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NWN events tomorrow night and Sunday afternoon.
Savage Tide on hold for the holiday weekend as well as next week due to player work schedules.
It's Friday and the weekend begins. What does everyone have on tap for the next few days? We're on hiatus again but only until December 12th, which will find me on December 11th frantically throwing together a game for my group.
How about the rest of us?
I just joined a new weekly game: My old college D&D group has re-formed via Zoom! We're going to play the "Shattered Star" Adventure Path in Pathfinder 1e. Our first session was this past Monday. I'm playing a Varisian half-orc cleric of Desna. The character is a foundling raised in a Varisian enclave in Kaer Maga. The GM let me switch out Orc for Varisian as a starting language, and consider her to have the Varisian ethnic background for trait selection. I don't have much else for her background in mind: I'll flesh that out in-play.
My Tuesday game got cancelled due to to players having last-minute work commitments, and I had not scheduled a Thrusday game due to Thanksgiving.
I'm attempting to reschedule a game that was supposed to run last Thursday, which I had to cancel because my neighborhood had an Internet outage. It's just a nightmare trying to schedule games!
Looking at next week: I'm hoping that we'll find an agreeable time for the conclusion of that Trophy Gold game from last week... and I'm on for three scheduled weekly games for the near future: Monday will be Pathfinder, Tuesday is my Brindlewood Bay group, and Thursday is my regular Gauntlet Community game. For December, I'm running the "Powered by the Apocalypse" game Back Again From the Broken Land, which is fantasy storytelling about a group of heroes of walking back home after the end of a war. The game is based on the final few chapters of The Lord of the Rings, although it's not actually set in Middle-Earth. A big part of the game is collaborative world-building and fleshing out what happened in flashback.
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As much as it pained me to do so, I just cancelled my subscription to the Pathfinder Adventure Path line. "Agents of Edgewatch #6" will be the last one I'll receive.
I started subscribing in 2011 with "Skull and Shackles", and have since gone back and filled in my collection with all previous AP volumes in print.
I just can't justify spending >$300 a year on a product line that I never expect to use: I don't see myself running another Adventure Path in the future. My existing collection will provide more than enough ideas to mine for setting material, adventure seeds, and encounters for the foreseeable future.
I feel somewhat conflicted about it, but I'm also certain that it's the right thing to do.
Oh... and on an unrelated note, I have an opening in a Thursday night game I'm running over on The Gauntlet. If anyone is interested, please sign up! It's free! (Registration requires you to sign in with a Google account.)
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I feel somewhat conflicted about it, but I'm also certain that it's the right thing to do.
I started all my Paizo subscriptions with PF2, with a plan to end them once I got "the basics". I'm going for all 3 bestiaries, the CRB, Game Mastery Guide, and Advanced Player's Guide.
That seemed to be a solid foundation for playing PF2 practically 'forever'.
I'm not planning on cancelling the AP subscription, partly because it has so much world lore, and partly because I have a grandfathered discount. I view it as a monthly magazine subscription that also has an adventure (Dungeon Magazine anyone?) I'm still keeping my Lost Omens setting subscription for now.
But everything else going forward is on an "as needed" basis. And, like you, I can't see much "need" beyond what I have.
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At this point I'm writing my own campaigns. Maybe eventually I'll finish one and release it for public use. I'd need to find the time to work on it though...
No game until next Saturday, so this weekend I'll probably just eat an entire strawberry rhubarb pie right out of the pan while staring at my gaming notes in hopes something coherent falls into place.
How about the rest of you'ns?
No game this weekend either, due to job-related issues.
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I had to cancel my Thursday night series of Back Again from the Broken Land. One player cancelled two days before the session, one player silently dropped out of the session less than an hour before start, and one never showed up. The game isn't intended for one-on-one play, so I had to pull the plug. I feel bad for the one player who did show.
He was the only one signed up for the other two games of the series, so I cancelled the run.
I hate that for you! It's so aggravating when that happens.
