Gaming in April 2020

One of the unforseen results of the house move was going without broadband for almost a fortnight.  This put a cramp into my participation with the various on-line campaigns that I'd been taking part in and other, multiplying oportunities for on-line play.

First a look at the on-going games without me...

The Black Hack 2: Melcher's Vale

Bolton on sabatical...

Just as Bolton the Mage had made contact with the Eunuchs' Guild of Mudharbour he had to drop out of the game.

In fact he's been doing some in-depth research into various arcane mysteries at Bo Lee Wang's monkey cabaret and over-indulging on dolphin burgers.









Call of Cthulhu: Forget-Me-Not

Episode 3: The Spider Clinic, which we played on 7 Mar has now hit the airwaves.*  Enjoy!

Two sessions went ahead without me (fortunately, Charlie, my character, has tended to fade into the background all along).  Andy has given me access to the unedited recordings of these sessions.

Our TV crew ('The Supernatural Files') rescued their co-presenter from the hospital where she'd summoned an Elder God, were reunited with their van and  finally made their way back to the abandoned farmhouse where we assume all this began.  And then things started getting weird.  In Andy's immortal words (ones you do not want to hear a CoC Keeper say), "well, that escalated quickly!"

We estimate that there's probably only one session left.

Andy is strict in keeping his sessions to a two-hour max.  These are then edited down to a 70-90 minute episode on the podcast (which is why you don't hear any dice-rolling or consulation of madness tables).

*In fact, Andy has been very busy.  His podcast is running six or seven different actual play campaigns at the moment with various Call of Cthulhu, Traveller and Tales from the Loop going on.

Dark Sun/Dying Star

Stolen from Modiphius - their Barsoom

24 Apr

This is GM'd by Dave Aldrige, who also runs The Black Hack sessions.  Although he's still running TBH, he wanted something with more of a campaign feel.

Dave has written a hack under the OGL of Swords and Wizardry Continual Light with an implied setting of DnD's Dark Sun (with the serial numbers filed-off).  There's a draft for play-test here if you're interested.  Our campaign is very much Dark Sun.

I missed the first session, but I have written up the second here.

I've never played in the Dark Sun setting, so can't say how true Dave is being to it, but suffice to say that I had a blast in this post-apocalyptic fantasy world with a hint of Barsoom.  As a friend of the blog said commenting on Dave's description on his podcast, this is definitely 'planet of the bastards'.

We play using a combo of a Zoom meeting and Dave's discord channel.  This latter allowed for the in-game sharing of artwork - which I always find useful - and maps.  There's also some out-of-game roleplay there, with one of our players writing up the session in the form of her character's (a Thri-keen trader-druid) journal.  This I find really helpful in giving some colour.  Actual roleplay is one of my weaknesses (as you know, my write-ups tend to be 'this happened, we did this, then that happened...') and being able to read someone elses RP interpretation helps me focus my own approach.

One-Off

28 Apr

Jason Connerley offered a one-off, settling on a 'spooky theme' (the alternative was 'cowboys in space').

It turned out to be an odd one!  Four of us played ourselves, returning from a RPG Con on a dark and stormy night.  Our hire-car broke down by a washed-out bridge.  Fortunately, there was a large house nearby on a hill...

Unsurprisingly, there was a strange butler and a mad scientist.

Jason discusses it here.

Solo Gaming: 4AD

Some may remember that I ran a solo dungeon-crawl last year.  This was done using Old School Essentials and a rather complicated system I'd botched together from a number of sources.  As a result it was a little unwieldy and although I enjoyed it, it collapsed under its own weight.  I therefore looked out for a system that can be run out-of-the box for a quick session, and invested in Four Against Darkness.

4AD is pretty basic, but I thought I'd give it a go.  It's ideal for those times you just want to sit down and roll dice for 45mins or an hour with no prep.  There's a good review here.

Time will tell whether there is much scope for repeat play in the system.  If that proves a problem, there are supplements and modules available for the cost of a couple of pints.  It may even prove an interesting exercise to expand the d6 Encounter and Treasure Tables to d66 ones.  I may write up sessions using the Heybrook setting I created for the previous campaign - it will prove the practice I need in creating a narrative out of dice rolls and hack-and-slash.

Gaming In March 2020

For obvious reasons Face-to-Face gaming has been on hold, but as regular readers will know I've been lucky enough to have been getting in to playing RPGs on-line.  These are generally aranged through Discord and played using Google Hangouts, Zoom or Roll20 (or a combo of these).  If anyone wants an invitation to join any of the Discord chanels, let me know.

