What are y'all up to these days?

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
I just brought to a conclusion a Polar Fudge Adventures campaign that started in May 2022. It ended with a big, rather satisfying finale, which isn't something I normally aim for, but in this case it seemed fitting. The adventure gave the players the opportunity to revisit many NPCs and places they had come across during the campaign, giving it a bit of farwell tour sort of feel.

It's funny because this wasn't even meant to be a campaign. It started off as one-shot, pick up game, part of the game's playtest. It then had a follow up adventure, and then another and before I knew it, I had a stabile group, keen to carry on long after the play test was over. Very happy how it all went but also happy that it's done, as I feel like I need a break from GMing.

One of the players will pick up the GM mantle next session. He said he'll be running a wierd western game using Polar Fudge, which, as the author, I find equally flattering and surprising (you'd think they'd be bored with Polar Fudge by now). But eveyone seemed to be on-board with the idea so that's good. Another player offered to run Ghostbusters, which I am looking very much forward to as it is such a great game and it's been a while since I last played it. But, yeah, my GM brains needs a break for sure.
 
My regular D&D groups DM needed a break from speaking after a business trip so last night I GM'd a couple games of "Everyone is John".
It went fairly well. Notable incidents include Frosty the Snowman trying to ducttape a child to his body for use as a human shield from police bullets and the First Gentlemen (IE the husband of the President) trying to start a war with Mexico by both insulting the President of Spain and saluting the veterans of both sides of the Spanish Civil War.
 
Still playing in our DCC Umerica game, with another session last night although it's been somewhat sporadic, and I've been too lazy to do any writeups thereof.

Also wrapped up the online DC Heroes one-on-one game had been playing in, as the GM admitted he had pretty much ran through all the major plot points he had wanted to bring up, and we also tied up the majority of the various subplots that had come up during the campaign. Both of agreed to leave things open for some potential one-shots in the future, though.
 
Also, I just sent my application for this month's two-day "mini con" at a local FLGS. I'm going to playtest the adventure for the Pub Zine again, in the Orb Setting, using Mythras CF again, because more playtest is always better...:thumbsup:
 
I am again reminded that my players characters are nearly completely incapable of any form of information gathering more complicated than looking at the first result on an internet search. In a game system where normal people have 4-6 wounds, PCs and major NPCs have 10-16 wounds, and having 20 wounds is being a near unkillable badass... they're fighting a shape-shifted-into-temporary-full-dragon-form Athasian sorcerer-king with a power fist in a buried chamber, who has 26 wounds and ten templars linked with Shield Other, giving him an effective 108 wounds. They don't even know how many templars there are, which they could have found out just by asking.

Over six rounds the PCs have suffered wounds, fatigue, temporary insanity, downed allies (they brought 30 marines) and have managed to do exactly zero harm to the sorcerer-king. They also split the party doing it, which kind-of works in their favor but not by much and not in the way they're expecting it to. They are, in short, going to take massive casualties and fail, while making a genius level major asshole master sorcerer into an enemy.

They are experts at making a mess of stuff and running away. Often leaving witnesses and evidence behind them.
 
Last weekend I had a chance to play a bunch of RPGs at SaltCON-Spring. Some of the games I got to play was the 1980's James Bond RPG and the rare Red Dwarf RPG. I also ran two games. A classic dungeon crawl for Basic Fantasy and a comedy Star Trek Adventures game. A Lower Decks style crew met the cast of Top Core (think BBCs Top Gear in space).

Here is my after action report. https://tardiscaptain.com/2024/03/07/saltcon-spring-2024-after-action-report/
 
It's confirmed. We're going to have a player new to RPGs on tomorrow's session, and she's closer to my daughter's* age than mine...:tongue:

However, she's very much "our kind of girl". As in, her answer to what she wants to play was "warlord".
What does that mean? "A warrior with manipulation skills".
And by way of example, she also pointed out that Conan became a king:gooselove:!

A 20-something old that knows Conan was a king and not just a "barbarian" is a keeper as far as RPGs go, I'd say. Besides, what better game to introduce her with than Mythras, right::honkhonk:?


As I said this week in other thread, I don't get people who keep introducing new players via D&D. Especially if they also bitch about D&D's dominance in the hobby:shade:.


