What I'm Up To

 I'm sure it has been missed by no one that I have been having trouble finding time for this blog. And it's anniversary has just rolled past. So I wanted to take some time to let you know what has been keeping me busy, as it is mostly RPG-adjacent.

Gaming!

Death in Space

I'm coming up on one year of an intense campaign in Death in Space. My players have managed to survive long enough to salvage a handful of functional ships, hired a crew of salvage and mining experts and built a network of laser communication satellites; they are trying to become a force for hope in the Tenebris system.

The game started as a one-shot pallette cleanser, and just kept going. So I didn't start posting play reports until it is too late.

The Weirth Campaign 

I've also been participating in a long-running campaign run by Stephen Smith that attempts to reconstruct the early 1970s Wargaming D&D experience. We've shifted systems a couple of times, including playing awhile using the 1973 D&D play test rules that were recreated in The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg, fueled with and eventually replaced by Blueholme, and after a few years shifting to a highly home-brewed iteration of Tales of Argosa.

This game uses domain rules that start for fighters at level 2, one-to-one time, patron players, mass combat played in Chainmail and other retro wargames, and a ton of classic modules including the aforementioned Tonisborg, The Tower of Xenopus, Keep on the Borderlands, The Isle of Dread, Temple of Elemental Evil, Empire of the East, Mask of Nyarlathotep, Into the Depths of the Earth, Veins of the Earth, Please Go to Sleep Arthur Cobblesworth, Sounds of the Mushroom Kingdom, and Against the Cult of the Reptile God among others.

Home Game

My home game with family has had a couple of false starts, but I just brought a satisfying end to a DCC RPG campaign and am setting up a game in AD&D.

I've also been playing a solo game in Grok?! 2e, amplified by Mythic Game Master Emulator.

Summer Game

Every year in the Summer I try to run six sessions of a classic OSR game with family, friends, and my favorite D&D people. This year I am vacillating between PARANOIA SP1 or running Operation Unfathomable and Odious Uplands in Swords & Wizardry.

Podcasting 

Two years ago, I founded an audio production company, Stormhead Productions, with terrible timing. The Descript AI changed audio production overnight about the same time I started my business. I was putting up a freelance profile on Upwork the exact same time that the going rate for that work were cut in half and the available jobs shrank by two thirds.

Solo Gaming Fiction: Bad Medicine (pt. 3)

 There wasn't time to guess at how stupid the move was; there was just time to move. Lise disengaged her boots and hammered on the controls in her hand, twisting and turning the cargo pod, building up as much momentum as the tons of medicine could manage with nothing but cheap gas jets, as she rode it out between the closing shutters, sighing with relief when the edge of the pallet caused a mighty squawk as the safety system froze the shutters.

She rode the pallet of medicine out into open space, her heart was pounding; oxygen consumption rate alarms blaring over her helmet comm.  She twisted the pallet and let it drift slowly towards the hull of the station parallel to the plating. Keying the pallet to follow her, she began the task of trudging across the hull between her rings of detection. Everything in her screamed to hurry, but in space, as they used to say in the 'Corps, rushing will get you killed.

 "Holden, are you reading?"

"I'm here."

"I just barely got out of the OT. The Bandits were early. I've got the payload. Monitor comms for me, would you?"

"You're cute when you talk like a soldier."

"Scan now; flirt later." 

"Yes Ma'am!"

Lise smiled in spite of herself. She'd needed that. There was nothing to do now but keep walking her strange, drunken route along the Space Station's hull.

"...Okay, there's nothing about the uh... OT.. in the Station Sec' channels, but we did just get an unauthorized work pod launch, and somebody's running interference to keep it from getting intercepted."

"Shit. I want you to start venting the Arrow's cargo bay now, and start warming up the M-Drive. Keep on sensors. Low energy sweeps. Let me know when the pod is coming."

Holden paused she could hear him interacting with her bridge computer.

"Look, Lise, scanners I can do, but I'm not a pilot."

