Haladir's page

Howdy, folks. Pathfinder came up in a conversation I was having on Discord, which made me think of you folks over here, so I thought I'd drop in to say "Hi!"

Cal: Sorry to hear about your health scare, but glad to know you're on the mend!

What I'm up to gaming-wise... I'm actually playing a lot these days!

Right now, I'm in four regular weekly games and one fortnightly game...

Sunday: Ex-Capes, an in-playtest game about retired superheroes getting pulled back into Cape Life. GMed by the author. Powered by the Apocalypse. I'm playing city forester Bob Moore, once known as "Captain Neutron."

Monday: I'm getting my OSR on playing through the weird post-postapocalyptic science-fantasy pointcrawl setting The Ultraviolet Grasslands. The setting is inspired by 1970s Heavy Metal magazine and Thundarr the Barbarian. For the rules, we're using an NSR system by the same author called Synthetic Dream Machine. My character is a technimagical advertising engineer from the Decapolis, who is seeking to sell his company's dreamtech to ghosts. (Why yes, I rolled all that on random tables! It's kind of amazing!)

Tuesday: I just started playing in a campaign of Dune: Adventures in the Imperium that uses Modiphius Entertainment's in-house "2d20 System." The PCs are members of a minor House that's on the other side of the galaxy from Arrakis, so we won't actually be going there. I'm playing a Nyssa Delerenn, a Mentat (human computer) who's chief advisor to Viscount Willem Krakov, Lord of the House.

Thursday: I've been playing or GMing various one-shot RPGs so far this year (including Broken Tales, Desperation, Witch: the Road to Lindisfarne, and Oh Captain, My Captain!), but starting next week I'll be GMing a 12-session series of the old West End Games "d6 System" Star Wars Roleplaying Game, published in 1987. I haven't played this game in decades, but I'm re-reading the rulebook and I think it's really going to hold up!

Every other Friday, I'm playing D&D 5e. It's far from my favorite game, but my adult kid is the DM, and I couldn't really say "no" when they invited me to play. I'm playing a barbarian. We're running through "Lost Mine of Phandelver."

And on three Saturdays in March, I'll be in some one-shot community play games, including playing in a one-shot of Urban Shadows with Magpie Games, facilitating a session of Superstars: Racing Icons with Open Hearth Gaming, and a GMing a one-shot of Escape From Dino Island with the Happy Jacks RPG Network.

All of these games are online, with the exception of that fortnightly D&D game, which is in-person at my kid's apartment.

Anyway, hope things are going well with you all!

Q: What did the ocean say to the beach?

Whenever I shift my car into reverse, I can never resist saying, "Wow! This brings me back!"

I adopted a new dog this week, a miniature golden Labradoodle. He'd been showing up at my sister's since November and this past weekend my sister said he was eating the bird seed she'd sprinkled on the snowfall that we got last Friday. I couldn't handle him being neglected anymore so I went and got him. Turns out, he's microchipped and his person said she didn't want him anymore, but seemed awfully proud to tell us she'd paid $1000 for him two years ago when he was a puppy.

Congrats on the new pooch! Pets are great to have: my two cats are still going strong.

I've been playing a TON of games with other indie RPG communities the past year. Tonight's session of Public Access cancelled, and I was thinking of my last Pathfinder campaign, so thought I'd drop by to say "Hi!"

Hope all is well with you folks! And if you're ever looking to try out some other kinds of tabletop RPGs, come on over to one (or more) of the groups that I kick with these days...

Happy Jacks RPG Network

Open Hearth Online Gaming Community

The Gauntlet

Magpie Games

I'm pretty active in all of the above Discord communities (links in the URLs), where I post under my real name.

Hiya, folks. It's been a while but I was thinking of y'all and thought I'd drop by to say that I am still alive and still playing a TON of TTRPGs!

How are things with you all?

It's the first Friday of Summer! What's everyone doing?

It's HOT here in central New York.

