Some fascinating stirrings among the blogs this week. More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this is weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find more links on weekly blogroll on r/OSR or the RPG Blog Carnival or a roundup of non-blog news on Third Kingdom Games roundup.
If you read one thing this week read From A Dark Forest on Old RPG Gamers and The Streaming Youth
Reverse Ettin wins Arcane Librarys adventure design jam with The Tragic Curse of GRIMHILL FORT
The Arcane Library gave us How to Write A D&D Adventure: The Complete Guide
Mazirian's Garden recalls Google Plus Mixtape, Track 03: Savage World of Krül
Periapt Games shares TTRPGs and the state, redux: Looting the dungeon
Wyrd Science gives us The Exploding Plastic Inevitabletop
The Hydra's Grotto writes The Ergonomic 3 Mile Hex
Gundobad Games discusses The Logic of Feudalism
Falling From Orbit has Running a “Political” Game - Campaign Retrospective
Follow Me And Die! celebrates their 14th Blogversary!
31 July 2023
29 July 2023
Strange weather from magical terrain (RPG Blog Carnival)
Answering the RPG Blog Carnival prompt on Terrain, Seasons, Weather (oh my) from Plastic Polyhedra I wanted to think about how they interact with weird terrains like we sometimes run into.
What if your storm is blowing in off a plain of negative energy dust, or it is a blizzard across a forest of elemental fire trees or this big flood washes out a haunted battleground, that sort of thing. For this post we are looking at this from a 'wind off the plane of horrors' angle; roll this to see what kind of weird weather-related effect you are getting and then snap that together with known local weird locations in your campaign or go to the bottom table for some ideas of what those strange locations could be.
d8 Strange Weather Effects:
1. Weyr-winds: where the winds themselves bear some magical phenomena; effectively swapping the atmosphere of one location for that of another - the gloom of the local spooky wood, the shrieking wind of a mountain pass, the perpetual storm that sits over the necromancers tower - whatever that signature weather of the other location is, now it is here.
2. Dust winds: like the harmattan, bringing dusts, smokes and other traces far from their usual locations and temporarily changing the nature of the local place. Perhaps sand coats all surfaces, or this forest air is suddenly sulpurous with volcanic ash, or mushrooms sprout from spores carried in.
3. Elemental tides: where things from beyond this world are drawn in by the strong element resonance with their home plane. Here the elemental spirits that resonate with whatever the other place is are now found here.
4. Extreme floods - surges of water along rivers or coasts, sometimes even avalanches that are not inherently magical but can carry larger, heavier things from magical places. Monsters get washed over, flyers are blown off course, things that dwell in the strange location now turn up here. For this one you can just transpose encounter tables.
5. Leyline resonance - not what actually happens but people use it to describe when the magical phenonema that occur in one place start cropping up elsewhere - the stronger shadow magic of the gloomy woods suddenly becomes possible on the nearby plains
6. Migrations - when flocks, shoals and herds of smaller creatures typical to a place surge into another, bringing the rest of their ecosystem along with them. Like a plague of locusts but not necessarily automatically a disaster, just the 'wrong' critters being found in a place
7. Avalanches and collapses - where a chunk of the nearby terrain is carried along into this one - down a river valley, atop an avalanche or simply driven by gravity down a slope. This can range from debris to whole chunks of a strange landscape complete with occupants
8. Exodus - the weather here is just an out-growth of a long-standing weather systems that has wreaked havoc in that other place and what you are finding now are things that normally never leave fleeing the heat/cold/flooding. These were the masters of that other terrain, now driven out and seeking a new place to lair/rule.
What if your storm is blowing in off a plain of negative energy dust, or it is a blizzard across a forest of elemental fire trees or this big flood washes out a haunted battleground, that sort of thing. For this post we are looking at this from a 'wind off the plane of horrors' angle; roll this to see what kind of weird weather-related effect you are getting and then snap that together with known local weird locations in your campaign or go to the bottom table for some ideas of what those strange locations could be.
d8 Strange Weather Effects:
1. Weyr-winds: where the winds themselves bear some magical phenomena; effectively swapping the atmosphere of one location for that of another - the gloom of the local spooky wood, the shrieking wind of a mountain pass, the perpetual storm that sits over the necromancers tower - whatever that signature weather of the other location is, now it is here.
2. Dust winds: like the harmattan, bringing dusts, smokes and other traces far from their usual locations and temporarily changing the nature of the local place. Perhaps sand coats all surfaces, or this forest air is suddenly sulpurous with volcanic ash, or mushrooms sprout from spores carried in.
3. Elemental tides: where things from beyond this world are drawn in by the strong element resonance with their home plane. Here the elemental spirits that resonate with whatever the other place is are now found here.
