Category: RPG

LotFP: World of the Lost first session

So we belayed 13th Age for a bit to try out the new playtest rules for Lamentations of the Flame Princess last night starting the new World of the Lost module from Rafael Chandler.  There IS confusion around the new rules, since it’s no longer JUST a better version of B/X, there are some biggish changes, and I’m not sure I like all of them yet (hence playtesting which will round off the burrs), so let’s see how it goes.

Main things are:

  • Everyone has some random skills, specialists have more skills that they can choose
  • There are fighting ‘styles’ now and Fighters can use all of them
  • Saving throws are different and use D6’s
  • All spells can be cast at first level.  This makes things a bit crazy because now spells can go awry (a la Warhammer Fantasy Battle/Roleplay).

Session stuff

Characters:

  • Rainer Keeling – Magic User (1 hp)
  • Van Hagan – Specialist (tinker, bushcraft)
  • Udo Quatellbaum – Fighter with a man catcher
  • Bernard Dreu – Fighter (I’m glad matt picked a good name this time)
  • Anton Schleiss – Magic User
  • Isaac Netherwood – Specialist (languages)!

The characters joined a ship’s crew in Cornwall under one Richard Trower who sold them on the idea of heading over the ocean to Africa, finding the city of Khirima all for a hoard of the “Negro silver!”  After months on a boat and weeks of travel from the Portuguese port of Lagos along with a Portuguese caravan, they made it to Khirima and settled in to start to look for the silver. Trower took 6 Germans from the crew and went off, supposedly to meet a contact and then come back the next morning– and that was a week ago.  While they waited, they stayed on the down low but got some rumors from the tavern.

As money ran short, the characters talked about what to do and decided to leave the tavern they were at to search the city for trace of Trower or the Germans.  When they did so, they were approached by an obviously sick and recently beaten Portuguese brass caster (who was with them on the caravan from Lagos) who kept repeating: “they put a disease in me.”  He told them that since Trower was now ‘gone’ THEY had to fulfill his debt for the crime he committed by fulfilling a task for ‘them’.  They were to protect a caravan from attack while also murdering a noble that would be a long with it.  They were suspicious and tasked the Portuguese hard but he only had so much information.

When he wandered off, they followed him into the Royal district, where he dropped dead while walking.   After being accosted by guards (Leopards) and a barber surgeon who noticed them following the man (as Europeans stick out quite a bit in Khirima), they dragged the body off, dumped it in an alleyway and high tailed it back to the tavern.  It was only a Portuguese anyway right?

They decided to scout the caravan they needed to guard the night before departure, but couldn’t find it, and then headed back to the tavern where they caroused.  Someone slipped them something in their drinks and they woke up in the jungle tied to stones by vines with something crawling towards them screaming.

Welcome to Africa!

Lost

Of note, the characters were constantly exposed to languages during this short session, so there were rolls for Hausa, German, Portuguese and nearly French as well.  The linguist specialist speaks nearly ALL of the languages they will encounter during this game and I tell you that helps.  I wasn’t sure what to do with languages since with a normal party, they wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone except via hand signs, with a linguist specialist, they have it made.

World of the Lost is pretty fucking badass,  got to run it more, but so far: recommended.

Garycon action!

We made it around 10 and it was already hopping at the Grand Geneva.   Great con to wander around in, but like all small cons, if you don’t have a game going on, there’s not a ton to do (except eat and drink!).  It was far from the mass insanity of Gencon.  We pretty much played Numenera all day as the Into the Odd game I wanted to get into is going on NOW rather than when I though it was.

Stuff that was good:

Location – The Grand Geneva is just that, it’s a grand hotel on massive acreage.  in summer you wouldn’t have caught me dead inside any buildings there.

Focused convention— Gary Con is an old school D&D convention with all that that means and all that that excludes.  There were no LARPers, very little cosplay, few board games– people were there to game as well and not jag around.

General friendliness- it’s Wisconsin after all.  WI people are a grim folk generally, but they are nice.  The staff at the grand Geneva were very friendly and accommodating.

Lots of indy stuff.  There were games played that have never and will never see wide publication or even publication outside of someone’s typed up notebook.

Food – was good

Beer – was cheap and good

Gaming – a bit more chaotic to try to get into games, and yet the con is so small you could just walk around and find the people that you want to play with.  Next year I will probably run something (Lamentations most likely).

Large Beards.  Some of the biggest I’ve seen.

So yes, for sure next year.

garycon

Gary Con tomorrow!

We didn’t sign up for jack shit, but we’re going. Last time I was in Lake Geneva for a convention it was probably 2007 or so for Gaming Hoopla. It was held in a small community center (with big fireplaces) and was a great time. It was also within walking distance of Tom Wham’s house, so he was there as well.

This is a big OSR con, so it should be quite a lot of fun. I’m going to try to get in on some Dungeon Crawl Classics and pick up a physical copy of INTO THE ODD. Probably will spend too much money on old modules and shit as well.

I’ll try to post from my phone with pictures of bearded Wisconsin types sitting around circular tables with paper on them!

DAT1

13th Age and the Halfling takes a savage beating again

halfling

The group is still in the mine/ dungeon crawl for the last session and upon awakening an earth elemental, the halfling was smashed into a wall instantly, only saved by the Paladin’s guard skills on a hit that would have taken him out. I noticed reading the session summaries that nearly every battle the Halfling took the brunt of nearly all the damage, and is the only character that consistently goes down during fights, even with a near-guaranteed dodge skill for those nasty blows.  Now, the group has some squishy characters, three in fact, but the other two (Elf Ranger and High Elf sorceress) don’t seem to take nearly as much of a beating as the Halfling does.  Why is this?  It’s not like it’s a gnome that I would go out of my way to kill off out of general principles, it’s a Halfling and a bard no less.

