RPGaDAY 2024 Review

RPGADAY 2024 Review 

Well, that was fun! 

It's been an interesting experience, and helped me think about what I play and why. It may even affect what I play in the future, particularly relevant with D&D 24 looming.

I'm not really surprised that I sound like an old school Grognard, but it's refreshing to see that I've mentioned more than just D&D and Call of Cthulhu. I like to think that I've dabbled in a few lesser known titles, though I've been reading a few other entries, and there are some truly obscure games out there.

I've definitely come to some sort of understanding of why I play games, and what sort of games are likely to appeal to me. 

Despite no longer being in the world of work, time seems as precious as ever, and inevitably I have to compromise when it comes to RPGs. 

In the past I've run several different games on different nights, using different systems (running D&D in both 4E and 5E was a challenge). I can't really do that anymore. The cognitive load is greater than I want to give these days.

I've realised that I don't enjoy a game if I feel I'm lost in the rules. I know that I might make poor choices within the game, but I want them to be my poor choices, not just because I don't understand the details of the game rules.

I appreciate that there's bound to be a period when I'm learning a new game, but, much as with my wargaming, I'm wary if something new comes along. Do I already have a game that does the same sort of thing? If so, is it worth learning something else new?

I've also realised that I like playing in games where the players act as a group to achieve a goal. I'm all for personal goals and motivations, but I've a personal dislike of games that set the players against each other. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with this style of game, just that they aren't for me.

And if I'm playing a fantasy game, I want it to feel heroic. 

Honourable Unmentioned 

I realised that I've played quite a few different games over the forty plus years that I've been roleplaying, and many of them haven't been mentioned. 

Here's a list of the ones that I can remember.

So, in no particular order;

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 

Judge Dredd Roleplaying Game 

Runequest

Fiasco

Shadow Chasers (and various other Polyhedron magazine games)

GURPS

Tunnels and Trolls 

The Arduin Grimoire (or is this just a D&D supplement?)

Dragon Warriors 

Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying

Basic Roleplay System (the OSR clone)

Traveller

True d20 (the Pulp version, not the Mecha version. I regularly get asked to run this again)

Microlite d20

Warrior Cats 

SAGA roleplaying system 

Star Wars (the WotC d20 version)

STOCSlite

Maelstrom 

Lone Wolf (RPG based on the game books)

TORG (both versions)

Empire of the Petal Throne 

Beneath the Sands (devised by a fellow player/GM at the FLGS)

MERPS

Maybe some of them will get a mention next year.

#RPGaDAY24

RPGaDay 2024: Day 29: Awesome App

Day 29: Awesome App

This one's easy. I only really use one app for RPGs, Roll20.

I'm not nominating it because it's amazing, it more or less does the job and I'm aware that it can do a lot more than I know how to do.

It's simply that we need a way to game online, and it seems to fit the bill. There's a regular cost, but that's unavoidable if I want to play online.

Now the vague rambling bit.

When I stop and think a bit more, I do have a dice rolling app on my phone, which I've not used in many months, and we use Meets for the actual AV side of things (the AV on Roll20 was too slow when we tried).

I also use Inkarnate to draw maps, but there are many other ways of producing maps, including just downloading commercially produced ones.

I'll also mention Obsidian Portal. I've used this off and on since the 4E days and it is a useful way to organise a campaign. I find that it requires a lot of set up though to have enough wiki in place for the players to usefully reference, and if some players interact more with it than others, I end up not sure what to assume with player knowledge. So I end up restating it in session, which sort of negates the reason for using it in the first place.

And now the rant-y bit.

But I know many people use apps much more. DND Beyond is the big one, of course, and it seems as if it's becoming increasingly necessary. I know there's a free version, but it doesn't cover all the options. WotC even advertise it now on the grounds that character generation is too slow and complicated without it. To me, that's like GWs' liquid greenstuff, a condemnation of the original product that its trying to fix, not a selling point for the new thing.

It also looks like the next edition of D&D will rely more heavily on D&D Beyond and VTs, all of which will require subscriptions.

I'm certainly not opposed to paying for content. I buy the books that I think I'll use (OK, and a lot more besides), but I don't want to have to buy everything all over again just to play remotely.

If we've got to the stage where the game requires apps to keep track of all the abilities, then it's getting too complicated* for me.

While I'm channelling my inner Grognard I have another grumble; people relying on the various apps have access to everything they've paid for, and it doesn't always match what's in the books. I like to start a game or campaign stating what books the players can draw from, usually just the Players Handbook. I rule that any other material has to be discussed before its introduced, and online services make it hard for a player to know if its something I've OKed.

Now this isn't a very new thing. 4E had online tools, and as the characters got more powerful, they became increasingly necessary for levelling up. We split the cost between us, but the wizard was using spells from all over, sometimes not very well balanced spells either.

It's not me being a killjoy, it more about me knowing what the heroes are capable of and building suitable challenges.

#RPGaDAY24

* My personal definitions; Complex - involving many details for the benefit of the whole.

Complicated - involving many details just for the sake of it to the detriment of the whole

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 28: Great Gamer Gadget

Day 28: Great Gamer Gadget 

Gosh, these are getting tricky.

I'm a bit stumped, because I don't think I really use gadgets*, nor have I played in games where others do.

One thing I wish I did do, is use music. Some kind of music playing device and a playlist, but I've never been organised enough, and there always seems to be something more important to prep. I'm not sure what I'd play, I'm not short of Medieval music for tavern scenes and banquets, but for background? I'd suggest video game music, for atmosphere (I'm a big fan of how well Nintendo did this in many of the Legend of Zelda series), but it can be a distraction if the players recognise the source.

