Picking up an interesting challenge from Jim at d66 Classless Kobolds which goes:
1. Pick a genre, setting, or time period
2. Write one or two paragraphs on context
3. Produce one page of random tables
4. Give advice on tropes and how to use them
So here is a thought I had kicking about for a while - portal-fantasy in spaaaaace.
The aliens do not care. There was a brief flash of attention when the war front passed near Earth before that all got quelled. Unfortunately humans escaped their world but they have nothing worth trading and their planet is a mess so ... *six shouldered shrug*
The time is the medium-distance future and our setting is an update on the planetary romance; you can go almost anywhere, walk under the distant suns, and so on as long as you spike your nano-treatments. All the different aliens are out there living their own paradigms and you can walk through the portal networks between them. In places it looks like Mos Eisley or Kill Six Billion Demons, other places it looks like Coruscant or Illium.
Something happened long ago and galactic civilization, such as it is, is jumpy as hell about backups and redundancy. They have portals you can walk through, portals with trains, they fly light-sails, they use habitats, they use generation ships, they use jump drives. They thread the crusts of worlds with bio-engines that can manufacture anything, then leave them mostly dormant.
22 March 2021
Shiny TTRPG links collection #9
This is the ninth weekly round up of interesting TTRPG things found on the internet. Previous one found here. Inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
Starting our mini-theme of NPCs for this week: a tweet-thread of ways to keep track of NPCs who don’t need full stat blocks.
Hauling out this old gold from Bastionland for creating NPCs.
Great set of ideas for making your merchants more interesting.
Neat D20 x 4 table for generating random nobles.
Starting our mini-theme of NPCs for this week: a tweet-thread of ways to keep track of NPCs who don’t need full stat blocks.
Hauling out this old gold from Bastionland for creating NPCs.
Great set of ideas for making your merchants more interesting.
Neat D20 x 4 table for generating random nobles.
20 March 2021
Comparing top 10 games on Roll20 vs Fantasy Grounds
tl;dr: D&D 5e dominates both; Fantasy Grounds likes Pathfinder, Roll20 likes Call of Cthulu.
Fantasy Grounds released its player numbers and I wanted to put the top 10 games side by side to compare. This it done by taking the top 10 games on Roll20 and then setting seeing how all the players who played those games were split out, then taking those same games for Fantasy Grounds.
Unsurprisingly, D&D 5e is the Kaiju in the room on both sites; ~ 3 in every 4 games are D&D 5e. We more or less knew this. What is interesting is the split on the last quarter.
Fantasy Grounds released its player numbers and I wanted to put the top 10 games side by side to compare. This it done by taking the top 10 games on Roll20 and then setting seeing how all the players who played those games were split out, then taking those same games for Fantasy Grounds.
Unsurprisingly, D&D 5e is the Kaiju in the room on both sites; ~ 3 in every 4 games are D&D 5e. We more or less knew this. What is interesting is the split on the last quarter.
18 March 2021
Gnarls Tale: Inspiration in Emergent Narrative
tl;dr: tap the stories that rise out of 4X and other games for inspiration at your table
I played a lot of Fall From Heaven II a Civilization IV mod and some of the strange chance outcomes that dropped out of that inspired fantastic pieces of table gaming. Units become NPCs, circumstances become adventures, strange sites become dungeons. This is one such example of repeated unlikely chance that built a tiny legend.
Gnarl - as he was to become known - started as a basic Hunter, a scout type that gives him better odds of having a favourable outcome when a) going into villages and b) venturing into dungeons and lairs. Villages are mostly dull but Gnarl, early on, ventured into a lair and was mutated to give him the Adventurer promotion. This made him a lot better (25%) at getting good results in lairs and dungeons so whenever we found something, Gnarl got the call.
I played a lot of Fall From Heaven II a Civilization IV mod and some of the strange chance outcomes that dropped out of that inspired fantastic pieces of table gaming. Units become NPCs, circumstances become adventures, strange sites become dungeons. This is one such example of repeated unlikely chance that built a tiny legend.
