First Roll20 session went okay, I think. I found it a bit tough to judge how engaged the players were, and we were all figuring out how exactly the interface works so it was a bit of a slow start. I feel like the general awkwardness of both the UI and playing on camera got a little in the way of roleplay at a few points, and I definitely had to work harder to narrate enemy actions and attacks when there's a pretty detailed little digital mini on the map.
I'm not sure I'd want to switch to online play full-time, but as a (hopefully) temporary measure while we can't play in person, I think it'll do.
Vampire'd over discord. It went okay! Technical issues are annoying and holy fuck one of my players doesn't have any kind of video capable devices in tyol 2020
Playing online definitely has a very different feel than paying in the same room; it's hard to know if it's okay to interject, sometimes, because latency might mean you end up speaking over each other, and it's near impossible to have a quiet aside with someone.
I was quite happy with Roll20 on Monday. My game doesn't feature a lot of in character chat, which might have been harder, but for daft plans and discussion of what to do and who to trust and theatre of the mind combat r20 did fine.
Only two of us were using a camera, voice only seems fine and might help with latency?
I'm going to spend some of today going through the tutorial learning how to use the map and things.
Only two of us were using a camera, voice only seems fine and might help with latency?
We didn't use Roll20's built-in voice/camera stuff; one of my players has a paid Zoom account which lets the rest of us join in a meeting without a time limit so long as he sets it up.
I've seen other people have reporting good results with Discord as well, but either way it takes some of the stress off Roll20's servers (which by all accounts are being all-but hammered at the moment).
I was considering using Discord too. Still might if we don't get much use out of the VTT functions.
I was just reading this guide to using Discord for RPG sessions: https://technicalgrimoire.com/david/2020/03/OnlineDiscord
Another Roll20 session today, this time with my teenage group. It was mostly good, with a few technical issues. I need to figure out how to get the maps looking good. There must be a way to line up grid better.
My Monday group are already talking about how we should get a second game going. I'm thinking of maybe buying Tomb of Annihilation and running through that.
The standard Roll20 grid squares are 70 pixels - as long as your source map is some multiple of that, it'll resize to an exact number of squares and look fine.
If there's a grid on the map itself, you could also just disable the Roll20 one. You wouldn't get the snapping anymore, but you don't get that with minis on a table either… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I figured that both of those would be possible solutions but I only had a couple of hours to prep and I didn't find an answer in time.
My Monday group decided that we should start up a second game running D&D 5e campaign on Roll 20. They split the cost of the Tomb of Annihilation adventure ($5 each) which gives us everything we need (the adventure, maps, tokens, NPC's, handouts) to play for about 40 sessions.
We generated characters last night which was a bit of work over voice chat but we got there. We have a fun mix of PCs with surprisingly few spellcasters. I suspect with a lack of area of effect magic later in the campaign they might struggle, but it'll be a fun challenge for them!
Our solution for playing online is Roll20 for the virtual tabletop and Discord for voice chat. It means that if Roll20 stutters we barely notice.
Modiphius' Dishonored RPG came out recently, and I've been flicking through the PDF. I'm a big fan of the setting, and there's a lot here to like.
It's based on their 2d20 system, where you have to roll under a target number determined by your abilities in order to succeed), and they've reflavoured the somewhat dry version seen in Star Trek Adventures into Skills - Move, Fight, Talk, etc. - and Styles, so instead of "doing a Combat/Security test", you "fight boldly", "move swiftly", and so on. It's a small change, but immediately makes describing what you're doing more dynamic and less game-y.
Unfortunately, it's a Modiphius book, which means it appears to have been proofread by a half-drunk raccoon; the thing is riddled with spelling mistakes, misused words, inconsistent terminology, and references to things that were clearly removed in later iterations (the rules for Void Powers are particularly bad for this); and on top of that, several index entries direct you to the wrong page.
It's shame, because it's a very nicely-presented book, with loads of art, tons of information about the Empire of the Isles beyond the confines Dunwall and Karnaca, and one of the least hideously cluttered character sheets I've seen in a good long while - but I wish to the Outsider they'd sort out the writing.
I love the Dishonored Skill/Style approach – being able to use each of your six skills in six different ways is kind of a stroke of genius. It's more adaptable than D&D's simple skill list, or games where Skills are tied to Abilities, while also being much easier to explain and understand.