So I'm reaching back to the 4E campaign again. As the characters grew more powerful and gained more abilities (and the monsters did too), combat could take ages. In an attempt to speed up the decision making I used a small egg timer. If a player completed their turn before the sand ran out, they gained a bonus. What it was varied from an Action Point to a draw from a deck of boons. I'm pretty sure that the last piece of cake was once claimed.

We also used the coloured plastic rings from soft drinks bottles to show the various conditions, and there were a lot of conditions in 4E. We even experimented with flight stands, but not very successfully I'm afraid (I repurposed the clix bases from WizKids Heroclix minis with a raised platform for the mini, but they were overlarge on the floor plans and fiddly to use).

But, if I think a bit harder I do use gadgets now. I have metal or plastic gadgets to represent where the PCs and their adversaries are. I also use other gadgets to represent the area the heroes are exploring.

I have a whole series of card and paper gadgets that I refer to for the rules, and even plastic gadgets to generate random numbers.

What I don't use much of is electronic gadgets, but we'll talk about apps tomorrow.

#RPGaDAY24

*Thinking more about this, I don't currently play face to face. My desk is crowded enough with PC, keyboard, phone and notes. There certainly isn't enough room for anything else.

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 27: Marvellous Miniature

Day 27: Marvellous Miniature

 

This is a tricky one, I own a lot of minis (seriously A LOT) and it's hard to choose. I invested heavily in the old WotC prepainted minis for D&D, so as to get just the right mini. Prior to that I had a lovely mix of different fantasy and historical minis. In fact I'd been collecting minis, especially the old Minifigs Mythical Earth range, long before I'd even heard of roleplaying.

More recently, I've gradually been replacing a lot of the early stuff with Reaper Bones minis. They are great for detail, relatively cheap and the soft plastic actually makes them more resistant to knocks and damage.

Of course, a lot of these are unpainted. I periodically have a blitz on them, as I'm sure you can see if you look elsewhere on my blog, and it's my ultimate goal to have a set of minis to provide adventurers and adversaries for roleplay games.

I'm ignoring minis that I use primarily for wargames, though there's some cross over, especially with the minis I use in skirmish games. 

It's would be even more difficult if I included minis that I've seen but don't own, so I'll ignore those too.

So now the rambling bit. I know I don't actually need minis for RPGs. I've certainly run sessions without them, and it's my default when running games like Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green. 

But minis have always been a part of Dungeons and Dragons for me. Right back to the first game I ever played, we used minis, though they were only used in a very general sense to show who was fighting who,  floorplans came a lot later.

Now there are so many options that both players and GMs are spoilt for choice. Indeed, with 3D printing and online services that let you customise a mini, a GM or player should be able to get exactly what they want.

And that idea of custom minis sort of brings me to a conclusion.

The Marvellous Miniature has to be a character mini, villains and monsters just don't get enough table time. 

There may be a 'Wow' moment when a particularly awesome gribbly monster mini is placed on the table, especially if the players haven't seen it before, and as a GM I try and find stuff to impress. 

I remember a Volcanic Dragon and a Dracolich being particularly admired.

So a character. 

And the customisation has to be a feature; the player has to feel that it represents their character.

I've converted and painted quite a few minis over the years, and I could have chosen many of these, from Flosi, my first ever character (an old Asgard Miniatures dwarf thief, no real customisation here, we were just glad to find fantasy minis) to Citronella (a Reaper Miniatures Bonsium dwarf). 

But out of these, Keith's character Francis gets the nomination.

Keith was new to D&D, though he had played in my Delta Green campaign, in fact he started off roleplaying in 'Music of the Night', the Call of Cthulhu scenario I ran with my daughter.

Francis was his first character, a fighter, and he used an axe rather than a sword and carried a crossbow for ranged capability.

I converted a WotC prepainted mini, adding a backpack and swapping the head from Frostgrave sprues, I thought the kettle helmet matched his soldier background. I painted him as the player suggested. It's a simple mini, but it does everything that it needs to.

It's not my best conversion or my best painting, but what makes it really special is that the player passed away during that awful hiatus we all suffered in 2020, and its a way of remembering him.

#RPGaDAY24

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 26: Superb Screen

Day 26: Superb Screen 

I'm not a fan of these fancy architectural screens. They may look great, I've seen castles, towers and dragons, and they may have features like dice towers and shelves for minis, but I've carted around enough stuff for running games, and I prefer something lighter and cheaper.

For practicality and affordability, I'll take the opportunity to suggest my home built screen. Of course, you have to provide the actual GM's charts and tables yourself.

But for commercial screens, more specifically for the information on them, I'll jointly recommend the screens for seventh edition Call of Cthulhu and the latest edition of Delta Green. Both have atmospheric artwork on the player facing side and useful charts and tables on the other.

They don't need to be fancy, just practical. In fact, too fancy and they can be distracting (on the players' side) and finding the information can become difficult.

I will just say that there's something to be said for collating the charts and tables yourself. Only you know what's going to be useful, and what you might need that little reminder for.

One thing I regularly do, when using my homemade screen, is put area maps on the player facing side.

#RPGaDAY24

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 25: Desirable Dice

Day 25: Desirable Dice 

Dice? Yeah, I got dice.

Oh, you want more?

Some dice are better than others, and I remember the original polyhedral dice where you had to colour in the numbers with a Chinagraph pencil. The plastic was softer than modern dice, and over time D20s ended up round. Given long enough, even D4s ended up as round lumps of plastic. Only the venerable D12 kept it's shape, because they never really got used.

Modern dice may have the numbers already coloured, and they keep their shape, but not all dice are equal. There's a reason why the cheap dice sets available online are cheap.

As a gamer, I've lots more dice than I need, even taking into account the buckets of dice needed in wargames (D6s mostly, but D8s for Deadzone and D10s for Warlords of Erehwon and Fistful of Lead). 

