First Impressions of Troika!

Troika! arrived in the post an hour ago.

I was happy to back the Kickstarter back when it ran; I was a big fan of Advanced Fighting Fantasy back in my youth, and to hear of something inspired by that game as opposed to D&D made me very curious. I've got a full plate of things to write and do for my day job, but a long series of train rides coming up when I might be able to give Troika! a proper read. So here's eight things I observe in my first five minutes of handling and browsing Troika!

1. The production values are high. Good hardback, nice thick-but-not-too-thick paper. Excellent printing.
2. d66 character classes is nice. It will take a while to read through them all, but first glance gives real variety from Burglar to Lonesome Monarch. Awesome.
3. Also: a piece of evocative art for each character class!
4. Reference tables on interior front and back covers: damage tables, spells and magical mishaps. Good to have them to hand.
5. Interesting to have only the d6 in play for rolls. Think I've only seen that previously when playing story games.
6. Some of the bestiary art is fantastic. Some is a little underwhelming. Again, just a first glance.
7. Nice to see a starter adventure present!
8. The cover is a bit of a mystery! I've no idea what is happening. I like the style, the wraparound-ness of it, but perhaps reading the character classes and adventure will make that clearer. It's cool but I don't know what it is.

I've not delved into the rules. I remember skimming the ruleset of an earlier edition and thinking it was neat. I'm sure that will be the case here too. I'm looking forward to spending more time with Troika! in the next week or so. Will share more thoughts then if that's interesting to anyone.

Found In One Folder

I need to sort out my game collection, which includes a few books and zines, a ton of pdfs that I can't even bear to look at for the most part and many, many random folders of things that I've started writing, noted down or half-considered.

In one folder, picked at random for sorting out this morning, I've found:

• Probability calculations for rolling n dice and getting at least one 6.
• Probability calculations for rolling 2 dice and keeping the highest result.
• Pages of notes for random setting generating a series of systems in Diaspora.
• A sketch of a rumours table for a fantasy city I remember thinking about.
• Notes for a new game of Dogs In The Vineyard (I say "new" - the notes are over five years old).
• Notes for a zombie hack of Dogs called Dead In The Graveyard (ugh, such a terrible name!) which didn't get very far, but which had - I think - the neat idea of renaming the stats "brains, brawn, blood and guts".
• What looks like a scrap of paper with PBTA game notes, but right in the centre a single question, "What happened at the Bus Station?" - and I have no idea why that's there...
• Notes on a two-player game inspired by the awful movie After Earth, for a game where two people play characters separated at great distance. One person has experience but is gravely injured, one can move freely but needs guidance. Both will die if they can't work together. There was a wonderful concept in After Earth that didn't work given the world details in the movie, but I wondered (and still do) if there's a neat little story game in there.

And finally, a sheet of paper with brainstormed ideas for a table to generate magical parasites...

I have at least a dozen more physical folders of various sizes.

I have to get organised.

The Folder

I have a bookshelf of RPG books at home which isn't even half-full. After nearly five years of play I have a handful of systems in paperback or hardback, and a couple of others that I've printed from pdfs. It's a tiny amount of games really, especially when I see the backdrop of some pictures or YouTube videos on things like Indie+.

I also have The Folder, which has tipped past the 2.5GB mark but thankfully shows some signs of slowing down. When I had a little more disposable income I was omnivorous when it came to RPGs. Something old school? Buy it. A free little homebrew game that sounds a bit silly? Try it. A weird game that I love the sound of but will never convince anyone else to play ever? I must have it.

It struck me a little while back that it might be interesting for me to actually work through The Folder, see what I have there, see what I actually want to play and what I don't. At the moment it's not terribly well organised. I can look through at a glance and see the names of everything, but have no idea what some of it really is any more. There are some Bundles Of Holding that I got on the strength of one or two games, and I don't know what the rest is.

(and of course there are some games that I really, really love, and haven't had the chance to play in a long time... But I'm working on it)

So: my plan is to spend just a little time each week working through everything and setting up some sub-Folders: Love, Want To Play, Probably Not - and probably set up some categories within that, Big Games, Small Games, Supplements. I'm tempted to even organise that as a grid of folders, like Love-Big Games, Probably Not-Supplements and so on.