So who's doing what this weekend? I'm kinda-sorta working on a game for Saturday night, which will be our last of the year, but my pain levels are really, really elevated and concentration is difficult, and that's with medication. If I don't have significant improvement by tomorrow morning, I might have to scuttle the game.
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I'll have to work some this weekend, but I also have a virtual poker game, Saturday Night!
We use a Steam app called (I think) Tabletop Simulator.
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Blowing snow, we're expecting anywhere from 1-7 inches, so should be fun.
Blowing snow, we're expecting anywhere from 1-7 inches, so should be fun.
It was 74 degrees here in Arkansas yesterday. I should NOT be sweating while walking the dingoes in mid-December. It's perverse!
Game was canceled, due to both my pain and an illness with one of the guys who drive over here from Memphis. He was the ride for the other two guys so there'd not have been enough players for the adventure, anyway.
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Sorry to hear that. Hope you feel better soon, Cal.
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Sorry to hear that. Hope you feel better soon, Cal.
Thanks. It's just part and parcel with chronic pain when coupled with getting old...lol. The other player who had to cancel suffers from gout. A mutual friend of ours did, too (although he passed away three years ago). My buddy texted me and said he'd been visited by the Ghost of Jerry Past and was given a gout flare-up for the holidays...lol
You have to keep a sense of humor about this stuff.
No game this weekend. We had tentatively planned to get together but Christmas travel and some other considerations have pushed us back to January 9th. I hope to spend some time cleaning my house a little before Christmas Eve.
How about everyone else?
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Nothing on the calendar. Hope to get some cleaning and some chores and maybe some wrapping done.
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Don't wander into labyrinths kids, nothing good comes of it.
But that's where the free twine is!
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Tonight's Pathfinder game is off, but my regular Tuesday game is on.
I've asked my players if they would be OK with me preempting our regularly scheduled game to instead run Goodman Games' The Doom That Came to Christmas Town.
It's an OSR module that's an homage to/rip-off of all the Rankin-Bass stop-motion Christmas TV specials from the 1960s and 70s.
In this adventure, the PCs (all pre-gens) have been summoned by Lord Claus to find and restore the stolen Jewel of Yuletide. Without it, Christmas will be forever lost! Lord Claus has already sent out his closest companions to retrieve it, but they never returned: Yukon of Cornelius; Rudolph the Red, and the dento-mancer Hermie. Travel to the Isle of Misfits, the besieged town of Who-Ville, and the Court of the Heatmiser!
The PCs are Lady Claus, the talking (and flying) reindeer Fireball, the Winter Warlock, the Foreman of the Elves, Sam the Snowman, and the rogue Cindy-Lou Who.
This module is very on-the-nose, but it looks like a total hoot!
I'd probably run it using either Swords & Wizardry or (if I have time) a minor hack of the system from Mörk Borg (to make it less lethal.)
That module sounds hilarious!
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I decided to run "Doom Comes to Christmas Town" as a hack of Mörk Borg, adapting most of the pregens from the module. Mostly I changed the names of a few things (e.g; "Omens" became "Luck") and I just assigned powers to the pregens by fiat rather than trying to "build" them using the advancement rules. I decided to more-or-less keep the pregen hit points, and I'll use the monsters as written, adapting them to the complete player-facing dice mechanics of MB.
(In MB, when it's the enemy's turn, the GM doesn't make a hit roll; instead the player makes a Defense roll. Success = they avoided the attack.)
Like B/X D&D, this game uses "race-as-class". So, halflings are effectively fighter/thieves and elves are effectively figher/magic-users.
My five players will have a choice of seven characters...
Cindy-Lou Who, professional caroler [Class: Halfling]
Fireball, Reindeer Games Champion [Class: Fighter]
Jovie Sparkletoes, toy assembly line troubleshooter [Class: Elf]
Leon the Snowman, raconteur [Class: Bard]
Mrs. Claus, co-ruler of Christmas Town [Class: Cleric]
S. D. Kluger, courier [Class: Ranger]
The Winter Wizard, lamplighter[Class: Magic-User]
And, since I cannot resist hacking any module I get my hands on... I'm changing the villain of the story from The Grinch (a little too on-the-nose) to The Heat Miser.
