31 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 31 - Game or Gamer you miss

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Game or gamer you miss?

A.  The gamers we've lost along the way.

There's a fair few gamers who I miss; slowly, people are starting to pass away (I guess that's one of those things of reaching your fifties) and I find myself naming ships and characters after them.

When I finally get 'This Fear of Gods' to print, there'll be a fair few people you may recognise if you've been around the Traveller scene, most recently Doug Berry, who I've dedicated vessels to. Matt Bond was the first of that particular group to be lost.

That's a sad note to end this year's #RPGaDay on, so let's talk games.

The very striking cover of Conspiracy of Shadows; all reds with a mottled effect and a black ink symbol which is a circle with line through it, which resembles an eye. The title 'Conspiracy of Shadows' is at the top in caps with a creepy font.
Conspiracy of Shadows

I miss Conspiracy of Shadows. A fantasy Eastern European X-Files type game from Keith Senkowski, it's since disappeared and that's a loss. I had a lot of fun running it at conventions. I wish that the cleaned up version of the rules had made it to print, or that it was still available on DTRPG as a legacy game.

31 August 2024


30 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 30 - Person you'd like to game with

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Person you'd like to game with?

A.  The crews from Dracula Dossier and The One Ring for the sequels we talked about

My initial answer to this was going to reflect on the gamers who I've played with who've since passed away, and who I miss at conventions. Then I looked at tomorrow's answers and realised that it would overlap.

I've also had some games with some of my gaming heroes in the past, and they ranged from fun to disappointing. There's definitely something in the saying of 'never meet your heroes'; they become normal people with all the flaws and virtues you'd expect. 

I was really disappointed that I was away when Loren K Wiseman visited the UK, because I'd have loved to have met him, as he was a perfect gentleman who I engaged reasonably frequently on mailing lists, forums and through BITS Traveller. 

I'd like to game with either the crew from the Dracula Dossier (with whom we've repeatedly talked about doing a sequel) or the crew from The One Ring Darkening of Mirkwood campaign, so we can do the dragons and rings sequel we planned. But... real life schedules.

Aside from that, I'd also like to get some time to game with the kids; they seemed to enjoy it, but in the whirlwind of their social lives and the distractions of quick gratification like the Xbox games with their friends, face to face roleplaying loses out.

I suppose that's one of my reflections upon life; when I was younger, I was much more time rich, but with a more limited budget. Now that has reversed, but I struggle to get time to game.

30 August 2024

29 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 29 - Awesome App

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Awesome App?

A.  Dice by pCalc (macOS, iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS).

This is a Dice Roller app by James Thomson (who also wrote the great calculator app pCalc). I love the simplicity and aesthetics of the application. The iOS, iPadOS and macOS apps all look very similar but scale differently.

Dice by pCalc (macOS window). Yellow D6 with a 4 in the middle, to the left dice types, to the right other functions, and the usual macOS window title and tools at the top.
A window screenshot from Dice by pCalc (macOS)

The Apple Watch version also is fun and looks great.

Dice by pCalc on Apple Watch Ultra series - there is a silver D6 showing a 4 on a mock wood surface.
Dice by pCalc on an Apple Watch

I just like the way this app is built.

29 August 2024

28 August 2024

#RPGsDay2024 - 28 - Great Gamer Gadget

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Great Gamer Gadget?

A.  My reMarkable 2.

I've owned a reMarkable paper table since November 2020 and I wouldn't be without it. It helps me avoid reams of paper and has allowed me to keep everything together in one simple package. I use it for preparation, for character sheets and for notes.

A reMarkable 2 paper tablet lying on a table with a flow diagram of a scenario. Beside it lies a digital pencil, the edge of an iPad and a spiral bound printout of Stealer of Souls.
My reMarkable being used for preparation work

I've even used it for art when the moment has taken me, for example my Yellow King notes which are all on one page on multiple layers. Each layer is readable on its own but reality warps when you show it normally.

Exported page of notes from the Yellow King with all layers showing so it becomes more of a pattern with the yellow signs showing rather than notes.
Exported page from my Yellow King notes

You can also easily annotate PDFs in it. I often export maps and mark them up as preparation. It was very useful for Curse of Strahd.

So that's my great gamer gadget. I see more and more of them at conventions too.

28 August 2024

27 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 27 - Marvellous Miniature

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Marvellous Miniature?

A.  I prefer theatre of the mind, but do use tokens and standees quite often at cons.

I don't really use miniatures in roleplaying games very often, I've always been very much a theatre of the mind person. That said, I'm happy using tokens on a grid on a VTT, probably as they're far less hassle to paint, for more skirmish-like games such as D&D.

However, sometimes I will use maps and tokens to make it clear who is where. When running at LongCon, I had printed maps and used some dry-wipe tokens (All Rolled Up have some really useful ones) and some meeples to do this.

A translucent plastic box standing on a pink surface It contains white tombstone shaped dry-wipe tokens, a selection of multi-coloured bases and two dry-wipe pens with erasers.
Blank game tokens by Meetory

I also found this set on Amazon a few years ago, and it's really useful when you really need a set of markers quickly.

A green battlemat covered with white card standees of fantasy monsters, stood in translucent bases. They're all set against a black backdrop.
Dragonbane Monster Standee set

I do like the way that Dragonbane has included standees for gaming in both the starter set and as a companion product to the Bestiary book. It does make the option to play with miniatures really easy to do.

