Some links from the depths of the hinterweb 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.
Illusory Sensorium writes their RPG Blog Carnival entry I Want to Believe
Graphite Prime gave us Strange Things Happen When You Sleep In Dungeons.....
@fuseboy tweets on XP bounties
TOM VAN WINKLE'S RETURN TO GAMING writes Yes, you ARE telling a story.
Chaos Magick-User proposes Let’s make goblins unique
TABLEMÖNGER gives us D20 Descriptions of a New PC Instantly Arriving In-Game
A Knight at the Opera shares A Fracture in Old-School Philosophy: Barbarian or King?
Blog of Forlorn Encystment gives us The Other Side of the Screen: Being the Player You Want to See in the World
19 February 2024
17 February 2024
After Action Report - Night of the Rolling Dice 3
We ran another of our open table events recently and got a bunch of folk in for it. We use Meetup as the 'on-ramp' and can reliably fill a 50 place event with a waitlist.
One key thing is venue - we found a place with a large back room that is happy to give it to us of a Saturday night with enough warning and without a deposit. At this point we are in virtuous circle territory - the venue is happy we'll fill the venue, so they're happy to give us the space to fill. The first event to prove this is the trick.
DMs are the other limiting factor - scrounge up enough DMs to run the tables you want plus a spare or two - book them in well ahead of time and then make their life as easy as possible - they should turn up ready to run something, you feed them players.
The other key thing is advance planning - get your venue booking in early, and put up the event place holder on Meetup to get that trickle of people started.
We get ~ 15% fade out of people before the event - plans change and confirms turn to no's - but we have a big enough waitlist that they fill automatically. We expect no-show on the night but that should be manageable by running tables with four in place of five players.
One key thing is venue - we found a place with a large back room that is happy to give it to us of a Saturday night with enough warning and without a deposit. At this point we are in virtuous circle territory - the venue is happy we'll fill the venue, so they're happy to give us the space to fill. The first event to prove this is the trick.
DMs are the other limiting factor - scrounge up enough DMs to run the tables you want plus a spare or two - book them in well ahead of time and then make their life as easy as possible - they should turn up ready to run something, you feed them players.
The other key thing is advance planning - get your venue booking in early, and put up the event place holder on Meetup to get that trickle of people started.
We get ~ 15% fade out of people before the event - plans change and confirms turn to no's - but we have a big enough waitlist that they fill automatically. We expect no-show on the night but that should be manageable by running tables with four in place of five players.
14 February 2024
Review: Beyond Corny Gron
tl:dr; a focussed mountains and caverns setting with great exploration mechanics, world invoked via bestiary and old-school style
Picked this up on kickstarter, part of my 'back the locals' approach and wow, this was something else. From Nerd Sirens based out of Poland, this is an expansion of Corny Groń a solo/micro rpg, with lots of random tables for wilderness and mountain adventures and mechanics referencing Knave but fitting any old school system.
The strongest wow-factor out of the box of anything that I've gotten my hands on recently - it was both larger format and thicker than I was expecting and the cloth and foil cover pops impressively. Inside is cleanly and clearly laid out with a consistent wood-cut/lino-cut art style throughout. There is a really nice touch in the right page border has the chapter list with the chapter you are in bolded - great for quick reference and keeps with the spare, clean style.
There were also four postcard with sites and encounters for mountains and caves bundled in from the kickstarter. These replicate what is on the inside covers, front and back, along with a nice woodcut art piece on the front.
Picked this up on kickstarter, part of my 'back the locals' approach and wow, this was something else. From Nerd Sirens based out of Poland, this is an expansion of Corny Groń a solo/micro rpg, with lots of random tables for wilderness and mountain adventures and mechanics referencing Knave but fitting any old school system.
