed to those who can sit down and extemporise entire campaigns - I used to be able to do it back in college running IOU while my expresso machine ran continuously but not no more. These days, I blorb, because if I come up with a good idea, great! If the players tell me what great idea is implied by stuff I told them earlier, great! If I'm stuck but I've got some tables I can pull a quick random-but-tailored encounter out of, also great! And finally if I find myself way down this list - nothing prepped, the players don't know what should be here, it is off the charts of stuff I have thought of before - then we are in genuine blank space of the world and that is also engaging. Whatever I come up with here in this blank space is going to be informed by all the things it wasn't which at least is better than starting from absolute zero.

Joesky Tax - d6 Abandoned Heist Hauls
1. Smashed chest of small coins, obviously fallen from a great height, bloody scrapes along one edge, short trail of coins away
2. Multiple antique urns, with fading illusions to look like one of the urns, which has an illusion to look differently
3. A great rusted pile of chainmail, swords, helmets, halbards and other gear, within which glint gold and some gems
4. A tipped over coffin with a scarred lid, something crudely hacked off the center of it, scrolls tumbling out across the ground
5. An extremely obvious burial sight hides a chest of the local tax collectors. Multiple trails come too and from the burial pit, signs of multiple reburials.
6. Heavy bundles of fresh furs from a large, dangerous predator. Getting a bit gamey but treated soon might be sold for good coin

Shiny TTRPG links #172

A fair few interesting links this week. For yet more links, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

DIY & dragons kicks off Summer LEGO RPG Setting Jam

Goblin Punch writes Deconstructing Healing, Potions, and Shrines

Technoskald's Forge gives us Blorb: The Technoskald Interpretation

Planarian Calamarium shares Unified THACO Resolution

Blue Bard gave us Say Yes to the Players

Coins and Scrolls gives us OSR: 1d20 Dungeon Merchants

Traverse Fantasy writes Materialist Magic / Magical Materialism

The Wondering Monster shares Motivating Players to Hexcrawl with Maps Found as Treasure

Hidden in Shadows writes It started with Blackmoor - Firsts

Loot the Room gives us Appendix N Part 2: Games

Nothing's RPG Zone shares Staying Classy in the Stone Age 1

Dice in the North gives us Delver's Tools

Elfmaids & Octopi shares Factions for Chagrinspire For a Prison Adventure

Remixing: Spelljammer Light of Xaryxis Part II

With the campaign over, diving into a chapter-by-chapter pull-apart of Light of Xaryxis and how I turned it into a sandbox.

In the first part of this remix I wrote about what I did
Read through Light of Xaryxis (LoX) and rework the framing of the campaign.
Adapt the adventure by breaking it up into 'plot chunks' which could be separated.
Created a system for all the action to happen in.
Dropped the various plot chunks into places that made sense.

This post is going to go into more detail on the last point now - how exactly I pulled apart the adventure into how many chunks. The broad toolkit I was looking towards was The Alexandrian 'How to Remix an Adventure' in making a node based structure - where all the nodes here were planets. My initial work up had Chapter 2 happen then direct to Chapter 4, then Chapter 5 and after into 'sandboxing' where Chapters 3, 6, 7 and 8 were the recruitment quests for a different faction. Chapter 6 ropes in the vampirates, chapters 3 and 8 the mindflayers, chapter 8 the local barons and chapter 7 the local imperial loyalists.

To recap the system I rolled up:
0. The Snuffed Star – the guttering remains of a star
1. Gorondirs Throne – small, with a fiery moon that makes it habitable, dwelling of the Sussurans
2. Mystra’s Mirror - small, flat waterworld
3. Hrungirs Roar - titanic air world with a fiery moon and a habitable earthen moebius-strip, seat of the local astral elves
4. The Great Belt - chain of asteroids within an extended atmosphere, with mines and Bral-like asteroid cities
5. Obsidian Depths - vast water world, inhabited only by great beasts
6. Fanthirs Ruin – enormous earth world, once populated by dwarves, now a mindflayer hold
7. The Ring Sea – water belt with rocky clusters and a great moon within it
8. Tears of Joy – tiny warm water world, with a seafaring/spacefaring culture

Chapter 1 - tossed overboard entirely - replaced with a bridge from a 'space whaling' two-shot. I had the intro as the githyanki whaler captain be so impressed with them that they signed them up for what they figured would be a cushy number of a letter of marque with the Githyanki empire to go find a lost agent. This also served as an on-ramp to add players to the party. None of the book content got used as we never witnessed a Starseed drop from the ground. I could have recycled the Moondancer with Cpt. Sartell, Flapjack the Flumph, Traevus and his mutiny and all that elsewhere but I had no shortage of ships to use so they got sidelined.

Chapter 2 - used the Darkstar encounter more or less as is at the system boundary, just kept a more traditional hadozee crew to make the Dark Star and its mission a more orthodox fleet ship. My players, raised on Master and Commander, of *course* took the Dark Star as a prize. Rock of Bral was swapped out for main port in The Great Belt.

Chapter 3 - wreck of the Lucid Edict is a great encounter, lifted as the 'faction quest' to get the local Mindflayers of Fanthirs Ruin allied against the Xaryxians.

Chapter 4 - the Ebonsnare neogi ship got turned into a wildspace encounter - I did not bring in the Space Galleon rescuers since the PCs were well able to take the Ebonsnare apart alone. The Stalwart and Incorrigible were available for use but never got used. All the content about the Rock of Bral got lifted straight over to the local asteroid port, including the astral elf ambush; interestingly, this set the dogs running for the PCs that the Xaryxians must be running a big spy network, how to find it and rip it out? Krux gets found, mentions the Second Wind but the party has their own ship so they ignore it and head to Topolah's for intel. Fel Ardra got recycled as the Xaryxian spy network encounter later, Flinch and Starbough never got used. Hastain the reigar gets placed as an ambush encounter at the asteroid port but the PC's keep doing fast, cunning port departures and coincidentally spoiling Hastains ambush a few times.

