Letting Magic Items Fall Where They May - or - Sometimes the Cool Sh!t Just Never Gets Found

I enjoy making up cool and unique magic items that have both good and bad attributes. Most of the time, the good outweighs the bad, which makes for a nice, non-generic item for the player that finds it.

When I decided to use Rappan Athuk, I knew I wanted to swap in some of my creations. My party has done a decent job of missing a handful. They almost missed the last one they found. I had to reread to them a "player's note" they had stumbled across 2 weeks earlier real time, but maybe a day game time.

See, I've been running games via G+ Hangouts and (the soon to be no more) Tabletop Forge. It was a pretty decent combination, except that you had to redraw the map with each session and there is no way to give players an actual "handout". What should have been a fair clue was forgotten over the intervening weeks. So, the other week I reminded them of their "handout". They were able to overcome (and then release and run from, foolish party) their adversary, but not before one of the party's thieves found an item I had placed weeks prior.

Strangely enough, it was the one section of the second level that they had bypassed when moving on to the third, before backtracking.

I have no problem letting my creations "rot away" unfound. It's the nature of fate. If they weren't hard to find in the first place, they wouldn't be as memorable ;)

I expect forgotten player's handouts will not be an issue in the future. Last weekend, before the announced merge of TTF into Roll20, I'd already decided to give Roll20 a shot. In part, it was for the mapping with a decent Fog of War, but it was also for the Player's Handouts feature. I expect I'll be giving both features a decent workout in the coming weeks.

Tabletop Forge to be Merged Into Roll20 - TTF Backers to be Treated as Roll20 Backers

ROLL20 GAINS THE SUPPORT OF TSR, TABLETOP FORGE

Application solidifies its status as the preeminent long distance gaming solution

Wichita, Kansas (January 29th, 2013) - This week two major announcements regarding the

popular online roleplaying program Roll20 became public. The first involved the newly launched

TSR company endorsing Roll20 as their “official tabletop,” the second pertained to the lead

developer of competing game space Tabletop Forge announcing he was halting production on

the program to instead help with future enrichments to Roll20.

“The most flattering part of all this is that they both came to us,” said Roll20 co-founder and lead

developer Riley Dutton. “It really helps make us feel like we must be doing something right.”

The new TSR was formed by Jayson Elliot to cover multiple aspects of gaming, beginning with

the launch of “Gygax Magazine” next month. Elliot was one of the first adopters of Roll20 in

the Kickstarter phase. Additionally, a feature by Roll20 co-founder Nolan T. Jones’ brother,

Nevin P. Jones, will be in the initial issue of Gygax Magazine covering Nevin’s first roleplaying

experience which was accomplished using his brother’s application.

Tabletop Forge was begun as a Google Hangout application by Joshuha Owen with the

purpose of helping the vibrant Google+ roleplaying community to better realize their games.

The Google+ page for Tabletop Forge boasts over 11,000 members, many of whom supported

the program’s KIckstarter last year. However, Joshuha decided that the community would best

be served by a single HTML5 solution.

“There are lots of options for roleplaying over the internet, but it became redundant to have

both Roll20 and Tabletop Forge, as in many ways they were serving the same community and

had similar features including a common goal of being lightweight and easy to use," remarked

Joshuha. As such, the creators of both programs say they will be treating all Tabletop Forge’s

Kickstarter backers as if they had made their pledges to Roll20, migrating Tabletop Forge

assets to Roll20, and be working with a multitude of RPG artists to bring their content to the

platform.

Roll20 began as an effort to keep developers Dutton, Jones, and Richard Zayas in touch via

long distance gaming. Their project went public with an eighteen day Kickstarter campaign in

April of 2012. Since then it has attracted over 100,000 users as a free service. The program

continues to be funded by subscribers who receive features that assist advanced gameplay.

(the bolding is by me. This is exciting news, and my understanding is that Josh will be adding his programing skills to those of the original Roll20 developers to make things even better. Just think, I started playing around with Roll20 after leaving it behind 6 months ago just this past Sunday. It's come a long way.)

(oh, and yeah, that stuff above? it's an official press release dealie)

TableTop Forge Kickstarter is in It's Final Stretch - Here's Pushing For the 3D Dice Roller!

The TableTop Forge Kickstarter has 3 days to go. It has already blown past it's original goal, numerous stretch goals and has one final goal - 3D dice.

Let me type that gain - 3D Dice. Rollable with your mouse. Holy crap! 

I love my VTTs. I've supported most of them. I've used more than my fair share. TableTop Forge is the VTT I've moved up to.

Lets see if they can hit 40k and we can roll some dice!  