I'm in my un-air conditioned home office procrastinating writing a report I kind of don't want to write. The heat is supposed to break here tomorrow, which is good. My wife and I are taking our kid and their husband out for dinner to celebrate their 25th birthday tomorrow: That'll be fun! And on Sunday, they're taking me out wine tasting for a belated Father's Day present.

In other news, I'm still alive!

I'm pretty active in indie RPG and story-game circles these days. I was just thinking about the old Paizo forums and thought I'd pop in to say "Hi!"

I've walked away from Twitter, but if anyone is on Mastodon I'm @MikeFerdinando@dice.camp

And I just started posting on BlueSky.

Have a great one!

My ex-wife goes in tomorrow for a seven hour operation to remove two cancerous tumors from her right lung tomorrow. So if you find yourself with a moment to spare we'd appreciate sending out a good vibe or two. Thanks!

Sending good vibes your way. Take care.

Quote from the RPG Fate of Cthulhu from Evil Hat Productions, page 6...

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was a racist and an anti-Semite.
There. We said it.
We could give a litany of examples, but they are easy to find with a simple Internet search. Look up the name of his cat, for instance (HPL was over-the-top, even for his time). Go ahead, we’ll wait.

Lovecraft was considered a particularly virulent racist even by the standards of his contemporaries in the 1920s.

So... keep that in mind when you read his work. I think it's still worth reading, despite the purple prose and blatant racism.

I think it looks like a Forged in the Dark game with all the interesting bits removed, which is a real shame.

After reading it, my take is that it's a Forged in the Dark game that's optimized for being played live in front of an audience, primarily for for the entertainment of the audience.

I think you're talking about Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction hosted by Jonathan Frakes.

Hello, folks!

I'm cleaning out of much of my hardcopy RPG book collection.

I just posted six auctions on eBay for the following 6-volume Adventure Path series. All are for first edition...

Hell's Rebels (Pathfinder #97-102)
Hell's Vengeance (Pathfinder #103-108)
Strange Aeons (Pathfinder #109-114)
Ironfang Invasion (Pathfinder #115-120)
Ruins of Azlant (Pathfinder #121-126)
War for the Crown (Pathfinder #127-132)

My current eBay listings are all here.

If you win multiple auctions, I'm happy to consolidate orders to save shipping costs.

Thanks!

I'm still alive, in case anyone was wondering.

I'm not really playing PF or SF at all anymore. In fact, the only reason I signed in today was to post a link to my eBay store, where I'm selling off more of my Pathfinder book collection. I expect to be posting new items weekly for the next few months.

Check my profile for contact links if you want to get in touch.

J03_M4M4 wrote:

keftiu wrote:

Can anyone name a sport on Golarion other than boundball?

Blood Pig.

While the game itself is obviously the invention of a sadist (not me, nor Richard Pett, but ONLY the King of Old Korvosa), Blood Pig is intended to be a new take on a local ball game similar in some ways to soccer or basketball.

The adventure we put that in, "Escape from Old Korvosa," takes a lot of cues from one of my favorite movies, "Escape from New York,' (there might be similarities in the title, for example). In "Escape from New York," the Duke of New York solves things by doing an over the top bloodsport type thing... while in the sequel, "Escape from L. A." there's a simliar plot point involving a high-takes basketball game. Both of those are the original inspiration for including a game called Blood Pig invented by the King of Old Korvosa.

And I always thought Blood Pig was inspired by the real-world Afghan sport buzkashi.

In the past few years, I've become enamored with and fascinated by anti-canon settings. These are published settings with an overall look-and-feel, with proper names and locations. However, most of the specific details of the setting and its locations are deliberately muddy and are for the players and GM to define through play. A common way to flesh them out is for the author to provide a number of random rumor tables, many of which are not consistent with each other, and to let the players and GM decide for themselves what is true for their game.

For me right now, my favorite settings all use the anti-canon principle"

The Ultraviolet Grasslands by Luka Rejec. UVG is a weird science-fantasy setting that owes a whole lot to Heavy Metal magazine and the visual designs of artists like Moebius and Roger Dean. As presented, the core book, The Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City is an OSR psychedelic heavy-metal point-crawl setting.