This could also be a big procrastination effort to thwart the part of my brain working on hacking a game... But who doesn't love projects...? And maybe I can find some gems in The Folder while I'm organising. I'll share some as I'm working on it.

(prompted by once again looking at GHOST/ECHO and thinking, daaaaaaamn that's good...)

People in Oddpool

When I ran a game set in Oddpool, I was of course influenced by the people of the city. At the same time, the game city is supposed to be a ruin, filled with weird creatures, strange architecture and general bizarreness. The people who live in Oddpool do so in small groups/gangs, with their own customs, their own wants and needs, and their own ways of interacting with others. When I ran my game, I just slapped Redmen and Bluemen in, as substitutes for football supporters, but for the Pocketmod I wanted something better.

I've been heavily inspired by David McGrogan's inspiration tables over the years (I've shared a few of my own on this blog before), so it seemed like the most natural fit for the Pocketmod would be to provide a little inspiration tool for generating groups and gangs of Skalls: rolling gives a couple of details to then inspire the GM to create the rest of the group. I've used the table to generate the following, Skalls you may find on the streets of Oddpool.

Mech RPGs

Yesterday afternoon I watched the second Evangelion Rebuild movie (micro-review: I liked it, I didn't understand all of it necessarily, but I liked it) and it got me wondering over on G+ - "are there any good giant mech defending the world RPGs?"

By this morning there were nearly 70 comments and it seems that noisms is going to hack his G+ Pendragon campaign to feature giant robots in a star-spanning feudal future. Yay for asking simple questions.

Meanwhile, I'm still thinking about giant robots saving the world. I have a couple of days of holiday this week, and in between enjoying cafes, reading some fiction and going on a couple of long walks, I think I want to noodle out some giant mech thoughts. Because why not, eh?

Mechanics light on the crunch, hopefully not too heavy on the teenage moping (I'm looking at you again Evangelion). One thought that did come to mind would be to use something of the Dogs in the Vineyard style and attach dice to character traits and mech ability... But that's just a first thought. I don't want 800 different options for mech heads combined with 2000 more different kinds of light railgun. We'll see.

CthulhuTech was suggested to me so I'm checking it out!

Making Things Up

Just bringing together some thoughts on where the setting for Somewhere North is coming from...

It all started with wanting to run something using Lamentations of the Flame Princess. And since it was nearly Christmas, I offered to do a one-shot. I made up an "evil Santa's house" and saw what happened when noisms and Patrick went there. After that they seemed to be enjoying things, so we kept playing. A campaign was born.

Somewhere North: The Vaeltaja

The Vaeltaja are nomads on the snowy plains. They wander on the snow and ice, and settle in their groups for the true winter. Where else is there to go? To the city of Zelman? Ha! They care not for the cities, nor for the towns. If pressed and in need they will go to a village or hamlet to trade, but even these are strange places for some of them.

They know where to fish, where to hunt, where to hide - and they know WHEN to do all of these things too. They travel in large groups, deer and ice ponies pulling great covered sleds - caravans of men, women and children - hunters and fishers, makers and leaders, warriors and mystics. Each large group is one great extended family. Groups meet and trade (resources, rumours) from time to time. Some of them are open to travellers stopping with them, especially if they would brave the snow in true winter.

Nomad Family

There are 10d20 people in a group. Each group will have a patriarch and matriarch and this "first family" has 2+d6 members.

For every 10 people rounded up, one will be a hunter (leather armour, dagger, sword, shield, bow) and will have some responsibility for finding meat. In two-thirds of Vaeltaja families they will have people adept at fishing, and the group will have made camp around a water source. In these cases there will be one fisherman for every 15 people in the family.

There are 2d4 spiritual/clerical people in a group. They will worship either the spirit of the open plain or a particular family spirit.

Many others in the family will be craftsmen, makers, food-gatherers, bards, ostlers and armourers. They share responsibility for the community and while they do have large extended families the "family" is more of a collective than one bonded truly by blood.

Everyone over the age of 4 will carry a weapon of some kind.

What determines the family's outlook? Roll a d12.