Chapter 5 - Topolah's tower and the scavvers were used as is, placed in the Great Belt. Topolah was much appreciated as a source of good intel and her advice to find Gargenhale was taken seriously. The Kindori pod never got used; but this bunch had already been space-whaling. The Gargenhale content was used as was, placed over Obsidian Depths, the big local ocean planet. Throwaway lines in the Gargenhale set up - two starmoth wrecks, evidence of a fight - all this provided lots of investigation by the players trying to reconstruct the timeline of events which took a lot of DM prep on my side to figure out reasonable answers. The players of *course* stopped to strip the Starmoth wrecks to the deck-nails, looking for valuables and intel.

Chapter 6 - Gargenhale and his mutinous crew played as is - though the TPK potential of the explosive cargo of the Last Breath was something I watched nervously as people split up during the fight. There was also a good chance to blow Xedalli to kingdom come before ever meeting her if things go sideways in the fight with Agony. Xedalli was however found and promptly re-imprisoned by the party aboard their own ship.

Chapter 7 - Xedalli got used as is. Pretty much all the long-haul voyage content is here in the voyage to Doomspace so that got repurposed into general travel encounters. Aartuks of Aruun got recycled as the 'faction onboarding' quest for the ssussurans of Gorondirs Throne, including the bulettes. Doomspace itself got chucked - I kept everything in-system, especially since it turned out to be large with weeks of travel between planets.

Chapter 8 - Vocaths base got re-framed as the mindflayers orbital trade station over Fanthirs Ruin. Arena of Blood got turned into the "mindflayer alliance quest" and went by the numbers. Prince Xeleths ambush of his sister was recycled to trip once Xedalli showed herself in public (wherever). Xeleths back-up snatch team got repurposed into the Xaryxian spy network as an ambush on the capital of Hrungirs Roar.

Chapter 9 - Alliance in Doomspace was re-painted and used as a faction-building challenge series to recruit the quarreling local eleven remnants on Hrungirs Roar, the local capital planet. The goals/ambitions etc remained but I switched the races to be residents of Hrungirs Roar.

Chapter 10 - From here on the adventure ran pretty close to 'script'. Citadel assault was played straight up apart from the githyanki knight encounter getting thrown overboard. With the players allying with mindflayers and *being* the local githyanki force it did not feel like a good fit.

Chapter 11 - Trial by combat went more or less by the numbers - some villain monologuing then a beefy fight with a Zodar.

Chapter 12 - Betrayal, fight-back and then final decision to destroy Xaryxis were used as is.

So after I pulled all those bits out and scattered them around, I threw in another faction on Tears of Joy to be an accelerator - they would join once a majority of others were onboard.

I unleashed the players and after a fairly direct route in to liase with Krux they found themselves aware of the problem (sun is cooling due to starseeds, Xaryxians are assholes, they are attempting to reconquer the place, we need to get the locals off their butts by doing things to get them on-side against the Xaryxians). After that they had a bunch of leads to chase down corresponding to encounters from the book set on different planets and off they went. I did not worry too much about what level things were tuned for because with my experience 5e players can usually nova their way through whatever you throw at them and this table were some hard-bitten 30yr D&D vets.

I retooled the milestone levelling to be check-list - once a certain set of encounters were done, they levelled, which meant that it took a while as they cruised around doing bits and pieces then they started completing things and levelled relatively rapidly into the end game.

All in all it worked pretty well - the players went off on some tangents I was able to catch and over all 80% of the campaign sessions worked through at least some content from the book so we got good use out of it. I will walk through how the players interacted with all this on another post.

Light of Xaryxis lends itself well to remixing this way as there are lots of elements that can be swapped around without greatly impacting it

Further notes on running big open tables

Unplanned I ended up running a big table of nine for one of our open sessions recently - it can work, it is not to be feared and disdained as some might insist. I also got to play in a seven player, multi-faction brawl and ran a seven man table in the past months for other examples. Writing up notes as per Gorgon Bones best practices - Record your hobby experience.

I previously wrote up how I used to make it work in the 90s. In the past months I have run a table of seven and one of nine and it gave me a chance to re-test what I recalled as the way to do it and see was I kidding myself or suffering false memory.

What I remembered of my old methods were:
- make it easy for people to pay attention - either have people involved or make sure things are interesting to watch
- 'just use bears' - keep the monsters straightforward
- take breaks
- run a count down - hold people to making quick decisions
- ambush long discussions with random encounters
- Viking Hat DM'ing - strongly steering the table - though that was just how I ran things back in the day

Since the 90s things I picked up along the way that I thought would help are:
- Puzzles and terrain hazards are great
- Keeping the momentum going by telling people to be ready ahead of their turn

So from these recent sessions, things that stood out to me were:

Lots of bodies makes a mess of combat encounters - a lot of damage gets thrown out before a monster gets a second turn; add foes but keep those foes mechanically simple.

People mostly stuck together - everyone worked well except one or two 'self-centered' characters. Lone-wolves do not work as there is not the time for their running off alone. Getting the party moving through impulsive actions (just pulling the lever) can be fine to break debate-deadlock.

Weird, quirky characters are fine where the player knows how to play them so as not to be a drag. Large headcount tables live in the now, backgrounds are unlikely to feature strongly since there is not time to give everyone that kind of spotlight.

Vary between calling on everyone and letting some drive the action. Some players were happy to sit back and enjoy the ride, if things are being driven forward.

Watch the progress of the group as a whole - as long as things are generally moving forward you are doing ok. Some things get resolved quickly because of many bodies (combat), other things take longer (roleplay).

