Don't Mind Me, I'll Be Over Here Playing with Myself (Yes, you heard that right...but SFW)

 

My Kickstarter history has been quite varied and *most* have been successful, but I'll admit there seems to be an inverse relationship between the expense of a Kickstarter and fulfillment.

Looking at you Kenny!

A couple of years ago I helped fund an interesting RPG game that had it's normal COVID delays, problems with production (as in actual printing and assembly) and I think I spent close to $200 after shipping for this thing. Luckily the creator was actually good at communication and I figured I'd get it when I get it..,,or not. At the $140ish price-point and my particular history I knew I was gambling a bit.

I actually got this HUGE box for the League of Dungeoneers game earlier this summer, but I had put off opening it until today, mostly because I was afraid of losing something from this massive TTRPG.

MASSIVE!

Seriously, this thing was shrink-wrapped over a nit-actually closed box because there was just too much add-on stuff inside. I think was close to throwing out my back carrying this around for pictures (22 pounds or so)! To show the scale I've put my KenzerCo Dwarven mini and my two Gamescience D30's on the box for scale.

That's the top view, but it gets even more ridiculous when you see the side view.....I'm not kidding when I said the box doesn't close.

Good thing is that after they shrunk-wrapped it it was covered with custom-fit foam and placed in a perfectly sized heavy cardboard box. They did not skimp on packaging and I'm grateful.

The reason I was willing to risk a couple Benjamins and wait a couple of years for this game is because it's a solo/co-op game for up to four players.....it's a TTRPG that doesn't have a GM!

There are rules for how the monsters work and IIRC there is some randomness worked in such that you can't easily cheat the system (assuming you're playing by the rules...anybody can just straight-up cheat) when running the bad guys. 

As expected there is a load of internal components and I'm actually a little overwhelmed by so much stuff. One of the coolest things about this game, and I'm 110% certain it factored into my purchase decision, is that a lot of the "stuff" in the box could be used for other games. There's a couple of maps (one is a neoprene placemat of sorts) a ton of tokens, and a bunch of nice, thick cardboard room/map tiles. I think I'll have to pull the plastic doors from the box to close it for storage, but no biggie.

This seems to be such a cool game I'm seriously considering bringing it to NTRPG and running a couple of sessions. If I do that I'd take the place of the player's DM/GM actions so four people couple just play and not have to worry about knowing the rules at first.

1-4 players......oh boy do I look forward to League of Dungeoneers (company website). The only thing I'm missing, and will most certainly pick up, is the PDF of the rulebook.

We Need More Above Average Gamers

I'm back from my last business trip and decided to hit up my local game store and pick up more miniatures that I definitely don't need, mostly because I can and because I'm gearing up for my winter shut-in project(s), which will be setting up my painting station and working on my bazillion minis.

As a side note, I somehow effed up my back on this trip, enough to warrant an ambulance ride to the ER and missing a couple days of the trip writhing in near-constant pain. Not mentioning this for sympathy (multiple shots and pills helped immensely), but to put into context some things I was thinking with regards to gaming.

Might be a stretch here, but please bear with me.......so I'm pretty much laid-out on the floor unable to do much more than roll around and moan. While I wasn't straight-up frightened, the feelings of helplessness reminded me of the last time this happened in much worse conditions (situational and severity) and I remember thinking...."Whelp, this....this is how I die."

A few hops, skips, and jumps in thinking and I'm imagining my folks going through my stuff and thinking, "Holy fuck Chris has a shit-ton of these little unpainted plastic miniatures. What the hell was he planning on doing with all this stuff?!" I guess it's better than it might have been had I been in my 20's and they could wonder on just how much I spent on all this porn.....

......I kid. In my 20's my military buddies and I had a mutual agreement to scrub our porn collections before the military sealed and packed off your personal possessions, so that wouldn't be a problem.....

Longs story short, I realize that I'm the only gamer in my family, so all my gaming stuff is....well, just "stuff". There's nobody to relish getting my books and minis to use in their own game, and I've come to the conclusion that I/We need more gamers, and not just "average gamers", but "Above Average" gamers.

What's an Above Average gamer? Well odds are you would qualify as in my experience the average gamer plays one RPG, probably with the same group of friends they've been playing with since high school. They don't go to conventions, they don't try other games, and they generally don't do "other" gaming stuff......

...which is a bit of a shame because these days being a dork/geek/nerd is somewhat cool and a lot of people are into what I would think of as "ancillary" gaming stuff. Movies are a great example. How many people love Lord of the Rings, but would never even think to play MERPs (Ok, that one I get...) but with the mainstream popularity of the Marvel movies and the popular Marvel based video games (the Lego games come immediately to mind, but the AAA Title Marvel Avengers just came out this last week), but have these fans been exposed to the classic Marvel Super Heroes RPG?

