Tabletop Gaming Feeds

Welcome back to my 40-year retrospective as a gamer.

If the early years were defined by beautiful chaos, 1993 was the pivot. At that time, my gaming schedule was highly irregular. We’d get together whenever we could, play whatever game was popular at the time (with mainstays like Rifts and AD&D 2nd Edition), and rarely play longer than a few sessions before moving on and rolling up new characters.

I quickly realized I wasn’t enjoying this scattered approach.

I sat down and seriously considered what I loved most about tabletop role-playing games. I knew I preferred being the Game Master. I loved long-form campaign play where characters grow and weave a massive story together. I wanted a regular schedule—weekly, if possible—and to stick to one system to facilitate long-term play, rather than constantly chasing the hot new game.

Playing in a world of my own creation was key to this. Running a homebrew campaign was a form of creative expression that kept me deeply invested. I figured that if I set a firm date and time and stuck with it, people would show up. I also hoped it would naturally pare down the increasingly large, rotating crew of players I was managing.

The Metro Comics Crew

By 1993, I had been working at Metro Comics for two years. It was my part-time job while I went to college. Metro Comics in San Patricio Plaza is a comic and game store (and yes, it is still there!). Back then, they had a great game selection, carrying the big-name releases of the day: lots of TSR, White Wolf, Palladium, and a few smaller indie games.

Through Metro Comics, I made many new friends, and my close-knit table grew. Gamers I met through my work at the store—like Luis Alvarado, José Fernando, and Pierre Anthony—pulled up chairs alongside my high school classmates. (Fun fact: José is still a regular in my current weekly gaming group, 32 years later!)

Circa 1996 or 1997 (from L to R): Roberto (me), Gilberto, Luis Alvarado, José Fernando,
Luis Miranda, Pierre Anthony, and Misael

We also connected with friends of friends who played at the University of Puerto Rico. Because I’ve always had trouble saying “no” to people who want to play, I typically ran TTRPGs for groups of eight or more. To this day, I consider six players a “regular-sized” group; anything smaller feels too small.

Circa 2000 (from L to R): Karlo, Luis Alvarado, Roberto (me), Pierre Anthony, José Fernando, Piwie

When I decided to put my new long-term campaign plan into practice, I invited the players I thought would best mesh with the style: a mix of high school friends, longtime players, and the Metro crew. It took a bit of shifting, but we found our rhythm. In no time, we established a core of six or seven long-term players, with a few others who came and went as real life demanded.

The Games We Played

The changes were a massive success. Over the next 13 years, I ran 12 distinct campaigns. Three of those were multi-year epics (averaging 2 years), with 8 shorter campaigns interspersed, ranging from 6 months to 1 year. We played all of these from beginning to end. (The only exception was a 9-month play-by-email campaign that fizzled out when work ate up my free time).

What did we play? Mostly D&D. While the rest of the world went all-in on the World of Darkness in the 90s, I stuck hard to D&D and fantasy. We played a lot of AD&D 2nd Edition, and when D&D 3rd Edition came out, we eventually made the change.

We also dabbled in variations of Big Eyes, Small Mouth, the Silver Age Sentinels system, and its Tri-Stat dX versions. Alternity was a short but incredibly important game for me during this era. I also kept going back to Palladium to try and make the system work for us; aside from Heroes Unlimited, I was growing weary of Rifts and their other titles.

Gaming in a Bubble

Because my group was so large—mostly friends and friends of friends—my gaming circle became incredibly insular. I left college, started working, got married, and essentially played in my own little bubble.

I was completely disconnected from the larger Puerto Rican gaming community. When Dragon magazine stopped publishing, and no new AD&D 2nd Edition books were coming out, I noticed, but it didn’t affect my table. We just kept playing with the books we had.

I wasn’t a recluse; I was online, but my internet use was focused elsewhere. I started my Master’s degree and wasn’t heavily involved in wider fandoms, TTRPG forums, or gaming news. I was perfectly content just creating maps, writing lore, and running my homebrew world.

Mind you, gaming was still a massive pillar of my life. The night before my first wedding in 1998, what did I do? I played a TTRPG session all about friendship with my regular players.

But life inevitably brings changes. This era saw me finish college, start a professional career, get married, and eventually go through separation and divorce.

After my divorce, things shifted again. I found myself with more free time, so I started playing with a more varied group of people, expanded my circle of regular gamers, and slowly began to reconnect with the wider gaming community around me.

Circa 2002 or 2003 (from L to R): José Fernando, Piwie, Luis Alvarado, Luis Lao, Roberto (me), Karlo, Pierre Anthony, Victor, Luis Lao, José Fernando, Karlo, Piwie

Then, in 2006, some friends mentioned they were heading to Gen Con the following year and invited me to tag along. I said yes.

But that is the beginning of a whole new era, and the subject of my next post.

The Stats (1993–2006)

• Total Campaigns: 12
• Years Active: 20 (Consecutive play from 186 to 2006)
• MVP Systems: AD&D 2nd Edition & D&D 3rd Edition / 3.5

How were these years for you? Did you ever go through a phase where you played in a “gaming bubble,” completely disconnected from the wider community or what was happening online? And during the 90s, were you a D&D loyalist like me, or did you get swept up in the World of Darkness craze?

 In the spirit of classic Sword & Sorcery, these encounters prioritize peril, atmosphere, and moral ambiguity. These aren't just "monsters to kill"; they are fragments of a dying world where the environment is as dangerous as the steel in a mercenary's hand.This blog post picks right up from Kull era Encounters & Treasures Table For a Sword & Sorcery Castles & Crusades Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Stephen Smith
Mister Smith Design
OSE
Levels 2-4

Exaggerated tales of the mammoth ship have spread like wildfire. But now, the truth is undeniable. The wreckage looms—larger than any ship has the right to be. A virtual leviathan of wood and steel, even in its half submerged condition. Its origin is a mystery—but no matter where it came from, it’s here now and ripe for picking. A colossal siren’s call for those brave or foolish enough to salvage its secrets—before it is lost to the waves forever.

