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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.
Pretty sure I saw the same article on Twitter about a month ago. Very, very interesting.
I've basically lost family members to the QAnon conspiracy theory.
There's a Reddit thread about people who have lost loved ones to QAnon. I haven't posted there, but I have read much of it. It's sad and infuriating.
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Pretty sure I saw the same article on Twitter about a month ago. Very, very interesting.
Its original posting date is Sept 30, 2020.
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My wife's brothers have been trying to get their parents to join their "community of like minded individuals" and they recently tried to get us to join. So we did a search, and yup, it's a Qanon cult in Arkansas.
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Anyone else having trouble getting enthusiastic about storming buildings and rooms and tactical planning for how to search out and kill the inhabitants? A lot of my joy has been clouded by thinking about the recent real-life parallels.
Perhaps its time for some outdoor camping.
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All I can say is that right now, I'm playing in three RPGs that don't have combat systems. If you've gotten into a fight, you've almost certainly done something wrong.
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I'm just glad that by and large a lot of the people/characters I GM PFS for on the regular are usually very strongly pro-Diplomacy if at all possible.
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.
It is.
My wife's brothers have been trying to get their parents to join their "community of like minded individuals" and they recently tried to get us to join. So we did a search, and yup, it's a Qanon cult in Arkansas.
I've had to let several people go, or at the very least block them on FB. I've been accused of being part of the Leftist World Dominating Death Squad because I won't sign onto their beliefs.
Hey, everyone!
No game here this weekend, but it's scheduled for next Saturday. A very dear friend is coming down to visit for the afternoon and I'm looking forward to that. She pretty much saved my life back in 1987 and I will always make time for her visits.
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I just finished playing "Back Again From the Broken Land" over at Magpie Games Community Play Day, their monthly one-day mini-con. Wow! What a fantastic game!
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I ran Session Two of my first playtest series of Naked City Blus, my hard-boiled detective RPG set in 1948. It went really, really well!
There was a fight scene... and the deliberate lack of a combat system was a genre-appropriate asset to the game. It just sang! I thought the scene played out exactly as I was hoping it would!
Play did bring to light a couple of situations that the rules didn't really address, so that's something I need to think about. Specifically: How to handle a Detective asking one of their NPC minions to do some independent investigations without a PC present. Also: How to write Cases with enough flexibility to drop-in new important NPCs that are introduced through play.
I think the game will be a lot stronger on its next iteration. I'll probably give it two more playtest series before I publish version 1.0.
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Not gaming related, but tomorrow I'm driving up to my mom's house to pick up a trunk full (including the trunk) of my late father's vinyls from the 70s and 80s. Plus the turntable that hasn't been plugged in in a decade. I've had my eye on the vinyls for a while, and my sister has been encouraging my mom to get rid of all the clutter in the house since it seems my mom spends most of her time in retirement on cleaning and upkeep of the house.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to gaining that collection so that I can have more things to clutter up my house.
My buddy wants to try ANOTHER session of 5e on Saturday.
Not a fan?
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Not gaming related, but tomorrow I'm driving up to my mom's house to pick up a trunk full (including the trunk) of my late father's vinyls from the 70s and 80s. Plus the turntable that hasn't been plugged in in a decade. I've had my eye on the vinyls for a while, and my sister has been encouraging my mom to get rid of all the clutter in the house since it seems my mom spends most of her time in retirement on cleaning and upkeep of the house.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to gaining that collection so that I can have more things to clutter up my house.
OH man...some folks go nuts over getting a pile of old books. I'd lose my mind in ecstasy if someone gave me a bunch of old LPs. I have somewhere between 500 and 600 still left from my misspent youth and I have to force myself not to prowl the used record shop in Little Rock when I go there.
My buddy wants to try ANOTHER session of 5e on Saturday. God help me I'm going. He's said he's open to trying PF1 since I'm continuing in this 5e game. Saturday I'm getting to his house early to discuss.
Grant me strength...
Sending thoughts and prayers... :)
I have a game scheduled for tomorrow night but haven't spent one minute of the last two weeks planning for it. I'm not sleeping very well again and it's taking a toll on me. I just don't have the energy for it. But on the other hand, if we put it off until next Saturday, that will get us back on our regular pre-pandemic schedule. I'll decide sometime later today if I want to try and reschedule or not.
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I'll be shovelling snow, probably through Tuesday.
Otherwise I have a few cheesy movies to watch; Wonder Woman 1984, Balls of Fury, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off in between the snow storms.