From the seven player table where sub groups split off regularly on mini-exploration runs, as long as people are doing entertaining things, others will be happy to 'watch the show' - a hub-and-spoke set up works where people do things and come back before doing another thing vs linear where people venture ever further away

From the nine player table - allow folk to run ahead with decisions, in particular being conscious of some players stopping to harvest or cast rituals or other time consuming stuff - note they are stopping to do a thing and see what everyone else is doing with their time. If the party feels it is critical, they will wait, if they feel it is indulgent they will move on and that gives a balance to 'bandwidth jamming'.

Pre-brief folk - recognise it is going to be a big table and ask their help keeping things moving - bring them inside the tent to help.

There was a cool puzzle as part of the nine player adventure, almost a toolbox for players to engage with as much as they wanted (programmable automata) and that worked well.

Shiny TTRPG links #171

Interesting links from about the web. For more links, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Methods & Madness shares Simplifying encounter procedures

RPG Wandering gives us RPG Carnival for May: It’s Not Easy Being Green

Ed Power at The Guardian writes Stop trying to turn Dungeons & Dragons into a Marvel-esque cash cow – it won’t work

Onion Souls gives us Magical accretion

Deeper in the Game shares Big Stakes GMing: Gamble Everything

State of the Blog (post #600)

I skipped out talking blog stats on the 5-year post, focused on meat-space so here we'll talk about how fares the online realm in a bit more detail.

On Traffic

Everything has gone weird - I assume scraping to feed AI models? The geographic origin of traffic here used to mirror where TTRPG-ers identified as their point of origin - 55% US, then 15% UK/Canada/Australia/Ireland, 10% EU, 20% rest - and over the past couple of months I've been getting *70%* of my traffic from the Pacific Rim - bouncing between Hong Kong and Singapore. That ain't real. Stripping off all that what I assume is bot-nonsense and traffic has been stable for 2024 so far at ~ 7800 hits a month.

Looking at this in the raw from blogger we can see the anomaly clearly - standard traffic is noisy, with occassional spikes with a quick drop of if I get featured somewhere. That big, sustained ramp-up since Feb 2024 is obviously nothing to do with me - either AI scrapers, backwash from other peoples cyberwars or whatever.

I am reassured some real folk do actually turn up because there are the comments and I see myself mentioned in random chatter now and then (shiny weekly links or the 1.2 million character sheets post). The r/OSR blogroll has been killed - the last one has just been left up and ... well throw your links in there to die I guess? I find the auto-feeds that folk set up on Mastodon are much more effective anyway so I am choosing not to fight this fight anymore. Farewell r/OSR blogroll, you served your purpose for a time. The two major replacements for getting the word out have been Sly Flourishes TTRPG Blogroll feed and the TTRPG network on Lemmy which is great because you can follow it on Mastodon and it just connects straight to your feed.

And again, I have to thank the following comrade-bloggers as those who bring readers here - both the long-standing Lizardman Diaries, DIY & Dragons, Chaudron Chromatique, Weaver.skepti.ch, Nothics Eye, Ynas Midgard, Uncaring Cosmos, Retired Adventurer, Kelvin Green, Awesome Lies, Spot Hidden, Shuttered Room, Wierd Wonderful Worlds, A Continent of Banalities, Archons March On, 3d6 Polar Bears and Advanced Mystery and Manners. I appreciate being on your blogrolls.

On content

Most popular posts of the past 6 months - assuming that all got equally affected by the bot-nonsense this is still some measure of what was popular.
Class/Race archetypes in 1.2 million D&DBeyond characters
Review: Reach of the Roach God
Review: Worlds Without Number
Campaign Spin-Up VIII - Fuzzier West March Sandboxes
Masquerade as social depth-crawl (RPG Blog Carnival)
Terrain, Terrain, Terrain
Landing the session ending for one-shots (RPG Blog Carnival)
Chekovs Hooks III: Loose Ends from Written Modules
Thoughts on a new "DMG of house rules"
Review: Beyond Corny Gron
Growing your game group (5yr Blog-iversary)

Of all of those, I am so glad I called out that I got all this data from Dice-scroller right at the top of the post about class/race archetypes post or this would be excruciating - I changed the colours to beef up the contrast and discussed the chart of all the data they pulled and somehow this post has become the 'go-to' post for discussing the dataset not their original post. Why, internet?

The review of Reach of the Roach God has shown legs which is nice but the Worlds Without Number one is really surprising - top 3 for Q1-2024 and it got published in Dec '21! Only other notable point is that the RPG Blog Carnival is providing good chewy topics to get the creative juices flowing on a consistent basis - join in if you don't already.

Another nice online moment was when Bruce Heard (of Princess Ark and Calidar) found the table-test I did of the flying ship combat system he published on his blog and reposted that Skyship Battle Playtest to his own blog. Praise from Caesar!

Additional online effort has gone into wrangling event notices on the RPGVienna forum and on the meetup - button mashing to get people to tables rolling dice.

On Goals

Since the last major check in I can cross off one major goal in that we brought the Spelljammer Light of Xaryxis campaign over the line - only my third campaign to hit their actual planned conclusion. Otherwise open night gaming continues, DM 101 session is at least scheduled and I am getting to play some Planescape as well as continuing Rime of the Frostmaiden.

I notice I have more fodder for 'actual play' and lessons learned posts, less time to do data posts - I guess that is a good sign of more actual gaming getting done.

Going to keep this thing running, it serves well as a place to document observations and lessons learned, flex creative muscles in the Blog Carnivals and so on.

Beyond Hirelings, Sub-questors for Pyramid Questing

My Ducal House table had an idea that, since the number of things on the parties to-do list had grown so collossal they would never get to them, they would parcel off some quests as things that could be run at my Friday open table games. Become quest-givers in other words.

On the face of it I love the idea, with the caveat that the first thing they proposed to carve off was a pretty grim problem that might just make mincemeat out of some uninformed adventurers. However, with a little finesse, I am sure this can be addressed.

The pros for me are that I already have a huge quantity of material for all the things they want to deal with - since they could well have gone to deal with it themselves. So in theory I just need to extract the specific notes for whatever is the objective, shape it into a one-shot session and see however a party does.

