Lavish feasts and high tables (RPG Blog Carnival)

For this months blog carnival we are back to the host VDonnut Valley for the topic of Feasts, Foods and Fancy Drinks, oh my!. You can see the rest of the topics for 2024 on Of Dice And Dragons 2024 Blog Carnival hosting list.

I've talked about Food in world building before, this time we delve deeper into what is served at the noble tables of the dragonbloods - or what is served when the point is to dine extravagantly?

All this will of course be set against the backdrop of the hosts day-to-day extravagance - chairs of rare woods, hangings of extinct beasts, paintings by great masters, war trophies, relics - all the things that are rare and coveted are just the frame for the feast.

For best impression the hosts would like to hit as many of these as they can - getting more extravagant and perhaps reaching the bounds of the hosts tastes and/or courage as we go down.

Shiny TTRPG links #163

Some curious links from about the internet. Even more can be found on the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. There is no r/OSR blogroll this week for reasons unknown. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Various and Sundered Items presents GLOG Class: Flock of Sheeple

The Burnt World of Athas releases the magnificenty Dark Sun 3e

Maynooth University has a Writing for Role-Playing Games Microcredential

Tales of the Lunar Lands gives us Yo Dawg, I Heard You Like RPGs...

Playful Void shares Red Button Monsters

Archstone Press gives us Lonely Fun in the NSR

Pelgrane Press archive diving finds Problem Solving vs Problem Protecting

Trilemma Adventures gives us Whose Mechanic is it Anyway?

All Dead Generations shares Beyond the Crystal Frontier - A Gazetteer of the World

Against The Wicked City gave us Bringing Down the Hammer, part 12: my own private WFRP

RuneHammer writes Plasticity

Sea of Stars gives us Dragons Feasts and Foods

Save vs Total Party Kill shares Mordheim 2024

Flintlocks and Witchery gave us Here's Some F*ckin' DnD!

Player perspective after four years of play

With four years since session zero now under our belt I thought I would pull together some of the player views on the Ducal House campaign.

I polled my players and a couple of themes droped out:
- depth of the world
- NPC interactions and political intrigue
- no solutions, only problems
- character evolution through their campaign experiences

On depth of the world they said they liked how much time they have spent in the world, how familiar it now is - particularly after the significant amount of time in the starting city. Now as they return after quite a lot of time away - re-encountering NPCs and being back on well known terrain is something they are enjoying. The interaction with the world now has a fluency that is in line with what the characters that actuall dwell in this world ought to.

Deep record keeping is becoming a challenge which ties to long real-world calendar time passing while the game-world turns relatively slowly within it. The Bard has taken to bi-annual re-reads of their notes to try and keep it all in mind. Enjoyment of the world and its intracicies is had despite it being hard to retain.

I enjoy the world and intricacies, but they refuse to stay in my brain (shoutout to our great bard for the notes and our cleric for having the brains)

our actions have consequences, even the minor ones. I very much enjoy hearing rumours filter back or learning that something we neglected in the beginning has not died as a story threat but has been brewing in the background. it feels immensely rewarding and daunting at the same time to know that what you do matters...for the better and for the worse

familiarity with the world from having spent so much time in Thenya, and even after quite a lot of time away - spent the time, got to know the place - and can really look back and see how we have grown. It feels earned.

Review: Flee, Mortals!

tl:dr; a toolbox for building intricate, challenging combat encounters with gorgeous art and tons of encounter ideas.

The MCDM Monster Book - built around 'action oriented monsters' - the revamp of the 5e monster manual that MCDM has been talking about for a while prior to launching the kickstarter. I backed it since I agreed with the thoughts about some of the issues and was interested to see what solutions they came up with.

Gorgeous book, great art, slightly glossier, lighter paper than the standard WotC book but it makes a bigger book not take up more space. The dust cover really makes it stand-out on the shelf. All the little quality elements are great - sewn pages, ribbon, dust cover - the finish is very good. Getting my hands on a copy here in Europe involved shelling out ridiculous shipping fees but in for a penny I guess.

Shiny TTRPG links #162

More interesting links from about the internet. Even 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.

Player Elimination writes The Decline of Miniatures Gaming – A Look Back at Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader

The Lizard Man Diaries gives us D&D Quick and Powerful Edition

Le Chaudron Chromatique shares Alignment languages miscommunication

Coins and Scrolls gives us OSR: Holy and Roguish Items, Pocket Debris, and the Ghastly Tomb Tinies

Port Imperiale shares Back to the obscure: Rogue Trader 40k Minotaurs!

Planarian Calamarium gives us Preserving the Mundane Peril of Dungeons at Higher Levels

Tracking "Strict Time Records" in a campaign

tl;dr: reviewing time records from an urban/wilderness campaigns highlight how time is the key resource in cities

Nudged into action by Vladars blog on Strict Time Records I dug out the data for my home campaign. My feeling was it was a less meaningful thing since we started as an urban campaign where the resource is not torches or food but time - and because every half hour was precious we progressed relatively slowly down the calendar. The party was happy to split up to get things done *in space* but not in time - reconvening regularly to compare notes and plan next steps every couple of hours.

I took a look at how we progressed down the calendar over the course of the campaign - each in-world month is 30 days.

Actual Test: House of Illusions (RPG Blog Carnival)

tl;dr: a forewarned party will make mincemeat out of your illusionist.

I table tested the approach to illusions from Bluebard "Death by Illusion" lightly adapted to 3.5e (Illusion save became Will Save) and it worked pretty well. This is also a return to Illusory Sensorum's Illusions & Delusions prompt for the RPG Blog Carnival. I tried to put it into practice and it... kind of worked, kind of went clunk but in a good way.

The background was that the party, children of a noble house, had figured out one of their cousins was being held on their own lands incommunicado by parties unknown. Scrying on them they saw the location they knew with the fittings of a neighbouring realm. Communication attempts through message were interrupted by the scry being countered until someone Sleep'ed their cousin and they saw them being dumped into bed with their also slumbering new wife. Further scrys on known servants revealed them all asleep in the potato cellar. The party deduced that something was going on involving illusions that made the cousin think all was well - they rounded up an 'illusion specialist' by way of the local mages guild and set off down river on a borrowed skiff using their Spelljamming saddle.

From the opposition side - they knew they were blown so they had some time to prepare. They had hostages and were at a fortified chateau, but one they knew the heroes were familiar with.

Philosophical question one - running this somewhat old school should the foes in place be of equal level to challenge the players or should they be of the level equivalent to when this hook was first set up - a force sufficient for the task by the opposition based on the last news the opposition had?

To set this all up I:
First off - I grabbed a map of a fortified chateau as my baseline
Second - I figured out the hostile forces, what they were and what they were disguised as
Third - I gave myself a random roll table of illusionary hazards