Wait a second? Those dice better include the wacky DCC RPG Dice! ;)

Here's the latest update from the TableTop Forge Kickstarter:

We've taken our coolest level and packed it with all the best goodies. Anyone who pledges the Elven Longsword level will get:

- The Full Backpack

- A 4-hour gaming session with the creator of Far West, Mecha, Spark, Dungeon World, or Narosia

- Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters, by Engine Publishing

- Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game, by Engine Publishing

...and...

- The full 82-card Tarot of Dreams deck fully integrated with your Tabletop Forge game and ready to play.

Of course, you also get to see the app during development, submit bug and feature requests before anyone else and have your name immortalized in the app's donor list. 

And before you ask, yes, anyone who pledges above the Elven Longsword level also gets the tarot deck and the PDFs from Engine Publishing.

We're less than $4,000 away from our final stretch goal too, so if we pass that everyone gets 3D rolling dice that you can roll with your mouse. How cool will that be?

ACKS Session 5 Recap (Part 1) and Video - For Those That Missed it Live ;)

Yep, Adventurer Conqueror King or Die Session Five was live on air via Google+ Hangouts last night.  Talk about pressure.

Wait, being asked to use some of Matt Jackson's excellent dungeon tiles in the adventure mere hours before we were two kick off on air, now that's pressure.

Not knowing how or in which order the tiles were to be used?  Priceless ;)

Last night had it's share of technical difficulty, more to do with the On Air app for Google+ Hangouts than anything else.  From my end, the technical difficulties were minimal.  What can I say, I learned to screenshare for the viewers at home and figured out how to upload the tiles (resizing I needed some initial direction).

I've now watched bits and pieces of the video myself, and I'm surprised and happy to say I think I did a decent job, especially considering that I changed EVERYTHING up in the last few hours before the the game.  That includes the encounters in the beginning where I was using the screen as a whiteboard.  My DM style is best suited for the whiteboard in my opinion, although I have to say using the tiles were a blast.

I didn't expect the "ghost-like" ghoul in the secret room to nearly lead to a TPK, but it was nice to have some of the less powerful (at the moment) characters shine as the damage inducing folks were puking their guts out.  It played out better than I could have hoped.

If you are going to watch some of the video, come in around 43:00 or so, as that is when we figured out most of the technical difficulties ;)

More wrap up later...

Tonight's ACKS Game Will Be Live On G+ Hangouts - On Air

In case you missed the announcement on G+, tonight's Adventurer Conqueror King System gaming session will be watchable via Google+ Hangout using the On Air feature.  So, as if I didn't have enough on my plate keeping 5 very skilled role-players engaged I now have an unknown audience added to the mix.

Normally, I'd have a few beers with my gaming session, but tonight is going to be pure caffeine.  Lots of it.

So yeah, 930 Eastern Time on the ACKS Channel.  Or just look for the announcement on G+ from Tabletop Forge.

Tonight's program is rated "R", for language, possible simulated torture, random acts of violence, liberal use of fire, portrayals of the undead, verbal descriptions of gore and other assorted silliness that accompanies "R"oleplaying.  You have been warned.

Tabletop Forge Kickstarter Is Live! (G+ Hangout VTT)

Man, there is just so much good stuff going on at Kickstarter these days it's almost ridiculous!  The thing that sets Tabletop Forge away from the rest is that it's a Goggle App to bring virtual tabletop gaming to your Google+ Hangouts interface.  It literally makes your computer your gaming table, with friends from around the world.

I'm kinda partial to it, but then I've been using the beta for months and I've been watching it progress.  It is great now and it's potential is f'n awesome!  I've been running my ACKS campaign on saturday nights using it (another session tonight) and it's been a blast.  I just need to remember it isn't fully compatible with Safari these days (I need to run it with Chrome or Firefox).  Did I mention it's cross platform compatible?  Yep.  Truly amazing.

I've used Klooge (ugh!), Battlegrounds RPG (perhaps better for board games, still a very nice piece of work), Fantasy Grounds (works better with voice added - trying to plug in your own adventure is insanely time consuming), Maptools (never quite wrapped my head around it), ScreenMonkey (ehh), iTabletop (never became that which was promised) and I am sure one or two others that have escaped my quirky memory at the moment.

The only one I've felt comfortable using to GM with?  Tabletop Forge, and that started with an earlier Beta too.

Where was i?  Oh yeah, the Kickstarter for Tabletop Forge.  TTF will be free to use wether you kick in to the kickstarter or you don't, but there are lots of cool things you can get or get to do if you kick into the kickstarter.  Wanna play in a game session run by Tavis Allison of ACKS fame (great DM - he ran a face to face session of 5e play testing that I played in), Gareth Skarka (Far West), Larry Moore (Barebones RPG) and many others?  Here's your chance.

Wanna give it a test ride for yourself.  Head over to the Tabletop Forge Blog and Click the Hangout button.