This forty page adventure details a shipwreck and its environs, with about sixty locations in all. Layout and formatting are admirable, and as a standard dungeon it would be ok. It tries the faction thing but that doesn’t come off well, nor does the fantastical nature, from the use of plain language?

This thing start out great. IN the local seafaring bar there’s an old cristy dude telling others of the shipwreck he just saw. A HUGE ship, at least three times the size of a normal large ship, washed up and broken on a nearby atoll. A CURSED stol I tell ye’s! This is about a column of read-aloud, in italics, but it’s also fantastic. It reeks of crusty sea dude and bar folk. There are some nice in voice rumors to go with this. This is the old The Wizard is Dead We Better Get To The Tower First To Loot It thing. There’s a nice little bit about getting to the wreck, handled in about five bullet points. Perfect to spur a DM on with ideas for running this portion. It’s augmented by a decent little NPC description for four or so of the townies that you might majorly interact with to guide you, buy a bat, etc. “Speaks in a low rasp, never removes his salt-crusted

oilskin coat. Grizzled loudmouth cuss when drunk. Claims salvage rights (unjustified).” Just enough there to get things going for the DM, and thus the party. The old salt who claims salvage right, the young dude obsessed with the wreck, the widow in possession of a boat to rent who bargains shrewdly. The town doesn’t go on and on, in fact there’s nothing to it except that read-aloud, the NPC decisions, rumors, and five little bullet points with some ideas for the DM to run this section. Fucking focused man!

We move on to the atoll, with five locations and again a few general notes in bullet form for getting aboard the ship and the island. Perfect. There’s also a small section of sea caves on the atoll, with another ten or so locations, and then the GIANT ship, broken up, also, with about forty more. The caves and ship do NOT get these little notes, to the detriment of these sections, although there is a good little “what you see”section, bodies hanging from yardarms and the like. 

The descriopns of the rooms are inconsistent. In one play we get “The chamber is dim and musty, with several old stacked crates and barrels. Faded scrawlings mark the containers. A mob of aged, pus-swollen cadavers are scattered around the area—along with one body that looks freshly torn apart (the curious pirate).” Nice summary, pus-swollen cadavers is always a good sign in a room description. Nicely evocative. And then in another place “Broken shelves held the shattered jars and bottles now decorating the floor. An alembic, soggy parchment, and other alchemical tools rest on a wooden desk.”  A little more facts based and less interesting in the word choice. Some of the descriptions mention who is in the room and some do not, just listing below the description something like “5 pirates.” This is maddening, the inconsistent nature. Some are terse and easy to follow and some go to great lengths to describe the trivia of the room. There is, after the text description, a nice little bullet point list of special/interesting things/facts/DM notes, which provides a nice summary for the DM. 

And then, the factions. This was a pirate ship, magic thing happened, ship got big. So we’re dealing with things on a larger than normal scale, 2-3 times or so, but that never really comes across in the text. The ship has a few monsters in it, and the helmsman is hiding out in it in fear of being hung by the crew because of the accident. But, more importantly, there gnoll pirates are now in charge and have the human pirates locked away below decks. A group of pirates were also taken away during a raid by deep ones (being now hidden away in the sea caves), except these are good guy deep ones, who are trying to save the pirates and atone for the sins of their relatives. Except they are alien minded deep ones, the pirates are scared and the caves are dangerous. 

And NONE of this really comes through in the text. Oh, you get essentially what I just told you in not many more words than I just used. But the encounter descriptions, the set ups, the guiding text, it’s just not present anywhere. And, there is NOTHING here that makes anyone seem like a pirate. Or even a seafarer, other than like two of the townfolk. They don’t act like them, they are not described like them. There’s just nothing in the way of specificity in looks or actions that there. “Pirate”. Great. It’s just maddening. The ship is complex, with hatches and the like, but that is downplayed as well. 

I like the set up here. The townfolks are great, the consequences are fucking great. Rescue the pirates? They tear up the town in celebration. “Tension is in the air. Stalls stand half-empty. Merchants are wary. A woman sobs quietly beside an overturned cart. Blood darkens the cobblestones. “They are out of control, some- thing needs to be done!” There are five or so of these and they provide excellent springboards for some consequences. The core of this, though, feels weak. Maybe because it really is just looting? But, then, why play up the factions if they don’t really exist, or do anything, if I can even call “this is a faction” playing up a faction. Didn’t need a lot here, but those five bullets for the town and atoll really worked wonders, The caves, ship, and factions could have used those also. Maybe that, instead of the pages dedicated to nine mens morris?

This is $6 at DriveThru. The review is fifteen pages. You can see from it how one might get excited. But then the ship, which is where the preview lets off, is where things are going downhill fast. Hinted at, I think, by the sea caves

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/541667/the-wake-of-the-brawny-witch?1892600

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at comics that were published on February 21, 1985.

Infinity, Inc. #14: Member last month when I said we were promised we would see more form young Todd McFarlane soon? Well, here it is as he becomes the regular penciler on the book with DeZuniga inking. McFarlane's layouts are interesting with a lot of sort of illumination flourish around the panels, but also a lot of white space to no good effect. Soon after the crew returns from the tropical island getaway, Infinity, Inc. is asked to provide security at a concert, where an alien being called Chroma appears and sings an enrapturing song of birth, life, and death. Only Obsidian, shrouded in his shadows, is unaffected, and he's able to cause Chroma to leave somehow. Unfortunately, Chroma's song was recorded and may spread.