Can't really comment on the larger rules or writing, though - I've skimmed it for ideas, as I am wont to do with every RPG book that I can get my eyes on, but haven't sat down to properly explore it yet.
With a bit of luck the errors in your PDF will be corrected before it goes to print.
I realise a couple years ago that skill systems tent to just add mechanics without any real benefit in play, this mix sound good though.
The rules for learning Void Powers were clearly streamlined a bunch during testing, but the intro paragraphs weren't updated. They talk about how, when you take the Mark of the Outsider talent, you pick a pool of Powers and Abilities that you will eventually unlock, and that you get the basic version of one of the powers immediately, as long as it costs 2 Runes or fewer to unlock.
…except that there are no upgraded versions of any of these Powers or Abilities, and all of them are unlocked by consuming a single Rune.
Just grab them on Twitter and let them know. Someone else might have already but maybe not. Hopefully there's still time to fix the books. There's definitely still time to fix the PDF.
This is a crazy good pile of freebies:
A Field Guide to Hot Springs Island and The Dark of Hot Springs Island are two books detailing the HSI setting, one for players one for GMs. They are systemless so they'll work with whatever you are running. They are good enough to read just for fun even if you never intent to run out play them.
Silent Titans is unlike anything else. A self contained game, setting and campaign about exploring the innards of non-euclidean machine god's. I think.
And then five other smaller books and adventures which I don't reall know but are all somewhere between good and great.
All free.
https://shop.swordfishislands.com/a-bundle-for-quarantine/
Hmm, ok Silent Titans is mental and critically acclaimed. I think it might also be shit.
Reminds me of when I played Retro City Rampage and I couldn't tell if it was a joke, it was shit or I just didn't understand.
HSI is still great though.
And it turns out that Hubris is a 350 page setting book.
They already did - I've had two updated PDFs from them in the last couple of days that fix all the major rule errors & contradictions (and one entirely unnoticeable formatting error). The index page numbers are still wrong in a couple of places, but at least the system as described functions.
I've been writing the heck out of a little mini-campaign I want to run in it. I'm not sure if my approach is a little too D&D, but the example adventure at the back of the book seems super railroad-y, so I'm trying to capture a bit more of the "immersive sim" feel of the games by coming up with little sandbox-y locations to explore and figure out.
The only lingering weirdness with the PDF is that it's quite small; the pages are only about 6x9 inches.
What's with pen and paper games and going 'weirdly, our version control turns out was shit and we released with bad documents that were massively out of date'? Onyx Path did it, WotC did it, White Wolf did it, Modiphius did it.
Does git not exist?
Are these people using google docs for professional writing projects?
Are these big licenced games not hiring professional proofreaders?
Did I spend £30 on a Dishonored hardback only to realise that apparently it's rules are completely fucked?
Who knows. It's almost like the TTRPG industry is full of cowboys and perennial fuck-ups oh well
Lesson learned, I suppose. Next time I'll just pirate the fucking book.
The book hasn't been printed yet, so it should (?) have the fixed version of everything.
crosspostin'
ZakS successfully suing people.
Here's the legal gofundme for the woman that accused him of his various alleged crimes of which there's a shitload of people providing coroborating statements.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/gxywr5-legal-funds/donations
Here's a tweet from Ettin about a cool game of his that you can buy for cheap to help him pay for his required legal settlement. If you see Ettin's statement, notice that he never admits he was wrong. Also note that ZS is running his campaign from Canada and Ettin is in Australia, two nations that have incredibly shite libel laws. Also note that so far ZS ain't done shit to anyone in the UK or in the US, countries with far more robust libel laws. Weird that a guy who's - allegedly - abused positions of power and privilege would find a way to continue to do that only this time via the legal system.
https://twitter.com/Ettin64/status/1248063779935367169
Thanks for elaborating and the links. I didn't have the brain space this morning.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/mdacq-legal-funds?d=eYpnp0jY%2B79jmcU09oeIxLKg61EDkHBPvuCWwclXXVs%3D
Ettin has a legal defence fund up now too. The fact that apparently he needs seven and a half grand means that long streak of piss got a reasonable amount which really fucking narks me.
If anyone is interested you can grab the John Carter of Mars RPG for free from the Modiphius website using the code barsoom.
It's another 2d20 game so it's worth a look if you were considering The Fallout, Dishonored, Dune, Star Trek or Homeworld RPGs.
