Ronan McNamee

The Dice Pool at One Hundred (Posts)

Progress

The last time I wrote a post like this one was waaaaay back on post number 30. That was a mere month after I started thedicepool.com. I used it as a sort of check-in with myself. I decided, at that point to quit posting daily as a way to make this more sustainable and to increase quality at the expense of quantity. I thought, at the time, that I would be able to spend days working on a single blog-post, researching, editing and polishing. In practice, that has happened only rarely. Normally, I spend most of the week skiving and then, with my self-imposed deadline looming I pull on my blogger’s hat, think of a topic and wheel my office chair up to my desk to actually write it in an hour or two.

I do wish I could more consistently plan, write, edit and post. Mainly because, the posts where I have done that are usually the ones I’ve been most proud of. I would include my series on Between the Skies, and the post about my experience with After the Mind the World Again. Both of these prompted their creators to contact me directly and After the Mind the World Again got a mention from Thomas Manuel on the Indie RPG Newsletter making it my most viewed post by a pretty wide margin. So, I’m going to redouble my efforts to spend more time on posts to produce something I can be more proud of.

Saying that, I am happy with some of the progress I have made with the Dice Pool Dot Com. Joining the Wood-paneled Web Ring run by Stu Horvath or Vintage RPG fame, was really cool. I would love to see more sites join Wood-paneled actually, as I really believe in it as a less corporate form of online community-building. If you’re reading this, dear reader, and you have a site that you think would be a good fit, go check out the web ring at the link above and contact Stu for an invite. I know he’d be thrilled to add a new member.

As well as that, I may not have won any prizes, but I was happy to be a part of the 2024 Bloggies. I think the dice pool came in about 7th place in the Debut Blog category, which, having read the other entrants who came higher than me, felt about right, to be honest. In fact, it was the exposure to all of these amazing blogs by people with similar interests and the desire to write about them was the best part of the Bloggies adventure for me. It got me thinking about the sorts of topics I’d like to write about, gave me ideas for riffing off other bloggers’ posts and made me think about the value of blogging in general. By the way, Clayton Notestine of the Explorer’s Design blog won the overall Platinum Medal for this post: The 1 HP Dragon. You should go and read that and subscribe to his awesome blog. Some really thought-provoking ideas in it. While you’re at it, go and check out Murkmail, who won the Debut Blog prize. They have grown enormously during 2024 and the blog is well worth a read.

What a week!

I say I want to spend more time working on blog posts, but, if I continue to have week’s like this one, I’m not sure how I could. Here was my gaming schedule for the past week:

Monday: The Darkest Dungeon board-game campaign in person
Tuesday: Dungeon World: Hirelings to Heroes Session 0 – on Discord
Wednesday: Dragon Age RPG, Duty Unto Death in person in our local game shop, Replay
Thursday: Dungeons and Dragons: Scatterjammer online
Friday: Dungeon World: Hirelings to Heroes Session 1 in person
Saturday: Trophy Gold: Hester’s Mill Session 0/1 in person

That’s six gaming sessions in the last week if you include the Darkest Dungeon game, which, obviously, is not an RPG. But I make the rules around here and I say it counts. I have loved it, honestly. It’s obviously not sustainable and something’s got to give, but I got so much from all of these. Some nights I might have been a bit tired or just not feeling it. But here’s a thing I learned a long time ago: playing games is a form of relaxation. It’s fun, or, at least, it’s supposed to be. Even on nights where I was at a low ebb, the game would actually make me feel a whole lot better than just sitting in front of the TV.

This sort of week would not be possible without Tables and Tales. All of these games were with members of our small but dedicated local RPG community. If I look back at the last year and consider the best thing I have achieved it would be Tables and Tales. Obviously, while acknowledging the fact that this was a team effort from the start and not even my idea. That credit goes to Isaac and Tom. I have been very proud of whatever meagre contributions I have managed to add. Dear reader, if you are an RPG enthusiast and you don’t feel like you get enough opportunities to get a group around an actual table I can’t recommend this enough. We started with a small group of friends but then I advertised for players for a game on the local game shop’s Discord. That was the proto-community along with Tom and Isaac and some of their own friends and workmates. We set up our own Discord to announce games and get members to sign up. From that point members invited other friends and family and before we knew it, we had enough people to allow us to play games six nights a week.

As for the games themselves, I have discussed some of them at length already. My experiments continue with my Spelljammer campaign. Most recently, I have started to use the tables in Between the Skies to come up with some weird space shit to throw at the PCs. I’ll write about that once I give it a chance to percolate a little bit. I just recently wrote about our Dragon Age game. It is likely to be wrapped up in a couple of weeks. Might see about continuing into a campaign with this band of Grey Warden recruits though. As for Trophy Gold and Dungeon World; these are both brand new to me and the group. So far, after one full session of each, I can say I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them. I have a lot of thoughts and I’ll definitely be blogging about them soon. The Darkest Dungeon campaign has had trouble getting going but we’re trying to stick to a schedule now. It’s tough and unforgiving and gives me a lot of OSRy ideas.