Batman and the Outsiders #21: This was an issue I bought as a kid. Barr is joined by 3 different artists for 3 Outsider solo stories. One has a good gimmick and the other two are decent. The best one will turn up in the Best of DC anthology and is a Katana story with art by Jerome Moore. Katana thwarts a gang trying to snatch an artifact (a vase or urn) being delivered to a museum. The gimmick here is that there is no dialogue, but the action is commented on loosely by the radio commentary on a football game.
The Geo-Force story has art by Trevor Von Eeden and has the hero taking on a mechanical shark at an aquarium park. The final story, with art by Randall, sees Black Lightning squaring off with Ghetto-Blaster a villain who has positioned himself as vigilante, knocking down the tenets of slum lords to the approval of the community, but he's really only doing it as a cover for a search for stashed loot from a heist.

Blue Devil #11: It's time for the Blue Devil movie's Hollywood premiere, but despite the superhero celebrity Cassidy has been catapulted into, Werner still isn't happy. What's worse, Blue Devil's trident seems to have a mind of its own, and Shockwave returns for revenge. He and his henchmen attack the theater at the screening. Meanwhile, Jason Blood has sensed a mystic evil rising and turns into Etrigan to track it down. Blue Devil finally defeats Shockwave with the aid of the trident, but after he does so he starts behaving strangely and announces that he is ready to "destroy the world of mortal men."

Conqueror of the Barren Earth #4: Cohn and Randall come to the conclusion of the series. Zhengla's army, with Jinal is primary strategist gets the business of moving against D'Roz, but only after a ritual with psychedelic Mulge mushrooms reveals Yisrah as one of the Old One's of that flying city and a spy. Through trickery and the Old Ones' overconfidence, they take the city, and as soon as they do Jinal betrays her lord and consort, shooting him in the back with the last shot of her blaster, paying him back for the humiliation and abuse she suffered initially. Her duplicity had been telegraphed, but only lightly, so it's a nice dramatic turn. The dying Zhengla remarks that the oracle had said only that he would conquer not that he would rule. He charges Jinal with taking up his dream of creating a new civilization on The Barren Earth. That's exactly what she intends do.
Now as ruler, she takes the Mugle mushrooms again and sees a vision of her forging the united Earth into a force to take into the stars and against the Qlov, but at that point Yisrah seems to speak with her and reveal a hidden truth: the Harashashan, Mulge, and Qlov are all human genetic variants created by the Old Ones to create groups that could survive on the changed earth. When the Old Ones showed the spacefaring humans what they had done, they rejected them, and when the Qlov achieved space travel on their own, a war broke out between the branches of humanity. Jinal realizes she must repair this rift.
Jinal goes looking for Renna and Skinner, only to find that a massive human starship has appeared in the skies over D'Roz. Her rescuers, if that is what they are now, have come at last. Unfortunately, this sort of "season finale" is the last we get of the Barren Earth. 

G.I. Combat #277: The Haunted Tank story by Kanigher/Glanzman turns on Stuart's wrestling with his decision to spare civilian casualties that leads the infantry to take heavy losses. As usual, he puts himself and his men in the thick of it, infiltrating and Italian town to get the element of surprise on the occupying Germans, earning him and his men commemoration in the town's church stain glass windows.
There are two World War II stories. One is about a PT boat captain and is by Kanigher and Catan. The other is about Bedouins turning on their supposed German allies and is by Kashdan/Infante. Finally, there's a "Bravos of Vietnam" story with the group captured and put in a Viet Cong P.O.W. camp, until they manage to make an escape. 

Green Lantern #187: Well, the Wein and Gibbons run didn't amount to much, though they did introduce some new elements (namely the Predator and Hal giving up the ring) later teams will have to deal with. This issue is a fill-in by Kupperberg and Willingham before the new, regular team starts. After Rich's funeral, Carol and Hal both note the distance in their relationship, but neither knows the cause. It isn't helped when Carol finds the Predator in her house. He again declares his love, and Hal shows up to fight him, but gets beaten up. Meanwhile, Bruce Gordon decides to leave Ferris Aircraft, and Stewart as Green Lantern flubs the rescue of a space shuttle (though it turns out all right, no thanks to him). Frustrated by his mistakes, he goes to the Oans to request training, and they assign Katma Tui to help out.
There's a backup Tales of the Green Lantern Corps by Baron with atypically cartoony art from Rogers. It's the story of a mom Green Lantern that uses a bubble blown with her kid's toy to escape a yellow energy bubble.

New Teen Titans #8: Wolfman and García-López/Tanghal open with Thia having pretty much conquered Olympus. She takes a break then to explain to Lilith how she met her father (the former head of Sun Publishing) then killed him once Lilith was conceived and took over the business. Lilith was spirited away by a nurse, and for a long time, Thia thought she was dead until her powers activated. 
Meanwhile, the Titans find out about Thia, then travel to Tartarus to enlist the aid of the Titan gods and team up with them to defeat some giants allied to Thia. They vow to help their teen namesakes against the renegade titaness.

Sgt. Rock #400: In the main story by Kanigher and Gonzales, Rock takes shelter in a cave from a fire started by a group of SS out to kill him. He thinks about the individual (named) members of Easy, how they each have beaten the odds and get on going at one time or another. He feels like he can't do any less. Of course, he makes it out alive and reunites with his unit.
The second story by Harris/Wagner has a GI taking inspiration from the Superman comic he's derided by his sergeant for reading. A humor strip by Eric Vincent winds out the issue.

Saga of Swamp Thing #36: It's interesting contrasting this title with Flash, both of which are decompressed in their storytelling relative to the other titles of the era, but in different ways. Bates/Infantino take a rather soap opera approach where important moments are delayed by intervening incidents and cliffhanger endings. Moore and Bissette move the story along in more of a modern streaming drama sort of way. It's mostly character stuff that delays plot points and the cliffhangers tend to come after something is revealed, not just before. Swamp Thing's is the style of serial storytelling that tends to work well in compilation.
Anyway, as Swamp Thing is dying from his exposure to Nukeface and calling out to Abby for help, we spend most of the issue with a former employee with some complicity with the dumping that led to Nukeface who has also improbably come to Louisiana. His pregnant wife is inadvertently exposed to Nukeface while the police search the toxic man. Meanwhile, Abby arrives to have Swamp Thing tell her he loves her and that this body is dying, but he's going to try to enter the Green and then make a new one.