"Take your time, even double-timing it I'm probably 17 minutes out. Remind me to invest in a thruster pack when I get paid."

Breathe easy. Breathe slow. You're in more danger from tearing your suit than anything else. Lise focused on taking slow steps and steering the pallet. She carefully registered a flight plan for the 'Arrow as soon as she was on board. But some part of her wanted to claw out of her skin.

Pain lanced through her ribs, as she took a particularly narrow turn and for a moment she was on one knee crying and cursing softly. 

"What's wrong?!"

 "Another Spasm", Lise said as she knelt on the plating for a moment. Tears floated free, starting to form a shell of liquid on the inside of the helmet. "I just need to breathe and keep my head in the game. I'll be there in 7."

"Is there a reason why you are still wobbling around the ship like a drunken Bwap on Holiday? They already know you're out there."

"The Bandits know I'm out here, but they are avoiding official channels. If I don't trigger any alarms it stays that way. They have no legal right to stop my departure or search the ship."

Come on!

She forced herself back to her feet and started making longer, faster strides. There was no time for pain.

Solo Gaming Fiction: Bad Medicine (pt.2)

This is part 2 of a fictionalized version of my solo game of Mongoose Traveller (2022), which I wanted to share with you all.  

Solo Gaming Fiction: Bad Medicine (pt.1)

One of the things I make a point of doing any time I am reviewing a TTRPG is to play a couple of sessions of it in solo mode so that I can get a feel for how it plays at the table. If I am going to share a game with you, I want to make sure I am doing my best to have good information. It is not enough to describe the mechanics of a game; I want to have a sense of game play.

This unfortunately slows down my reviewing process - a lot.  Recently, one of my kids has developed some pretty extreme issues related to the way his autism expresses itself. I have had to drop everything - including work - to take care of the little guy. Finding the time to sit down and take a trip into a dungeon or into outer space has been hard as of late. And when I do, it has been more for the joy of playing than for the purposes of the blog.

 But I wanted to relate a cool story from a recent solo game. I decided to sit down and play a round of the 2022 Mongoose edition of Traveller so I could have a better basis of comparison to Cepheus Deluxe and Stars Without Number, which I want to finally review properly in the near future.

This is the first adventure of my home Traveller campaign; and I will present it in four parts to make it more digestible than last year's Death in Space story. 

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

Stardew Valley is © Concerned Ape 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.

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. 

Artful Vaguness in Setting Design

 Earlier this month, I started a campaign of Death in Space with a few friends. Life and scheduling conflicts have forced me to put playing Undeadwood on hold. 

After my solo game last Christmas, I've been itching to play more Death in Space. I love flavour of dark science fiction that DiS brings. 

More importantly, The Tenebris System is an amazing starting point for a campaign setting. It has plenty of the ideas to get you rolling, but vague enough that you can put your stamp on it without too much difficulty. In fact, The Tenebris System is a brilliant case study of the technique of Artful Vagueness. 

Artful Vaguness:

Artful Vagueness is the skill of using suggestive or open language to elicit a response in a way that encourages the other party to use their creativity in answering.

An Atari-inspired Campaign for Traveller/ Cepheus Engine

I have been tinkering with a new campaign to play at home with friends and family inspired by my current binge of old Atari games and retro sci-fi. I wrote it specifically for Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition from Stellagama Publishing, but it should run with almost any form of Traveller with a few tweaks.

8 want something lighthearted that captures the kind of fantastical popcorn Space opera that you see in the premise of 80s SF movies like The Last Starfighter or in the manuals and comics that came with early console games.

The bad guys are vile, the good guys fly cool ships, and the stakes are very high. It is definitely not like the Third Imperium... although I decided to keep some of the best ideas of that setting.