*And yes, First Daughter is also going to be there. We're going to have between 4 and 5 players (one guy isn't sure) and me.
As a consequence, I decided against doing an open sign-up for this session, this time, because those are the players who signed up from the Discord:gooseshades:.

Acmegamer said:
View attachment 79090
Click to expand...
Well, the report was from someone who played with the author on a con. He or she also stated that this made him buy the book, but then didn't quite manage to make it run nearly as smoothly...:gunslinger:
 
spittingimage said:
"Here's your character sheet, here's your pencil, here's your scientific calculator..."
Click to expand...
My recollection was that Phoenix Command just had basic arithmetic. Lots and lots of it. Also many dice rolls one lots of tables that had progressions that couldn't easily be memorised, so you had to check the table every time.

Now if you want maths that encourages the use of scientific calculators, try Fire, Fusion, & Steel (for TNE) or Vehicles (for GURPS). They involve square and cube roots. Terrible stuff.

AsenRG said:
IIRC, the game master just told them to say what they rolled, then quoted the values they needed to mark:thumbsup:.

Yes, supposedly he'd memorized those tables:shade:.
Click to expand...
Well, if he wrote the game, he probably knew the underlying design and how it translated into the charts and tables, so he'd have a good feel for it even if he didn't know all the charts off.
 
It's possible to front-load quite a bit of the calculations for Phoenix Command. Combining that with having relevant tables close at hand, and things can go quite smooth.
 
Lundgren said:
It's possible to front-load quite a bit of the calculations for Phoenix Command. Combining that with having relevant tables close at hand, and things can go quite smooth.
Click to expand...
I'm sure it can. When my group tried it when it was new, our feeling was that it didn't add enough extra realism over games like Aftermath! to justify the extra rolling and the time taken to learn it, and that a lot of the realism was in the wrong place as far as we were concerned (we weren't super-interested in really detailed wounding if the end result was going to be "Your dude dies of blood loss" anyway).
 
Sharrow said:
I'm sure it can. When my group tried it when it was new, our feeling was that it didn't add enough extra realism over games like Aftermath! to justify the extra rolling and the time taken to learn it, and that a lot of the realism was in the wrong place as far as we were concerned (we weren't super-interested in really detailed wounding if the end result was going to be "Your dude dies of blood loss" anyway).
Click to expand...
Now, not thinking the details produced are worth it is another thing, and that one I can agree with.
 
TardisCaptain said:
The same GM ran it last year. Having played it twice now, I'm amazed that a game from the 80's with it's crunch ran pretty smoothly.
Click to expand...
Why shouldn't a game from the 80s run smoothly? Even with crunch?

The games I play all run smoothly, at least to my mind they do. Though many of them are from the 70s not the 80s :-)
 
I'm begging the mods step in and make the baaad baaad people stop talking about the horror that is Phoenix Command! Haven't we been tormented enough! Plus Sorrows mention of Fire and Fusion and GURPS vehicles! What have I stumbled into? A math BDSM dungeon? Where's my fucking safe word! Think of Abby will you!

Abby Normal.JPG
 
OK, so in my ongoing Rolemaster game my character's party had a near TPK and the survivors were captured and imprisoned by some nothighlanders, losing all out gear and money. After a few months of jail, circumstances allowed us to bust our way out. In the process of getting-the-gang-back- together, we also made mortal enemies of the local dwarves.

There are now two rewards out for our capture.

Fleeing to a neutral port, we were presented with a business opportunity involving another group of dwarves, a grumpy trio from the south who my character had unwisely made fun of on a recent night out at the tavern

They agreed to do business with us, ONLY if my character made an appropriate public apology. So, OK, we agreed, and I wrote up a little "I Love Dwarves" speech. I read the speech out, which the table thought was pretty good, and my character made a decent Public Speaking roll.

And the tavern was packed to hear it.

However, a cabal of local spies, who we had recently declined to be recruited by, held a grudge. And they were gnomes, so they had a nasty trick in play. With their magical horn of flatulence, they totally ruined the delivery of my poor sorcerer's oratory! The crowd thought it was hilarious, and the trio of dwarves were really really pissed off.

We were hoping to try to make amends the next day and still cut some sort of deal. Everything will be better in the morning kind of thing.

