2019-04-02 Blog Findings

I’ve been posting links to other blogs on Mastodon every now and then. Let me try and repost then them here and now. It’s a continuation of 2019-02-21 RPG Blog Highlights?

2019-02-21 RPG Blog Highlights?

Delta was invited to run a boss monster at a convention. «to participate as something of a co-DM, namely, the dedicated brains behind the boss – here, Flame, an ancient red dragon of maximum size, power, and spellcasting ability, from the Dungeon Magazine ​#1 adventure “Into the Fire”. … by separating the jobs here, Paul could focus on rulings on player actions, while I had the whole 10 minutes or so to meditate on my options» – Delta's D&D Hotspot: Co-DMs for Boss Fights

Delta's D&D Hotspot: Co-DMs for Boss Fights

Maybe I should do that, too. In our chat channel, don’t just ask who’s coming to the next game but also adding a rumor or two. «Rumours are a … must have for sandbox gaming. Without that information the player characters … just go along with the adventure du jour …. However, self motivated PCs are gold for a gamesmaster, therefore throwing out as many hooks and tit bits of setting info as possible for them to bite on is elementary to enabling them to be so.» – How Heavy This Axe: Things That Have Worked: Rumour Posts

How Heavy This Axe: Things That Have Worked: Rumour Posts

Jens talks about things I didn’t know about the D&D Rules Cyclopedia: «did you ever think that the reputation D&D has for being about killing things and taking their stuff is unjustified? I did and there is yet another odd thing about the D&D Rules Cyclopedia that could shed some light on why that is so.Just killing monsters and taking their stuff? No, definitely not.» And then he talks about all the extra rules I didn’t know about. – The Disoriented Ranger: Rules Cyclopedia Oddities Part 5: Experience

The Disoriented Ranger: Rules Cyclopedia Oddities Part 5: Experience

I like the idea of D&D as competitive story telling. «Every player has a story planned for their characters. Maybe they are “meant” to become kings, make their deities proud, or slay an old nemesis. The GM - or the NPCs - have their own story planned out - Strahd destroys his enemies or captures his unwilling bride, etc. Players and GM compete to see which story becomes “real”.» – Methods & Madness: D&D as COMPETITIVE STORYTELLING

Methods & Madness: D&D as COMPETITIVE STORYTELLING

Actually, got involved in a discussion with some people on Mastodon regarding that blog post and wrote some more about it.

I think I agree because I enjoy stories of adversity and overcoming. I’ve had feel good sessions where all the plans work, all the NPCs agree, all the enemies see the error of their ways, and at the end of the day the accomplishment rang hollow. It still happens at my table, but rarely. How do you look at it?

By the way, when I ran the Luke Crane family of games conflicting story lines wasn’t really the vibe I got. It was a lot of meta discussion about helping dice and which tests to make, so the games did not work for me at all even though I invested about 15 sessions into Burning Wheel, Mouse Guard, and Torchbearer. I guess I just find it very simple to run a game of “how much are you willing to sacrifice for what you believe?” without rule support. That’s why D&D variants work just as well for me.

I didn’t think the blog post was talking about player vs player too much and I don’t enjoy that at my table, either. But sometimes I have a character arc in mind for my own player character and don’t mind sacrificing them to get that closure so in this particular sense, I have my own agenda in addition to all the agendas we do share.

Back to links all over the place!

Who doesn’t need a map for Tower McDemonFace? “This map is made available to you under a free license for personal or commercial use …” – Release the Kraken on the Tower-Faced Demon! | Dyson's Dodecahedron

Release the Kraken on the Tower-Faced Demon! | Dyson's Dodecahedron

Waves and clouds, Japan, 1903. If you need some abstract patterns for your stuff.

Waves and clouds

Delta writes about cool stuff like throwing spears! «one of the edits I made was to change the penalty for range from a short/medium/long categorization to a flat −1 per 10 feet shot … “External ballistics of Pleistocene hand-thrown spears: experimental performance data and implications for human evolution.” … It’s always super neat to see people putting historical speculations to practical tests -- especially this one, based on a 300,000 year-old find.» – Delta's D&D Hotspot: On Throwing Spears

Delta's D&D Hotspot: On Throwing Spears

Random names, pages and pages of it. 100 for each nation of the Flanaess, but who cares because you get a 100 names each for all the various cultures of your setting. – Random Names for the Flanaess | Original D&D Discussion

Random Names for the Flanaess | Original D&D Discussion

If I understand it correctly, generated using this shareware software appropriately called “Everchanging Book of Names” – EBoN - Download

EBoN - Download

I think I’m going to like this (and it���s free): “If you’re looking for some wicked-twisted spells that a cyborg sorcerer from a shoggoth-haunted nuclear waste-land might have on-hand … Here is a collection of over 100 strange new spells that combine magic and technology in bizarre, unsettling and often horrific ways best suited to Lovecraftian Space Opera, Eldritch Cyberpunk, Post-Apocalyptic Sword & Planet campaigns, settings or games.” – Space Age Sorcery Version 1.5 - Hereticwerks | DriveThruRPG.com

Space Age Sorcery Version 1.5 - Hereticwerks | DriveThruRPG.com

Anne writes about a “a sub-scene of RPG bloggers who use the Goblin Laws of Gaming, aka, the GLOG. So just who is this GLOGosphere? Who are the GLOGgers?” – DIY & Dragons: Who is the GLOGosphere?

DIY & Dragons: Who is the GLOGosphere?

How Michael “Chicago Wiz” does wilderness encounters: “Me: It’s the 8th day of Autumn and you’ve loaded up your supplies and are ready to leave town. Do you do anything else or do you head out? Players: We go! Off to the fort! Me: Well, (reading notes) Fortune smiles upon you, as with the help of the ranger, you have a fairly unventful journey for the first 5 days of your trip. You navigate the Dark Woods without incident, …” – How I do wilderness encounters

How I do wilderness encounters

“There’s a giant train that passes through many worlds. Everyone writes a one-page dungeon carriage using a template. The carriages get stitched together to make a sort of randomly generated segmented megadungeon, suitable for drop-in games, travel between worlds, or extremely random encounters.” – Coins and Scrolls: OSR: The Indefinite Train - Community Project

Coins and Scrolls: OSR: The Indefinite Train - Community Project

I like Zedeck Siew’s Writing Hour. A people described with three tables. Their job. Their look. Their problem. Not sure how immediately it translates into an adventure but it seems perfect for a setting description. “4. He rehearses. Before you see him you hear him: feet stamp-stamp-stamping, the Mountain’s heart, beating. He is a dancer. 5: Unguents for newborn babes; a meteoric-iron mallet to smash undead spirits. Midwives watch the boundary. She is a midwife.” – Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours • People of Andjang

Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours • People of Andjang

Elves grow their stuff from plants, right? Like, cups from gourds, for example? – 3ders.org - Biodegradable HyO-Cups are dried gourds grown inside 3D printed molds

3ders.org - Biodegradable HyO-Cups are dried gourds grown inside 3D printed molds

​#RPG ​#Old School ​#Blogs ​#Blogosphere