Sunday I ran a Cthulhutech one-off titled “Fear and Loathing on the Plateau of Leng”. It’s something of a last hurrah for me, almost certainly the last chance I’ll have to run a game here before I move in May. Also one of the larger games I’ve run in a while, with seven players, and [...]
The more SR4 I play, the more I really like the system. It has a rather nasty learning curve — the book is incredibly difficult to navigate at the table, and it’s complex enough that for quite a few sessions, there’s a lot of dead time while people flip through muttering “I swear, I saw [...]
Ye gods, have I been neglecting this space.
Sorry about some of the layout issues for the last week. Updated WordPress for security reasons and it blew up the tools I was using for the “Cantrips” entries. Have disabled those until I have time to fix it properly.
The RPG industry has failed to motivate me. 4e [...]
So, with scheduling issues, we’ve only gotten in a few sessions of Red Hand of Doom. In the initial phases, the group handily curb-stomped a few hobgoblins, which is fine. There was a hydra encounter in a swamp that could have gone very badly, but the hydra rolled a natural 1 vs. drow poison and, [...]
Forge of Fury ended last night with the players taking out the black dragon and collecting their lewts.
Here’s a thing, and I will mention it again in a future post, no doubt: module writers do not understand encounter level. A young black dragon is a CR 5 monster, and since he’s a dragon, he has [...]
He returns!
Yes, yes. I still haven’t worked up the energy to finish reviewing 4e, but I wanted to get caught up on AiP posts, so he’s some catch-up.
Level 3 didn’t really change the game a lot, but it is the point where players at least have enough HP that an unlucky swing isn’t likely to [...]
Second session, and since level 1 is dull, we advanced to level 2 at the beginning. Good thing too.
Quote of the night, while searching for a mysterious beeping: “It’s not the Armor Class. Uh. Air conditioner.” Some slight acronym confusion, there.
Kad’dath Leoban, Human Jester 2. Second level Jesters get their Charisma bonus to saves, which [...]
So, we kicked off the first session of James’s House Rules Extravaganza tonight, opening up with The Sunless Citadel, a reasonably good first level module. For reference, I may post a link to the Tome of Houserules at some point, but in any case I’ll highlight differences as I go along.
The Party:
Kadath Leoban, Human Jester [...]
With one of my extant D&D games winding down due to the GM’s impending departure from the region (job, moving, &c.), I have a suspiciously game-sized hole in my schedule.
I also have a whole stack of rules revisions that I’d like to see on the table. Stuff like class replacements, a refactored economy and magic [...]
Iron, Flame, and Shadow has ended, after a year and a half of experimentation, adventuring, and triumph. We pushed Ptolus to the limit, with six (five, towards the end when one moved out of town) optimized gestault characters romping their way from underground Yuan-Ti cities, through the Banewarrens, and all the way up to Goth [...]
Ptolus: Iron, Flame, and Shadow resumes tonight, as the players head into a mysterious shadow plane to battle the forces of the Pact and recover Captain Tourmann before he spills the secrets of the Circle and makes everyone very sad.
Gnomes are not in the 4th Edition core. I love it. Stupid gnomes. Always gnoming it [...]
Been busy with work and other things. Including, actually, quite a lot of tabletop play, which is always nice. In a short-form high-level D&D game, which is actually my first experience with the high-level 3.X game. I’ll have some insights to share once the game is over.
Also, finally running Mage: The Ascension again. Have thrown [...]
or, Things I Learned This Weekend.
The Gold Faction of the Sidereals are curiously okay with plans like “get a friendly raksha to build a Freehold in the middle of Creation so you have somewhere to hide a couple thousand First Age refugees”, but totally against plans like “use the Lap to blow up the Imperial [...]
Another long hiatus – I got caught up in work, a short trip out of town, building a new computer, and a variety of games determined to keep me from posting. The good news is, I have three reviews in the pipeline: White Wolf’s Scion: Hero and Manual of Exalted Power: Lunars, and 7th Circle’s [...]
One of the major reasons I haven’t been doing these writeups lately is that, since we’ve started into the Banewarrens, it’s been pretty much dungeon crawling and combat, which are somewhat boring to write about.
You wouldn’t think that, since combat is all about Kicking Ass. But I’m lousy at writing up combat scenes, especially when [...]