If red-teaming is having the opposition run by others what is this called? Not blue-teaming because the people playing the one-shots would be being blue-teamed by the Ducal House players. Consultation with experts of the deep interwebs suggests 'sub-questing', 'nested questing' or 'pyramid questing' and I have to admit liking the latter quite a bit.

To make this work first I need the Ducal House players to pick some tasks they are carving off which might be a wrench given their (well founded) view that nobody else gets anything right if they do not do it themselves. Once they deign to outsource some tasks, I need to frame them up in a way that it can run as a one-shot.

Thinking about it any given task is going to have the 'dial' of how hard or easy it is to get to. The first two things mentioned in passing were retreiving a magical item from a presumed abandoned temple complex deep in the jungles of the Land of the Dead. The second thing was the harvesting of a magical component from a mythic location that they are not quite sure where it lies. Both of which have potentially interesting terrain adventures to be had.

The main Ducal House campaign has a balance of swift change (due to high PC mobility through magic) and plenty of warning for me as a DM since they like to plan things out. I think the template I'll be using here is the Spelljammer Academy mini-campaign which was all done around 'big hook' for any given session and then built out with stuff to do around that - typically the voyage to the location or the flight from consequences afterwards.

On a pure DM'ing level, it is going to be a fun exercise in T2-3 play and running bad-guys worth their salt at that level. Not quite Tuckers Kobolds level of 'ye shall fear the enemy' but the signature foes for some of this are individually not so dangerous but collectively a hazard.

I was nudging the Ducal House players towards 'you are high level now, you should have others doing things for you' - me thinking hirelings, vassals, maybe a couple of friendly NPCs. Classic DM mistake, my players took what I was thinking and ran off over the horizon with it...

Shiny TTRPG links #170

Marking a round number with fresh links from about the internet. For more links, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Whose Measure God Could Not Take gives us Why Are You So Emaciated and Your Face Half-Crazed? (Carousing Rules)

Luke Gearing shares d100 Carousing

Grumpy Wizard writes How Do I Create Random Generation Tables for a Sandbox Campaign?

I Cast Light! gives us I CAST FIST!: Brawl Arcane 28 A Perfect Intro To Kit Bashing And Skull Smashing

Gorgon Bones writes “Boring” Combat is Fine Actually

Prismatic Wasteland writes We Live Again

Actual Test: Spelljammer 5e Fleet Combat (Fantasy Space Combat Rules Part 7)

tl;dr: not really a fantasy space fleet combat ruleset - but it sort of works at table.

I have run the 'fleet combat' set up for Spelljammer 5e by the book twice now (and it ran in the background for a third session) and it sort of serves its purpose as a dramatic device but I really hesitate to call it a rule-set. Following from writing on the Spelljammer 5e lack of rules before there is actually, toward the end of the adventure in the set Light of Xaryxis, some minimal mass combat rules: once you are in mass ship combat, each side loses a ship each round and the players get to focus on boarding actions.

Recalling what we saw previously - you practically cannot batter a 5e Spelljammer out of action through weapons fire alone without it being a deeply tedious dice-rolling exercise so the players getting stuck-in as boarders is the sensible thing to do - they will rip up an enemy crew a lot more quickly than their ship will hammer an enemy ship out of action. This 'chalk one ship off per round' is really just a timing mechanic to drive urgency in the boarding actions - but then making sure that the players have material targets that make enough of a difference within reachable distance is purely down to GM sleight of hand - exactly how far things are and how fast things are needs to get handwaved hard or players spend a lot of time too far off to be doing anything once they have crushed a first target but the battle is not yet resolved - or have foes come to them. If you actually look at the relative ship speeds, a foe trying to avoid boarding drives relative closing speeds per round down to 10-30' per round - starting even at the closest range of 250' that makes a long, long time trying to get to grips with folk.

Recapping the three instances where I've used the mass fleet combat:
First was the finale of the Spelljammer Academy extended campaign - and the players used their fleet to tie up the enemy fleet while they did an end run around to board the enemy base
Second was a variation on Chapter Nine of Light of Xaryxis where the players decided to slug it out with Xeleths fleet when he came to grab Xedalli because they had managed to round up some allies by then. That was an extended series of boarding actions to the backdrop of the fleets tearing each other apart.
Third was Chapter Ten of Light of Xaryxis where the players used their fleet as a blocking force against the citadel fleet and did a run directly for the citadel - fighting solar dragons on the way in.

It is enough mechanic for players to judge 'how is this fight likely to go' - which is purely 'have we at least a matching number of hulls to tie the enemy up while we do our thing'. Not very elegant but enough for the purposes of getting a session moving.

I guess it is *a* way to do multiple ship combats and my player groups have enjoyed the fleet actions because it keeps the focus on the heroes which I guess is the point for 5e. I write it up grudgingly because while I dislike it conceptually, my players have enjoyed the effect at the table. This feels wierd to me, but maybe it might be useful to you. It all feels a bit quantum ogre for me - the enemy will stumble upon you just at the appropriate moment - but really it just makes all the ship combat as wallpaper. The ships are just the shapes to have combats across; as long as you know that is the style of campaign you get with Spelljammer 5e, all is well.

If you want actual mechanic sets with a bit of heft to them, we have previously gone through two magazine-published sets of rules for fighting magical flying ships - the 3e adaptation Shadow of the Spider Moon and the 5e Aces High aerial combat rules from Arcadia #3 published by MCDM as well as the original AD&D Spelljammer and the to-be-published OD&D compatible Calidar. Most recently we also tried the gridless, Theater of the Mind house ruleset for the Spelljamming focused 'Tales from the Glass Guarded World' podcast.