Dear reader, if you have stuck around for the last one hundred posts, thanks! I appreciate your patronage. Go tell a friend about thedicepool.com and then come back to enjoy the next hundred.

Flash Fiction Challenge Week 4: He Told Us

The news

Art is political. I might struggle to call what I make “art” most of the time but I guess, whether it’s good or bad, it’s still art. Some of it is more overtly political than others. You can certainly see the politics in NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth novels. It bristles and boils up and breaks the world, but it is still veiled by its fantasy setting. When you read her Great Cities books, based, as they are in her very real home of New York City, the place and the politics are the real deal. It’s right there on the page; the shit that people deal with every day even it is couched in fantastical occurrences and the antagonists are disguised behind cosmically horrific metaphor.

Usually, what I write lies in the former category but, today’s flash is jumping right out of the headlines. It came unbidden, I will say, but here it is. Take it for what it’s worth.

This is a flash fiction challenge where I challenge myself and anyone else who cares to take part to write a 500 word flash fiction piece every week. I generate five random nouns and five random verbs for each piece. Part of the challenge is to include all the words in the piece. Here are the words for this piece.

Nouns

crusade
cluster
drawer
railcar
turkey

Verbs

permit
stop
spring
control
fuck 1

He Told Us

by Ronan McNamee

He told us to permit no Rykerites. Neither should we tolerate a Jellicho to live amongst us. For we were the people of the one true god! Kark!

We joined together in a great convocation. We occupied Scotte Station and created of the railcars an impassable barrier. That’s how the Rylerites came to our great city, like diseased cells through the arteries of a body. We watched the trains burn from the terminal.

He told us to take back control so our crusade abandoned the useless railway and spread to the spokes of our great metropolis, the bridges. Those who could, exploded them, the rest of us smashed them, rammed them, blocked and burned them. No more Jenwayers coming across those bridges.

Finally, together on our island of freedom, we beat down doors, beat on drums, beat those damned heathens, the Forgistas. They didn’t belong here either.

He told us to clean the city and that’s what we did. We sprung traps for all the unwanted. We clustered them all in Liberty Gardens and watched them bobbing around in there, like livestock, like turkeys. We fenced them in and went home for dinner.

He told us to eat what the city produced. So we opened our pantries and explored the recesses of our drawers. We ate ketchup and pickles until our tongues fizzed and stung. We drank old soda and energy drinks until our teeth throbbed and our brains balked.

We looked across the barricades and threw obscenities at the filthy outsiders beyond. We returned to Liberty Gardens. The Rykerites and Jellichos had run out of condiments and own-brand cola. They lay in the dirt and we licked our lips.

He told us not to stop until they were gone. So we started and did not cease until we picked our teeth. We were free of them then. Or were we? Some of our crusaders continued to subsist on mayo and sherbet. They refused the “turkey.” They went back to their lives. Sympathisers. Vegetarians. Fuck them.

He told us to find the traitors and destroy them, hang them from the bridges and the tallest skyscrapers. And we did, though we kept a few to make up for the last of the city food. Great Kark would not begrudge his favoured people a good meal.

The eyes of the traitors looked down on us, as we basked in the streets, satiated. And I heard him tell the others to take us for anti-city behaviour. We ran and cried but finally obeyed the leader. We gave ourselves to the great people of our city and they fenced us in, fed us stale donuts and old olives until we lay in the dirt, doing what we were told until they came for us with belief and hunger in their eyes. Had Kark abandoned me? Was I no better than a Forgista now? I always did what I was told. Was this a reward?

He told us what he was, but we never listened.

Next week’s words

Here are the five nouns and five verbs to fit into next week’s piece:

Next week’s nouns

session
nature
wood
guest
membership

Next week’s verbs

dominate
slow
forbid
get
dictate

Happy writing!

Death and Troika!

Whole-Hearted goodbye

The death of a PC in a role playing game might be something to mourn, it might be something to celebrate, it might be something assiduously avoided, it might even be something to seek out. But I think there’s one thing for certain: it’s almost always memorable.

When I think about the death of a PC there is a high-water mark for me. Heart is a game that builds up to that ultimate beat from the get-go. Your character’s death (or end at least) baked into the character creation system. The Zenith Abilities generally come in only two or three flavors and one of those is going to be the way your fucked-up little guy says goodbye. And yes, I know it‘s possible for a Heart character to die before their Zenith Ability goes off, but that’s only with the consent of the player. And, from my experience, the player really wants to make it to that finale. It is the greatest treasure they can obtain in the game. It is truly, all about them and how they do it. As the endgame hoves into view in Heart, the players are planning how they will work their big moment into the fiction and the GM is paddling away frantically like a murderous swan, to ensure it happens for them. And when the two meet in the middle? When player and GM both realize the ambition to achieve the perfect end? Chef’s kiss. One of the best feelings I have had playing any RPG, honestly.

And then there’s Troika!

Three adventurers protected by a magic shield against a hail of arrows. One of them takes an arrow to the back of the head though… — That’s gotta hurt. Art by Andrew Walken from Whalgravaak’s Warehouse.

