Busy week, lots of links! For even more, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
Goblin Punch writes Lessons from Elden Ring
Zzarchov Kowolski responds The forgotten element of adapting Dark Souls
Roll to Doubt gives us “Against” On-Boarding
Kontent Punch shares My Best Mistakes
How to Start a Revolution in 21 Days or Less gave us On Randomness In Character Generation, and Why Old School D&D Is Awesome For New Players
d4 Caltrops gives us B/X Procedural Flow Charts
Smithsonian Magazine gives us How Dungeons & Dragons Sparked a Revolution in How We Play Just About Everything
09 September 2024
07 September 2024
Actual Test: Scarlet Heroes Adventure Generator
Scarlet Heroes has the adventure generators I was looking for in Worlds Without Number, huh. I decided to test run it for my open table games. Out of the urban/wilderness/dungeon options I liked that the urban options had 'mission' structures so I went with those as most appropriate for a one shot. Written up to follow Gorgon Bones first best practice: "Record your hobby experience" while continuing the DM commentary addition to the session notes.
I rolled up some 'tags' - Foul Sorcery and Holy Site - and a plot - "An Antagonist seeks to steal something precious to a target."
The plot workflow had a few bits:
I rolled up a skilled sorcerer and a paid guardsman as actors and some locations - a Public well and a Fighting pit. Combining those with the tags and thinking through how it ties to dangling threads from previous adventures I rewrote all this as:
- Skilled Sorcerer [quest-giver] turns up looking for help
- Antagonist is seeking quest-gives most precious posession - a Tome of forbidden lore
- Figures they are in the city, this is where their networks are, degraded as they maybe
- seen by public well - start there
- get waylaid by bribed guards [catspaws of Maganza], tickets to local fighting pit in their pockets
- Infiltrate a Location where the activities relate to a Clue (fighting pit, predator)
- investigate there, ancient shrine to predator queen - terror bird
- spot servants of antagonist - need an approach angle
- Trick an Actor into revealing a Clue.
- Convince an Actor ally of the foe to betray them
- Plan revealed need to extract and get word back
I then localised it by combing back through old sessions to refresh my memory on locations and players at large to conserve my NPCs, and came up with:
I rolled up some 'tags' - Foul Sorcery and Holy Site - and a plot - "An Antagonist seeks to steal something precious to a target."
The plot workflow had a few bits:
Draw or choose either the Antagonist or the Target, whichever your hero is most likely to care about.
Draw an unknown actor to be foundy after a successful Investigation scene spent discovering their identity.
Be waylaid by a hostile Actor with a Clue.
The object being stolen is the Target’s most precious possession or something important to the Antagonist that the Target possesses.
Scenes revolve around finding the thieves, guarding the object, and snatching it back if it is stolen.
- Infiltrate a Location where the activities relate to a Clue
- Trick an Actor into revealing a Clue.
- Convince an Actor ally of the foe to betray them
I rolled up a skilled sorcerer and a paid guardsman as actors and some locations - a Public well and a Fighting pit. Combining those with the tags and thinking through how it ties to dangling threads from previous adventures I rewrote all this as:
- Skilled Sorcerer [quest-giver] turns up looking for help
- Antagonist is seeking quest-gives most precious posession - a Tome of forbidden lore
- Figures they are in the city, this is where their networks are, degraded as they maybe
- seen by public well - start there
- get waylaid by bribed guards [catspaws of Maganza], tickets to local fighting pit in their pockets
- Infiltrate a Location where the activities relate to a Clue (fighting pit, predator)
- investigate there, ancient shrine to predator queen - terror bird
- spot servants of antagonist - need an approach angle
- Trick an Actor into revealing a Clue.
- Convince an Actor ally of the foe to betray them
- Plan revealed need to extract and get word back
I then localised it by combing back through old sessions to refresh my memory on locations and players at large to conserve my NPCs, and came up with:
04 September 2024
It Came From Beyond Time - RPG Blog Carnival Wrap Up
And so we conclude the August 2024 RPG Blog Carnival - our topic was "It Came From Beyond Time!" - on my mind was the strange effects of long life and magic can have in dredging things up from the deep past and hurl them into your current campaign.
We got responses from:
Sea of Stars on time in their campaign world and who keeps the records.
Foreign Planets with the Ape race-as-class with a glorious d100 random advancements table.
VDonnut Valley with A few treasures of distant past - even more irreplaceable than merely precious or powerful.
Elemental Reductions wrote On Temporal Displacement on the why and how they have used elements of their dungeon project to convey the sense of ancient time.