1. Family are wary of outsiders.	7. Family speak a bizarre language.
2. Family worship an ancient spirit.	8. Family are well-armed and warriors.
3. Family possess a Dwarven treasure.	9. Family are wealthy.
4. Family rob travellers.	10. Family are keeping a monster.
5. Family have a rivalry with another group.	11. Family are poor scavengers.
6. Family recently suffered an attack on them.	12. Family are at war with a band of pugs.

How is the favourite son of the family known? Roll a d20.

1. Great Axe	6. Pathfinder	11. Firstborn	16. Knifeman
2. Singer	7. Mead-drinker	12. The Runt	17. Spirit-friend
3. Pug-slayer	8. Bastard sword	13. Mutant	18. Monster-slayer
4. One-arm	9. Farseer	14. Wolf-slayer	19. The Fast
5. Fisherman	10. Future-sight	15. Goatherd	20. The Mute

Example:
There are 111 people in the Hentunen family, a group known for being well-skilled as warriors. Arto and Liisi are the head people in the group, and they have two young daughters. An organised band of twelve hunters keeps the family in wild deer and shaggy pig flesh, and a small but skilled group of fishermen bore holes in the ice over lakes to find prized fish. Half a dozen clerics worship Kalevi, the protector of travellers. Kimi the Mead-drinker is the favourite son of the clan, known for his exploits in drinking contests.

NPCs

In a G+ post yesterday Zak asked "What do you know about an NPC before they come up in your game?" - a question that I think is really interesting. I think that over the last year, which is as long as I have run games, my approach has changed a little.

The first game that I GMed was In A Wicked Age - by design, I knew nothing about any of the characters before we played. NPCs were revealed as players asked questions, and were sketched from stick figures into something resembling real people over the course of the first scene that they were in.

Dogs in the Vineyard, which I ran as my first short campaign, was more interesting. As NPC stats are descriptive by nature, this plants seeds in my mind about what the people look like. How they walk and talk maybe. For some of the characters they look like people that I know or have seen on the TV. Some - typically the people who are props perhaps - are less fleshed out. As the campaign wore on the potential for some NPCs changed a lot.

The hedge-witch/trader that the Dogs were tailing turned up dead, badly mutilated. Now, originally this was going to be the work of the mad-with-grief Dog-turned-Steward in the town. But... As they investigated this didn't sit right. And so the dabbling-with-demons brother and sister became the "oh King of Life make it stop, they morph into Resident Evil style monsters and they just keep coming" finale bosses. And their grandfather was supposed to be dead, but good things come in threes...

In LotFP/Somewhere North I have used a few generators just to generate details about people. I have stats and nothing else, or a one-liner (a retired hero lives there; a war criminal is in hiding) and this becomes the basis for something else. Names are good. I can't put my finger on what it is about the names that lead to descriptions, but they do something. Randomly rolling Ungrall the Unctuous instantly put the person in my head, with all but one detail missing.

A detail that is always missing for me until the NPC appears on-stage. The voice. I never know what a NPC will sound like until they say something. Never. Zinternik's elves and halflings are all cockney. Ungrall the Unctuous speaks with a pronounced lisp due to tongue boils. Robin, the head guard of Overtornea is incredibly officious and bored. Marco the magic-user is incredibly excited and casts spells like he is throwing Pokeballs.

But until they open their mouth for the first time, even I have no idea what they will sound like.

Actual Play: Somewhere North, session 5

I was so busy just now scrabbling some notes down for the next session of Somewhere North that it has taken me this evening to realise that I haven't written anything about the last session!

So: previously Külk and Esa-Pekka have ticked off a lot of people - cursing a wealthy village to silence, refusing to sell a magical tome to a probably evil man - it was only a matter of time before there would be consequences. A week or so has passed since they fled Rovaniemi, and in that time they saved some cheesemakers from a big wolf, and then delved into Oddli's Tomb.

Now: Külk (Patrick) leads the band on, as Esa-Pekka has taken his dog and his magic and escaped in the night (noisms has moved! So the game ultimately might migrate to G+). Külk takes a rag-tag group of fighters and halflings across the cold wilderness. They meet some fellow adventurers who are headed for Oddli's Tomb. They seem friendly enough, and mention that there is uproar throughout the region: the cursed village is emptying the treasury to send mercenaries after "those bastards who cursed them to silence." Of course, Külk plays it cool and pretends that he is someone else, and the groups go on their separate ways.

