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!

In Search of the Best Crapsack Future

 

So I have had two (video-) gaming obsessions and three podcast obsessions that have managed to collide in a perfect storm of inspiration

And that has had me grinding away like mad at my google docs for about a week now.

100 Statement World-Building Challenge

Shoggoth did A Monit
by Flannerius CC-BY-SA 4.0

This is a challenge that I saw Samwise7RPG doing that looked like a lot of fun: create a setting in 100 statements. I worked on it on what spare time I could steal between watching my little guy and recovering from the pneumonia that wrecked me this month.

It got too big for Twitter pretty fast. And Twitter was exceptionally unpleasant yesterday, so I moved it here.

I let my imagination just flow when I had time to type. This represents about 5 hours of stream -of-consciousness brainstorming, starting with the idea of a fractured world with an elder god serving as it's sun and just running with it .

1.  Lim-Obol was uttered into existence by U'ulul, the greatest of the Shoggoths.
2. U'ulul was among the first shoggoths vomited forth by Mother Hydra, and shared much of her divinity.
3. For Aeons U'ulul gibbered only nonsense in the heart of the void until, growing quiescent for a time, he projected his eyes through the multiverse.
4. It is fever dream he left it into existence his own Twisted reflection of the reality his half seeing eyes witnessed.

   

   Image generated with Dall-E Mini

   
   
5. Only his sense of smell was not fooled, nor subject to his madness. And so he created around himself a shell of sweet air.

Using Misinformation in Play

The Nostromo in Alien was originally
Imagined as an amphibious starship
called The Leviathan. Chris Foss'
Original design was a big inspiration.

Over the last month I ran low fantasy gaming as a guest GM for Steven Smith's World of Wierth campaign. My adventure ended in tragedy with one PC grievously wounded in a submersible accident, then devoured by mutant sea creatures before his allies could rescue him. The other two died fighting Deep Ones in the sunken wreck of an ancient spaceship, The Leviathan.

While I run a very action heavy game, and one that can be quite lethal, what really makes my games special (in my opinion) is the way I handle NPC interactions.

I don't expect players to act in character or put on funny voices. But, I at least act out some of the dialogue myself (with voices) where it adds color and flavor. More importantly, I do so where it adds valuable nuance and complexity.

When the right amount of play acting is added to a game, it can be used to control the flow of information.

One of the ways I like to enrich games is to make sure that the Player Characters get information that isn't always correct, is partially correct, or misleading. Obviously, you never want to lie to Players about the world around them as perceived by the PC; that runs contrary to the best practices in the game. But you can include deceptive information by having helpful NPCs be ignorant or misinformed, or by having NPCs with hidden motives intentionally giving incomplete information. 

It reminds wary players stay on their toes and keep them thinking about what they and their characters are experiencing in ways that being too stingy with information -- or making any given NPC basically unhelpful -- cannot.

This past month I used this to great effect.

Strange Ways

 I have kept myself very busy this week! Once I finished work on The Queen of Decay, I decided to create another project. Namely, I decided to grab all the classes with I have created over the past few years that added their own twist on the magic system for Dungeons & Dragons and gave them a serious overhaul, and bound them in a single PDF entitled Strange Ways.

 My created classes have been all over the map in terms of how they are presented. They have been done for different systems, written using different conventions, and often created to work only on the context of a given game. 

I decided to change that first. Each class has been rejiggered to work with TSR era systems and retroclones without any serious messing around. They use familiar tables and designs:

In some cases this alone required some heavy editing in some places, but worth it. So long as you are dealing with a system grounded in TSR Dungeons & Dragons this should be pretty easy to adapt.

B/X Class: Voidwarped

  My solo campaign set on The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence has taken a hell of a lot of twists and turns. It definitely isn't going in directions I would have expected, and that has made it far more enjoyable than I had expected. 

Recent events in my campaign have led to the fall, death, and surprising resurrection of one of the Clerics in my party. He has been exposed to a dimension of pure antimatter, and been in contact with entities that lurk there. 

After what happened to him and how, I don't feel like he and his Goddess are likely to be on great terms. I think he has come back drastically changed. To create something that not just would make sense, but fit the gonzo aesthetic of The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence, I decided to take the idea of a Cthulhu cultists and crank it up to 11.