The realist in me knows that most of my gaming is online, so purchasing miniatures is a rabbit-hole I don't need to go down.

27 August 2024


26 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 26 - Superb Screen

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Superb Screen?

A.  The a|state table tower

I do tend to pick up screens, but often find that they need modification to fit what I need. I wrote a blog post last November about how I use screens, which goes into more detail on what I look for.

Photo of the a|state table tower - a GM screen - stood on a glass topped table in a garden. The screen is set up as a square in the middle of the table with guidance on how to run journeys facing the camera. There is a map of the City, which is a set of concentric circles where canals cut through it, keyed with the local boroughs.
The a|state table tower showing the map side.

However, this entry asks about a 'superb screen', so I'm going to call out the a|state table tower. This is an intriguing design from Handiwork games intended to be used in multiple ways. It's also suggested that it can be placed in the centre of the gaming table that folks are gathered around so that the can all reference it during play. The screen covers different phases of the such as missions and downtime, and it's suggested that what's showing on the screen is changed dependent upon what your group is up to.

I like this screen because it's clearly laid out, looks fantastic and presents the procedural elements as well as the usual flat lists that you get commonly get on screens. I also think the idea of dynamically changing what is shown and putting the screen mid-table is superb.

26 August 2024 


25 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 25 - Desirable Dice

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Desirable Dice?

A.  Roll 4 Initiative Translucent Blood Orange and Yellow dice

This is kind of weird because I like to tell myself that I'm not really that bothered about dice,  but then I go and buy they for most games that I play if I do the preorders, so they must mean something to me.

I recently found the lovely aluminium dice set of 2D6 that I picked up at the first Revelation and enjoyed getting them to the table again, although they definitely punished me for their extended hiatus.

My favourite dice at the moment are my orange Roll 4 Initiative Translucent Blood Orange & Yellow dice. They finally scratched my itch on getting some orange dice that I love. I have to give a hat tip to SavageSpiel on the Gaming Tavern, who shared her Roll 4 Initiative dice last year during #RPGaDay2023 and pointed me in the right direction to get hold of them. They look lovely, are easy to read and feel good in the hand.

A set of 7 polyhedral dice in translucent orange with large high contrast yellow numbers. The D4 is an arch type rather than a pyramid. They're set on a black background. In the bottom left is a DiceShop logo with a small dragon.
Roll 4 Initiative Blood Orange & Yellow Dice at the diceshoponline.

25 August 2024

Alien: Romulus - some spoiler free thoughts

The poster for Alien: Romulus. Red, with a facehugger clamped to the head of a woman with shaved hair. The film title and details are below in white.
Alien: Romulus Poster.

I watched Alien: Romulus at the cinema last night, and enjoyed it. There were lots of jump scares and it gave me that somewhat unnerving feeling that I was being watched as I walked home from the show. I did pick the slightly longer but better lit route option deliberately.

The film is very well done and is a homage to what has gone before; the director has deliberately used the same shots, sound design and even lines (although delivered slightly differently) from previous ventures into this dystopian future to make the film. There are echoes of Alien, Aliens, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant throughout. I think the station also draws on the Alien: Isolation video game, but I've not played enough of that to be certain how much. There's a direct link back to Alien.

The set up is well done and feels like it could have come straight from the roleplaying game. The protagonists are all young people who are on a perpetually dark Weyland-Yutani mining colony, and you see the impact of the indenture that people service to 'start a new life in the off-world colonies'. I deliberately echo Blade Runner there, because I think this is the first film that has made me feel that they could be the same universe. I could easily imagine Elon Musk running operations like this; increasing peoples indentured hours on a whim and trapping them as labour. It's been done before and I'm sure it will be done again if the Billionaire rich start setting up colonies off world in the future. I can't see a philanthropic way forward in most cases.

The movie is very much a heist gone bad; the group discover an abandoned Weyland-Yutani station drifting into orbit and on course to impact the rings of their planet. As they have the means (several of them run a cargo haulier for the company which is FTL capable but has no cryopods) they decide to board the vessel and rob the means to escape the planet.

The main protagonist - Raine - is asked to help; she's a friend of the others but more importantly, she has a Weyland-Yutani synthetic who should be able to access through the security of the station. The synthetic, Andy, is defective and had been scrapped, but was salvaged and repaired by Raine's father to look after her. He is protective, tells bad dad jokes (I took notes), and comes across as quite vulnerable as his motor controls are damaged. 

Things quickly escalate and the ending leaves lots of possibilities for follow up. 

I enjoyed this a lot; it avoids the flaws of some of the other sequels, but lacks some of their ambition. I'd still love to see the final film in the Prometheus / Covenant sequence, but realise that's likely never to happen. Alien: Romulus is superior fan-service. You know what you're getting and it's very well executed. It shows more of the setting and interlinks back to past work effectively. 

Recommended.

25 August 2024

Film Trailer poster: By Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures - IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76404631

24 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 24 - Acclaimed Advice

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Acclaimed Advice?

A.  I didn't get much advice when I started, so here's some observations and sources of advice I rate.

This is kind of a strange one; my early gaming had no real advice available as I was the person who introduced roleplaying to my circle of friends. There wasn't a local club that I was aware of, so my approach was heavily flavoured by an article in a magazine and an introductory book which I picked up from the library. Soon after, White Dwarf came into general circulation (issue 52) and I took the magazine for the next five or so years until it became a support and promotion organ for Games Workshop's Warhammer catalogue. Much of the advice published in those years is still worth considering, although it may have dated.

