RPG Blog Carnival: Endings

Apologies for my lack of involvement over the last few months, real life gets in the way sometimes. I do have a post still in draft for the September Carnival theme, then Orktober took over, and had I previously posted something on the theme for November and was struggling for ideas...

But on to this Carnival! To bookend Scot's January topic of "Beginnings", for December 2023 I've chosen an intentionally broad theme of "Endings" to close the year. 

Image credit: NataliaDrepina

Some suggestions:

Campaign finales and closing plot arcs

(I'm particularly interested in this; as much a fan of shorter campaigns that I am, I still struggle with endings - it's easier to just keep the story rolling on!)

Character death, retirement, and TPKs

(I've talked briefly about the latter before, but I still think it's an interesting topic)

2023 in review / retrospective

(I don't usually do this, but I like reading them; and I think I will this year as I started the year off with hopes and dreams - if you are too then please share here!)

But anything goes that fits the theme!

Drop a link to your themed post in the comments on this post, all welcome, and I'll post a wrap-up at the end of the month when the Carnival moves on.

After this month the 2023 RPG Blog Carnival is ending - signups to host in 2024 are open at the hub on OfDiceAndDragons, along with general info about getting involved (and why you should) and links to all the past Carnivals too.

Gorkamorka mob building and loadouts

I've had a couple more games of GorkaMorka and started building my own minis to represent my mob (as I borrowed them last time). Rules-as-written there are a few things to consider when choosing gear for my Boyz

• Everyone gets knives/knuckles free, meaning there's no reason any boy can't have multiple melee weapons
• The +1 Attacks bonus for having multiple melee weapons only applies to Boyz who don't have any two handed weapons
• The Big Shoota is hands down the best weapon, no reason not to take one on each vehicle apart from cost!

There's no advantage to having a pair of Choppas or a pair of Sluggas (apart from if one of them runs out of ammo) or a 'Uge Choppa and another melee weapon, so I've been reviewing my mob's loadouts.

The boyz grabbing some loot

My Nob's switched out his Slugga for a Shoota as they cost the same and the Shoota is better at range at the cost of being two-handed - so he got no benefit from using the Slugga with his 'Uge Choppa. Not that that would have stopped him being taken out by one of Jim's grots (above, left) - oh the shame!

Oddly, Slugga + Choppa is probably the best loadout for a Nob, despite the urge to beef them up. The game is definitely designed for boyz to go ranged OR melee, and I'm trying to make them all unique:

Melee/CQ 3-teef loadouts:

• Slugga + Choppa/Chain/Spear
• 6 Shoota + Choppa/Chain/Spear

I might play around with them but the other melee weapons (spears etc.) just don't feel like they have as much utility as a good ol' Choppa. Happy to take advice!

Ranged 3-teef loadouts:

• Kannon (worth trying out)
• Shoota + Choppa (for the strength bonus?)
• Shoota + Shield (cause I think it would look cool and might work?)

Stuff I'm toying with:

• 2x 6 Shootas (two rounds of firing before needing to reload) - 4 teef
• Shoota + 'Uge Choppa - 4 teef
• Frag stikkbombs (only? Nothing really adds much and they're already fairly expensive - but presumably fun) - 3 teef
• Just a Slugga - for the drivers - 2 teef

Going to try a few of these out. Thankfully I won a few bags of teef so I've put a Big Shoots on my second trukk too.

Suggestions for fun loadouts accepted in the comments!

Orktober GorkaMorka shenanigans

It seems I've been drawn into a GorkaMorka campaign at my FLGS; I'd forgotten how much silly fun that game is. It was pretty cool that about half the players at the table had their original rulebooks however, and spirits were high.

With 100 teef in the budget and only five spare boys available to borrow for my mob I went for a couple of trukks (which were thankfully plentiful) to spend up:

• Trukk (20)
• Trukk (20)
• Nob - six shoota + uge choppa (15)
• Spanner - slugga + choppa (9)
• Spanner - slugga + choppa (9)
• Boy - 2x slugga (9)
• Boy - 2x choppa (7)

With a few teef left over I splashed out on a spear gun for one of the trukks and called it done.

My borrowed mob, centre, ready to race...

