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!

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?

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!

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!

RPG Book Review: Skycrawl

Who are the players and what do they do?

Explorers of a "weird, whimsical, endless sky". The main focus is on exploration and travel.

This is a supplement (setting?) for any roleplaying system, packed with systems and procedures for journeying between mysterious lands floating in an endless azure sky, ship to ship combat, and more.

The colours are better in real life!

What's the core mechanic?

The book itself is systemless and provides guidance and examples for how to use it with d20, 2d6, percentile, or FATE mechanics, but could easily be used for dice pool games or other mechanics as well.  The core procedures use standard terms such as "crit", "strong success", "success", "complication" which can be easily defined for any method of generating these outcomes.

What's good?

The procedures here are wonderful; there are systems for:

• Procedurally generating Lands and the Folk who inhabit them, and the ships that move between them
• Tracking the movement of those lands as they orbit in the sky
• Researching, plotting, and executing journeys between these lands
• Ship-to-ship combat
• Orcery, which is an interesting alchemy system 
• Generating and resolving random encounters in the skies

The systems used for play utilise "moves" which will feel familiar to anyone who has played a PBTA game, but these can easily be explained as player procedures at the table if not.

I particularly like the systems for travel; PCs accrue and spend a meta-resource called "tack" to help with navigation and journeys are planned out and executed in several steps (be they days, weeks, or abstract measures of difficulty) which naturally resolve into scenes and encounters as the players spend their tack and decide how best to play out each step.

Lands are mechanically easier to get to if the party have been there before, or if they have discovered three or more rumours about the place - which is something I love as a driver for exploring and interacting with the world.

The main procedures are seemingly based on the designer's other game Downcrawl, which you can get a good feel for in its free HTML version here.

The lore and art, that there is, is evocative and flavourful too. It's a great book!

What's bad?

Honestly, I'm struggling. Some people might find it a little wordy for their tastes maybe (I really don't) but that's just thinking of something - anything - to put in this section!

Bottom line?

Highly recommended. There's a lot here to mine from and adapt to other games (the systems shared with Downcrawl could just as easily be adapted for overland travel and traditional pointcrawls, and these rules could just as easily be applied to traditional sailing ships with a little tweaking) and it feels like it could be run straight from the book. Looking forward to doing so!

Fans of the depthcrawls generated by The Stygian Library or The Gardens of Ynn, traditional OSR hexcrawl mechanics, or the travel procedures in Ultraviolet Grasslands would probably find a lot to like in this little gem.

If you have any favourite procedure-based RPG resources then I'd love to hear of them, either in the comments or by submitting a link to one of your blog posts on this month's RPG Blog Carnival hub, where the theme is "procedures".

#dungeon23 side quest - a Mothership metroidvania

I'm starting a Mothership campaign and it's a good feeling so I have - understandably - been pondering a Mothership megadungeon. Gradient Descent exists. 

The nature of Mothership got me wondering what sort of megadungeon I could create without the traditional levels and loot, and without returning to the surface with treasure, but still with a delving feel and with ramping challenge.

After explaining both Samus Aran and Simon Belmont to my youngest child in the context of Smash Bros, the idea - trying to stay within the bounds of dungeon23 - is to make a 12 area "metroidvania" dungeon and play around with escalating encounter tables and with re-traversing changing areas.

4 conceptual stages, 3 diary pages each. One a month:

Indie RPGs saved my relationship (and they can save yours too)

I was, on reflection, probably too busy with the other elements in my life to dedicate the time and the attention she needed. She was inflexible, demanding, frustrating, a source of great joy that left me burnt out and miserable.

D&D is a harsh mistress. We had a difficult relationship for many years, through 4e and 5e and variations on 3e, and it took something new to change that. Indie games turned my relationship with gaming right around, so a big thanks to their creators and to the November RPG Blog Carnival for prompting me to get out of my rut and blog about how much I love them!

My collection so far

I have said it before: the moment I read and played Stars Without Number and Dungeon World it was like a light went on in my head. Suddenly I saw so many other, better, ways of doing things in my games. Better ways of prepping, organising, running, and playing games. Better mechanics and frameworks, better tools, better abstractions.

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

Late to the party: Dissident Whispers

I recently found out about this collection of 58 double-page adventures and promptly ordered myself a copy from Melsonian Arts Council.

It arrived today and I've thumbed through already.  Most of the adventures within look viable, some are entertaining or humourously written, many are beautifully presented.