I amassed a good few more recently with the Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer partwork, and some of these are nice. My favourite set is probably the metal set, though they are a bit small.

I've seen dice with miniature weapons cast inside them, dice with skulls instead of dots and even spiked dice (potentially painful), but there's only one set that I ever thought of as desirable.

Back last century, when magazines were actual physical things printed on real paper, a company used to advertise in Dragon Magazine. They made dice out of unusual materials, and as a geology student I wanted the set made from dinosaur fossil. Really wanted them. 

But they were expensive, and shipping from the US wasn't cheap either.

Now I'm more aware of the issues in the fossil business, and I'd avoid them, but back then they were the dog's pyjamas.

And to think I thought I'd have nothing to say about desirable dice, and I didn't even rant about dice apps.

#RPGaDAY24

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 24: Acclaimed Advice

Day 24: Acclaimed Advice 

It's very tempting to simply repeat my recommendation for Justin Alexander's 'So You Want To Be A Game's Master' or his website 'The Alexandrian', but that's too easy.

Another RPG pundit that I've benefited from a lot is Scott Rhem, aka The Angry GM.  His Tension Pool, or whatever it's currently called, is a great idea that I regularly used in F2F gaming, but much of what he writes is specific to certain circumstances, and aimed at long time GMs.

In fact today there's more advice for GMs and players that ever before, and there's only going to be more.

When I started playing, the rule books, especially the GMs section, contained useful advice, and then there were the magazines and fanzines. 

A lot of this seems to have moved online now, and a GM or player can spend hours each day watching helpful advice rather than getting on with designing anything useful.

So I'll settle on one very wise piece of advice that a venerable GM, witnessing me stressing over preparing to run a session at the FLGS said;

"Looks like they're going to have fun tonight".

I must have mumbled something like I hope so, I just have to get all this ready for them.

He replied "Don't forget to have fun yourself".

Now I'm ashamed to admit that I can't remember who said this. It was one of the other GMs at the shop. We'd regularly glance at each others games, but I didn't really respond beyond a mumbled thanks. I did try to catch him later, but I missed him*.

I'm certainly guilty of spending a lot of time trying to make sure that my game will be as good as I can get it. I want the players to have as much fun as possible.

Long time readers of my blog know that I've a tendancy to overthink things. 

When I was in teacher training our tutor instilled in us a very 'belt and braces' approach, but quantum ogres notwithstanding, in RPGs this leads to a lot of wasted prep (in lesson planning too). 

In the end, this leads to frustration and burnout, or at least, it does for me.

I came close to this with the 4E campaign. Ironically, one of 4E's flaws, the overly detailed and slow combat, especially at high levels, helped me here. I never had to plan in detail very far ahead. 

I still ended up designing an entire dungeon based around a Blue Dragon that the players completely avoided though.

If I'd remembered to have fun myself I suspect the campaign might have ended sooner. I'd certainly have worried less about getting everything perfect. I'm sure as well that when the GM is having fun, the players pick up on it and have a better time too.

#RPGaDAY24

*Now I realise that this would be a better story if no one else had seen him, or that the staff had said "that sounds like 'Owd Tom'. He always sat there, right up until the night he died".

Still, it's possibly the best advice I've ever heard.

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 23: Peerless Player

Day 23: Peerless Player 

Oo, a tricky one, I don't want to offend my players by missing anyone out, but nominating 'everyone I've ever played with' is trite and inaccurate. Besides, I'm related to half my current group, so I don't want to be accused of favouritism.

But over the years I've had the pleasure to enjoy this hobby with very many people, so I'm going back to my early days, to the days of the KMMGS, Huddersfield New College Gaming Club and games played at each others' houses. 

Dennis was in the year above at college, and as keen a fantasy fan as I. He tended to be a player rather than a GM, though I remember him running S1 Tomb of Horrors to deadly effect.

He tended to play wizards, and got the best out of his spells, not just Fireball and Lightning Bolt either. He came up with imaginative uses for spells, and often saved the party with a Reduce or Polymorph.

I think he was the first player I knew who actively pushed the idea of the party as a team. New players back then often saw the game as their own personal hero trip, which went well for a while, but tended to go badly when things got tough. He encouraged us to work as a team and make choices that benefited the group as a whole.

He was there in the Halls of Anubis and going through the lich mega dungeon.

I remember both adventuring with and GMing for Fordeldrax, his favourite wizard character. Playing alongside him I learnt a lot about exploring different solutions. Back then many adventures had a regrettable tendancy to present problems with only one way out (often combat). He looked for different ways, and certainly as a DM I responded by being more open to this, and now, in the words of Justin Alexander, I 'prep situations, not solutions'.

Dennis also introduced me a lot of music I'd never heard before. He led a trip to Leeds to see a group and we missed the last train. Lacking the funds for a taxi, we all spent the night in the waiting room improvising a game using coins instead of dice.

#RPGaDAY24

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 22: Notable Non Player Character

Day 22: Notable Non Player Character 

I can't speak for the players, but from my experience as GM, I'm nominating a character from a published module who took on a life in subsequent adventures.

Klas Jorga appears in the Second Edition D&D box set, Hail the Heroes. This is an above average adventure (despite the cheesy CD) and it fitted nicely into the third edition campaign I was running at the time*.

Jorga is a foil to the PCs activities, representing the extreme end of a rival faction also seeking the Temple of the Shield. While he could be used simply as another combat encounter, I played him as a fanatic who will play dirty to succeed. He KNOWS his side is right, so that excuses his actions, he avoids getting his hands bloody, but understands how to use others to achieve his goal. He frequently sets up situations that can be blamed on the PCs.

This is pretty close to his description, see above, but the players loved him (their characters less so). One of them was a member of the Temple of Traladara, and was just as driven. Both Jozan and Jorga viewed the other as basically good, but misguided. They only needed to see the error of their ways to come over to the light.