The magazine was Space Voyager and it gave me enough of an understanding of roleplaying games that I knew that I wanted to try them. It was the very first issue, and I actually bought it for the Blakes 7 content. You can find a copy here on Archive.org. The article was written by the UK Steve Jackson, and starts on page 12.

The cover of "What is Dungeons and Dragons?" which has the head of a dragon with polyhedrals flying out from its eyes. The author's names are to the top in yellow courier style text, with the book title in courier type capitals in white below.
What is Dungeons and Dragons? by Butterfield, Baker and Honigmann

The book - What is Dungeons & Dragons? - was published by Puffin and did a great job of explaining what a roleplaying game was, how D&D works and then how other games worked. What really stood out for me was the example dungeon (The Shrine of Kollchap) and the example of play, which was the first time I saw game fiction set in one column against the game mechanics in another.

I was pretty much self-taught from then on until I started going to cons many years later. Continuum introduced me to signing up to games to see how they played (especially useful if you're struggling to follow what's written) and also attending seminars. I've used this approach to get my head around Hero Wars/HeroQuest/QuestWorlds and Gumshoe in the past, plus some of the more indie games like Blades in the Dark (although I'm still not a hundred percent certain I've really got my head around that one).

The most useful resource for me for advice is the internet. Specifically blog posts by other gamers. I much prefer to read written words than watch a video, although I realise that's probably because I'm a dinosaur. I don't get on very well with actual play videos, but I know many love them. Blog posts I especially like get clipped into Evernote.

The blog roll in the sidebar shows quite a few of the blogs that I find useful, but I have a much larger list connected to an RSS reader. If you've not used one of those, I recommend it. It picks up on the feeds from blogs and will grab some or all of the text to the reader when it updates. It serves a similar function to notifications, but the right reader will let you work offline.

I've found the Alexandrian quite thoughtful, along with Tales of the Grotesque & Dungeonesque. However, there are many others. Xaosseed does a really useful weekly set of links which are worth exploring, especially if you're interested in D&D. Traveller seems to have less posted out there, and sometimes I think that I should make more of an effort in that space because the posts I've done have triggered a lot of interaction. The Monsters Know What They're Doing is a great blog for GMs running D&D 5e as it takes apart stat blocks and looks how they work.

My advice to a starting GM is check out blogs like those by Sly Flourish and the Alexandrian, because there's a lot to learn there. By all means watch actual play videos or get into games at a local convention to get a feel. Guy's Burn after running (see blog roll) is also packed with great advice and although it's aimed at one shots, it's generally applicable.

Most importantly, start small and don't be intimidated. If you watch or see some of the productions out there, it's easy to feel like you aren't good enough. You will be; the people doing those have probably got hundreds if not thousands of hours of gaming or performance under their belt. Some of them regularly act. 

If you've got a player who's keen on the rules, then co-opt them and use them as a resource to check things. You don't have to get things exactly right; it's more important to be consistent. If you discover that you've made a mistake, then own it and discuss it with the players. You can always retcon things later or just change what you do going forward.

Make sure you've read the rules a couple of times. I find it useful to take notes and make my own cribsheet, but other people I know prefer to take a game's own cribsheet or screen and mark it up with post its or annotations.

If maps are important, get your own copy and mark up important information - even if it's just page references and names of NPCs or creatures that can be found there. Anything you can do to avoid having to look things up works well.

Be ready to change and adapt. No matter how well you know a scenario, the players will do something surprising. Roll with it; this is why a human is running these games and not a computer. Improvise, react, have fun. Be a fan of the players; your job is to challenge and help them have a fun time. It can feel like an anti-climax if the players come up with a neat plan that completely trounces the villain, but always remember that they will feel great if it all comes together right. It won't be an anti-climax for them so long as they feel that they were challenged and that their plan came off.

Don't be afraid if you get into games with your gaming heroes - designers, authors, pundits. You'll find that they're just as human as you. They may have experience or a voice, but it doesn't make them any better or worse than you.

Don't feel you need to stay at a table where you aren't enjoying things; talk to the GM or withdraw gracefully. Or throw yourself into it and try and make the most of it. 

Have fun. That's the most important thing. If it feels like work then you're probably doing things wrong; even if you're publishing games it should be fun.

24 August 2024

23 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 23 - Peerless Player

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Peerless Player?

A.  ‘Dr Mitch’.

This was a really difficult one as I know a lot of great players, especially in the GM’s club when they get the chance to let their hair down and run a game. However, when I reflected, the answer was simple.

In this case, I’m going to call out Dr Mitch, as he has been the yin to my yang, the heads to my tails during our ongoing run of Eternal Lies for Trail of Cthulhu. It’s a very intense and challenging set up to have two players and a GM. You have to carry when the other player is having an off day, for example tired from work. You have to share the spotlight and balance out each other’s character’s weaknesses. You almost need to be in a place where both of you could play the other’s character. You need a different level of generosity and focus to play like this.

We’ve been on with this for three years on and off, so have developed a deep understanding of both characters. It’s been fantastic and challenging and one of the best roleplaying experiences of my gaming life. So a big thank you to Dr Mitch!

23 August 2024 

22 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 22 - Notable Non-Player Character

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Notable Non-Player Character?

