What are y'all up to these days?

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At the risk of name dropping, back when I was working on Bounty Hunters of the Atomic Wastelands, Simon Burley was insistent that I should not give the game away for free on basis that free lowers people's perception of its value. He's probably right, but I kind of like having nice, clear boundaries between what I do as work and what I do as a hobby.
I dunno how true that is these days. I see lots of games I think have limited value charging and games like Sine Nomine's stuff free for the artless version but charge for art+etc.

When no gatekeeper is setting a price then price:value is random as hell.
 
As a writer, there is of course the desire to earn a profit from your labor. As an independent publisher, there is also this understanding that a large segment of tabletop world is going to ignore your work because it isn't exactly the thing they want, and they don't want to try something different, more so, there is a segment of the gaming population that is never going to see your work because you don't have the means to advertise to them.

With both of our print releases, I've tried to keep our price points reasonable for core books, both in print and for the PDFs, and I do what I can to promote them. This includes small web enhancements, APs, and before the pandemic, events at conventions. However, my perspective changed over the pandemic.

So many people were out of work during that first year, and still today, people are struggling to recover from the impact of the pandemic, or the new normal that it has become. For about the first two years we changed all of our PDFs from set prices to PWYW. Additionally, I pivoted to meatier weekly content on the House Dok site.

Now, we have returned to a more traditional paid structure for the core book PFDs, we just couldn't keep them as PWYW indefinitely. However, we've started re-releasing adventures originally published as web enhancements as PDFs with a bit of added clean up. As this was originally free content, the adventure PDFs are PWYW. While I don't know how people will receive this new content on Itch or DTRPG, hopefully it helps to get fresh eyes on our games and people appreciate the level of support that an indie title has.
 
At the risk of name dropping, back when I was working on Bounty Hunters of the Atomic Wastelands, Simon Burley was insistent that I should not give the game away for free on basis that free lowers people's perception of its value. He's probably right, but I kind of like having nice, clear boundaries between what I do as work and what I do as a hobby.

I am retired, or I might have felt the way you do. Carlos also said that free gams don't get played. I don't know how he knew that.

Another publication, the second in three days. It shows that not having a life has some advantages.

 
Poisoned Apples: Who Let The Dog Out? - A Metahumans Rising Adventure (Part 2 of the Iron Cycle)

A criminal returns to the city only to continue enforcing his corrupt dogma. The heroes stopping him is only the first part of the story, as evidence around his escape from police custody afterwards emerges.

 
Playing Jacks (Part 2), Page 21: Last Minute Plans
With the shifting battlefield, the Aces will need to think fast before they are overwhelmed with no means of escape.

 
For the past 2 Sundays my 2nd group has taken a break from our regular campaign and did a 5e Die Hard one shot.
What followed was a hilarity as we bumbled through Platomi Nakaza Trade Spire. For the first session all but one character thought that we were in an elaborate escape room. All our shoes were destroyed by Acid that was disguised as champagne.
Grans Huber and his gang of disco Drow we're the villains (except for a twist at the end were it turns out that the guy snorting coke at the beginning was the real mastermind).
My character was a grossly incompetent (my rolls sucked major the whole first session) dwarf ex-city guard named Detective Dwarfo. His only good rolls were attacks on the Drow gangsters.
At the end the villain almost got away because a new player didn't realize that throwing him from the top of a tower was a more efficient way of killing him than a single attack with a dagger (She wanted to cut his throat while he was under the effects of a sleep spell, not realizing that he had more than 4 hp).
All in all good fun.
 
For the past 2 Sundays my 2nd group has taken a break from our regular campaign and did a 5e Die Hard one shot.
What followed was a hilarity as we bumbled through Platomi Nakaza Trade Spire. For the first session all but one character thought that we were in an elaborate escape room. All our shoes were destroyed by Acid that was disguised as champagne.
Grans Huber and his gang of disco Drow we're the villains (except for a twist at the end were it turns out that the guy snorting coke at the beginning was the real mastermind).
My character was a grossly incompetent (my rolls sucked major the whole first session) dwarf ex-city guard named Detective Dwarfo. His only good rolls were attacks on the Drow gangsters.
At the end the villain almost got away because a new player didn't realize that throwing him from the top of a tower was a more efficient way of killing him than a single attack with a dagger (She wanted to cut his throat while he was under the effects of a sleep spell, not realizing that he had more than 4 hp).
All in all good fun.
5e for Die Hard: Not Enough Wounds Penalties edition:grin:?

Either way, I'm disappointed. Wasn't it said that cutting a throat of a sleeping enemy should bypass HP? Or at least count as a coup de grace (could be coup de gras if you stick him in the gut, I guess:tongue:)?
 
I've been prepping for another IRL game with me as GM this time, though I could actually run it on here depending on the schedules of my IRL group.
 
Powering Through 7: Hypnotic Combat
This week's Powering Through was a fun one as we get to blend what is traditionally not thought of as a combat power with martial prowess. Enjoy!

 
What company are the Ogres from?

Can't remember, I'm afraid. Bought them some time ago and don't have any packaging. Were 3d printed so will have been off Etsy and/or Ebay. I'll have a check when I get back home to see if I can ferret them out - ie, order history, etc.
 
And here are the finished miniatures...