So the party and Jorga had mutually exclusive goals. He proved a thorn in their sides through the adventure, but the party prevailed, and Jorga went into hiding in disgrace.

Several of the NPCs from Hail the Heroes returned, but Jorga made such an impression that he triggered a later adventure. He survived that too, but lost an eye and gained a much grimer demeanor. The party had a much less positive attitude towards him by now, he'd done some unpleasant stuff, believing that the end justified the means.

His final appearance was in the 4E campaign, where he sported a magical eye, and led a band of thugs. He was instantly recognised by Jozan's player, and just as quickly loathed by the characters.

Jorga's importance grew through two campaigns, but what if he'd died early on? Well he certainly didn't have plot armour, and initially he was no more prominent than the other NPCs (ah Kriss, who remembers you now?). It was simply the way he 'clicked' with the players that inspired me to keep bringing him back. It was nice to get repeat use out of him, but, beyond his actions triggering 'The Temple of the Sword' he was completely disposable.

And I suppose there's a lesson there. Memorable NPCs can develop organically, and are often the better for it. But it's a mistake to artificially keep them alive. Don't plan on them surviving first contact with the heroes, and you might be surprised what develops. I certainly was with Jorga.

#RPGaDAY24

*Again with the mismatch of game world and edition 

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 21 Classic Campaign

Day 21: Classic Campaign 

When I stop to think about it, I've played in or run very few 'proper' campaigns, at least in the way most people think of them now.

Early D&D was very much a series of adventures with characters drawn from a pool depending on who was available and what the party needed. The closest we ever got to playing a linked series of adventures was the classic G modules at college (we bought them out of club funds and three different GMs took it in turns to run them. I was set up to continue with the D modules, but we never got that far).

Even when we started playing Call of Cthulhu, it was similar. I ran whichever investigation I'd just bought or written. I did seed references to the Shadows of Yog-Sothoth campaign, and some of the investigators joined the Silver Twilight, but that's as far as it got. In fact, they never even suspected that the Silver Twilight had any sinister intentions, and when they found the Shining Trapezohedron in an abandoned church steeple in Boston, they handed it over to the Lodge for safe keeping John Scott was delighted.

Since then I've managed to run a BECMI* campaign set in Mystara. This was for a gaming club, the successor to the Kirklees Military Modelling and Gaming Society. It was still a bit 'adventure of the week', but there was a clear goal and end point. 

Likewise, I ran a 3/3.5 edition D&D campaign, again set in Mystara. This was a series of plot arcs, but the final one, the module Night's Dark Shadows, was unfinished.

Because then we moved to fourth edition, and we actually managed a ten year campaign with foreshadowing, character arcs, a proper ending and everything.

 I'll admit that it started out as just trying the system by playing Keep on the Shadowfell. But once that was done, and it was clear that we wanted to continue, I did actually have a plan. Well, I planned up to the end of Heroic Tier, then as that approached I extended the scope to cover Paragon Tier. As Epic Tier loomed I took various plot threads and brought them together to provide, I hope, a suitably epic conclusion.

I even managed to include references to events that happened in the previous campaign as some of the players had taken part in that. The feeling that they had influenced past history was very empowering to them.

But none of these get my vote today, party because most of the early stuff had no real design, and by the end of the 4E campaign I was experiencing a lot of dissatisfaction with the system. I still enjoyed it, but it had become hard work, and that colours my memories of it.

So I'm nominating a campaign that I played in rather than one I ran 

The best campaign I've ever played in was a Golden Heroes campaign run by Grim.

He based it in our area, and while the first few sessions were fairly low key, it became apparent that something was happening to the world around us. The way he tied events into West Yorkshire was fun (we had a base next to Leeds Central Station; if you wondered what the current road works and alterations are, it was probably something to do with us).

But the changes, subtle at first, really made it special.

At the time I had very little comic book knowledge, apart from reading a few early Marvel titles pre teens. Now I'd draw parallels with Wolverine's disorientation at the start of House of M. 

Eventually we traced the changes down to one character, now I'd describe him as a slightly less malevolent Mad Jim Jespers. We eventually realised that we had just as much control over the changes as he did, and set things back to rights. Or to a version of 'right' that suited us.

Highly enjoyable and marvellously fascinating, a tribute to a system that is great at reflecting it's genre, and a GM who really understands the system and the genre, but is not afraid to twist it to fit his own vision (rather as we did to end the campaign).

It also keyed me in to the joys of running games in a familiar location. He'd run a game before which was based on us playing fictionalised versions of ourselves. 

I now try and find a way to localise most games I run, obvious fantasy excepted.

Which brings me to my honourable mention, my own Delta Green campaign. Without Grim's localised Golden Heroes campaign, it would never have happened.

Much as I like the Delta Green's background, I wanted it set in the UK. I developed my own organisation, called simply The Section (which may be a cover, or a replacement, for PISCES, which definitely exists in my game world). I used a mix of published scenarios reworked to fit and case files that I wrote myself. It all ended rather messily in Wales, but that's the nature of the game. The action was all set in places that I had at least a passing familiarity with, with several major events happening in West Yorkshire.

Now I'm looking forward to running Rivers of Yorkshire.

#RPGaDAY24

*Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortal. An acronym for the 'not Advanced' Dungeons and Dragons rule set and it was published in parallel with first edition.

It was originally released as a series of boxes, named as above, which were essentially tiers of play. Yes, you could reach Immortality.

The whole lot was later collated into the Rules Cyclopaedia.

While I'll stick with 5E, partly because it's so accessible, and there's a lot that I think they've got right, I'd definitely run BECMI if there was a call for it.

RPGaDAY: Day 20: Amazing Adventure

Day 20: Amazing Adventure

Once again for the sake of fairness I'm going for two. One I played in and one I ran.