Actual Play: Stirring the Hornet's Nest at Het Thamsya

I got to take Stirring the Hornet's Nest at Het Thamsya to one of my open table sessions and it ran pretty well - some squeaks but those were driven by the typical open table stuff - no filtering of play-style, no session zero, ended up with a massive table (nine) of which six were new to me, four of those were new to D&D. Review of the module is here. Writing it up as per Gorgon Bones Record your hobby experience.

This is a big site - 25 rooms - and an intriguing heist/rescue. Spoilers abound from here on.

Shiny TTRPG links #169

Substantial archive dive this week. For more links, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Grumpy Wizard gives us Tolkien’s Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits Don’t Belong in Dungeons & Dragons

Built by Gods Long Forgotten wrote DMing tricks vs. rules changes

Rise Up Comus gives us Interesting Social Situations, or The Discourse Post

James Cook University write Dungeons and Dragons may improve mental health

Known World, Old World gave us Fantasy Religion?

The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms wrote Dungeon Module Design

Aeons & Augauries shared Making Ogres Tougher or "How to implement Old Rules to make tough combatants tougher."

Why war-games make great settings: Iron Kingdoms (RPG Blog Carnival)

Another month and the RPG blog carnival continues at Codex Anathema for the topic of Favourite Settings. You can see the rest of the topics for 2024 on Of Dice And Dragons 2024 Blog Carnival hosting list.

I have a bunch of the old 3.5e era settings sitting on my shelf that I never quite got around to playing - Midnight, Scarred Lands - and some earlier ones similar - Al Qadim, Greyhawk - but one thing I have always had a softspot for is a really distinct aesthetic - and worlds used for miniature games are great examples of this. WHFRP is perhaps the most obvious but Iron Kingdoms is one of my favourites.

I liked the original setting - the combinations of heavy metal mayhem with magical mechs and swashbuckling ethos.

Growing your game group (5yr Blog-iversary)

To mark the 5th anniversary of spinning up this blog I find the theme this past year has been 'getting more people gaming' - from running events to helping bring more people into our local game group to trying to connect up disparate D&D folk - nothing has been particularly innovative or high style just the shovel-work of running open tables and pointing people at other people.

One thing I did find inspirational from the broader blogger community was Gorgon Bones best practices - Record your hobby experience, Introduce others to your hobby and Participate in a hobby community - having that list was a weirdly helpful acknowledgement that we got to get the basics right - find the people, figure out when they can be at tables, find places with tables - before we can start doing the rest of it.

The things I've put my shoulder to over the year has been
- maintained the Meetup 'funnel' to bring people to our local gaming groups forum
- simplifying the big beginner events (Night of the Rolling Dice) so they demand less of us to run them
- helping expand to a second location for the regular Friday nights - mostly by just being one of the regular DMs there
- linking up a whole new bunch of local D&D folk with the DM supergroup - they've done some stuff already while my calendars been a shambles

The online stuff - Meetup, the RPGVienna forum, the discords - have got their memes and minor connections but there are a lot of folk who chirp up when booking their place at one of the open table sessions that we never hear from otherwise. I read this as the majority view the online spaces as somewhere face-to-face gaming is coordinated.

Online is all well and good for what it is, but for folk who want to go offline - who are sometimes folk with thriving online gaming - it is hard to do that from a cold start so giving them a helping hand is worthwhile. My own online gaming got nuked by the smallest householders shifting sleeping patterns - last year I was able to near guarantee they would be asleep by a time - enough that I ran the whole Southern Reaches campaign on weekdays after bedtime. This year - no such luck, even getting the last few episodes of Light of Xaryxis done is proving tricky.

Instead I've put the bits and pieces of time I have in evenings towards helping to try coordinate face to face gaming over weekend slots, both for myself and others.

Having that big online footprint is bringing folk in, both regular gamers and more unusual things like someone who's turned up to do an ethnographic study for their course. We have enough presence that we appear when you search so good enough. Certainly at this point, when I've been ill things have trundled merrily along without me doing anything which is good.

d6 Ways to funnel folk to your game group
1. Make sure something pops up when someone googles 'D&D' and your locality
2. Run open tables where people with no experience can rock up and game for the first time
3. Be flexible as DM's so you can say yes to whoever wants to join you; one of the people attending having a T1 game in their back pocket in case folk turn up but also being happy to play too
4. Figure out where is good to play - and when you start to hit the limits on a venue, be prepared to run multiple locations - so when they show up you can seat them
5. Tell your Friendly Local Games Store your group exists and is open to new folk - they'll cheerfully tell anyone who comes in shopping for the books
6. Trial periods on 'connector' social networks like Meetup, Couchsurfing, Internations, even Facebook can be low-effort ways to get the word out to people who are not actively looking for you (those people found you from point 1.

I figure there are lots of better game designers and OSR theoreticians out there, if I can road test and document what helps with getting those tables clattering with dice, that is probably a worthy use of this place - til the 6th anniversary at least.

Shiny TTRPG links #168

Interesting links tripped over this past week. For even more, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Tabletop Curiosity Cabinet gives us Resurrection: Having my cake and eating it too

The Voyager’s Workshop shares Dungeons & Dragons & Lego

JEFF'S GAME BOX asks What Did Medieval Fantasy Look Like Before Tolkien?

Gaius Invictus writes Book Club: “Digital Minimalism”

The thrill of "the Find"

I had a refreshing experience recently at Vienna Games Convention - the thrill of 'the find' - something I'd largely missed in this always-on cornucopia we all live in these days. On the way there I was asking myself 'is there anything under the sun that you would actually be looking for' and apart from stumbling over some classic early D&D modules as a general category, the only thing that came to mind that I had sought but not found easily online recently was 'The Plane Above' from 4e.

And lo.

When I saw them on the stack, I was wondering what would be a reasonable price - and when the guy shrugged and said 'tenner' for Plane Above and the Manual of the Planes, the hardest bit was keeping my poker face. He had Plane Below too but it was not one I had been looking for before.