Back in my early days of gaming, I played with a lot of different people and there were a couple of DMs who behaved just like this. It's very aggravating. I believe that there are times a GM should withhold information but if a player outwits me or rolls high enough I give it to them. And I admit I've railroaded things a few times but only to get them back from some tangent they've merrily skipped away on or to put them all at the same starting point. I might not always let them know I've shoved them back on the right track in the first instance but if I need to get everyone together to make the game work I'll tell them I'm doing it, but I try to weave in the things their characters might have been doing before or otherwise.
Good luck this weekend, Mark!
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My buddy wants to try ANOTHER session of 5e on Saturday. God help me I'm going. He's said he's open to trying PF1 since I'm continuing in this 5e game. Saturday I'm getting to his house early to discuss.
Grant me strength...
You've been complaining about this guy on these forums for a few months now... if it were me, I'd have have quit this guy's game long before now. It's less about the system than this guy seems to be an adversarial GM for the sake of being adversarial. I tend to find playing under such a GM to be the opposite of "fun".
Mark, I was just about to ask how your 5e session went this weekend. Better, I hope!
I had to postpone my game until this coming Saturday for a variety of reasons. But the up side is by doing so we should be able to get back onto our normal schedule.
Those are all noble and admirable reasons. Not knowing his background I guess I've judged his GMing style simply based on his ego. But things make a lot more sense, now. I'm glad you provided some background. Hopefully, if he gets to be a player in your game he'll take note of how things can be done differently (and better).
Those are all noble and admirable reasons for a person to stick by him, I think. I think you're being a pretty good friend for doing so. Not knowing his background I guess I've judged his GMing style simply based on his ego. But things make a lot more sense, now. I'm glad you provided some background. Hopefully, if he gets to be a player in your game he'll take note of how things can be done differently (and better).
Mark: Thanks for that background. I understand how you would want to be charitable with this guy.
You are a much bigger person than I would be in this situation: I don't think I'd be able to continue playing with a person who GMed in that fashion. From what you describe, playing RPGs with this guy as a GM would be the opposite of fun. I'm really patient, and it takes a lot to set me off, but once I get pushed too far, I tend to explode. I like to think I'd try to provide some constructive criticism after-the-fact... but if he didn't take it well at the time, I would probably not make a second attempt.
If I were in your position and feeling charitable, I'd offer to take over the GM role of the group. You might want to see if he'd be interested in joining another group as a player: He might learn some better practices by playing under a competent GM. There are a LOT of online groups these days, and the online tools available make remote play very accessible.
Going to try and run a game tomorrow but will only have one player here. The rest will be playing remotely. The player who will actually be in attendance drives two and a half hours to get here because he doesn't like gaming over the internet. It's gonna be a little weird because he won't be able to see any of the other players, just hear their disembodied voices.
My wifi router is in a different room than the living room where we play and while it used to not really be a problem, the signal barely registers on the laptop I use for gaming now. I have a new router so I'm not sure what the problem is, but I went and bought a 50' long ethernet cable to run from the router in my bedroom to the living room. Just having one remote player was crashing Skype and Google Meet so now that I'll have three this weekend I knew it was not going to work at all. Hopefully, things will go more smoothly than the last time!
How about youse guys?
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I generally don't game on the weekend to spend time with my non-gamer spouse.
Monday night I played in an ongoing Pathfinder 1e game. We're running through "Shattered Star". I'm playing a half-orc cleric of Desna who was raised by Varisians named Anya Starchild. We just finished up Chapter 3 of Book 1: Shards of Sin and are about to head into Chapter 4: "Legacy of Wrath".
Tuesday night, I GMed my regular Tuesday night group through our second session of the RPG Back Again From the Broken Land, a Powered by the Apocalpyse story-game about a band of little people returning home from fighting in a big war against the Doomslord.
And last night, I wrapped a three-game series of my in-development hard-boiled/film noir detective fiction RPG Naked City Blues. It was a smashing success, although I did end up having to improvise some rules interpretations that I hadn't thought of... these will be codified for the next iteration.
If anyone is interested in checking out Naked City Blues, the public playtest materials are at: https://tinyurl.com/NakedCityBlues
This weekend, I'm planning to work on NCB a little more, and hopefully will get version 0.3 finished and available for playtesting. I'm also planning on releasing the first scenario, "The Case of the Untrue Heart." [This was the scenario I ran for the playtest session... it needs some polishing.]
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It's going to snow Saturday that's what I'll be doing Sunday.
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It's going to snow Saturday that's what I'll be doing Sunday.
There's three inches of snow on the ground at my house right now, and it's still coming down pretty hard. It's also 9°F (-13°C) and windy.