Things are tough though. Meeting with some friendly reindeer herders they are acquainted with fills them in on the big picture: there are groups of people looking for them on all the roads, and after killing a pack of banshee wolves that attack in the night they set off for a mountain pass to try and head out of the region, and head... NORTH!

But first: the mountain pass is guarded by a competent group of adventurers looking for Esa-Pekka and the book that he wouldn't sell to Ungrall the Unctuous. After they realise that he is not there, and that their leader is homicidal, the other group accept a bribe to turn a blind eye. The next day, Külk and company head on to Harjuusma, a village known for enchanted hot springs. After getting some advice from a retired hero, Külk tries the springs, and comes away feeling stronger and more nimble. He meets a new friend, Hugo the Cleric, who joins the party.

Their course is north, but first they decide to stop at the last village before the long road, Sirkka. There are rumours of slavers operating in Sirkka, pressganging travellers into service. Külk and company, disguised as the family of a cheese merchant, turn in for the night in Sirkka - and then kill the slavers in a long combat taking place in a hotel hallway. Things are touch and go, but once again, they pull through...

Notes
Wanted! I found it interesting that Külk was determined to escape to the far north. Things might be tricky, but surely things aren't that bleak? Especially as I've mentioned that the north contains monsters, long-abandoned Dwarven fortresses, cities of bad people - oh, and the true winter is supposed to come soon. Day after day of snow and ice...
One Down... Külk has discovered some of the powers of one of the hammers that was found in Oddli's Tomb. The nicknamed "Runehammer" deals d6, but if a 4, 5 or 6 is hit then the hammer deal an extra d4 damage AND the victim must make a save versus paralysis or be flung to the floor or 10 feet away (wielder's choice). It's a magical item in an LotFP game though, so there's got to be some downside to it... It's not been found yet though. (heh)
...One To Go: The much bigger hammer found in Oddli's Tomb has just been carried around in the last session. I wonder what it might do, other than drive back Dwarven undead monsters?
Treasure: The party spent a lot. Mostly in bribes. Cheese was given away, thousands of silver pieces, an ancient Dwarven ceremonial rod - how are they going to pay their way from now on?
Hugo: Favourite NPC of the night. I have no idea where the voice came from, but Hugo is a cross between Bill and Ted and a warrior-monk. Hugo serves Iiola, the spirit of better days, a spirit that wants the world to be a better place. "Wooah, dude, like, slavery is haaarsh!"

Next time: it seems like Patrick is going to press on with north. So: new random encounter tables, notes on new places, new people, and also need to think about what happens when snow really starts to fall. Will have to do something about provisions and shelter: if inches or feet of snow are falling each day, and there is nowhere to rest, the party will not last long. I'm confident that Patrick will think of something - and we might have someone else joining as well.

All is well, Somewhere North...

Actual Play: Somewhere North, session 4

Last night was the fourth session of the campaign. Ideas of stealth largely went out of the window, as Esa-Pekka (noisms) shouted "Halloooo!" at the probable bandits he saw on the hillside surrounding Oddli's Tomb. Külk (Patrick) was able to stealth up the hillside a little, and when the inevitable fighting broke out he was able to provide some sneaky covering fire before he was spotted.

After a brief but hard-fought combat, the party (two PCs and four retainers present) had massacred the bandits. The kill-toll was 11 to 1; while they had defeated the bandits and their leader Mad Aamos, they had lost their companion Eerik to a lucky hit from one of the criminals. He died in Esa-Pekka's arms, revealing that he was indeed a Dwarf and passing on some clues about Oddli's Tomb...