In my family my mother just loves pretty much any TSR paperback that has been printed. Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Icewind Dale.....you name it, she's probably read it, but never once has she picked up and slung dice, much to my chagrin.

Now as far as my family goes, all my fault. I've picked up some D&D starter sets before, but maybe I should've started with the Dungeon board game, or even some other board games to whet their appetite. I missed the boat, pure plain and simple.....

.....but these days we have a golden opportunity with all this COVID-19 stay at home mentality. With kids/families spending more time at home indoors, we have a captive audience. Playing RPGs can be a family-friendly cost effective form of entertainment and depending on the game even educational!

One game I HIGHLY recommend for trying out with younger kids is Dungeonteller Fantasy RPG from Blue Boxer Rebellion. Honestly I'd just buy/download everything that Blue Boxer Rebellion has for Dungeonteller, but I'm biased. All you'll need for dice is a butt-load of d6's and the mechanics are kid friendly, quick & easy to boot. Make sure you download the free extra character classes.

This is one way we can help start growing new gamers, but that's just a start for average gamers. For Above Average gamers we need to take the basic/average gamers and start exposing them to the larger gamer culture. Get them playing one game and then try out some other games, try different genres. Introduce them to Zines....bring them to conventions. Hell, even just making some tweaks to your normal game is a good start! If you have a mini-heavy game, try playing more "Theater of the Mind" or vice-versa.

I'm just spit-balling here, but the basic idea is that I think we need to not only grow the fan base for RPGs in general, but we need to "close the loop" and bring RPGs not only more into the mainstream on a personal level, but to broaden our shared experiences. Most of us play because we really enjoy it and getting to share that with friends and family, now and even after we're gone, is important. I think we should all be looking for opportunities to create some Above Average gamers.

Now excuse me as I look online for D&D plushies for my Great Nephew (1st of his generation in my family).







Last Second Idea Edit!
Actually I've an idea........comment to this post the name and relation (something along the lines of "Titus my Great Nephew", don't need to be too specific) of someone you'd love to introduce to RPGs and I'll pick one at random to hook up with a fair bit of Dungeonteller Fantasy RPG kit. I'll make a selection next Sunday, which will give me a week to reach out to Doug Anderson and make sure he gets paid and figure out the logistics. Worst case I'll just send a gift card for DTRPG you can use to pick it up.

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Using my Soapbox to "Discourage" a Problem at Some Tables...

So I'm not 100% when this post will be, well posted, but I'm running with the assumption that this will be my 1st weekly entry here at the Tavern.

There's so many things I could write about, but one thing popped into my head, something I feel strongly about and something that has a back story. There are probably three things I'm passionate about, well maybe five things, or 50........I really don't keep track, but clearly I'm a passionate, passionate man.....

So here I am with an audience....not entirely mine, but hey....I really ought to use this pulpit to educate and eradicate this one particular bane of RPGs. Seriously, there is no worse scourge than the abomination that is the.....wait for it....

The GMPC.

Not the GameMaster working some temporary Non-Player Characters, but a full-on Player Character being run in the game side-by-side with the rest of the players. What's the harm in this, you might ask? Well 1st off, the GM should be impartial when running a game. I know some systems have the GM working in more of an adversarial role, but even if it was a cooperative game system, letting the GM run a PC is just.....it's just wrong. They should not be benefiting from the rulings they make at the table. If the GM wants to actually play on the other side of the table, then by all means....sit down as a player....with someone else serving as the GM. Switch off the duties and spread that work load around.

I was asked to join a gaming group once and eventually the GM left and another player stepped up to GM....but we had to let him run his PC with the others. Best damned thief you ever saw.....never missed a trap, always managed to land a backstab when the party needed it, etc. It was a little childish, but hey...it was a game....until it became too much. Because not everyone could game every week we had two different campaigns: one large group and one smaller group.

The larger group was running the Temple of Elemental Evil and I was playing a Pacifist Monk. It was a very specific build.......and wouldn't you know it, the GM had himself a PC with the same build! Thanks for letting me have something unique! The GMPC Monk was actually one of two GMPCs he had in this campaign. As we were going through the adventure there was one big battle where we were clearly heading for a Total Party Kill (TPK). More than half of the party was already dead, and most everyone else was sucking on fumes with single-digit HP left. My PC was in a position to make a break for it and flee the battle, which only made sense because the authorities needed to know what was going on and TPK would prevent that. Of course once my PC bolts the one GMPC, the other Pacifist Monk, miraculously manages to disengage as well. The next week's game we meet and somehow the GM justifies bringing all the dead PCs back to life, save one. His dead PC.....somehow managed to come back actually stronger than he was before he died....seriously, WTF?

