My family and I are once again celebrating the life of my brother, Lorcan this weekend. Tomorrow it will be two years since his untimely passing. It’s still very near and raw. I think about him every single day and he inspires me still, every time I do. Though, it’s always tinged with sadness and thoughts of what might have been.
I wrote a post about the effect he’s had on me this time last year. I’m sharing it here again now in tribute to him and also in the hope that someone else might find some inspiration in the work he did so often to bring people together.
It’s almost time again for the second annual Tables and Tales Talk Like a Pirate Day Pirate Borg One-Shot or the TTTLPDPBOS as I like to call it.
TTTLPDPBOS
It’s almost time again for the second annual Tables and Tales Talk Like a Pirate Day Pirate Borg One-Shot or the TTTLPDPBOS as I like to call it. Friday September 19th is the big day, of course!
Illustration of a circuler door of gold with a skull in it.
We had a great time last year playing a pared down version of one of the adventures in the Pirate Borg core book. I did a Pirate Borg character creation post beforehand and I gave a run-down of the one-shot in this post later.
New Options
The covers of Cabin Fever, Down Among the Dead, the Pirate Borg Starter Set and the Player’s Guidebook. From the Kickstarter page
Last year all I had was the core Pirate Borg book, which I’d picked up from my friendly local game store, Replay. Since then Limithron had a Kickstarter campaign to launch a starter set, Down Among the Dead, a proper expansion with new player options, monsters and adventures and Cabin Fever, a book of third-party creator classes, options, rules and scenarios, all great new products for their flagship game. They recently released the beta PDFs for these items to the backers and I’m so glad they did because I am going to get so much use out of them for this year’s one-shot. Check out the whole kit and caboodle here. You can still pre-order it if you feel so-inclined. I would encourage you, of course, to go and support these small indie creators trying to produce quality products during an incredibly volatile and unfriendly trading climate. On that Kickstarter page, you can also read a little about the challenges they are facing in production and shipping, if you need any more reason to support them.
Trapped in the Tropics
The cover of trapped in the tropics. undead in a jungle with a smoking volcano in the background
The Starter Set includes a bunch of maps, character creation guides, dice, tokens, reference cards, a Player’s Guidebook, and a starting adventure, Trapped in the Tropics. I really wish I had all of those little physical extras to play with at the table but they are not going to be here in time for the I’ve been looking at the TTTLPDPBOS, so I’ll have to wait. I have been reading through Trapped in the Tropics. It’s designed as a teaching adventure with great tips for both beginner GM and players. It lays out the structure of the adventure in a very easy to understand format, includes notes on tone, style and inspiration and includes advice on how to use it at the table in both multi-session and one-shot forms.
As an adventure, it’s set very much in the OSR mould. It provides potential hooks, interesting locations, important NPCs, encounter tables and enemies, without a strict plot or step by step list of occurrences. I’d love to play it as a longer form game. It looks like the sort of relatively free-form OSR module that players could really sink their teeth into and make their own. However, the one-shot option is not as interesting to me. I like parts of it, but I’m struggling to come up with anything from it that might make for a memorable finale.
Cabin Fever
The cover of Cabin Fever
Then we’ve got Cabin Fever, a standalone book of content from third-party creators that was kickstarted along with the Starter Set. This is a treasure chest of a book, brimming over with little gems like new player classes (e.g. the Angler, the Barnacle, the Sulphur,) a bone construct dice drop boss generator, some truly Forlorn Encounters (e.g. Stowaway Imp, Baroness Malaria, Parasitic Beard,) and most importantly for my purposes, a selection of excellent Pirate Borg adventures. My appetite was whetted as I realised that one of these was specifically designed as a one-shot. It’s largely a location-based, exploration adventure in the mould of Pirate Borg, with a central ship, a large number of undead and a crew full of scum. And, importantly, the adventure includes elements that I feel could make for a really great finale to our TTTLPDPBOS. It’s ideal, really. So, I’ll be breaking out the tiny fake spyglasses, eyepatches, and plastic doubloons to help us get in the spirit for “the Repentant” by Zac Goins on September 19th.