Black Hack

1 Mar
15 Mar
22 Mar
27 Mar

Our Black Hack game continues.  Because of the Open Table Dave runs, we jump around various areas of his Melcher's Vale setting from game-to-game.  We've therefore been exploring dungeons under the ruined temple, delving into the sewers and had a martial arts tournament (with added intrigue between bouts).

A relatively new development has been that introduction of faction rules.  It's early days yet as none of us have earned enough points to progress very far in any of the factions.  They all seem to have major drawbacks though!

It turns out that the Patron my Mage has attached himself to is quite probably a vampire and, having received her Kiss, he might have been Renfield'ed.  At the end of each session I've having to pass a CON Check to avoid loosing HP.

Lady Bund a vampire?  Who knew?

On the other hand he has now made contact with the Eunuchs' Guild, so that's a positive...

Call of Cthulhu 

7 Mar
22 Mar

Our modern-setting (c.2003) of CoC run by Andy Goodman (of the Expedition to the Grizzley Peaks podcast) continues, and the plot thickens.  Having said that, in our last session we lost said plot and went off on a complete tangent.  One of our party  attempted to cast a spell, went permanently insane and ended up summoning an Old One, Tsathoggua.  Decapitations were involved.  We closed the session just as the cops arrived...

Meantime, Episode 2 (which we played back in Feb and in which we go a bit mad) has hit the airways.  Reminder, I'm playing Charlie Hogan, the cameraman.

Index Card RPG

This was a one-off run by Pete (of the Dragons Are Real podcast).  It was my introduction to the system, which is very simple and easy to pick-up.  It's Pete's go-to system for a number of genres, but we were playing a low-fantasy style.

M'mm, pie...

The plot rotated around a raid that had been done on a pie shop (Mrs Miggins' Pie Shop of course).

The obvious culprit was the owner of a rival establishment, but that seemed too simple.  My character was convinced that the rival was a small cog in a larger plot who had taken advantage of the removal of magical wards for his own purposes.  We therefore spent some time talking to to other establishments and testing wards (my chap walked into them until he was knocked out).  At least we established that it was a lie that all the wards were down.

In the end it turned out that the obvious solution was the right one.   The pieman had stolen Mrs Miggins pies in order to reverse-engineer the recipie in a lab he'd set up in a cabin in the woods.

Anyway, the game was a blast and ICRPG works very well.

Gaming in Feb 2020

After the drought, then the flood!

Face-to-Face

At the FLGS

On 9 Feb we got one of our occasional games of Dungeon Crawl Classics in.  I've written about that elsewhere.

Sunday 16 Feb reverted back to our more usual Barrowmaze.  For some reason after encoutering five Giant Centipedes attacking a Giant Toad we rescued it and decided to take it back to our stronghold where we're nursing it back to health.  We haven't gone so far as to name it yet...

On 29 Feb we had our last trip to the Barrowmaze before the (in-game) six month break for the rainy season.  This marks the end of our fourth in-game year of the campaign! 

For the first time in several sessions we actually entered the Barrowmaze rather that exploring the mounds on the Barrowmoors.  Much fun was had, loot was found, and new stuff added to the map.

No, we didn't go through this doorway!

The Home Team

For one reason and another we hadn't met to to play our Hole in the Oak mini-campaign since before Christmas.  However, on 21 Feb we met up at The Games Table to play a few boardgames (the main game was Ticket To Ride, with Battle Sheep as our warm-up and Exploding Kittens as the wrap-up).  I asked whether we wanted to carry on with The Hole in the Oak and possibly take it a little further: everyone seemed up for this.  I think I'm going to suggest we alternate between RPG and Boardgame nights (it'd be nice if we could do it weekly, but I suspect the diaries won't align).

Sadly, the RPG session we had planned for the last week of the month was again cancelled due to Real Life.  So I haven't yet had a chance to test the Dolmenwood Players' Guide.

On-Line

The Black Hack

I wrote about the games we played in the first half of the month here following the death of my long-term character (5th Level thief) Bil Lee.  After discussions with the GM, I was all prepared to introduce Bil's hapless cousin, taken from his cushy job in the Monkey Cabaret to serve at the pointy-end of Tong business as he was the last surviving male relative able to uphold family honour.

Bolton the Mage

However, our next session wasn't in Mudharbour, but another town of the setting.  So, I thought, I'll play with my reserve character.  And I've fallen for him!