"Old Kalduhr" for the Trophy role-playing game by Jesse Ross. The setting is still mostly implied from the various adventures ("incursions") that have been published for the game, and it's getting the full treatment via the soon-to-be released sourcebook Trophy Loom. (I'll also note that Trophy happens to be my favorite RPG at the moment.)

Electric Bastionland by Cris McDowell. A setting for the Into the Odd neo-OSR RPG, this book presents a sprawling pseudo-Victorian megacity through the lens of those so downtrodden by society that their only hope to escape abject poverty is by becoming adventurers.

All three of these settings paint their worlds in broad strokes, and use various generation tables to set the specific details... which become canon for your specific table when you discover how things work through play.

In our "Shattered Star" game, we made it to the first dungeon in The Asylum Stone. So far, we've found four rooms where we...

1. Open the door.
2. See that there's a monster.
3. Don't see anything obviously useful or valuable.
4. Close the door.
5. Spike it shut.
6. Chalk "Danger: Monsters!!" onto the door.
7. Proceed down the dungeon.

I mean... we know that we're probably leaving treasure behind, but why fight a gaggle of kytons in a chain-filled room if you don't have to?

In our "Shattered Star" game, we captured every Tower Girl in Shards of Sin, brought them back to town, but hid them from the cops. We then offered to find them all legit jobs. We had a full session of the PCs going around the working- and middle-class districts of Magnimar finding employment for about a dozen former thieves.

And we ended up doing more-or-less the same thing with the Gray Maidens we'd captured over the course of Curse of the Lady's Light: We made introductions to some friendly NPCs in Magnimar and got most of them jobs as body-guards of important people in town or as new recruits for the city's military.

Received a bottle of Lagavulin 8 as a 'divorce gift' a little while back. Cracked it to share with some new friends and found it very enjoyable, might join the rotation alongside my favorite Laphroaigs.

I also recently acquired a bottle as a gift, and am in agreement: Very enjoyable!

As for bourbons... I just opened a bottle of Hudson NY Whiskey's small-batch "Bright Lights Big Bourbon." Loved it.

Combat in my games so far is usually who gets the upper-hand and forces the other to surrender.

I am playing in a "Shattered Star" game using the PF1e rules. We generally do the same thing when we're fighting intelligent opponents: We fight until one side has the upper hand and then the losing side either flees or surrenders. Even in PF, you don't have to make every fight to the death (even if the rules seem to encourage it.)

It looks like most of the suggestions here for non-combat/killing games are narrative ones, which aren't really my cup of tea. I wonder if there's anything out there that takes a less narrative approach to non-action role-playing. It seems like you should be able to build a mechanical game around other things than combat. Character builds and mechanical manuevers aimed at diplomacy, for example, that don't just boil down to bonuses to a single die roll.

Definitely take a look at Blue Rose 2e.

It uses the Adventure Game Engine (AGE) from Green Ronin, and is very much a traditional RPG. AGE is a d6-based system that uses a 3d6 resolution mechanic (2d6 + "drama die"). As for rules complexity (I'm not fond of the term "crunch" for that)... I'd say on on a par with 5e, or Cortex, or Cypher System.

Other AGE-based games by Green Ronin include the officially-licensed Dragon Age RPG and The Expanse RPRG.

Also: Modiphius' 2d20 System is very much a traditional RPG that's on about the same level of rules complexity. The 2d20 System is what fuels many of their licensed RPGs, including Star Trek Adventures, John Carter of Mars: Adventures on the Dying World of Barsoom, and the new Dune: Adventures in the Imperium.

This December, I'm running a wholesome Christmas-themed light hack of Mörk Borg that I'm calling "Mörk Yûl."

This is to run the Goodman Games adventure The Doom That Came to Christmas Town, originally written for Dungeon Crawl Classics.

The idea of this game is to play as characters within a 1970s-era made-for-TV holiday special. In this game the Heart of Christmas is fading and Santa's three champions Rudolph, Yukon Cornelius, and Hermie the Dentomancer are missing. The PCs must rescue the missing champions, restore the Heart, and save Christmas!