A.  Count Strahd von Zarovitch, Vampire Overlord of Barovia.

I think that for me that this needs to be Strahd. I spent sixty sessions sitting in his shoes. What I like about the character is that there are nuances there, and reasons for the darkness. Of course, that became a running joke with the players who were having none of my ‘shades of grey’ approach. They decided he was evil and needed to be ended. They even think that they did manage that.

For a time, maybe.

22 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 19/20/21 - Classic/Amazing/Spectacular Addendum

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Classic Campaign/Amazing Adventure/Spectacular Session?

A.  Cthulhu City with the Cthulhu Hack

This is the one that got away because it didn’t have an easy way to categorise it. Back in October 2018, I ran Cthulhu City at Furnace. Now, this was one of the years I didn’t write an after action report on my blog, and I suspect that any update that I did has been lost in subsequent Gaming Tavern updates. I have found some notes that I called the session ‘Weeping for the Memories of Lives Gone By’ but I can’t find any photographs from the day itself. It was the very last session of the convention; always a risk running then as people tend to be tired. It was also memorable because it was the last time I played with one of the strongest GMs I knew, someone who has subsequently passed away. As an individual, they could be very marmite, but as a player and GM they were superb. Mostly. As a con organiser, they could sometimes be a nightmare.

Cthulhu City is a sourcebook for Trail of Cthulhu which didn’t quite hit the mark for me when I read it, as it lacked guidance in how to use it, but it intrigued me enough that I wanted to run something set it in. The set up is that Arkham is a huge metropolis where the Elder Gods exist and are openly worshipped. The book reminded me of a gazetteer. What it provides is a sandbox campaign space, which I then ran as a single adventure in a single session.

In preparation, I went through the book and took copious notes on organisations, their motivations and locations on index cards, printed an A1 map of the city on splashproof paper (and added it to the table when the players found a map) and then set up a kicker that characters from the University ended up finding themselves in Cthulhu City after an evening together. They ended up trying to find a way out.

I decided to run the game using the Cthulhu Hack, which fits my sensibilities really well. It’s lightweight, fun and just fades away into the background. I felt that it ran faster than either Trail or Call of Cthulhu.

I can remember it running with noir overtones, as the group desperately tried to find a way out of the City and back to their reality. I can’t recall if everyone escaped, but I do know that we had fun when it happened. It’s one of those games that comes back to recollection every so often.

I actually sold the sourcebook and map afterwards, as I figured I’d probably got the use out of this that I would, but every now and again I get tempted to pick it up again.

Anyway, I couldn’t work out which of the three days that this fitted in, so it’s got its own entry.

22 August 2024

21 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 21 - Classic Campaign

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Classic Campaign?

A.  The Darkening of Mirkwood for The One Ring RPG

My immediate thought went to Twilight’s Peak for Traveller, which I’ve mentioned in previous years. However, I think this is asking something different.

I’m tempted to answer Black Sword / Stealer of Souls for Stormbringer, which I’ve run twice and loved both times, but instead I’m going to go with something that I’ve played rather than GMed or just read.

Shortlist then;

Albion’s Ransom for Esoterrorists. Set in the North of the UK and Scotland mainly, this is an epic campaign of modern horror using the Gumshoe system made all the more real by the familiar locations.

Eternal Lies for Trail of Cthulhu. I have read this (way back when it first came out) and I’m playing it right now. This is creepy, evocative and scary and I find it a level about Masks of Nyarlathotep, which was my previous favourite Cthulhu-based campaign. Impossible Lies for Delta Green is the only campaign I’ve read that potentially rivals this. Part of the reason I’m enjoying it so much may be because we’ve a duo of players, but the writing and atmosphere is really strong in Eternal Lies. I talk a bit about it here.

The Dracula Dossier for Night’s Black Agents is more of a campaign frame than a campaign, but my experience of it was superb. Spies and vampires across Europe and one of the biggest player handouts ever. Fantastic.

The Darkening of Mirkwood for The One Ring. This was fantastic. Tolkien - and especially the Hobbit - was one of my early influences and the chance to play an epic campaign around Mirkwood was fantastic. We faced Nazgûl, Giant Spiders, Orcs and men corrupted by greed or the evil of the Necromancer. We nearly died crossing the wastelands of what was Angmar and met Beorn. Altogether epic and fantastic. It is such a same that this campaign is now out of print because of the change of publisher. I can’t believe that it’s five years since we completed that campaign. Anyway, the link here will take you to various One Ring related posts including some snapshots from the campaign.

So what do I choose?

I’m going to go with The Darkening of Mirkwood, if only because we’ve played all the way through it (and Eternal Lies is only half way through), but it was very, very close.

21 August 2024

PS I did consider adding in The Yellow King to this list, but we’re still very much up in the air on this and have only played through two periods of the game. I hope we get back to this again too!

20 August 2024

#RPGaDay 2024 - 20 - Amazing Adventure

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Amazing Adventure?

A.  I6 Ravenloft for AD&D.

I have two contenders for the ‘Amazing Adventure’ crown; one for Traveller and the other for AD&D. This is mainly because several of the others that I would use I’ve yet to get to the table so they’re only amazing in theory.