Here's my pitch:

Cepheus: IRATA

A Solo Play Report: Death in Space, 51 Ehlee

So, last night I wanted to break in the Zoom H5 I got for an early Christmas present and have fun with a solo RPG at the same time. I'd played Death in Space a couple of times, but I hadn't really managed to try everything the game had to offer, so I decided it was high time to really give it the shakedown it deserved. And its dark, apocalyptic setting seemed the perfect cure for the Holiday blahs. I coupled it with Mythic Game Master Emulator 2e, and dove in.

I recorded my entire 1 hour and 37 minute session, with the idea that maybe I could turn it into bonus content for Swords Against Madness; I would record me figuring out the game Extemporanneously, and then redo it as a story and cut them together in the style of one of my favourite RPG podcasts: P.J. Sack's A Wasteland Story.

That is a podcast well worth your time if you like the older Black Isle / Van Buren Fallout setting, by the way.

As it was, Death in Space lived up to its name, and I didn't make it more than five encouters into the game before my PC died horribly. And you know what? It was incredible fun, but I just don't have enough for a good podcast episode, so Instead I decided I would write it up as a short story to share with you all.

The story includes a couple of horrible torturous deaths, exsanguination, piracy, and inappropriate treatment of a corpse... but I don't think I need to sell it too hard.

A World-Building Experiment: Heroes & Homelands (pt. 3)

 Over the past two weeks I have created a simple D&D retro-clone called Heroes & Homelands that is intended to be easily copy/pasted and edited to make new bespoke games as I need them. You can get the current version of it in .PDF here, or in .PDF, .html, .odt, and .docx formats in a PWYW bundle on itch.io.

Then I sat down and brainstormed a campaign I called "Into the Mistlands", a surreal magical adventure into something like a weird psychocosm. Here is the pich:

Campaign Reports and PWYW Preview of Undeadwood WWRPG

I really enjoyed creating podcasts for my players to summzarize our last play sessions and build up lore for Xen this past Spring. I've decided to do that and take it up to 11 for my current campaign Undeadwood Weird West RPG, especially as I have been building a game for scratch that has turned out to be pretty darned good.

And so, with two episodes now live online that are a mix of developer's blog, world building, and play reports, I wanted to share that podcast with you here. It will be live on major podcasting platforms over the next month or so.

Tailoring a Campaign: My Player Resource for Running Hot Springs Island

I am in the process of setting up for my Summer game of Hot Springs Island. One of the first things I wanted to do aside from sending out the pitch document that I shared with you last week, was to write a guide for the players. This guide had to tackle some basic tasks:

1. Cover how to make a character
2. Reiterate at least some of the house rules in the pitch document.
3. Expand on the information in the pitch for players who have bought in.
4. Add in any new content relevant to the players.

So I started by reiterating my character generation process. I added in firearm rules cribbed from Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and a gear list that brings the characters into the 17th century, including some era-appropriate armour and equipment.

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.

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:

Podcasting Your Campaign Notes

I am, generally speaking, awful about keeping notes as a DM. When I run  a game, I am so deep in the flow moat times that writing things down doesn't occur to me. Three days later, I can usually tell you exactly what happened without referring to my scant in-game notes. But by the time a week has gone by, I am stuck in the position of sometimes having to ask, "What was that NPC's name again?"

It really isn't the best way to do things and has been the source of a few jarring moments in otherwise great game flow. I've started making quick audio notes after sessions so that I can have a quick refresher before the session begins.

For the sake of building some enthusiasm,  honing my craft, and having a little fun with my friends, it occurred to me that I could turn these into a podcast with a tiny and very specific audience. Although, once it is in full swing it might be interesting to other players who want to see how those older 1970s style rules and 1:1 time play out in an actual game.

Once the 5-10 minutes of audio notes are recorded, I also realized that I could also record some of the lore about the campaign setting in a fun delivery package that helps me avoid lore dumps in the game. "Here's 5 minutes of stuff you might want to know and might be interesting, but isn't game critical - and you can skip!" seems like a winning formula. Especially as it is as much about me as them.