So here is a custom class made for B/X Dungeons & Dragons that is ideal for a gonzo character who was warped by the Elder gods, magical radiation, or the Far Plane. 

Voidwarped

Prime Requisite: Wisdom
Experience Bonus: 5% for Wis 13-15, 10% for Wisdom 16-18
Hit Dice: 1d6 per level up to 9th level
Armor: Any, Shields Allowed
Weapons: Any
Attacks as: Cleric

Transformed by exposure to the void between worlds, the Voidwarped are a conduit for alien powers that bend reality itself. They come at a cost, however, as these powers corrupt from within causing Hideous mutations. 

No two Voidwarped are the same; they sport unique combinations of powers, mutations, and abilities. They can be found with any alignment as some revel in what they have seen while others want to shield Humanity from what they have suffered. What is true is that the longer they weild these eldritch powers, the more horrible toll it takes. 

Separate Solo Game Blog

I have created a separate blog for chronicling my solo Dungeons & Dragons campaign set on The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence. That way, those of my readers who are uninterested can opt out.

Given the themes of the campaign setting, and that I like my content a little racy and a little dark, I'm putting a Content Warning on it. Unless there becomes a sudden, overwhelming demand for written erotica by Yours Truly, - - which I doubt - - it will remain Rated R.

I'm way behind on my play reports, and still figuring out format, but my report for session two up. It is entitled Swordplay, Singularities, and Seduction. 

The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence: Attempt 2

"Jonas" created using Hero Forge. Used
here in accordance with their EULA 

Originally, I wrote this piece as a Novella. It was about 22,000 words with illustrations and all. Unfortunately, blogger does this thing where, for a split second, it replaces the content of your article with the string listng your tags. Normally not a problem. It puts it all back. But if you have an error where it switches your WiFi network at the wrong time, it will automatically save it in that state. So, I lost a book's worth of "Tale of the Manticore" inspired fiction.

It is not all gone. I have 70% of the book in garbled, out-of-order voice dictation notes that require hours of editing to translate what my phone heard into what I said. I am not yet sure if I want to spend the time.

But I still wanted to share this, because I am having fun.

Oh... And mildly NSFW art ahead.

Overview

Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia
Cover Art by Jeff Easley 
©1991 TSR, Inc. 

I am playing Venger Satanis' weird, pulpy, oversexed The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence as a solo D&D experiment. I am using BECMI Dungeons & Dragons played straight out of the Rules Cyclopedia that I have had since I was 12. Mixed with The Dozen Dooms. By Baldrage for simpler experience and encumbrance, and using most of the recommended house rules in 'Purple.

I am using Dungeon Crawl Solo from Parts Per Million as my tool for making GM systems and developing the campaign..

After the brutal TPK I suffered the last time I played, I decided to give my PCs a fighting chance by having full gear, a five person party, and starting them in a low level dungeon.

Once free of the dungeon, it will be a Hex crawl to find a town where they can resupply and start pursuing emergent goals. Using the character background generating tools in Purple is great for having built-in hooks without taking forever to generate. Adding in a DCC RPG occupation table writes the character for me.

Review: Saving Cha'alt

Adventure Review: Saving Cha'alt

Cover to "Saving Cha'alt" by Monstark;
©2021 Kort'thalis

Author: Venger Satanis
Publisher: Kort'thalis Publishing
Marketplace : DrivethruRPG
System : Crimson Dragon Slayer d20

NOTE:  Saving Cha'alt and ChaAfter Dark are now part of the book Cha'alt: Chartreuse Shadows.

Saving Cha'alt is the latest addition to Venger Satanis' Cha'alt setting. It is meant to be an appetizer to keep the audience interested as he works of the third book of the Canon trilogy, Cha'alt: Chartreuse Shadows (w.t.).  While the book offers a little bit of GM advice and a few random tables, it is primarily a collection of seven short adventures.

The book is designed to be played with the Crimson Dragon Slayer d20 system, which can be downloaded at DriveThruRPG, but is also included in a slightly updated format in the backs of Cha'alt and Cha'alt: Fuscia Malaise.