Gnarl - as he was to become known - started as a basic Hunter, a scout type that gives him better odds of having a favourable outcome when a) going into villages and b) venturing into dungeons and lairs. Villages are mostly dull but Gnarl, early on, ventured into a lair and was mutated to give him the Adventurer promotion. This made him a lot better (25%) at getting good results in lairs and dungeons so whenever we found something, Gnarl got the call.
16 March 2021
Examining reduced roleplay preference among older gamers
tl;dr: preference for play-style changes with age - older players show reduced preference in roleplay.
Following up on the observation that new joiners appear to be getting older, what does this mean? Is the nature of the game changing?
I started from the Tabletop RPG Research Survey 2020 - 2021 Results Update #1 which showed changing preference for the pillars of gameplay with age, with increased preference for problem-solving/exploration, reduced preference for roleplay.
Comparing this to available datasets we can see the same patterns - first in the 2014 Reddit D&D survey that shows reduced preference for role-play, increased preference for combat.
Following up on the observation that new joiners appear to be getting older, what does this mean? Is the nature of the game changing?
I started from the Tabletop RPG Research Survey 2020 - 2021 Results Update #1 which showed changing preference for the pillars of gameplay with age, with increased preference for problem-solving/exploration, reduced preference for roleplay.
Graphic copied from TTRPG Research Survey 2020 - 2021 Results Update #1
Comparing this to available datasets we can see the same patterns - first in the 2014 Reddit D&D survey that shows reduced preference for role-play, increased preference for combat.
15 March 2021
Shiny TTRPG links collection #8
This eighth weekly round up of interesting TTRPG things found on the internet is a fairly substantial one, lots of interesting things out in the past week. Previous one found here. Inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
GM philosophies - good thoughts here on how they run their game; interesting as a reflection on which dials can be tweaked.
Great example of Free Kriegspiel in action in a modern version of its original context from JM.
Low-level city sandbox in space! Launching a barebones Spelljammer campaign - I like this way of meeting the problem of 'half a year of play before finding out we are playing in a Spelljammer campaign' that was a stumbling block of old.
Great retrospective on campaigns run - I tried to do similar myself, it is a pleasure to read anothers perspective.
GM philosophies - good thoughts here on how they run their game; interesting as a reflection on which dials can be tweaked.
Great example of Free Kriegspiel in action in a modern version of its original context from JM.
Low-level city sandbox in space! Launching a barebones Spelljammer campaign - I like this way of meeting the problem of 'half a year of play before finding out we are playing in a Spelljammer campaign' that was a stumbling block of old.
Great retrospective on campaigns run - I tried to do similar myself, it is a pleasure to read anothers perspective.
14 March 2021
Actual Play: Kobolds Art Exhibition part V - The Tour
Following up on the previous posts about playing through the Kobolds Art Exhibition zine by Evlyn Moreau. Links to the review and part I of play using it, Part II, Part III and Part IV.
The exhibition begins to wrap up as the time creeps into the small hours of the morning. Half of the guests join one of the three tours that the Lady of the House has arranged with the kobolds and our party follows Historian Vru. The sorceror is momentarily dissappointed that the tours are not going to be into paintings of the palace but foot tours.
First they troop across the hall into the Old Throne Room where the historian starts in kobold, notices the crowds failure to follow him and pulls out a scroll of tongues, casts it and continues briskly. Marched rapidly around the room the party has works they would have identified as quality pieces denounced as derivative junk, things they thought were war trophies praised as outstanding vernacular works of giant- and dwarfcraft and the trio of great pieces along the back wall, the bi-part Kingmaker portrait and the huge saddle praised as masterworks.
The exhibition begins to wrap up as the time creeps into the small hours of the morning. Half of the guests join one of the three tours that the Lady of the House has arranged with the kobolds and our party follows Historian Vru. The sorceror is momentarily dissappointed that the tours are not going to be into paintings of the palace but foot tours.
Curator Zisk, sketch by the bard
First they troop across the hall into the Old Throne Room where the historian starts in kobold, notices the crowds failure to follow him and pulls out a scroll of tongues, casts it and continues briskly. Marched rapidly around the room the party has works they would have identified as quality pieces denounced as derivative junk, things they thought were war trophies praised as outstanding vernacular works of giant- and dwarfcraft and the trio of great pieces along the back wall, the bi-part Kingmaker portrait and the huge saddle praised as masterworks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)