We started with a race to help learn the vehicle rules, which I think was a good idea. Space on the starting grid was tight so it was perhaps inevitable that we weren't going to get very far... things soon degenerated into enjoyable chaos as trukks collided and span out, becoming obstacles.

Narrowly failing to slip through a gap

This is a game where vehicles can move and then boost forwards (risking rolling on a failure table for extra fun) so from the offset we were ramming each other with glee. Two turns in, the track was pretty much gridlocked - but that was a fine opportunity for a good ol' orky fight. Four turns in only one player had made it more than halfway round the track and some of us had to call it a night, but we'd all had fun.

Definitely a game that's better if you embrace your inner Ork, and despite not placing in the race my mob ended up with some xp and a bag of teef to spend. Looking forward to next time.

Happy Orktober, progress on my fledgeling Genestealer cult is on hold now as I've just bought a box of Boyz and a trukk!

Four arms good, two arms bad

With the release of a new edition of 40k I've been tempted away from my usual love of skirmish games* and see what all the fuss is about - so I've picked up the Genestealer Cult combat patrol.

First thoughts looking at the sprues were that with the number of extra arms and heads it seemed like a great opportunity to do some kitbashing (I've always preferred building minis to painting minis)!

GW Genestealer Cult + Anvil Industry bits

I'd wanted a rag-tag mix and match look but my second thought was how badly the GSC torsos and legs fit to these Anvil legs and torsos due to the angling of the joins - and in fact, the GW legs and torsos don't mix and match well with each other! Reading the assembly instructions it's clear that the torsos and legs are designed to be paired up exclusively which is disappointing.

Reading the instructions it also became clear that although "each mini" has two intended builds (very much like the monopose Warcry minis that are my only other recent GW experience) and that many have a shared component in both, often a left arm, which I guess is going to be a factor in any potential kitbashes using the spare arms.

All that said, I'm excited for the possibilities. Playing around some more:

Those same Anvil and GW bodies, now unmixed

Trying GSC heads on Stargrave and Frostgrave bodies

Of all these I really like the Frostgrave soldier body with the GSC head, ridiculous as it looks here, it's just a shame that they're so small in comparison to the GW bodies. If I could build up the torso/shoulder area it could work, as the head is actually about the right height, so I'm definitely filing that away for future consideration!  Not sure about the fit of the others with the aesthetic however, but food for thought all the same.

Any suggestions for potential kitbashes, and your good or bad experiences, welcome in the comments!

* OK I'll admit the main reason I went for GSC was because I could use them in Necromunda and Kill Team too!

Mining the D&D Anti-Canon

This month the RPG Blog Carnival is all about Cabals and Congregations - which got me thinking about the organisations and factions we use (or rather don't use) in our games.

When I play D&D particularly, I get the feeling there's a whole load of built-in backstory that often gets ignored because it's not used going forward, especially in published adventures. I'm fully in agreement with Luka Rejec on canon and anti-canon and that I'd rather do this stuff at the table to make our own world than spend days reading and remembering details of someone else's world.

None of our PCs exist in a vacuum; explicitly Bards have Colleges, Druids have Circles, Rangers have favoured enemies, Sorcerers have Bloodlines - these are all potential factions to draw into our stories, and more are implied for all classes.

Since Dungeon World and Stars Without Number* helped change my DM worldview I've been keen to try to build the story round the PCs, not push the PCs into the story. 

Here's some session zero thoughts to bring these background factions to the foreground, e.g:

• Barbarian - who are your tribe? Who are their enemies and allies? Who else roams your lands?
• Bard - where did you train? Are/were you part of a troupe? Who have you worked for?
• Cleric (also Druid) - do you belong to an order? Who are the enemies of your god/religion? What are your holy gathering places?
• Fighter - where did you train / who did you train under? Is there a local fighter's or mercenary's guild (and what's your relationship with them)?
• Monk - where is your monastery and what are its rites and rituals? Who threatens or empowers your way of life?
• Paladin - draw from Fighter and/or Cleric, but also: what organisations are aligned with / opposed to your Oath?
• Ranger - who else lives outside of the points of light (and what is your relationship with them)? Who of your favoured enemy do you have history with / are currently active locally?
• Sorcerer - who shares your bloodline and how do they live among other people? What organisations seek to regulate or exploit your magic?
• Warlock - are you part of a cult to your patron? Who are the enemies (or allies) of your patron?
• Wizard - where did you train/learn? Who is/are the largest/wisest holder(s) of arcane knowledge in the region?