Last Year's Games

Games Played
Cyberpunk 2020
In A Wicked Age
Microscope
GHOST/ECHO
Lamentations of the Flame Princess
Diaspora
D&D
Dogs in the Vineyard
Risus
Blood & Honor
Murderous Ghosts

Games Run
In A Wicked Age
GHOST/ECHO
Dogs in the Vineyard
Lamentations of the Flame Princess

Games/Stuff Bought
Lamentations of the Flame Princess - and Vornheim, Isle of the Unknown
Bought in to the Seclusium of Orphone and No Security settings on Indiegogo/Kickstarter

Games I Still Want To Run But Haven't Had Time/Players Yet
A zombie game, possibly using Dogs in the Vineyard's mechanics
Apocalypse World (most likely will start this in the next few months for nephew and friends, aka, The Teens)
A time travel game (no idea how, but the idea intrigues me)

Least Fun
Being away for work at various points limited gaming options; that's likely to continue this year. Diaspora had great collaborative setting and character generation, but seemed a bit cumbersome to play. I am convinced that with a different roll/resolution mechanic our group would have loved it.

Most Fun
Cyberpunk 2020 was great. Playing a futuristic game in an alternate near-past of where we live was brilliant. I think that we players really hit our stride a few sessions in, and after that we explored so many different directions and ideas in "Soviet Cyberpool 2011" that I wondered each week where we could possibly go next. The GM (noisms) had a great handle on everything, and it faded to black following a terrific gun battle and blowing up a dodgy drug-dealing church.
I've enjoyed GMing a lot! (a few one-shots and now my second campaign)

The Retainers

(HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!)

In the Somewhere North campaign, the two current PCs, Esa-Pekka and Kolk, have strengths of 5 and 6 respectively. Their only companions were a couple of halflings, Mumble and Crumble, who seem moderately competent (about half of the time). In the long term, this might not bode well for them. So in a previous session they paid the owner of The Knife & Cousin tavern to put the word out that they were looking for some muscle. In the town of Rovaniemi the adventurers' guild are very choosy and only allow "the right sort" in. And the fees are pretty steep. So the people that Oskar the tavern owner found were people who for one reason or another could not be part of the highly competent guild. They are, however, enthusiastic. For the most part.

Magnus
Magnus is a young fighter, possibly even younger than Kolk (who is only 17). He is tall and Scrappy-Doo-esque in his enthusiasm for battle. He has only a short sword and shield. He dealt the killing blow to the enormous wolf that was plaguing the cheesemaking hamlet of Hakala, and was hence named Magnus Wolfsbane!

Tuukka
Mid-to-late thirties. Tuukka has had many jobs that have required a bit of muscle, but has never really progressed in any of them. Think of a guy who tried out for the police force, didn't get in, and then spent twenty years doing a series of security guard gigs that didn't pay very well and which he didn't find very stimulating. That's Tuukka. He is actually quite knowledgeable about the region, and pretty even-tempered. He wears leather armour and carries a great two-handed axe.

Sanelma
In her mid-twenties with long black hair, Sanelma makes constant references to restoring family honour. Her equipment is all inherited and and awkwardly worn or carried, but she is sincere in her attitude and desire to win honour. Dressed in chainmail, carrying a shield and short sword.

Eerik
A short man with a tamed beard, Eerik speaks in short sentences with a strange twang to his words. Claims that his family told him all about Oddli's Tomb and is rather insistent that the party go there. Struggles in chain mail, but carries a two-handed axe like he was born with it.

Of course, after a few quick words, the players (noisms and Patrick) hired them all.

Actual Play: Somewhere North (session 3)

Yesterday I met up with noisms and Patrick to continue their adventures Somewhere North... Actual play report, and then some notes/thoughts at the end.

Previously (at the end of session 2, which I forgot to mention last time), Kolk the Artifex (Patrick) and Esa-Pekka (noisms) had really ticked off a greedy toll-levying village by cursing the village and surrounding area to silence. Forever. Hastening to the town of Rovaniemi, they set about installing themselves in some digs (above that wonderful drinking establishment The Knife & Cousin - thanks Vornheim!) and going for a lookaround. Esa-Pekka took a seemingly blank book to the grotesque and diseased Ungrall the Unctuous (a bookseller), who made a big noise about wanting to keep it. The contents could be revealed and read only under the light of a full moon. Ungrall sent his hulking servant Jonas after Esa-Pekka, but despite accusing him in public of being a thief, Esa-Pekka was shrewd enough to worm his way out of it. Meanwhile Kolk had acquired the services of Helvi Ritva, a cleric (NPC) of the spirit Ritva; the PCs planned to take her with them when they went to explore the tomb of the long-dead Dwarven King Oddli. Oddli's burial place is rumoured to be filled with treasure and undead monsters. The PCs know that some reindeer thieves are camped out there as well.

