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?

My Gaming Notebook (or how I am learning to embrace order)

Let's start by saying I lean somewhat toward Chaotic. My notes, traditionally, are scribbled on margins, envelope backs, and other blank spaces sighted within my apathy radius.

I also have real difficulty with parsing text or writing while I'm talking or listening.

In that context, let's talk about July RPG Blog Carnival topic of "The Gamer's Notebook".  This post sat in my drafts since the beginning of the month as I wanted to take the opportunity to actually think about what I should be doing and if my emergent process is actually any good.

As a GM:

When I run a game I have started trying to keep separate reusable reference sheets for different things depending on their purpose and just reference the ones I need that session. I dread flicking through monster lists at the table as much as I do looking backward and forward in a published adventure looking for a certain piece of information.

Generally I'll want to have:

Blades in the Dark: a Review

Inage (cc) Yowan2008

I haven't been tending to the blog for a while, sorry.  Covid has affected gaming opportunities, I have not had a personal laptop, I have had difficulty getting things down on paper.  Plus I have been playing a lot of Cyberpunk 2077.  A lot.

Here I am trying to re-ignite things with a review format that feels like it could have legs.  Let me know if you want more of these.

Who are the players and what do they do?

Characters in Blades in the Dark are scoundrels in the underworld of Doskvol, a haunted fantasy-industrial city fuelled by leviathan blood and electroplasm.

The players work together as a Crew, lining up and running "Scores" to acquire Coin, Rep, and Turf.  At the same time they need to manage their Heat (and Wanted level) and relations with other Factions in the city.

What is the core mechanic?

On Covid, Blades in the Dark, and blogging

I've been away for a while, sorry.

Image (cc) Nick Kenrick

After facing redundancy my gaming life went through a drought, then there was Covid which has brought some interesting changes to the way we play.

I'm now running Blades in the Dark, on Roll20, which is worthy of a whole review post in itself.  It's a game I have wanted to try out for some time, given my recently discovered love of Dungeon World and PBtA games in general, and while it isn't perfect it has been very enjoyable indeed.

Before that was a brief return to WFRP, a dalliance with the intriguing Monster of the Week, and of course very little boardgaming or wargaming!

It's time to get the blog back up and running.  I've even applied to host the RPG Blog Carnival sometime.  I'm excited about getting my head back into gaming and, perhaps more importantly, gaming back into my head!

How have you all been coping, hope your gaming life has adapted to this odd new normal?  Comments always very welcome...