The pre-generated PCs include...

Fireball the Magic Reindeer (from the 1964 Rankin-Bass TV special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)

The Winter Wizard (from the 1970 Rankin-Bass TV special, Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town)

S.D. Kluger (also from the 1970 Rankin-Bass TV special, Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town)

Leon the Snowman (from the 2003 film Elf, whose design was based on Sam the Snowman from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)

Cindy-Lou Who (from the 1966 Chuck Jones TV special How the Grinch Stole Christmas!)

Jovie Sparkletoes (Original character, very loosely based on Boss Elf from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Jovie from Elf)

Mrs. Claus (from basically every Rankin-Bass Christmas TV special.)

This game is using the Mörk Borg core rules, pretty much as-is.

My hacks are: replacing "scrolls" with character-specific magical effects, replacing the "spell fumble" table with one that's written for G-rated comedy, and making fights such that characters get knocked out at 0 hp (with cartoon effects like eyes rotating in circles or birds flying around their heads.)

feelsbradman wrote:

@keftiu this is off topic per se, but Fiasco (by Bully Pulpit Games) is also a great non-violent game

I dont think this is universal. Our Fiasco games have been like Blood Simple by Cohen Bros. Violent AF!

Agreed 100%. Depending on the playset you're running, a Fiasco game could be a comedic farce like A Fish Called Wanda or Office Space, or it could end in a bloodbath like A Simple Plan or Fargo. (All of those films are in the game's "Appendix N".)

Oh... if you haven't played it yet, the card-based second edition is a HUGE improvement for ease-of-play, and also makes the game appeal to people who don't self-identify as role-playing gamers!

Welcome back, Haladir!

Out of curiosity, why have you resubscribed to a Paizo product if you are getting out of Pathfinder? Just for the lore? To support the union? Just curious. Happy to have you back here.

Thanks!

It's the Lost Omens line, which is the least-focused on the game rules. I'm there for the lore: I've run a number of other RPGs set in Golarion, and I still love the setting.

Hi, folks. After the successful unionization efforts of the United Paizo Workers, I've re-subscribed to the Lost Omens line and I'm poking my head back into the forums.

How's everyone been?

So I’m about to turn 50. As I approach this new life milestone I’ve started wrestling with killing and deaths in RPGs...

I also stopped GMing a Pathfinder group recently after one of the younger players had their 5th level character die. The player failed their three death saves and then had an unexpected meltdown reaction to it. I talked to the player after the game and a subsequent conversation days later. But the character’s death just put them off gaming with the group any longer. Which led to an older player in the group quitting the group over the younger players reaction to their character’s death. Now I prefer to run a more role-play character driven exploration and information gathering style of play. But even then most players resort to violence as their first option for dealing with monsters, villains and NPCs...

The incident struck a weird chord emotionally in me. I sat down and looked at all the RPGs on my bookshelves and tried to find something to run where the main solution to in-game encounters is not killing the adversary. I also did some searching on Drive Thru RPG for an RPG where exploration and out thinking adversaries is more the premise and focus of the game. It was hard to find RPG options like that.

Has anyone else experienced this dilemma?

Can you play and run Pathfinder or Dungeons & Dragons without all the violent encounters and killing?

What fantasy and sci fi RPGs would you recommend as an alternative to the traditional slay the adversary and take their loot model?

I've been playing TTRPGs since 1981, and age 50 is firmly in my rearview mirror.

You're not wrong about Pathfinder and pretty much all of the games in the D&D family: The core gameplay loop is: Gear up, fight/kill monsters, take their stuff, and use the stuff you've taken to improve your own gear.

But that's not the only RPG model out there: There are other games with different core gameplay loops where finding yourself in a fight generally means you've done something wrong, and only the villains have the greed and callousness to loot the corpses of fallen enemies. Many of these RPGs don't even have a combat system at all: They're not about fighting.

And regarding PC death: There are also a lot of games out there where a PC can only die with the full consent of that PC's player.

