#RPGaDay 2024, Week Five

The fifth and final week of RPGaDay 2024 posts is here! All of these were previously posted on Mastodon and the RPG.net forums. Additional commentary exclusive to this blog are in italics.

Day 25: "Desirable dice"

The ones I just saw. Online or at a FLGS - doesn't matter. The set that made my eyes widen in wonder and light up in joy. Just like the set I saw right before it. A shiny set of dice I don't own yet are the most desirable.

No, I'm not a dice goblin, you're a dice goblin!

I'm not a true dice goblin. I'm not even the biggest dice goblin in our group. But I understand the appeal.


Day 26: "Superb screen"

When I use one, I prefer half sized screens. The one in the Mothership boxed set is a good example. Doesn't get in the way as much. Still difficult to reach for minis and snacks, though.

I don't like the ones that feel like I'm erecting a wall between me and the rest of our group. The one for Star Trek Adventures 1e was terrible. I could've been napping behind the thing and nobody would've been the wiser.

The screens for some games feel like they were deliberately designed to completely isolate the GM from the players. Why go halfway? Throw in battlements, boiling oil, and a moat between me and the snacks! Oversized screens are a major factor in why gamemasters don't like using the things!


Day 27: "Marvelous miniature"

The one I saw on that one time. The one that costs an arm and a leg, plus international shipping. The one that doesn't fit into any game I have on the horizon, but just looks so gorgeous. The one that will sit, in its packaging, on my pile of shame for ages while I work up the nerve to prime it. Best miniature around.

I don't have a problem. You have a problem!

I may not be a true dice goblin, but the urge to add to my vast collection of unpainted miniatures is something I've learned to manage.

Day 28: "Mimic, Describe a Monster" (alternate prompt because I couldn't come up with a "Great gamer gadget")

A mimic that emulates the appearance of a quest giver.

BONUS: A mimic that emulates the appearance of a tavern, including a quest giver.

Gotta keep the players on their toes!

I feel that a GM putting a mimic into an adventure is already halfway to pure evil. Why not complete the journey?

Day 29: "Awesome app"

I've just started getting into Lancer and the more I learn about COMP/CON, the more I like what I see. Rules database. Character generation. Encounter building. It's an all in one package.

The executives at a certain other company would look at a free web app like COMP/CON and think "we're not monetizing things enough" to themselves.

It's Wizards. I'm referring to Wizards of the Coast.


Day 30: "Person you'd like to game with"

As a lifelong Star Trek fan, I'd go with Will Wheaton. Or Todd Stashwick as an alternative.

And, no, I wouldn't ask them to play Star Trek Adventures. That's a little too on the nose, I think!

I have no idea what I would do when confronted with Wheaton's infamous dice curse. Other than not letting him touch my dice collection, of course.


Day 31: "Gamer you miss"

I grew up a Navy brat. There are crowds of folks I moved away from and would like to see at the table again.

There are many things I regret about having to move every few years as a child. Not that I had a choice in the matter.


Final Thoughts

The prompts weren't quite up to the quality of previous years, but having Skala Wyzwania's alternates available more than made up for it. Prompts like these are a valuable exercise and I wish there were challenges like this out there. I hope that you had as much fun reading my responses as I had writing them!

#RPGaDay 2024, Week Four

Here are the posts for the fourth week of the RPGaDay 2024 challenge! All of these were previously posted on Mastodon and the RPG.net forums. Additional commentary exclusive to this blog are in italics.

The prompts by David F. Chapman from the AUTOCRATIK blog.

Day 18: "Memorable moment of play"

My most memorable TTRPG moments involve GM plans getting derailed, falling into the sea, and being nuked from orbit.

The PC who took down the big bad in exchange for their own life. During their first encounter.

The time the PCs completely ignored every faction squaring off during the climax of a campaign to go after the NPC who screwed them over that one time.

Good stuff. I learned a lot.

