We are entering the last week of this hashtag thingy bob. The home straight so to speak.

Here is today’s words scrambled up into nonsense.

One thing I recently found out was that the four books that make up “The End of the World” RPG books by FFG were “based on El Fin del Mundo, an RPG line originally created by Álvaro Loman and José M. Rey for Edge Studios.”

I have two out of the four books available, Alien Invasion and Zombie Apocalypse.

I’m tempted by the Revolt of the Machines. But the Wrath of the Gods doesn’t grab me. Although having the set does appeal to me. However one major obstacle to this is the fact that these books are “between printings”. Which means that if you can locate a copy they go for a premium.

It’s funny that these books may have been transferred to Edge Studios as part of the Asmodee restructuring of FFG, and the moving of the FFG RPG stuff to Edge Studios. Who it would appear are the RPG power house for the Asmodee empire now. Although nothing has been said about these books and whether they will be getting a reprint.

What attracted me to these RPGs was first the themes. I love the apocalyptic setting, and that these focus on one particular cause of that apocalypse, such as zombies or aliens. From there we get four different scenarios that each give a different set of events that caused that scenario.

Finally I love that the system is a rules light d6 system, where the players play themselves in whichever town you all live in. I love, love that a players starting equipment is the stuff they have on them at the table or can find in the room they are playing in when the session starts.

I’m glad these got translated into english and hope that Edge Studios keep them around.

I’m spotting a pattern with my purchases recently. Not in what I am purchasing but in being totally unprepared for how much bigger than I thought they were.

The most recent such example of this was a new dice bag I bought to store all the dice, tokens, and life counters that may or may not be needed whilst playing MtG.

I wasn’t expecting such a large dice bag. It’s nearly as big as a football! It could be a hat or wouldn’t look out of place hanging in the end of stick used by a hobo.

It’s way too big for using at store tournaments or when table space is at a premium. But damn it’s great having everything in one convenient place.

As you can see in the photos above I have a few spin down counters. That’s despite giving some to Gavin. The 16mm white d6 will grow in number soon. I have 120 in the post somewhere.

But enough of this, let’s get on with the hashtag.

Memory is something I’m going have to make good use of in the coming weeks. In particular when it comes to remembering where we were in our campaign.

Luckily I won’t have to rely solely on my failing memory. I have some great ramblings on here in my session planning and post mortem posts. Which I will be revisiting to refresh my memory. I have notes in the GoodNotes app on my iPad that I can also go back to.

I also have burnt into my memory the over arching story arc, and a couple of future plot points that could be hit.

As a DM I’m grateful now after such a long hiatus that I built into my routine note taking and recording my thoughts for the campaign. But even without a global event enforcing a long break, what I did in writing the posts here, or making notes in GoodNotes is good practice. I then have something to refer back to in between sessions to aid my memory and future planning.

Well I had fun with my guilt free gaming yesterday, and you can read about it in the previous post.

Heeeeeere’s today’s hashtag…

For me there is no substitute to gaming in person (you can read my thoughts on streaming here).

And I can not stress how much I am looking forward to it being a thing again.

Our gaming group is holding a test event next Friday at our regular hosts The Luxe. Depending on the outcome and how things are progressing in the real world we will hopefully be starting regular gaming sessions back up. And this means only one thing at that point our D&D campaign can start back up.

I’m pretty excited about that.

Well I’m sticking to the plan for some guilt free gaming today, as this post was written yesterday.

Here it comes, today’s hashtag thoughts…

I like things to be simple. It’s so easy when preparing for the next session to over complicate things. To spend lots of time on stuff that just doesn’t get used.

That’s why I became a practitioner of the Way of the Lazy DM as prescribed by Sly Flourish (click HERE for the YouTube playlist going through the steps).

Basically by using the 8 steps described by Sly Flourish to prepare for a session you are concentrating on the activities that will most benefit you whilst running that session. It’s not a ridged you must do all the steps, you do what works for you. It’s about giving yourself the confidence that you are prepared for that session.

There is a companion workbook full of useful tables and 10 generic locations that can be dropped into any campaign.

Mike aka Sly Flourish has even got the process down to 15 minutes! Yep if for whatever reason you hardly have no time at all to prep by using just 3 of the steps you can be ready.

What I like about this approach is the simplicity, and that it’s applicable to any RPG system. It really is a life changer.

Feeling smug I wrote today’s post yesterday! Which means if I write tomorrow’s post today, I can enjoy my friends birthday gaming day guilt free.

Let’s see what I wrote today…

I’d love a RPG based on the classic Asimov Foundation series of books.

I’ve not read the books in decades, but I loved them. I have fond memories of reading them in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and having my mind blown when Asimov linked the Foundation series with his equally awesome Robot series of books. They are the same universe and one big story! OMG!!

Naturally I don’t need to wait for a publisher to create a Foundation inspired RPG. Generic systems like Genesys RPG or the Fate system could be used to run a campaign in the Foundation universe.

Luckily with the books, audiobooks and the soon to be aired Apple TV show there is plenty of source material to refer to, and inspire.

I’m not saying using the generic systems will not require a lot of work to get something players can explore. I think my preference would be the Genesys system. With the Expanded Players Guide and it’s “refined” rules for creating adversaries, vehicles, skill trees and settings the work gets a little easier. The Space Opera setting notes from the core rulebook make a good starting off point. Plus when it eventual comes out the Twilight Imperium: Embers of the Imperium source book might have a lot of useful stuff that could be “borrowed”.

Maybe if the Apple show becomes popular we will see an official RPG for Foundation produced (That seems to be the way of things these days.)

Today is going to be another giant muffin day.

By that I mean I’ll be making more muffins. I’m going to try modifying my basic recipe so it becomes white chocolate and raspberry muffins.

Coffee and a nice muffin are one of life’s little luxuries that help make those me time moments special.

They also make a great treat while running a game session. Sadly for my friends and fellow gamers there hasn’t been an opportunity for them to try them since I got back into baking.

Let’s look at today’s hashtag theme…

Theme for me is just as important a factor as system when choosing an RPG.

If the theme doesn’t excite you then why are you playing a RPG with that theme? It’s why I have no interest in the upcoming D&D campaign/adventure Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos. I wasn’t a fan of the Harry Potteresq setting in MtG. So doing a D&D setting with it, it just isn’t for me. Which is fine. So I won’t be buying it or playing it.

Very often the mechanics of the system you are playing support and help bring out the theme of the RPG you are playing. A good example of this is in the Alien RPG with the stress dice and it’s stress mechanic.

Free League have done a really good job of using the Year Zero engine to bring out that element of stress to the game. Each player has a stress level which determines how many stress dice they roll in addition to their normal dice to make a skill check. They can even opt to take on stress to add a stress die to the check. More dice rolled increases the chances of getting a success. However there is a risk. Roll a 1 on one of those stress die and they have to make a panic roll. If the combined value of their stress level and panic roll is 7 or more then some sort of negative impact affects the player. Which could be as simple as increase their stress level, or at the extreme end make them catatonic.

Naturally being a fan of the Alien movies and comic books from the late 80’s/early 90’s, the theme attracted me. But what sold me was the stress mechanic. It struck me as being really cool.

So themes that are likely to get my interest are the usual fair, such as fantasy (D&D, Realms of Terrinoth, The One Ring), cyberpunk (Cyberpunk Red, Android: Shadow of the Beanstalk), sci-fi (Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 A.D., Paranoia, Alien), post apocalyptic (The End of the World) , and alternative history (Twilight 2000).

What themes grab you?

Nearly had something to break up the monotony of these posts. But life stuff got in the way and the plans had to be cancelled at the last minute.

Here is today’s poorly thought out and constructed post.

I kinda write a bit about RPGs. Nothing intelligent and useful like the likes of Sly Flourish and others.

My writings fit in with this blog, which if you haven’t noticed is more a diary/notes/brain dump of stuff than carefully crafted intelligent useful articles. Maybe some people stumble across this blog and find something useful. That’s a bonus.

You can read my thoughts and ideas for my campaign and sessions I run by following the session planning category of this blog.

Whilst you can see how I think the sessions went by following the post mortem category.

Having the two categories I’ve just mentioned is really useful to me. It makes finding my notes easy, and I hope sharing them may help some-one. But combined they are basically what I’d be putting in a physical notebook for myself.

Following the RPG category captures most (hopefully) of my posts about RPGs irrespective of the system. I do have other systems that I dearly would like to get to the table. But finding interested players has been a challenge. May be I’ll have better luck once our gaming group starts back up playing in real life.

That’s it brief and to the point. More tomorrow.

Another shortish post is in your immediate future giving you some brief thoughts from my mangled mind.

Here is today’s hashtag entry.

So far in my limited time as a DM I’ve used a couple of traps. The first was in the Matt Colville “one shot” for beginning DM’s The Delian Tomb. The other was in the pirate liar that my party of adventurers stumbled into at the start of our campaign.

I try and use things like traps and puzzles/riddles sparingly. I don’t want to be reliant on “gimmicks” or be formulaic when it comes to sessions and what happens in them. I want things to feel natural and authentic when players come across them. So when the party comes across a trap I want them to think “oh this makes sense to be here” and not that it’s something I’ve put there because I can, and to give them something to do.

My preference for trap design is to follow the additional advice given in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything over that in the DMG. I like the advice better, especially the layout and information given for designing your own. Most probably simple traps are the only ones I’ll use.

If I need to create a trap on the fly the Lazy DM Workbook has 5 tables to roll against to generate one. Plus it can also be used to inspire/create one during session prep.

If my players are reading this. There may or may not be a trap or two in your future (once we return to the table).

Wrapping up this post with some sage words from the man himself Matt Colville and Dael Kingsmill on the subject.

Not much to say here so let’s skip to the meat of the post…

I’ve gone with the alternate theme Tribute today.

Historically a tribute has meant a “payment made periodically by one state or ruler to another, especially as a sign of dependence.”

In my campaign I made use of a bit of lore for Mintarn from The Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide involving the dragon Hoondarrh, the Red Rage of Mintarn.

The lore specifically spoke of a yearly tribute that the Red Rage demanded from the people of Mintarn.

The party of adventurers were hired to guard the small fishing town of Queen’s Cove contribution to the tribute as it was sent to Mintarn. On the way they were attacked by sahuagin who were trying to steal the contribution. An attack they successfully repelled.

In Mintarn the party of adventurers ended up being asked “nicely” to escort the whole tribute to the home of the Red Rage on a nearby island by the Tyrant of Mintarn.

A bigger sahuagin raiding party tried stealing the tribute whilst it was at sea. After a very very close battle on board the groups ship they defeated the sahuagin, and delivered the tribute.

Once back at Mintarn the party were rewarded with some magic items.

I liked how I used the tribute as a plot device. It worked really well. It’s certainly one I’d return to in the future.