I've talked before about how I like to use factions to help generate plot threads and story arcs and (I think) making the movers and shakers relevant to the PCs helps to tie the characters to the world.

The above are version-independent ideas, but if 5e is your D&D flavour  there's also backgrounds to mine (as well as them being bags of proficiencies)! 

• "Guild" backgrounds aside - Acolytes, Entertainers, Gladiators, Sages, Soldiers all probably belong to some sort of professional organisation
• Charlatans, Criminals and Urchins surely must have had run-ins with (or been members of) underworld organisations
• Folk Heros need a folk to be the hero of!
• Sailors have crews, Knights have orders, Nobles have houses... Outlanders have people back home
• Even Hermits have people, even if it's just the ones they are pointedly avoiding!

These low hanging fruit are often overlooked, but I'll be making a point to try to remember them in my future games. How do you go about creating and using factions?

For more information on the RPG Blog Carnival, or to check out the archive (going back more than a decade) make sure to check out the link - you can sign up to host here too.  Thanks to Gonz for hosting this month!

* I'd forgotten, but I started working on something similar for SWN a few years back too!

July 2023 RPG Blog Carnival wrap-up

 Apologies for the lateness of this post, I've been AFK for the last week or so.  Also Blogger seems to be marking comments as spam a few days after I approve them, which makes them disappear, so I had to work that out and bring them back...

Thanks for the contributions to the July 2023 RPG Blog Carnival topic of Terrain, Seasons, Weather:

Image credit: skyscapeparadise

Sea of Stars RPG writes about unusual weathers and their use in our games:

"Like all things, weather should be used to make the world more interesting.  Bring it in when it heightens a scene or mood, and minimize it when it is not important to the action."

Seed of Worlds gives us a d8+d20 weird weather generator for weird terrains:

"For this post we are looking at this from a 'wind off the plane of horrors' angle; roll this to see what kind of weird weather-related effect you are getting and then snap that together with known local weird locations in your campaign or go to the bottom table for some ideas of what those strange locations could be." 

Beneath Foreign Planets gives us a system for random weather and some seasonal examples:

"I've wanted a weather system that possesses the following qualities: is simple enough to be memorable, allows for the weather to be naturally and randomly changeable AND stay the same for long stretches, to show weather patterns/trends within a season and most importantly allow for the weather to become 'weird' so that the players can experience wild or dramatic weather phenomena (but not too often) and to try to do all this with as little die rolling as possible."

And my own submission reviewing A Visitor's Guide to the Rainy City, here.

The Carnival has moved on to Codex Anathema for August, where the theme is "Cabals and Congregations" - I hope to see you there.

For more information on the Carnival, or to check out the 15 year archive of Carnival posts, or if you want to host on your blog, then check out the hub at Of Dice And Dragons.

RPG book review: A Visitor's Guide To The Rainy City

As this month's RPG Blog Carnival topic relates to weather and seasons, what better time to get round to reviewing one of my favourite setting books?

Photo ironically taken on the only non-rainy day this week...

Who are the players and what do they do?

PCs are denizens of, or visitors to, the Rainy City - an island city at the end of the world and enduring constant rain.

Piracy, exploring, smuggling, protecting/exploiting the weak, guild work, diving (to explore the flooded ruins of a magical academy), starting a cult or a will-o-wisp business, founding parliaments, flaunting their riches, salvaging shipwrecks, serving wizards... There are no set adventures, but a huge number of seeds, ideas, and potential hooks here.

What's the core mechanic?

None - the book's all fluff and no crunch. What's great is that it's all written as prose, from the pen of Beauregard Hardebard of the Master and Four Wardens of the Fraternity of the Art and Mystery of Haberdashery and Millinery. The core mechanic I guess is settling down to read it.

What's good?

Each area of the city is sketched out over a couple of double-page spreads, each has its own feel, goings on, denizens, and weather.