The Traveller option is Death Station, an adventure where the players end up boarding an abandoned laboratory ship where things have gone wrong. I’ve both played and run this. In fact, I think it was the first time that I actually played Traveller rather than running it. I encountered it in a session run at the FLGS we had for a short while in Alsager. Playing in what was originally the kitchen of a small house, we had scares and excitement as we crept though the abandoned lab. I had the same experience from the GMs seat so this one has stuck with me.

The AD&D option is I6 Ravenloft. I’ve run this many times, most recently in the expanded long form take of Curse of Strahd. It’s an adventure and setting that I keep going back to. I think it manages to interweave dungeoneering with gothic horror wonderfully, and when run right it can terrify the most experienced and powerful party.

I’ll pick Ravenloft for this.

20 August 2024

19 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 19 - Spectacular Session

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Spectacular Session?

A.  Berlin-87 for Cartel (and Character-vs- Character games in general)

Spectacular sessions are hard to do, because there’s a whole mix of ingredients that you need make them work. Convention games are the epitome of these, and perhaps even harder to get right because they’re often with a group of strangers. Guy writes an excellent blog which is packed with advice on running one-shots well, which I wholeheartedly recommend.

To get a good session, you need compelling characters that the players are invested in. Ideally you want them to be engaging with each other, perhaps with a little joking and snark. For a one-shot, this is often harder unless the system or the GM deliberately sets things up to do this. They need objectives (which may not quite align) and crosslinks to each other.

I quite like PVP games for this because they explicitly give players permission to both engage with each other and interact. I really don’t like the tag PVP though because while it is appropriate for online games, in tabletop roleplaying games it should always be CVC - character vs character. Explicitly, if you play a game like this you are giving other players permission for their characters to do mean things to your character and vice-versa. Hopefully, a shared objective will help avoid things coming off the rails.

A plot isn’t essential. It helps, but it isn’t essential. I’ve played and run sessions where the players have just got into their characters and had a bunch of fun interacting. Often you sigh and lay the plot to one side at that point, knowing that they’ll get back to it at some point. Sometimes these are the best sessions ever. In the recent game of the Berlin-87 setting for Cartel at Revelation, the characters had the general mission to get an agent out of East Berlin without creating too much noise, but their personal agendas dominated. The nominal plot was a backdrop.

The most spectacular sessions that I’ve played or run have tended to be those with CVC tendencies. Blood Operas for Conspiracy of Shadows, Cartel drug based conflicts, The Slow Knife - a story of revenge, and most recently the Berlin-87 game.

So for this, I’ll pick Berlin-87.

19 August 2024

18 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 18 - Memorable Moment of Play

 

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Memorable Moment of Play?

A.  After 40 years gaming, there are many; shortlist below.

First of all, I’m not going to mention anything from Curse of Strahd, even though there were many moments in that. I’ve written everything up from that campaign except the final session, so you can read here if you fancy 60 sessions of Barovian fun.

I find that a lot of things fade after games; I’m not good at holding onto the detail like some of my friends, but here are some of the things that have lasted.

As a player:

From Steve’s run of the Dracula Dossier at Longcon;

  • Absolute terror on a bridge covered in mist at night as our contacts were attacked by agents of Dracula or perhaps the big bad himself. Reader, we ran away.
  • A scene on the sea wall at Staithes where my character talked down Julian’s character who was a traitor until then.
  • Destroying Dracula at the end (with a rocket propelled grenade), but having to kill my character’s closest friend in the team as they’d been turned. and more
My detached and damaged cold war former agent facing down the enemy in a nuclear submarine at the end of Rich’s campaign of Albion’s Ransom for The Esoterrorists and dying to save my colleagues and the world. A form of redemption.

Knowing what happened to Beorn when he disappeared between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings because we were there in Dr Mitch’s The One Ring game.

As a GM;

A clear memory of the ending of Song of Loeul, a Stormbringer game hacked into Wordplay where the players cunningly stacked the odds at the climax to make it a walk over. I was worried I’d made it too easy but the players delighted in their ingenuity.

The moment in a run of Delta 3 is Down from Traveller at UK Gencon at Loughborough when I vapourised the party. The scenario is one where you’re a group of Zhodani trying to escape off an Imperial world after you’ve been shot down. They decided to fly onto the spaceport in the equivalent of a Ford Transit van (an Air/Truck version of an Air/Raft); as the base was on full alert, the starship laser batteries to defend it were live. The party decided to avoid all stealth and go in high and fast. They could have flown under the guns, but didn’t. They ignored the two warning shots and so I vapourised them. There was a moment of stunned silence and then one of the said ‘Well, fair enough, we were being a bit daft going in like that’. Phew.

The moment that the party faced off with Elric in Black Sword/Stealer of Souls under TRIPOD this Longcon, and lived to walk away. That and the debauched night in the Melnibonéan camp that set Debbie’s character on a different path which left the space to survive.

The campaign killing death of one of the character’s - Art - in my Traveller Twilight’s Peak campaign leaving SteveH’s character Kira pregnant and bereft, and the campaign imploding in its wake. I do have a wonderful write-up on this by Steve, which means I really should get my website live again (or put it here).

I’ll stop now…

18 August 2024

17 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 17 - An engaging RPG community

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. An engaging RPG community?

A. Dice.Camp on Mastodon.

There are three RPG related communities that I’m currently involved with; two virtual and one very much face-to-face. Two of them I’m involved with organising, so I am a little biased. However, in both those cases I became involved in organising them as I’m invested in them and they wanted help.