They also seriously discussed cramming him down a lavoratory hole to see if it ‘led to the 2nd level.’

Later in the session, during the post fight decompression, the paladin mentioned off hand: “I still hope to lower him into a toilet.”

13th Age session, Interview with Raggi, other stuff

It’s been 10 months and we finally got back on Roll 20 for some 13th Age.  Unfortunately, the group was right in the middle of a dungeon, so the break between sessions sucked for everyone.   I blame this on 1) Summer 2014, 2) Runequest 6 which most of the same group played in person after summer 3) people not showing up on Thursdays on Roll20 (myself included!).  4) Me taking it too seriously and building a huge campaign area and series of prepared adventures (whether original or pulled from wherever) instead of going the lazy route, which 13th Age allows. 5) Moving.

I think it was a good getting back into the game session, but I still have problems spending player’s Icon rolls in these short 2 hour sessions, especially when they  roll well and I’ve got a bunch of 5’s there.  5’s are the hardest.

More RPG stuff to read.

Interview with Raggi and the guy that finished the new TOWERS TWO adventure after the GWAR guy died:

– Provocation is the entire purpose of fiction

Raggi always has a lot of really interesting stuff to say and ways to say it.

also an erection

As the Runequest name goes back to Chaosium and Gloratha for good, we have Design Mechanism’s new name for their BRP D100 game following the RQ6 ruleset: MYTHRAS.  While I won’t need to buy this since I have RQ6 already, I likely will.  Best thing is that any supplements based on Mythras will be RQ6 compatible, and that’s fucking awesome for you and for me.

Mythras
Mythras

What’s more, DM is coming out with Classic Fantasy, a hack of RQ for dungeon crawling old school style. Here is a preview of it.

For those playing/GMing 5e, below is an article detailing that you can stack your D20’s (like 3D20 and take the worst one or vice versa) and it works. Say someone is wounded, turning to stone, being eaten alive, etc.  you can double down on the disadvantage roll and the math doesn’t turn to shit. Overall Advantage/Disadvantage is a great mechanic that has definitely trickled into my games.

Stacked disadvantage in 5E with maths.

Lastly, the Shinobigami translation will be ready for playtesting in about a month.  This is a ‘get together for about 5 hours’ type of game like Carolina Death Crawl, so look for that on your calendars in May.

Edge of Empire – first play

I got to play Star Wars: Edge of Empire Saturday with Matt and run by Dan at this benefit thing.   We could pay $$ for rerolls or the game’s version of bennies so it was good.

Thoughts:

I have a fucking sore spot for Fantasy Flights ‘special dice and cards’ style of RPG/board game after they fucked up Warhammer Fantasy 3rd Edition with one of the most complicated RPG’s that it could have only come out in 2009.  I wanted to like it, bought a bunch of stuff in the fire sale but it was VERY difficult to learn, VERY difficult to play/GM and covered the table in crap.  The core dice mechanic wasn’t terrible though, it was everything else surrounding that which had the suck.

Secondly, while I like the new film a lot, I’m not a big star wars GAME fan. Yes Xwing vs Tie fighter was awesome but I pretty much stick to the movies and that’s it. There’s just not much there that’s gameable to me.  Two factions, one is on the run, the other one is cool for the movies, but otherwise boring.

Naturally when Edge of Empire came out I scoffed at it since it was a version of WFRP3.  However, having played, it’s not that bad.  Gone are all the stupid cards for attacks, and though the character sheet is about 4 pages of crap long, it played fast.

What’s more, while it uses some elements of those lame-ass story games like FATE and Dungeon World, it can be played entirely ignoring that type of stuff on the dice, and use those sides for entirely mechanical effect.  It has some blammo sides to the dice (triumphs) but their effect is completely dictated by the GM, it’s basically a reason for GM fiat to hurt or help the players.  This is without any mechanics if you want, unlike FATE which piles every fucking thing about everything in the game world into ‘aspects’ that are really just wholly mechanical +2’s.  So if your group has realized that the FATE-style games are a total waste of time like ours has, you can roll and not care about that stuff.

We played with minis, but it was very abstract, like Numenera, 13th Age, etc.  That is very good.  No nurpling around with goddamn squares and five foot steps and all that 3.5 bullshit.

So, I have a plan, that may or may not happen. I want to run a 1 v 1 JEDI fight using Edge of Empire, the Star Wars West End D6 game from the 90’s and … Design Mechanism’s free Mod for Runequest 6 and see which is the most fun.  I know where my hypothesis would tell me, but let’s see what happens. Volunteers?

Star Wars

World of Darkness post

A VERY frank discussion about Paradox’s plans for the World of Darkness.

This is the quote I liked most, but read the whole thing, there are others:

In the last few years, focused and easy-to-use products like Mutant: Year Zero and Lamentations of the Flame Princess are selling unexpectedly well. Their brevity and low threshold makes them perfect for introducing new players to the hobby, while the monumental classic-WW-style books generally sell poorly and are more read than played. If future editions of WoD are actively used rather than collected we have done our job.

Que a discussion of the pile of Exalted books in my house and how much we actually played it compared to…well nearly everything.  And fuck, I tried, I really tried.

If you want to discuss it, please let me lend you my Fair Folk 2E book so you can read that first.

annike

Massive armour and weapons visuals

If you are looking for examples of weapons and armor from across the globe in pictures, look no further than this Pinterest user. He has everything well categorized.

https://www.pinterest.com/magnusbarbadus/

This will answers stuff like:

What does a Gambeson look like?

What types of Morions were used in the English Civil War?

What did Landsknechts actually wear?

What’s the difference between a Dane Axe and a Lochaber Axe?