My early days of D&D were dominated by two DMs, both of whom ran games at the club in town. They took it in turns to write adventures for our party. There was some sense of a background (the same priesthood set us tasks, and frequently Raised fallen comrades, and the geography was consistent), but it was largely a campaign by virtue of the cast of characters.

One DM, Jonny, was responsible for the massive dungeon we played over a weekend, see Day 19 for details, but the other, Martin, produced some memorable dungeons too. I should say that for us back then, adventure and dungeon were synonymous.

The best was probably the Halls of Anubis, a massive underground complex that started out in a system of desert caves before we reached the long abandoned priest's quarters. 

Then down to the mummification chambers (and a mechanism that sent coffins down to a subterranean lake). Then those that avoided the chute descended down inside a statue of Anubis to the lake and had to find their way across to the Maze of the Dead. Alas, the funeral barge had sunk, but remember those coffins? They float. Just mind the Sacred Crocodiles.

At last we reached the Maze, fought or avoided various mummies and finally faced the Demon Ghoul King.

Looking back, it was quite linear, but we didn't care. As long as we were moving forward, we felt we were progressing.

And the memories it leaves, priceless.

"Sarcophagus Ahoy!"

Now for one I ran, or jointly ran. 

It was for Call of Cthulhu. I've run 'Music of the Night' several times, set firstly in 1920s New York, and then in Arkham. My daughter expressed an interest in running Call of Cthulhu and requested a scenario to run. Now I'm a firm believer in trying to anchor games set in a version of our world somewhere that I have at least a passing familiarity with. So we relocated it to her university city and brought it up to the modern day. 

The scenario is a simple one, designed to introduce new players to the game, yet provide sufficient interest for old hands. 

It involves a music student (Michael Spencer) who has stumbled upon fragments of a late sixteenth century score. Unknown to him, the notes contain a Summon spell. 

He transcribes the notes and gathers a small group of fellow students to practice. I usually start the investigation just after the creature has appeared, killed one player and driven the others mad. Spencer has fled, and in his madness seeks to undo what he brought about.

There's a clue trail with the opportunity to recover the original MS, which contains a dismissal rite, but I purposefully leave the ending open for ingenious players to come up with their own solution.  To hurry them along, the creature is hunting down the people present at the summoning, and there are reports of a huge bat seen at night.

The adventure went extremely well. As my daughter was new to the system she handled the narrative and the determination of investigator actions, I merely filled in with rules queries.

Although it was her last bit of Keepering so far (she's gone on to other systems) I was impressed. I wish I'd been that good a GM at that age.

If you're interested, the group did manage to track down Spencer, but they didn't bother with the Dismissal Rite. They reasoned that the creature had only been seen in the dark, and seemed to deliberately avoid bright light. Using Spencer as bait they lured the thing on to the moor and flooded the area with lights, thus banishing it.

Everything neatly wrapped up in one session.

Of course, one of the characters later passed a club and recognised a familiar discordant note sequence...

Everyone had fun, so much so that a couple of the characters got ported over to my Delta Green campaign (which I realise hasn't yet been mentioned in this series).

#RPGaDAY24

 

RPGaDAY: Day 19: Sensational Session

Day 19: Sensational Session

For fairness I'm nominating two here. One that I've run and one that I played in.

Of course, I'll ramble around the topic as well.

Probably the most sensational session I ever played in was a D&D adventure that one of my first DMs ran for a group of us.

The Kirklees Military Modelling and Gaming Society was where I first played any roleplaying games. There were two DMs who took it in turns for our group, but after a while Jonny moved away with his family.

He invited us over to play an adventure he'd devised, so four of us travelled by train to Lytham for the weekend. 

We pretty much just gamed, ate and slept, but by the end we'd fought our way through the temple and defeated the lich. It was so close at the end that Jonny's mum drove us to the next station so we'd get a crucial extra twenty minutes.

Technically, I suppose this was several sessions, but it all flowed together so well that it seemed like one mammoth one.

Honestly, I don't now remember too many of the details, but the sense of sheer fun was immense.

I'm lucky enough to be able to share my hobby with my kids, and sessions played with them are always special.  But for a session where the gaming itself was sensational, I'm once again going back to the 4E campaign. 

On reaching Paragon Tier (11th to 20th level) the characters were all rewarded by being made Lords or Ladies and several were given grants of land. 

Grim had picked up on one of the underlying themes of Heroic Tier, a land struggling with it's identity and with different factions with often conflicting goals. He suggested to me that organising a grand fair on the frozen lake north of Threshold might help bring the people together. Between us we roughed it out, then next session the whole party pitched in with suggestions for what their characters could bring to the event.

The session I'm nominating is the next one, where we ran a timetable of events with the characters responding to various problems and threats (including traditional animosity between dwarves and elves, a vampire seeking victims and a missing child). There were also competitions to judge events to organise (and take part in) and just generally making sure things went smoothly.

Amazing fun for all of us, and it was a delight to see the players so engaged in a (largely) non violent activity that cost them quite a lot of gold.

Despite their good work bringing the community together, shortly after they all got arrested, as recounted yesterday. Still, that's the breaks when you're an adventurer.

#RPGaDAY24

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 18: Memorable Moment of Play

Day 18: Memorable Moment of Play

Is it cheating to say that there are so many that I couldn't possibly choose?

Yes?

Ok then. 

Well back in the ten year 4E campaign, when the characters had just reached Paragon tier, they investigated a mysterious valley of snow and ice. 

They ended up slaying the Frost Queen, along with one of her acolytes, who they knew to be a lass from a village back on Karameikos.

One player in particular found this difficult, and suggested that there should be some consequence*. The party were arrested and charged. If you know anything about Karameikos you can imagine their dismay on seeing that the initial judge was Baron von Hendricks, the Grand Duke's uncle. They deserved such elevated attention as they had recently been ennobled. One reward was exemption from taxes for a year.

