The Journal of Agatha Fizzyflask -- My Cozy Campaign Experiment (pt.1)

Stardew Valley is © Chucklefish Games

My wife has been playing Stardew Valley a lot this summer; a game where you play a young person who has just inherited a farm in a fantastical world that sits at something like 1980s technology. It's what the video game industry, and more recently the TTRPG industry refer to as a "Cozy Game." Meaning it is focused on a small area, the stakes for success are failure are small: you might save a community, but the world is in no danger, and the relationships you build with the characters in the community is very much the focus.

Cozy games are not my cup of tea at all, but the game has sort of cast a spell over the rest of my family. My boys are excited to hear what has gone on in the farm and see the strange new fantasy farm animals and the useful item that my wife's avatar brings up from the dungeon. 

Well, if you want to run a good scenario the key is to figure out what your audience likes, and I got the feeling that something like Stardew Valley might make an appealing draw for a few weeks as we ease back into the school year.

So I sat down and asked myself "How can I make this interesting for me, so that I can get myself into the game enough to make it interesting to them?" 

 As I sat and pondered, my mind drifted to a concept that I have been spending a lot of time considering lately: the idea of prep as play.

My Summer was Full of Games

 I realize I haven't posted on here in a hell of a long time! My Summer was a glorious mix of in-real-life and in-game adventures.

Brier Island North lighhouse,
taken from the deck of the Mega Nova

IRL I took a family roadtrip that put nearly 3,000km on the Mazda, and along the way I attended art festivals, live concerts, joyous family functions, long days on the beach, and a whale watching tour where I got to see nine individual humpback whales and a few minke whales.

I also produced a pile of episodes of my solo RPG podcast Swords Against Madness, following my heroes getting themselves in pretty deep in their gonzo sword-and-planet weirdness, played in Swords & Wizardry.

It wasn't my only solo-gaming time spent. I took a couple of days of lazy relaxing to play through a massive chunk of Jason Sholtis' Operation Unfathomable and Odious Uplands, and had an absolute blast! 

These modules are the best example of making 1st level awesome that I have ever had the pleasure to experience. I have both a review upcoming and possible a few bonus episodes of Swords Against Madness summarizing my playthrough... with all of the running and screaming involved.

Help Me Buck the AI Monkey

 

When I created Swords Against Madness, I wasn't expecting a big hit. I figured that my own LSD-soaked imitation on Tale of the Manticore with immortal space barbarians and killer robots might garner an audience of 20... including my friends and family.

I sure as hell didn't expect it to have over 500 regular listeners and thousands of downloads. I am astounded, amazed, blessed, and humbled by the response  to my show.

Now I want to make it into an eve higher-quality, weirder, wilder, trippier project than before.And the first step to that is to ditch one of its weakest points: the AI-generated music.

500 Posts!

 I've been writing this blog for five years now, and I am proud to say I have finally hit my 500th post!

I haven't had the time I would like for it lately, but for all the right reasons:

Welcome to the Deathtrap has inspired me to write a number roleplaying games from full OSR clones, to OSR-compatible games with their own Dark Fantasy setting and mechanics, to my own unique 2d6 Weird West system, to a one-page horror game.

I also have published a number of short OSR modules, and I am working towards a full-sized campaign setting. 

W2tDT has attracted some friends who share my passion for D&D, it's history, and it's potential, allowing me to participate in many campaigns both short and long.

I have created 2 ttrpg short podcasts for friends and ongoing solo actual play podcast with over 500 regular listeners. Not to mention a complete 41-episode science fantasy audio drama inspired in part by the Gonzo gaming aesthetic I have come to love since starting the blog.

I have all of you to thank for carrying me through the lockdown, through the transitions involved with becoming a work-at-home dad, and through a life-altering central nervous system injury and learning to live with a disability.

I want to thank you all and hope that this blog will still be seeing the off update in another five years.

Making the Low Levels Awesome

 I've been running a Swords & Wizardry game at home the last few weeks that has been possibly one of the most fun, most campaigns games I have played to date.

My idea started out both simple and challenging: "What if I ran a D&D game with as much surreal, plane-travelling weirdness as there was in late-90s Magic: the Gathering. I'm talking the peak insanity of the era of Tempest, Ice Age, Urza's Destiny, and Urza's Legacy, where the game was simulating a war between insane cthulhoid cyborgs and a race of precision-bred magicians with living shards of crystal and an inter-dimensional goblin horde in the middle.

I wanted low-level PCs to be roaming the planes, dealing with truly out-there wizards, and warped magical entities. As always, I subscribe to the theory that level one should feel as awesome as level 10.

My Setup

 Swords & Wizardry played RAW, but using a cosmology based on the AD&D2e / D&D3.X era Great Wheel / Planescape planar layout.

The PCs come from a kingdom on a mostly-undetailed world I am basing mostly on a mix of H.P. Lovecraft's Dream-Cycle mixed with a bit of Lord Dunsany, then brought kinda' down-to-earth with the trippier bits of The Elder Scrolls' Tamriel.

 At the beginning of the campaign the PCs are new arrivals at Armathan, a grand castle on a high-mountian meadow. The Mountain's great workshops are powered by a waterfall and streams that run right through its undercroft. The Castle itself was built as a part of and to defend a silver mine and an important monastery. The mine in turn connected to ancient pre-human ruins. 