Art by Alicia Wiśniewska
The strongest wow-factor out of the box of anything that I've gotten my hands on recently - it was both larger format and thicker than I was expecting and the cloth and foil cover pops impressively. Inside is cleanly and clearly laid out with a consistent wood-cut/lino-cut art style throughout. There is a really nice touch in the right page border has the chapter list with the chapter you are in bolded - great for quick reference and keeps with the spare, clean style.
There were also four postcard with sites and encounters for mountains and caves bundled in from the kickstarter. These replicate what is on the inside covers, front and back, along with a nice woodcut art piece on the front.
12 February 2024
Shiny TTRPG links #159
Only the most curious links, stumbled over in a week of browsing. 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.
Whose Measure God Could Not Take writes Considerations on Jaquaysing the Dungeon br>
Rise Up Comus has Four Tips to Drive Role Playing
Rolltop Indigo gave us Staring Back at the Invisible which started back with The Invisible Rulebooks
Playthings of Mad Gods shares The Power of Messy Success
Pity-Crit gives us The Smallest Gods: Unworthy Divinities For D&D
Laidback DM writes Running Big Parties
Whose Measure God Could Not Take writes Considerations on Jaquaysing the Dungeon br>
Rise Up Comus has Four Tips to Drive Role Playing
Rolltop Indigo gave us Staring Back at the Invisible which started back with The Invisible Rulebooks
Playthings of Mad Gods shares The Power of Messy Success
Pity-Crit gives us The Smallest Gods: Unworthy Divinities For D&D
Laidback DM writes Running Big Parties
10 February 2024
Open Table Procedures - Euro Edition
tl;dr: tempo of booking, prepping and running open table games
Take on Rules wrote My Procedure for Facilitating Open Table Gaming and cast a light on a very different gaming set-up to my own so I thought I would document how things are running here in Vienna.
As per Gorgon Bones best practices - though this allows me to hit the trifecta of Record your hobby experience, Introduce others to your hobby and Participate in a hobby community.
Sequence
Long-lead (long beforehand)
- program up the slots in the Meetup group with generic 'visit our forum' links
- pull down pre-gens from the Brancalonia site, print them
- block out Friday nights on my calendar
- put up a setting brief on the forum
D-5/7 - forum opens for the next session
- confirm venue - 99% of the time it is our usual, occassionally we skip to somewhere else. This usual is a club-house for wargamers/card gamers that we connected with last year after a few years of cafe gaming. It is a bit out of the way but cheap. Lots of big tables, a fair amount of seats
- watch for the next Friday thread to go up on the forum; jump on and say if I'm going and what I'll be running/playing. we fill quickly these days so getting in early is important
- usually I run, copy/paste my little Brancalonia pitch
- update the Meetup entry for this date with a link to the specific forum thread
- tweak post-session summary from last time to make a new entry on the campaign log
D-2/5 - prep the session
- of an evening I prep for the game - read the content, write my own timeline
- spot any recurring NPCs, factions or the like for Conservation of NPCs
- one of the forum organisers will tot up the attendees, list the DMs, the players who have expressed a preference for a DM and who is left
- check who I have at my table - any repeat players and any hooks to work in
D-1/Gameday
- pack my go-bag off my checklist
- leave work, big coffee in a thermos for at table, small coffee and muffin for on the way
- get to the venue, check my name off and pony up my €3, find a seat and drag it to the table
- help match open seats with stray players once I get there
- change into my Brancalonia t-shirt because I've got one
Take on Rules wrote My Procedure for Facilitating Open Table Gaming and cast a light on a very different gaming set-up to my own so I thought I would document how things are running here in Vienna.
As per Gorgon Bones best practices - though this allows me to hit the trifecta of Record your hobby experience, Introduce others to your hobby and Participate in a hobby community.