Crimson Dragon Slayer d20 is designed to be a fast, light OSR-style game that is completely compatible with Dungeons & Dragons 5e. In essence, you could bring a group of PCs from D&D5e into a Cha'alt module and have no difficulty playing, as the numbers are completely compatible, and the math for Crimson Dragon Slayer d20 works out to be about the same. And you could toss a Crimson Dragon Slayer d20 party into a 5e adventure and have a pretty compatible challenge.

Venger places Cha'alt solidly in the O5R camp: games and settings designed to play Dungeons & Dragons 5e  in the style of TSR-era D&D.

I have had the privilege of playing Cha'alt with Venger Satanis last month (play report here, I was the one who jacked the starship), and I can say that in actual practice, the engine is incredibly fast and flexible. More than I thought on reading and running home solo simulations.

I suppose that should serve as disclosure: I have a fairly amicable relationship with Venger. But I don't think that will affect the quality of this review, as I have plenty to say, both positive and negative about this particular product.

Planning for Mothership RPG: Building a Cast

Image by Lucija Rasonja from Pixabay

In my last article I mentioned that I am working on cobbling together something for Mothership RPG. My intention is to play a game that lasts 3-6 sessions each containing an adventure that is structured like a five room dungeon.

I find this structure ideal for horror game play, as it allows a story to unfold, but also is forgiving if there are a lot of player deaths or mission failure; knowing it is finite changes the way players engage with the PCs. They aren't likely to get attached thus take greater in-character risks that serve the horror element of the game well.

I already have a fair premise and a clear idea of the most likely chain of events. But, of course, the plan is to let myself be surprised as often as possible. 

I find one of the most important things to keep in mind when planning such a short campaign and in a system that your players are not familiar with, is that character generation is going to stretch out a very long time if you allow it. It can damage enthusiasm for the game as much as it can build it.

It's usually easier to just have some pre-generated characters available, with enough background to give some role-playing tips, and with a little world building done in character generation. I like to have two pre-generated characters per player if I can, that way there's plenty of choices. Often players will surprise you by deciding to go completely off of their usual pattern. 

This is a horror game: it is going to be lethal. Having at least two PCs per player means you can kill a few off early without bringing your game to a halt. This actually puts a limit on which systems are appropriate for this kind of game: if the characters take too long to build the investment is not worth the payoff for the GM.

I have not played Mothership, and these will be the first characters I make for it, and so this will be the first test. Most horror games are played in a relatively short format campaign like this. If the characters are too time-consuming we would see a place where the mechanics would fail the game's aims.

On top of that, I'm going to want a handful of NPCs who will die horribly early or serve as sources of information. I will break the characters into three groups.

Game Review: Tiny Cthulhu

Game Review: Tiny Cthulhu

Tiny Cthulhu Cover Art by 
Tom Brown; ©2020 Gallant
Knight Games

Author: Alan Bahr
Publisher: Gallant Knight Games
Marketplace: DrivethruRPG
Engine: Tiny d6

I am a Cthulhu Mythos fanatic, and have a bookshelf full of Lovecraft's fiction, and the work of his circle and modern "Lovecraftian" authors to show for it. One of my all-time favorite campaigns in any system was one I ran designed as a mashup of The Silver Key, The Festival, Celephais, the video game The 7th Guest, and the anime series Witch Hunter Robin.

Oddly, I have never played the original Chaosium Call of Cthulhu. I found the version of the rule-set I got my hands on was unappealing. But Call of Cthulhu d20 was one of my favorite systems, and still sits on my shelf.  The problem is that Eldritch Horror just doesn't jive well with a level-based and combat-heavy system like d20. and the charm of that adaptation wears off pretty quickly.

I've tried to capture the Cthulhu Mythos in a lot of systems since: Mage: the Ascension, the new World of Darkness, GURPS, Cypher System... All with mixed results.

I am also an Arkham Horror junkie. 

I have a theory that the Mythos really does need a purpose-built system to work. Games built to make characters the heroes, or at least give them a fighting chance often fall flat. And I have been looking for a good CoCd20 alternative to tell my Weird Tales. I was thrilled when I heard that Alan Bahr was taking a stab at the Mythos in the chatter after my recent interview with him.  I've been watching the calendar for my shot at this review for months. And I am not disappointed.