As a #ForeverGM, it's usually my plans that end up forlorn, wet, and radioactive. Here's some of what I learned from these two incidents:

Dead means dead. Don't expose the big bad to danger unless the campaign is set up for it. If the big bad ends up dead, don't just have the second in command slot into the empty position. Make it clear that the actions of the PCs changed the setting. Maybe the big bad didn't tell anybody the plan or there wasn't really a plan to begin with. Many organizations don't have a way to deal with the boss being taken out of the equation. The lack of a succession plan results in a period of chaos and infighting that could be more destructive than whatever the big bad had in mind. In a F20 game, the party may have to interrupt any effort to rez the big boss while the infighting is going on.

Players have three basic sources of motivation. The players themselves, their characters, and what the gamemaster provides. What the players are interested in overrides everything else. What makes their characters tick generally comes out ahead of what the GM presents to them unless they align. And players have to be reminded of things that come up during the campaign. In this case, it's easy to see why the players responded in the way they did. Getting a shot at revenge against the jerk NPC might have been better presented before the campaign climax.


Day 19: "Sensational session"

A GM can't make a sensational session happen, but can set the conditions for one.

Consider how things look to the players. The GM knows everything except what's going on in everybody else's heads.

Be prepared, but not over-prepared. Things will go sideways.

Be comfortable with improvising. Things will go sideways.

Don't get married to an idea. Killing your darlings isn't mandatory, but sometimes they need to go.

A GM has to work with the players to make sensational sessions possible. Sometimes that means letting things go.

Cover for Skala Wyzwania's alternate RPGaDay 2024 challenge.

Day 20: "Battle, Encounter" (alternate prompt, "Amazing Adventure" felt too close to previous prompts)

Representatives of two factions that the player's aren't fans of are engaged in a pitched battle. Do the PCs wade in, hold back, or avoid the whole mess?

This is when I started looking to the alternate prompts offered up by Skala Wyzwania, an option I mentioned when I announced I would be doing this challenge. With all the prompts about one-shots, environments, and sessions, I felt that I had said everything I had to say about adventures already.

An encounter with two enemies (or non-allies) going at each other presents the players with an interesting decision. Screw them over directly or screw them over indirectly?

Prompts for the alternate RPGaDay 2024 challenge.

Day 21: "Disaster, Quest" (alternate prompt)

WANTED: Enterprising salvage teams to penetrate debris fields and automated defenses at Tyron V. Navigation errors during Tyron fleet exercises resulted in multiple collisions, triggering Kessler syndrome. Generous contracts to recover classified military hardware on surface available.

My response to the previous prompt about "RPG with well supported campaigns" covered anything about a "classic campaign" that I had to offer.

Naval history buffs might spot what Tyron is a reference to.

If I were to run this scenario, I would include at least one competing salvage team as a complicating factor. Because these things never go smooth. If I were feeling particularly nasty, I would make some of the hardware a rogue AI commanding drone defenses.


Day 22: "Notable non-player character"

A couple of simple things to keep in mind when introducing an NPC.

First, make the NPC interesting to the players. Making them useful or an obstacle to at least one PC is the easiest way. Connecting to a PC is more complicated, but potentially more rewarding. Otherwise, the NPC is just there.

Second, an NPC can be cool to a point. An opponent should have flaws and vulnerabilities. An ally should never overshadow the PCs.

It doesn't matter how cool a NPC is to the GM. The players are the audience in this context and they have to be entertained by the NPCs.

We all remember the worst days of Elminster, don't we?


Day 23: "Ritual, Mechanic" (alternate prompt)

If there is a ritual the PCs must stop, give them a fair chance to make the appointment. Don't keep information gated behind die rolls or a skill none of the PCs have. Where, when, and how to stop the ritual should come up in the investigation. On the other hand, the ideal way of stopping the ritual or the defenses around it can be offered up as bonus information that takes more effort to find out.

I just didn't feel like singling out a single "peerless player" from all the folks how have been at my table over the decades.