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We got almost a foot on Monday and we're expecting 3-6 inches tomorrow, unless it tracks more northerly, in which case we'll probably get close to another foot of snow.
Had to cancel my game. After going to bed last night around midnight I had to shoot straight into the bathroom as fast as I could and there I spent the night. I've still not had any real sleep and I'm still not over the affliction. Dammit.
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Yesterday, I posted three games that I'm going run at this quarter's Gauntlet Community Open Gaming online convention.
I will be running...
Escape From Dino Island - Thursday 2/25, 9:00 AM EST
Swords of the Serpentine: The Dripping Throne - Friday 2/26, 9:00 AM EST
Spirit of '77: BEAST-Bound and Down! - Saturday 2/27, 2:00 PM EST
There are currently about 40 events on the calendar in total, and new ones are still being added.
This event is FREE and open to everyone. Registration starts TODAY!
I hope to see some of you there!
I want to try and find a way to at least run dynamic, cinematic and engaging fights online, if anyone has any tips. And before anyone says "theater of the mind," understand that one of my players is a bit... challenged, and NEEDS maps and minis or he won't be able to keep track of the action.
Roll20 is pretty much the gold standard for web-based online shared battlemaps for tactical TTRPG combat.
It's pretty easy to import maps from image files. It's a little trickier to get the grids of the image file to mesh perfectly with Roll 20's grid markings, but once you get the hang of it, it goes pretty quickly.
The map has layers, so you can set different things on different layers and not worry about accidentally moving map elements around.
As for defining the third dimension on a map... that's pretty much the same problem as when you're using a flat battlemat on your dining room table when you don't have terrain pieces. I'd set a different layer than the map itself and then draw in markings to indicate elements that are at different heights. (e.g. red line = 5 foot drop below floor; green line = 10 feet above the floor.)
That said... using Roll20 is more-or-less an art unto itself. Back when I was running a Pathfinder online game, I found myself spending a LOT of time before sessions prepping the map. That's one of the reasons I don't really GM games that use tactical combat anymore.
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I took my family to a house in the Texas hill country for the weekend. There was no internet. We played boardgames and went on lots of hikes.
Hope you're feeling better, Cal.
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I took my family to a house in the Texas hill country for the weekend. There was no internet. We played boardgames and went on lots of hikes.
Hope you're feeling better, Cal.
Sounds like a fun weekend!
I'm feeling a lot better, thanks! It was just one of those short term stomach bugs. I get them all the time. Some folks get sinus infections or colds or even Strep regularly (I had Strep one time over 30 years ago and have never had it since, thank goodness). But let there be even the least potent stomach virus around and I'm going to get it. Every time!
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I've already played what I'm going to play this week...
Monday was another session of Shattered Star: Shards of Sin. We just started Chapter 4, "Legacy of Wrath" for the final dungeon levels.
Tuesday was the penultimate session of Back Again From the Broken Land, where our heroes ran from the Doomslord's Hunters, learned why the Hunters are still after themn, befriended a lost ogre child, and returned him to his village.
And last night was the first session of four sessions of the "Belonging Outside Belonging" RPG Flotsam: Adrift Among the Stars. Our setting is Space Station Exegesis, a former archaeological research station in orbit around a semi-habitable planet that was once home to a long-dead alien race. The planet had been pretty much fully catalogued nearly 100 years ago, so the station had been mostly re-purposed as a supply depot in an otherwise-uninhabited sector. But just three years ago, the ongoing war between the Galactic Confederation and the Interstellar Hegemony ended in a peace treaty that ceded our sector to the Hegemony... and meet the new boss same as the old boss. My character is a former exoarchaeologist who accidentally gained a connection to the collective consciousness of the dead aliens... what she calls their "Oversoul." This gives her mystical-seeming powers. The other characters are a cybernetically-enhanced Confederation spy who's now on his own; a doctor who's been infected with alien nanoprobes that are affecting his personality, and a rogue AI who's bouncing around the station's computer system. Hijinks ensue!
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Wait, one of the PCs is a disembodied AI? That sounds different and super fun.
Happy Friday, y'all. Anything exciting (or mundane, dull, or just OK) going on this weekend? I'm going to try ONE MORE TIME to run the game I've had to put off twice already. I'll have two players in attendance physically and the rest will be calling in via Google Meet. Cross your tentacles that it finally happens Saturday!
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Wait, one of the PCs is a disembodied AI? That sounds different and super fun.
Yup! The character's name is "Hey Cosmos", and they're masquerading as the station's central computer's voice interface. This gives them the scoop on most of what's going on aboard the station. They can also "manifest" by taking over control of various pieces of station equipment.
