tag: fvtt

Wood engraving in "Andersen's Fairy Tales", by Hans Tegner This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance. Joshua and Emmett are now cattle ranchers, both seeking a quiet change in career for various reasons. They’re driving buggalo from Emerald City to the Porcelain Citadel. Now on the Lime Steppes, the Matriarch of the Pine clan is asking for a favour… Do ya like dogs? ...

This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance. Joshua and Emmett are now cattle ranchers, both seeking a quiet change in career for various reasons. They’re driving buggalo from Emerald City to the Porcelain Citadel. Currently they’re in Violet City, hanging out with some Lime Nomad pilgrims, after irritating some lovable street-life. More drugs, some commeuppance. ...

This continues a (hopefully) long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance. Joshua and Emmett are now cattle ranchers, both seeking a quiet change in career for various reasons. They’re driving buggalo from Emerald City to the Porcelain Citadel Last session they were approaching Violet City, and had resolved to kick back and explore for a week. ...

Time for a new game. I want to run Luka’s Ultra Violet Grasslands again, but I just don’t quite understand his SEACAT engine, so I’m going to use Black Hack for that1. We’re going to make a travelogue in the Vastlands! Joshua and Emmett are now cattle ranchers, both seeking a quiet change in career for various reasons. They’re driving buggalo from Emerald City to the Porcelain Citadel We had a Session Zero and talked about the kind of game the three of us wanted to take part in, and we all wanted something pretty chill. Violence should be largely avoidable (minimal surprise ambushes!) Not too grim (some of Luka’s flavour-text is being elided) Enjoy the ride, we’re thinking of the Westerns we like and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintence ...

Survive. Solve. Save. Pick one. Back in August, I had a game of Mothership for the first time in ages. Mothership (MoSh) is a sci-fi horror game that leans strongly on the style of the Alien films. Humans have spread among the stars, but it’s grimy, dirty, and technology is fallible. Space is big and scary, but you have to put up with it, to earn some money from The Man. The character classes are Scientist, Android, Teamster, and Marine; and don’t need any explanation if you’ve seen the films. I honestly thought I’d written about it on here, but I bought a lot of MoSh stuff in ZineQuest 1 when Pound of Flesh came out, and wasn’t writing up my experiences then. After a frenzy of games (and getting back into RPGs in general), Mothership took a back-seat for me. I think I travelled through Gartner’s hype cycle on it - I played a few different games of it in rapid succession. There’s a lot I like about it, but after a while it does feel unfinished, and some of the rules stack a bit messily for me. For example, each class typically modifies the behaviour of rolls for players around them. So if you’re playing this with a 5e mind to a balanced team1 Very soon the promised final version is launching on Kickstarter and hopefully that will answer all the questions. I ran The Haunting of Ypsilon 14. This blog will contain extensive spoilers! Also CWs for body horror and animal death. ...

I finally got round to trying Into The Odd. It’s by Chris McDowall and a forerunner of Electric Bastionland. I was interested in something rules-light, but I’d previously struggled using Maze Rats. The most contraversial thing of ItO is that it has no to-hit mechanic. All attacks hit, you only roll damage. That’s certainly an efficiency saving, you’re halving the rolls. Players don’t have to wait through a turn and then flub their attack. The only problem, the enemies don’t miss either… The dungeon I used was the Stellarium of the Vinteralf. The vinteralf are glacier-dwellers, and æons ago built a stellarium to investigate the heavens. It’s been abandoned and forgotten for some time, but the heroes have been told it’s poking out of the ice again. Pillage it! ...

Last time in Illmire, the Ranger Leithidir turned out to be cursed by the Deathly Spade. If only Yorivar, Illmire’s druid, was still around! Leithidir would also still like to replace his hand, he’s only been able to find a wooden one. After a lot of arguing, the party choose a route that involves going through as much forest as possible, to utilise the Ranger’s favoured terrain. This goes well until the edge of the lake, where a Giant Crocodile 🐊 attacks them while fording a river. This ambush is super effective! ...

I’ve got terrible at keeping up with these. Let’s try to sort that out! The players leave the surrounds of Illmire and get supplies, and more importantly recruits to reinforce Illmire. They travelled out on the King’s Highway, and got torrentially rained on. I like AiME and so a good excuse to make this journey a Journey with Exhaustion and suffering1 is one that’s been missing for me up until now....

So last time, the players decided to sneak into the cult’s temple in Illmire. Coincidentally they managed to knock out the window to the only room without cultists inside it. This session started with a happy murder of all the cultists desecrating the temple that didn’t surrender in time. Most notably the ranger found a sacred mace, that he very carefully didn’t touch with his skin and passed back to the cleric for safe-keeping....

We continue the tales of the Evils of Illmire. And what I’ve learned while running it. The party start in the sunken Bastion, keeping a Black Skeleton Turned at bay while they rob his throne room. They then have a short rest, and explore the room unlocked by the key on the Skeleton’s belt. Some normal skeletons provide no trouble, but the Wraith they unleash from the cell is much more of a problem, especially when it starts raising the freshly interred skeletons as Spectres....