And, yes, this is the GUMSHOE approach to investigations in a nutshell. I never figured out what the problem with it was supposed to be.

Day 24: "Acclaimed advice"

Paraphrased from multiple sources:

Most TTRPG issues can be solved with patience and open, mature communication.

As advice goes, it's both revelatory and obvious at the same time.

The question "I'm having a conflict with my GM and/or players" comes up a lot in TTRPG spaces. "Have you tried talking it out" is the response that seems to get to the bottom of things the fastest.

One more week to go. I've been enjoying this challenge. I wonder if there are others like it out there?

#RPGaDay 2024, Week Three

Here's another week of RPGaDay 2024 posts. All of these were previously posted on Mastodon and the RPG.net forums. Additional commentary exclusive to this blog are in italics.

Day 11: "RPG with well supported one-shots"

My mind went immediately to all the different flavors of D&D, but I don't like that answer. Although adapting classic modules bulks out the number of one shots available to Old School Essentials.

Mothership seems like a game made for one shots. There's an array of pamphlet adventures available. The vast majority written by third parties.

The sheer volume of adventures available for all the different versions of D&D, Pathfinder, et cetera offers the F20 community unmatched support for one shots. I acknowledge and accept that, but I don't have to like it.


Day 12: "RPG with well supported campaigns"

There's plenty of TTRPGs with iconic campaigns out there. "Masks of Nyarlathotep" for Call of Cthulhu. "The Pirates of Drinax" and "Deepnight Revelation" for Traveller. I hear any campaign touched by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan turns to gold. All kinds of stuff out there for OSR. I really only worry about the health of a game if it doesn't have at least one solid campaign published for it.

Having at least one well-regarded campaign available feels like a strong structural element for a TTRPG line. A good introductory adventure helps start groups off. A campaign sustains interest and builds up a gamemaster's confidence in creating their own campaigns.


Day 13: "Evocative environments"

Rain fits into most settings. Unless the game is set a desert. Or underwater.

Narratively, rain evokes mood. A light spring shower followed by a rainbow. Low, oppressive clouds making day into a wet, neon-lit night. A soaking storm casting lightning above a muddy battlefield.

Mechanically, rain effects tactics. Darkness and mists reduce visibility. Boots slip on slick ground. Mud imposes movement penalties.

I posted about rain awhile back. It's one of my favorite tools. Rain can make most existing environments more interesting without permanently altering them. Dark skies and rain can change the mood for a session. A storm can add drama and a little more tactical complexity to a climatic battle.


Day 14: "Compelling characters"

Having enough depth for contradictions. The brooding one who collects cute things. The cheerful one with a sense of humor that runs dark. No one note characters.

But contradictions don't equal depth. The overall type has to be established first. That takes a session or three. Or a character could appear to be a stereotype that is immediately contradicted. One takes work. The other subverts what already exists.

The underlying factor is complexity. A character that goes one way except for a few things sustains interest better than a character who just goes one way.


Day 15: "Great character gear"

As a #ForeverGM, I like gear that lets me feed information to the players. Could be a journal, a hard drive, or the Necronomicon. "Your character remembers a reference in the blog of that poor guy who disappeared a decade ago looking into the very thing y'all are investigating now."

Here's a response that I put aside in favor of the above:

There are players who scan through gear lists looking only at the damage numbers. If it can be purchased, let them buy Big Damage. If it needs to be found, put Big Damage in the game and let them seek it out. Sort out the balance issues later.


Day 16: "Quick to learn"

Most individual game mechanics are simple to grasp. It's when multiple mechanics run at the same time that games get labeled as hard to pick up. Combat rules often run into this problem. Many players want a tactical challenge, so factors like positioning and distance need to be modeled. Spaceship combat rules are particularly prone to being over-engineered to the point they become games in their own right.

Yes, I have beef with overly complicated spaceship combat rules. I can dig Star Fleet Battles out of storage if I want to spend hours crunching numbers and arguing about rules. Give me something that doesn't feel like a completely different game during spaceship fights.