Anyway, at the trial the halfling rogue from the neighbouring Five Shires was finding it all too much (guilty conscience?) He shouted out that she was a monster, she shouldn't be protected by the law, she wasn't a citizen, she wasn't even a tax payer!

A marvellous example of a player really invested in his character and showing real anger and frustration at the way the game world was treating him. It was a lovely touch of irony when the Baron replied "technically, neither are you".

If you want to know how it ended, the Duke's son took over the trial but they were still found guilty.  Due to extenuating circumstances, they had to perform a task as punishment. Cue the Baron rubbing his hands and exclaiming "I have a dragon that I need getting rid of ". 

Interestingly, if the players had simply been given a dragon slaying quest, they'd have happily gone ahead, but it would have meant a lot less to them. Setting it as a punishment meant that they really felt the consequences of their earlier actions.

I don't force characters to do specific things, I believe strongly in their choices mattering, this was a result of an earlier choice, and felt natural.

If you're wondering, they did get the dragon, eventually. They did lose Ozzie the wizard (again) and as the dragon flew off with the body, they had to hunt it down. But they triumphed, restored the wizard, and were able to humiliate the Baron into the bargain.

#RPGaDAY24

*The character was dead at the time (where else but an RPG would that statement make sense?) and was unable to intervene to save her.

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 17: RPG with an Engaging Community

Day 17: RPG with an Engaging Community

Ah, now then.  I'm the wrong person to really ask about this.  Despite the fact that I write a blog, I use social media very little. So if we are, as I suspect, talking about an online community, I have very little experience.  I really need the online equivalent of The Diogenes Club.

I am a member of a couple of active Facebook Groups, Rivers of London and D&D for Old Dudes.  There's a generally respectful tone on these, especially the former, but I don't interact much with them.

I used to be fairly active on Yogsothoth.com, which again, was a pretty friendly and helpful place.

Most of my online RPG interactions have been through The Piazza, but this covers a wide range of games, so I can't really nominate it for any particular RPG.  I was particularly involved in the Mystara boards when I was running my 4E campaign, and I still look in on the Nentir Vale stuff as that is relevant for my 5E campaign*.

I do find that I'm prone to spending too much time online if I let myself, and RPG forums are particularly addictive.  I'm also aware that not everyone is at their best online, so there's always the danger of taking or giving offence. I have left Facebook groups in the past when I felt the general tone of posts had deteriorated, regardless of where the unpleasantness was directed.

If I consider more face to face interactions, then in the past I've been a regular attendee at various games shops and clubs.  These tend to have a reasonable community of players (and far fewer GMs), and they can be pleasantly welcoming and inclusive.  

It's been a while since I took part in any of these local groups though. The pandemic forced my RPGs online, and for geographic reasons I'm still there.

MEGAforce (the Monday Evening Gaming Association), which played through the 4E campaign, is now a (highly enjoyable) card and board game group.

It sounds like I'm not really part of a wide gaming community, but I've met many great people through RPGs, some of whom are still good friends. I'd never have met the likes of Bodvoc, T'Other One, Grim or Andy but for gaming, and I'm still in contact with a couple who I met, and who met each other, back in the seventies through gaming.

So thank you RPGs for introducing me to some wonderful people.

#RPGaDAY24

* Yes, I am aware that neither of these editions are the ones for which the campaign worlds were developed.  This might tell you a lot about my attitude to gaming. Or life in general.

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 16: RPG that's quick to learn

Day Sixteen: RPG That's Quick to Learn

I'm always surprised how quickly new players pick up D&D. Well designed starting scenarios and pre-generated characters can get new players up and playing (a shout out here to the first 5E Starter Set, The Lost Mine of Phandelver. Not perfect, but very good, and far better that the two sets that followed it). 

This is an argument against the increasing multitude of options, especially for new players.  The players' choices should always matter, but to begin with it helps if these choices are 'what to do?', rather than 'which of the hundreds of options I have do I use now?'.

But there are other games that are as easy or easier to learn. 

RPGs that provide Quickstart rules are great. You might not learn all the rules, but certainly enough to play, and, importantly, enough to decide if it's for you. 

Savage Worlds do some great Quickstarts, often promoting their published settings.

HeroKids is another, and is a great way to introduce younger people to RPGs

I will note, however, a trend for Quick to mean 'only a little bit faster than normal'. I got a free Quickstart recently for an OSR* that topped out just short of 100 pages. This included pre-generated characters and a short adventure, but still.

If you carefully poke around on the internet you'll find even shorter RPGs. I have one called Microlite d20, which is very much an OSR game, but because there's so little to it, its fast to get running, and it's adaptable to different genres.

But I'm supposed to make a decision here, and I'm once again nominating Rivers of London. The ENNIE award winning scenario The Domestic is a great way to learn both how to create a character and how the basics of the game work. It's available to download free from Chaosium's website. 

If you want something a little darker, Alone Against the Flames does a similar thing for Call of Cthulhu, though you'll also need the free quickstart rules, also available on their website.

And because I just can't stop typing sometimes, I'll mention the D&D 4E Red Box.  This included a choose your path adventure which worked in a very similar manner.  The Red Box was a starter set, and featured a Red Dragon very familiar to those of us who remembered the old Basic D&D boxed set.  

The mini adventure featured one character who was accompanying a dwarven merchant.  When goblins attacked, choices such as 'do you solve problems by fighting or magic?' helped guide the player to create their first character.

There are a couple of strikes against it though; the starter set came out long after the game was first published, and, well, it's 4E.

#RPGaDAY24

*Old School Renaissance, basically any game that aims to recreate the feel of the original dungeon crawling games.

