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.

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.

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,

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.

Strange Ways is the Deal if the Day on DTRPG

 Strange Ways: Six Classes and Alternate Magical Systems for Any OSR Adventure Game is my Copper Bestseller set of alternative magic systems and classes that use them for OSR games. I'm very proud of my creation!

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.

Steal This Map!

 Whether or not you are listening to my semi-actual-play podcast Swords Against Madness or not, you might find the map and encounter tables I created for the podcast worth stealing (1 hex = 6 miles).

Nar is the island where the campaign is currently set. A tropical island colonized long ago by a culture of explorers, the Aldi Guilds (inspired by Mystara's Minrothad Guilds), and then abandoned when the motherland suffered an economic collapse.

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!

Swords Against Madness

 Swords Against Madness, my new gonzo OSR solo TTRPG podcast launched today, and I have to start by saying that I have never felt a more warm welcome for anything I have ever done. Abel from The Iron Realm, Simon from Legend of the Bones, John from Tale of the Manticore, and T15 from Legends from the Fireside all dropped by and said hello, and asked me how they can help and promote me. I am blown away by how awesome a crowd this is already.

Swords Against Madness is played using Swords & Wizardry Complete and a bevy of tools from tables stolen from ICRPG to the Pendulum World-Building Assistant, to the Dungeon Dozen. I am turning the gonzo weirdness is going to be turned up to the max.

If you are interested in Swords Against Madness, you can learn more here! Or listen to it through YouTube here:

Welcome to the Deathtrap: Year 4 in Review

I have been writing Welcome to the Deathtrap for four years! I can hardly believe it has been so long!

In the last year I've put out a couple of light games, like Drakken and Dragonette, I've nearly completed my complete edition of Deathtrap Lite, and have a couple of other rules light games in the works in my spare time. I haven't spent nearly as much time as I would have liked on reviews. I have a backlog of books I've read, or have almost finished readings, but haven't had much of an opportunity to review.

The ebb and flow of the 'blog has definitely reflected the good and bad times in my life. In the past year and a bit, I have partially lost use of my hands, feet, and lips, and developed chronic fatigue due to a brain injury, I've been forced to move once, and nearly had to do so a second time. I've lost 28 lbs. I've tried to go back to work, and found myself too ill to do so effectively. I've learned a new skillset, and I'm starting a business.

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

The Trans-Real News

 

I just realized that I wasn't sharing my podcast here with the people who might appreciate it the most!

Trans-Real News is my weird fiction audio-drama podcast framed as a newscast from the Astral Plane as time, space, and reality is collapsing.

Over the course of the 40 episodes I have planned (10 are already recorded and edited.) The newscasters will slowly go from unscrupulous hacks and shills to heroes in a war against supernatural authoritarians.

It isn't TTRPG material (yet), but I hope it will inspire people looking for gonzo setting ideas to steal from it.

Here are my first three episodes:

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.

What Gives them Hope? (Musings in the Hour of the Wolf)

 

I can't sleep tonight, readers.

Life has handed me a problem where none of the outcomes are good or happy. And one that has made me so frustrated and angry I just don't know how to vent it so that I can relax enough to get to sleep. Housing crisis, living in a city that has become unlivable, skyrocketing cost of living, vaccine-induced brain damage, bad timing, children with special care needs... yadda, yadda, yadda... I wrote a version of this article with all the details, and it was boring. Suffice it to say, I have a lot of compromises to make, and years before any of it gets better. And that brain damage part never will.

And so I fired up blogger to do two things. And hopefully, in the process, keep serving you all. This blog, for what it is worth, is almost as great an escape for me as the games itself. 

The first is to put a thought in your ear, as it is one that makes a campaign all the much richer. Which is the question, where do people find hope? In a fantasy world as dark as Dungeons & Dragons when it is played by us oldsters, where do people find the charge to keep building those keeps on the borderlands, praying alongside those clerics, and going through life knowing they are one goblin raid away from ruin?

The Joy of Learning (Getting into Podcasting)

Life never sits still for me. There are always new challenges and new troubles. This is nothing profound. I am sure most people can say the same. In my case, it is high time to start a new business so that I can start to earn while working around my health limitations.

I have decided to start using the audio production skills that I learned recording audiobooks for Audible, coaching, writing, and as a UXD to offer my services as a producer, editor, and developer for podcasts.

• I have no worries about the technical process; I know my way around Audacity, Wordpress, BluBrry, and dHTML. 

• Nor do I have much difficulty in developing content ideas, coming up with good descriptions and SEO.

• For the podcasts I hope to produce I can write and I can act. I have spent many years getting certifications from Toastmasters, I've hosted a television program before.

Where I am weak these days is understanding how to best devellop and optimize RSS feeds, on marketing podcasts, and the various options that Podcast 2.0 has to offer for monetization and publicity, etc. And so I have been diving deep into material like the Audacity to Pocast and every relevant book I could find in my public library.

And few things make me happer. There is something about ploughing headlong intto new ideas and skills that wakes me up and makes me come alive.

As I was contemplating what to do about my poor neglected blog this morning, I realized that the same reason I have been letting it slide for the past week is the same reason I have loved writing for you all over the last few years. I love sinking my teeth into a new system, a new setting, or a new world. I like learning how to build fun new experiences using the tools of TTRPGs.