Sequence
Long-lead (long beforehand)
- program up the slots in the Meetup group with generic 'visit our forum' links
- pull down pre-gens from the Brancalonia site, print them
- block out Friday nights on my calendar
- put up a setting brief on the forum
D-5/7 - forum opens for the next session
- confirm venue - 99% of the time it is our usual, occassionally we skip to somewhere else. This usual is a club-house for wargamers/card gamers that we connected with last year after a few years of cafe gaming. It is a bit out of the way but cheap. Lots of big tables, a fair amount of seats
- watch for the next Friday thread to go up on the forum; jump on and say if I'm going and what I'll be running/playing. we fill quickly these days so getting in early is important
- usually I run, copy/paste my little Brancalonia pitch
- update the Meetup entry for this date with a link to the specific forum thread
- tweak post-session summary from last time to make a new entry on the campaign log
D-2/5 - prep the session
- of an evening I prep for the game - read the content, write my own timeline
- spot any recurring NPCs, factions or the like for Conservation of NPCs
- one of the forum organisers will tot up the attendees, list the DMs, the players who have expressed a preference for a DM and who is left
- check who I have at my table - any repeat players and any hooks to work in
D-1/Gameday
- pack my go-bag off my checklist
- leave work, big coffee in a thermos for at table, small coffee and muffin for on the way
- get to the venue, check my name off and pony up my €3, find a seat and drag it to the table
- help match open seats with stray players once I get there
- change into my Brancalonia t-shirt because I've got one
07 February 2024
Review: Valley of the Five Fires
tl:dr; a dense module of mechanic, lore and adventure sites for nomadic adventure.
This is a 'Fantasy Setting and Adventure Module' that I got print on demand from Lulu grace of the discount stickers and one of the many 'best of the OSR on Lulu' lists. I have been pretty happy with Richard LeBlanc's previous work like d30 Sandbox Companion and this continues that good trend. This is pitched for 0e, 1e and BX but there is lots in here for whatever system you run. I am coming to look at it now on the back of other 'steppe' connected recent releases ranging from Ultraviolet Grasslands through to Empires of the Silk Road and Wayfarer: Nomadic Realms.
Decent production quality from Lulu - black and white art within mostly by the author, all very coherent and clean. Much of the artwork within the book was done by the author and I have a lot of respect for the level of industry involved here.
This is a 'Fantasy Setting and Adventure Module' that I got print on demand from Lulu grace of the discount stickers and one of the many 'best of the OSR on Lulu' lists. I have been pretty happy with Richard LeBlanc's previous work like d30 Sandbox Companion and this continues that good trend. This is pitched for 0e, 1e and BX but there is lots in here for whatever system you run. I am coming to look at it now on the back of other 'steppe' connected recent releases ranging from Ultraviolet Grasslands through to Empires of the Silk Road and Wayfarer: Nomadic Realms.
Cover art by Nicholas Roerich
Decent production quality from Lulu - black and white art within mostly by the author, all very coherent and clean. Much of the artwork within the book was done by the author and I have a lot of respect for the level of industry involved here.
05 February 2024
Shiny TTRPG links #158
A handful of links from a travelling 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.
Illusory Sensorium provides the February RPG Blog Carnival prompt Illusions & Delusions
The Lizard Man Diaries gives us The Tactile and Generic TTRPG - Boardgamey tablefeel using bits and bobs.
TRAIPSE writes Overloading the search die
Goblin Punch gives us Dungeon: Castle of the Gribblies
Illusory Sensorium gives us Doom Clock
Playful Void shares Diagetic advancement and inventory
Methods & Madness gives us Wilderness level tables
TASKERLAND writes Into the OSR: On Diegetic Advancement
Illusory Sensorium provides the February RPG Blog Carnival prompt Illusions & Delusions
The Lizard Man Diaries gives us The Tactile and Generic TTRPG - Boardgamey tablefeel using bits and bobs.
TRAIPSE writes Overloading the search die
Goblin Punch gives us Dungeon: Castle of the Gribblies
Illusory Sensorium gives us Doom Clock
Playful Void shares Diagetic advancement and inventory
Methods & Madness gives us Wilderness level tables
TASKERLAND writes Into the OSR: On Diegetic Advancement
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