I was looking for Plane Above because as an Astral guide it has suddenly popped back into focus with Spelljammer 5e's new treatment of the realm between planetary systems - was phlogiston with pretty much nothing there - now is the Astral which is stuffed full of adventure. The astral skiffs and clippers in Plane Above had been something frequently mentioned by others in discussions online of Spelljammer so that was a gap in my visibility.

The Manual of the Planes I wanted just to get the baseline for the World Tree cosmology of 4e which was substantially different from the Great Wheel of AD&D that I lived and breathed.

After initially getting the first two, I wandered around a bit, crewed the RPGVienna desk and let 'do I really want the Planes Below' bubble in my mind before arriving at 'yes, I'll kick myself for not having the set' and snaffled it up too on my way out.

All this is something I missed for ages. The last time I got this kind of 'hell, yeah' feeling was walking into my FLGS and spotting Veins of the Earth just sitting on the shelf. Keeping an eye on the kickstarters does mean that I have taken a view on much of what could possibly be there before I ever walk through the door. The surprise factor gets crushed, which is a first world problem, to be sure, but I do recall the time of significantly narrower pipelines of stuff, of what few bits being available on a bookstores small RPG section being the 'take it or leave it' limit.

Mostly I am hugely amused that the only thing I could think of that I was looking for - was found!

Review: Zariel's Guide to the Seven Heavens

tl:dr; a useful toolkit on making lawful good celestials interesting to play, as NPCs and as adversaries for adventurers.

From Sven Truckenbrodt, someone I've been following a while (see Wolpertinger, Wererat - Well!) we get a supplement talking about celestials and how to make them adversaries and/or use them to drive adventures. I am always keen to read into the topic because it is indeed a tricky one to address. The Lawful Good Seven Heavens are hard to pry adventure out of - the place is a fortress crammed with angels, what is an adventurers angle? The broader question of how to generate adventure on the good side of the upper planes can be a tricky one and this is a good delve into the residents to try and answer that.

Cover by WarmTail

First impression - good art, nice design, an interesting reds and golds general palette which is different to the usual celestial white and blue one might expect. It works well here.

Shiny TTRPG links #167

More links from about the internet. For even more, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Greyhawk Grognard shares Free Greyhawk Resources

Le Chaudron Chromatique gives us Update and Marchebranche is getting in print!

The Foot of Blue Mountain shares Connecting the Hex; Creating Full Hexes with Meaningful Encounters

Ludological Alchemy writes The Incentive to Kill in Dungeons & Dragons

Elfmaids & Octopi gives us Morale & Guards & Patrols

Stumbling into a Forever DM Support Group

I found another nest of TTRPG-ers by the simple method of mentioning D&D in public and watching who's ears prick up. We were crewing the desk of a charity ball, had a few % no-shows and I mentioned this was great compared to ~25% for a group I help run - what kind of group - D&D - oh really, well I too... and click, connection made.

This has lead to them organising a DM Supergroup to test run the stuff that forever DMs have trouble getting their players to try - very topical as I was just looking at my numbers and I play very little that is not D&D any more.

The money question however was 'what do you want to run' - a proper poser. I have a bunch of *campaign* ideas I want to try and scope to run whatever 5e episodic things I might want at the regular Friday night sessions - but what of the towering wall behind me do I actually want to try at table where I am testing a proper unknown?

Others in the group have proposed intersting stuff that I'm happy to try but never heard of plus stuff that I have heard of and was on my to-do list - Mork Borg, Star Trek Adventures, Band of Blades. What do I want to suggest?

My focus this year so far has just been scaling up the local games society - onboarding new folk and tweaking venue issues. The mass of folk ouy there seem to be coming in off Baldurs Gate 3 so you can take anything 5e and find players easily if you DM. Players for anything else is a lot more tricky, so I've set tons of stuff aside as just not worth the hassle and focussed on bringing new folk aboard, running welcome-wagon 5e Brancalonia D&D. But if I now have the opportunity to *try* that odder stuff, what do I want to try?

After pondering it a bit, I found four themes I want to investigate:

Review: Stirring the Hornet's Nest at Het Thamsya

tl:dr; evocative 25 room dungeon packed with factions, puzzles and threats set in a fantasy world centred on Southeast Asia.

This comes straight off the internet - I spotted Munkao had dropped this new adventure - Stirring the Hornet's Nest at Het Thamsya - and better yet was doing a launch sale and I'm not so proud to deny I slammed that 'Add to Cart' button as quick as I could. This is the launch adventure for the Kala Mandala setting - a meditating abbot in grave danger and needing rescue.

This is a good old zine - 15 pages that looks like I could be a 32 page booklet - with the clean layout style and wonderful drawings that have always characterised Munkao's works. What you get is a big site - 25 rooms - and an intriguing heist/rescue.

Shiny TTRPG links #166

A short stack this week as I have been ill. Seek more on the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Infernal Pact gives us Adding In Domain Play After The Fact, Part 1 and part 2

Jay's Brick Blog gives us Review: LEGO 21348 Dungeons and Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale

A Knight at the Opera writes No Foolproof Illusions

The Robgoblin gives us Thievery, or Close-Up Magic? Picking Locks in Fifth Edition

Dungeon Fantastic gives us Mapping Lessons from Ancient Ruins

Osse Rota's Weblog writes Games I've played, and what I thought of them.

Time spent running and playing editions of D&D

A curious thought came to me - how much of each edition have I played? It feels like I have been playing a lot of 5e recently - have I in the grand scheme of things?

Starting off my time was split with different campaigns more or less being different systems - the three big starting ones were World of Darkness, WHFRP and AD&D 2e - that was my teen gaming; threw in a smattering of one shots here and there but that was the bulk of it

Hitting Uni - I ran 3.5e, played more World of Darkness and WHFRP plus some freeform nonsense from time to time.

Post college it became almost all 3.5e - run as PBEM or played as Living Arcarnis - but all the same system. 4e happened but I never picked it up; work was ramping up and my social circle was both smaller and not interested.

