Cometh the elders: confirming the 'age up' of new joiners

tl:dr; multiple surveys across ~ 2013-2019 show an increasing age of new joiners.

Originally prompted by pulling apart the D&D Gateway survey data from Necropraxis that showed the age of new joiners had jumped +5 years since 2015. Note post-2010 split out into before/after 2015 to emphasize trend.

Could this be seen in other surveys? Short answer yes.

Actual Play: Kobolds Art Exhibition part IV - The Show

Following up on the previous posts about playing through the Kobolds Art Exhibition zine by Evlyn Moreau. Links to Part II and Part III.

The Kobolds cross paths once more with our party on the night before the pre-wedding ceremonials.

Some time has passed and much of the senior family including the Earl and the General, mother to the cleric, have returned from the war-front for the wedding. During this transportation the foe managed to strike the court wizard who is locked in temporal stasis to prevent his own death. The bard and sorceror sought help from the head of the Mage University who gave them a horrid bat-cat stitched together thing that they are to kill to let the master of the university know they want him. The party is not keen on dealing with this and have been pushing the horrible thing off on one another over the course of the day.

As night falls, the sorceror shoved it into the bards room while she was at dinner with an old pal. After some late night altercations once the bard spotted that her fireplace was blinking at her, the thing they have named an imp has been left to sleep in the fireplace with a screen in front of it. The bard tucks in and everyone sleeps soundly. The imp is just resting however and so when the kobolds come around distributing invitations for their exhibition it is the only thing to rouse.

Invitation bearing younger Kobold by Evlyn Moreau

Shiny TTRPG links collection #7

Seventh weekly round up of interesting TTRPG things found on the internet. Previous one found here. Inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Opening with this post on "Awesome Fantasy Drug Abuse In Shadelport For Murder Hobos" if only so I have the excuse to use the following image.

Visit Shadelport, Become Crab

We also go to Weaver.skepti.ch for this neat Abacus hit gauge which I think makes a good point for (during tabletop play) any sort of neat chunky physical hit-point counter. Not so helpful for VTTs but the day of face-to-face will return, I have faith.

A spark list to start a dungeon but also a cool concept I may follow up on of using a slush-pile of ideas to make spark-lists.

d24 Mythic Shoreline encounters boosted by neural networks

Starting with a d16 block of ideas from old folk tales, family stories and legends from North West Ireland.

Near shore graveyard marker, Co. Mayo

Mythic seashore encounters:
1. Shellfishers with baskets and large rakes, working along the tide line. They can tell you any movements along the coast and are happy to trade a delicious dinner for any extra hands to help them carry away the palm-sized cockles and hand-long razorfish they are raking up.
2. Lights at low tide, the spirits of a long dead chieftan and his warriors holding a moot on the strand exposed by the sea. Anyone who keeps distant and watches will see a full re-enactment of a key meeting before a battle that changed the local history. Reading lips by those who understand the old tongue is possible. The key point to be gleaned is where the battle took place and where the mighty artefacts the chief and his companions are wearing fell.
3. An ancient fey defense - a standing stone that flings iron far out to sea. The fey have long moved on after tide wore away a portion of their keep. The defense still stands, allowing those with fey-ancestry to pass while throwing any others who wear metal off the cliff it stands near.

Rolling Up Encounters - question from Jojiro

Following a request on the OSR discord from Jojiro for "a blog post where they just go through an example of how they roll up an encounter - HD, reactions, morale, and all, and make calls based on those things? [...] just go through a bunch of different rolls, and explain how you then adjudicate that."

Examples: setting up a planar site / pocket dimension type of thing plus 'gang of orcs and a flail-snail' from the original ask.

A roundup of space-faring fantasy

Following stumbling across this article on why Spelljammer is worth saving - adding the concept of 3D hexcrawling to the points mentioned in earlier posts on this blog I wanted to publish this list of fantasy space-faring resources / settings / systems to get them out there and be a thing I may add to over time.

First for Spelljammer itself - various online resources, edition updates and variants.

There is a magnificent "One page spelljammer rules" which boils original Spelljammer down to 1 (dense) page - well worth looking at for any edition.

Sessedrix 54 page 5e adaptation which also includes a excel combat calculator for encounters.

Alternative 5e update with "theatre of the mind space combat rules" as used in the Tales from the Glass Guarded World actual play podcast. Episode 101 is mostly a space battle using these rules if you want an example.

Shiny TTRPG links collection #6

Sixth weekly round up of interesting TTRPG things found on the internet - less than last week - previous one found here. Inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Sci-fi and Fantasy blending in the roots of Warhammer

Good overview of the new Ravenloft book by Tales of the Groteque and Dungeonesque

The latest user numbers from Fantasy Grounds showing the popularity of various rulesets.