Warlord #93: I reviewed this issue here.

Who's Who #3: This issue features Blue Beetle who has yet to actually appear in the DC Universe. We get a few Firestorm characters: Breathtaker, Bug, and Byte. There's Blue Devil and his foe, Bolt. Blackstarr is here from her story arc in the short-lived Supergirl series, but the internet informs me she's got a couple more appearances before the end of Crisis.

A new Stars Without Number (SWN) supplement dropped five days ago, and I missed it!

How could I? It’s not like any important event happened this past weekend around February 14th, or that I’ve been sick since last week… okay, maybe I have excuses. But honestly? I feel like I should turn in my fan card.

If you’ve followed me here on the blog, on social media, or if you read Part 1 of my recent posts about my current favorite TTRPGs, you know that (quoting myself from somewhere online), “I worship at the altar of Kevin Crawford.”

I am a huge fan of his corpus. There are a few TTRPG authors whose works I support in crowdfunding or buy sight unseen as soon as they are out. Kevin Crawford of Sine Nomine Publishing is one of them.

(Bruce Heard is another such creator, by the way, and he recently announced his next project for the World of Calidar. I’ll be sure to share more information on that as it becomes available. But I digress.)

The new supplement for SWN is titled Proteus Sector: A Gazetteer for Stars Without Number.

This gazetteer and rule expansion was created as part of Mr. Crawford’s latest Kickstarter campaign for a reprint of the offset edition of Stars Without Number: Revised. His Kickstarters are a masterclass in running an effective campaign: he never overpromises, communicates clearly, and is always on time—if not early.

I’ve backed 12 of his 14 Kickstarter projects. I only missed Spears of Dawn (his first, which I eventually got!) and this latest one.

Here is why I missed it: When I read that the rewards would include the Proteus Sector, I was tempted. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I already own two offset copies of SWN, plus a POD copy I got for table use. Not to mention a POD copy of the original edition. I think I own every supplement Crawford has published in print or PDF.

I couldn’t justify buying a new core book just to get the PDF of the supplement. I contacted Mr. Crawford to see if there was a reward level for the Proteus Sector alone, and he told me the book would be available as a PDF and POD on DriveThruRPG later.

True to his word, the book is available now by clicking this link. It’s an 83-page PDF for $14.99 and a softcover POD for $24.99 (which includes the PDF).

Is it worth it? Oh yeah.

A Short, Spoiler-Free Review

The book is part gazetteer, part rule expansion, and another winning entry in the Stars Without Number line.

The layout follows the classic Sine Nomine style we know and love. This book feels denser with illustrations than the core book, and the interior art is excellent and fits the tone perfectly. It includes a detailed description of a very interesting sector of space, including government structures, and every planet described gets its own image.

Kevin Crawford is all about making books usable. He provides tools to make a GM’s life easier, and this is no exception. Besides an excellent setting that continues to flesh out the default SWN universe, it includes a one-page player’s guide to the sector, plus tools and ideas on how to connect this sector to your existing campaigns. Planets include all sorts of details, adventure hooks, and NPCs. It empowers the GM rather than constraining them.

The Mechanics (The Good Stuff)

While I love the content as a source of ideas, I am a homebrewer at heart. What I really want are the rules.

Crawford’s work is renowned as a toolbox that can technically be used for any system, but I really love his version of the classic D&D B/X engine. Proteus Sector adds some great new levers to pull:

• Smuggling & Trade: It includes a simple smuggling and trade system—much simpler than the one presented in Suns of Gold. This is likely the one I would use at the table going forward.
• Augmentations: There are very interesting rules for augmenting characters and abilities that feel a lot like proto-ideas for a superhero game. (We can hope for Capes Without Number someday, can’t we?)
• Genetics: There are rules for genetically modified beings. This might finally be the tool I need to make that Buck Rogers XXVc conversion I’ve been thinking about for almost 10 years now. (Gennies Without Number, anyone?)
• Cybernetics: There are new, more powerful, almost mythical cybernetic rules. The book discusses how these differ from the main rules and how to adapt the cybernetics from Ashes Without Number for use in SWN.
• Combat: New opponents appropriate for the sector, as well as new starship systems, weapons, and rules to accommodate them within the existing starship combat framework.

One Caveat

I will admit that the cover and title design for Proteus Sector seemed off at first. I wasn’t a fan at first glance, but after reading the book, I understood the choice. It is a very evocative, certainly OSR-looking cover, but it’s my least favorite of the SWN books’ covers.

Final Verdict

I said it before, but I’ll say it again: this book is worth your time and your money.

If you are a fan of Stars Without Number, you’ll find something to use. If you want a sector to drop into your game—even if it’s not SWN—you’ll find something you can use here. I know I certainly will get a lot of mileage out of it.

I wholeheartedly recommend it.

 A Leigh Brackett-style Mars campaign for an Old-School Renaissance (OSR) game moves away from the "superheroic" feel of John Carter and toward a gritty, "Sword & Science" noir. Her Mars is a dying, dusty world where ancient civilizations are being encroached upon by cynical Earth corporations and hard-boiled mercenaries.This blog entry picks right up from OSR Mars Campaign Update :Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Kabuki Kaiser
Self Published
OSR
Hex Crawls - Levels 1-whatever. Don’t fuck up

Danger Will Robinson! The vibe here is how I would live my life if I could. So, you know, I don’t think this is a based review but I’m aware of my love for the vibe.

Fly Me to the Moon gives you the fantastique Moon stitched into a majestic hexcrawl where each entry promises sleepless hours of adventure and d’Amberville conundrums, a moose head of a Moon in 168 hexes compatible with everything OSR from Basic to Advanced.

