#RPGaDAY2021 Day 6

Heck folks have been doing this hashtag stuff for nearly a week now.

Here we go again with today’s theme…

I’m going to interpret today’s theme (over looking that it’s spelt wrong) as text that provides a mood or gives background information.

So in D&D terms we are talking about the boxed text in the published adventures.

For me a follower of the way of the lazy DM, less is more. I’m running what many would consider a homebrew campaign. So when I come to preparing the next session I don’t want to be spending hours writing text that may not even be needed. Let alone making sure it will hopefully keep the attention of the players when it is finally read out allowed.

By following Chapter 7: Develop Fantastic Locations of The Return of the Lazy DM, all I need to come up with during my prep for each potential location the players might visit is “an evocative name and the location’s aspects.”

The advice given is that the “name of the location should fire up
the imaginations of you and the players alike
.” Whilst the location’s aspects “describe important, notable, or useful features of the location.”

An example from the Return of the Lazy DM for a fantastic location is the following: “The Bridge of Teeth: Narrow bridge of bone spanning a gorge; bones tied together with cracked and splitting leather and sinew; howling wind sounds like moaning”.

All we are aiming for is “having just need enough of a reminder to help you describe it to the players during the game.” I don’t know about you but the example fantastic location gives a lot of flavour and creates a vivid image of the location. Does the location description need to be any longer? Not in my opinion. I think it ticks all the boxes of the definition at the start of this post.

When our group finally returns to our campaign sometime in September (world events allowing) I’ll be following the steps Sly Flourish outlines in a post about applying the above to an existing dungeon map that I plan to use.

So there we have it flavour in an RPG doesn’t have to be paragraphs and paragraphs of text, it can be a sentence or two of text instead.

#RPGaDAY2021 Day 5

I’m impressing myself. So far so good that since starting a day late that I’m keeping up with the daily schedule of contributing to a hashtag.

Let’s do this thing…

The temptation to roll a d4 and randomly choose from the list was strong on this one.

But I’m going to stick it out and go with throne.

What comes to mind when I read the word throne? Power, royalty, politics, back stabbing, arranged marriages, wealth, court, subjects.

But it’s the fact the throne represents power that resonates the most with me.

No matter which system you play having your party being beholden to a powerful person is a great plot device to have.

How they come beholden can add to the backstory and give the party extra starting equipment, a base, maybe a vehicle of some sort. Or that powerful figure could be an adversary/nemesis.

Also during the campaign that powerful figure could be the driving force, reason the party undertake a quest. Maybe they have been asked to retrieve some valuable artifact as a way to repay their debt.

I know a loose interpretation of the theme, but at least I didn’t go the toilet route.

It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled

It’s been a long time, been a long time
Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time

This morning I was round Gavin’s to play some MtG.

It felt soooo good to finally play a game in the real world once more. Over 18 months since I last played with a real person in the same room. I’d almost forgotten what it was like.

Plus I got to meet the latest addition to Gavin’s household young pup Murphy. I’m hoping Murphy has got his name because Gavin is a Robocop fan. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s because of some tenuous link to Top Gun. Gavin is somewhat of a Top Gun fanboy.

We played some two player Commander. Yes it’s not really the same as playing with more players. But it gave Gavin a chance to try the Ur Dragon and Markov precons from 2017, plus play his Strixhaven precon. And I got to try a new deck I’d been working on during the lockdown.

There was also some standard played as well. It was Gavin’s mono green deck up against my mono red dragon deck. There was one game where I missed played that cost me the game.

I’ll have to get Gavin’s deck list off him. But mine I’ll look at in another post. There were a couple of times I ran out of gas, and was unable to end the game, going on to lose. But on the whole it did it’s thing.

Out of 11 games the final score was 8-3 to me.

#RPGaDAY2021 Day 4

Day 4 of this thing.

I’ve been following the hashtag on Twitter and there are some impressive and thought provoking stuff being done. And then there is my stuff.

Let’s get the suffering out of the way…

Today’s theme was a toughie for me.

I’m a halfling, wizard, staff sort of person. Or if I’m shaking it up a halfling monk. But definitely a halfling.

In a cyberpunk setting I’d be a hacker most likely if I was a player and not running the game.

What I’m saying is I’m not up on weapons or playing characters that are reliant on weapons. Although I am intrigued by the prospect of players having to track their ammo usage in Twilight 2000, and how that will impact combat and the tactics used.

So I thought I would track down the amazing art created for the MtG D&D crossover set Adventures in the Forgotten Realm of some iconic D&D weapons.

WotC use some very talented artists, and seeing how they portray the weapons is interesting. I’m a fan of the art produced.

However I love the flavour text on the Great Axe card. It’s witty and goes so well with the art to tell a mini story of sorts.

#RPGaDAY2021 Day 3

Day 3 of this hash tag thing, and the second post on time! Two out of three ain’t bad.

Let’s jump into today’s theme and my thoughts inspired by it.

This theme was a no brainier for me. Only one thing came to mind and it was a book.