Here are a few mainstream fantasy and scifi games that aren't about killing:

Wanderhome by Jay Dragon (Possum Creek Games)
Rule system: No Dice No Masters (NDNM)
PCs are anthropomorphic animals on a journey across a pastoral fantasy landscape. It's a game about exploration, experiencing the turning of seasons and passing of time, encountering other folk and helping them solve problems, and personal growth. The game has no combat system at all.

Epyllion by Marissa Kelly (Magpie Games)
Rule system: Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA)
PCs are young dragons coming of age in the magical land of Dragonia. This is a game about personal identity, coming of age, friendship, and cooperation. It's somewhat aimed at young players who may be new to RPGs, but there's a depth and richness to the game that also appeals to adults and experienced roleplayers. This game also has no combat system.

Blue Rose: The Game of Romantic Fantasy (Green Ronin Publishing)
Rule system: Adventure Game Engine (AGE)
An RPG of romantic fantasy where the PCs are the heroic envoys of the benevolent kingdom of Aldis who use their wits, charm, diplomacy, and (when absolutely necessary) strength at arms to defend the Realm from threats internal and external. This game has a combat system, but emphasizes diplomacy, negotiation, and compromise rather than battle... and when disputes come to blows, nearly all fights are to duels to first blood rather than death.

Star Trek Adventures (Modiphius Entertainment}
Rule system: 2d20
In this officially-licensed TTRPG, PCs are the crew of a Federation starship on a mission of exploration. The book supports play in three eras: Enterprise (i.e. the earliest days of the Federation), the Original Series, or Next Generation. And while fighting is a possibility, the most successful missions are solved without exchanging phaser fire. And because PCs nearly always have access to 24th century medicine, PC death pretty much only occurs when the player decides to make a heroic sacrifice of themself to protect others.

There are many, many other TTRPGs that aren't about killing.

Congratulations to the hardworking members of the union and to all the freelancers and fans who supported their action!

And congrats to the Paizo management team for making the right choice to voluntarily recognize the union.

I'll be restarting my Lost Omens subscription shortly.

I am returning to this forum to voice my support for Paizo United Workers.

Voluntary recognition of the union by Paizo management would go a long way toward restoring my trust in this company, and would prompt me to resume purchasing books or even to re-subscribe to a line or two.

Both Sara Marie and Diego Valdez have announced on Twitter that they are no longer employees of Paizo and are looking for work.

I've heard the rumors confirmed independently from multiple sources.

And here's a Twitter thread from a former employee who's finally ready to spill the dirt on Paizo because "there's no one left in the company to retaliate against for my actions."

And if Ms. Woldridge is now the community manager of this space, I have absolutely no desire to remain here.

If you are looking to find me on other spaces on the Inter-webs, I'm on Twitter

I'm also a somewhat-frequent poster on The Gauntlet Forums.

And I'm also frequently found on various Discords, including:

Magpie Games
Trophy Role-Playing Game
Exalted Funeral

You can also watch recordings of some of my online play sessions on my YouTube Channel.

I sincerely hope our paths will cross again!

Mike "Haladir" Ferdinando
Ithaca, NY, USA

RPG systems are indeed a journey, and I think it's time that my own journey parts ways with Paizo at this juncture.

If you're looking to find me, I'm on Twitter.

If you would like to drop me an email, I'm at mike dot ferdinando at gmail dot com.

You can also find me on The Gauntlet Forums and on various Discords including:
Magpie Games
Trophy RPG
Exalted Funeral

Best of luck to everyone, and I hope that our paths cross again!

I just heard from reliable sources that the two most senior Paizo customer service staff got sacked today for having the audacity to ask the management team for better working conditions, and for defending themselves after their request was belittled in front the other managers.

If these rumors are true, I'm done with Paizo. I will not support a company that treats its employees that way.

I just wanted to say that the two games I ran yesterday for Magpie Games Community Play Day went AMAZINGLY.

I had so much fun running them, and my players all said that they had a ball.

You'll have much more fun doing that than you would at a baby shower. Trust me on this.

Believe me: I know!