This 169 page hexcrawl uses about 120 pages to present about 160 hexes to explore on the moon. This is a romantic moon, with every lunar pop culture reference present. Fanciful, it remind a hex crawl, presenting situations that the party can involve themselves in. And, thusly, like most hexcrawls, you must bring to it your murderous intent to play as is. IE: hex connections/an overall thrust are weak Which isn’t a bad thing is your group like to loot The Keep in B2 cause that’s where the most XP is.

I think perhaps we need to talk about three things here. The vibe of THIS hexcrawl and then what a decent hexcrawl is in the context of if this is a decent hexcrawl. What I’m not going to do this time around is cover the evocative nature of the writing and formatting. The evocative writing is fine to good and the formatting is plain, with decent cross-references present, and at about two paragraphs to a column per, written in such a way that it is terse enough and “front loaded” enough to run pretty on the fly.

This is a romantic moon, as is romanticism, mixed in with pop culture. Every type. Cheese. Verne. About a dozen different selenites, including the Selenites, from every incarnation fo media. And, yes, this includes Apollo, the mission. Romantic as in what I’ve always wanted The Dreamlands to be. 

In one hex you stumble across a hunting party. “The party consists of eight hunters led by Turambol, a petty lord clad in a star–studded pyjama, and accompanied by two court poets, both of whom ride zebras and strum luths as they travel. Turambol himself rides a white gazelle with long horns.” Fanciful, in places. If the moon has ever had a reference, in media or culture, dating back three thousand years, then it’s probably in here. And it’s going to have a fanciful bend to it. Think slim arcing towers, silver and blue light and so on. 

We have incursions from other lands. An ambassador from other words, or references to Emperor Norton. Dreamy, but with consequences. “The Rotunda of Earthly Mirrors, a monumental structure of slate and alabaster tipped with a metallic silvery dome stands atop the Mons Piton’s highest peak here. The rotunda is visible from afar, its silhouette contrasting with the darkness of space.” Thematically pretty much everything matches perfectly here. 

A few notes on mechanics before I move on to the nature of a hex crawl. The map is nothing, really. Imagine a black page with hex numbers in it. There’s your terrain. There’s a light background image on the map but it’s artistic. What “travel type” we should consider the moon is not noted, although there are some low gravity notes. Whatever “These basaltic plains lie buried

beneath silt, ash, and black sand” is/are. Except in some places we have wildflower meadows, cultivated fields, groves of fungi and a land of chasms and canyons and the Marsh of Rot. No clue man, we’re just handwaving that. These are ten mile hexes, but mostly flat, I think? There is a landmark or two on the map, but, really, a better job at landmarks on the map would have been nice, as well as horizon stuff, to get players moving from hex to another with “in the distance you see” type of things. A better version of the map would solve most of my bitching here, maybe with a couple of travel/vision notes on it. 

And then, the nature of a hex crawl. What is its purpose? Dread has you wandering around, looking, essentially, for lairs, which contain loot, so you can level. Wilderlands, being a more platonic example of a classical hexcrawl, contains loot hexes as well as things for the party to exploit, or to get in to trouble with. More of a situational encounters, in that there is a situation to interact with … while you still look for personal gain to exploit. This is going to fall solidly in to the situational category, as you will meet a wide variety of people and encounter a large number of areas to find some gain in, either through looting or through making friends. There are lots of ogres wearing bejeweled crowns to talk to, to reference a favorite situation of mine in other adventures. Stab the potentially friendly dude to get the XP? Make friends? 

And this gets to the reference to The Keep in B2 earlier. Are you willing to murder hobo this place up? That would be a more traditional Wilderlands way to explore. Taking each hex individually and exploiting it. You’re going to need a party in the right mindset. And this succeeds admirably in that. You can rescue people/creatures and do some tasks for others if you are so inclined, and you can put the place to the sword and gather the loot also. 

What is lacking here is an overall plot. And I’m using that word very VERY loosely. Interconnections between the hexes. There are a few of those, but they feel intentional and constructed in a blunt way. 

I want to take this hex as an example: “t’s that time of the year again! Once more, the Flying Broom Acrobatics Competition has gathered next to an antique blue marble amphitheatre rising from the cloudy Mare” The Selenians here are excited about this. But no other Selenian encountered will mention it. There is no overview of a larger situations/situations going on that a DM can sprinkle in here and there to make the place seem more like the realm of intelligent beings that it is. There’s a loose “my enemy is the aphid-lord, please help me kill them”  but no larger … geopolitical context? Not in politics, perse, but in terms of larger situations to embroil yourself in. And no summary, anywhere, to help a DM toss some things in. A page of this would have really helped, and perhaps a little more work on the hexes to help connect them just a bit more. Again, some of this DOES exist, but it feels isolated. So, read a 120 pages and take some notes. 

As noted, I like this vibe/theming a lot. It’s consistent. And it provides interactivity for a party willing to mix things up. As a view of the moon, in terms of theming and encounters, I would be hard pressed to believe someone could do better. The map/mechanics are a let down, and it would be a much stronger product with a little summary of situations to help the DM interconnect things more and/or a few larger situations embedded i a stronger way. 

Experienced murder hobos are gonna have a field day. 

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is listed as fourteen pages and although a few are blank pages you do indeed to get see several hexes and get a sense of the style of encounters you are to encounter, both in romanticism and in hex-crawl nature, so, good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/540802/fly-me-to-the-moon?1892600

A question came to mind during this. How do you handle “hidden depth” of resources? This happened in several places in this, and in other adventures as well. A platonic example here may be some mushroom that, if you kill, you could make their large caps in to umbrellalike things that act as feather falling. How do you telegraph this to the party? I mean when you encounter a note like “The spleens can be used to make an amulet of proof against poison.” Great! How do we know that? A simple DM note to the party, maybe during combat, that they seem to fall slower than they should?

Paul Wolfe of Mystic Bull Games is starting up a Sword & Sorcery fiction magazine called Swords Against! The first issue is being crowdfunded now. It features stories by familiar names including Michael Stackpole and Dariel R. A. Quiogue, and interior art by Jason Sholtis (presumably among others).