We had his awesome Thief in the smaller group and nothing ever touched this PC, which was normal. Nothing new here, but without the other/older GM playing the level of control this PC had over our game was a bit much. Of course he always got the best magic items. I'd try to get the group to agree to some other method for the division of treasure. Didn't really matter, the GMPC got first pick again. This time though, we had one extra magic item, a cursed item at that. The PC who ended up with the last pick got the extra item.....which was my guy. The GM allowed us to sell whatever we didn't want based on some formula in the book, whatever. I had already sold the "extra".....come on it was cursed...item and was divvying that coin out to the other PCs when the GM pipes up, basically telling me to STFU because this time...this time my guy got two magic items when everybody else only got one.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back with me. I told him I'm out and he could go play with himself all he wanted.

The fun part was that on the next business day the GM stopped by my place of work to tell me that he talked with the group and he was "uncomfortable" GMing with me at the table.....wow...what part of "I quit" didn't he get.

Yeah, no more GMPCs at any table I'm playing at....never again. Sure you could write off that this GM was just an asshat or something else, but outside of the GMPC BS he ran a decent enough game. Clearly the temptation to...well I'll just say it....cheat, was too much. A GM cheating is a post in and of itself, but for the purposes of this post, a GM should not be in position where cheating gives a tangible benefit.

Microlite74 Ultimate Edition - Hanging Strong as a Best Seller at RPGNow

Its always nice to see games with the Old School vibe hang tough in the RPGNow sales rankings (currently sitting at #5 overall) Right now, that would be Microlite74 Ultimate Edition (PDF and EPUB versions) Now, Microlite74 and its various versions are an interesting experiment in sticking close to the 3x SRD while trying to stay true to the feel of the original rules. How well it does that is a matter of personal opinion. Suffice to say, Microlite74 Basic was one of my inspirations when I put together Swords & Wizardry Light - its not easy taking the 3x SRD down to 20 pages, which ML74 Basic did.

Needless to say, I'm surprised that Microlite74 Ultimate Edition goes far in the other direction - 384 pages. Holy shit.

Microlite74 comes in three other flavors - Basic, Standard and Extended. All are PWTW, so you can peek before plunking 10 bucks down for the Ultimate Edition.

From the Extended Rules blurb:

The Microlite74 Extended rules are based on the 1974 0e edition of the world’s most popular fantasy roleplaying game with its supplements and material from 0e magazine articles, some 0e third party material, some of the house rules the author used in the 1970s, and selected ideas from other roleplaying games. These rules are not intended to be a clone of the 0e rules, but rather a conversion of them to a rules-lite D20-based system that encourages old-school play without strictly old-school rules.

Kickstarter - Trudvang Chronicles (Swedish Fantasy RPG translated to English)

The above graphic for the Trudvang Chronicles is needed, as the $70 support level doesn't really spell out that you are getting the game in print.

Oh, and of course, Pdf should be PDF, but that's nitpicking, right?

Apparently no, it's a "thing."

The below comment from the KS is from just over 2 hours ago:

So they are having a few issues with translation. Actually, it seems like a large amount of issues with translation, which makes me wonder who they hired to do the translation / editing.

It's not that the Trudvan Chronicles hasn't exploded:

Yes, I used a screenshot because I couldn't believe the numbers. Those are Monte Cook numbers without the accompanying attitude.

Trudvang Chronicles is an award-winning fantasy roleplaying game based on the mysterious and dark Nordic and Celtic sagas and myths. Enter a world of enchanted forests, trolls, dragons, spirits of nature, heroes and adventures. Trudvang is both grim and dark, epic and yet down to earth, with a melancholic tone of an ancient age when nature was a living creature and magic was wild and strong. Above all, Trudvang is a saga...

I'm interested. I'm intrigued. I'm terrified it will be a poorly translated mess.

The Tavern's readership spans the globe. Does anyone have first hand / second hand / long distance hand knowledge of the Trudvang Chronicles? Is it worth the leap of faith?

I fall in love with the above art, then I see the below in the video:

Kickstarter - Crosswell: Junction To Adventure (Generic Urban Sourcebook)

Do you remember the the old CityBooks from Flying Buffalo? I do, although I only had the first back in the day (just rectified at the FBI website) I remember they were highly thought of but the players in my group that had them.

Crosswell: Junction to Adventure is inspired by those books.

It very well be hit or miss, but there are still a handful of early backer slots for the PDF available at 4 bucks - at 4 bucks how can you go wrong?

I hope it's quality and inspires a whole line of releases. Time will tell.

Crosswell: Junction to Adventure is for use with any role-playing system. While designed with a fantasy flare, with a bit of tinkering the establishments presented here can be used for any role-playing game setting--futuristic, post-apocalyptic, etc. Since Crosswell is a generic role-playing aid, no game system-specific statistics are provided for non-player characters or situations. General descriptive terms are provided to aid game masters in determining how to best fit the provided material into their own game. 

edit: Free Preview of Crosswell at RPGNow. It covers the Ten Hearth Inn. I'm partial to Inn and Taverns myself ;)