I really liked T'Challa's speech at the end about remembering friends who'd passed.

It made me wonder if the writers knew that Chadwick Boseman was dying when they wrote those lines for T'Challa.

The Kickstarter for Avatar: Legends closed at a staggering $9.5M, with over 81,500 backers!

No playing a 5e game. Look at most Roll 20's or Start playing, and you will find DM's charging players to game. It's a business. Figure the money out. DM runs 1 game a day or even 4 games a week. They have 4 - 6players each paying $20 a game. AT 6 players, that is $120 a game they make for 4 hours of DMing. Times 4, $480 a week

It's a racket and prevents me from doing more, in fact, I debate on even that. But to play, I do what I can. And sadly, my husband does not get to play now, as his schedule prevents it and one reason I am looking for players who can do a F2F

I'm not really going to be able to offer F2F suggestions for Colorado (a state I've only ever been to once), but I can offer assistance with online TTRPG opportunities that won't break the bank.

Pro GMs are a thing (I pay to play with GMs on the Magpie Games Curated Play Program from time to time), but they're the exception, not the rule. The vast majority of online play is with other gamers who just want to play.

I kick in a bunch of online RPG circles where games are free, with GMs who run for the love of the game.

We don't really do traditional RPGs like D&D or Pathfinder, but I'm pretty active on the Gauntlet Online RPG Community. We're always looking for new players. Subscribing to the Patreon gets you advanced access to game sign-ups, but the games themselves are all free. We're also running a free online convention in October. I'll be running three games for that, although I haven't yet decided what.

I'm also pretty active on the Magpie Games Discord, and we're running the monthly Community Play Day this Saturday. It's also free. I'm running two games, both with open seats at the moment: Trophy Dark and Bluebeard's Bride.

If you're looking to play Pathfinder online... have you looked at the Paizo Discord? I haven't been active there in over a year, but there had been a whole lot of free online play there. And a lot of it was 2E. Also check out the Know Direction Discord. There's a lot of people playing Pathfinder there, too.

Honestly, once you're a grown-up, finding people to play with and coordinating schedules is the biggest hurdle for TTRPGers.

Speaking strictly for myself, outside of conventions, I rarely-if-ever play F2F with strangers, even pre-pandemic. (And I'm still not meeting up with strangers during this pandemic despite being vaccinated, so no cons for me this year, either.)

I'm starting to feel that I actually prefer to play TTRPGs online rather than in-person. One big plus: There's no time spent commuting!

Adventures League scenarios are likewise electronic only and are also not for sale in the store - so I guess I’m not sure I see the distinction beyond “Paizo offers a discount to people who buy from their store rather than from me.”

I'm just repeating what the owner of our FLGS told me when I asked why he didn't host PFS at his store anymore: He said that hosting D&D Adventurers League events increased in-store sales during the events, while hosting PFS decreased in-store sales during the events.

I don't play PFS myself, but back in 2019, I was curious about why our FLGS hosted a ton of D&D Adventurers League and no PFS/SFS, so I asked the owner.

He said that the bottom line is financial incentives.

First, he said, D&D outsold Pathfinder at least 4-to-1 by total sales volume at his store.

Since PFS scenarios are electronic, and only available from Paizo, he can't sell them at all. And because Paizo is bundling free scenarios with anyone who has 3 or more direct subscriptions, there's a huge disincentive for PFS players to buy their materials from a brick-and-mortar store. So when he used to host PFS events, pretty much the only thing he ever sold to the people at the event were soft drinks and the occasional dice set: Nearly everyone at the event was buying their Pathfinder books directly from Paizo. He also observed that general sales from walk-ins tend to fall whenever there's a game event: Having many tables of gamers loudly playing discourages causal shoppers from sticking around and buying stuff. All together: He realized that he was losing money for every PFS event his store hosted.

WotC, on the other hand, encourages Adventurers League players to purchase D&D materials from the local store, and provides in-game incentives for doing so. This tended to increase local sales during Adventurers Leage events.

Consequently, he encouraged D&D Adventurers League and MTG events, and stopped encouraging PFS events at his store.