So, session 3!

Actual Play: LotFP, Somewhere North

December has gone by in a flash, and I've not written on here at all! I disagree with noisms describing me as having an irregular blog - I just haven't written in the last month. I was pretty regular before then. But no matter. I'm writing here and now.

And it seems appropriate to write about the campaign that I seem to be running for Dave and Patrick. It started in the week before Christmas, when I offered to run a festive weird horror setting for them; I had just recently received LotFP (taking advantage of the 50% print discount), and created "the Lodge of Zinternik" - an evil red-dressed toymaker, who delighted in putting life of all kinds into things. The local villagers had heard that he had recently died, so his house on the mountain, and more importantly the conternts, were ripe for the taking...

Patrick rolled up a Specialist (or as he prefers, Artifex), a young adventurer named Kolk, and Dave created a Magic-User, the older gentlemen-rogue Esa-Pekka. Both had to be careful, as they had low STR, and Esa-Pekka also suffers from having a Charisma of 3. But they have their wits and creativity to keep them going.

Zinternik's Lodge was a mix of monsters and traps, and NPC "baddies", some of whom the players turned really quickly. They convinced a pair of halflings hired by "Zinter" to labour in his workshop, and turned some elves against each other; they avoided Dolf, the animated evil stag with a blazing red ruby for a nose and and tractamorphic tentacle antlers, firing at him from the roof of the lodge. And finally they left the Lodge with some mysterious (probably magical) items, and with a promise to Mumble and Crumble (the halflings) that they would help them return to their home in the far frozen north.

And that was that... Or so I thought...

When we mentioned playing again in the setting I updated the map, a few more villages (generated with help from noisms' own random village generator) and a handful of details about the nearest large town. I googled One Page Dungeons and had a quick look for something that could be modded easily. I statted up a few more creatures and things. And I thought about what had happened before, and noted a few interesting things that could be good. And that was it.

In the second session the players decided that their characters needed answers, and set off for a nearby village where someone was said to be very wise, perhaps someone who could tell them what they had found at Zinternik's Lodge. The old man, Hannes, gave them some ideas of the artefacts that they had found, and they set off across country for Rovaniemi, the nearest large town. They were looking for provisions and gear to head on the long road north, back to the home of the halflings.

After a run in with a banshee wolf, and a night of talking with some nomadic reindeer herders, they found the road and kept on for the town. However a small village stood in the way; the village was built in a narrow pass between rocky cliff faces. To go around might take a day or more. To go through they would have to pay a steep toll. This did not sit well with the PCs.

In Zinternik's Lodge they had found a magical scroll of incredible power. A one use Scroll of Indefinite Silence. If the nine syllables on it are read aloud then a permanent silence would fall in a sphere with a mile radius. Everlasting silence. As far as they know this can never be removed.

So, what do you do when some toll-charging villagers have hacked you off? You curse their village to silence. Forever. And off you ride to the town you're headed for...

In town they set about trying to recruit retainers for an expedition to a Dwarven King's Tomb, filled with the undead, Kolk sleeps with a young woman (noisms asks "Does she become pregnant?" The DM rolls and makes a note...) and Esa-Pekka of the Low Charisma ticks off a shady bookshop owner, calling the attention of the town guards. As they make their way back to the tavern they are staying at, one of the halflings runs up and says "I was down by the gate, and a posse of a dozen men from that village have just rode up shouting and asking if anyone had seen you!"

Oh dear...

Tomorrow I'll collect some thoughts about what I'm using and how I'm doing this, and what the setting is like. Anyone interested in seeing stats and descriptions of weird creatures that lurk the frozen north?

Games Night: GHOST/ECHO

Yesterday's games night was great. We played GHOST/ECHO with me GMing, and Patrick taking the role of GRIP, and Steve playing COIL. One minute these characters were just names on the page, and soon they were thieves on a job-gone-bad, armed with origami guns and brain hack knives, stealing information from the Ghost World and running from men and wraiths in a future-China of seemingly endless night...

