Unnatural Twenty

 Last night I wrapped up my cyberpunk campaign using the Sprawl after six sessions. Because of scheduling those six sessions took place over the course of six months, and I had told the players at the start that it would be a mini-campaign. We had a session zero where the three players made up their characters and relationships as per the rulebook and then we got to it. Campaign Image by Midjourney We had a hunter, a tech and a driver. Since we live in London I suggested we use it as the setting, and I went on to suggest that in the future London has become a haven for those doing business off the financial grid. My vision of the city was that it is mostly empty, with little to no industry. There would be buildings that catered to visiting corps and crime syndicates who wished to meet and make deals, without the worry of surveilance and financial records. While I imagined the rest of the world's major cities would contain the more expected cyberpunk tropes like massive arcologies, ...

 I have used the Golden Sea (by Grant Howitt) about six times now. I had downloaded it at some point and thought it was cool, but one year at Dragonmeet I saw an A2 sized high quality map which included all the rules (it's a one page RPG!) and I grabbed it. Even then it was a while before I actually ran it. My usual group had gone on hiatus during lockdown and I wasn't feeling up to playing online either. When people started talking about meeting in person to play again I started to look at the Golden Sea again, and it was the first RPG I ran after a break of about a year. So, as a one page RPG it doesn't require much reading, but as some have commmented it leaves a lot for the GM to do. The first time I ran it was with just two players, and there was a lot of enthusiasm after the previous year. I don't think any of us had played in that time. I had made a few plans beforehand, mostly about how to present the setting and the way trade and society worked. The game uses a...

Previous post:   My GV (Gaming Vitae) 2019 Maelstrom Dungeons & Dragons Dragon Warriors Rolemaster Vampire: The Masquerade Call of Cthulhu Deadlands D20 Advanced Fighting Fantasy Pathfinder The Dresden Files Microscope The Black Hack Lords of Gossamer and Shadow The Gaean Reach Spellbound Kingdoms Spark The Sprawl Urban Shadows Hack the Planet Manifold Whitehack The Golden Sea ICRPG

A friend of mine picked up Night's Black Agents and Solo Ops at Dragonmeet last weekend, and it reminded me of another of my overly ambitious RPG ideas. I had hoped to run a Night's Black Agents campaign with maybe three players, but each player would only play solo sessions using Solo Ops. After each session the player would send an email with a summary of what they had discovered to one of the other players, a contact. When that player played their next session, the information from the other player would be part of their session, and then they would feed info onto the next player. As long as I had a very simple 'conspyramid' first time out I think I could have managed it. I just need the time, that's all!

Tomorrow will be the third session (plus session zero) of my Unbound campaign! I'm still not likely to blog very much but it's great to be back to regularly playing again. I'll hope to finish this mini campaign by the end of the year, and then have a review. After that, who knows, but I have no shortage of ideas.

Previous post:  My GV (Gaming Vitae) 2018 Maelstrom Dungeons & Dragons Dragon Warriors Rolemaster Vampire: The Masquerade Call of Cthulhu Deadlands D20 Advanced Fighting Fantasy Pathfinder The Dresden Files Microscope The Black Hack Lords of Gossamer and Shadow The Gaean Reach Spellbound Kingdoms Spark The Sprawl Urban Shadows Hack the Planet Manifold

Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement) This carved wooden wand has 1-3 charges when found. As an action the bearer can expend spell slots with total level 3 or more to return one charge to the wand. The bearer may also, as an action, expend one charge to regain one first level spell slot. The wand may hold a maximum of 3 charges.

Weapon (longsword), uncommon You have a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon. It glows faintly when undead creatures are within 120' of it.

Armor (shield), uncommon (requires attunement) This shield appears to made from wood and leather. Upon attunement it merges with the arm of the bearer, and can move of its own will. The bearer can benefit from the armor bonus of the shield even when using a two-handed weapon.