My own entry has d10 + d6 + d6 ways things from the deep past can return to haunt or save your campaign
You can find some deeper background on the RPG Blog Carnival on 'of Dice and Dragons'. Our next topic is going to be "Wondrous Weapons and Damning Dweomers" hosted by Attronarch's Athenaeum.
We got responses from:
Sea of Stars on time in their campaign world and who keeps the records.
Foreign Planets with the Ape race-as-class with a glorious d100 random advancements table.
VDonnut Valley with A few treasures of distant past - even more irreplaceable than merely precious or powerful.
Elemental Reductions wrote On Temporal Displacement on the why and how they have used elements of their dungeon project to convey the sense of ancient time.
My own entry has d10 + d6 + d6 ways things from the deep past can return to haunt or save your campaign
You can find some deeper background on the RPG Blog Carnival on 'of Dice and Dragons'. Our next topic is going to be "Wondrous Weapons and Damning Dweomers" hosted by Attronarch's Athenaeum.
02 September 2024
Shiny TTRPG links #188
More toothy links from about the internet. For even more links, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
RPG Taverns gives us Dungeons & Dragons at Edinburgh Fringe
Blake DeRusha writes D&D’s Lightning In A Bottle: How Moldvay, Marsh, and Cook Got It Right
James Poniewozik for Time writes How D&D Changed the Culture
All Dead Generations shares Mont Sainte Bec
Le Chaudron Chromatique gives us My new Black Sword Hack Campaign
The Land Of Nod wrote Downtime and Special Guest Heroes [Notion]
Roll to Doubt shares What a Horrible Night to Cast a Curse
Vladar's Blog gives us First year of Mystara campaign
Ben Riggs writes D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax was Sexist. Talking About it is Key to Preserving his Legacy.
RPG Taverns gives us Dungeons & Dragons at Edinburgh Fringe
Blake DeRusha writes D&D’s Lightning In A Bottle: How Moldvay, Marsh, and Cook Got It Right
James Poniewozik for Time writes How D&D Changed the Culture
All Dead Generations shares Mont Sainte Bec
Le Chaudron Chromatique gives us My new Black Sword Hack Campaign
The Land Of Nod wrote Downtime and Special Guest Heroes [Notion]
Roll to Doubt shares What a Horrible Night to Cast a Curse
Vladar's Blog gives us First year of Mystara campaign
Ben Riggs writes D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax was Sexist. Talking About it is Key to Preserving his Legacy.
31 August 2024
RPG-a-Day Speedrun
We got the RPG-a-Day done by Autocratik again this year - I've been hesitant to push them out over socials because I see a lot of snarling about feed-jamming - but the Gartopia discord for Garblag Games has been doing them in a quiet channel and it has been fun so I am collating them here:
Below are the prompts and my answers:
1 - First RPG bought this year - Knave 2e (by payment processed) or Qelong (actual new purchase in FLGS)
2 - Most recently played - 5e (Friday night D&D)
3 - Most often played RPG - 5e (33/49 sessions thie year)
4 - RPG with great art - A Thousand Thousand Islands zines
5 - RPG with great writing - Veins of the Earth
6 - RPG that is easy to use - 5e since everyone knows it? A 5e table fills in a heartbeat, any other system you have to sell it.
7 - RPG with 'good form' - Good Society
8 - An accessory you appreciate - DM screen my home campaign players made for me - big fancy dragon on the front, portraits of the PCs on the initiative trackers, its awesome
9 - An accessory you'd like to see - for VTT's some kind of 'mask and voice' filter that would allow a DM to appear as whatever NPCs - runs as part of a VTT. We have a million daft instagram filters, this should be doable. Even pop-up static portrait and a voice-changer would be cool.
10 - RPG you'd like to see on TV - All my answers are D&D setting answers - I'd love to see either the Mystara setting (Princess Ark) or Spelljammer (or even MtG Weatherlight) tested to see if fantasy flying-ship Star Trek could work.
11 - RPG with well supported one-shots - Dungeon Crawl Classic - famous for its starter funnels.
12 - RPG with well supported campaigns - B/X? If we count it as the lingua franca of the OSR then all the megadungeons like Barrowmaze, Rappan Athuk, Stonehell, Castle Xyntillian etc are a bunch of campaigns
13 - Evocative environments - Veins of the Earth - atomic bees....
14 - Compelling characters - SLA industries - Halloween Jack et al
15 - Great character gear - Dr Grordborts Scientific Adventure Violence - your weapons are gear - your spellcasting uses gear! Your skills are more gear! (though the original 40k Rogue Trader had great gear, tons of which imply it should have been used as a TTRPG not just a wargame)
16 - Quick to learn - Just reading Knave 2e; seems pretty straightforward. Anything without complex character classes and huge spell lists...?