Rolling off that into recent years I saw 5e happening but I was buried under career stuff so did not bother to make the leap to the new system. I kicked off a campaign in 2018 using 3.5e and another in 2020 which is still grinding along.

I finally picked up 5e in 2019 when I started going to my local games club - since then I've run and played quite a lot of it there and as part of pandemic-driven online campaigns.

Post-lockdown I've gotten in a few other games - Spire, Scarlet Heroes - but mostly D&D.

So which system have I put most hours on? I went back and checked (best estimates before 2018) and...

...it looks like I *still* put more hours in running AD&D than 5e - and that 3.5e dominates both of them. I guess when you have no other committments as a teen you can really crank those long form campaigns.

Dwarven Synthetic Cuisine (RPG Blog Carnival)

Another idea for VDonnut Valley for the topic of Feasts, Foods and Fancy Drinks, oh my!. You can see the rest of the topics for 2024 on Of Dice And Dragons 2024 Blog Carnival hosting list.

The old Dwarven Empire were masters of alchemy based off botany. The empire fell and with it their easy access to their plants. The cultural tastes remained but the source was gone - everything was recreated from alchemy and minerals. Now dwarves live on mostly synthetic diets and swear they taste better.

Shiny TTRPG links #165

Another stack of links this week. Even more can be found on the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Richard's Dystopian Pokeverse gives us Wind, Sand and Stars: reconstructing Dune pt. 1 and Machines As The Measure Of Men: reconstructing Dune pt. 2

@incandescaent tweets 7 things that cookbooks and TTRPG BOOKS do well to make them ultra user/GM-friendly

Roll to Doubt writes RPGs as Craft

Finding Meepo writes Adventure Reports – Reflecting on Running RPGs

The Disoriented Ranger shares Protect your Gamemasters (and don't call it "fudging")

Review: Jinx's Almanac (Brancalonia)

tl:dr; a solid adventure anthology that has been a reliable source of one-shots

Is wear on a book from being carted too and from games nights a tragedy or marks of heroic purpose? If we take the latter then Jinx Almanac is one of the most useful books I have gotten my paws on anytime lately. Taking note of the points about whether one can review an RPG that you have not played, this is one book that I have surely earned the right to review.

This is a collection of digital magazine articles, special editions, modules and all sorts of ancilliary stuff that was published for Brancalonia and then collected during the second crowdfunding campaign. It is a big grab bag of stuff that has a surprisingly dense amount of gameable content. I got mine from the second Kickstarter campaign along with the Empire Whacks Back.

Cover art by Lorenzo Nuti

We are well past first impression territory here - we have the same Brancalonia art style - old paper with wine stains on it, consistently pretty and evocative art both new and public domain with nice clear layout from a design sense, even if some decisions about the sequencing of information are a bit odd.

Rare Feasts from Magical Terrain (RPG Blog Carnival)

A second thought for this months blog carnival from VDonnut Valley for the topic of Feasts, Foods and Fancy Drinks, oh my!.

Based on an anecdote from family about how particular meat from particular places tastes good because of what the wind blows there from a particularly grim industrial accident, stealing a bit from the French idea of terroir, we have reasons that foods might be sought after that tie to where they are from.

This builds from our previous strange weather from magic terrain combined with some food item generators.

As a workflow this is:
1. Figure out your unusual meal courses - great starts for this are Monster Menu-All Part 1: Eating the AD&D Monster Manual by Coins & Scrolls. You could also tap Box Full of Boxes great Local Cuisine Generator or Random Table of the Week's Local delicacies or the d30 offal ideas for giant appetites elsewhere on this blog.

2. See why the source is special. Roll up a strange weather effect and terrain type from strange weather from magic terrain - use the weather effect to give you how the food type was affected and the terrain type to give you the nature of the difference.

3. Spice to taste. Back reference our previous Lavish feasts and high tables and see if you want to layer any additional things on - the 'materials' and 'difficult to execute foods' might be taken care of by what you have rolled up already or maybe you want to spread yet more extravagance into the mix.

My own test case for 'why' the terrain is strange and what is being harvested from it was a house of summoners who threw a big feast to impress their patron - I pulled Mimic, Salamander and Dragonturtle from Coins and Scrolls list, then diced up some magical terrain locations to see where they had come from.

First I got Meteor Fields and Intrusive Outsiders, second I got the Black Earth and Flooding; this gave me mimics that had come down on meteors, grown up in a meteor field and caused wierd extra-sensory effects when consumed followed by Salamanders drowned when positive-energy Black Earth flooded - incredibly nutrious and energising stuff. I felt dragonturtle was interesting enough on its own and served that as was.

Given the fuss that people in the real world make about tiny shifts in soil quality and breeds of crops and animals in the taste of things at their table I am sure that nobles, worse long-lived nobles like elves, worse elven noble mages would have preposterously refined tastes, insisting on things being Just So. This type of thing also makes fabulous treasures - finding some delicacy well preserved on a dark shelf in a dungeon? A fortune to the right buyer... or a quest in its own right.

Shiny TTRPG links #164

A chonky stack of links this week with a significant archive diving block. Even more can be found on the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. No r/OSR blogroll, reasons remain unknown. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Whose Measure God Could Not Take gives us Adventuring Tavern Generator

Dungeon Fantastic gives us What it takes to live & thrive in Felltower, Part I: Characters and What it takes to live & thrive in Felltower, Part II: Players

I Cast Light! writes WHAT INTERESTING ABOUT BASIC DUNGONEERING: And what is not

US National Archives releases early D&D versions in David L. Arneson vs. Gary Gygax and TSR Hobbies, Inc

Blue Bard may vanish on 4th April - We Had A Good Run

Lixu gives us Dark Sun OSE Players Handbook and Dark Sun OSE Game Masters Guide

Capsule Reviews #7: Castle of the Silver Prince

Since there is just so much content in this entire campaign setting I am going to skim it capsule-review style in recognition of it could be some time before I get through it all in detail. Short answer, this is a colossus of a project, with material for years of play.