4. Extreme floods - surges of water along rivers or coasts, sometimes even avalanches that are not inherently magical but can carry larger, heavier things from magical places. Monsters get washed over, flyers are blown off course, things that dwell in the strange location now turn up here. For this one you can just transpose encounter tables.
5. Leyline resonance - not what actually happens but people use it to describe when the magical phenonema that occur in one place start cropping up elsewhere - the stronger shadow magic of the gloomy woods suddenly becomes possible on the nearby plains
6. Migrations - when flocks, shoals and herds of smaller creatures typical to a place surge into another, bringing the rest of their ecosystem along with them. Like a plague of locusts but not necessarily automatically a disaster, just the 'wrong' critters being found in a place
7. Avalanches and collapses - where a chunk of the nearby terrain is carried along into this one - down a river valley, atop an avalanche or simply driven by gravity down a slope. This can range from debris to whole chunks of a strange landscape complete with occupants
8. Exodus - the weather here is just an out-growth of a long-standing weather systems that has wreaked havoc in that other place and what you are finding now are things that normally never leave fleeing the heat/cold/flooding. These were the masters of that other terrain, now driven out and seeking a new place to lair/rule.
26 July 2023
Activity levels in a games society
I swept up the past six months of activity for our local games soc (January-June 2023) to try and give us a sense of how many of us there are at present.
Thanks to one of our members dilligent (and consistently formatted) table arranging on our forum ahaead of events I could go back over our Adventurers League equivalent games so far and see who had registered to attend. We had three venues in play so far this year: Friday nights at our old primary, our new primary after the old could no longer host us and Saturday brunch-slot at another place. Over all we had 28 events in the period, including a lull after we lost our old venue and were figuring out a new one.
Thanks to one of our members dilligent (and consistently formatted) table arranging on our forum ahaead of events I could go back over our Adventurers League equivalent games so far and see who had registered to attend. We had three venues in play so far this year: Friday nights at our old primary, our new primary after the old could no longer host us and Saturday brunch-slot at another place. Over all we had 28 events in the period, including a lull after we lost our old venue and were figuring out a new one.
24 July 2023
Shiny TTRPG links #130
Huh, have been doing this for 2.5 years. Have some links to celebrate! More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this is weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find more links on weekly blogroll on r/OSR or the RPG Blog Carnival or a roundup of non-blog news on Third Kingdom Games roundup.
alch3mist nocturn3 gives us Ecology of Magic Items
Delta's D&D Hotspot on Solving Chainmail Jousting
Prismatic Wasteland writes on D&D Initiative & The McDonald’s Problem
Orbital Crypt gives us Small Gods 2: A Complete Pantheon, plus extra DCSS material
The Colours of Pentagrams and Their Meanings shares Magical Trinkets & Curious Baubles
@PearseAnderson tweets about Likeness Machines
Grumpy Wizard writes on Subtleties of “Rulings, not Rules”
Mindstorm gives us Ransacking the Room
d4 Caltrops shares Spoor & Sign or Tracks & Traces by Type
alch3mist nocturn3 gives us Ecology of Magic Items
Delta's D&D Hotspot on Solving Chainmail Jousting
Prismatic Wasteland writes on D&D Initiative & The McDonald’s Problem
Orbital Crypt gives us Small Gods 2: A Complete Pantheon, plus extra DCSS material
The Colours of Pentagrams and Their Meanings shares Magical Trinkets & Curious Baubles
@PearseAnderson tweets about Likeness Machines
Grumpy Wizard writes on Subtleties of “Rulings, not Rules”
Mindstorm gives us Ransacking the Room
d4 Caltrops shares Spoor & Sign or Tracks & Traces by Type
22 July 2023
A Book Goblins Shelves
Just ahead of moving location I thought I would share my shelfies as they currently sit (stand?) with an eye to what of all this stuff am I actually using?
Start with my desk-side reference shelf - this is the Most Frequently Used stuff. The red frame has my Ducal House folder and Southern Reaches sitting on top of it. The ragged pappers along the top at right is the Spelljammer Academy notes. The Spelljammer folder is my the Smoulderspace campaign - a Light of Xaryxis remix. The 3.5e core books are for Ducal House, the 5e books are for the rest. Worlds Without Number, Fire of the Velvet Horizon and a less visible d30 Sandbox Companion, d30 DMs Companion, Planar Adventures and Kontext Spiel Collection are mostly used to support Ducal House, sometimes Southern Reaches.
From top to bottom on my core shelving: my OG Rogue Trader from ~93, my core 5e stuff, the various things I picked up for my Hikuru campaign plus some of the first OSR things I grabbed. Of what is in this picture, the AD&D DMG got a lot of use early on, perhaps the most individually use. The 5e core books have gotten a lot of use, the modules, apart from Spelljammer, less so. Of the other stuff O drew on the Iron Kingdoms books and the Oriental Adventures books for inspiration in some short run campaign - did get some use, not for very long.