So much varied rain. The rain varies by location, be it stormy, misty, or - on the Headlands:

The rain varies by season (Quiet, Firelight, Rainy, and Windy seasons) and creates interesting challenges (and solutions) for lighting, heating, and cooking. Hats are important.

Every location is crammed with rich nuggets of interesting prose, characters, things, events ... Honestly there's so much going on you could run whole sandbox in each district. Nothing is wasted and all of it is enjoyable.

If I ever run Blades in the Dark again, I want to run it in the Rainy City.

Honestly the best thing about this book is just how much fun it is to read. Close second best is how many ideas it conjures in your head; it's an OSR DM's dream!

What's bad?

I guess some people would want some of the named locations to be mapped out, or more explicit adventures, or explicit "quest givers". I think it's a breath of fresh air and I love it.

Bottom line?

It's great. If you want somewhere to game that's more Ankh Morpork than Saltmarsh then this is the place.

Even if you never play it, you'll enjoy reading it!

Please drop your thoughts in the comments if you've used this book - how was it for you?

RPG Blog Carnival: Terrain, Seasons, Weather (oh my)

And so the RPG Blog Carnival rolls into town once more, this month's topic is "Terrain, Seasons, Weather" - and how you use them in your games.

Inspired by a post I read about the impact of describing the sky in our GM narratives, and an interesting comment on my last month's carnival submission regarding the narrative and mechanical effects of terrain types, I'm interested in how people use terrain, weather, and the changing seasons in their games - narratively and mechanically.

To participate, simply write a blog post connected to the prompt and post a link to it in the comments of this post, for example:

• How you use weather and terrain in wilderness travel?
• Games where the seasons are important to gameplay?
• How you use the changing of the seasons, and the festivals that mark their turning?
• Do you use something interesting like hex flowers to generate changes to the weather?
• Reviews of relevant resources?
• Anything else related to the topic!

At the end of the month I'll do a wrap-up of all the submissions and the carnival will move on to somewhere else.

On that note: the RPG Blog Carnival has been running since 2008 but now it needs more hosts for 2023 - if you'd like to host please check out more info on the carnival and fill in the sign-up form here.

DIY Blood Bowl Sevens pitch

I have a soft spot for Blood Bowl that goes back to the 90's (anyone remember the polystyrene "astrogranite" board?) and I've been keen to dust off my newer copy and get it all painted up.

One of the best things I think that came out of Blood Bowl being OOP all those years was the Sevens format, 'cos let's face it GW games can be overlong and the idea of lunch break gaming has always appealed! So here's my take on a Sevens board:

Basically I just masked off the lines on one side of my regular Blood Bowl pitch and stippled some white primer in (to try to match the existing effect of the lines).

Blood Bowl Sevens pitches are 11 squares wide and split into three 6 square long areas between the end zones, each team has its own scrummage line. Note I didn't put the end zones on so my board is 18x11 not 20x11 but for the purposes of the rules it will work just fine.

It's not terrible, and more importantly it's not £30. Looking forward to playing some games on it...

An exploration of travelling in TTRPGs

A new month rolls around already and June brings with it the topic of "Travels, by Wave, Cloud, or Portal" from Seed of Worlds for the RPG blog carnival.

Exploration is something I love about TTRPGs and something I want to play more of (and get better at) but I always found the rules for it lacking in modern D&D editions.  The hexcrawl-traversal procedures of the old school I find too heavy - I'm more narrativist than simulationist I feel - although not as heavy as the time I played Barbarian Prince...

Image credit: ThemeFinland

So, between these poles of "nothing" and "too much" what is there? I decided to go through my RPG book collection with a lens on the theme of "travel"...

It's hard for me to think about travel-based games without mentioning the hot-mess science-fantasy-wagon-train pointcrawl that is Ultraviolet Grasslands.  The places, people, and art are inspiring - but in a game that is ostensibly about travelling, how do we travel?

A destination is chosen, a known number of days away, and the caravan departs. There's a roll to see how ill fated the journey is, and one to see what is encountered. Time and resources are adjusted (there is caravan management and good-old OSR resource-management) and you've arrived. You could flesh the whole thing out into a multi-scene session, or a single montage.