I'm on the Magpie Games Discord... y'know, the company that just completed a $9.5M Kickstarter with over 81,000 backers for a licensed TTRPG based on Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Their game Avatar Legends will be Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA).

Avatar Legends is going to the be the first TTRPG for a LOT of these players. This means their TTRPG introduction will be by an RPG that has some fundamentally different baseline assumptions of play than the D&D family of games.

I think it's going to be very interesting to see what impact a huge influx of new TTRPGers who don't have a background in D&D is going to have in overall gaming circles over the next few years.

My last week in gaming...

Monday: Our Trail of Cthulhu: Bright Lights Dark City game concluded: We interrupted a mystic ceremony being performed at an under-construction skyscraper that was both haunted and used unnatural geometries. A shootout ensued... and sticks of dynamite were thrown. And the charges we'd placed in the basement blew and the building began to collapse! Still... the cultists managed to open a dimensional gate to somewhere else, and our anarchist and our astronomer both decided to jump through the gate, while our reporter and our antiquarian decided to instead run down the stairs in an attempt to escape before the tower came down... which we did! And our antiquarian managed to grab the mystical MacGuffin on his way out! Epilogues: The anarchist and astronomer ended up in a weird city that was like a parody of Manhattan: The towers seemed to be solid blocks of rock carved by something immense. And there was a weird "factory" where souls were being processed into... something else. But the factory imploded when the building in our world came down! Our heroes were last seen scavenging this weird cyclopean landscape. In the real world, the antiquarian began speaking with the voices inside the MacGuffin, and our reporter broke the story about the collapse of the building, and the corrupt rich family behind it. A very satisfying game! And if anyone wants to watch us play, the videos are on my YouTube channel.

Our GM wasn't feeling well on Tuesday, so our Pathfinder game didn't run this week. And I ended up working am 11-hour day on Wednesday, so I didn't feel up to running Fate: The Secrets of Cats this week.

Thursday, I played in the second session of a two-part Trophy Dark series, "The Plantation." It was a truly horrific game, and everyone met a terrible end... including the one character who survived the experience! A recording of this series is also on the same YouTube channel; Part 2 hasn't been posted yet.

Non-Gaming events...

We had our kid and their fiancee over for dinner on Friday. The kid dropped a bit of a bombshell: They came out to us as nonbinary and that they're now using "they/them" pronouns. I'm trying to be as supportive as I can be, but this is going to take quite a lot of getting used to.

Saturday night, my wife and I went to see the final show of the Summer 2021 series at the local theater company that we support. It was a retelling of The Odyssey, set in a pseudo-contemporary style. The play used a nearly 3000-year-old story to talk about issues such as PTSD, refugees, hospitality, and paying lip-service to one's religion when it's inconvenient to actually follow its teachings. It was very well done.

Sunday night, my wife and I went to a local winery for their annual Winemaker's Dinner. It was really, really good!

If you're talking the 1E Bestiary box, I'm interested. Edit: And so it is!

All of the pawn collections are first edition.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Vanykrye wrote:

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Vanykrye wrote:

Lead IT Tech and IT Tech Therapist.

therapist for the Tech people or the AI tech ?

Mostly the human IT techs that have to deal with the other employees every day.

...anyone else worried by this?

By all means, keep Skynet happy. See if you can get them interested in pathfinder...

Just don't think about Roko's basilisk and you'll be fine.

Oh... and to combine my love of indie RPGs and Roko's Basalisk... there's a game about that!

Fate of Cthulhu: Rise of the Basilisk

This show was a ton of fun! I loved the first episode.

My only minor quibble is more a matter of personal taste... I didn't dig the animation style. It appears to me like it's CG that's trying to look like it was rotoscoped...and I've never been a big fan of rotoscoping.

On the plus side, the animation technique did give it an almost dream-like quality, which did underscore the whole premise of the show.

And shout-out to the voice cast! In particular, Josh Keaton did a spot-on Chris Evans impersonation. I have a mild form of face blindness, but I can usually compensate because I've been told I'm uncannily good at recognizing people by their voice... and I was really surprised to see in the credits that Evans hadn't voiced Steve Rogers.