That book being The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters by Keith Ammann.

The book “unpacks strategies, tactics, and motivations for creatures found in the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual.”

What I like about the book is that it allows you as a DM to make combat with the monsters feel “real” and unique. Almost giving them a personality. And hopefully stopping the encounters feeling samey. No more relying on two tactics of run away or fight to the death. Which is important to me. Not only am I keeping the players on their toes, but hopefully keeping things fresh, and authentic.

Obviously as the quotes dotted throughout the post point out, things change once a combat begins. You have to react to changing events known as the players. But that doesn’t make this book pointless. It makes it more important as it allows you to have the monsters react authentically to the unfolding situation. You basically have a framework to make decisions against.

The Monsters Know What They’re Doing can be bought either as a physical book, ebook, and audio book. Sadly I have all three versions of the book.

There is a sister book aimed at players called Live to Tell the Tale: Combat Tactics for Player Characters (only available as an ebook or physical). Which provides “beginning and intermediate D&D players the tools they need to fight back. Examining combat roles, class features, party composition, positioning, debilitating conditions, attacking combinations, action economy, and the ever-important consideration of the best ways to run away”.

I can’t speak for this book as I don’t own it. I did point my players in its direction, I have no idea if any of them bought a copy. I hope they did.

Then this December we get a follow up to the original tome called MOAR! Monsters Know What They’re Doing. This new book “analyzes the likely combat behaviors of more than 100 new enemies found in Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes.” Like the original it is available in the same formats. Amazon is taking pre-orders now. Which I have taken advantage of.

In the meantime there is a blog that you can go to as well by the author. Click HERE to read it.

#RPGaDAY2021 Day 2

Day 2 already?!

Well it’s hardly unexpected considering the day 1 catch up post that just went up.

Ok let’s get on with the main reason you are here, today’s theme for #RPGaDAY2021…

I enjoyed creating my first ever dungeon map the pirates lair for my homebrew D&D campaign. It was used in the very first session. As were my first ever town/village maps in the second session. I’ve not given up creating my own maps. I just decided to work smarter!

By smarter I mean using other peoples hard work to lessen the work load I have to do. Below are some of the giants shoulders I stand on when it comes to maps.

A good source of maps to use in your own adventures is the Dyson Logos blog. He has a load of maps on there that a free to use (non-commercially). You can get even more by supporting him on Patreon.

Dungeon Map by Aaron Millar for the MtG D&D crossover set Adventures in the Forgotten Realm

Sly Flourish (who along with Matt Colville I mention all the time) talked about having a go to map that you could use at a moments notice for those unexpected moments thrown at you by the players.

I’ve used town/city maps from published adventures (something Matt Colville suggested in a video). I used the map for Alhaster (from an old Dragon magazine issue) as Mintarn in my campaign.

I keep the Lazy Dungeon Masters Workbook handy because it has 10 generic map locations that can be used in any campaign. I’ve used the docks map for a session, and had another couple lined up if the players followed particular plot hooks.

I have a couple of the Battle Map books (a fantasy one and a cyberpunk one) that I can use. These are generic enough that they can be used with any system. Always handy to have a round.

Map & Dice Playing Cards, and the Deck of Many Dungeons are great for generating dungeons on the fly. Especially if you don’t have the go to map to hand.

I also have a couple of maps of real life locations that are local to me to hand also. In my home town there are some underground tunnels in the town, and an underground part of the “castle” (more town house) known as the vaults (iirc). I thought these would be fun to use in a campaign at some point.

Plus in the DMG Appendix C: Maps you have maps you can use! There are also 7 monster lair maps in Volo’s Guide to Monsters.

I like that what I have above allows me to save time when preparing for a session. But that also if the session goes off in an unexpected direction that it doesn’t matter because I can cover it with at least one of the above.

#RPGaDAY2021 Day 1

Nearly missed this completely, but a day late isn’t too bad. Unlike last year when I missed it completely and ended up doing it much later in the year all by my lonesome.

This will be my third year doing #RPGaDAY. I like the creativity it inspires in me. It certainly isn’t for the views and followers.

So that you have a heads up on what I’ll be rambling on about for the next month below is the graphic showing the themes we have to inspire us.

So there will be two posts today, one for yesterdays theme and the other surprisingly for todays.

The theme for yesterday was Scenario.

Unless you are following a published campaign such as the excellent WotC ones for D&D 5e. Probably one of the hardest things to come up with no matter which system you are using are scenarios.

Luckily there are lots of sources of inspiration out there that can fire the imagination.

In a recent post I listed 5 basic quest models that could be used as the basis for a scenario.

In the past I have used my Map & Dice Playing Cards, and the Deck of Many Dungeons to generate a map that acts as inspiration for a scenario.

Sometimes I “borrow” ideas from other media for inspiration. Look at my notes here that I made to remind me at a later date of some ideas for some horror scenarios.

