Trans-Real News is Complete at 41 (Gamable) Episodes

I wanted to point my readers once more to my podcast Trans-Real News. It is one of the main reasons why this blog is being so scant lately. And I hope that you will find that it was a worthy diversion. It is now complete with 41 episodes averaging about 8 minutes in length.

Trans-Real news is my surreal science fantasy comedy audio drama. It follows the lives of the cast of a daily news show as they attempt to report on a world where time, space, and reality has malfunctioned. Please to things like rampaging hordes of barbarians coming back through time too eliminate people they think made humanity weaker, much of the Monterey Bay area of Northern California turning into a swamp full of Carboniferous life forms, Los Angeles turning into a shining 1950 science fiction-style Utopia, and a hive mind of talking insects taking over hollywood. 

If I were to try to describe it, I might do so as a Murphy Brown and meats Bill & Ted, while a selection of comics from Heavy Metal play out in the background. 

Throughout the series, I make a lot of references to Dungeons & Dragons. There are even a couple of scenes of the characters playing it. And one of the things I have tried to do with it is make sure that it is gamable.:

I tried to create a podcast where every episode might give a dungeon master six or seven new ideas for adventure hooks or strange events in their campaign world. 

Throughout it, I also  did a lot of World-Building, and there is definitely a setting all its own there where modern people are facing fantasy and science fiction dangers while trying to learn to navigate time travel, alternate dimensions, and the world where magic is coming into its own. 

It is my intention to start working on a setting book for it based on an in-world book a couple of the recurring characters wrote. I would love feedback from my readers as to whether or not this is something they would be interested in. 

I will post the trailer here. You can find it on most of your podcatchers, such as spotify, youtube, Podcast Addict, and itunes. 

If you have a few hours to spare, I would love to have a chance to entertain you!

Example of Tailoring A Campaign: My Summer Vacation Game

I've recently experienced a severe stall in my Silver Gull campaign.. a couple of my players suffer from chronic illnesses that have been bad lately, and they haven't been able to make it. While my campaign is normally run in one to one time, my players aren't really interested in playing unless they have the full group available. Another of my players has a psychological block when it comes to trying to run multiple characters at once. He simply isn't able to do it, and so it doesn't want to start anything on the side. 

The end result is that my players have needed to move to a pause time model of play, and then we have been unable to play simply because some of my players are being too sick.

I'm not willing to give up on the Silver Gull. This campaign has been one of the most enjoyable I've ever run. And, in spite of stalls and brakes, the player characters are now sitting between 7th and 10th level depending on class. They have intrigues, long term goals, romances, sworn enemies, holy missions, and are building towards a dominion now. 

But I get the feeling that things are not going to work themselves out for another few months.

And so, I've decided that for the Summer I'm going to be running something a little different. And this is where tailoring your game to the campaign is absolutely vital.

Game Review: Hero Quest (2021)

Creator: Stephen Baker

Publisher: Avalon Hill

System: Hero Quest

Marketplace: Amazon

I received a copy of Hero Quest (1989) for my birthday when I was 11. A product of Milton Bradley in conjunction with Games Workshop, it was designed as a tool for introducing young people to the concepts of role-playing games, but with minimal amounts of the play-acting and dramatic storytelling.
Hero Quest consisted of a board, and a collection of minis and frogs, along with cardboard tiles and specialized diced resolve combat. The combat system was loosely based on Warhammer Fantasy Battles, with various icons on the dice representing one and six, two and six, and three and six chances of success on a d6 roll.

The symbols were variously a skull to represent a wound (3 in 6), a shield to represent a hero deflecting an attack (2 in 6), or a skull to represent a non-heroic unit deflecting an attack (1 in 6). 

Original 1989 box

Making Best Use of Downtime

Many of my players don't like downtime. They want a fast-paced adventure where they know danger is around every corner. They prefer the kind of pacing that you see in modern Dungeons & Dragons play. Downtime for them is like a montage. And for many years, because I know my audience, that was how I played. Downtime only existed between acts or when the PCs decided to- and the unfolding events allowed them to- take a break.

The Evolution of Timekeeping Advice in D&D

As a kid, I missed reading the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide, I missed out on its advice for keeping time and running the game (I went from playing with the Mentzer "red box" Basic Dungeons & Dragons to using Mentzer Dungeon Master's Rulebook and the AD&D Player's Handbook, to using AD&D2nd edition. Thus, I missed the best resource ever written on running a D&D campaign. The AD&D2e Dungeon Master's Guide buried its advice a somewhat in favour of optional rules and setting design, and skipped some of the best options. Bu the time they decided to expand it in DMGR1: The Campaign Sourcebook and Catacombs Guide, the developers at TSR had very much moved away from Gygax. Here is the meat of their description of how to manage pacing of a campaign in DMGR1: