+1 Thread of Tabletop Roleplaying

I am gonna be there on Saturday hooray.

Excellent!

Yes! I remember going there so long ago I think, uh, Killzone 2 had just come out? Hapi was complaining that it was infecting all of his WHFRP writing.

I thought Haley's Comet returning made me feel old.

Had a great time at Conpulsion over the weekend. I ran a couple light PbtA games for a mix of kids and adults. I bought a bunch of cool RPG books including some weird OSR stuff, and the James Bond RPG. I bought a two player mini wargame called The Cousins War which I then played and it was awesome and kind of exhausting!

I had lunch with Luscan which was lovely. I was in a panel where the audience almost outnumbered us 2:1. Me and my friends had a massive, heated, alcohol-fuelled debate about the nature of games and RPGs. And then we won the pub quiz!

The players finally engaged with the cult stuff propertly in this week's Dragonbane session, but are starting to second-guess their enthusiasm for helping the "paladin" hanging out in the town bar after her religious fervour came out full-force in an extremely quick (and maybe too brutal?) battle.

Spoiler - click to showAfter capturing a cultist last time, the Mallard Bard let slip to the paladin that there was a cultist in the town jail. The paladin headed immediately to the jail to execute the captive, but was followed by another cultist who attempted (along with his mates) to ambush the paladin when she came out (having failed to convince the sheriff's deputy to allow the execution). The bard and thief tried to stop the mugging, but I'd underestimated how powerful this knight is; she shrugged off the cultists' attacks and decapitated one in a single hit. To avoid her rendering the players useless, she continued to beat the corpse on her next turn while the mallards dealt with the second mugger.

The paladin has now been arrested for attempting to murder a fourth (officially only "suspected") cultist in front of the deputy. Next session I want to emphasise that she's one of the more reasonable ones, and have her superior arrive to complicate things even further.

They're still on the fence about the precise alignment of their would-be employer – is she part of the cult, or just doing things that happen to align with their wishes? – so I'm trying to figure out how to manoeuvre her so that they can't get a firm grip just yet.

The 13th Age 2e Kickstarter has opened – I'm a little iffy about paying £90 for the hardback books, but I'm sure I'll justify it to myself somehow.

More importantly, they've sent out the updated playtest packet, which includes a ton of changes even from the earlier alpha (which, admittedly, I only ever skimmed).

It's really making me want to run another 13th Age game, but that seems highly unlikely with my current schedule and obligations.

Another one to add to the pile, I guess!

I've never done much more than skim the first edition of 13th Age, though it's a game that one of my D&D players really likes - albeit one of the only non-D&D games he's played.

I've run 30-40 sessions of 13th Age. It's my favorite modern D&D. But… I'm not in any hurry to run modern D&D just now and those pledges are expensive! £40 for PDFs? No thanks.

One thing that really caught my eye with the packet they sent out today is that, at 10th level, all characters get an extra +30 to their attack rolls (on top of 4x the ability mod). I've not checked the monster math yet, but part of me wonders if the idea is just "you're max level, you're not gonna miss".

+30 sounds like a typo.

Yeah, that seems extreme. Why even make it a modifier, rather than just say "you can't miss"?

I've started a DnD campaign! Final geek level proudly unlocked after all these years.

Everyone is brand new to it, and I assume a bit shit. Our DM is great but has never DM'd before, so we're all figuring it out as we go along. Doing Phandelver, which I think is basically a My First DnD? It's fun!

I'm an undead Bard with a surprising amount of sex appeal for someone with no lower jaw. I've tried to Speak with Animals twice, and both times I've been knocked unconscious.

One of us! One of us!

Doing Phandelver, which I think is basically a My First DnD? It's fun!

There are two Phandelvers - Lost Mine of Phandelver (the original 5e starter set adventure), and Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk (part update of the original, part new adventure). I've not read Shattered Obelisk, but I ran LMoP, and yes, it's great! A really solid intro to the game, and easily one of the best prewritten adventures 5e's produced.

I've tried to Speak with Animals twice, and both times I've been knocked unconscious.

What did you say to those animals!?

I think we're doing Shattered Obelisk.

What did you say to those animals!?

The first time I asked a horse a question and got shot by a goblin.

The second time I was trying to inspire a pack of wolves. It didn't work.

Ah - the goblins in the first encounter? Those can be brutal. Good idea with the wolves, though!

I like running games for new players. They (you?) tend to think outside the box a bit more, whereas long-term players, I feel, can sometimes fall into the habit of not looking much beyond the specific actions listed on their character sheet.

I just ran a session of Mausritter for the kids (plus Sarah for guidance) , and it went pretty well! I stole the gist of the setup from LMoP (friend asked you to meet him, but you get there and he's been kidnapped), so they had fun chasing down a group of rats who were trying to force their fellow adventurer to open a magical vault for them.

Along the way, E revealed a mildly alarming determination to shoot everything in the heart with her mouse's bow, L tried to squash a surrendering captive with his warhammer, and they set fire to a spider's web before Sarah added injury to insult and skewered it with a spear.

