RPG January 23

Read
I have been reading a little bit of lots of different games. It looks like I might be running a lot of stuff this year so I’m trying to get to an idea of what I want those games to be.

I got Iron Falcon ‘74 for Christmas and it is a lot of fun. The set up is Stranger Things, but instead of the kids getting thrown into a Stephen King novel, they find a megadungeon under their FLGS. Mechanically Iron Falcon is just a really tidy update of oD&D. The kids get a class, a couple spells and a handful of HP. I kinda love how up-front it is with it’s set up.

I’ve also been reading a few games based on Into The Odd as it is a great system both for kids and one-shots. I particularly enjoyed Liminal Horror and Mausritter. Liminal Horror feels like a much more modern take on horror than most RPG horror games with their Cthulhu obsession.

I also read Trophy Gold. I think it’s my new worst rpg. It’s just awful.

Play
I have played a lot over the last few months. Ten sessions over five different rpgs. Sentinel Comics has been great, I’m looking forward to that getting going again in a week.

A friend has offered to run the Delta Green campaign Impossible Landscapes for me. I don’t know when or who with but I will find the time.

GM
So I’m not actually running anything right now but my 13th Age game will be back up and running in a month or so.

If I start running for my older daughter and her friends again, I’m thinking of running Vaults of Vaarn with Offworlders to make a sort of JRPG fantasy-with-ancient-tech game. I want to keep it short though, so after that I’m thinking Alien or Mothership’s Gradient Descent.

If I end up running one-shots for the rpg club in the local bookshop I’m thinking Liminal Horror or maybe Cairn and run through some short OSR adventures. It’s only a once a month meet so not too much of a commitment but it’s a good opportunity to run some things I’ve had lying around.

That’s not even all of it. My younger child really wants me to run something for her and her friends (probably short D&D adventures with a lighter system) and I might be running again for the Wednesday group (something SF).

I suspect half of these potential games won’t happen. Let’s be honest, I don’t have time for all of them. Still, I’m excited for which ever do get going!

Read
Quite a lot, which is unusual for me!

I'm still consulting Alien from time to time as I finish off the Cinematic adventure I've been working on, but I also (as mentioned elsewhere) picked up Dune quite cheap, so I'm writing something for that, too. As well as those, I've got a lot of 13th Age books to look into (thanks, aniki), plus got Vaesen in a Humble Bundle, which is a neat setting/concept for a Year Zero system. Thinking I might use that for something I was originally looking at running in Call of Cthulhu.

I've also got a copy of The One Ring on the way at some point, and I keep looking longingly at Avatar Legends.

Play
Nothing over Christmas/New Year; all my games are paused until everyone's schedules make it back to euclidian space.

The one D&D game I play in basically only has a session left, which will mostly be dominated by the final boss fight; after that, I think I might bow out of the group, as I just haven't been available enough, missing several sessions or arriving late due to IRL stuff. The time that's convenient for me just isn't good for anyone else.

GM
My Curse of Strahd game is also right at the end - the next session will open with initiative against the man vampire himself. I suspect that Strahd is going to have to play extremely defensively to survive more than about a round and a half, because this group are ridiculous. They're also total chaos goblins, so I don't know how much they remember of the bits of lore they've learned, but I've given them a way to break the cycle of Barovia forever, instead of the book's "you can leave for now, but Strahd will be back because Dark Powers" ending.

The Natura1s have had a bit of a complex time since the end of November, but I picked up a bunch of audio gear around Black Friday which will massively improve the sound quality going forward, and let us have a backup recording in case of further technical issues. I keep worrying I'm going to run out of things for them to do (they're a wildly efficient group at getting through any challenges I throw at them), but then I check my notes and surprise myself with things I'd forgotten I had up my sleeve, which is nice.

Looks like my Wednesday game is already off, so that makes things a little easier.

Read

I'm going through the Paranoia: Perfect Edition preview pretty closely as I try to put the finishing touches on a FoundryVTT implementation; it's more ambitious in a lot of ways than my Avatar system was (and I'm learning a lot that I want to apply to the Salvage Union one that's been mothballed until the final PDFs come out in January). The book is mostly fine, though there are some oversights (there are repeated mentions of spending XP on equipment, but no guidance whatsoever on how things should be priced) and it frequently goes for a joke over clarity.