Somehow, this seems vaguely familiar…
This? This is something I absolutely suck at.
How the GM got his groove back.
Very delayed. Apologies for that. Just been that kind of week.
Cross-posted as usual.
“What do we want!” “Braaaaaains.” “When do we want it!” “Braaaaaaaaains.”
Another new experiment in trying to find a more interesting way to write these up. I take suggestions, too.
Crossposted as usual.
A huge green fierce snake bars the way!
A shorter writeup than usual – heavy combat session, and not really feeling the long and detailed writing.
Crossposted as usual.
Slow down, you move too fast. Got to make spell durations last.
Now in a newer, more narrative style, because “and then” recitations are boring. Only it takes a lot longer to write, hence the delay.
Crossposted as usual.
(Delay on this and lack of posts in general due to being otherwise busy, not just with FFXII, but also with emergency car-shopping following a collision.)
Because everyone loves Yuan-Ti. Or I do, anyway, and generalizing from one example is right and proper.
Crossposted as usual.
I think my players are paranoid.
Crossposted as usual.
Right, then. Next time, I’m cranking it higher: To 11.
Crossposted as usual.
This was a short one, since I mostly just wanted to finish out the pre-written adventure I was using.
Crossposted on RPG.net as usual.
Today’s lesson: Book of Nine Swords is pretty dangerous in gestault.
As usual, from memory and notes, so accuracy isn’t 100%; cross-posted to RPG.net.
Spoiler: They all survived.
Extended writeup below the cut. All conversations recorded from memory, not guaranteed to be perfect. Also cross-posted to RPG.net.
Extended session writeup below the cut. Also posted on RPG.net’s Actual Play forum.
This post is obsolete as of 10/13. The house rules are now posted on their own page, instead of in a normal blog post, for ease of access. This post will remain for any legacy links.
Here are the character creation and house rules I’m planning to go with for my upcoming D&D game. Thoughts are [...]
This is a general-interest question, but I think/hope most of my regular gaming group read here, so it’s the easiest way for me to inquire.
My copy of Dogs in the Vineyard arrived yesterday. And yes, it’s pretty brilliant, but what really hit me was just how perfect it is for a 40K Inquisitors game.
Would people [...]
Things I learned playing Weapons of the Gods tonight:
Tactical Opposition kicks ass.
You’re misreading that rule.
No seriously, you’re still misreading it.
Try again.
Check the errata.
Who the fuck edited this book?
Remember Tactical Opposition? Yup: Still kicks ass.
Really, though, I kid because I love. Great game.
Sat in on the Weapons of the Gods intro module last night, and running through it myself today (GM has like 9 people who expressed interest in the game, so we’re all running through the intro module to see who actually likes it). Went okay, given that no one at the table had ever played [...]
Background music in games.
On the one hand, it completely breaks game for the GM to say “Hold on, need to set the track.” On the other, unless you’re using really strict, timed scene framing, it’s pointless to try to put a timed playlist together for the game, because the pre-combat scene with your primary antagonist [...]
My copy of Everway came in a few days ago, and I’ve been looking over it. Everway, for those not in the know, was an RPG published by Wizards of the Coast prior to their acquisition of TSR. It uses some interesting card-based mechanics for a variety of things, including chargen. Basically, it feels at [...]
Saw A Scanner Darkly. This is not a place for movie reviews, so I won’t comment on its quality.
But it did make me want to run any of several Unknown Armies games. PKD’s stories in general make great UA fodder, especially given his habit of playing around with reader perception and story framing, but this [...]
I want to play in this WotG game.
I mean, c’mon, everythings better with Cthulhu.
I was really happy with last night’s Trinity session. In brief: The PCs are investigating pre-Crash financial records, and uncover evidence that a large, powerful shipping cartel was, and might still be, involved in arms and drug smuggling. Their mission: Pretty much, blackmail said shipping company for more pre-Crash data and some encryption tech.
I got [...]
A friend of mine recently had a post about the standard 13/26 episode formats in anime, and it’s something that I think is applicable to campaign design too. Note that this is from the perspective of GM-as-scenario-writer, where the PCs have agency within the framework of a general plot, but the tacit assumption is that [...]