In the end, they rescued their friend, got some cool loot, and were just barely talked out of committing any war crimes - so they're TTRPG naturals, basically.

They've already asked when we can play again; I'll have to see if I can come up with something that has less combat, perhaps?

Sounds great! In my experience kids veer suddenly and randomly between befriending everyone they meet and genocide.

There's some good adventures in The Manor which are light on combat.

Yeah, I've hovered the Buy button on The Manor a couple of times, but having bit actually run the game couldn't quite justify it to myself. I may take another look…

The playtest/starter for Embers of Humanity just launched on itch.io: https://johnthehedge.itch.io/embers-of-humanity

It's a light and versatile post apocalypse RPG using stripped back BRP rules. It's mostly written by a friend of mine but apparently I wrote enough to get a full writing credit. Give it a look tell us what you think!

The rpg I helped write has just been released:

https://bsky.app/profile/johnthehedge.bsky.social/post/3lhbm7lr3522c

There's an actual play of our RPG up on Spotify if anyone is curious: https://open.spotify.com/show/6p2MYl0HMzKgmrxVM3LX9P

To no-one's surprise Wizards have abandoned their plans for their dedicated D&D VTT. It's almost like building an easy to use 3D tool box which can recreate anything you experience in a game of D&D is an unachievable pipe-dream.

I mean… I'm a bit surprised. They just launched the public preview last month, didn't they? I haven't played around with it much, but while it was a little thin on content, it didn't seem so bad that they'd just unceremoniously can it.

A quick Google suggests they've laid off most of the team, but I can't find any official word (yet) that the project is scrapped. Maybe that'll be later today…

Polygon have posted an internal email "attributed to Dan Rawson, senior vice president Dungeons & Dragons and Hasbro Direct":

I want to share an important update regarding Sigil. After several months of alpha testing, we’ve concluded that our aspirations for Sigil as a large, standalone game with a distinct monetization path will not be realized.
…
We are, however, proud of what the Sigil team has developed and want to make sure that fans and players on DDB can use it. To that end, we will transition Sigil to a DDB feature.

Ah. The alpha already had pretty major DDB integration (you can't create a character in the app, just build a mini and assign a DDB character to it). I honsetly didn't realise they were looking at it as anything other than an extension of DDB…

Free League are currently Kickstarting the Second Evolved Edition of their excellent ALIEN RPG. The changes advertised are more of the "streamlined and refined" variety (plus a much cleaner and more readable layout), but that hasn't stopped me backing it at a probably over-generous level.

It's due to fulfil in September, too, which seems like a remarkably quick turnaround if they can stick to it.

I imagine that Free League already knew they were going to get the thing funded and were well on the way to starting production before the campaign started. They're bound to have good relationships with printers and fulfillment outfits at this point, too, so I'd imagine their pipeline is pretty efficient.

I'm skipping this one. I like the first Alien RPG and none of the changes sound necessary to me. Also I'll never use the minis.

I'm getting a bunch of it, but definitely skipping the minis. I like the flippable motion tracker ping/character tokens, and I have a bunch of wooden circular tokens that I've used to make my own in the past.

I'm also using this as an excuse to pick up the Colonists and Marines books at a slightly reduced rate, since I don't have those.

The shop just got in Triangle Agency, which I'm kinda tempted by. It's a fun read and quite clever, I think it's a bit more cartooney in play than I would actually enjoy though. Like, less Severance, more Men In Black.

Late notice perhaps but it's Conpulsion 2025 in Edinburgh this weekend. I'll be there running a couple of games and maybe manning a stall or two. It's always fun, so if any of you are near enough to take the trip into Edinburgh it'd be great to see you.

Conpulsion '25 was a lot of fun but far more relaxed than last year (see above).

Caught up with Luscan and a load of other friends. I helped out with the shop's stall and we made a decent amount of money so I expect we will be back next year.

I ran a couple of Star Wars themed Offworlders games which were a lot of fun. One of my players works for Modipheus and knows that I don't like the 2d20 system so he signed up to see how well I run things. He took comedy passive aggressive notes for the first half hour but stopped when he realized I couldn't concentrate because I was laughing too much.

Good time as always. Recommended.

It's been long enough since I backed it that I'd apparently forgotten that I paid for the full Rapscallion physical set (including dice and a GM screen?), only reminded by the shipping email that just came through…

There's a Kickstarter running for a second printing of Hard Wired Island. I'm sure I remember someone singing it's praises a while back ( @luscan maybe?) . I probably don't need another 400p book on my shelf but the Kickstarter has an option for just a cheaper-than-usual pdf too.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ettin/hard-wired-island-reprint

The Land of Eem Core Rulebook is just $6 on DriveThru today. This has quickly become one of my favourite RPGs (and the kid's).

I've heard it mentioned a lot but I don't know anything about it. What makes it special?

It's really the tone and the world that does it, which has always surprised me; I tend not to be into proscribed settings for RPG systems, but the clear vision for what this world is (and how it differs from traditional fantasy settings) really makes it stand out.