Day 17: "An engaging RPG community"

I mourn the loss of Twitter's TTRPG community. "X" is a ruin lorded over by lunatics. Reddit is sliding towards the same fate. Discord is opaque to me.

Facebook groups manage to keep the flame going for their tribes. Mastodon has promise.

RPG.net is reliable. And it should be, if my "20 Year Hero!" badge has meaning. It survives due the mods enforcing the absence of conflict.

"Over the Hill Gaming" is a reference to my age. In case that wasn't clear before.

Online communities don't seem to last. Of course, I'm looking at the situation over a period of years and decades. Vibrancy fades, but those seeking fresh enthusiasm and bright ideas can find them. It does mean moving on, though.

Remodeling B4 The Lost City

In a previous post, I went over the preparations I made for running D&D module B4 The Lost City in Old School Essentials. In this post, I'm detailing the changes I made to the module during those preparations. My motivations behind those changes varied. Some things about The Lost City as written wouldn't land well with our group. Other don't fit with how I like to run things. Still others needed alteration to better suit the Nostalgia Tour campaign concept I was planning. So I had some work to do.

The Layout

Before getting into the meat of this topic, I'll provide some basic information about The Lost City. This is necessary to provide context for the changes I made. This information will spoil the module for anybody who has not played through it yet.

The dungeon in The Lost City is within a step-pyramid (although it could be called a ziggurat) at the center of a ruined city partly buried in the sands of the surrounding desert. The module presents each chunk of the dungeon in tiers. Tiers 1 and 2 are considered dungeon level 1. Tiers 3 and 4 are dungeon level 2. Tier 5 is dungeon level 3. Tiers 6 - 10 are optional areas that take the adventure beyond Basic D&D and serves as sort of an ad for Expert D&D. The optional areas are mapped, but only superficially presented. Work or skilled improvisation is needed to run them at the table. The Lost City's iconic monster - Zargon - is the last encounter of Tier 10, in room #100. Finally, an underground city in a vast cavern below the pyramid is presented with an isometric map and basic information covering critical areas.

The most significant change I made was opting not to run Tiers 6 - 10. As part of the Nostalgia Tour, The Lost City serves to kick things off and get the player characters to third level. Then the campaign could move to another classic D&D module like X1 The Isle of Dread or X2 Castle Amber. Tiers 1 - 5 would accomplish this nicely. The Lost City, as written, suggests collapsing the only set of stairs connecting Tier 5 to Tier 6 as a way of supporting this choice.


"Borrowing" Ideas

I'm not too proud to "borrow" other people's ideas, so I went looking for some. The Lost City is decades old. There are plenty of essays, blog posts, and YouTube videos out there about the module. Many of them describe the experiences of other gamemasters - how they ran it, the issues they had, and the solutions they implemented.

The B4 The Lost City Sourcebook

This is a collection of essays about the module. Much of it is from a real world perspective or expands the adventure's fictional background. The main value for me were the suggestions throughout for refining the adventure.

It was while reading through "Notes on the Underground City" by Jason Cone that I realized what was bothering me about Tier 5 of the dungeon. Tier 5 features a supernatural possession, Wererats, Doppelgangers, and mind controlling Werefoxes. That's three different kinds of shapechangers waiting in ambush and two examples of taking control of characters away from their players on the same dungeon level. I realize that OSR is supposed to be more challenging on players, but I also didn't want to go full Dark Souls on them. The possession stayed since it is linked to another encounter. The Werefoxes and Doppelgangers were changed to Wererats to tie things together more to my taste.

Dungeon Craft Ultimate D&D Adventures: The Lost City (Ep. #346)

Seeing how another gamemaster runs an adventure is always insightful. Even if the only insight is that different styles are different. This video's emphasis on OSR play was a needed reminder for me. The party's focus must be on finding food and water at the beginning of the adventure - they are lost in the desert and have been out of supplies for awhile. The players also have to keep in mind that encounters aren't balanced, most XP is earned from treasure recovered, and player characters start with hit points in the single digits.

