Read
I bought myself Teeth with some birthday cash. It's an RPG about hunting monsters and magic in Northern England in 1780. It's a fun read (well written by Jim Rossignol), atmospheric, grim and funny in a very British way. It uses Blades in the Dark as its system which wouldn't have been my first choice, but I can worry about that if I ever get this to the table.
Coriolis: The Great Dark I haven't read much but it's such a gorgeous book. I'm excited to dig in. If you don't know it, it is a SF game about enormous space ships exploring frozen dead star systems. The PCs are themed after early arctic explorers and deep sea divers.
Play
Nothing just now, so instead…
Plan
It's Conpulsion in Edinburgh next month so it's time to put a couple of games together. I'm thinking of running Offworlders again because it's quick and easy and everyone just gets it (It's basically Star Wars). I always like to make my Conpulsion games kid-friendly so I need to throw together a fun adventure and maybe I'll give everyone a pet droid this time.
I'll run a fantasy game too, probably using The Vanilla Game and may one of the Trilemma Adventures. Maybe I'll try something new this year though. Tales From The Loop maybe?
GM
My Reach of the Roach God/WhiteHack game is 5 sessions in and is growing into exactly the sort of unpredictable surreal joy that I love in a good RPG.
The group were supposed to be rescuing some villagers from dog-sized cockroach soldiers in a cave complex but instead they had wandered into the cockroach goddess who was causing all the trouble. I was fairly sure that some of them would die. Maybe a TPK.
First they escaped the goddess with clever use of WhiteHack magic turning the waters flowing through the dungeon into a sort of dark inversion of the flood which washes away the Nazgul in Lord of the Rings. Then, as the demons of the party escaped the dungeons, the brave human tea-brewer of the party returned and liberated the villagers with the help of a drugged-up bat-person wizard who was in love/very horny with one of the captives.
Then they accidentally made the nearby lake of tears overflow and wash away all the roaches, including the goddess. It was pretty great and ended with the three unlikely heroes united and off on an adventure to find out WTF is going on!
I've had the first Coriolis book wishlisted forever, then held off when I heard about The Great Dark. Does it do much that you couldn't run in, say, Alien? I'm not generally the biggest fan of books that are mostly setting. Having said that…
Read
…on a whim, I'm skimming through Orbital Blues again, which is a great little book that gives a great sense of the universe, even if I'm still not 100% sure how it works mechanically. It's on the Very Long List Of Things I Want To Get To The Table At Some Point, but one of the biggest hurdles is that I don't have anything prepped to run in it.
The 2025 D&D Monster Manual arrived last week, so I've also been flipping through that for inspiration. My very hot take is that D&D is Good, Actually, and I like basically everything they've done with the 2025/25 refresh.
Play
Our Descent into Avernus game finally descended into Avernus at the very end of the last session. It suffers a little bit in the way that many prewritten adventures do, where your characters are just assumed to want to checks notes travel into hell itself for no real reason? I've never read the module, and sort of assumed that the party would be dragged into hell against their will, but turns out you have to volunteer. Weird.
GM
Not much. Scheduling has been a disaster for a few weeks, though we're currently pencilled in for Saturday evening. Fingers crossed nothing comes up!
Coriolis, The Great Dark structures play around expeditions and delves in ruins, which isn't present in Alien. Also the background stuff is really evocative and unlike any other SFRPG I own (whereas all of the others are basically either Traveller or Alien). Speaking of Traveller… Coriolis The Third Horizon is great too but it's a heavy read. It has a much more tactical combat system than any of the other Year Zero games.
I backed the Orbital Blues kickstarter, I was really excited for it. When the PDF arrived I flicked through, loved the art and vibes and then settled in to read. Half an hour later I closed the PDF and haven't looked back. There's nothing in there. It's a rules set stripped-back to the point of irrelevance. The book repeatedly tells you what it's about without giving you anything more than pretty pictures to make that happen. It's Traveller without any of the things which make Traveller good.
5e2 has been selling fairly well in the shop, I'm not sure if anyone is actually running it yet though. I keep hearing about weird omissions or contradictions. Look up the procedure for an NPC spotting a PC who is trying to hide for an example. I found it pretty disappointing that they can spend two years updating a set of rules as well-played as 5e D&D and the result is more messy than it's predecessor.
I'm skimming through Orbital Blues again … even if I'm still not 100% sure how it works mechanically
My First Dungeon ran a short campaign of Orbital Blues which I really enjoyed from an RP perspective, but I still couldn't tell you what the core mechanic is.
The core mechanic is 2d6+stat, 10+ passes, but you can get bonus dice by being clever. I think. It's the system used in Ben Milton's Maze Rats where the idea was you'll probably fail unless you set things up in the fiction to favor your PC. It's not a great system.
Not quite - 2d6+Stat, but 8+ passes, and there's no bonus dice. You can roll with the Upper Hand or Against the Odds (roll 3d6 and keep the 2 highest/lowest), and gear can change the target number in combat, but I didn't think it seemed too bad or weird as a core system. I do struggle following the Troubles stuff, though.
D&D 5e2:
We've been playing 2024 rules since the PHB came out, and haven't had any problems. Mind you, that's with the 2014 monsters, so we'll see once the 2025 demons come out to play.
Look up the procedure for an NPC spotting a PC who is trying to hide for an example.
I just read it as adding a DC 15 to successfully hide while you're obscured or out of line of sight? Otherwise, your Stealth check result is the DC to find you, which is the same as 2014 Admittedly, referring to the Invisible condition does make it look confusing; if they'd renamed the condition Hidden, I don't think people would trip over it quite so much.
re Orbital Blues: 8+ for tasks makes a lot more sense.
re 5e2: I think that's probably how it was supposed to be understood but it is so poorly written.
re 5e2: I think that's probably how it was supposed to be understood but it is so poorly written.
Agreed. Which is weird, because I think they generally did a pretty good job of simplifying things elsewhere.