The Dishonored dice roller I tweeted about earlier is on my website now, so I can try and get it to look like not-garbage on mobile. If anyone wants to look at it to play around, tell me how bad my code is, or suggest features I'm as-yet incapable of implementing, here you go!
It's good. certainly easy to understand.
Forcefully is out of place on my screen though, and I would like the dice sorted in numerical order as that would group them into levels of success and just look tidier.
Forcefully is out of place on my screen
Odd, everything's lined up okay on everything I've thrown it at… I'll check the margins. Is it way off?
I would like the dice sorted in numerical order
That sounds like it should be relatively simple (famous last words…).
If anyone wants to look at it to play around, tell me how bad my code is, or suggest features I'm as-yet incapable of implementing, here you go!
Okay, first point: tables for layout 
If mobile-friendly presentation is your goal, and you don't want to spend weeks diving into the intricacies of the flex-box layout rules, you definitely want to look into a column-based CSS library like Bootstrap (you can probably just use the CDN versions, and the javascript might be more than you need but offers some nice functionality for visual flair). There are others, and Bootstrap is commonly criticised for always looking a bit samey out of the box, but you can be quite aggressive with the overrides for its visual components without impacting the structural classes. (If you need a crash course, let me know.)
Code review time:
I think most of the js functions you've got could be combined by using arguments rather than separately-named versions that perform fundamentally the same operation on separate elements.
function updateStat(stat) {
val = document.getElementById(stat+"Value").value
document.getElementById(stat).value = val
console.log(stat + " set to "+ val)
}
// updateState("move")
I'd also consider switching from pure JS to something more flexible, cross-browser compatible and friendly like jQuery, which would further DRY up the code you've got.
var updateStat ->(stat) {
var value = $("#"+stat+"Value").val()
$("#" + stat).val(value)
console.log(stat + " set to "+ value)
}
I'm pretty sure you could get around needing two separate fields per stat (the radio button and number input), but js isn't really my strong suit and it could end up being much more complicated for minimal gain.
Odd, everything's lined up okay on everything I've thrown it at… I'll check the margins. Is it way off?
It was down one line like there was an extraneous return. I'll send you a pic when I get home.
I've played about with flex box layout before, but it didn't seem reliable in some browsers; I'll have another look, through, maybe I was doing something wrong.
I figured that I could collapse the value update functions, but hadn't worked out out yet. I just wanted to get something working before I really started optimising.
Tomorrow the Ultraviolet Grasslands will be free. It's a neon psychedelic continent spanning Oregon Trail D&D adventure. It is by turns fantastic, odd, hilarious, stupid, confusing and gorgeous. You might not like it, but you might just love it.
" 1st of May, get the Ultraviolet Grasslands .pdf free with the code: UVGWORKERSDAY at https://t.co/xmyuFOSdvG
#laborday #ttrpg https://t.co/aMf7Qp7Pci https://twitter.com/stratometaship/status/1255950319227453441?s=20"
I have spent a lot of today reading the Coriolis RPG. I've mentioned it in here before I'm sure, it's really good. Alien, Firefly and Arabian Nights. It'll be a couple months till I will be running it, but I'm rally looking forward to it now.
Wizards of the Coast have announced upcoming stuff for D&D to make things more representative - including the much-requested separation of ability scores and race (though they seem to be lessening away from the word "race" as a descriptor, too):
Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D's many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own.
They're also changing text in per books as they're reprinted to remove problematic language referring to (among other things) Vistani.
The usual suspects are, of course, enraged at the SJW snowflake agenda.
Full details here.
My Whitehack game is done.
73 sessions, over 28 months.
We played through seven adventures linked together with bits from Yoon Suin and stuff I made up myself.
The group started at level 2, finished at 7 or 8. 5 PC deaths.
PCs included,
Dengar the Brave Ninja of variable competence.
Shroom the Strong Myconid
Nomad the Wise creepy underdark woman with magic tattoos.
Zerim the Strong Paladin of Priapus, who ascended to being Priapus when he went back in time at the end.
Bernadette, the Wise Cleric and Good Dog.
My favourite NPC was a Crystal Ball with a bad attitude called Lenny, although Aspru the half-zombie spear woman was fun and Yorimi the God of Forgotten Paths was good too.
I am pretty pleased with how it all went. It was a lot of work, but definitely worth it. I even managed to have an apocalypse in the middle where they all thought they had failed. Recommended.
