Remixing Spelljammer: Light of Xaryxis

As mentioned on a previous post - I have been running Light of Xaryxis adapted to the wild randomness and sometimes paranoid tactical noses of my players. Just running them along the 'suddenly, neogi' path of the adventure would not fly so it has been fun so far collaging the set pieces and encounters from the adventure into a new structure which gives the players better motivations. It is beneficial to me also as some challenges and encounters get tripped where I would have hand-waved things along by instinct - so it makes things a bit more unpredictable and interesting. I have been a big fan of the Alexandrian remixes so I thought I would write up these mid-point notes.

What I did was:
Read through Light of Xaryxis (LoX) and rework the framing of the campaign.
Adapt the adventure by breaking it up into 'plot chunks' which could be separated.
Created a system for all the action to happen in.
Dropped the various plot chunks into places that made sense.

Shiny TTRPG links #136

A bunch of notable links this week. More links 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.

Blue Bard releases a masterwork in Castle of the Silver Prince Release Day

The Wandering Gamist gives us Rival Parties and Replacement Characters

Mazirian's Garden shares Into the Megadungeon Episode 2 "Little Persistent Worlds"

Traverse Fantasy proposes a new tag: DIY Elfgames

Playful Void asks What’s with “mainly diy elfgames”?

Bruce Heard shares Legacies of Ill-Gotten Loot

DMDavid writes How D&D’s Rules Changed To Encourage More Varied Groups of Heroes Than Those in the Pulp Fantasy That Inspired the Game.

Review: Historica Arcanum - The City of Crescent

tl;dr: a dense setting book for 19th century Istanbul by a local team celebrating their own myth and legend, combined with an interesting free-form adventure and delivered in a gorgeous package.

I have just had my hardcopies of Empires of the Silk Road and City of the Crescent arrive a week ago. I went through the pdf of City a while back and found a big slab of inspiration. I like it a lot because it is a team from the region writing about their neighborhood and while it works with the 5e mechanics it takes a refreshingly original approach to presenting a setting book. It is up on Bundle of Holding (until 4/9/23) and at ~$6 a pdf, I think its pretty decent value and I'm all for supporting games studios in non-standard places.

Cover by Yağmur Kıyak

It is compatible with 5e but not in the typical 5e structure. The team writing it leaned hard into the lore, art and presentation and came up with a gorgeous book - with one caveat. The cover art above is iconic and probably the most gruesome thing about the book. To maintain harmony in my household I have had to wrap my own copy to hide it, but the rest of the interior is just gorgeous - different flower borders for every chapter, public domain art pieces for chapter breaks and lots of care and attention gone into the layout.

The really nice, crisp, clean feel to it which is especially impressive when you realise how dense this book is. There is a huge amount of material crammed in here which might not suit everyone - this is not a skim-and-go supplement.

The Lighthouse Organisation - Clubs and Congregations (RPG Blog Carnival)

Answering the RPG Blog Carnival prompt on Clubs and Congregations from Codex Anathema I decided to pull out a faction that I had run against my PCs for the first 'season' of my current home campaign.

From the prompt post, grace of Google Translate "All campaign settings, whether official or original to each DM, are filled with a wide variety of larger organizations: religious cults, merchant guilds, arcane cabals, and state governments being the most typical examples. [S]hare ideas about your favourites, comment on how you handle them in your campaign, or show us your creation. [...] What makes the organization unique? What is your role in the world and how do you stand out in it? What benefits does it grant to those who belong to it? How do members interact with non-members? Do you use special rules like Renown or Piety with them?"

For a faction, I am going to run through the prime-adversary for the first cycle of my home campaign which was 'the Lighthouse'. Initially a shadowy organisation identified only as the hidden hand assisting other bad actors the players spent a large chunk of effort back-tracking clues, running down research and then leading the palace guard on raids to finally pull its teeth.

Shiny TTRPG links #135

Some themes of play-by-post and starting campaigns this week. More links 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.

In a welcome return Dungeonfruit gives us Class-As-Species (Anatomically Correct Wizards)

Daily Adventure Prompts shares Monsters Reimagined: Bandits

Goblin Guerrilla Warfare writes Encouraging Domain-Level Play from the Beginning of the Campaign

Beau Rancourt gives us Magic Item Economy

A mini-theme on play-by-text/post with:
Gorgon Bones and Play-by-Post Gaming - some notes and advice
Shadow & Fae with GM Pointers: Live-Text Games
Mediums and Messages on Approaching Live-Text Play

Mason Quah on The Gamer writes Dungeons & Dragons: How To Have The Best Handouts

Class / Race choices in Baldurs Gate 3 vs tabletop 5e

Larian Studios, makers of Baldurs Gate 3, released stats from the first weekend of the game being live including class and race choices of the players. Given that it is a pretty faithful implementation of the 5e ruleset I thought it would be interesting to compare against what data we have for peoples choices at tabletop. I was surprised to see a big, big difference in classes and near enough same old, same old for races.

The big difference is the preference for paladin as the top class choice - typically not even top 3 for tabletop players. I am surprised at the big seperation between wizard and sorcerer also - how is one full caster perceived as so different from another?

Review: Reach of the Roach God

tl:dr; a creepy cult and lots of great sites fill this (final) underground expansion for A Thousand Thousand Islands, arriving with bitter news.

This was the juggernaut kickstarter from the Thousand Thousand Islands crew - getting 10x on its target and gifting us this beautiful hardback book to go sit with the Stygian Library and the Veins of the Earth as classics of the OSR. This blog is a long-standing fan of the Thousand Thousand Islands so having this arrive and then not two days later watching Zedeck and Munkao go daggers drawn and declare A Thousand Thousand Islands dead really took the shine off it.

Hardback arrived

First impression is that this is a beautiful artefact even before you crack the cover. The design work is fantastic from the creepy roach legs to the ribbons to the custom Thousand Thousand Islands typeface. Our overarching theme is the struggle against the Roach God Odoyoq - starting with signs of his cultists, then the spread of his influence through underground communities.