I also "borrowed" the idea of setting up Zargon like a boss monster to wrap up the adventure. Zargon packed up his slime pool and relocated from room #100 to his temple in the underground city. The climax was an assault by every faction against Zargon's worshipers and their hobgoblin allies. The party's role was to kill off Zargon while his cult was dealt with off-screen.


Small Changes

A minor tweak I made was increasing the amount of support available in the dungeon. There is no town nearby as a place of rest and resupply. Allying with one of the three human factions in the dungeon provides a source of food, water, and rest. However, there is no equivalent of a shop for equipment. I ruled that any of the factions could provide standard adventuring gear at standard prices once friendly relations were established.

The final change was the result of a random encounter. The wandering encounter table for Tiers 1 - 2 features a group of gnomes exploring the dungeon. I expanded the encounter by providing the gnome leader with a name - Wigglewort. I also explained the presence of the gnomes to the party with a short speech by Wigglewort:

"We were sent out from our town on a simple mission: explore the underworld. To seek out new markets and trade partners. To boldly go where no gnome has gone before!"

Wigglewort and his gnomes stuck around for the rest of the adventure. They made contact with the three human factions and provided gear to the party at reasonable prices. In the aftermath of the adventure, they are setting up trade agreements with the underground city now that the cult of Zargon and the hobgoblins are no longer around.


Looking Back

I had a variety of reasons for the changes I made to The Lost City. The major one - cutting out Tiers 6 - 10 - was to fit the adventure into the campaign I'm running. Others - such as not having multiple similarly themed encounters on the same dungeon level - were a matter of taste. Still others - making sure that there was the equivalent of a "town" for the party and creating a "boss" fight as the climax - reflect a more modern approach to adventure design.

#RPGaDay 2024, Week Two

Here's the first full week of RPGaDay 2024 posts. All of these were previously posted on Mastodon and the RPG.net forums. Additional commentary exclusive to this blog are in italics.

Day 4: "RPG with great art"

A TTRPG art piece that stands out to me is in Mothership. It's a two page spread. One end illustrates "adjacent" range with a monstrosity grappling with some hapless figures. The other end is "extreme range" and can only be reached with an eagle eye, steady hands, and a smart rifle. All the ranges in between are detailed in similar fashion. It gets the range and distance rules across to players.

The piece I mention is not the greatest in execution, style, or similar terms describing the quality of the art itself. It stands out to me because it plays a part in explaining the range and distance rules in a way that can be immediately grasped by the viewer. Most TTRPG art exists to bring the setting to life. Which is a valid function. But this piece feels like part of the rules.


Day 5: "RPG with great writing"

Ideally, the narrative writing in TTRPGs shows what the player characters do in the game. The technical writing that goes into TTRPG rules explains what the players do with the game. The former generally gets the point across. The latter is where things often fall apart.

A recent game that both conveys the setting and clearly describes the rules is Mothership.

I go into narrative versus technical writing in TTRPG adventure modules here.

I almost went with how the writing in Old School Essentials is so clear and concise for this prompt. However, OSE does assume that the reader already knows what they are getting into.


Day 6: "RPG that is easy to use"

I have a hard time running many TTRPGs due to the number of wheels spinning at any given time. Most flavors of GUMSHOE are manageable. Old School Essentials is a breeze for me to run. Of course, OSE feels like cheating with the decades of D&D under my belt. I'm hoping to find other relatively easy to run games as I get more of my TTRPG collection to the table this year.

The difficulty I have with running complex systems with many things interacting with each other at the same time is exactly that - my issue. However, it does influence my buying decisions and I tend towards the more streamlined end of the TTRPG market.


Day 7: "RPG with good form"

Star Trek Adventures. I own most of the first edition line and there's not been a dud in the bunch. The original core book gets a rebuke for poor organization, but other than that, every book has added to the quality of the game.