We will be taking a break from Whitehack for a bit, but I will certainly be back. I already have a few other campaigns sketched out, although all but one of them are significantly shorter.
Ran my first session of The Expanse RPG last week, which went pretty smoothly. It's a little crunchier in some areas than 13th Age, and there was more rules-lookup than is ideal (but less than I'd expected). Roll20's AGE System character sheet had a pretty major upgrade recently that's made it much better, which definitely seems to have flattened the learning curve substantially for players. We didn't do any combat and I may have been overzealous with some of the rolls I called for, but partly I wanted to illustrate the differences between the different kinds of ability tests.
I'd done a bit extra "meta" prep for this campaign, which seemed to go over pretty well; I've got a voice changer app that lets me put a "suit radio" filter on my voice which blew the players away, and mi oso finyish xunyam fo showxa langbelta to give the Belters a bit more authenticity. So far it's been limited to scripted lines and the occasional insult, but now that they're on Eros Station and interacting with people, they should be giving me more opportunities to use it.
Plot-wise, they started on approach to Eros, with a couple of plothooks in the newsfeed handout I gave them and a message sent to the (NPC) captain which the comms officer player managed to see. There were a couple of tests to repair a minor leak in the cargo hold, and to dock in a berth without any automated assist, then they went exploring. There's a flight controllers' strike going on, and a union dispute over conditions on a waste hauler that they could potentially get mixed up in, but mostly they seem to have latched onto a touristy thing I offhandedly mentioned being advertised, so now I've got to write up some rules about low-gravity gokarting.
Awesome. Looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
Anyone looking for something a bit different for their roleplaying might be interested in the new a/state. Stories focus on trying to help your community in a distant, crumbling dystopian future. Mechanics are taken from Blades in the Dark so it should do a good job of portraying the community building while also being player driven.
You can download a free intro adventure, but you will need Blades to run it for now.
https://www.geeknative.com/98708/free-to-download-astate-nicely-done/?utm_content=bufferd898a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
I think I'm starting to embrace the idea of running sessions without much of a plan. Last week's 13th Age game was the lightest I've ever run, notes-wise; I had two plot points to hit, and they managed to walk smack dab into both without any prompting. I didn't even have anything prepped for those plot points - I just knew I wanted to get them in contact with two NPCs in particular.
I wasn't expecting them to take a route that involved quite so much arson, but hey – we got there in the end!
Tonight is my third Expanse session, which is similarly free of clutter in the notes department. I've got a couple of maps together just in case (for atmosphere as much as combat), but at least part of the evening will be spent getting one character – whose player was unavailable last time – up to speed.
Sounds good. I find that as long as I know where a session is starting and I have a couple of things to drop in if the game slows down, then I'm probably good.
My Coriolis game has been going pretty well. Investigative SF is a nice change of pace.
We are still grinding through Tomb of Annihilation. The last few sessions have been good, but there is still a daunting amount of adventure to go. Last week they had to fight their way out of a dragon's lair, with 20+ well-prepared kobolds holding the high ground between them and the exit. it was fun.
And then there is Mothership. The system isn't exactly singing, but running SF horror with teenagers is so good because you can use all the lazy horror tropes and they actually get scared.
I ran the first chapter of Lost Mines of Phandelver got friends of friends last night, and it went pretty well! I've not been behind the screen in a while, but they were mostly new players - only one had really played before (in a previous campaign I ran years ago). I wanted to make a good impression of the hobby, so went a little overboard with ambience on a bluetooth speaker, maps on the TV, and adult voices for goblins. Everyone seemed to really enjoy it; I'd forgotten how great it is to play with enthusiastic newcomers.
Lost Mines is good if a little unsurprising. Glad to hear you all had fun.
I recommend replacing the pointless village in the East with the village in the North. It stops a lot of mostly dull travel and frees the players up a little with the order they want to visit everything.
I'll keep that in mind if we can organise anything going forward - ran it more as a taster session (so it went a little longer than I usually like to go), but one of the players had edged me on Facebook and messaged to let me know he's keen to continue. Let the hell of RPG scheduling… BEGIN!
Lost Mines isn't groundbreaking, no, but I think a familiar story is fine when everything else is new. 
(If we do manage to continue past the Starter Set, I think I might take them to Icewind Dale… Strahd is bae, but needs the right group.)
What do people expect from a starter set? Characters? Ability write ups? A rules explainer? A game that you can run over a single night or a few nights or what?