First up is the Garricon community, the people who attend to run and play roleplaying games at the Garrison Hotel in Sheffield. This all started nearly 19 years ago with the first Furnace (named after the steel making industry which dominated Sheffield), and reader, I was there. The idea was a very focussed convention that was ‘all about the games’. There were no seminars or other such frippery (joking, I’ve enjoyed such at Continuum in the past) as the initial organisers wanted a laser focus on gameplay. It proved popular and, although the format has evolved slightly on feedback, the convention remains essentially the same. Every October, somewhere between 65 and 75 gamers descend on a former military gaol-house for a weekend of fun. I joined the committee about five years in, when most of the original organisers left, with only Graham Spearing remaining from the original committee. Since then, we’ve added in Revelation (a Powered-by-the-Apocalypse and Forged-in-the-Dark focused con in February) and North Star (an SF RPG focused con) but Furnace remains the jewel in the crown. Seven Hills runs along as a cousin with different organisers. We do have a core of attendees that go to all the cons, but it’s nice to meet the slightly different groups that attend for the different flavours that float their boat.

Next up is the Gaming Tavern, an online forum set up by Tom Zunder. This is an old-style bulletin board, mainly populated by UK gamers (but open to all). What I like about it is that mostly it avoids fractious engagements and people are pleasant, thoughtful and engaging. Speaking as an admin, we have had the occasional clash, but we’ve done our best to manage it. It’s reasonably low traffic; add that to friendly, and it’s a nice place to hangout. Again, I’m an admin as Tom wanted some support.

The final community I really value is the Mastodon gaming community which I’ve come to know through the Dice Camp server. I found Twitter an echo chamber and abandoned it eighteen months ago when they killed off Twitteriffic, and have since found a much more engaging social media group to be involved in. It’s nice to get the friendly engagement and discussions that I see there. It’s also interesting that posts and blog entries shared there get far more engagement than those on Twitter or Facebook (even though in theory I had more followers on both platforms). It took adjusting to (for example, the need to use hashtags to make search and engagement work) but I like it and the open source ethos. Some of my friends have gone to Bluesky, but even though I have an account there I’ve not found a compelling reason to invest time there. 

So which to choose? 

I think I’m going to go with Dice Camp and Mastodon because that’s something that’s been a big change for me over the last 18 months; the others have been constants over the last two decades.

17 August 2024 

PS I don’t mention BITS Traveller, as that’s mostly been on hold since the pandemic. However, that’s about to change.


16 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 16 - Quick to Learn

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Quick to Learn?

A. Mausrítter, as I’ve already picked TRIPOD.

Two of the games from the start of my gaming spring out as easy to learn. Call of Cthulhu’s iteration of BRP, and Traveller

Traveller is a simple roll 2D6, add a skill and get 8+ to succeed at its heart. You can see an evolved variant on this on Paul Mitchener’s Liminal, which doesn’t have the layered complexity that Traveller hides underneath. That layered complexity - lifepath character generation, starship combat, worldbuilding, starship construction etc. mean that Traveller is more complex as you dig into the game. However, it’s very much emergent when you need it rather than being throughout the game. It does make it quick to learn, as you only really need the subsystems as you get to them.

Call of Cthulhu was a very simple iteration of the percentile basic roleplaying engine from Chaosium. All the complexities seen in RuneQuest fall away and you’re left with an elegant and simple game. However, along the years that simple and elegant game has accumulated cruft and rather than the short and complete rulebook that my battered second edition copy from Games Workshop presents, the game has bloated with two large core books. Now some of this is art, and some of this is extra material and explanations, but some of it is overwriting. It’s lost its simplicity of presentation, something you’d only get to with the Quick Start booklet. 

It’s interesting that a lot of systems come with free Quick Starts these days, or Starter Boxes. I think that they’re great (especially the free ones) for getting a taste of the game. I think that they’re a necessity with the price of games these days. That’s not a critique of prices, by the way. The books we get now are a world of difference from the staple-bound black and white short volumes or boxed sets I got as a youth. Now we have glorious colour, lots of art and hardcover volumes with quality components. That’s why gaming books cost significantly more (that and inflation). We get what we pay for.

My lack of familiarity with FATE in play (I’ve never run it and only played a couple of sessions and read some games built from it) means that I know it’s a contender in this category, but I can’t speak about it with any authority. So that knocks FATE out.

TRIPOD would be my natural winner here. Simple descriptions of a character with narrative traits, add a base attribute (Body, Mind or Soul) and a relevant trait to get a number of D6s in a dice pool, then roll them. 6s give two successes, 4 to 5 one success, total the number and the margin by which you win or lose creates a trait that’s applied to the winner or loser. If you gain a big enough margin, it’ll be a complete victory. There’s lovely touches too where you pass another player a dice to roll if you help, so you can see if you made a difference. However, I’ve used TRIPOD before, so I’m going to pick something else for this. I’m going to pick the game that I introduced my kids to roleplaying with, Mausrítter.

The view from the GM’s table side - Mausrítter book to the left (green with a hole cut in it and a mouse with a torch within), a summary sheet showing time spent and character summaries to the right, then in the background some orange polyhedral dice and the GM Screen.
Mausrítter from the GM’s side.

Mausrítter has a really stripped back game engine, using a D20 to make saves against three primary attributes. It’s an evolution of Into the Odd which I’ve talked about before on the blog here, with my initial review here. I ran it for my lads two years ago and it worked really well (first session here and follow up here). The tactile approach for components and the simple engine, not to mention the cute setting, make it an excellent and easy to learn game. 