Hey, all. What's shakin' this weekend? No game here at Sweet Home Calabama as it's our off week. Sunday is Valentine's Day, of course, though I have no plans for that at all. It would also have been my sweet Rosie Girl's twelfth birthday, but she unexpectedly crossed the Rainbow Bridge last Sunday, so I'm really not in the mood to game even if we had one scheduled.
So tell me what you have in store!
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As usual, my gaming was restricted to weekday nights so that my weekends are free to spend time with my non-gamer spouse.
Monday night was our Pathfinder 1e "Shattered Star" game. We're well into Chapter 4 of Shards of Sin and are now in the lower dungeon levels beneath The Crow. I'm guessing two or three more sessions before we finish out Book 1 of the AP. I'm playing Anya Starchild, a half-orc cleric of Desna who'd been raised by Varisians.
Tuesday night was Session 4 of a run through Back Again From the Broken Land. The fellowship has made it to the faerie-haunted Toadstool Forest on the edge of their homeland.
Wednesday night's scheduled Session 2 of Flotsam: Adrift Among the Stars was cancelled at the last minute because the GM was in a bicycle accident and was being treated at the hospital for a fractured wrist. (He was able to send us a message cancelling the session, and he later said that he's going to be fine, eventually.)
This past week, I've been working on a conversion of the Pathfinder module The Godsmouth Heresy for the OSR/story-game hybrid RPG Trophy Gold, which is one of my absolute favorite games at the moment. I'm running this adventure a week from Sunday at Gauntlet Community Open Gaming, our quarterly mini-con. (It's free!)
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Condolences, Cal.
On a whim, I bought a copy of the old Milton Bradley boardgame Life, and my kids are pretty excited to play it this weekend. We started a game one night this evening, but we didn't finish before bedtime.
For Pandemic Valentine's, my wife and I are going to rent Knives Out and have fancy cocktails. My sister-in-law got us a subscription to a thing called Shaker and Spoon, where they send a box every month that has everything you need to make a few fancy cocktails, minus the glasses, the alcohol, and anything quickly perishable. Last month was a few gin drinks, and we made a... 'contraption' is the best word I have for it... involving apple cider, tart raspberry syrup, angostura bitters, heavy cream, and shaved cinnamon. It was delicious, but it was also a lot of effort for just a couple drinks. Still, it was fun. Anyway, we'll probably choose another of those high-effort drinks and make something again.
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Thanks, Andostre. It's a big adjustment, let me tell ya.
Way back in the Ice Age (the late 1980s), my friends and I once made up a drink out of "leftover" stuff in the fridge. We took a couple of cans of peaches in heavy syrup, some peach jello, heavy cream, black rum, and ice, dropped it all in a blender, and thus the Peachy Keen was born. It was absolutely delicious and I haven't made one since the early 90s...lol (it's weird, but I haven't owned a blender since then). Now I'm thinking I might have to invest in one.
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Sorry for your loss, Cal. Losing a pet always hits you harder than you expect.
It was a big splurge, but we bought a Vita-Mix blender a few years ago, and that thing is amazing.
Also in the "Ow! My wallet!" category... Kickstarter's ZineQuest 3 started last week. This is a program for small-scale indie RPG designers to put together a short crowdsourcing campaign to produce a TTRPG supplement in zine format. IOW, a half-sized (5.5" x 8") B&W zine of 40 pages or less.
The ZQ3 projects I've backed this year are...
Back Again from the Broken Land - a PbtA RPG about small adventurers returning home from a big war.
Through Ultan's Door #3 - an OSR dungeon adventure.
Paranormal, Inc. - a GM-less PbtA TTRPG about professional ghost-hunters.
The Soul Sword Forge - an adventure for both OSR and Trophy Gold
TOKEN - a "Rooted in Trophy" duet RPG (i.e. a GM and one player) about a monster and a monster-hunter stalking each other.
Against the Dark Conspiracy - a rules-light RPG about competent agents taking on supernatural threats in the modern world. The author wrote a blog post about the evolution of his game design.
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I'm over the moon!
Last month, I ran a playtest series of an RPG I'm writing: Naked City Blues, a "Powered by the Apocalypse" game of hard-boiled/film noir detective fiction set in the 1940s. You can grab a copy of the latest playtest version at tinyurl.com/NakedCityBlues.
Shane M., one of my playtesters, was interviewed as a guest on this month's Gauntlet Podcast... and she chose Naked City Blues as the game she wanted to talk about!
It is SO COOL to hear people saying nice things about something you made!
That is fantastic! Congratulations!!