17 - An engaging RPG community - Gartopia which actually ran this - though for me the RPGVienna forum is absolutely where I engage most to get my gaming in with the regular Friday night games.
18 - Memorable moment of play - Recent Rime of the Frostmaiden game where my wizard took dragonbreath to the chest for an insta-kill; took the red slaadi tadpole that was about to hatch down with me, the little sod.
19 - Sensational session - As a player - fighting an Abyssal prince at the mid-point of Out of the Abyss. Deathly silent round the table as the dice decided our face.
20 - Amazing adventure - 'Plague City' game where our party of intrepid heroes ventured forth, tracked down the cultists and then were ready to go 'ok, so let us send word to the King so he can send someone to deal with this' ... and came to the horrified realisation that we *were* the help and there was no more coming.
21 - Classic campaign - Enemy Within. It has been a few years but the randomly rolled characters combined with horrific events that hammer their weak-spots make very memorable gaming.
22 - Notable non-player character - Aubrey, tiefling captain of the guard in my home campaign, player favourite
23 - Peerless player - one buddy is a masterful rules lawyer but uses his powers for good - helping people realize what they want their chars to be, counselling but not directing the plays in fights and generally using their grip on the details to support rather than face down the DM's he plays with. I appreciate it all the more because his unhelpful equivalents are far more common.
24 - Acclaimed advice - recognising that world-building is one activity, game prep is another similar but not the same one
25 - Desirable dice - I love the UVG incredibly unreadable roman numeral ones - those as a Zocchi set would be amazing.
26 - Superb screen - See answer #8. If I have to give a new one, then the classic AD&D Planescape DM screen
27 - Marvellous miniature - I love the aesthetic of the Folk Horrors from Garden of Hecate
28 - Great gamer gadget - clothes pegs as initiative trackers, simple but genius
29 - Awesome app - Beyond20 - plugging Roll20 and D&D Beyond together
30 - Person you'd like to game with - Matt Colville and the MCDM crew - in particular continuing The Chain.
31 - Game or gamer you miss - I've had the great good fortune to still be in touch with pretty much all the gamers I've played with and grace of this new era of VTT gaming we've played more together in the past three years than the 15 before that - so happily, no answer for this one.
1 - First RPG bought this year - Knave 2e (by payment processed) or Qelong (actual new purchase in FLGS)
2 - Most recently played - 5e (Friday night D&D)
3 - Most often played RPG - 5e (33/49 sessions thie year)
4 - RPG with great art - A Thousand Thousand Islands zines
5 - RPG with great writing - Veins of the Earth
6 - RPG that is easy to use - 5e since everyone knows it? A 5e table fills in a heartbeat, any other system you have to sell it.
7 - RPG with 'good form' - Good Society
8 - An accessory you appreciate - DM screen my home campaign players made for me - big fancy dragon on the front, portraits of the PCs on the initiative trackers, its awesome
9 - An accessory you'd like to see - for VTT's some kind of 'mask and voice' filter that would allow a DM to appear as whatever NPCs - runs as part of a VTT. We have a million daft instagram filters, this should be doable. Even pop-up static portrait and a voice-changer would be cool.
10 - RPG you'd like to see on TV - All my answers are D&D setting answers - I'd love to see either the Mystara setting (Princess Ark) or Spelljammer (or even MtG Weatherlight) tested to see if fantasy flying-ship Star Trek could work.
11 - RPG with well supported one-shots - Dungeon Crawl Classic - famous for its starter funnels.
12 - RPG with well supported campaigns - B/X? If we count it as the lingua franca of the OSR then all the megadungeons like Barrowmaze, Rappan Athuk, Stonehell, Castle Xyntillian etc are a bunch of campaigns
13 - Evocative environments - Veins of the Earth - atomic bees....
14 - Compelling characters - SLA industries - Halloween Jack et al
15 - Great character gear - Dr Grordborts Scientific Adventure Violence - your weapons are gear - your spellcasting uses gear! Your skills are more gear! (though the original 40k Rogue Trader had great gear, tons of which imply it should have been used as a TTRPG not just a wargame)
16 - Quick to learn - Just reading Knave 2e; seems pretty straightforward. Anything without complex character classes and huge spell lists...?
17 - An engaging RPG community - Gartopia which actually ran this - though for me the RPGVienna forum is absolutely where I engage most to get my gaming in with the regular Friday night games.
18 - Memorable moment of play - Recent Rime of the Frostmaiden game where my wizard took dragonbreath to the chest for an insta-kill; took the red slaadi tadpole that was about to hatch down with me, the little sod.
19 - Sensational session - As a player - fighting an Abyssal prince at the mid-point of Out of the Abyss. Deathly silent round the table as the dice decided our face.