I think the moment Bolton the Mage came to life was when were were required to stop and take rations (one of the results on the encounter table).  Bolton hadn't got any of his own, so a fellow offered one of his (and asked me to roll the Usage Die).  In one fell swoop, the rations were gone.  Suddenly, he became this louche Caspar Gutman/Nero Wolfe figure.  The Fat Mage of Purbury was born!

Google helped by coming up with this fantastic image (which is apparently concept art for Assassin's Creed).  And Dave has created some house-rules for cigar smoking.

The session itself was fun.  After the experiment in the Hive, we returned to more tried and tested ground, pulling of a heist (using more of Dave's house-rules).  We were employed by Lady Elvira Bund, a local femme fatale, to regain an artifact that the local theives' guild have stolen from her father (she didn't realise that we'd pulled of that heist too and indirectly killed her father).

Lady Elvira Bund

It all went very well, mainly due to the groundwork that the heist rules allow us to do in advance (ret-conned, it true heist movie style).  After minor tusssles with the thieves and gnolls, we recovered the artifact and much other loot.  Some of us gained a new patron: though one party member who was on a quest for redemption revealed that he had been involved in the death of Lady Elvira's father and was immediately killed by her.  This worked out well in the end - part of his quest was 'to be given a second chance' and he was revived by his goddess.

We also had another session in another part of the world, where we had anold-fashioned dungeon-crawl under the ruins of a Temple (complete with portal to Another Place and encounters with alligators and kobolds).

Call of Cthulhu

Our second session of the Forget-Me-Not scenario took place on 9 Feb.  It moved on from the slow start of the first session (slow as in 'building-up tension' rather than 'boring').  The party now know who they are, that one of their number is missing and have several leads to follow up.  In addition we had a major outbreak of temporary insanity (a bit of mud-wrestling and pistol-whipping) and coughing up of wriggling things.

Andy had recorded the play 'for training purposes'.  He since (with our acquiescence) decided to broadcast it on his Podcast. 

Episode 1: The Cornfields of Your Mind
Episode 2:

I'm playing Charlie (the one who doesn't speak in the first episode!).

The Legendary 9 Febuary 2020

The observant will have noticed that 9 Feb was a busy day for me!  I played DCC at The Games Table from Noon until 4pm, Call of Cthulhu on-line from 6-8pm, and then the Black Hack from 8-11pm.  I don't anticipate being able to carry off such feats often, though I think the stars will aleign about every six to eight weeks.

Recent Black-Hackery

The Black Hack game continues to be fun.  As I write the Kickstarter for the spin-off zine is in it's final hours.  It exceeded all funding expectations and is something that I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing later this year.

Dave is managing his amazing feat of running two games most weeks, though I've missed a few of the Sunday sessions because of the Call of Cthulhu I'm now involved in.  One of the beauties of the Westmarches style of play however is that this doesn't matter.  Whichever players turn up on the night play, and the other can sit it out without too much damage to continuity.

Bil Lee

The character I've been playing is Bil Lee, a thief in the Mudharbour Brotherhood who has been rising up the ranks of the Greeen Dragon Tong under the watchful eye of 'Uncle' Wang Lee.

Bil wasn't there when the party battled Crabzilla, but he took part in some of the mopping-up afterwards in which Uncle tasked him to recover the legendary weapon the Flying Guillotine.

His success in this mission marked him out for advancement within the Tong

The Guillotine proved its worth in the next session when Bil was able to decapitate a Boss Witch (by scoring a hit and then rolling above her HD on a d12).  Nevertheless, Rusty, a party member died.

Rusty - by Claire Aldridge

This is where it gets a little involved.  Rusty was an automaton - a Reliable Rickshaw Runner - and it was determined that if we recovered his familiar, Travis Bickle - who had been snatched by giant bees - and procured a new body for him, we might be able to resurrect him.

In the following session a crack trio of thieves determined to try to do the first part of this, entering the giant hive.  Disaster struck though.   Overcome by venom and terror Bil suffered a fatal heart-attack and only one of his companions managed to escape to safety, empty-handed.

We were doing something different in the Bee Hive Delve.  Although still using the Black Hack rules, we were following the Hex Flower engine devised by Goblin's Henchman.  More specifically, we were following the procedural methods applied to the exploration of a maze-like giant insect colony in his adventure 'Carapace'.  The proceedure uses Hex Flowers to generate a labyrinth so alien as to surpass human understanding and mapping.

