Year In Review 2022

We come to the end of the year and looking back 2022 was a pretty good year for gaming - faded a little off 2021 in pure hours but got almost the same number of sessions (59 vs 62) and got lot more different things done including the launch of another campaign and spun up a third.

On running things, got in 26 sessions, over half of them on the Ducal House (3.5e) campaign, the rest 50/50 between the Planescape Splinters (5e) one-shots and the Spelljammer (5e) campaign.

Ducal House (3.5e) - home campaign slowed way down due to scheduling but still ground through some high heroism, got in hex-crawling and labyrinth bashing, old school dealings with petty gods and giants and it is about to enter year 4 with momentum which is nice. Players are still keen as evidenced by the below piece of character art gifted by the bard to the cleric.

Planescape: Splinters (5e) was a series of one-shots on different plans (Mechanus, theBeastlands, Acheron) - usually got 2 sessions with different groups for each plane, much hilarity in how differently things go for the different tables, great to get back on the planes, lessons learned for me in session control time and setting up one-shots

I have to give a grudging star to Spelljammer 5e here because despite my serious gripes about the set, it is also the only WotC release that got a bunch of the old warriors to pull down their swords off the wall and commit to a campaign even before the book dropped - and we managed to follow through *and* after a 2-shot mini-game we've sustained that into running the campaign that came in the box. I've put in a bunch of elbow grease to throw a world I'm happy with around the set pieces from the campaign but the combo seems to be working well.

Actual Test: Downtime as Worldbuilding

In the back of the Downtime in Zyan zine, after the downtime actions, we get 10 prompts for prepping your campaign to help "develop your setting, create your starting community, and stock your map with sites of exploration and treasure that encourage the use of downtime activities." I reviewed Downtime in Zyan previously and decided to test out this workflow as a world-building tool.

The prompts, or steps to run through, are:
1. Institutions operating in the starting community where play begins.
2. Master artisans that currently reside there.
3. A rival adventuring party.
4. A secret location where spiritual exercises can be performed.
5. A secret location with a trove of otherwise inaccessible and valuable information.
6. A secret location where special revelry can be engaged in.
7. Some legendary institutions, now gone.
8. Some prolific master craftsmen of the distant past.
9. A tragically lost magical book.
10. A remarkable material that could be used to fashion splendid artifacts.

Downtime in Zyan, showing cover art by Evlyn Moreau

Shiny TTRPG links #100

100 links round-ups! I hope everyone is having a relaxing vacation period, certainly the run up was productive for many! More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this - weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find even more links on the weekly blogroll on r/OSR or the RPG Blog Carnival or a roundup of non-blog news on Third Kingdom Games roundup.

Friend of the blog Joy and Forgetfulness speaks in Review: The Wargaming Compendium by Henry Hyde

Traverse Fantasy has crunched some numbers in OSR Rules Families

Weaver.skepti.ch shares the Initiation Maze

The Wandering Gamist proposes Bug-Orcs

Welcome to the Deathtrap gives us Developing A World Through Encounter Tables

Sundered Shields and Silver Shillings gives us More Cheap Tricks

I Cast Light! asks BLOG!: Good God! What Is It Good For?

A Slow Circle has some good thinking in Bridging the Player Information Gap

Actual Test: Deck Of Worlds

I need to build out the surrounds about my starter town - and what just arrives in the door? The Story Engine and The Deck of Worlds. I set the Story Engine aside for now because the Deck of Worlds was exactly what I needed to shake some life into a regional hex-crawl. I got this from a kickstarter where it scratched two itches, that of dabbling novelist and also of dungeonmaster. The sub-title across the front of the box says 'the deck of endless world building' and I can see this getting a lot of use if it works.

The box comes with an 8-page booklet, 6-pages are the instructions - how the deck works, creating microsettings, interpretting a microsetting, creating a world map, building nuanced worlds, multiplayer rules and how to combine with the Story Engine deck. My campaign is manifesting as a zoom down into a region, based around a tavern in a fly-speck town. I have a global scale map, but I need to build out a region, so we are going to try about half of these.

Besides the instructions we get 6 stacks of cards - Regions, Landmarks, Namesakes, Origins, Attributes and Advents. Each deck is square with nice, non-specific art - not as clearly fantasy-land as the Izirions West Marches Location Deck - but it is supposed to be more universal than that. RPGs are just one subset of users.

The process from the instructions is to:
1. Draw a Region to establish terrain type
2. Draw a Landmark and tuck it beneath the region so one of the two options is showing to give a point of interest
3. Draw a Namesake and place it so either the region or landmark is named with one of the four options to create in-world names
4. Draw an Origin card and tuck it under the region or landmark to leave one of the four options showing and detail the history of the location
5. Draw an Attribute and do similar to give the present day features
6. Draw an Advent card and place it the same way to finish with 'gunpowder' - crisis points or looming change

Review: Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (5e)

tl:dr; evocative art returns to a great aesthetic but no rules support for building campaigns.

I had this on order, got it as soon as it came out and have commented on some aspects already - particularly thoughts at the time of the Spelljammer announcement where I thought 'with all these ship minis, there must be some ship combat system, right?' and then as the first previews hit the web on How Much Flying Ship Combat System Is Enough? I also managed to table test the combat rules before I got to finalising this.

At this point I feel a bit monkeys-pawed. I said 'hey, for an RPG sourcebook, all you really need is evocative art and you can pretty much cook up everything else from there'. Yes. Well.

Shiny TTRPG links #99

Gloriously free from work for the year - have trawled the interwebs for delightful links. More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this - weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find even more links on the weekly blogroll on r/OSR or the RPG Blog Carnival or a roundup of non-blog news on Third Kingdom Games roundup.

This week we get an awesome haul of dungeon building tricks and techniques on the back of #dungeon23:
A thread from @yungdumbitch on More #Dungeon23 reading
@DuvelmanDice tweets #Dungeon23 Resources Vault
Hexed Press prepares Dungeon23 Helper
Sersa Victory gives us Cyclic Dungeon Generation
Swamp of Monsters! shares how i did my megadungeon
macchiato master compiles dungeon23 tools - dungeon23
All Dead Generations shares DUNGEON23 WORKSHEETS
Monsters and Manuals gives us On Dungeon23 and the Correct Way to Write Dungeon Room Descriptions
Archons March On gives us The Osprey's Bastards, and Scourge-Flutes - Notes for Dungeon 2023

Weaver.skepti.ch adjusts hidden depth tables in Tasking 24 or 12

Prismatic Wasteland continues Hexcrawl Checklist: Part Two

Dangerously Rare Elixirs And Decoctions proposes D20 "Alternatives to scrolls"

Bat in the Attic masterclass continues in A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail Part XXIII

Le Chaudron Chromatique gives us Lot of stuff!

Culture of the insectfolk - Beetlescale

Inspired by images of little ants riding on big ants and tarantulas keeping tiny frogs, what does it look like when you get creatures operating on such different scales, they can climb on top of one another (and have sufficiently relaxed concepts of personal space as to be happy to do this)?

Conceptually, think about keeping racoons and the racoons having pets themselves, everyone carving out their own niche. The biggest creatures live in the spaces, the mid size creatures can share those spaces, around the edges, under the tables, up on the shelves and so on - and the smallest creatures can live in the walls and ceilings, maybe interacting with the mid-size creatures but being careful around the largest creatures who could hurt them without noticing

So - cultural aspects of the insectfolk:
- Things and space are fleeting, give generously
- Know one another by their deeds, accept all who join the great work
- Work hard to be lazy