If you are curious, here are my first to proper session versions of the micro-podcast:

Silver Gull - Episode 2

Silver Gull - Episode 3

Silver Gull - Episode 4

Returning to Xen

This is another article to file under "I don't know who this will interest":

I am returning to the Silver Gull Campaign after a hiatus. I find coming up with material for it so much easier than the CHV Natani game.

It has been awhile, and my players  were asking for a reminder of the events of the game so far. Moreover, I am looking to onboard a new player. So every was asking for a summary, if I could put something together.

Because I am trying to get into the podcast production and editing biz, I decided to take this as an opportunity to practice my podcast design and mastering. It is about half an hour, covers an overview of the campaign, and a summary that covers around 70 sessions, that is pretty condensed.

 Listen to it here

If you are interested... or want to see what I can do, check it out above.

CSV Natani: Death Match of the Bands

Iria Ocano, generated in Unstable Diffusion
by her player.

 

 This is a quick report on what has happened in my White Star campaign over the last few sessions as the PCs played their way through Cascadia's bloody and perilous Deathmatch of the bands.

Session 9: January 22nd, 2024: Intrigue and Politics

Ciara tapped deep into her deviousness to help Leedo sabotage the Black Sun mercenaries. She started by sending anonymous warnings to Princess Dorala. She then faked a legal siexure of some major dockyards on the Taurelian home system, forcing their representative to jump home to sort matters out immediately and leave a proxy to observe the Festival of the Culling.

She also wove a botnet into the local film production systems so that she could weaponize the camera drones being used in the filming.

The band began to plan their tactical strategies while Ciara wrestled with whether to be on stage in a mask, or simply hide so that there was no choice of begin seen by the Alterrians that might yet be hunting her.

Iria, Leedo, Ciara, Pavo, along with newcomers Hrungg and Dj'hurk finalized their contracts as the band Iria and the Bloody Murder and began participating in the 3-day multi-stage concert / gladiatorial event.

All Hail the Kingslayer!!

Let me play the proud father for a moment and tell you the tale of Nargle the Kingslayer!

My oldest son has earned a ban on all screens except to practice coding in Scratch this week, so to keep him entertained in the mornings before school I decided to run a game of Dungeon Crawl Classics for him every morning, powered by a mix of Donjon and the Mythic Game Master Emulator. I am playing three PCs and he opted for only one. We agreed once the campaign was rolling that we would switch from me doing all the interpretation and game planning to sharing it.

We rolled them up using the Tatterdemalion's Heroes method at 1st level, and he got a character with a pretty solid 15 in Intelligence and Stamina, and a whopping 18 in Luck, but a low Agility. While I encouraged him to consider a Dwarf or a Halfling, My son, however, has only one class he ever plays: Wizard. And so was born Nargle, the Neutral rope-maker-turned-Wizard. Of course, it helped that that insane Luck bonus got added to all spell damage rolls based on his character's lucky sign.

Nargle has become one of the most destructive, world-wrecking lunatics I have ever had the pleasure to GM.

CSV Natani: The Big Rock Manouvre

 

This is yet another update of the last few sessions of my White Star campaign, where the players are members of the crew of the tramp star freighter, the Natani.

Session 6; Dec. 18th, 2023: Keep on Rockin' in Free Space

With the Dusk of Hope, a mysterious private star freighter on their heels, the Natani hyper-jumps to the Solara Vortex system - a backwater space station in orbit around an unstable blue giant. Aside from collecting solar energy, skimming the star for hydrogen, and collecting radioisotopes - all jobs for robots - there is virtually nothing to do in this station but refuel passing ships. In fact, Solara has three permanent residents: Myra the bartender, Mack the Mechanic, and Tendi an administrator who also runs the local banking, commodities exchange, and and law enforcement services (in theory.)*

Entering the system they are hit almost immediately by one of the system's incredibly violent ion storms, and are forced to do both some blind flying and emergency repairs on their comms array in order to safely make it to Solara Vortex Station.