20 - Amazing adventure - 'Plague City' game where our party of intrepid heroes ventured forth, tracked down the cultists and then were ready to go 'ok, so let us send word to the King so he can send someone to deal with this' ... and came to the horrified realisation that we *were* the help and there was no more coming.
21 - Classic campaign - Enemy Within. It has been a few years but the randomly rolled characters combined with horrific events that hammer their weak-spots make very memorable gaming.
22 - Notable non-player character - Aubrey, tiefling captain of the guard in my home campaign, player favourite
23 - Peerless player - one buddy is a masterful rules lawyer but uses his powers for good - helping people realize what they want their chars to be, counselling but not directing the plays in fights and generally using their grip on the details to support rather than face down the DM's he plays with. I appreciate it all the more because his unhelpful equivalents are far more common.
24 - Acclaimed advice - recognising that world-building is one activity, game prep is another similar but not the same one
25 - Desirable dice - I love the UVG incredibly unreadable roman numeral ones - those as a Zocchi set would be amazing.
26 - Superb screen - See answer #8. If I have to give a new one, then the classic AD&D Planescape DM screen
27 - Marvellous miniature - I love the aesthetic of the Folk Horrors from Garden of Hecate
28 - Great gamer gadget - clothes pegs as initiative trackers, simple but genius
29 - Awesome app - Beyond20 - plugging Roll20 and D&D Beyond together
30 - Person you'd like to game with - Matt Colville and the MCDM crew - in particular continuing The Chain.
31 - Game or gamer you miss - I've had the great good fortune to still be in touch with pretty much all the gamers I've played with and grace of this new era of VTT gaming we've played more together in the past three years than the 15 before that - so happily, no answer for this one.
28 August 2024
Review: Feather, Beak + Bone and Claw Atlas
tl:dr; awesome map-labelling game, build a city together, perfect for a collaborative session zero.
So I got Feather, Beak + Bone and the Claw Atlas expansion as part of the 'Details of our Escape' Kickstarter. I picked them up as add-ons but it can also be found on itch.io. I recall it seeing it crop up with people saying "hey yeah this is cool" a fair few times and particularly talking about map making so I thought "sounds like my kind of thing". A slimmer pamphlet than I was expecting, definitely in the zine class of game, really punchy, with nice presentation.
It comes bundled with three blank maps and you get another example of the map inside the front and back covers of the book - so strictly five blanks of the map come with it and then you could photocopy for further versions.
So I got Feather, Beak + Bone and the Claw Atlas expansion as part of the 'Details of our Escape' Kickstarter. I picked them up as add-ons but it can also be found on itch.io. I recall it seeing it crop up with people saying "hey yeah this is cool" a fair few times and particularly talking about map making so I thought "sounds like my kind of thing". A slimmer pamphlet than I was expecting, definitely in the zine class of game, really punchy, with nice presentation.
Cover by Austin Breed
So all told this is a nice straightforward game with the usual zine high content to weight ratio in here. Fully self-contained with good line art that gets the whole feel across. Good stuff.It comes bundled with three blank maps and you get another example of the map inside the front and back covers of the book - so strictly five blanks of the map come with it and then you could photocopy for further versions.
26 August 2024
Shiny TTRPG links #187
A fair few gems from the past this week. For even more links, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
I am currently hosting this months RPG Blog Carnival - It Came From Beyond Time - on ways things from the deep past (or far future!) can haunt or save your campaign - you still have a week to get an entry in!
Sea of Stars contributes with Time and Ages the Sea of Stars – RPG Blog Carnival
I Cast Light! shares ASIMOVIC ANDROIDS: A Tweak For Mothership Androids
A Knight at the Opera gave us The Differences in Mystara, Greyhawk, and Forgotten Realms (Part 1)
Simulacrum: Exploring OSR Design wrote A Historical Look at the OSR — Part I
Press The Beast gives us Daemonium: Retrospective
Traverse Fantasy shares D&D Fifth Edition: Death & Rebirth
I am currently hosting this months RPG Blog Carnival - It Came From Beyond Time - on ways things from the deep past (or far future!) can haunt or save your campaign - you still have a week to get an entry in!
Sea of Stars contributes with Time and Ages the Sea of Stars – RPG Blog Carnival
I Cast Light! shares ASIMOVIC ANDROIDS: A Tweak For Mothership Androids
A Knight at the Opera gave us The Differences in Mystara, Greyhawk, and Forgotten Realms (Part 1)
Simulacrum: Exploring OSR Design wrote A Historical Look at the OSR — Part I
Press The Beast gives us Daemonium: Retrospective
Traverse Fantasy shares D&D Fifth Edition: Death & Rebirth
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