RPGaDAY 2024: Half Time Thoughts

As we're about half way through the month, I thought I'd step away from the questions briefly and try to explain my background in gaming, which might give some clues as to where I'm coming from with some of my answers.

If I get the opportunity to ramble on a bit more, all the better.

Firstly, thanks to my good friend Grim who suggested I take part in this. 

Massive thanks also to Autokratik, who organises these every year.

I've been playing RPGs for nearly 47 years. Long time readers of my blog know that I was trying fantasy wargaming for even longer. 

When I started sixth form I joined the Wargaming Society. A couple of weeks later, one of the older members told us about this great new game that he'd tried at the club in town. I went along the following week and was hooked. I persuaded my friends to try and pretty soon the college wargames club was a D&D club.  We later branched out into other RPGs, but there wasn't that much around back then.

Nothing really displaced D&D (then Advanced Dungeons and Dragons) until after university.  After my last final I bought the second edition of Call of Cthulhu, the one published by Games Workshop.  This was another immediate hit, though it's fair to say that our early investigations were still rather 'dungeonish'.

  

Time went on and I've tried all the editions of D&D, and most of the editions of Call of Cthulhu.  I've tried other games, as may be apparent from some of my RPGaDAY entries, but its been mainly these two.

I've increasingly moved towards GMing rather than playing.  It might be that sense of control, or the joy of creation?  Maybe it's just that I'm more willing to put in the time and effort than others?  Regardless, I rarely play as a player anymore.  Perhaps I should remedy that?  

I've come to understand that the games that really interest me are the ones where the characters can become heroes, doing heroic deeds, or at least make a difference.  That's partly why, although I recommended Call of Cthulhu for its one-shots, I find a lot of them too downbeat (yes, I know.  It's Call of Cthulhu, but still).  I've no interest in the 'last one to die' type game, nor games where the idea is to cause chaos and mayhem.  I find that there's too much of this in the world anyway, I turn to games for escape.  Please don't think I'm saying that there's anything wrong with this type of game, its just not for me.

Well, that gives a bit of background where I'm coming from with this, so hopefully my entries may make a little more sense going forward.

#RPGaDAY24

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 15: RPG with Great Gear

Day 15: RPG with Great Gear

Hmm, another toughie, but that's good, it gets me thinking.

I suppose we are looking at games where the gear is likely to be available to the characters, not artefacts that are quest McGuffins or ultimate rewards.

For this reason I can rule out D&D, and indeed most fantasy RPGs. Standard equipment is pretty ordinary, or at least, it would appear so to the characters. I might think it would be pretty amazing to have a suit of armour, but to a character in a traditional fantasy world, that's relatively normal.

Now magic items are cool, and there are some that I'd definitely have, but they are very much optional (although there can't be many parties without at least one bag of holding*), and there's absolutely no way a player can predict what items might crop up, or there shouldn't be. 

Research, crafting and deliberate questing are all valid methods of gaining that one particular item that the player wants, but it should never be a shopping list. 

One of the things, in my opinion, that fourth edition got wrong was putting this choice in the players' hands.

So that leaves modern or SF games. 

I've less experience of these, other than Call of Cthulhu (and a lot of the special items in that are very far from cool, downright dangerous in fact). 

I recall that the True20 RPG (a simplification and derivation of third edition D&D) had a world setting where the characters were mech pilots. The game had two phases, the characters themselves investigating stuff, and then in their mechs fighting kaiju style monsters. I'm sure there are other, similar games out there. A mech would be cool. But since I never actually played this, I can't count it.

I've owned several Star Wars RPGs, and even run a few. Strangely, despite the light sabres, spaceships and blasters, the gear didn't really make the players go wow. Well, the light sabres did at first, but pretty soon everything became just another tool.  I suppose that there was just so much awesome, that the gear tended to fade into the background.

I have written a couple of Savage Worlds adventures set in the Star Trek universe, where the characters are the crew on a Starship (yes  I know there's an official Star Trek RPG, but see my comments on Day 6 about why Savage Worlds is great).

Having a Starship has to be pretty cool, but again, as I haven't yet got around to playing this, it doesn't really count.

So cool gear in a game that I actually have run? 

I have to go right back to the early eighties. 

The James Bond RPG was a game that we initially struggled with, so many of the concepts in it were very new; ideas such as variable difficulty and pushing rolls, which now seem an integral part of RPGs, baffled us at first.  Once we got the hang of it though, it was fun.  While I'm not rushing to go back to playing this kind of game, I'd use Savage Worlds in future if I ever did.

The game did a good job of simulating the style of the films, though it struggled, as all games based so closely on an IP do, with having to stick to the source material, while being different enough to provide a fun game experience. By far the best module was Back of Beyond, a new storyline set largely in Australia.

Anyway, the various Q Division gadgets are, by my definition, 'cool gear'. 

#RPGaDAY24

*Sudden realisation that a bag of holding, or a handy haversack, is what I should have nominated for the 'Game Aid I'd Like to See' day

RPGaDay 2024: Day Fourteen: RPG with compelling characters

Day 14: RPG with Compelling Characters

Hmm, another tricky one, but I like interpreting these questions in different ways.

What do we mean by Compelling Characters?  Presumably, interesting characters that players are drawn to and want to run. 

How much of this is down to the system and how much to a combination of GM and player?

When we started playing D&D in the seventies, character generation was simple.  Roll 3D6 six times and use the scores for abilities.  We later assigned the die rolls where we wanted, but originally, it was play as rolled.  This is why my first long term character was a fighter with DEX 18 and STR 12.  

The longest time taken was usually equipping the character.  Little or no thought was given to what sort of person they were, why they were adventuring, or what they'd done beforehand.

But were our characters all one dimensional fighting machines? Some, maybe, but as we played, our characters developed. 