I talked a while back about Skycrawl/Downcrawl and how much I love the procedures therein, it's literally a game (setting?) built around exploring and discovering new things (for the GM too with all the generation tables).

Travel in these games is heavily procedurised but pretty rules-light; the "difficulty" of the journey is set out in how-many-boxes-do-we-need-to-check-off style and the players go about checking off the boxes.  Each day they can press on (checking the boxes), rest, or retreat - with opportunities to gain and spend a meta-currency called "Tack" which prevents them from getting lost.

There are moves for players to be able to expand the map or add detail to it, which I personally think is wonderful.

Side note: I keep meaning to talk about The Wildsea - which is another game I own which is pretty much about exploration.  There needs to be more hours in the day, or perhaps just fewer working hours.  Travelling the rustling waves feels conceptually similar to Downcrawl; 

Wildsea travel similarly involves setting a track (boxes to tick off) and, similar to the starship combat in Stars Without Number, allocating the PCs to their stations. Rolls are made to see if the ship makes progress, the crew encounters anything notable, the cartographer maps the area/route, and so on. When the track is filled, the party arrives.

I think these are what I like.  I'd like the journey from one place to the next to fit nicely into a session (sometimes) - but this is something I need to explore more.  The journey forms the scenes of the narrative, which I like, but the number of scenes is unknown (due to different levels of success ticking different numbers of boxes) which isn't helpful in this context...

Interestingly, if you crossed these systems with the traditional hexcrawl you would probably get something like Yochai Gal's wilderness rules for Cairn v2...

On a very different tack, I purchased a bundle on itch.io purely out of curiosity about Wanderhome.  It's not my usual cup of tea but it's about travelling, which I have mechanical interest in, and a while back I got hooked into Patrick Stuart's musings on "soft", Ghibli-esque D&D.  This is a much more narrativist game, with places along the road created and fleshed out in play by the players.  It's pretty much all about the journey - but I can't say I fully understand, from reading it through, how it's supposed to be played.

I do like some of its ideas and especially on how to build places, essentially by combining templates, which is something to file away for inspiration...  Of course, every game has something you can steal to make your other games better.  

So, what are your favourite travel mechanics or systems that I can steal from?

PSA: The RPG Blog Carnival is looking for hosts for 2023, you can find out more and sign up here (it's incredibly easy and actually quite fun). Thanks to Seed of Worlds for hosting this one!

Changing gears: on the beauty and realisation of short campaigns

When I, or my group(s), run a game there is a tendency to build each session on the previous ones, weaving a story based on what went before and where it feels like the characters are heading.

This ends one of two ways:

1. Everyone has a blast and the campaign finds a natural and memorable conclusion
2. More frequently people drift away, or burn out, or something else means we never get finished

This month's RPG Blog Carnival topic, changing gears, has inspired me to post my thoughts on having more short snappy games - especially now life and work interfere more!

I would totally recommend switching games every few months. Switch system, switch setting, switch DM, maybe mix up the player group slightly. Decades-long world defining campaigns with the same group are not the goal, and I feel getting less and less likely.

Changing up games is more fun. We get to play more new games, we get to finish more campaigns, we get to switch out DMs which helps with burnout. As a player it feels more satisfying to finish a shortish 2-3 month arc than plough through a multi-year story. As a DM it's more satisfying to run that shiny new book and wrap it up ready to run the new-new book...

Why not try out a different genre? Image credit: Paddy-One

Changing up games is less pressure. If we don't like a system or setting then it's only a few sessions. There's less fear of a campaign finale falling short. There's more chance of getting to that finale with the same group of players who started! If someone can't make it for a few weeks they can probably (hopefully) join the next game...

If a game is a big hit, run a second season like a TV show. Axe it when it runs out of steam (like a TV show) - and bring it back for a reunion in 10 years with the original cast.