It's much more online-friendly, though, so I'm thinking a one-shot might be in order at least.

Play

The 5e game's been on hold as Christmas schedules have conflicted, but we should be resuming in a couple weeks. The WhatsApp group has been active at least, and we're all keen to get back to… whatever it was we were doing.

GM

Avatar has also been hit by scheduling woes, but will be back next week, all things well. I might need to turn the heat up on a couple story threads, but there's some recapping to do before I can hit the gas.

GM - just before Christmas I finished off the Starter Set for The One Ring 2e, then in an attempt to create some continuity with my AIME adventure from a couple of years ago, kept one character and rolled three new ones for some fun west of the Misty Mountains.

Starting everyone in Bree, the Lady Imra (who they nearly killed in AIME) is still recovering in Rivendell, but has tasked her favourite Hobbit with getting her boat ready at the Grey Havens, so a sealed message needs to be delivered to The Shipwright.

He however, seems to have locked himself in his tower for the last ten years, while the elvish navy are off fighting pirates, the trade routes into Mithlond are plagued by pirates - not much ship building is actually getting done.

Our heroes manage to get an audience with Ciardans secretary, but may be waiting weeks to meet the main man, so head off to see what they can do about the bandits.

We are half way through the Star of The Mist Landmark, and I think they’re quite enjoying themselves.

I'm desperate to get my hands on The One Ring, but the place I ordered it from has had it on back order for months, and I don't know if it when it'll actually turn up.

I've been reading a lot of games, what with the kerfuffle over WotC this last couple of weeks, but a lot of the big names in alternatives to D&D I don't really like, for various reasons, but the big one is that the characters my players use mostly aren't replicable without a considerable amount of homebrew-mechanical legwork that frankly I don't have the brain for.

I have been poring over Free League's Dragonbane quickstart, though, and so far I like what I'm seeing. It seems much more straightforward to run than Pathfinder's predilection for towering stacks of situational bonuses and penalties, and one of the playable races is Donald Duck.

That’s quackers

I late pledged on Dragonbane, and have the beta PDFs now.

It's not the best-explained system at the moment, but there's a lot in there to like, and plenty I might just steal for any game I run.

Played my first Pathfinder 2e game tonight – a one-shot by a paid GM that a friend roped a bunch of us into joining. The GM could've been better prepared (there were a few obvious questions that he didn't have on-hand rules references for) and I feel like six players was a little on the high side for a one-shot introduction to the system, but it all seemed to flow pretty well once we got going.

We didn't get into combat enough to really test out class features; the one fight we had didn't last an entire round, so most of us didn't get to land a hit (one guy didn't even get his turn), but I did like the three-action combat economy compared to 5e's Move/Action/Bonus split, which often leaves me feeling limited in my options.

I didn't think it felt all that different, in the moment-to-moment, from the likes of 5e or even 13th Age, but I get the sense that where it really sings is in a longer campaign with properly-built characters. I've run through a couple of character creation tools for PF2e and the number of options for customization and specialization seems bewildering, but much more flexible. (Though I do feel like it'd be possible to build yourself a character that's utterly useless for a given campaign.)

Dragonbane does look nice, like a lighter RuneQuest. There wasn't anything that really grabbed me in the beta but it's nice all the same.

Pathfinder 2 is still very much D&D. I think Aniki's actions comparison is is pretty indicative of the difference between the two systems. 5e's Action(Attacks?)/Move/Bonus/Reaction structure takes some learning but doesn't really leave you with many tactical options. Pathfinder's three actions sounds a lot simpler but actually it opens up a lot of tactical options. I don't actually think Pathfinder 2e is any more complex than 5e, but I think it does make much better use of that complexity.

What (admittedly little) I've read of Pathfinder 2e reminded me a bit of 4e D&D, weirdly - the seemed to be a lot of little stacking situational +2 bonuses, which were thrown out in fifth in favour of the simpler dis/advantage setup.

Overall, I think "tactical options" seems about right as a descriptor - but I'm not a very tactical person. 🙃

Just got an email that my copy of The One Ring 2e finally shipped, so that'll be another one on the Read pile!

I already knew this from leafing covetously through it in Forbidden Planet, but by Eru, The One Ring is a lovely book. The paper quality, the art, the layout, the fonts… Just gorgeous.

…

The system seems pretty good, too, I guess.