Significant doings in the TTRPG space this week. More can be found on the previous list found here. You can find more links on this weeks r/OSR blogroll or the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
Traverse Fantasy gives us Kubular & Other Attack Methods
Tales of the Lunar Lands writes I Love Underused Monsters
OSR VAULT gives us 100 Good/Evil Faction Motivations
Grumpy Wizard asks How Do I Keep Players From Ignoring Adventures In My Sandbox Campaigns?
The Fantastic is Fact on Getting Started with OD&D
Methods & Madness discusses The BECMI reaction table
11 December 2023
09 December 2023
Campaign Spin-Up VIII - Fuzzier West March Sandboxes
I ran an open table game and wanted to dig into a little how it all came off from the DM prep point of view. There are some player session write-ups that went up on Obsidian Portal.
Deliberate aspects of this campaign were:
- open table, drop-in game - go whenever 3 were available
- follow the players, drop hooks but no big plot
- minimise prep - I had three other campaigns running, there was no time for more prep
- newbie friendly
The tools used in sessions were
- a hidden depths table for the wilderness
- Brancalonia non-lethal brawl rules to make non-wilds/underground less dangerous but still fun
- an overloaded encounter table for the tunnels beneath their base
- a semi-randomly generated dungeon made with a map and tables from the DMG 3.5e
- someone elses Dungeon 23 run for the big hidden dungeon
- maps from photos - woodworm burrows, tourist guide to a castle, hexmap
- a city page generated using my workflow - the In Corpathium and Infinigrad generators combined with Stupidly Quick City-Building from r/DNDBehindTheScreen and steps 3 & 4 from creating fantasy villages, towns and cities to get the layout
- a few special sessions built off a dedicated tool - two from Where the Wheat Grows Tall, one from the bathhouse table
Going session by session on what drove play each time a group sat to table:
Deliberate aspects of this campaign were:
- open table, drop-in game - go whenever 3 were available
- follow the players, drop hooks but no big plot
- minimise prep - I had three other campaigns running, there was no time for more prep
- newbie friendly
The tools used in sessions were
- a hidden depths table for the wilderness
- Brancalonia non-lethal brawl rules to make non-wilds/underground less dangerous but still fun
- an overloaded encounter table for the tunnels beneath their base
- a semi-randomly generated dungeon made with a map and tables from the DMG 3.5e
- someone elses Dungeon 23 run for the big hidden dungeon
- maps from photos - woodworm burrows, tourist guide to a castle, hexmap
- a city page generated using my workflow - the In Corpathium and Infinigrad generators combined with Stupidly Quick City-Building from r/DNDBehindTheScreen and steps 3 & 4 from creating fantasy villages, towns and cities to get the layout
- a few special sessions built off a dedicated tool - two from Where the Wheat Grows Tall, one from the bathhouse table
Going session by session on what drove play each time a group sat to table:
07 December 2023
It Has A Name (NPC Management)
tl;dr: Name your NPCs to avoid slips and obfuscate who is important.
A theme of this year has been a lot more one shots and published material - me reading and assimilating other peoples stuff with not so much prep time before running it - Light of Xaryxis campaign and the Fistful of Quatrins series in the Bracalonia book among others. What I have found this has lead to is problems for me where NPCs have false identities or hidden aspects.
Examples:
This person they found has a core aspect of their identity that is not obvious on first glance.
That sailor is a shapeshifter? How to avoid slipping and referring to him by 'cultist' or 'shapeshifter'.
That voice behind the door is a monster? Better not refer to it as what it is.
That guy has a connection to people that is his only characterisation but you do not want that to spring out at folk
Solution - name them and never give another reference, even after things become clear.
Best part of this is that even after things come to blows and there are pieces on the battlefield, you just have different looking pieces but the names still obfuscate exactly what it is.
Spoilers ahead for light of Xaryxis (LoX).
A theme of this year has been a lot more one shots and published material - me reading and assimilating other peoples stuff with not so much prep time before running it - Light of Xaryxis campaign and the Fistful of Quatrins series in the Bracalonia book among others. What I have found this has lead to is problems for me where NPCs have false identities or hidden aspects.
Examples:
This person they found has a core aspect of their identity that is not obvious on first glance.