Mechanically, as I understand it there are a lot of cues taken from other systems, but they're combined in a way that's unusual. (I haven't got a deep enough history with games to recognise all the originators.)

It takes a lot of cues from story-focused games with its narrative abilities, session-end XP questions and results table. It uses the oft-forgotten d12 as its primary die. Character levelling is horizontal rather than vertical, with PCs getting a broader set of skills rather than becoming more powerful. Money is abstracted into "pouches" with usage dice (also used for consumables), which makes bookkeeping much easier.

It's not going to be for everyone—I doubt my Dragonbane group would all get along with it—but for six bucks it's a steal.

Those YouTubers really are getting excited about DragonBane. I wanted a few reviews. It looks fine I guess. It's D&D, but with different bookkeeping and no initiative.

I guess I'm not the target market. It does look more interesting than 5.5e…

Yeah, it's fine. Rolls tend to be more swingy than D&D, particularly damage, because you aren't adding modifiers to anything. Monsters work a bit like Xenomorphs in Alien, where you roll from a list of attacks that mostly just auto-hit.

All of that means it's a bit more unpredictably lethal, and I think it's probably more suited to one-shots, or at least shorter campaigns. I don't know how well it would work for a big, multi-year campaign.

It does also have some inherent wackiness built in (it advertises itself as "mirth and mayhem roleplaying"), which maybe appeals to #content creators?

Alien 2e has had its second beta preview after feedback, and they've addressed pretty much all of the issues I had with the first version.

There are a lot of math nerds and would-be game designers on the forums throwing around phrases like "inherent dichotomy" and arguing for more crunch, but for my money it's in a pretty good place right now, and hopefully they don't mess with it much more.

Wow. Sorry. I totally crit failed. I was trying to talk about DaggerHeart but I wrote DragonBane instead.

The funny thing is, nothing I wrote in that post doesn't also hold true for DragonBane too, but I actually quite like that one.

I really liked Alien 1e, I didn't like the sound of the changes, but honestly I think I am unlikely to go back to Alien now that I've got MotherShip.

Wow. Sorry. I totally crit failed. I was trying to talk about DaggerHeart but I wrote DragonBane instead.

Oh, oops! Yeah, I don't get the Daggerheart hype. It's getting all the YouTube oxygen because it's a Critical Role invention, and CR brings the views, but only from people who don't want to hear a bad word about it.

I poked about with the beta waaay back when it first got released as a preview on Demiplane, and hated it. Damage is particularly stupid:

1. Roll the attack's damage.
2. Compare the result to the target's damage thresholds*, to see how much damage they actually take.
3. Reduce that number by armor.
4. Actually take the damage.

Who looked at that and thought it was a good idea!?

*I can't remember if that's the exact term, but it's something like that

Yeah I agree that damage looks like Work.

People are also going to get really tired of every roll generating either hope it fear. It's just so much processing.

I also thought that their "simplification" of money which kind of recreated old money was particularly baffling.

For direct D&D competition we will soon have:

13th Age 2nd
Pathfinder 2nd
DaggerHeart
Tales of the Valiant
ShadowDark
Draw Steel
DC20
DragonBane

And hat's not even considering OSR/NSR games. Crowded market.

I was talking to a couple of my players last night and now I'm hyped up about The Wildsea again, so I might be running a short thing with that sooner than expected.

I've also been skimming the 13th Age 2e drafts that were sent to backers last week, and I've remembered how much fun I had running that. I don't know how I'd get that to the table on top of everything else, though…

I loved running 13a but some of my players didn't enjoy it. I think it was too combat focused for them.

Inevitable is $8 on Bundle of Holding this week! I've mentioned this before, I'm sure, but it's one of the best, most evocative settings I've ever read. A post-post-apocalyptic Arthurian western where a cadre of sad cowboy knights fight to stop the Doom that's been prophesied to destroy their kingdom.

Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford have joined Darrington Press, which people keep telling me is a big deal but I'm struggling to care about.

The cynic in me thinks this is a pretty good PR move for Darrington and a temporary post for Perkins and Crawford before they launch their own thing(s).

I implies that Darrington Press are intending big corporate things (you know, to the scale of RPGs), so I think some people are seeing this as a victory over the Wizards monopoly.

I look forward to being told again that Critical Role are just friends playing their home game.

What percentage of D&D players even know who Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford are, though? This feels like a coup only as it concerns the most online of DMs. If the very public cast of Critical Role weren't able to pull enough eyeballs to Daggerheart already, I don't know what these two very behind-the-scenes hires are going to do.

I suppose they might just start with expansions and adventures—that's certainly an area where D&D has traditionally had a big head start, and building a library of #content for people to run could make the "switch systems" pitch easier.

I'm never gonna stop talking about Land of Eem, so here: they launched the Kickstarter for their first expansion book (and a more kid-friendly, stripped-down ruleset) today. It's hit the funding goal already, but I'm hoping it manages to reach at least the $225k stretch goal so I can get some more character meeples.