I wasn't sure what "good form" was supposed to mean in the context of TTRPGs. From the responses I've seen, I wasn't alone.


Day 8: "An accessory you appreciate"

I'm not gonna name just one. Dice for when success and failure are both interesting outcomes. Fold up dice trays for when the little plastic bastards decide to go for a swan dive off the table. Miniatures for when relative positioning is relevant. Terrain, tiles, and sheets because they look cool on the table with the miniatures, but they aren't strictly necessary.

As much as I enjoy miniature wargames, my use of miniatures and terrain for TTRPGs varies. There are times when they help keep track of things in combat. There are other times when it just takes too much time and space to set up.


Day 9: "An accessory you'd like to see"

More sci-fi terrain NOT covered in skulls and two headed eagles would be great. And more generic sci-fi miniatures, terrain, and maps in general would be nice.

We all know what game setting I'm referencing here, right? Cool.

And - to be fair - I realize that it's hard to make miniatures, terrain, and battle maps that would work for Star Wars, cyberpunk, grimdark, and Star Trek equally well. But a man can dream.


Day 10: "RPG you'd like to see on TV"

RPG to TV adaptation? There's Star Trek, but that's cheating. Maybe Lancer? I'm reading through it and the setting is interesting. Plus there's mecha!

Let's play? Whatever TTRPG I'm trying to get my head around at the moment.

I always have time to watch more Star Trek. And I've long been a giant robot connoisseur.

I don't enjoy watching other people play a TTRPG. I realize this isn't universal. I do find value in let's play videos when learning a new TTRPG. Seeing a game in motion is more informative to me than reading an explanation of how a set of rules is supposed to work.

Preparing a Classic D&D Module for OSE

Running D&D module B4 The Lost City in Old School Essentials was a success. Our group enjoyed a slightly revamped version of a classic adventure. And only a couple of player characters died! I can't say that Zargon and his cult were happy with the outcome, but they got what was coming to them. I credit the experience to a good group, my ability to improvise whenever players do the unexpected (which is all the time), and the efforts I made beforehand.

A gamemaster's homework is never done.

Step 1: Read the Darn Thing

It doesn't matter if it's the first time or the hundredth time. No notes. No highlighting. Just go through the whole thing and get familiar with the contents. What are all the pieces and how do they fit together? What stands out? What works and what won't land with this particular group of players? What doesn't fit with how I like to run things at our table? What is so iconic that any alterations would only lead to bitterness and despair? None of these questions can be answered without knowing what's in the adventure.


Step 2: What Changes?

Outside of the occasional one shot, adventure modules aren't played in isolation. They have to fit into existing campaigns. In this case, the Nostalgia Tour concept. The Lost City couldn't overstay its welcome or it would push out another classic module. I needed to wrap it up by the time the player characters reached third level and were ready for the next module.

I originally wrote a bunch of details on the changes I made, but that turned into a whole thing. The changes and the thinking behind them will be presented in that mythical time we call later.

(EDIT: Later turned out to be a week and half down the road. Here's a post about all the changes I made: Remodeling B4 The Lost City.)


Step 3: Attack the Module with a Highlighter

Classic adventure modules weren't exactly masterworks of organization. The need to present information to the GM by embracing the tools to technical writing - bolded text, bullet points, and otherwise separating out critical statements from a body of text - wasn't fully identified until more recently. Since there's no way to add these features to an existing module with rewriting it, I used a highlighter to make key information stand out.

I'd be squeamish about marking up a vintage module this way. Even a damaged copy is still a decades old document at this point. Fortunately, I was able to avoid the issue with a print on demand copy from DTRPG.

Here are examples of the kind of information I highlighted:

• How the traps are supposed to work. What does a player character do to trigger the trap? What happens when the trap is triggered?
• Reactions for monster encounters. What do they do when they encounter the party? Otherwise, I rolled on the reaction table.
• Motivations for NPC encounters. What does this NPC want from the party? How do they respond based on the reaction roll?
• Treasures and other loot. This information was sometimes buried in the room descriptions.
• Key historical facts. The Lost City has a backstory relevant to the adventure. I wanted to keep the critical details handy.