Another tool in my arsenal for generating scenario ideas is these quest decks I backed as a Kickstarter. I didn’t get them all (finances and all) just those I thought I could get the most usage out of.

There are lots of sources of tables to roll against to generate scenario ideas. It could be the Roll & Play book, the DMG, the Sly Flourish Adventure Generator, the Tome of Adventure Design just to name a handful. Actually before I forget there is a rather nice system in the Android: Shadow of the Beanstalk sourcebook for the Genesys RPG for generating scenarios.

One or two of the above suggestions can be used on the fly at the table if need be. But all work really well when preparing your next session.

Spirits of the Forest digital now live

The post title says it all really.

The app version of the tile set collection board game Spirits of the Forest is “finally live on both Google Play and iOS App store and it’s free for everyone to download and play in both solitaire and multiplayer.”

Here are the all important links.

My username is surprise, surprise, whitespider1066 if you want to hit me up for a game or two.

Three Cool Cyberpunk Red Additions

I so need to get a session or two of Cyberpunk Red organised. But that I’m afraid has to wait for safer times. However in the meantime I got one or two bits in to help with that when it happens.

The cool thing is one is generic enough it could be used in a Judge Dredd RPG, Genesys RPG Shadow of the Beanstalk, or even an Alien RPG session. Whilst another although aimed at Cyberpunk players it’s contents could apply to other RPGs. Finally the third item is pure Cyberpunk Red only.

First up is the newly released Cyberpunk Red Data Screen.

The Data Screen is the official GM screen for Cyberpunk Red by R. Talsorian Games.

My initial impressions of the screen is that I like it. It looks one of the more useful screens in relation to the information it has (see below).

I love the art on the player facing side (see below). It screams cyberpunk, the Bladerunner influence is clear to see. The sprawling metropolis of Night City looks stunning.

The Data Screen is available from R. Talsorian Games directly if you can’t wait (like me) for it to arrive at your FLGS (they are in transit).

Next up is a reprint of a 1994 book for the Cyberpunk RPG, “Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads!!!!” The book offers “advice on a number of topics, including crafting long-term campaigns, game style and atmosphere, cyberpunk sociology, running interesting and dynamic combat, and more!” Despite being nearly 30 years old, the info still seems relevant today.

“Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads!!!!” is available physically, as a pdf and as an audible book. Which ticks all the bases for me. I don’t think this will be a surprise to anyone but I have all three versions! So I can listen to the book while going to sleep or driving (a good use of an audible credit). I do like having a physical copy, I’m old school like that. But I also like the digital as well in case I need to print or quote something. I’m an ideal mark for a publisher.

Finally the “Big Book of CyberPunk Battle Mats” is bigger than I was expecting. It’s A3 size (there is an A4 version). I really should read the product description. But as I said at the top of the post this is generic enough to be used with several other systems. The maps can be bought digitally via DriveThruRPG for use with something like owlbear.rodeo for running a game online.

Inside the large tomb you get the following maps: Concrete Plaza,Motel,Downtown Shops,Nightclub,Neon Streets,Neon Crosssing,Car Park,Neon Alleys,Subway Station,Rooftop Helipad,Supermarket,Municipal Lobby,Municipal Rooms,Corporate Office,Data Centre,Tech Rooms,High Rise Hab Block,Corporate Lobby,Neon Plaza,Freeway,Luxury Residence,Warehouse,Shipping Container Lot,Storm Channel Underpass ,Industrial,Cabin in the Woods,Quarry Dirt Track,Ruined Street,Death Road,Abandoned Desert Houses,Mud and Grass,Deserted Train Yard,Shanty Town, and a Blank Grid.

Having said that it’s large, I do actually prefer the larger A3 size over the A4 (I have one of the fantasy map books of theirs in that size).

I just need to use the stuff now in anger.

Getting by

Just a holding post to say I’m still here.

Not been up to much. To be honest I’ve not felt up to doing much. Despite having some posts in various states of completion.

I’m not going to be cryptic about why I’ve felt this way. Wednesday my Aunt was rushed into hospital after having seizures. It wasn’t looking too good at one point. But she has improved a little, but not out of the woods.

It’s made harder by the fact that my Aunt is on the opposite side of the world in New Zealand.

So you can imagine we have been a bit distracted, shocked, and worried.

Apparently I’m to blame for my friend Gavin getting into MtG!

All I can say is if that is what he has to say to himself so that he can sleep at night. Then I’ll be the bad guy for him!

Gavin has learnt to play MtG using Arena, and bought the last starter set, and a Commander deck. Gavin is looking to upgrade the Commander deck, and has been pointed in the direction of one or two sites that write upgrade articles about the precons.

We should be playing MtG this coming Monday. Although it won’t be the full Commander experience we’ll play 2 player Commander. I’m going to use this as a chance to start testing one of my new decks that I built during lockdown. Plus I might take the Ur Dragon precon for Gavin to try. I was taken aback at how much that deck is going for these days. It’s shockingly high.

So I’m looking forward to actually playing again in real life. So you know what the next post will be all about.