You can get the authors own overview of all the bits and pieces in the launch-day blogpost

Castle of the Silver Prince Module - comes in a bunch of variant covers, I went for the limited edition orange spine. This is a donkey-killer of a giant book detailing 470 locations across the 8 levels of the castle. There is a complex interplay of magical seasons that make each entry sizeable - as well as all the descriptive markers of odor, features, structural aspects, hazards (traps, monsters, etc.) and secrets we have some of those changing depending on what 'season' the castle is in - randomly determined on arrival. So in fact we have 470 locations x 4 as places to explore - and a ticking clock every time the party enters the castle - which together make this a colossal place to explore and one that really captures the old-school 'every time, start at the door' feel which makes sharp mapping and discovering short-cuts a key piece of play. This book also has a proposed shared background for party membes - the house of Wicke - which is neat and comes with some nice ties into the campaign background.

The campaign premise is that the party gets a charter to reclaim a border castle between two nations - where that castle construction, its residents, the leadership of one nation, its one-time master and some of the monsters lurking in the region are all linked. Clues to events and elements within the castle can be found out in the wilderness around it and as the campaign begins, two grand competing forces are swinging into play as the campaign begins making the castle the fulcrum around which the fate of the region turns. Events ratchet up overtime, motivating returns to the castle to try and save humanity from two dread fates.

The books are supposed to be used with the Module open on the location you are at, the Maps book open to the right map and then you can look up the bits and pieces at that location in the Appendix. With a little wearing-in I can see this working quite well = Map book changes slowy, locations in the Module change as the party moves and you can flip over and back through the Appendix. I cnn see the Maps books will need to be weighed down at the corners but it does all feel suitably epic.

Lavish feasts and high tables (RPG Blog Carnival)

For this months blog carnival we are back to the host VDonnut Valley for the topic of Feasts, Foods and Fancy Drinks, oh my!. You can see the rest of the topics for 2024 on Of Dice And Dragons 2024 Blog Carnival hosting list.

I've talked about Food in world building before, this time we delve deeper into what is served at the noble tables of the dragonbloods - or what is served when the point is to dine extravagantly?

All this will of course be set against the backdrop of the hosts day-to-day extravagance - chairs of rare woods, hangings of extinct beasts, paintings by great masters, war trophies, relics - all the things that are rare and coveted are just the frame for the feast.

For best impression the hosts would like to hit as many of these as they can - getting more extravagant and perhaps reaching the bounds of the hosts tastes and/or courage as we go down.

Shiny TTRPG links #163

Some curious links from about the internet. Even more can be found on the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. There is no r/OSR blogroll this week for reasons unknown. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Various and Sundered Items presents GLOG Class: Flock of Sheeple

The Burnt World of Athas releases the magnificenty Dark Sun 3e

Maynooth University has a Writing for Role-Playing Games Microcredential

Tales of the Lunar Lands gives us Yo Dawg, I Heard You Like RPGs...

Playful Void shares Red Button Monsters

Archstone Press gives us Lonely Fun in the NSR

Pelgrane Press archive diving finds Problem Solving vs Problem Protecting

Trilemma Adventures gives us Whose Mechanic is it Anyway?

All Dead Generations shares Beyond the Crystal Frontier - A Gazetteer of the World

Against The Wicked City gave us Bringing Down the Hammer, part 12: my own private WFRP

RuneHammer writes Plasticity

Sea of Stars gives us Dragons Feasts and Foods

Save vs Total Party Kill shares Mordheim 2024

Flintlocks and Witchery gave us Here's Some F*ckin' DnD!

Player perspective after four years of play

With four years since session zero now under our belt I thought I would pull together some of the player views on the Ducal House campaign.

I polled my players and a couple of themes droped out:
- depth of the world
- NPC interactions and political intrigue
- no solutions, only problems
- character evolution through their campaign experiences

On depth of the world they said they liked how much time they have spent in the world, how familiar it now is - particularly after the significant amount of time in the starting city. Now as they return after quite a lot of time away - re-encountering NPCs and being back on well known terrain is something they are enjoying. The interaction with the world now has a fluency that is in line with what the characters that actuall dwell in this world ought to.

Deep record keeping is becoming a challenge which ties to long real-world calendar time passing while the game-world turns relatively slowly within it. The Bard has taken to bi-annual re-reads of their notes to try and keep it all in mind. Enjoyment of the world and its intracicies is had despite it being hard to retain.

I enjoy the world and intricacies, but they refuse to stay in my brain (shoutout to our great bard for the notes and our cleric for having the brains)

our actions have consequences, even the minor ones. I very much enjoy hearing rumours filter back or learning that something we neglected in the beginning has not died as a story threat but has been brewing in the background. it feels immensely rewarding and daunting at the same time to know that what you do matters...for the better and for the worse

familiarity with the world from having spent so much time in Thenya, and even after quite a lot of time away - spent the time, got to know the place - and can really look back and see how we have grown. It feels earned.

Review: Flee, Mortals!

tl:dr; a toolbox for building intricate, challenging combat encounters with gorgeous art and tons of encounter ideas.

The MCDM Monster Book - built around 'action oriented monsters' - the revamp of the 5e monster manual that MCDM has been talking about for a while prior to launching the kickstarter. I backed it since I agreed with the thoughts about some of the issues and was interested to see what solutions they came up with.

Gorgeous book, great art, slightly glossier, lighter paper than the standard WotC book but it makes a bigger book not take up more space. The dust cover really makes it stand-out on the shelf. All the little quality elements are great - sewn pages, ribbon, dust cover - the finish is very good. Getting my hands on a copy here in Europe involved shelling out ridiculous shipping fees but in for a penny I guess.