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Don't wander into labyrinths kids, nothing good comes of it.But that's where the free twine is!
Twine?! F%+@ yes!!
Happy New Year, everyone!
While 2020 sucked donkey balls overall, I had a particularly good year of gaming. (I mean... what the hell else was there to do?)
I kept a spreadsheet of my TTRPG activity over the year...
Haladir's Year of Gaming: 2020 in Review
Total TTRPG sessions: 104
Different RPG systems played: 23
Pathfinder 2e: 24
Monster of the Week: 15
Brindlewood Bay: 14
D&D 5e: 8
Trophy Dark: 7
Pathfinder 1e: 6
Swords of the Serpentine: 5
Offworlders: 4
Trophy Gold: 3
Mörk Borg: 3
Call of Cthulhu: 2
Fall of Magic: 2
Bluebeard's Bride: 1
Escape From Dino Island: 1
Honey Heist: 1
Laser Metal: 1
Lasers & Feelings: 1
Lovecraftesque: 1
Night Witches: 1
Project Perseus: 1
Rapscallion: 1
Star Trek Adventures: 1
Starfinder: 1
-----
Sessions as GM: 54
Sessions as Player: 47
Sessions of GM-less RPG: 3
Online Conventions Attended: 4
Games On Demand Online: 2 sessions
Gauntlet Community Open Gaming: 7 Sessions
Magpie Games Curated Play: 2 sessions
PaizoCon Online: 5 sessions
-----
Gaming Communities/Groups Played With: 10
My Home Group: 34
Adam's Home Group: 24
The Gauntlet Online Gaming Community: 19
Rick's Home Group: 8
JP's Home Group: 6
PaizoCon Online: 5
Games On Demand: 2
Gehenna Gaming: 2
Magpie Games Community: 2
Storn's Home Group: 1
-----
Games played in person: 10
Games played online: 94
Online A/V Tools Used:
Discord: 4
Roll 20: 1
Zoom: 89
Virtual Table-Top/Play Aids Used:
Astral: 1
Google Docs/Sheets: 63
Fantasy Grounds: 1
Roll 20: 29
Very cool! It was more hit or miss for us this year, between COVID and my own personal and health issues. Hopefully, we can get back to something like normal after the new year kicks in. Our first game is scheduled for January 9th.
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Sessions of GM-less RPG: 3
Tell me more! What systems do you play that don't need a GM?
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Sessions of GM-less RPG: 3Tell me more! What systems do you play that don't need a GM?
Of the games I played in 2020, Fall of Magic and Lovecraftesque are GM-less role-playing games.
Fall of Magic by Ross Cowan (Heart of the Deernicorn Press) is a breathtakingly beautiful story-game... and I mean that both in terms of the gameplay and the physical game (when you're playing in person). The game consists of a 36" x 60" faux leather scroll map (double-sided) with a set of five campaign coins that are used as character counters. It's a pure story-game. The game's set-up is: "Magic is dying, and the Magus is dying with it. We travel together to the land of Umbra, where magic was born." You then pick a name and title from pick-lists, both of which you can interpret however you wish. Your character has no stats beyond their name, and you can pick up, change, and lose additional titles and descriptors over the course of the game. As you play, you move through the map and then pick story-prompts printed on the various locations and then frame and play out scenes based on the prompts. The players collectively decide through play who and what the Magus is is, why magic is dying, and why they are accompanying the Magus on their journey. It's often elegiac, but doesn't have to be. There is no dice mechanic or resolution system: Everything is played out through pure narration and character dialogue. There is no GM role; in some ways the map itself serves as the GM. Every time I've played Fall of Magic, we've ended up with vastly different stories with extremely varied tones.