That sailor is a shapeshifter? How to avoid slipping and referring to him by 'cultist' or 'shapeshifter'.
That voice behind the door is a monster? Better not refer to it as what it is.
That guy has a connection to people that is his only characterisation but you do not want that to spring out at folk
Solution - name them and never give another reference, even after things become clear.
Best part of this is that even after things come to blows and there are pieces on the battlefield, you just have different looking pieces but the names still obfuscate exactly what it is.
Spoilers ahead for light of Xaryxis (LoX).
04 December 2023
Shiny TTRPG links #149
A wider ranging ramble about the web this week. More can be found on the previous list found here. You can find more links on this weeks r/OSR blogroll or the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
Plastic Polyhedra start Decembers RPG Blog Carnival: Endings
VDonnut Valley compiles November's Carnival Roundup Post
U.S. Postal Service Reveals Additional Stamps for 2024
Hipsters & Dragons gives us Designing & Running Heists in 5e D&D
Full Moon Storytelling suggests Using ‘third places’ to add cultural depth to your D&D campaign or character
Mazirian's Garden shares Downtime: Home away from Home
Grumpy Wizard asks How Do I Keep Players From Ignoring Adventures In My Sandbox Campaigns?
Plastic Polyhedra start Decembers RPG Blog Carnival: Endings
VDonnut Valley compiles November's Carnival Roundup Post
U.S. Postal Service Reveals Additional Stamps for 2024
Hipsters & Dragons gives us Designing & Running Heists in 5e D&D
Full Moon Storytelling suggests Using ‘third places’ to add cultural depth to your D&D campaign or character
Mazirian's Garden shares Downtime: Home away from Home
Grumpy Wizard asks How Do I Keep Players From Ignoring Adventures In My Sandbox Campaigns?
02 December 2023
Table Matching Survey Results
I ran a survey of our local game group to discover preferences and see what else people would like to be playing. From conversations at Night of the Rolling Dice I thought it would be a good idea to survey the group to ask what games people want to play to then try and match up tables. Partially inspired by the frequency of recent group matching posts here, I wanted to try and highlight preferred frequency (weekly, monthly, etc), preferred session length, online/in-person/both so folk could hopefully see that there were others interested in the same timeslots.
Our standard tempo is a Friday night session and a sometimes Saturday brunch session - my hypothesis going into this was these were driven purely by force of habit - those timings generally working and being 'good enough' we left them. I wanted to know if there could be other times that would suit people who could not make the Friday night slots and what those would be.
What stands out to me from the point of view of getting more tables going:
* We have people interested to play most weeknight evenings - plenty of room to fit in a new game.
* We have nine people interested to run a table - behold your player pool!
* 11 of us are happy to play online
People available per day - our regular slot is a Friday due to room availability but it looks like it would be even better for folk on a Saturday or Sunday.
Preferred frequency of play - most people are being covered by our weekly session but we have a fair few that once or twice a month suit better.
Our standard tempo is a Friday night session and a sometimes Saturday brunch session - my hypothesis going into this was these were driven purely by force of habit - those timings generally working and being 'good enough' we left them. I wanted to know if there could be other times that would suit people who could not make the Friday night slots and what those would be.
What stands out to me from the point of view of getting more tables going:
* We have people interested to play most weeknight evenings - plenty of room to fit in a new game.
* We have nine people interested to run a table - behold your player pool!
* 11 of us are happy to play online
People available per day - our regular slot is a Friday due to room availability but it looks like it would be even better for folk on a Saturday or Sunday.
29 November 2023
Thoughts on a new "DMG of house rules"
Back in Ireland this past weekend I met up with my old Katharsis table and we got to talking about the coming edition - in particular what would need to be in those books to get us to lay down our cash. Running theory is that the PHB will shift huge numbers, because players love options. The Monster Manual will not because there are so many online equivalents and a significantly smaller pool of interested buyers. We were not sure about the DMG; and wondered what we would want to see ourselves - a book full of settings perhaps?
This would be a book with a chapter on each of the major D&D settings to give just enough to get started in any of them - Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Spelljammer, Planescape, whatever. This would make it something that both players and DM's would want and hugely increase the potential pool of buyers.