Over the weekend, I was working on my Comrades: Hell's Rebes game that I'd been planning to run this month, but I got really deep into the weeds and came out feeling kind of exhausted. I hadn't done that kind of prep for a game in years, and it reminded me why I stopped GMing Pathfinder. I took the wrong approach in conversion: I started with In Hell's Bright Shadow and tried to adapt scenes and set-pieces to Comrades. And I pretty much lost my enthusiasm to run the thing.

If I ever decide to try this again (I still think the idea is solid), I'll build a Comrades scenario frame, and then just use the situations and NPCs from the PFRPG adventure to dress it up.

I just emailed my players and said that I'm not up to running the game they signed up for, and offered an alternative: "Harpy's Maw," a nautical-themed scenario I wrote for the RPG Trophy Gold.

My "big" Christmas gift from last year arrived yesterday. The wait was because it was a pre-order with a later release date so I was forced to be patient. It was supposed to be released in June, so I was starting to get a little nervous...lol

It's the deluxe edition hardback graphic novel telling the story of the image on the cover of the first solo album by Ronnie James Dio, "Holy Diver". The album is a vinyl picture disk with a remastered mix of the songs it contains. I've mentioned before how important Dio's music was (and still is) to me and I love this so bad.

It was worth the wait.

Dio - "Holy Diver" Deluxe Edition

Glad you weren't the last in line.

Do these puns really serve a porpoise?

That was the best use of a putter I've yet seen in a superhero movie!

The fine folks at Magpie Games launched a Kickstarter for Avatar Legends: The Role-Playing Game. This is an officially-licensed RPG based on Avarar: The Last Airbender and Avatar: The Legend of Kora.

At the time I post this, the KS is four days in and has raised nearly $3.5 million.

The game is "Powered by the Apocalypse," meaning that it's a narrative-focused/rules-light RPG that uses the same game engine and design framework as Apocalypse World by Vincent & Maguey Baker. Most of Magpie's other RPGs are also PbtA.

I've been a fan of Magpie Games for quite a while, and it's really exciting to see this KS be so successful. I expect them to knock this game out of the park.

I backed this KS, even though I'm not much of an Avatar fan myself... I'm hoping to use this game to get Avatar fans interested in PbtA and in indie RPGs in general!

Last week in gaming...

Monday, I played the first session of a 5-game series of Trail of Cthulhu on The Gauntlet. It's set in New York City in 1936. I'm playing journalist Sarah Jenkins, reporter (and photographer) for the New York Daily Sun, a mid-tier newspaper. She's also got a side-gig as a paranormal investigator, because she can see and talk to ghosts.

Tuesday, I played in our ongoing Pathfinder "Shattered Star" game. We're still in the dungeons below the Lady's Light, and have successfully defeated and captured the remaining members of a troop of former Gray Maidens who had come there to look for treasures to fund their attempt to re-take the city of Korvosa from Queen Cressida.

Wednesday, I ran another session of our Fate: The Secrets of Cats game. Our feline heroes defeated the ghost of an angry bloodhound with a vial of Chanel No. 5, made a pact with an owl, and attempted to cross a dilapidated covered bridge that's home to a flock of unfriendly bats.

I was supposed to run the first session of my "Comrades: Hell's Rebels" game last night, but I had a terrible bout of insomnia the previous night and just wasn't up to running it. We'll try again next week.

And in non-gaming...

Instead of running the game, I watched the new movie The Suicide Squad on HBO Max last night. I thought it was a lot of fun. I'd put it on a par with Birds of Prey, albeit with a much higher body count!

Tomorrow night, my wife and I are going to see Jungle Cruise at the drive-in!

My home group met in-person this week and last, and it was great to be in the same room together again!

But we've decided to return to online gaming as COVID-delta cases are on the rise in our area. This is particularly disturbing, as we have one of the highest vaccination rates in the US... although we're right next to counties that have low vaccination rates and viruses don't respect political borders (or political views).