Step 4: List Making

Although a highlighter makes critical information easier to find, I wanted to have some things at my fingertips. Lists make it possible to reference certain things without having to flip back and forth through the module.

Examples of my lists:

• Static monster encounters. The rooms and the bags of XP dwelling within them organized by room number. It worked as a checklist of what the party ran into as they moved through the dungeon. I included each monster's page number in the OSE Referee's Tome for easy reference. This made it handy during combat and for calculating XP in between sessions. Easily the list I used the most.
• Wandering monster encounters. Includes the page numbers of each wandering monster table from the module. As with the static monster encounter list, I also included each monster's page number in the OSE Referee's Tome. Not as useful as I expected. The dice were not cooperating and I didn't roll as many wandering monsters as I expected.
• Trap encounters. Room numbers and a description of the traps within them. Having the information in one place wasn't as useful as I expected. The work I put in with the highlighter was enough for me to find the information when I needed it.
• NPC encounters. Statistics, descriptions, significant items, and spell lists for encounters that might result in talking, fighting, or some combination of both. The descriptions of some groups are spread throughout the module. Compiling them in one place saved some time during play. It also helped me keep the names straight.
• Cynidicean encounters. The inhabitants of the titular lost city have their own sub-table in this module's wandering monster tables. Since I needed to convert them to OSE anyway, I retyped the (converted) statistics and descriptions on a handy reference document.

Step 5: Old School Essentials Conversion

Although OSE is based on Basic D&D, certain things required adaptation. Most of the monsters have statistics in OSE, but the ones unique to B4 The Lost City needed work. The biggest issue involved our group's decision to go with ascending armor class as an option. All things considered, the conversion process was easy. Converting an AD&D module to OSE might involve more time and effort. I'll be burning that bridge later in the Nostalgia Tour campaign.

#RPGaDay 2024, Week One

The first week of RPGaDay 2024 was short. Only three days. In retrospect, combining the introductory post with this one would have been a really good idea.

All of these were previously posted on Mastodon and the RPG.net forums. Additional commentary exclusive to this blog are in italics.

Day 1: "First RPG bought this year?"

This is awkward. I haven't bought any new TTRPGs this year.

Lancer? Pre-ordered in October 2023.

The Mothership Boxed Set? A Kickstarter reward for a pledge I made in December 2021.

The issue is that 2024 is the year I'm putting the games I have on my shelves in front of our group instead of adding to them. Lancer and Mothership were grandfathered in. I'm not buying new TTRPGs for a reason.

Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy didn't make the cut. It was a Black Friday Sale purchase from 2023 and arrived before Christmas.

I've also bought a few things from DTRPG this year. However, those were all adventures and supplements for games I already own. This is also part of my get more stuff from my collection onto the tabletop plan I had for this year.


Day 2: "Most recently played?"

As a #ForeverGM, I'm going with "most recently run" here.

Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy. I slightly revamped D&D module B4 The Lost City and ran our group through it using OSE. We had a fun time with this classic adventure. We also faced challenges with the comparatively streamlined rules. Zargon went down swinging, but the party is now in need of an active volcano to finish him off.

I previously posted about the Nostalgia Tour campaign for OSE here on this blog. More posts on B4 The Lost City are on the way.


Day 3: "Most often played RPG?"

As a #ForeverGM, I'm combining "ran" and "played" here.

I've clocked in more hours with some flavor of D&D or another than anything else. Especially if I include other fantasy dungeon delving TTRPGs like 13th Age or OSE.

Honorable mention goes to Star Trek Adventures for dominating our table for years. We're taking a break this year for variety's sake, but it'll be back.

As a middle aged dude, it should come as no surprise that I started with D&D. All that time with all those editions piles up.

I am planning on bringing Star Trek Adventures back to the table at some point, but I'm not sure how the second edition will factor into that.

More next week!