My fighter, Eric Harminon, who started out the angry second son of a disreputable knight, but grew to accept this and eventually expunged his father's deeds and brought redemption to his family.

The wizard and cleric couple, who's relationship grew along with their players (still married). 

The rogue who's curiosity often got him (and his companions) into scrapes.

The cleric who founded a temple and forgave the person who betrayed his father.

None of these personalities were rolled at creation or determined with charts and tables, they grew organically through play. 

Even up to fourth edition background was provided by the player (or foisted on them by the GM). There was very much an understanding that this stuff was important for roleplay, but it wasn't baked into the system as a rule mechanic.  It was up to each player to engage with it as much or as little as they wished.  [A handy GM tip I learned was when a player states that their character knows or can do something, ask what happened in their past that led to this.  This encourages even the most back story averse player to think a bit more about it].

My, how things have changed.

Now most of the RPGs I read require background to be created at the generation stage, indeed, character abilities are often tied to backstory. I understand that the new edition of D&D even has the ability score increases tied to background rather than race species.

While there's nothing wrong with this, and in some cases, it could provide helpful guidelines, there's something in me that balks at this. I want the freedom to gradually explore my character as I play. Indeed, I've seen many players feel trapped by character background created in session zero that no longer worked for them.

In short (not that I ever are), I think it's down to individual players, with the GMs encouragement, to develop compelling characters.

That said, some games make it easier, and this seems to be a trend especially in newer games. Do I agree with this? That depends on the game.

One game that had the potential to produce compelling characters was Golden Heroes. A UK based superhero RPG, the heart of character generation was randomly rolling on the powers table and then coming up with a rationale for them.

When we played, most of the group were pretty happy with their rolls, though I think we all ignored one or two of them. The best bit was tying in backstory and powers to create a superhero, but personally I found the random scattergun approach a little off putting, I'd much rather have chosen, but I had little experience of the Superhero genre; perhaps the random rolls helped?  Once created, the characters went on to have a series of amazing adventures, and the system was a good one for what it portrayed.

But there was something special about just grabbing a piece of paper, rolling eighteen dice, plus hit points, and getting straight into the game.

#RPGaDAY24

RPGaDay 2024: Day Thirteen: RPG with Evocative Environments

Day Thirteen: RPG with Evocative Environments 

A tricky one, as I believe in most cases environments, evocative or not, are down to the GM firstly to imagine, then describe to the players, rather than an intrinsic property of the RPG itself.

I suppose it's easier in a well defined game world, where a lot of the environment is the product of the writers.  I'm sure the Forgotten Realms has evocative environments (I did like the Panopticon in the film), but I know relatively little about the Realms, so can't really comment.

I much prefer to make a game world my own. I have used published worlds, notably Mystara, but they are often very open to interpretation. The more space there is for my own material, the more I like it.

I really enjoyed creating my own world (Teramarr), and I like to think there are some evocative environments there (minotaur tomb complex built into a cliff face, jungle ruins, islands surrounded by near impenetrable storms or flying islands anyone?).  I must get back to Teramarr.

If I have to nominate something I'll suggest Mystara. Although I said it's pretty open, there are some stunning places. The staircase up to the monastery in X4 Master of the Desert Nomads, ships flying over Alphatia, or the first sight of the Hollow World. All memorable, stunning and very, very fantastic.

#RPGaDAY24

RPGaDay 2024: Day 12: RPG with Well Supported Campaigns

Day Twelve: RPG with well supported campaigns

I'm assuming here that we're talking about games where the publisher also produces good quality campaign material to support the role playing game.

I'd like to say Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons. After all, every year WotC bring out a hefty hardback campaign. These have provided additional details for the default world of The Forgotten Realms and have often provided additional rules and systems to cover specific environments or styles of play. Examples include Rime of the Frostmaiden (sandbox), Storm King's Thunder (point crawl) and Tomb of Annihilation (jungle set hexcrawl).

Yes, I'd like to say D&D 5E, but sadly, the recent campaigns just don't measure up*.

They all contain great moments, but are often padded out with fairly ordinary stuff. They can also suffer from awful railroading; not a good lesson for the GM looking for guidance on designing their own campaign.

You'd have to go back to the original Dragonlance series to find a reasonable example of a published D&D campaign, and that never quite worked for me (its me, not Dragonlance, but I found it too 'soap-opera-ish for my liking, and it also suffers from railroading).

So instead I'm going for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu (again).  Particularly the classic Masks of Nyarlathotep.  

This campaign has been around since 1984.  I remember owning it when it was a box with seperate booklets for each chapter.  I've still got the 1996 version, but not the recent mega version, nor, sadly, the props package that comes with it.

It's considered the exemplar of a roleplaying campaign (though Eternal Lies, apparently, comes close) because it offers a huge degree of freedom in which order the chapters are handled beyond the first.  There is a reasonable amount of redundancy in the clues (almost the Three Clue Rule at work) and it is truly world-spanning.  

If you want to know more, check out the Wikipedia page.  

If you are a Call of Cthulhu player and you've never played in it, (and you've got many months of game time available), badger your Keeper to run it for you, or better still, take up the revered mantle of Keeper of Arcane Knowledge yourself and run it for a bunch of victims mates.

I will warn you though, that, written in the 80s, some of the attitudes seem outdated now (rather like some of HPLs).  

Good Keepers should be able to overcome that though, and it's well worth the effort.

#RPGaDAY24

*Honourable mention though to the BECMI Wrath of the Immortals campaign.  Written as a swan song for the BECMI version of Mystara before everything went second edition, this was more a series of set pieces that were the framework of a far ranging campaign.  There are some great moments in it, and I tangentially used some of them in my 4E campaign, but there are too many gaps that require many levels of adventuring to fill in to properly class as a full campaign.