More links from across the web, some interesting stuff from the archives! 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.
Deeper In The Game shares We Built This City – Before and Now
Probable Train gives us Old-School Dungeon Maps Made Easy
Autocratik launches This August - the 10th RPGaDAY
Moondog Gospel gives us Mental Encumbrance
Swords & Stitchery shares 1d20 Random Sword & Sorcery Traits of The Nephilim Background Table For Your Old School & OSR Game Campaigns
Mazirian's Garden writes The Problem of Spotlight Management in OSR Games
DELTA'S D&D HOTSPOT gives us Violence Inherent in the System (of Art)
David J Prokopetz suggests Proposals to refer to One D&D as “6th Edition” in order to spite Hasbro marketing don’t go far enough
07 August 2023
05 August 2023
Class/Race archetypes in 1.2 million D&DBeyond characters
tl;dr: giant dataset from D&DBeyond shows us that over half of characters created are the same few (30) race/class combos.
dice-scroller.com pulled over a million character sheets of D&DBeyond to give us Most popular D&D Classes and Races and I wanted to revisit some work I did last year on Player choice of unusual races within D&D classes. Caveats about all this at the bottom of the post but short version - this is probably not Big-T-Truth, no dataset can be, but I think it is still worth looking at what shapes and patterns might become visible.
Just eyeballing the work that dice-scroller did we can see the same concentration as before - this is not a gently-fading colour map, we have points of heat speckled across our race/class grid that shows strong preferences for certain combinations. Interestingly for such a large data set we *still* have some race/class combos missing saying that eight years after the game launched not all things have necessarily been tried.
The significantly lower frequency of Artificers and to an extent Bloodhunters says that those being gated behind paywalls on DnDBeyond is having an affect, as could be expected.
dice-scroller.com pulled over a million character sheets of D&DBeyond to give us Most popular D&D Classes and Races and I wanted to revisit some work I did last year on Player choice of unusual races within D&D classes. Caveats about all this at the bottom of the post but short version - this is probably not Big-T-Truth, no dataset can be, but I think it is still worth looking at what shapes and patterns might become visible.
Just eyeballing the work that dice-scroller did we can see the same concentration as before - this is not a gently-fading colour map, we have points of heat speckled across our race/class grid that shows strong preferences for certain combinations. Interestingly for such a large data set we *still* have some race/class combos missing saying that eight years after the game launched not all things have necessarily been tried.
The significantly lower frequency of Artificers and to an extent Bloodhunters says that those being gated behind paywalls on DnDBeyond is having an affect, as could be expected.
02 August 2023
Actual Play: giant cannon foundry as terrain
tl;dr: tested out a 'what-if' terrain set up, adding scale and verticality and it worked quite well
Having just listened to Hida-O-Win's lament about the lost opportunity in the final fight in the Enemy Within Book 4 (from the Adventuring Party podcast #752, spoilers ahoy for Enemy Within) I thought I'd try and execute his vision as described in the final fight in my Spelljammer Academy mini-campaign.
The whole session was a bit of bricolage - it was the boarding and clearing of an old Dwarven Citadel taken over by a rogue Astral Elf star empire (the Xaryxians, straight out of the book). it started with a stolen version of the fleet action from Chapter 10 of Light of Xaryxis for the approach then gave the heroes the option to fight the fleet or be the landing party.
They chose landing party and for the interior of the Citadel I used Graphite Primes Mazes set up. The presence of a pair of artificers stood them in good stead getting past hazards but then there were two fights buried in the maze.
First was going to be the Xaryxian command post, second was their Scro allies who were looting technology from the Citadel. The Xaryxian fight was a nasty little brawl in a room, a knife fight in a phone-box that was difficult based off testing a range of the Xaryxian tougher types. There was effectively no terrain in that beyond a few stairways.
The scro fight I attempted to make more interesting. My sketch map below. Here we have high mesh gantries 60 ft up, 10 ft wide on either side of the room. The big thing in the middle is a 40 ft diameter cannon, a main gun for the citadel. 1/4 in from each end of the room and in the middle were a gantry of chain winches, essentially a curtain of chains. The opposition were three pairs of Scro warriors with a chest each they were carrying and a pair of Scro sergeants overseeing them. The two sergeants were up in the chain-gantries keeping an eye on things. The Scro were re-skinned Giff from the Boos Astral Menagerie - the warriors were CR3 Shipmates, the Sergeants CR6 Shock Troopers. They had muskets and grenades, according to the CR calculation widget this should have been a CR16 encounter, classed as Deadly.
The roster for the night was:
Having just listened to Hida-O-Win's lament about the lost opportunity in the final fight in the Enemy Within Book 4 (from the Adventuring Party podcast #752, spoilers ahoy for Enemy Within) I thought I'd try and execute his vision as described in the final fight in my Spelljammer Academy mini-campaign.
The whole session was a bit of bricolage - it was the boarding and clearing of an old Dwarven Citadel taken over by a rogue Astral Elf star empire (the Xaryxians, straight out of the book). it started with a stolen version of the fleet action from Chapter 10 of Light of Xaryxis for the approach then gave the heroes the option to fight the fleet or be the landing party.
They chose landing party and for the interior of the Citadel I used Graphite Primes Mazes set up. The presence of a pair of artificers stood them in good stead getting past hazards but then there were two fights buried in the maze.
First was going to be the Xaryxian command post, second was their Scro allies who were looting technology from the Citadel. The Xaryxian fight was a nasty little brawl in a room, a knife fight in a phone-box that was difficult based off testing a range of the Xaryxian tougher types. There was effectively no terrain in that beyond a few stairways.
The scro fight I attempted to make more interesting. My sketch map below. Here we have high mesh gantries 60 ft up, 10 ft wide on either side of the room. The big thing in the middle is a 40 ft diameter cannon, a main gun for the citadel. 1/4 in from each end of the room and in the middle were a gantry of chain winches, essentially a curtain of chains. The opposition were three pairs of Scro warriors with a chest each they were carrying and a pair of Scro sergeants overseeing them. The two sergeants were up in the chain-gantries keeping an eye on things. The Scro were re-skinned Giff from the Boos Astral Menagerie - the warriors were CR3 Shipmates, the Sergeants CR6 Shock Troopers. They had muskets and grenades, according to the CR calculation widget this should have been a CR16 encounter, classed as Deadly.
The roster for the night was:
31 July 2023
Shiny TTRPG links #131
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!
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!
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
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