The Solo Roleplayer's Network

 I wanted to draw you attention to another project I have been involved in!

A while back I started talking about my great enjoyment of solo rpg podcasts, such as Tale of the Manticore, Legend of the Bones, and Stories from the First Watch.

Then I started my own: Swords Against Madness.

Since then I have joined a community of creators of these amazing solo-game inspired pods (as well as comics) and really found my tribe. 

Recently, with PJ Sack of A Wasteland Story as the idea man, and Jon from Tale of the Manticore as the voice of wisdom, and me as the tech monkey, over a dozen solo roleplaying podcasters set up a The Solo Roleplayers Network with a website where you can check out a wide variety of podcasts inspired by solo TTRPGs.

 There are so many amazing games being shared here (and I listen to all of them!)

• My own Swords Against Madness: psychedelic sword & planet played with Swords & Wizardry.

• Tale of the Manticore: a rich novel-like dark fantasy played with B/X D&D; TotM is the template on which most of the other podcasts are built for good reason.

• Legend of the Bones: a well-told dak fantasy heavily influenced by medieval Norse, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon history using B/X D&D.

• A Wasteland Story: a gritty, hard-hitting solo role-playing story set in the Fallout universe (matching tone with the original Interplay games) using the Fallout 2d20 role-playing game. 

• A Game of One's Own: featuring a range of indie TTRPG games played solo and turned into audio dramas to showcase them, including Mountaintop Isolation, Dragon Dowser, To the Bitter End, Pitcrawler, Death of the Author, Hedge Witch, Universe at Your Door, Forgery, Why We Fight, and Knockoff

• Errant Adventures: a series of solo games played in Ironsworn, Starforged, and Traveller, often intrigue-heavy science fiction adventures. 

• Stories from the First Watch: a grimdark fantasy with a rich story played in B/X D&D.

• Legends from the Fireside: an extremely old-school D&D adventure that really captures the 80s gaming vibe played with Old School Essentials. 

• Soul Operator: a surreal survival horror story focused on human relationships in the face of Lovecraftian horror played with Welcome to the Habitrails.

• Reflections in the Darksome Mirror: a tense and dark fantasy survival story played using the Darksome Mirror TTRPG. 

• Echoes of Eshaton: a post-apocalyptic primal punk scifi game played as short mini-series and snapshots that build on each other to paint a picture of a world rising from the ashes with Degenesis.

• The Lone Adventurer: a high-octane manapunk spy and crime thriller using D&D5e, Blades in the Dark, Chasing Adventure, and Warbirds - changing system to suit the needs of the narrative.

• Roll by Myself: a long-form game that alternates between actual play and audio drama based on it featuring two-session plays of solo journaling games such as Grandpa's Farm, Blood on My Name, and Deadline: A Clockwork Press. 

• The Chronicles of Nephes: an high-fantasy epic with intense storytelling played in  Nuovarden 

• The Solo Roleplayers Podcast: A podcast that is a mix of actual plays, interviews, and how-tos on playing solo TTRPGs. Includes playthroughs of Shadowdark, Forbidden Lands, Starforged, and Crown and Skull,among others.

And more being added all the time,

Game Review: Chasing Adventure

Author: Spencer Moore

Publisher: Self-Published

Engine: Powered by the Apocalypse

Marketplace: DriveThruRPG (free vers), game hompage

 Back in November I found myself with a very long series of waits on my hand on buses, in cafes, and in Hospital waiting rooms. I am trying to cut my screen time way back, so I decided instead I would grab Mythic GME and a book off my shelf and play a solo game over the course of the day.

I decided to give Dungeon World another whirl. I was not disappointed: I rather enjoyed the narrative complexity that came out of a storygame played solo (even if my players are still not interested in them.) I came up with a fantastic tale of a young princess, a squire, and an apprentice magician playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with dwarf terrorists in the Underdark. I gave the overall experience a 7/10, it was a good solo run, but in a lot of places it was marred by some of the flaws of the system, such as how easy it was for a bad roll or two to turn into an quagmire of bad events, and the fact that magic was often fickle and ineffectual. I made a pile of notes about how I would tweak the game in the future.

In March, I had to move house, and as I packed, hauled boxes by the dolly-full between houses, and unpacked every day for a month, I found myself binging a lot of solo semi-actual play podcasts that I was behind on, including the entire third season of the amazing The Lone Adventurer by Carl White. TLA tells a cohesive story of spies, thieves, and manapunk fighter pilots that is deeply engrossing. And one of the things he does that I really enjoy is that he periodically changes game systems to suit the kind of adventure he wants for the specific arc of the story. When he wants Bondesque action he plays D&D5e; when he tells crime stories he uses Blades in the Dark; when he is engaging in a long skyship voyage he plays Ironsworn; and airship battles are played in Warbirds. And for each he works very hard to explain the system and how it is producing the story he wants. After a few episodes in a given system, you have got a pretty good sense of how to play it and how it plays.

For one recent segment of The Lone Adventurer, Carl switched over to Chasing Adventure, a PbtA fantasy adventure game that was designed to work similarly to Dungeon World, but was intended to smooth off DW's rough edges, be mechanically a little lighter and more free-flowing, and a little less beholden to Dungeons & Dragons. Listening to Carl play got me quite intrigued, I went out and grabbed the free version immediately, and liked it enough to buy the full version a few days later.