Start with my desk-side reference shelf - this is the Most Frequently Used stuff. The red frame has my Ducal House folder and Southern Reaches sitting on top of it. The ragged pappers along the top at right is the Spelljammer Academy notes. The Spelljammer folder is my the Smoulderspace campaign - a Light of Xaryxis remix. The 3.5e core books are for Ducal House, the 5e books are for the rest. Worlds Without Number, Fire of the Velvet Horizon and a less visible d30 Sandbox Companion, d30 DMs Companion, Planar Adventures and Kontext Spiel Collection are mostly used to support Ducal House, sometimes Southern Reaches.
19 July 2023
Campaign Retrospective: Spelljammer Academy
Since a mini-campaign actually finished, let us do a retrospective Against the Wicked City style as we have previously.
Spelljammer Academy, 12 Sessions (Feb-June 2023)
What it was: semi-open table run continuation of the Spelljammer Academy adventure. It initially was the hook for us to test new venues for our games club so it was episodic one-shots I banged together fairly haphazardly and just let it evolve as it went
What worked: Episodic nature worked well, set-up tolerated a changing cast week on week really well. People were able to pick up the 'D&D in Space' vibe pretty well. I got to improve my 'minimum viable prep' muscles. We found some kick-ass venues, people were understanding when the venues were sub-par;
What didn't: Trying to be authentic and use the Realmspace supplement. Slogging into the morass of old Oriental Adventures content. What rose-tinted glasses I may have had about AD&D Spelljammer or Oriental Adventures were ripped off and ground underfoot. Some time management issues but that is perpetual with the drop in games. Some venues worked better than others.
Lessons learned:
Fixing two dates a month and asking a bunch of people to get a minimum table of 3 is much better for my stress levels than trying to align peoples schedules
Reduce what you need to carry by challenging yourself to run games with only what is in one or two books
Episodic things like this or Adventurers League are ideal for open tables but you can get much of the campaign 'actions have meaning' feeling with even one or two players continuing session to session
Read the abilities of your monsters and how they interact with players on ships - area effects like dragons-breath, banshee wails, etc. are a lot more effective because people cannot spread out
Spelljammer Academy, 12 Sessions (Feb-June 2023)
What it was: semi-open table run continuation of the Spelljammer Academy adventure. It initially was the hook for us to test new venues for our games club so it was episodic one-shots I banged together fairly haphazardly and just let it evolve as it went
What worked: Episodic nature worked well, set-up tolerated a changing cast week on week really well. People were able to pick up the 'D&D in Space' vibe pretty well. I got to improve my 'minimum viable prep' muscles. We found some kick-ass venues, people were understanding when the venues were sub-par;
What didn't: Trying to be authentic and use the Realmspace supplement. Slogging into the morass of old Oriental Adventures content. What rose-tinted glasses I may have had about AD&D Spelljammer or Oriental Adventures were ripped off and ground underfoot. Some time management issues but that is perpetual with the drop in games. Some venues worked better than others.
Lessons learned:
Fixing two dates a month and asking a bunch of people to get a minimum table of 3 is much better for my stress levels than trying to align peoples schedules
Reduce what you need to carry by challenging yourself to run games with only what is in one or two books
Episodic things like this or Adventurers League are ideal for open tables but you can get much of the campaign 'actions have meaning' feeling with even one or two players continuing session to session
Read the abilities of your monsters and how they interact with players on ships - area effects like dragons-breath, banshee wails, etc. are a lot more effective because people cannot spread out
17 July 2023
Shiny TTRPG links #129
A short stack of links as I was afk at the seaside. More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this is weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find more links on weekly blogroll on r/OSR or the RPG Blog Carnival or a roundup of non-blog news on Third Kingdom Games roundup.
@wldenning tweets on "blogs leave ruins"
Flintlocks and Witchery summarises the sad news of the Dissolution of ATTI?
Charlie's Diary has an Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
Weaver.skepti.ch gives us 3d6 2d10 1d20
Sly Flourish writes Ensure the Resilience of Your RPGs
Apotheosis of the Invisible City gives us Medieval Demographics Done RIGHT (Pt I) and (Pt II)
Moondog Gospel writes Domain-Level play, Reasons for adventuring, and Crack Cocaine.
@wldenning tweets on "blogs leave ruins"
Flintlocks and Witchery summarises the sad news of the Dissolution of ATTI?
Charlie's Diary has an Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
Weaver.skepti.ch gives us 3d6 2d10 1d20
Sly Flourish writes Ensure the Resilience of Your RPGs
Apotheosis of the Invisible City gives us Medieval Demographics Done RIGHT (Pt I) and (Pt II)
Moondog Gospel writes Domain-Level play, Reasons for adventuring, and Crack Cocaine.
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