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 šŸ™ˆ. ...

AAR: Thousand Year Old Vampire - Unferth during Armaggeddon

I played the ENNie award-winning Thousand Year Old Vampire. The story is that youā€™re 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. ...

Considering Bees

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. šŸ šŸ šŸ 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 Iā€™d just buy it on roll20? ...

AAR: Penguins are cute

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 ā€œno prepā€ game, so this is a big deal for me. Can I actually just set up a game and go? Well, yes! šŸ˜Œ Player: Is this game dark and miserable? Me: No, someone told me they played as meerkats in a zoo. Itā€™s as light or as dark as you want. Behold the tale of the brutal religious civil war of the penguinsā€¦ šŸ§šŸ§šŸ§ ...

Witchburner AAR: SPOILER EDITION

This post is just spoilers for Witchburner. You probably meant to read this one. LOOK NO FURTHER. YE HAVE BEEN WERRRNNED! šŸ§™ā€ā™€šŸ§™ ...

Witchburner: After Action Report

I ran Luka Rejecā€™s 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 didnā€™t 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. ā€œOur 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, ā€œAnd the council will cover your stay at my inn.ā€ The bushy-haired priest looks uncomfortable, ā€œNow go, find that witch, before she brings Winterwhiteā€™s 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. ...

AAR: Blood for the blood god

The Quiet Year is a sort-of-coop map-drawing and story-telling game. You use a deck of cards (special printed deck or thereā€™s 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 itā€™s more like Roman consuls where each day/month it would swap who was ā€œin chargeā€ rather than agree or compromise on a single coherent course of action. In fact youā€™re 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. Whoā€™s to blame for their death? There are other better reviews, and I donā€™t really want to do that here. Although I suppose this is a small review of the roll20 module that I used. ...

Artefact After-Action Report

Over the last few weeks Iā€™ve been playing Artefact, by Mousehole Press. I wrote some words about it already. In case I didnā€™t mention before, itā€™s 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 didnā€™t do that. The game has setup (which I did wrong) and three acts, and I did those all on separate days. ...

After Action Reports: A checklist

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 itā€™s worth covering it all. The last point about the lesson is my reason for writing these, but if I donā€™t include the context, then I canā€™t be sure itā€™s the right lesson. What did I play? How long for?...

Tomb of the Serpent Kings (5e) After-Action Report

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. Weā€™re talking here about combat-as-war rather than combat-as-sport, and the general idea of ā€œdonā€™t assume your GM is keeping you aliveā€. The players I ran this for wanted to play in Fifth Edition, and as Iā€™d chosen the RPG for our last game, I used a free conversion pamphlet. Spoilers below. ...

8nd August, 2020