Back From Being Away

In my "day job" I am a freelance skills trainer who works with PhD students and researchers in general. I do various things, most of which is to get people thinking about their skills, what they can do to develop them and maybe more importantly how they want to develop them (getting them to reflect on what they want).

This week I was away tutoring on a week-long course in the Lake District. And as a bonding exercise we were all (on the tutor team, and also on my tutor group) talking about guilty pleasures or things that we do for hobbies. And a couple of times I mentioned how much I've enjoyed playing tabletop RPGs over the last year or so (which is when I got into it). On the last night in the bar someone asked me "so what is a tabletop RPG?" followed by "is that the same as LARPing?"

We talked about it for a bit, and she was genuinely amazed at the thought that there was more than one system (i.e., that there wasn't just Dungeons & Dragons). Not in a malicious way, but because it was so far removed from her experience. In talking about it I described tabletop role-playing as

"Collaborative story-telling between two or more people; typically one person will facilitate the game, and the others will take on the roles of individual characters; the remaining one person will take on the role of any other character in the world of the game, and respond to the other players' actions and requests for description about the world; if the outcome of any proposed action is in doubt then typically dice are rolled according to some game mechanism; other materials can be used depending on the type of game; some games require players and the game facilitator to keep track of details of attributes that their characters have."

Or at least I said something close to that. I'm sure it is a trope of people blogging about games to ask, but what would you say to someone who has little to know experience of tabletop role-playing games?

Dogs in the Vineyard, Session 5

Last night the Dogs assembled as "Three in Authority" and brought deliverance to the town of Jewel. Brother Paul arrived in town just as Sister Basemuth (Patrick) tried to hold the Steward back from killing a woman who was strongly suspected of being a witch; Brother Caleb (David) meanwhile was in hot pursuit of a man - the witch's brother - who had staggered away despite being tied up and shot in both legs.

After sessions of solving town squabbles and disagreements with local tribes, this was a full tilt into horror, action and exorcism. Brother Caleb tracked down the tongueless brother, Alex, and had to fill him full of lead as he transformed into an unspeakable monster, all triple-jointed fingers, razor teeth and deformed skull. The dice went with Caleb, but it showed up that when it comes to dealing with demons it really pays to have more than player acting against them. Demons/monsters can have a lot of dice in physical conflicts...

Random Table: The Great Bakerie

Being the first in an irregular series of random provocation tables for games of various types. In my mind when I started writing this one I just thought, "Hmmm, what kind of cakes would a magic baker sell?" It seemed silly at first, and is possibly over-written, but it's just designed to give some ideas. You fill in the blanks, and of course YMMV.

Merion is the son of a Sorceress and a Gourmet. Trained by both, he set off to find his own path in the world; after years of travel and practice he set up The Great Bakerie, a shop where he makes and sells confections that defy the natural order. There is usually a selection of cakes and pastries that have magical effects. Sometimes he has far rarer and more bizarre delights...

Games Night: BRING IT!

We couldn't get everyone together to play Dogs In The Vineyard last night, so once again Patrick offered to run a Lamentations of the Flame Princess session for me and David. As with our previous session we were playing with Charley (Specialist), Chastity (Fighter) and Aleph (Cleric of Namco, God of Idle Pursuits) but there were two big differences:

1. We decided very early on that we were going for treasure and XP rather than out and out exploration.
2. My characters had silver to spend and more levels than the last time they had met Aleph.

The first thing that we did - after meeting a crazy skeleton with roses for eyes - was to spend some money and really try to get some crazy weapons. We had a mission: to go and kill a vampire, who was by all accounts very old and powerful. We needed something to tip the balance in our favour, especially since we were going into a dungeon with rumours of undead creatures.

Games Night: Joining the Teens

I was able to squeeze in an extra gaming session this week, and decided to join up with Patrick's regular game that he runs with the Teens. One of the Teen's, Teen1 in Patrick's AP reports, is my nephew. In fact some months ago I introduced him and his friends to Patrick when they happened to be at our local games haunt, and as I was the only person who had turned up from the proposed group they joined in with us.

I played for a few weeks, but then couldn't keep up with two regular games nights each week; I've dipped in and out of playing LotFP with Patrick when we were available, and really enjoyed hearing about how they were getting on - or more often getting in to evermore insane situations (usually with some choice dialogue ensuing).