A photo of two Mausrítter character sheets on a table with an iPhone lying to the left (with a dark screen). The sheets are anchored down with a cannon and the phone against the breeze. The simple inventory system is on show with counters for equipment.
Tactile and simple character sheets

As a result, I choose Mausrítter as my ‘Quick-to-Learn’.

16 August 2024

15 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 15 - Great Character Gear

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Great Character Gear?

A. It’s complicated.

I can remember pouring over the AD&D equipment lists and all the cool items, especially the magic ones, in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. I can recall being super-excited by all the different assault, plasma, gauss and other paraphernalia in the 2300AD rules and linking them back to the Aliens movie and more in my head. The Cyberpunk 2020 gear books were also kind of cool.

These days, I find the whole equipment list thing tedious and boring. I much prefer the approach taken by games like Blades in the Dark, where you pick a load-out that may trigger a mechanical effect, but can select what gear you want as things go along, and perhaps use a flashback to make it credible if you want something outlandish. Alternatively, the GUMSHOE preparedness pool is your friend; a simple dice roll to get hold of something in the event that you really need it (an approach they extended to contacts in their spy game); if you really want it, you spend more of your pool to get it.

A snip of the equipment list from Blades in the Dark showing a load selection of 3, 5,  or 7 objects, with a list of typical items below.
Chef’s kiss to Blades in the Dark for simplicity

I do like a good unique item, and I am fascinated but yet to be convinced on Cyphers in Numenera and beyond.

I have posted regularly on OSR games in this blog; they tend to be more mechanistic about this kind of thing, and I’ve actually ended up letting the players drive encumbrance and equipment, or adopted a simple system to manage it. Mausrítter has a lovely simple way of managing this kind of thing.

15 August 2024


14 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 14 - Compelling Characters


The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Compelling Characters?

A. City of Mist.

Again, a prompt rather than a question.

I think that you need one of two things to make a game strong; compelling characters or a compelling environment/situation where the characters can emerge. In a perfect world, you’d want both.

Compelling situations & environments are those that pull actions from the players to make their characters do things. For example, the classic D&D dungeon does that. You usually start with a rag-tag group of heroes who have somewhat tenuous reasons to be together, and the actions that they take against the (mostly) hostile environment help the players to explore and build the characters. In an OSR style environment, there’s also a sense of fragility and likelihood that death may strike at any time if your luck runs away. D&D 3e onwards is more about a heroic journey and death is much less of threat than its older siblings (but that’s a whole other discussion).

A lot of earlier games don’t really build compelling characters. I think that the first edition of King Arthur Pendragon was the first time I started to see mechanics being used in games to start to make characters more compelling; the paired personality traits and passions gave mechanics to drive character behaviour and make them more than just a set of numbers that determined how you could fight.

When I was more regularly writing material for gaming conventions, I’d spend around half the time on the character sheets, giving the characters a short backstory and reasons to engage with each other. These were hooks to drive engagement quickly.  I realised that if the players were having fun by riffing off each other, they tended to have a great time whether or not they succeeded at the story. This was all built on top of the core Traveller character sheet; a second page with table that gave the hooks on how they felt about or what they wanted from other characters along with a background to draw in.

These days, I tend to use games which will lend themselves to doing this with their mechanics. When I run Powered by the Apocalypse based games, a key part of this is completing the character playbooks at the table so people can build the interactions between their characters which are baked into the game engine. They create stronger signposts about how the GM should engage with their characters. This isn’t exclusive to PbtA; games like Numenera have really clear signposts when they describe a character as ‘I am an adjective noun who verbs’. Creating bonds and links between characters and motivations for the whole groupare at the core of modern game design.

A game that I particularly like that does this is City of Mist. Each character is a combination of four themes, each of which describes a core aspect of their identity or a mystery that they absolutely want to get to the bottom of. There are potential consequences if you fail to lean into these areas. There are also weaknesses that mean that the character can get into trouble but learn from it. At a group (Crew) level, there’s also a shared theme card for them as a whole. This is packaged with some glorious looking character sheets of you want to use them at the table, with great artwork and all the key mechanics showing on them. So I’ll choose City of Mist for this answer.

14 August 2024

City of Mist character sheets laid out on the table in front of the City of Mist Starter box set which is laid side on, and partly over a MacBook Pro with a black screen. The characters are (left): Mairead Conroy, Ghostface, Bassie and (right): Salamander, Declan L’Estrange
City of Mist Character sheets

13 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 13 - Evocative Environments


The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Evocative Environments?

A. Traveller.

Well, that isn’t really a question, is it? 

A quick look at my iPad’s built in dictionary links gives me this.
EVOCATIVE
adjective
bringing strong images, memories, or feelings to mind: powerfully evocative lyrics / the building's cramped interiors are highly evocative of past centuries.
ORIGIN
mid 17th century: from Latin evocativus, from evocat- 'called forth', from the verb evocare.

Usually, I find that the setting itself has an impact on how evocative a roleplaying game is, but the prompt is calling out environments. I think that this really knocks out most of the games that are tied to third party IPs, because they are as much the settings and the plots that you’ve seen there. So that means games like Pelgrane Press’ The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game (which I’m re-reading at the moment), Star Wars, and most of Modiphius’ output are really not an option here. I also think that a lot of the Powered by the Apocalypse games are out, as the environment itself is usually a weak layer built on interaction prompts in playbooks.