Let's Talk Adventures: Highfell

 I am going to experiment with a slightly more conversational tone to discuss some of the big modules out there in the OSR and beyond, rather than giving them the lengthy, structured approach I give to TTRPGs here. Partially in the name of doing more with this blog, and partially because I feel the value you get from a module depends very much on what you intend to do with it, and partially because I am, as always, here to share the things I find awesome. And you all don't always want to read 20 paragraphs.

So I am going to start this experiment with Highfell: The Drifting Dungeon.

Highfell: The Drifting Dungeon

Author: Greg Gillespie
Publisher: OSR Publishing
Marketplace: DrivethruRPG,
System: OSR Compatible

Greg Gillespie is probab;ly one of those designers who doesn't need much by way of introduction. He has a pretty good reputation in the OSR community for his massive and complex modules.

Every couple of years Greg Gillespie releases aa new module that he has been hammering away at, often daily for years. His first one, Barrowmaze, is legendary: a sprawling labyrinth of barrows in a haunted valley that is peopled by undead, strange magical monstrosities, and terrible curses. As the PCs explore this on-floor labyrinth they will find that trditional "levels" are replaced by zones that are inreasingly deadly as you push further away from the nearby town. Sattered runestones introduce a new kind of magic, and there is a history of the place that can be learned by clues.

Highfell: the Drifting Dungeon, along with Dwarrowdeep are two follow-up megadungeons. They are offered in both OSR and D&D5e versions. with the OSR versions being mostly structured along the conventions of AD&D / OSRIC, meaning you will see relatively middling stats for NPCs, high stats for the pre-gen PCs, and two-part alignments, but as always, OSR is OSR, you can convert anything for a B/X system like Old-School Essentials in a few seconds in your head as a veteran GM.

All three modules are set in a consistent world, and Dwarrowdeep and Highfell cross over with one another and have cross-over material from Barrowmaze seeded into them. As a clever manoevre, most of the towns and villages of the settin make menton of cities with familiar names like "Threshold" allowing a comfortable drop into existing D&D worlds like Mystara.

This module is pretty much a full canned campaign: you have a hometown with enough factions and intrigue to make time in  "Town" compelling play, and a pretty big cast of NPCs. A couple of smaller villages that have enough details to make them interesting, A few adventure sites, and then one immense megadungeon. Like Keep on the Borderlands or Temple of Elemental Evil there is enough material beyond the dungeon to run a whole campaign, probably for years if you want to.

Game Review: Autonmnijobs: Small Jobs for Unimportant People

Author: Beth Crane
Publisher: Battle Bird Productions
Marketplace: Gumroad
Engine: Lasers & Feelings

Beth Crane and I don't share the same taste in RPGs, but I admire the hell out of my creativity. I first came across her work while hunting for a new science fiction podcast and discovered We Fix Space Junk, and instantly fell in love with it.

WFSJ is set in a far future where humanity lost most of its digital data due to catastropic solar flares in 2088. One of the only surviving financial instutions was a predatory student loans service that kept its intrusive accounts records sealed in lead boxes in an underground facility. The company was able to allow other financial institutions to recoup some of their losses by selling their data. 

The lending company quickly became the most powerful financial institution in the galaxy. This emergent  megacorporation, now called Automnicon, finds desperate people (usually desperate because of the terrible conditions they create on space colonies in the first place) and offer them loans to for medical or travel expenses. These loans come with ludicrous interest that makes the debtee into a slave of the company. Failure to do the jobs assigned by the company leads them to shut off life support in whatever starship or space colony the recalicitrant employees are located. 

The podcast follows Kilner and Samantha an odd couple of deeply indebted repairwomen who are sent from planet to planet doing menial repair jobs in often psychotically dangerous and volatile situations by a company that couldn't care less if they live or die.

We Fix Space Junk is exactly the kind of dark comedy I love the most, and I have been binging it for days.

When I heard that Beth Crane had made an RPG based on her setting, I decided to grab a copy as much as a way to shoe my appreciate of her podcast as to try to experience the setting myself.

Seeking the Wisdom of My Readers (complete version!)

The Intrepid was created by taking starship images
From No Man's Sky (©️2017 Hello Games)
And feeding them into Stable Diffusion to
Create retro-80s Scifi graphics 

Blogger's Brain Broke!

When it hit publish last night, blogger spazzed and  deleted an hour's worth of writing and editing! I wasn't aware that only 1/3 of the article was up when I went to bed at 1:00am.

Mea culpa, readers.

Let's try this again....

In my last blog post I mentioned a solo game I was playing and a PC who I couldn't seem to kill.

The project, tentatively named Starfarer, has been a great escape during a time of great uncertainty and stress in my life. 

My original intention for Starfarer was that it would be a No Man's Sky inspired SciFi adventure using the Mythic GME, Star Adventurer, and Alone Among the Stars that I would eventually turn into a solo gaming podcast in the vein of Tale of the Manticore. 

I never intended the game to tell the story of one character.  If anything, I was hoping for the Ship and its mission to be the Stars.

Like the podcasts that helped inspire my solo experiment,  I intended that "no character [would] be sacred, and no character [would] be spared if the dice decide their fate is ay hand."

But The Game Had Other Ideas...

Portrait of Molly created Using Stable Diffusion 
Vis the Imagine App. In Manga style.

One character,  Molly Hyaline,  often got out of situations by the skin of her teeth, surviving most - or all - of the crew, and often the ship. She ended up in conflict with a secret society,  with a price on her head, an experimental ship, unique brain damage that made her almost a null space to psionics, a serial killer stalker, and the enmity of an evil entity of pure thought.