Lovecraftesque by Becky Anison and Josh Fox (Black Armada Games) is a cosmic/existential horror game that is specifically not based on the Cthulhu Mythos. In Lovefraftesque, all of the players take turns running a single central protagonist. There is a scenario that that sets the situation, some NPCs ("non-protagonist characters" in the game's parlance), and some locations with just enough detail to give the players something to take up and run with. The game has a structure where each player frames and plays out scenes of a certain theme. There is also a story clock that instructs when and how the players can begin to introduce horrific or fantastical elements to the story, and the game intensifies as it goes one. Each player also gets a card with narrative prompts and a "special ability" that you can use to change the direction of the narration once certain narrative goals have been met. It's a very clever system, and I highly recommend it.
Thanks for the explanations! I'll have to see if I can't find a Let's Play (or something similar) for Lovecraftesque.
Thanks for the explanations! I'll have to see if I can't find a Let's Play (or something similar) for Lovecraftesque.
Here's the video of the game of Lovecraftesque that I played in.
I am scheduled to play a series of the GM-less RPG Flotsam: Adrift Among the Stars in February. This game by the same authors as Lovecraftesque, and uses the "Belonging Outside Belonging" RPG framework (also called "No Dice, No Masters"), which is based on the rules from Dream Askew by Avery Adler (Buried Without Ceremony press). This game is about marginalized/poor people aboard a spaceship or space station in the far future. The touch-points are those episodes of sci-fi series like Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica that focused on the day-to-day lives of the lower classes aboard the station.
Most BOB games are GM-less and do not use dice. They tend to use a token system: Your playbook (i.e. character class) has two sets of role-playing prompts: "Weak Moves," which tend to cause trouble and/or put yourself in a disadvantageous position, and "Strong Moves," which are your powers and special abilities. You need to spend a token to use a Strong Move; you get a token by using a Weak Move. I've never played Flotsam before, but I did play a two-game series of Dream Askew back in 2019, and they use very similar mechanics.
This is a game that will be on The Gauntlet, and most of those sessions are recorded. Assuming that this one will be, I'll link the series from my YouTube channel.
I was supposed to run my first playtest of my new game Naked City Blues tonight, but in light of the attempted coup d'etat in Washington yesterday and the feeling that the future of the Republic is teetering on the brink.... I am just not in the proper frame of mind. I had to tell my players we're not running this week, and that this is going to be a three-session run instead of a 4-session run.
Since last Sunday I have had one panic attack after another. Panic attacks last 15-30 minutes for most people, and as soon as I'd recover from one another would manifest. The emotional cost has me rolling over from panic into barely controllable bouts of rage (after an incident earlier tonight I will need to replace my printer). We're supposed to get together for our first game of 2021 Saturday but depending on how tomorrow goes I won't really have much choice but to cancel. I don't trust myself to be able to hold down any sort of emotional/mental stability right now. I don't have any idea what's going on because I can't put a finger on what's causing them and why they won't stop.
I don't currently have a mental health counselor. After my last one retired in July none of the others in that particular association was taking on new patients, and that organization is the only one in my city that takes Humana insurance, which is what I have. I'm not able to drive the 30 miles to the next city that offers mental health counseling anymore, so I'm pretty screwed right now.
Anyway, now that I've brought the house down (and not in the fun way) I return you to your regularly scheduled lives.
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Cal, I'm really sorry to hear this. I wish I knew what to say, but I don't have much experience that would help. I hope you feel better soon.
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Cal, I'm really sorry to hear this. I wish I knew what to say, but I don't have much experience that would help. I hope you feel better soon.
Thank you very much, Andostre, but there's really no need to say anything at all. Mental health is just often a fragile thing. We never expect people to understand why it happens. We just ask that people understand that it happens at all and to bear with us. I know my issues are far less severe than those of many, many others, and that most of the time things are under control. But sometimes the levee breaks and all we can do is hope to stop the flood. I just texted my group to tell them that as of right now the game is still on. Today has been a better day than any others this week, so hopefully, that trend will carry over until tomorrow.