The only problem I have with short campaigns is keeping them short. I like to meander, I like to find out what happens to the characters. I dislike prep (too much like the planning I have to do for work) and I don't plan ahead. Here's what I have learnt:

1. Work out what the main elements of your setting are and how they are connected (I spent a fair bit of time talking about my ideas about this in the past) 
2. Use those connections to plan out a series of plot points. These are stepping stones, anchors, the landmarks on your campaign road trip. Depending on how long you want to play for, and your tendencies, either plan more (and don't sweat about hitting them all) or less (and fill in the gaps when you feel inspired by events in play) than that number!
3. Build an adventure around each plot point. Don't force them. They don't have to sequential. The plot point can be the hook ("thieves guild want to steal the crown") or the twist ("find out the necromancer is the Duke's father") or background ("the goblins lay siege to the city") for the adventure, but it's better if the adventure isn't the plot point itself so the outcome isn't predetermined.  No railroading.

Let's say we want 2-3 months of weekly sessions, so let's go for 10 adventures. We can skip or add 2 and still be about right, let's not sweat it.

We know the things, NPCs, places and antagonists we want to work the story around and we know we want 10 adventures.  The classic "3 act story" suggests there are (variations on) nine generic plot points:

1. Exposition - setting the scene and the status quo
2. Inciting Incident - something propels the protagonist(s) into the story
3. Turning point 1 - The Point Of No Return 
4. Confrontation / Rising Action - tension builds, stakes are raised, obstacles emerge
5. Midpoint - gaining confidence, taking action
6. Turning Point 2 - everything is going so well ... then
7. The Dark Night - oh it's all gone wrong
8. Climax - but the protagonist (usually) pulls through and wins in the end
9. Denouement / Conclusion - what happens after? 

I dislike using the "3 act story" template (because I don't think it works for our medium) but I think some of the plot points are crucial: we need an Inciting Incident and a Climax, really, and I think it's good to start with some Exposition/Setup, so that's adventures 1 (setting the scene), 2 (the Inciting Incident that launches the campaign), and 10 (the Climax, plus often the Conclusion in montage). 

We need seven more plot points adventures... 

Perhaps better inspiration for plot points are found in the Hero's Journey which is analysed and explained very well by the AngryGM here? 

Or better aligned with our medium (but perhaps less deeply analysed in the Gnome Stew post that brought all this fresh into my mind) is the Heroine's Journey?

Find a structure that works, for you, but they're all basically:

• Players get a feel for the world and some of the key players
• Something kicks off that gives them a Quest
• They explore, learn, find artefacts and information, make friends and enemies, win and lose
• There is a final confrontation to end the Quest, and we see how the world is changed

Let me know your preferred structures or go-to plot points in the comments?

You'll get better each time, and if you keep changing gears there's always a next time.  Thanks to Lair of Secrets for hosting, and thanks to Of Dice & Dragons for maintaining the Carnival - check the archives or sign up to host here.

Test minis for Warcry

 A while back I got into Warcry, a light and fast skirmish game which is perfect for time-strapped modern life!

The previous Blood Bowl minis were a pre-test for these to try out Army Painter Speedpaints - although hopefully some Blood Bowl is on the cards sometime.

Huanchi skink and a Jade Obelisk cultist

I wanted some nice contrasting colours and as I wasn't feeling restricted to a colour scheme (as I have been with Infinity) it was fun to experiment.  I knew I wanted jade green for the cultists and went from there, and I really didn't want to go green for the slinks so I picked orange as a nice counter to the cultists' purple.

These are Army Painter Speedpaints from the starter set, I've seen people complaining about them "reactivating" (i.e. not drying) but I find that makes blending and mixing colours easier...

I'm liking it so far, and having fun finally, just need to get the rest done!

What's on your hobby table?

On creating elements for a setting

When I saw this as the title for the April RPG Blog Carnival my mind started ticking over campaign and setting planning and how I want to go about it.

Image credit: cosmicgrooveart

It's easy to just start building things that will never get played and I think a solution is:

• to break prep into separate and reusable elements (I've talked about this before)
• to only plan what you need

So, leaping off from that into the void, what sort of elements and what does each need?

Places

TTRPG games generally involve some exploration, and even if they don't the scenes have to be set somewhere.  Places are everywhere from towns to rooms to dungeons to continents and planes!

In my opinion, Places are often containers but I think they need the following themselves:

• Flavour descriptions / scene setting (depending on scope and scale)
• Rumours / things to interact with

As well as being the basic things you need for a dungeon room, these settle nicely with the start of a "three act" story - Set the scene, call to action - so can often lead to setting up a sidequest nicely.  Can we run the full mile and prep some of the rest too?