If that alone isn't enough to convince to you, Jason and I have short comic that will appear in the issue now that that stretch goal has been surpassed. It's called Spells Against Civility. Here's the pitch:

Harken to this tale of two rival wizards, apprenticed together, now alike in Art, pettiness, and vainglory...

Marzomon, once the Golden, former hero whose reputation fell under shadow of cowardice and party abandonment. He now ekes out a living trading on his former glories and hawking dubious male enhancement magics.

Hokus the Black, who sold his soul and other vital constituencies piecemeal to various diabolic entities and must stay ahead of his creditors as he seeks to overcome his rival. 

If any of the above sounds cool to you--and particularly if all of it does--then head over to backerkit and give some support!

 Thirteen Parsecs: Beyond the Solar Frontier is a toolkit-style science fiction tabletop RPG designed by Jason Vey and published by Elf Lair Games. Released in 2024, it is the third pillar in their "trilogy" of core games, following Night Shift (modern horror) and Wasted Lands (fantasy).+1

 Mixing the "Raygun Gothic" surrealism of C.L. Moore’s North West of Earth with the grimy, claustrophobic body horror of The Red Room and The New Flesh creates a campaign setting that is essentially "Cyberpunk at the Edge of Cosmic Madness."In this world, the frontier of space isn't a high-tech utopia; it’s a decaying, visceral nightmare where the laws of physics are as fragile as the human Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The B/X Carousing Procedure

FRONT (3x5) — B/X CAROUSING (HOUSE PROCEDURE)

1) SPEND (gold is gone):

   Light:    50 gp × level

   Standard: 100 gp × level

   Hard:     200 gp × level

2) INTENT (matters on high rolls):

   Rumors / Contacts / Heat Dump / Blow Off Steam

3) ROLL:

   2d6 + CHA

4) BAND:

   2–5  TROUBLE

   6–8  MIXED

   9–11 GOOD

   12+  GREAT

5) BASE RUMORS (always, by spend):

   Light 1 / Standard 2 / Hard 3

TROUBLE (2–5): +Roll 1 Trouble

   Heat Dump: reroll Trouble once (must take new)

   Steam: roll 2 Troubles, take worse

MIXED (6–8): choose 1

   Complication OR Owed Favor OR Contact-with-a-Want

GOOD (9–11): add by Intent

   Rumors: +1 rumor OR upgrade 1 to STRONG

   Contacts: +1 Contact

   Heat Dump: reduce Heat 1 step

   Steam: small boon

GREAT (12+): add by Intent

   Rumors: +2 rumors OR (1 STRONG +1)

   Contacts: Strong Contact + boon

   Heat Dump: reduce Heat 1 step + safe contact

   Steam: bigger boon

OPTIONAL XP:

   XP = 10% of gold spent (cap 200 × level)

BACK (3x5) — QUICK TABLES

RUMORS (d12)

1 Odd coins buyer       2 Paying for fresh graves       3 Missing guide/map

4 Watch attention        5 Noble servant hiring           6 Shrine lit at night

7 Rival crew hurt         8 Healer wiped out                 9 Road “curse”

10 Locked cellar         11 Torchlight in tower            12 Bounty on the impossible

TROUBLE (d12)

1 Brawl enemy                                               2 Pickpocket (lose +10% spend)

3 Public scene (-1 reactions 1 week)            4 Owed favor (fixer)

5 Property damage (+50 gp×lvl or feud)     6 Bad bet promise

7 Offended faction                                         8 Watch questions

9 Duel challenge                                            10 Hangover day (lose morning)

11 Tagalong NPC                                          12 Marked by rivals

 Ah, the Pre-Cataclysmic Age. Before the oceans drank Atlantis, and before the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of—and a king named Kull. This blog entry picks right up from Kull era Serpent Men Relics & Treasures Table For a Sword & Sorcery Castles & Crusades rpg CampaignTo capture the specific vibe of Robert E. Howard’s Valusia, you need more than justNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

I picked up a few comics this weekend. Here they are.

I got this Toxic Avengers book because the cover looked fun. I figured why not? I do like the interior art by Tristan Wright.

Eventually I'll read it.

I will never pay money for any of these Ultraverse comics... unless they have a Dan Brereton cover. Putting his art on your cover is like reaching into my pocket and taking my money.

But the interiors... I mean, no shade the creators and all that... but this shit is shite.

I tried to read a few pages but it was difficult. I know this is like mid-story. It's just irritating to be thrown into an epic and expected to buy a whole line of comics and respect all these characters you've never seen before as if they were classic icons of superheroes. Spoiler alert: it did not work out for Malibu.

This Thundarr #1 just sang to me. I love that cover art by Michael Cho (one of MANY ALTERNATE COVERS... but that's a whole other rant).

The real treasures I found! I got that fat Nexus book for $2 and that complete Eternals for $5. Amazing. This is what flea markets and vendor malls are for. I'm actually excited to read these! I might never read any of the comics I mentioned before this, but I'll probably read Eternals (I've never read it before).

So yeah, that's my little haul. Got me in a comics mood.

 This campaign for Castles & Crusades uses the "Conquistadors of Mictlan" line by Antediluvian Miniatures to create a "Lost World" pulp-fantasy setting. This 'Lost World' Pulp setting has become an Inner Earth level. We replaced our party's numbers who had been killed last game with several explorers.  This leg of the campaign picks right up from Aethel, the Sunken Core Inner Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Original Video: https://youtu.be/npZHmv9OeNU

THE THREE QUESTIONS THAT BUILD A FACTION FAST

Whenever you make a faction—dungeon or wilderness or city—ask three questions:

What do they want?

Not “what do they believe.” Not “their backstory.”

What do they want this week?

What do they have?

Soldiers, gold, information, magic, a monster, a legal charter, the only clean well in town—something real.