For me, a neat edition to this would be optional rules tagged into each setting - Forgotten Realms is heroic fantasy, use the standard rules. Greyhawk is supposed to be more swords and sorcery, maybe use Gritty Realism, etc. All the various optional rules would be grouped and presented with the setting to support the feel of that setting, making there be a reason to play different settings to get different experiences out of the same, known, system. I really like the way that Brancalonia is effectively a 5e mod - it gives a different feel to the setting without have to have people learn a whole new system. Things like ship combat, overland exploration and other mechanics could also be tied in as setting options.
This would be a book with a chapter on each of the major D&D settings to give just enough to get started in any of them - Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Spelljammer, Planescape, whatever. This would make it something that both players and DM's would want and hugely increase the potential pool of buyers.
For me, a neat edition to this would be optional rules tagged into each setting - Forgotten Realms is heroic fantasy, use the standard rules. Greyhawk is supposed to be more swords and sorcery, maybe use Gritty Realism, etc. All the various optional rules would be grouped and presented with the setting to support the feel of that setting, making there be a reason to play different settings to get different experiences out of the same, known, system. I really like the way that Brancalonia is effectively a 5e mod - it gives a different feel to the setting without have to have people learn a whole new system. Things like ship combat, overland exploration and other mechanics could also be tied in as setting options.
27 November 2023
Shiny TTRPG links #148
A short set of links due to travel. More can be found on the previous list found here. You can find more links on this weeks r/OSR blogroll or the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
Scholomance has launched The Great Tabletop Roleplaying Survey - get your views in!
The Burnt World of Athas shares Scale, Tail, and Claw - The Reptilian Peoples of Athas
A Knight at the Opera gives us Action Mysteries
Well well well, look what the shoggoth dragged in shares My Arden Vul campaign, 6 months in
The Lady and Tiger gives us One and a Half Month OSR Retrospective
David J Prokopetz compiles Tumblr 200-Word RPGs 2023
Eldritch Fields gives us Wilderness Encounter Details/Activities
Methods & Madness seeks Good generic wilderness encounter tables? (B/X vs. AD&D vs. 5e)
Bjarke the Bard writes Downtime Activities Leveled Up: A Comparative Review of A5E and D&D 5E
Darkplane shares Popping the Hood on Published Scenarios
Signals from Delta Pavonis asks GM Screens - what is their Glorious Purpose?
Vladar's Blog writes Planescape review: The March Begins
Tales of the Lunar Lands shares Friday Encounter: Fire in the Hole
The Ideocron of the Oracular Somnambulist gives us Bone Fire
Mythlands of Erce writes Standing up for D&D's Gen X: 2e (Part 1)
OSR VAULT gives us 100 Curses
Rolling With Us shares The Shadow Over Yuletide: Free Christmas D&D Adventure
Mindstorm presents Gulch
Scholomance has launched The Great Tabletop Roleplaying Survey - get your views in!
The Burnt World of Athas shares Scale, Tail, and Claw - The Reptilian Peoples of Athas
A Knight at the Opera gives us Action Mysteries
Well well well, look what the shoggoth dragged in shares My Arden Vul campaign, 6 months in
The Lady and Tiger gives us One and a Half Month OSR Retrospective
David J Prokopetz compiles Tumblr 200-Word RPGs 2023
Eldritch Fields gives us Wilderness Encounter Details/Activities
Methods & Madness seeks Good generic wilderness encounter tables? (B/X vs. AD&D vs. 5e)
Bjarke the Bard writes Downtime Activities Leveled Up: A Comparative Review of A5E and D&D 5E
Darkplane shares Popping the Hood on Published Scenarios
Signals from Delta Pavonis asks GM Screens - what is their Glorious Purpose?
Vladar's Blog writes Planescape review: The March Begins
Tales of the Lunar Lands shares Friday Encounter: Fire in the Hole
The Ideocron of the Oracular Somnambulist gives us Bone Fire
Mythlands of Erce writes Standing up for D&D's Gen X: 2e (Part 1)
OSR VAULT gives us 100 Curses
Rolling With Us shares The Shadow Over Yuletide: Free Christmas D&D Adventure
Mindstorm presents Gulch
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