• Rising action
• A climax
• How the place is left changed

Oh - there's a location based adventure!

Antagonists

TTRPGs are about conflict and resolution, and where would conflict be without antagonists to rub against our protagonists (the party) - these are the factions and moving parts!

Blogging back for March, and thoughts on April and beyond

Sorry for not being more active, real life takes its toll once again.

I haven't really had any time to read around the blogosphere or to get anything written, but here's a whistle stop tour of the (active) blogs that sent me hits in March, as a thankyou!

of Dice and Dragons, of course, has been keeping the RPG Blog Carnival rolling - please go show your support if you can, there are still some slots available to sign up to host in 2023 I believe!

Seed of Worlds has several very readable recent posts, and many better and more frequent blog link lists than I do (or can)

Hobgoblinry showcases some Oathmark Orcs and some Mordheim Skaven and terrain

Sea Of Stars has not only been hosting the March carnival but is also embarking on an A-Z blogging challenge for April (good luck!)

DIY & Dragons has a 2022 in review (not just gaming) in a smorgasbord of interesting things

and Shuttered Room has been cataloguing creatures, all the way to Z! (more talent and tenacity than I)

I'm planning on getting back on this horse every month, as part of my bid to be a more sociable blogger, and trying to participate in the Carnival and just see what great stuff is going on.

Dungeon23 has burned me out but I'll hopefully be back on that as well ... I have a whole shelf of stuff I could review ... comments welcome on anything you'd particularly like to see more of!

Seedy Sci Fi / Cyberpunk bar generator

As I'm currently enjoying running Mothership as much as I used to enjoy running Stars Without Number, and this month's RPG Blog Carnival theme is "Taverns, Bars, and places to meet", I thought why not combine my old love of one-roll generators and my new love of spark tables into a bar generator for your favourite SF TTRPG?

Image credit: Pazuah on DeviantArt

So grab a fistful of polyhedrals and let's see where the party ends up:

This place is:

d10 tens	d10 units
a backstreet or spaceport hotel bar	filled with noisy arcade machines
a streetside kiosk in a shipping container	selling local moonshine
a laser-lit all-night club	rumoured to have a secret back room
a trendy wine bar in a respectable 'hood	tended by an AI/robot/alien
a high class cocktail lounge	with live music playing
a trucker / hauler / biker bar	hosting an open mic contest
a pop-up bar in someone's hab block	allegedly run by the mob
a snug in the back of an ethnic restaurant	with the best bartender in town
rooms in a church, mission, or similar	with plenty of under-the-counter goods
a motel bar in the middle of nowhere	with a priceless bottle under glass

Current patrons (reroll each day / as needed):

Quick and dirty slap chop tryout

I've been putting off painting my minis for a while now, mainly because I worry that the output doesn't justify the time invested.

So today I've decided to treat my as-yet-unpainted Blood Bowl minis as "just board game minis" and give them a super quick and dirty 3 colour slap chop paint job. Skin, cloth, armour. Let's just get stuff done - starting is the important thing, after all. If only I still had the 90s one with the polystyrene board...

I usually use a rattle can zenithal base but I thought - especially as I live in a cold, damp, windy climate - that I'd give slap chop drybrushing a go. Honestly, apart from the colour schemes I chose I'm happy with the results (in context) and each of these minis took less than an hour tops.

Drybrush Threepwood

In retrospect, I think I should have stuck to my guns and gone with my gut blue armour for the Ork (Deff Skulls til I die) and maybe a less clashy undersuit for the Human, like grey?

However, for the time invested - and the Just Getting Stuff Done factor - I'm happy. This is my first time working with SpeedPaints and they seem to be just fine. Poor pallette hygiene suggests they mix well, which is something to explore in future. Time to finish these (and the Infinity Nomads) and get through WarCry so I can buy more minis...

#dungeon23, Level 3, gets a little weird

Leaving level 2 behind us the party descends the slime waterfall to level 3, which I rolled "Song" and "Edge" on the spark table for so I'm running with it, at least for now!

