Infinity Operation Crimson Stone: 15 point beginner list building

With face to face gaming likely to be coming back soon, and the new Code One starter box for Infinity incoming, I'm pretty excited about the idea of getting back into any game - but Infinity was always my favourite skirmish wargame and I am hoping this is an easier entry point.

From playing Haqqislam before, and feeling somewhat that their Red Veil / starter units weren't a great starting point, let's see what's in the box!

Cyber-ninjas and werewolves you say? Image (cc) chesterocampo

Nomad implied list, from the units in the box:

10 more gems from the blogosphere

First off, Sheep and Sorcery featured an unspeakably cool post that is not only a serviceable and colorful light OSR game but also a reference post for some excellent, flavoursome random tables it utilises. That's about as indie as indie games get. I should have told you months ago.

Prismatic Wasteland made a strong case for the application of freeform, player driven truths in mystery RPG scenarios. This is definitely something I'm going to try sometime as I find it hard to plan and run mystery scenarios myself.

Angry GM manages to write about story structure in a way that's usable for me as a GM, and it's been a revelation. Angry is sweary, opinionated, and wordy, and the other thing I like is that his advice is pretty much always good.

Library of Attnam has this random regional trouble table for shaking things up in your neighborhood - although some of it is campaign-starting stuff in its own right.

I'm in an OSR mood at the moment and really liked this short adventure over at Sundered Shields and Silver Shillings. It's for GLOG but I would definitely use it for e.g. Mork Borg...

Rats! Image (cc) TmoeGee

...and d66 Classless Kobolds has this wonderful list of crowdsourced quick settings that is definitely too good to not share!

And Against the Wicked City presents d100 reasons your wizard had to drop out of academia and go adventuring instead.

Spiceomancy reminds us of the importance of players being rat bastards, and how to foster that devious quick-witted behaviour.

And as my own thoughts turn to dungeons and megadungeons I am reading this post at Bat in the Attic about minimalising dungeons, and this one at The Yak Man Cometh about mapless (roomless!) dungeons with interest...

As always please support the blogosphere, and let me know of any more gems in the comments.

UVG: d11+n more reasons to travel the Ultraviolet Grasslands

The seed for one of these travel quests came from a conversation with a friend along the lines of "what if the party were all bards and the campaign was actually a stadium tour," and the rest came all at once after that.

I'm writing them down for when I come to run a game in the Ultraviolet Grasslands and hope you find them useful or entertaining, further suggestions are very welcome in the comments! 

Ah those crazy cat lords. Image (cc) maricamolesi

Inclusivity in tabletop gaming

Recently I have stumbled upon a few thoughts on inclusivity in our hobby:

 

B/X Blackrazor on Juneteenth

Various insightful posts on Cannibal Halfling

It's not something that's personally important to me - hetero white male privilege? - but it's of personal importance to other people so it's important to me that I'm more conscious about it at the table.

As always, comments welcome.

On loot and lifestyle

Most players love finding loot, but how often do we do anything with it apart from hoard it or go equipment shopping?

Wealth could be a deeper and more meaningful part of the story, and this month's RPG Blog Carnival over at Campaign Mastery has got me thinking about how I could make more of it in my games.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be

All RPG campaigns need glue to hold them together, and a popular glue is having PCs have a shared goal or a shared enemy. One that I think could be fun is a shared debt - all the PCs owe somebody big time - which is effectively both of the above.

Starting the players in debt is an easy way to bring disparate characters together, it gives context to accumulating wealth, and can be an effective short (or even long) term goal.

Some games have this built in, some it's easy to factor: in a Traveller or Stars Without Number game, ships are expensive. You're not likely to get one without a loan.  In a cyberpunk world if you want chrome you're likely to end up owing - or being owned by - someone to be able to afford it.

What about fantasy or other settings: