This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua want to sail away to a mystery new island in the Circle Sea. They’re going to see if a friend will take them.

For the last ten months I’ve been trying to run a tabletop RPG at work over lunch. Specifically, a small group of people, 45m sessions, weekly.

I did not think it would be easy.

It was not easy.

This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua are back in Violet City and looking for excitement. Or a boat, at least.

This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua are seeking ancient truth in the scrolls of the Lime Nomads, in a pink Routemaster autogolem. Joshua wants to cross the Final Barrier and be able to raise the dead.

This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua are seeking ancient truth in the scrolls of the Lime Nomads, in a pink Routemaster autogolem. Joshua wants to cross the Final Barrier and be able to raise the dead. Currently they’re transporting a sacred relic to the holy Village of the Lavender Cliffs in the Nomad Steppes.

This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua are seeking ancient truth in the scrolls of the Lime Nomads, in a pink Routemaster autogolem. Joshua wants to cross the Final Barrier and be able to raise the dead. And they’ve found the Pine Clan and saved it from a megavome.

This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua are seeking ancient truth in the scrolls of the Lime Nomads, in a pink Routemaster autogolem. Joshua wants to cross the Final Barrier and be able to raise the dead. If only they could find the Pine Clan?

Do I like Foundry as a Virtual Table Top?

Yes, love it.

Do I recommend it to others?

Uh, well, it depends on your definition of “recommend” 😬

Some idle screaming-into-the-void on Mastodon prompted a conversation with the Old Scouser Roleplayer about my Foundry setup, and I realised I end up typically saying the same thing a lot about Foundry:

1. It is a beautiful product, especically for crunchier games
2. You will absolutely get distracted with doors, and sight lines and music, and audio effects, and away from the actual game
3. It is an utter pain to use securely.

The word “securely” here is key. There have been some cracking vulnerabilities in the software already (fixed already!). The developers are moving fast and breaking things, and that’s great for making a beautiful VTT with some really novel features, but less good for boring, stuffy, security.

So I love Foundry, but I don’t trust it. Let me explain.

This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua are seeking ancient truth in the scrolls of the Lime Nomads, in a pink Routemaster autogolem. Joshua wants to cross the Final Barrier and be able to raise the dead. While they’re doing that, they’re also making some money being a tour-guide for Spiral 8-body.

We left the party around a campfire, having tried to defuse an encounter with some pointy horses. But now it’s time for something Completely Different¹…

The UVG game we’re playing is written by Luka Rejec, and another of his projects is called Zoa of the Vastlands². It is a zine for expeditions, safaris, and research trips looking at the flora and fauna of the UVG world. This emphasises one of Luka’s ideas in UVG, which is that the party can gain XP from seeing new animals and new places, as well as the traditional options. One of its ideas is to have the party sit around a campfire, discussing what they saw that day.

So, that’s what happened.

We spent some time first going through in more detail the setting up of the camp and the view of the sunset and the night sky over the steppes. Then described some things the party had seen. This doesn’t require a GM, it’s pure co-operative story-telling, so I took the role of Spiral, the NPC.

This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua are seeking ancient truth in the scrolls of the Lime Nomads, in a pink Routemaster autogolem. Joshua wants to cross the Final Barrier and be able to raise the dead. Now they need to find the Pine Clan to talk with their Elder to understand what scrolls they found.

This is a short one, turned out the whole group was tired for this session, and we stopped early.