Ugh. I'm so sorry, Cal. The US health care system is just awful: I've been in similar "catch-22" situations with my insurance company in the past. (i.e. the only practitioner within a 2-hour drive that accepts my insurance isn't taking new patients.)
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You're absolutely right; US healthcare is just a money-grabbing scam. But I'd better stop before I get banned from this place as I have been on other sites lately...lol
My game Saturday went pretty well. Only one of my long-distance players was planning on being here in person but a miles-long traffic jam kept him from even getting out of his city in time for him to make the drive over. He doesn't like playing over the internet, so he just said that his character was away on a religious retreat...lol
Another long-distance player nearly always plays via either Skype or Google Meet. One of my in-town players elected to do that because of COVID, which was cool. But then my internet began to completely slow to the point it wasn't even registering on the speed test I ran. So the local player just came on over and masked up and the other player just interacted via the loudspeaker on my phone. So I ended up with three players in my house and her over the phone.
But the game was fun and everyone had some badly needed laughs and silliness. My friend who plays the wizard in the party had been looking and waiting for an excuse to cast the spell Mad Monkeys ever since he acquired it. My group is famous for taking forty forevers to completely overthink even the most minor of things. They were trying to rescue a nine year old girl from a group of cultists who were trying to perform the first of several rituals to bring an evil entity back to life. So I had already mentally prepared myself for one of their usual extended committee meetings about something as mundane as opening the door. I'm serious. They once spent nearly two hours discussing what their next action would be once they opened an already unlocked door. I shouldn't allow this to happen as often as I do but it's sometimes fun just to listen to some of the more absurd notions they come up with.
But this time they caught me off-guard with the Mad Monkeys spell. The results were hilarious but they successfully rescued the child. I gave everyone a little extra XP for not making me sit through one of their overplanning sessions again...lol With any luck we'll be able to get back on a regular gaming schedule from now on.
Thanks, Mark! I always *mean* to tell a bit about our sessions after we play but I've become quite good at being a lazy bum for a long time now...lol. But I'll try to do better. I also pay very close attention to your posts and those of several others here because quite frankly some of the adventure seeds I see posted from you and the other folks are terrific. I have a few of them copy/pasted into document form and I look for any opportunity to at least mine something from them for my own sessions. One, in particular, an outline you titled "The Hidden Malediction" is something I've wanted to use for quite a while and I think I'll finally get to use it in the campaign I'm currently running. I have more of the adventure ideas you and I tossed around a few years ago stored on an external drive, too. Sometimes I wait months or even years before what I feel to be the right time to use something someone has suggested has arrived.
As far as playing online is concerned, it's almost the only way one of my players gets to join us. She lives a couple of hours away and making the games in person isn't very affordable for her. Her playing via Skype or Google Meet has become a pretty smooth operation for us. I have three other players who come from the Memphis, TN area (about 2.5 hours away) but they really don't like remote gaming at all. But some of the local troops tried a remote session last summer and it was a disaster because no one else except for she and I had ever used remote meeting outlets before. I'm not even going to try and suggest an actual online platform like Roll20 or Discord, for instance, because frankly, no one in my group of grognards wants to take the time to learn how to use them. Just the one session using Google Meet with everyone demonstrated that any attempt to use something like those would simply end in waves of lamentations and sorrow...lol
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What about that one idea I had? With the doohickey, and that one person who does that thing with the whatchamacallit.
THAT was a pretty good idea, you should totally use that.
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Oh yeah! The one with the hooziwhatzit!
I read an article last night by a guy who designs games who outlined how the whole QAnon movement follows along almost identically to the processes involved in the playing of certain types of RPGs. I'd like to share it here to get everyone's take on it, but I'm afraid it would become really incendiary very quickly.
Send me the link, please
Send me the link, please
Hey, I only just now saw this. Check your private messages.
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Thanks Cal.
I sent it on to a friend of mine who writes sci-fi and teaches world-building seminars. It's certainly an interesting way to look at what's happening.