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My photography skills don't do these justice IMHO. I'm really happy with how they've come out. I don't get to paint regularly but I tried out the slapchop method for the first time, with contrast paints and a little highlighting/touch up work to finish. The four of them took about 7 hours (painting and basing time, over two evenings) or so; which is a fraction of the time they'd have taken usually. I'm a very slow painter!
 
Yesterday I ran an ICONS Christmas themed one-shot adventure for a few Pubbers. It was fast, funny, the players were endlessly creative (thank you guys!) and the scenario just unfolded in a very satisfying manner. I had not run ICONS in a couple of years between one thing and another. This was a reminder of how much I like this game.

Today I concluded a short Mutant Chronicles (Savage Worlds edition) campaign. I always wanted to try my hand at Savage Worlds (this was my first go running it) as comes with so many fun settings. Likewise I've long had a soft spot for Mutant Chronicles, largely due to the movie and from stories roleplaying friends shared with me.

Overall it think the campaign came across a little flat; not my worst campaign but lacking something. I based it on the published Dark Legion campaign as it seemed like the most iconic Mutant Chronicles campaign and it does take you on tour of the setting. But it turned out to be kind of repetitive.

As a learning experience, the short campaign wasn't enough for me to fully internalise the Savage Worlds rules. So on one hand I am thinking I should follow this up by running another Savage Worlds game (I have Day After Ragnarok in print, a pdf of Deadlands and some other bits and bobs). On the other hand, ICONS was so much easier to run and such fun.

I'll need to think about this.
 
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And here are the finished miniatures...

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My photography skills don't do these justice IMHO. I'm really happy with how they've come out. I don't get to paint regularly but I tried out the slapchop method for the first time, with contrast paints and a little highlighting/touch up work to finish. The four of them took about 7 hours (painting and basing time, over two evenings) or so; which is a fraction of the time they'd have taken usually. I'm a very slow painter!

Those are really nice paint jobs! Wish I could still paint, but my eyesight just won't cut it anymore, and I never could adjust to using one of those magnifying glasses. On a positive note, I sent my huge collection of paints, brushes and related stuff to my nephew, and now he's been painting 40K minis like there's no tomorrow. :-)
 
Tomb of Horrors was a bit disappointing. Everyone rolled up heavy combat focused characters only to find a tomb of traps and puzzles. They all float too so the overused pit traps were completely ineffective. One character died currently, she walked into the Green Devils mouth. I did some adjustments to the tomb to make it a little more fun. One was having dead characters souls transfer to a new body in the entry hall. I also gave everyone a scroll of wish and a deck of many things.
Additionally, in the stupid secret door puzzle the party found Acererak's skull sitting on a spear of backbiting. It quickly became apparent that Acererak is dead, and a note in his mouth proclaimed that "I killed Acererack, he was a bitch", the author likely being the mysterious voice that's been taunting the party as they travelled through the tomb.
Because everyone is combat focused the 2 combat encounters were done in less than 2 rounds. The 4 armed gargoyle got 1 hit killed and a demon got 2 hit killed.
We ended halfway through the Tomb and will likely finish next week.
 
Playing Jacks (Part 2), Page 22: Come Together

The clock is ticking down before the Chimera base leaves orbit. The team has to act fast if they want to escape.

We publish new content every week, from adventures to comics to other bonus content for the Metahumans Rising RPG. Pick up a copy of the Super Powered RPG at Itch: https://housedok.itch.io/metahumans-rising
 
Finished the first draft of my next game design. I have a lot of editing ahead and haven’t even started illustrating it, so it will be a while before it’s done, but this is a milestone.

Funny story how this game came about. As part of the play test for Polar Fudge Adventures (a generic, Fudge-based system) I ran a bunch of fantasy one-off games, some of which run here on The Pub’s Discord server (once agian, thanks guys!). Fantasy seemed like a good way to stress test the rules, but as I hadn't run any fantasy games in a very long time I didn't really have a vision of the setting so I just went full generic.

During play, however, the implied setting gradually started taking a shape of its own, rooted in feudalism, dirty medieval politics and surreal comedy. It’s like the setting found its own voice. It seemed worth developing as its own thing, so here I am.
 
Savage Worlds is this coming Friday. It'll be our only December game, so I'm going to make it a bit of a Christmas special by borrowing the premise from the movie Christmas Bloody Christmas: decommissioned military robots that someone rather unwisely decided to re-use as robot Santas, haha.
 
My biweekly-ish Dolmenwood OSE campaign is taking a short break due to some players being unavailable during the holidaze. In the meantime, I'm running Blades in the Dark, picking up where that campaign left off last December. Playing in a monthly AD&D game and recently started playing The One Ring (1e revised) over Zoom with an old friend. Finally, my colleague/co-DM and I have started planning/prepping for the resumption of our library BX D&D open table game in February.
 
I love it when that happens:thumbsup:!
Yeah, it's interesting when that happens.

There is a bit of a paradox. From a point of view of getting the GM excited about running something as well as pitching the game idea to the players successfully, having a precisely defined setting and campaign tone assumptions is beneficial.

At the same time, the best campaigns often have humble origins, with just the most bland, vanilla genre assumptions which then, in play, just organically grow into something unique.
 
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