Rolling a few sparks from the words I generated last time got me the following:

Denizens/monsters: Enchanting Diver & Cutting Siren

Places: Poetic Ravine & Edgy Theatre

Hazards: Melodic Blade & Steep Echoes

Treasures: Musical Sword & Sharp Melody

I'm filing half of these away for next week, I might roll some more and see what I can put together... Some of these spoke to me though, or at least seemed to fit together, so this is what I have come up with for this week:

It's been an interesting adventure, I'm already pondering the "Edgy Theatre" and how that might fit... thoughts and comments always welcome!

February Blog Carnival wrap-up, and #dungeon23 sparks for March

First things first, let's wrap up the February 2023 RPG Blog Carnival!

Alesmiter brings us procedures for speeding up wilderness travel - "Let's see how we can accelerate this if we stop asking the dice if an encounter has occurred and start asking them when the next encounter occurs."

Sea Of Stars brings us a procedure for generating ships coming into port - "Ships are arriving in Port Imperial all the time. So, for inspiration for such ships, we have another random table!"

Image credit: mcrassusart

Seed Of Worlds brings us procedures for generating encounters by rolling overloaded dice on unlockable encounter tables - "So together we get the below - a flat chance of it being the type of encounter from the d6 and the probability curve of it being whatever is out there wandering about."

RPG Wandering brings us hexflower-powered procedures for tracking any kind of progress - "The basic idea of a hexflower is a random table with a memory. The next encounter/location/treasure rolled depends on where you currently are on the grid. This appeals to me as a way to track the PCs progress on all sorts of long-term projects, from inventing magic items, to tracking down an old ruin in the wilderness, to investigating some long-forgotten lore."

I wrote up a review of Skycrawl, an indie setting with a whole load of interesting procedures, and have started working on a spark-table-of-spark-tables for procedurally generating dungeons - more on this below!

#dungeon23 - bringing loose ends together for February's level

 Looking back to the other posts for February's "Fungal Wasteland" I've tried to tie everything together as the rooms draw to a close:

The fungus-folk's prophecy from week 1 was a loose end, as was the giant ancient mother-shroom so I had to tie those together in 26/2.

This also concretes the purpose of the machinery in 9/2 and should give players something interesting to unravel should they wish to.

Another slime waterfall joins the one from 5/2 as the exit down to level 3, and it made thematic sense to join these with a river.

This level felt like it was missing a "boss" encounter so the "feral harvester" spark added that, plus an extra conflict between it and the fungus-folk (to add to the uneasy peace between them and the goblins that the other rooms imply.

Overall I think the sparks from my meta-spark-table-of-spark-tables have helped a lot in the process, there's definitely a lot I can riff off when I come to draft up the level proper and it feels like the "story" of the dungeon is emerging nicely.

I'm going to refine that spark tabling procedure for March and see how things go ... what will Level 3 be??

Can I grab some cheap Warcry warbands from Stormbringer magazine?

I found out what minis come with the first 10 issues of the Warhammer Stormbringer magazine and have been wondering what warbands I could put together for Warcry on the cheap ever since... here's my thoughts.

I haven't posted about it but I recently got into Warcry and it's great for a quick skirmish game, I'll try to post some more stuff if people like it!

Stormcasts

Cool fanart by Zliva on deviantart

Seemingly the following not-Space-Marines-honest units will come with the magazine:

Knight Arcanum (spellcaster) - 205 points

5x Vindictors (spearmen) - 135 or 170 points each

Praetor hero (halberdy bodyguard) - 160 or 215 points

Lord Imperatant + Gryph Hound - 240+115 = 355 points

Xandire's Truthseekers - now these are interesting! I can't use the bird but the others have a sword (Vanquisher?) a bow (Vigilor?) and a hammer (Annihilator or a Lord maybe?) so it will be fun to play with the options!

Kruleboyz

Who doesn't like orcs (or Orruks?)?

Killaboss + Stab Grot - 180+45 = 225 or 190+45 = 235 points

10x Gutrippas (orcs) - 75 or 140/145 points each

10x Hobgrot Slittas - 70 points each

Swampcalla Shaman + Pot Grot - 165+45 = 210 points 

So, let's see what we can make from this lot...