But that night, those three dwarves were murdered. By a fourth dwarf. Who I think is from the nothighlander area we just escaped from. MEANWHILE, a nothiighlander noblewoman is also in town, knows about the bounties, and she is trying to blackmail us to do some night work against a former lover.

I am hoping this dude can be turned into an ally. We need all the help we can get at this point.

Good fun!
 
Acmegamer said:
I'm begging the mods step in and make the baaad baaad people stop talking about the horror that is Phoenix Command! Haven't we been tormented enough! Plus Sorrows mention of Fire and Fusion and GURPS vehicles! What have I stumbled into? A math BDSM dungeon? Where's my fucking safe word! Think of Abby will you!

View attachment 79099
Click to expand...
I'm not sure if that was a typo or intentional, but I laughed.
 
Put my game on pause. There was agreement there wasn't the bandwidth for a sandbox game and no one had anything they were hot to play. So, off to board games for a while. One of my players really likes to role play so he's trying to find another.

I suppose this frees up some time for me to do other things. I've got a list
 
One of my gaming group has a new partner which eats alot of his time up, and he's starting to drift.
I've known him since I was eight years old, and we have been doing trpgs since we were 13 or 14 yrs old, about thirty-five years now (with perhaps a five year break in there). He's a great mate, I guess I've been used to seeing more of him given that he's been single for the last decade or so.
He is part of my current gaming group. We are a group of four friends; one woman, three guys, with two of us being married with kids.
We have been hanging out together for the last fifteen years doing trpgs - we would really hate for our group to lose momentum now.

Other than that, I've somehow managed to run another 13th Age session, still got some ways to go before finishing this adventure
Then I have plans for my homebrew Hyborian Age Adventures - we already have converted our previous Conan 2D20 characters to Mythras.
After this it's possibly Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4E by the end of the year.

We'll see if we can keep the momentum, which could be challenging when one of us is possibly starting to drift away
 
Last edited:
Mankcam said:
One of my gaming group has a new partner which eats alot of his time up, and he's starting to drift.
I've known him since I was eight years old, and we have been doing trpgs since we were 13 or 14 yrs old, about thirty-five years now (with perhaps a five year break in there). He's a great mate, I guess I've been used to seeing more of him given that he's been single for the last decade or so.
He is part of my current gaming group. We are a group of four friends; one woman, three guys, with two of us being married with kids.
We have been hanging out together for the last fifteen years doing trpgs - we would really hate for our group to lose momentum now.

Other than that, I've somehow managed to run another 13th Age session, still got some ways to go before finishing this adventure
Then I have plans for my homebrew Hyborian Age Adventures - we already have converted our previous Conan 2D20 characters to Mythras.
After this it's possibly Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4E by the end of the year.

We'll see if we can keep the momentum, which could be challenging when one of us is possibly starting to drift away
Click to expand...
Recruit his partner?
 
Mankcam said:
One of my gaming group has a new partner which eats alot of his time up, and he's starting to drift.
I've known him since I was eight years old, and we have been doing trpgs since we were 13 or 14 yrs old, about thirty-five years now (with perhaps a five year break in there). He's a great mate, I guess I've been used to seeing more of him given that he's been single for the last decade or so.
He is part of my current gaming group. We are a group of four friends; one woman, three guys, with two of us being married with kids.
We have been hanging out together for the last fifteen years doing trpgs - we would really hate for our group to lose momentum now.

Other than that, I've somehow managed to run another 13th Age session, still got some ways to go before finishing this adventure
Then I have plans for my homebrew Hyborian Age Adventures - we already have converted our previous Conan 2D20 characters to Mythras.
After this it's possibly Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4E by the end of the year.

We'll see if we can keep the momentum, which could be challenging when one of us is possibly starting to drift away
Click to expand...