What are they afraid of?

Because fear creates urgency. Urgency creates action. Action creates play.

Write those three answers on an index card and you are 80% done.

Now you add the one thing.

Who do they hate… and who do they need?

Faction Card Template (steal this):

Name (short, usable at the table)

Want (one sentence)

Have (one sentence)                                                                  

Fear (one sentence)

Tell (how the players recognize them fast)

Then add:

One ally

One enemy

One job they’d pay for

By Dale L Houston
Duck and Crow press
OSR
Level 3? Tourney/One-Shot

You have a treasure map that strongly suggests there is a pile of loot for some forgotten god just waiting to be extracted from Nightmaw Cave. The locals are all like “don’t go in there because the cave is cursed.” WHo are you going to believe? Idiot villagers or your map. Grab your sword, ready your spells, ignore all better judgement and prepare to delve!

This twenty page adventure features about 21 rooms in a vertical dungeon with … billions of bats. As a tournament adventure it succeeds well, being interesting with special mechanics and a scoring system. Nicely evocative and with special encounters that don’t feel set-piecy, I feel the designers charms are lost on the tourney market.

If I write an adventure and tell you up front its AI slop with no real value and you should not buy it, then is it fair game to review it any other way? Likewise, if someone writes a tournament/one-shot adventure and advertise it that way is it fair for Brycy Bryce to bitch/review it any other way? Fuck if I know, but I do know that I’d love to see some real adventures from this designer and/or they are doing a right bangup job in being the GOLD standard of tournament play.

Cover? Fucking great. Love that bat on the left with the red mouth and the shocked expression. The map layout here? Fucking great. It’s got verticality to it. Either small rises between rooms, think climbing up to a ledge, or shafts up/down between rooms. A traditional map is supplemented by a pointcrawl map which is one of the better uses of a pointcrawl map, in this vertical environment.

The adventure introduces two new elements. The first is climbing/up down. Securing ropes through freeclimbing and/or the people behind you climbing those ropes. Basically an unsecured vs a secured climb, that can be an easy route or a hard route. We’re making some “climbing checks” here. Clever monkey, labeling it all OSR systems and then sticking in your favorite modern contrivances. Anyway, you’re doing some climbing in places. Then we’ve got this Bat Cloud mechanic. Certain rooms have LOTS of bats in them. The more light you carry the more likely you are to set them atwitter, which results in a Take Damage Every Round system. 1 point for a PC, 1d3 if you’ve got a light. So, maybe, you cut down on your light sources in order to have a lesser chance of setting them off. So, you’re going to maybe fall in a hole in the ground or miss a ceiling hole/climb/exit, or have more trouble “searching” by increasing the difficulty. Ahum. No, I have confirmed that there is no 5e version of this. There’s a few other weird things going on mostly through the wandering table, crystal rooms, “The Song of the Night” and such. It;s a good mix of eerie and mysterious. The entire adventure is supported by a one page town, if that, with the demeanor of “defeated” and a sheriff who will pay you 1000gp to NOT go in the dungeon and just leave. Cantankerous, clever, and always eating mutton or something else greasy. That’s a great fucking NPC! Or “Morgan Krawk: Minister of the Sepulcher of the Holy Carcass. Balding with long hair. Excellent elocution. Steals from offering plate. Doesn’t like Witch Gulbon and thinks Sheriff Johns is incompetent.” man, I wish every notable NPC in an adventure were written like this! And the town is really just a blow off, a a place to enjoy the rumors and get warned off by the sheriff, which, is a great little bit of preamble to the adventure. 

Rooms have a couple of sentences up front that summative them. And they can get purple sometimes “A sour smell of guano and fear wafts from the darkness.” Sour guano is great, but fear is a bit purple, yes? “The squeak of bats is deafening. Ankle-deep guano crawling with insects covers the floor. Stalagmites dot the chamber.” Noice! How about a creature description? “A billion bats, eyes glowing red, circle a towering creature. A humanoid-bat giant, a sword jammed into each eye, pivots enormous ears, and emits a piercing shriek!” And, same dude, in the appendix “15’ tall bat-human hybrid. Eyes have been gouged out with swords, wings are ragged, covered in filth; it sheds bloated maggots.” Maggots for the win! But, nice touch with the swords jammed in his eyes bit. Moving some of the appendix description to the room would have been better, I think, so we don’t have to consult two places, but, whatever. Descriptions are solid.

Magic items are great, although, I might comment, wasted on the fact that this is a oneshot and/or tourney adventure (with scoring provided! Get loot, explore the dungeon, break the curse)

There’s a miss here and there. One room has a living statue in it. Pretty much all we get is “The living statue can barely interact, its pro- gramming corrupted with age.” t’s supposed to be “standing guard” but there’s nothing like that present. It almost feels like something was left out. 

“The Stone: The hum and vibrations emanate from the oval stone, as do slight variations in temperature. This is the stone egg-coffin of an ancient Ophidian praefectus. Opening the egg-coffin will flood the chamber with malignant energy causing 1d10+10 damage to every living thing in this chamber each Turn. The bones of the praefectus will writhe and release this poison for 1000 years.” Well, that don’t seem good! This is, I think, a decent example of the interactivity present, as well, perhaps, that statue. There are things to look at. There are things to open and search. The Man Bat is introduced to you by a bloody rabbit carcass dropping to the floor at your feet from the ceiling. Perhaps, we might call it, a great intro song to entering the ring. The adventure does a great job with that, as well as with other things that seem weird to poke and prod and look at and wonder about. Which is to say, it’s a hack. I mean, yeah, you need to navigate the ups and downs and not trigger the bats, and it’s a tourney adventure, so, you know, ok I guess. It’s it certainly not, though, and empty guard room with 6 kobolds in it. As hacks go it does a decent job of presenting an interesting environment and interesting creatures with some fun bits here and there, like the dead rabbit, to introduce the combat. But, in terms of mysteries to solve and things to do, it’s a hack.

