It was about a week ago when the urge struck. I wanted some old school fantasy. I wanted D&D with alignment penalties, with arguing the merits of a Bec de Corbin versus a Guisarme-Volgue, with THAC0 and big swords and helmets with wings on them, with Larry Elmore art and half elven stablehands molesting horses (that last one may be specific to my own AD&D history). This urge was pretty odd to be honest. For two reasons, the first is that fantasy is a genre that I have very much cooled on, I honestly cannot remember the last time I read a fantasy novel and I have no urge to change that. The second reason is that while I have very fond memories of AD&D there is absolutely no rose tint to those memories. Modern systems with unified mechanics are infinitely preferable and while I do miss Stoneskin being amazing I have no urge to return to older mechanics. But still the urge was there. Continue reading…
Tag: rpg
GIWTR 02 – Eight Devils of the Demon’s Gate – Part 02.5 – Delays
I was really hoping to keep up bi-weekly posts on this little project but sadly it was clearly not meant to be. While there are some minor extenuating circumstances the main reason for the delay is the process of getting to grips with GURPS that I mentioned in my previous post. I love the idea of a modular endlessly customisable and adaptable system. I also love the basic idea for this campaign. But as it turns out I don’t love reading (literally) hundreds of pages of generic advantages and disadvantages. My first few attempts to slog through it met with failure. Clearly my tolerance for reading pure RPG mechanics has faded as it woudlnt have phased me in the least in the past. While I can appreciate the depth reading through it just to read through it feels like a waste of time. Not that all the effort is wasted as I’ve mentally made provisional lists of which advantages and disadvantages are suitable for the campaign. The customisation options are also impressive, but I think I’ll need to mock up some sample characters just to stop myself falling asleep. I did switch to skimming the text but that only brought me up to the skills chapter. Which is equally unexciting. How an RPG reads has little to do with how it is in play. But this is a spectacularly dull book to read. I shall soldier on, but with no chance to run this in the near future my interest and drive has drifted a bit (to running “pure” Lovecraftian Call of Cthulhu or first edition Earthdawn). I shall try to solider on, if for no other reason than the hopes of making some use of this blog again. I have thought more about the setting (because its easier and I’m lazy). I’ll try and fire up a post outlining that this week (preferably when it isnt five in the morning).
GIWTR 02 – Eight Devils of the Demon’s Gate – Part 02 – GURPS and Iterative Conversions
Came up with a snappy title, and by came up with I mean just took the literal translation of the antagonists from Ninja Scroll. But I won’t tell if you don’t. So when we last looked at EDotDG (behold my mighty acronym powers) I was considering how best to create a system for the Tracking/”Discovery” phase of the game. I do have some thoughts on that, which I’ll get to later, but while thinking around it other elements sprung up. Perhaps the most pressing of which was how to make the combats against the “Devils” feel both different and fun. Considering the menagerie of huge monsters that show up in most fantasy RPG’s (and a number of other genres) there is surprisingly little written about how to run such combats, in terms of either GM advice or actual mechanics. Continue reading…
PDF’s, Print on Demand and the allure of custom rulebooks
If you’ve been reading my recent gaming posts you’ll know I’m on something of a GURPS kick as the moment. While reading about it online I came across people discussing custom rulebooks. At first I thought they were simply talking about a PDF with some stuff Frankensteined together. But then I realised they were talking about actual physical books (made from PDF’s Frankensteined together). I’m not going to lie, this idea intrigued me greatly. Continue reading…
GIWTR 02 – Part 01 – (Ninja) Hunters of the Shadows of Monster Colossi (Scrolls)?
If you have forgotten what the amazingly unwieldy acronym “GIWTR” stands for it is “Games I want to Run”. Spawned in the heady days of 2013, when the world seemed a much brighter place (I mean I had a job and a working chair which are two things I lack now), it (like this blog honestly) hasn’t seen as much use as I thought it would. But as running and playing RPG’s is now a vaguely regular thing I’ve started to have those hot movements in my brain pan that the village elder assures me are what the gentry call “thoughts”. Thoughts for campaigns of such magnificence that playing in them would alter lives, cure illnesses and doubtless increase sexual potency (no refunds). I suppose at this point I should stop amusing myself and get to the subject at hand, what is this campaign idea about? Continue reading…
Out of the Abyss Part 1 – A campaign post-mortem
To paraphrase my favourite Irish musician, “I wasn’t going to write this post, but I’m going to write it.” I’m writing this because, while I refuse to accept it, my memory is like Swiss cheese in a perverts cupboard i.e. fucked. So hopefully the next time I run something I can look back at this and learn from it. Continue reading…
Games I want to run – My Goldilock’s problems
It’s been a few years since I ran a game, well the odd one off here and there, but nothing particularly long. The last campaign-ish thing I ran was a terrible Vampire campaign that fell apart, largely because I made every NPC an unbelievable cunt. Earlier this year I ran a short Traveller campaign, which started off rocky as I was fairly rusty but I was getting back into the swing of it by the time it ended. Last week I picked up the most recent mega-campaign for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, Curse of Strahd. Continue reading…
Iron Gods Campaign preparation Or How I Cried Wolf at the Heart of the World
I’m not going to say that I’m going to run this campaign. If the last few years have thought me anything is that my campaigns are like Schrödinger’s Cat. Theyre both dead as soon as you open the box. So this is just a little mental game I’m playing with myself (ooh err matron). Let’s keep it hypothetical (which is how the last woman I asked out turned me down). So what is Iron Gods? A sweet rock band? No you’re thinking of Stone Gods. Iron God’s is one of the more recent Adventure Paths from Paizo Publishing for their Pathfinder RPG (it in fact the most recent if you only count completed ones). “Hey wait a second!” I hear you cry. “A few months ago weren’t you working on converting the Rise of the Runelords adventure path, you’re nothing but a big dirty campaign slut aren’t you?” In answer all I can do is giggle coquettishly and roll my d20 on this ominous looking pinball table. I did in fact convert the first two parts of Rise of the Runelords. But the bloom is off that rose for a number of reasons. The major one being that I’m a big dirty campaign slut. Continue reading…
Return to the Dungeon (Part 01)
Sorry to disappoint my more salacious readers, but while I can bust out a turtle binding with the best of them this is about Dungeons and Dragons, not BDSM. Specifically it’s about my thoughts on Dungeon & Dragons 5th edition as I read through the core books. Dungeons and Dragons was the first role-playing game I owned or ran. After reading the original Dragonlance trilogy in first year of secondary school a number of classmates and I pooled our money to purchase the basic D&D boxed set (from Toymasters in Newry). Not knowing of course that the Dragonlance campaign used AD&D (how embarrassing I know). Also now that I think about those fuckers never paid for their share. Bastards. Continue reading…