Warhammer, uncommon (requires attunement by a cleric of the tempest domain) This warhammer is a magic weapon made of shining steel. Whenever you roll minimum damage with it, it gains a charge. It can only have one charge at a time. When you hit a creature with this weapon you may expend a charge to smite the target. Your attack deals an additional 2d6 thunder damage, and the target is knocked prone.

Weapon (quarterstaff), uncommon This is, to all forms of examination, a plain hickory staff. The bearer can hold the staff upright while resting it on the ground and make a mental command (an action), and the staff becomes immobile and unbreakable. The bearer can touch the staff and mentally will it to become movable again (an action).

Previous post: My GV Maelstrom Dungeons & Dragons Dragon Warriors Rolemaster Vampire: The Masquerade Call of Cthulhu Deadlands D20 Advanced Fighting Fantasy Pathfinder The Dresden Files Microscope The Black Hack Lords of Gossamer and Shadow The Gaean Reach Spellbound Kingdoms Spark The Sprawl

And yet another RPG mashup rears its head! I just picked up Sig: Manual of the Primes in hardcover, and I'm feeling like I can combine it with Lords of Gossamer and Shadow for an awesome campaign across the many planes of existence. I ran a brief text-based LoGaS campaign and I was really happy with how the game dealt with different realities and genres. Each player created their own character and the world that they came from, and then they all met up via the Grand Stair. I haven't delved very deeply into Sig yet, but I feel like I'll need to make the City of Sig be the literal center of all the planes of reality that the Grand Stair opens onto. I might need to do some work to figure out how each game's version of reality interacts with the other's, but that's the fun of the mashup process!

I've been using Ebonclad in my online campaign for a few months now, it's quite cool, and it's deal of the day on DrivethruRPG today. Check it out here .

Ring, uncommon (requires attunement) This brass ring requires the bearer to look through it at a scene for one minute to become attuned to it. Thereafter, looking through the ring shows the bearer a view of that scene as it currently looks.

This looks awesome! A game of constructable battling potatoes!

The latest of my mashup concept RPG campaigns is a combination of Spire and Cryptomancer . I've had Cryptomancer for a while but haven't had a chance to delve very deeply into it, let alone run it. I missed the Spire Kickstarter campaign, but I did order prints of the two maps that were available as add-ons. I liked the premise of Spire as a setting, and I loved the previews of the maps, but I wasn't sure I wanted to add yet another system to my list of 'let's play this' RPGs. Meanwhile I was still trying to get around to reading through Cryptomancer so I could get that to the table. Now I'm feeling I can just mash them together and kill two birds with one stone. Ideas Spire is a location within the Cryptomancer setting Use of shards isn't very common within the Spire (and the Underspire) but they are used to communicate with the rest of the world The campaign is about freedom fighters up against oppressive overlords The Risk Eaters don...

A great value RPG, check it out here !

GNS and the Big Model TTRPGs consist of three pillars, Gamism (use mechanics to have an enjoyable game), Narrativism (tell an interesting story), and Simulationism (create a credible story). Players can enjoy each to lesser or greater degrees, and some games are better at some than others, or are generally recognized as such. I recently realized that I like the Gamist part of games to be light enough that I can get down to playing pretty quickly, the Narrativist part is something I try to contribute to, and Simulationism means adhering to genre conventions, not trying to overturn them. GNS Theory at the RPG Museum Challenge versus Genre The most important thing in some games is to maintain the expectations of the genre, so that the story that is created seems appropriate. In other games, the genre informs some things, but the most important thing is to have fun in whatever way drives the characters to achieve their own goals. I don't think I really care about challenge ...

Which RPG have you played the most since August 2016? I haven't played much in the last year. I played two online sessions of Microscope and one face to face. I ran two sessions of the Sprawl, and about six of the Black Hack, both of which followed on from games of Microscope. I played Call of Cthulhu and D&D5 at a convention last December, and last week I played the first session of a new campaign of Spellbound Kingdoms. So I guess the Black Hack is my most played game in the last year.