And I don’t think I’m complaining about that, at least not in a tourney adventure and not given the quality of the window dressing. This could, however, make things difficult, in future adventures, when moving over from a tourney/one-shot framing to a more exploratory/longer-term adventure mindset. But, that’s a bitch for a future review. I’m Regerting this one, just because Tourney/one-shot is niche, IMO. 

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages, a good mix, and shows you encounters and some additional specials. Good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/540652/bloodbath-dungeon-1-the-cursed-cave-of-one-billion-bats?1892600

 The MADOX-01 (Metal Armor Differential-Operational Experiment) is the quintessential "heavy metal" power suit. In the context of the Hostile RPG (which uses the 2D6 Cepheus Engine/Traveller framework), the MADOX-01 functions as a prototype Heavy Powered Armor unit designed for urban pacification and anti-tank roles.

 Combining the "Big Three" of planetary romance—Burroughs, Brackett, and Moore—creates a Mars (or Barsoom, or Ma'adim) that is a haunting, neon-and-dust graveyard of a world. In an OSR (Old School Essentials, Dungeon World, or Worlds Without Number) context, this is a "Science-Fantasy" setting where the "dungeons" are decaying crystal cities and the "dragons" are multi-legged predators or Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Welcome back to my 40 Years a Gamer retrospective.

In the last post, I looked at the first game I played. But today, I want to talk about the early years of playing tabletop role-playing games (TTRPG) and Game Mastering, from 1986 to 1992.

If I had to describe this period in one word, it would be: Chaos. Beautiful, creative chaos. It all started in the summer of 1986 with the D&D Mentzer Red Box, and suddenly, the gaming table became a revolving door of neighbors, school friends, and random kids from the building I lived in. And we played everywhere! My house. On the floor in a small nook in the building’s lobby. We even commandeered the ping pong table in the recreation room to play D&D.

The Neighborhood Crew

My first “party” wasn’t a carefully curated group of role-players. It was whoever happened to be around. We had Ricky (Mano Fast, the thief), Jorge (Conan the Elf), Emilio Ruiz (Dragon Knight), Jose Luis, Hector, and, for a moment, Gretchen and Mari Vanessa.

We didn’t worry about campaign balance or narrative arcs. We just played.

I remember running one-shot adventures for up to 13 neighbors at once. Can you imagine running AD&D 1st Edition for 13 teenagers? It was madness. I remember one specific homebrew adventure where the world was flooded by non-stop rain. It was basically a prequel to Waterworld before Kevin Costner had the idea, but with more dice.

Eventually, the group stabilized. My “regular” crew became Emilio Ruiz, Gary Burden, and Luis Miranda, with Emilio Rodríguez joining us for the long haul.

From left to right: Me (Sunglar), Emilio Ruiz, and Luis Miranda, playing Dark Suns in 1991.

We Played Everything

While D&D (specifically the Known World/Mystara early) was our main game, we played many other games, as soon as I could get them and read the rules, at least most of the rules.

• Robotech: Because in 1987, who didn’t want to pilot a Veritech?
• Marvel Superheroes (FASERIP): We spent hours fighting villains in New York.
• DC Heroes & Champions: We dabbled in crunchy stuff, too.
• Star Frontiers: This was a huge one for us. We ran a campaign that ran from 1987 to 1990. I don’t think we had a proper name for it; we just called it Star Frontiers. Because of recurring antagonists, I often refer to it as “Ninjas in Space!” Yes, really. I regret nothing.

I also must mention the countless “One-Player Adventures” I ran for Emilio Ruiz. Whether it was Star Frontiers, Robotech, or Forgotten Realms, if the other people couldn’t make it, we were still rolling dice.

The Birth of a World

Looking back, what surprises me most is that the seeds of my current campaigns were planted right there in the chaos of the 80s.

In 1987, I ran a campaign called Ruma (proto-Lagamur). In 1988, I launched the second version of Lagamur.

I didn’t know it then, but those messy, teenage sessions were the rough drafts for Lagamur—the world I am still running campaigns in today, nearly 40 years later.

What Happened?

Early on, we played a lot, whatever game, whenever or wherever we could, every day if you let us! My grades slipped in 9th grade, and my mom limited game time to Fridays and weekends. Now and then, we slipped in a game on a weeknight.

While we ran long D&D and AD&D 1e games, mostly set in the Known World, aka Mystara, based on the information in the Expert set, including one with an all-thief party, I am reluctant to call these campaigns. There was continuity of characters, but most of them were one free-wheeling adventure after another, with very loose connections between them and fewer consequences.

True campaigns were the two early versions of my long-running homebrew Lagamur, which I ran with daily sessions over the summers of 1987 and 1988. That and the long-running Star Frontiers campaign, which ran on and off with a rotating cast of characters from 1988 to 1991. I also ran a one-player campaign for Emilio Ruiz around 1987 or 1988.

Other than that, from 1986 to 1992, the rest of my gaming was a series of one-shots, games that lasted a handful of sessions, and trying out the latest new-shiny game. After high school, college was a time when we played whenever we could, often making new characters and not playing long-term. This was not what I wanted out of gaming, so I took stock and made some radical decisions. But that is a tale for another time.

The Stats (1987–1992)

• Total Campaigns: 4
• Primary Systems: AD&D 1st Ed, Star Frontiers
• Vibe: Pure, unadulterated enthusiasm.

Tell me about your “Early Years.” Did you start with a massive group of neighbors, or was it just you and a friend trying to figure out what a hit die was?

Wandering a sun-scorched wasteland shouldn't just be about thirst and exhaustion—it’s about the bizarre, the ancient, and the deadly. Here is a D100 table designed for a gritty Sword & Sorcery setting (think Conan, John Carter, or Dark Sun). This blog post picks right up here from Kull era Serpent Men Relics & Treasures Table For a Sword & Sorcery Castles & Crusades rpg Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0