Frankly, I didn't take to it.  I can see why the Hex Flower appeals to some, but using it as part of the game (as opposed to behind-the-scenes world-building) doesn't suit my playing style.  Wandering about in nominal directions chosen on a dice-roll, and then deciding whether to spend points to alter the roll felt a little board-gamey to me.  There's nothing wrong with board-games of course, but for me it brought in too much meta-gaming and broke the role-play.  I suppose I prefer my magic behind the screen!  However, it looks as if we're going back in on Wednesday, so I'll give it a go.

Kickstarter Watch: Mudharbour

Recently I've been able to play in Dave Aldridge's on-line RPG sessions which he runs using the Black Hack.  Dave has created Melcher's Vale, a very enjoyable low- to mid-fantasy setting, which will suit many game systems.

The largest settlement (we've found so far) in the Vale is Mudharbour and this is the focus of Dave's Kickstarter.  He has decided to take part in Zine Quest, a co-ordinated effort by creators to publish RPG Zines funded by Kickstarters.

A hand-stitched 32 page [now 36, stretchgoals having been met] zine detailing a Kung Fu fantasy setting influenced by Shaw Brothers movies and martial arts videogames. Mudharbour is a cosmopolitan island city dominated by mystic temples and featuring warring gangsters, scheming bureaucrats, elemental automata and marauding pirates. 

I'm quite fond of Mudharbour as my character was introduced there and, as one of the first players there, I've contributed to its development.  The character, a thief was originally concieved as Billy the Dip; he quickly and seemlessly morphed into Bil Lee, a junior member of the Green Dragon Tong (as led by 'Uncle' Wang).  He's since met giant crabs, hungry ghosts, psychic jellyfish and exceptionally well-shod assassins.  Great fun!

The Kickstarter is now (on it's 4th of 14 days), 350% funded.  You can see details here.

Gaming in Jan 2020

A little later than I anticipated, due to computer problems.

Face-to-Face

At the FLGS

Our GM claims that January is problematic for scheduling.  Netherless he managed to put together two sessions of Barrowmaze.  I should have taken some photos for the blog, but of course didn't.

Knowing that I've run it at home and had one session at the FLGS, one of the other players suggested that I run the OSE Hole in the Oak module.  However, he was the only one who signed up for it, so we cancelled.  Although the home sessions went well, I completely fluffed the session in the shop, so I don't know if the word went round!

I didn't make it to any board game nights this month.

In other news from the FLGS (The Games Table), last month they announced that they were planning to move to larger premises.  This week they told us where.  It's a very good spot, slap-bang in the centre of Norwich in the wonderfully named Lower Goat Lane (for those who know the city, it's just off the Market Place).

I'm a big supporter of The Games Table.  In less than two years, Kieran has built a good business, but more importantly a great community.  It's done wonders for my social life and, as a result, my mental health.

The Home Team

We didn't meet this month. After two sessions playing Hole in the Oak, there's probably only one session of play left.  If the guys want to continue (which I'm not certain of), I've been thinking of various plot hooks that would lead on to other adventures.

On-Line

Having heard a lot about the Discord Audio Dungeon on various podcasts, in December I took the plunge and signed up.  Like all social media it's necessary to filter which areas one engages in or be swamped, but that's OK.  It's a welcoming group and very easy to find games to join.

The Black Hack

I've been taking part in a Black Hack game run by Dave Aldridge of the dpercentile podcast.  We've been lucky enough to be able to fit in a couple of games a week!

I've played a little Black Hack before, and am really getting into it here - it is a lovely, simple system that I heartily recomend.  Dave's setting - Melcher's Vale - is very nice.  In Feburary he's going to Kickstart a Zine which will detail a section of it, a city with a Fantasy Ku Fu vibe influenced by Shaw Brothers movies and martial arts videogames.  I shall be posting more about it when it launches.

Call of Cthulhu

I've been wanting to try CoC for quite a while, but never found anyone to play with.  Last weekend I took part in the first session of the Forget Me Not module.  An introductory module set in modern-day USA.  We all woke up in a crashed van in the middle of a corn field, and by the end of the two-hour session had discovered that we were the crew of a TV show 'The Supernatural Files' investigating spooky goings-on in Michigan.  The plot will thicken in a fortnight...

What Makes a Good RPG Session?

Well...

When a roll on a random table gives the discription of a tavern as being known 'as a site of violent yodelling duels' and on the basis of that the GM improvises a yodelling competition which leads to 45 mins of hilarity.