Time for another impromptu game of The Quiet Year! Much like last time, I offered it into a roll20 session when we realised we didn’t want to continue a campaign without one of the players.

BEHOLD! Marvel at the majesty of the Barrowmaze! Gaze in awe at its breadth, its depth! It has hundreds of rooms, leaving years of material to play in!!!

The party triggered a trap in room 2, and died, fleeing, in room 1. As a GM, not my finest hour. Again. This is the same group that I killed before!

I wasn’t enthused about the third adventure in the Bree-land Region Guide — but saying that, I haven’t run it. Also, I wanted to keep doing something with Berelas, as at least one party member was quite attached to her, and there’s no further published material on her, to my knowledge.

So, instead, I asked the group where they wanted to go (ahead of the session), and then offered some hooks. Berelas wants to go to Radagast, which is quite a trip away. The players offered to escort her, and I prepped a long Journey and had some vague ideas for some things to do in Rhosgobel when they arrived.

Although, hmm, how to get there.

Finally, finally started a UVG game! 💜💜💜

This is mainly running as a play-by-post on Discord for the moment, although we’ve had some short live sessions:

1. To say “hi” and discuss Slovak culture
2. To have an encounter lick some rocks

I didn’t really intend to start a new long-form game, but I couldn’t see a good one-shot that would still use the travelling mechanics for more time than it would take to introduce them. SEACAT as a pure encounter engine for me does not hold the same appeal.

This post contains spoilers for the named adventure in the Bree-land Region Guide for Adventures in Middle Earth, by Cubicle 7 🙈.

Short post here, here’s the games in my “to-play” pile, sorted by immediacy. I thought it would be a nice way of keeping track of stuff that’s caught my eye.

Games I’ve not played yet:

• Beak, Feather & Bone - An IRL friend bought me this. Not only do I therefore want to report back, but it is a short story-telling game and thus ready for dropping into a blank session. And it has bird-people. Need to import an image into roll20 for a game.
• Ultraviolet Grasslands - Love Luka’s art, getting ready to start a play-by-post of this. My games always end up a bit grim, so I really want an excuse to make a cheerful gonzo game with a Mad Max bent.
• Hypertellurians - For some reason I just really want to play this atomic raygun RPG. I’m not even sure why but I have it in PDF and physical and it looks like a laugh and relatively light. Mind you, so does a lot of stuff I already own!
• DELVE - A solo dungeon-building game. I’m waiting for the physical book for this one. It might be a bit fiddly compared to a pure story-telling game as it involves some light cellular automation of rooms to cover invasions and water flow and stuff. Worst case it would be easier on roll20 or similar where I don’t have to pack it up.
• Ex Novo - another story-telling map-building game that was in the Racial Equality bundle. It can be played solo and I definitely want to give it a go.
• Humblewood - a 5e campaign that’s finally arrived across the Atlantic. It’s very beautiful, and I will save running it for post-pandemic. For completeness it’s worth noting it’s available on roll20 now…

I played the ENNie award-winning Thousand Year Old Vampire. The story is that you’re a Vampire that can live for Thousands of Years. This game is the Ronseal (™️) 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. 🐝 🐝 🐝

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 I’d just buy it on roll20?

Ross, of 2-minute table-top provides maps, and assets to his patreons, and on his shop. And Dungeondraft packs of those assets. Including a train.

I like trains.

🚂

70px for roll20

Well, I bought Dungeondraft. I regret it only in the sense that drawing maps is now my life. Roughly, the workflow:

1. Paint the terrain (and water)
2. Paint the cave
3. Plot the dungeon walls
4. Draw the cliff-tops as a path that can be edited
5. Drop on lights, tables, torches, mushrooms, rocks
6. Export