Traveller always screamed ‘space’ at me, as it very well represented the kind of science fiction that I grew up with. The environments described by Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Andre Norton and CJ Cherryh all called out to me from the game’s writing and made me believe that you could play all those kinds of stories.

Twilight 2000 is another; there was a realistic feel to the environment that it described even though the truth of even a limited nuclear exchange was likely to me far more catastrophic; I was always interested in seeing how people would respond to that situation (although a lot of the follow on material printed seemed to veer of in different directions). The flavour it evoked for me was a reminder of the British Apocalypse type story, JG Ballard, John Wyndham and more. However, Hot War came along later and absolutely nailed this kind of feeling for me.

Blue Planet and some of the 2300AD planetary supplements like the Aurore Sourcebook evoked feeling of very different and alien worlds, but anchored in enough of our world’s environment to feel real and strange at the same time.

A|State gives this wonderfully evocatively strange city in some kind of weird setting but then completely ignores that to focus on a tiny corner and the struggles of a neighbourhood. I love the way that this is done, but sometimes I wonder if it’s missing something.

Some games seem to miss this; my initial skim read through the two newish Numenera core books (Discovery and Destiny) has left me excited by the characters, the way that they are described and the simplicity of the game engine, but I find some of the world building descriptions of the environments just a bit plain and mundane, almost a bit traditional D&D. I’m curious whether my view of this will change as I read them.

I’ve found books like The Ultraviolet Grasslands and The Vaults of Vaarn very evocative; they are very much about the setting (in both cases a post-apocalyptic feel world of plains and deserts). Acid Death Fantasy does this really well in the spaces between the character information. They all have the same vibe  and are adjacent to the feel of the Dying Earth.

So where do I end up? Ultimately, the answer I’ll give is Traveller, because if in doubt Traveller is always my answer. My first and enduring love as a roleplaying game, something that is definitive and evocative due to the science-fiction of my youth.

The truth is, the way Traveller is constructed, it has sub-systems that allow you to create an evocative setting which you’re invested it. You can design all the starships you want. You can create sectors of space to explore, and detail the star systems therein. You can dive deeper and create the creatures and environs that you explore. Traveller gives you procedural generation for your space adventures, with scaleable detail; you can gave a star-system described in a string of text by its UWP or dive into more detail with world maps and more. 

Traveller lets you build evocative environments with ease. One of my earliest writing projects that failed to see the light of day (as Marc Miller’s Traveller T4 ended) was taking a subsector in space with a list of UWPs and some of the future background material (as the original setting was a thousand years in the future) and then describing the star systems for a player to explore. It made me realise the flexibility of the game engine and how much you could draw from a simple set of data points created from the mechanics.

So Traveller it is.

13 August 2024

Playing catch up here due to work and preparing to go away for a few days.

12 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 12 - RPG with well supported campaigns?

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. RPG with well supported campaigns?

A. Spire

The easy, obvious choice for this is D&D 5e. There are multiple official campaigns and many more from third parties. Some are excellent, other less so. Brancalonia looks excellent, and the Historica Arcanum books also inspire me. Neverland is also well worth a look.

It's also worth calling out the many OSR supplements that are out there at the moment, all of which look excellent for campaigns. Personal favourites include Castle Xyntillan; the author also has a whole set of zines called Echoes from Fomalhaut which have an extended campaign world. I also think that Wulfwald, which I've just finished, will be right up there. It's a full Anglo-Saxon game world and hack for OSR style systems and looks excellent (review coming soon). The Ultraviolet Grasslands is also another OSR derived campaign I'd love to explore.

I also really like the way that the new edition of Blue Planet has multiple campaign frames to help you get your games underway. Red Sky Charters is excellent and several of the extra ones in the final book also make me want to run them. However, I called out Blue Planet in a previous post so I'll give another game an opportunity here.

However, I'm going to go with Spire. Spire is a game where you play Drow freedom fighters / terrorists in a megacity pushing back against Aelfir (light elf) oppression. There are a number of different campaign frames which I've read that inspire me. The Kings of Silver, where you run a Drow nightclub and gambling den, really called out to me, but there are others like Eidolon Sky and Blood & Dust that also looked great. The supplements Sin, Strata and the various related Kickstarter goodies are in my to-read pile as well with more opportunities for a campaign. There's a lot to draw on and I think you could get a great campaign from this.

12 August 2024

11 August 2024

#RPGaDay2024 - 11 - RPG with well supported one-shots

The RPGaDay2024 graphic. Three columns of prompts for discussions about RPGs. You can find a full text list atP https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html
This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. RPG with well supported one-shots?

A. City of Mist.

I've run one or two games of City of Mist at Revelation and Furnace each year for the last few years. I've never written a scenario. Each scenario has been taken from the campaigns and adventures that have been released to support the game, ranging from the starter set, through to Nights of Payne Town (the epic campaign) and Local Legends (the about to be released supplement) and also some of the fan-created scenarios. 

The game is built around a supernatural-noir detective case format, which means that the adventures are pretty self-contained, even if they are in an arc. You don't usually need to know what has happened before to make them work. I've not had one go bad as yet from a GM's perspective, and I have had repeat customers at cons so it must land well with the players. 

Hence my choice is City of Mist.

11 August 2024