Yeah, seen this a few times before. In my experience, expect significant drift or potentially him ceasing gaming altogether for 12-18 months, then he'll be back after the new relationship has either entered its "settled" state, or its blown up...
 
bleys21 said:
Yeah, seen this a few times before. In my experience, expect significant drift or potentially him ceasing gaming altogether for 12-18 months, then he'll be back after the new relationship has either entered its "settled" state, or its blown up...
Click to expand...
Yeah that's what I figured, so I'm trying to weather the storm and hanging in there as the group's glue at present
 
I haven't had a chance to work with my friend on the solo game I'm going to run for him. In the interim, I've commissioned a fair amount of artwork lately. I'm planning two supplements for Four Color Heroics, where I focus on some heroes and villains (with a few original characters mixed in) for a specific Golden Age publisher. I've got one for Quality Comics planned, and one for Fawcett. I have an artist specifically working on the character images for each book, so all the art will be by the same person. Due to a desire to avoid hassles from a certain comic publisher, I'm changing up a specific set of heroes because they're fairly popular (even though they're also legally public domain)
 
I got a notice from Paypal today that I got a small payment. Turns out I got a royalty payment from Lovecraftiana Magazine for my poem they published last year. I honestly didn't expect to make anything, as I was just hoping for some exposure (given I'm still new at this whole fiction writing thing). That kind of made my day.

Of course, this reminded me to check if the sister publication, Schlock!, was open for submissions again. It was, so I submitted a short pulpish fantasy story I wrote (which a couple of other publications turned down). I've got another story coming out in that one in May, so I figured I'd try my luck again.
 
AsenRG said:
It's confirmed. We're going to have a player new to RPGs on tomorrow's session, and she's closer to my daughter's* age than mine...:tongue:

However, she's very much "our kind of girl". As in, her answer to what she wants to play was "warlord".
What does that mean? "A warrior with manipulation skills".
And by way of example, she also pointed out that Conan became a king:gooselove:!

A 20-something old that knows Conan was a king and not just a "barbarian" is a keeper as far as RPGs go, I'd say. Besides, what better game to introduce her with than Mythras, right::honkhonk:?


As I said this week in other thread, I don't get people who keep introducing new players via D&D. Especially if they also bitch about D&D's dominance in the hobby:shade:.


*And yes, First Daughter is also going to be there. We're going to have between 4 and 5 players (one guy isn't sure) and me.
As a consequence, I decided against doing an open sign-up for this session, this time, because those are the players who signed up from the Discord:gooseshades:.
Click to expand...
The session actually went great. I mean, I knew how much more they could have done, but they didn't, and had fun.

I switched stuff around in the adventure (G2: The Lonely Lighthouse for M:CF) because I liked it better. And, notably, I used some Warhammer terrain to represent the tower, which might surprise some of you.

The statement of the night was: "Obviously that's a mother boar which identifies as a mother rabbit!"


If I find the pictures of the terrain, I'd post them in my thread::honkhonk:.


Also, my third FB Live event was yesterday:gooseshades:.
 
Altitus: Bladesmith - Psionic Swordsman
This week's character takes us down a villainous path. Bladesmith is able to generate planes of telekinetic force which she has learned to apply with deadly force in her personal crusade.

housedok.com

Altitus: Bladesmith - Psionic Swordsman - House Dok Productions

This week we introduce Bladesmith, a Classic villain with a taste for equality. What does that mean though? Bladesmith As A Character As a person, Bladesmith wants to elevate the standard of living for all people. However, the hardships of her life have shaped her outlook. She is a casual...
housedok.com
 
Sharrow said:
My recollection was that Phoenix Command just had basic arithmetic. Lots and lots of it. Also many dice rolls one lots of tables that had progressions that couldn't easily be memorised, so you had to check the table every time.
Click to expand...
Yeah. I have Phoenix Command books. The problem for me isn't the amount of math, but the amount of tables. GURPS is very playable for me not just because the math is easy for me, but because the math makes sense to me, so I can memorize it. Large tables remove most/all of that (and also make it much less useful for taking the ideas to another system, i.e. GURPS). But also, the math that can be analyzed, didn't pass my sniff tests in some key places, such as experience increasing the ability to handle bullet wounds so much.

A few people have claimed to have mastered Phoenix Command well enough to make it playable. I'd gladly play if they were facilitating, but I'm not going to invest the skills to be able to do that myself.

Sharrow said:
Now if you want maths that encourages the use of scientific calculators, try Fire, Fusion, & Steel (for TNE) or Vehicles (for GURPS). They involve square and cube roots. Terrible stuff.
Click to expand...
FWIW, at least the more advanced math in GURPS Vehicles is about designing/building vehicles, not about using them in play.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top