We haven’t played much Troika. I ran three players through the hotel-based adventure, the Blancmange and Thistle, from the core Troika book last year. We did it as a one-shot and it was so surreal and hilarious that I knew I wanted to play more. So, in the summer, I thought I would give Whalgravaak’s Warehouse a go. Since then, we have lost one player (who moved to Spain, don’t worry) and two PCs. Please bear in mind, there have only been four sessions exploring the chaotic and bizarre workplace so far. We have lost one PC in each of the last two sessions! Tim got smashed and burned in an encounter with a blood sucking crimson giant (one of the warehouse staff) and Borrowick Grimpkin got got in an encounter with some wizardly loaders. So, this seems like a high lethality rate, right?

I think Troika has a fairly tough rule for character death. Essentially, if you go to zero Stamina (Health) and another PC comes to your aid in the same round, you have a chance of survival. This is particularly nerve-wracking for the incapacitated PC since Troika initiative is random. Each player and enemy gets a certain number of tokens and they all go into a bag at the start of each round along with one other token that, when drawn, means the end of the round. So you never know when it’s going to be your turn or when it’s going to be the end of the round! Add to this the fact that, if you go into negative stamina, you’re instantly killed, and I think you can see what I mean. On top of that, there is no way to increase your Stamina so you will always be exactly as squishy as you are at the start of the game, unless you add armor.

A warrior bleeds from the eyes and mouth as he is assaulted by some other dimensional horror. — I don’t know how to describe this one.

For poor Tim and Borrowick, they were beyond help, insta-dead, no coming back. Some of the enemies in Troika can do so much damage that they are not unlikely to one-shot the average adventurer. And that is the way the game is built. At least, that’s what I am coming to understand. You have to make the most of the time you have with your characters because it’s going to be a good time, not a long time.

Another thing I have come to understand is that, even in a game where your character’s end is not necessarily the goal, and not something you plan for, you can still have a good one that feels right and satisfying. After their character’s death, each of the players highlighted it as a major star of the session! The shock and the surprise element of their endings, in fights that seemed both unexpected and momentous, not to mention, in true Troika fashion, bizarre and unique, left them happy with how they went out.

I’d like to take this opportunity to share the obituaries I wrote up for each of them. I shared these in the general chat on our Tables and Tales Discord. After the second one in a row went up, we all agreed we needed a new channel entitled Fallen Heroes Obituaries. And that has been a big hit!

Tim

We lost a good one last night. Tim leaves behind his beloved gremlin-terrier, Brutus and fellow worthy adventurers, Ba’Naana and Borrowick Grimpkin. He had an illustrious career as a gremlin catcher before ever setting foot into Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. He had once managed to trip up one of Troika’s oversized citizens in the city’s renowned Gianttown district. This caused massive property damage but he still managed to capture the gremlin he was chasing at the time. In the warehouse Tim faithfully executed the wishes of his erstwhile patron, Exultant Wulf Memnemenoch by bludgeoning to death the alien cacogen known only as the Opportunist. Unfortunately, it was a member of staff of the warehouse that laid low the heroic gremlin catcher. He died bravely clubbing another giant, an enormous, crimson, vampiric one named Paude. And no doubt, his sacrifice was deeply appreciated by Ba’Naana and Borrowick Grimpkin as they accidentally but poignantly cremated his body just as the ancient warriors did for their honoured dead.

Borrowick Grimpkin

We lost another brave soul last night. Borrowick Grimpkin, Wizard-hunter extraordinaire, known across Troika City for his exploits in infiltrating and despatching an entire wizarding cult of Muhtrenex the Rufescent, Gulper of Blood, met his end. Despite having fulfilled his mission to slay the cacogen Opportunist, he and his team-mates continued in their exploration of Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. It was there that he was predeceased by his companion Tim in the battle with Paude the vampire giant. The circumstances of Borrowick Grimpkin’s passing were, in many ways, that of a workplace accident, impaled, as he was by the forklift arm of a rusty humanoid loader with the oxidised face of the wizard who created it. If it were not for the fact that, by his actions, his crate pilfering friends, Ba’Naana and Sticky Nicky were afforded the opportunity to escape, that might be how his death was recorded. Instead we can proudly state that Borrowick Grimpkin died as he lived, performing a dangerously acrobatic jumping sword attack from two stories up on a man made entirely of metal. RIP.

How does your group handle PC death, dear reader? Do they celebrate it? Do they rage against it? Are they forgiving or do they hold a grudge?

Flash Fiction Challenge Week 3: All that Glitters

A little horror

I don’t think it’s particularly worthy of a trigger warning, to be honest, but, just in case, this week’s flash features insects, skeletons and flesh eating, not necessarily in that order. Also, it’s got a foolish academic. It’s a wee bit Indiana Jones, a dash of Pirate Borg and a smidgen Cthulhu.

This here flash fiction challenge is to write a 500 word piece, including the five random verbs and five random nouns that I generate each week. Here are the words that I randomly generated last week: