AAR: Strange Men, Strange Roads
This post contains spoilers for the named adventure in the Bree-land Region Guide for Adventures in Middle Earth, by Cubicle 7 š. ...
This post contains spoilers for the named adventure in the Bree-land Region Guide for Adventures in Middle Earth, by Cubicle 7 š. ...
I played the ENNie award-winning Thousand Year Old Vampire. The story is that youāre a Vampire that can live for Thousands of Years. This game is the Ronseal (ā¢ļø) of RPGs in that sense. Consider it Highlander, the RPG. TL;DR It is great. ...
I wanted to try a 5e game but with OSR rules for dungeoneering. For that, I used Considering Bees from AAW which I had in print with VTT assets from their Kickstarter in 2019. This is a level 2 adventure, and pits the players vs, well, bees. š š š This took two sessions of about 2.5 hours each, and had two PCs each running a single character. We played in roll20. I tried to set up proper dynamic lighting (the new style) but cocked it up reasonably-well so defaulted back to the old version (was showing the whole map to the players). Perhaps next time Iād just buy it on roll20? ...
Tried having a quick game of The Quiet Year due to a last minute cancellation in a regular game. I normally like planning ahead, even a āno prepā game, so this is a big deal for me. Can I actually just set up a game and go? Well, yes! š Player: Is this game dark and miserable? Me: No, someone told me they played as meerkats in a zoo. Itās as light or as dark as you want. Behold the tale of the brutal religious civil war of the penguinsā¦ š§š§š§ ...
This post is just spoilers for Witchburner. You probably meant to read this one. LOOK NO FURTHER. YE HAVE BEEN WERRRNNED! š§āāš§ ...
I ran Luka Rejecās Witchburner in Old School Essentials over Discord for my wife and a few friends, back at the height of lockdown. None of them had played OSE before, but as this is a pretty social-based story, it didnāt matter too much. The plot The Mayor pats down her forehead with a napkin and looks left, then right. The councilors arranged around her in their finery nod assent. She looks down at the motley witchfinders, spoken for by the Lord Rightmaker. āOur request is simple. Find the witch before All Saintsā Night, before the month ends, and we shall pay you 3,000 cash.ā The shadow-skinned councilor smiles, āAnd the council will cover your stay at my inn.ā The bushy-haired priest looks uncomfortable, āNow go, find that witch, before she brings Winterwhiteās hunger on us all!ā The idea is that the rural town of Bridge is plagued by evil portents, caused by witches, and the party is brought in as Witchburners to find the Witch, and Burn them. Minor spoilers below the break. ...
The Quiet Year is a sort-of-coop map-drawing and story-telling game. You use a deck of cards (special printed deck or thereās a lookup table for a normal playing card deck) to draw events, and use them to tell a story. I say sort-of-coop, in that itās more like Roman consuls where each day/month it would swap who was āin chargeā rather than agree or compromise on a single coherent course of action. In fact youāre explicitly not supposed to actually talk through each event together and agree it. You draw on the map the result of each event to build a recording of the story, and you can start building projects to fix the problems beset by your tiny community. The events are things like: An old piece of machinery is discovered, broken but perhaps repairable. What is it? What would it be useful for? As the seasons turn towards Winter, they get darker: The weakest among you dies. Whoās to blame for their death? There are other better reviews, and I donāt really want to do that here. Although I suppose this is a small review of the roll20 module that I used. ...
Over the last few weeks Iāve been playing Artefact, by Mousehole Press. I wrote some words about it already. In case I didnāt mention before, itās pretty. Admire how pretty it is, again. Technically, one should play it in one or two sessions and think solemn thoughts as you meditate on being left behind. I didnāt do that. The game has setup (which I did wrong) and three acts, and I did those all on separate days. ...
Some useful feedback from OSR Pit later, and I want to remember what I want to put in an AAR. I might not write that much for each bullet-point, but I think itās worth covering it all. The last point about the lesson is my reason for writing these, but if I donāt include the context, then I canāt be sure itās the right lesson. What did I play? How long for?...
Finally, FINALLY, ran Tomb of the Serpent Kings. It is rightly held up as a great intro dungeon, for teaching lessons (in a good way) about some OSR concepts to beginner players. Weāre talking here about combat-as-war rather than combat-as-sport, and the general idea of ādonāt assume your GM is keeping you aliveā. The players I ran this for wanted to play in Fifth Edition, and as Iād chosen the RPG for our last game, I used a free conversion pamphlet. Spoilers below. ...