The main illustration for the adventure, “the Repentant.” A skeletal head in a hood with a cricifix around at its throat. All in red, white and black.
What about you, dear reader? How will you be celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day this year?
Fallout is one of the most fun things about Heart. Players are sick little freaks who love getting lumbered with terrible burdens. Give them what they want, I say!
A Challenge
I have generally looked at Heart, The City Beneath as a campaign-play game. It’s made for it. It has a structure to the gameplay that rewards multi-session arcs. Your character’s beats beg you to spend time to seek out the opportunities to achieve them. And that Zenith ability; everyone perversely desires that big finale, their moment in the spotlight for one last time, that explosion of ‘themness’ right at the end so they can say they really went out in style.
So, when you are asked to run a Heart one-shot, what do you do? How can you replicate the uniquely satisfying journey that belongs to the delvers in a campaign, in just one session? The short answer, of course, is, you can’t. But, can you create a satisfactory one-shot with a slightly different feel? Yes, of course you can.
You will not be too surprised, dear reader, at this point, to discover that that was the exact situation I found myself in last week. I had a special request come from one of our founding Tables and Tales members to run a Heart one-shot, so I had to give it a go.
Heart Exam
The Butcher, replete with antlers, haunted expression and meal
Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor know what they’re talking about when it comes to designing and running games, particularly their own games, I figured, so I started with them. Heart has a lot of useful tips for GMs in it. There’s advice for the novice and the veteran alike on how to run RPGs/story games/Heart. They also include separate sections for campaigns and one-shots. It’s worth noting that much of the general advice for running Heart is just as important in a one-shot context as in a campaign. The one-shot bit itself is minimal but useful.
Running Heart as a one-shot is straightforward enough. The only changes you’ll have to make are around pacing and how you inflict stress and fallout.
Pace-maker
The Heartsong Calling sitting on the edge of the bed wondering where that music is coming from.
The advice around pacing is as true for a Heart one-shot as it is for any game, you have to start fast and keep it moving. No long-winded expositions, no character-development heart-to-hearts that take thirty minutes, no hanging about. Start in media res or as close to it as possible. Provide the necessary information in summary or in flashback and get to the action. Also, you have to give them something they can do in one session, a goal, a destination, a creature to kill or a thing to retrieve. All this sounds easy enough, but it can be tricky. It has taken me quite a while to develop my one-shot technique to a point where I feel like I am almost guaranteed to get it done in one shot. You start to figure out where you need to kill your darlings to make up the time. Working that sort of thing out on the fly is a skill I have made gratuitous use of recently.
In this one-shot, I had the PCs escaping Redcap Grove as a sort of mini-delve on the way to the entrance of the actual delve which would take them to Hang Station. They had a simple job to deliver some psychoactive fungus to a Vermissian Sage in the station. But, woah, were they rolling badly… and also being little nut-jobs. The Cleaver, predictably, decided to hunt the Druids who were hunting them and it turned into a stress and fallout ridden combat. This was fun, and horrific and hilarious. Almost everyone in the combat hulked out at some point, the Witch into her True Form, the Deep Apiarist into her Awarm Form, the Cleaver into his Chimeric Form and the one remaining Druid into their Cave-dweller Form. The players understood the one-shot assignment and did not hold back. There’s no point in saving your cool power till the end… it’s all end. Anyway, because this took a little longer than expected, I ended up combining this mini-delve with the longer inter-landmark delve that I had prepared between Redcap and Hang. I essentially just combined the remaining resistance of the mini-delve and the delve-proper on the fly. This worked well, even though it meant I had to cut out an encounter with the Butcher…
Stress and Fallout
The Penitent Calling on their knees, praying for forgiveness
Mssrs Howitt and Taylor also mention stress and fallout in the extract above. You can’t be afraid to hit them hard. Fallout is one of the most fun things about Heart. Players are sick little freaks who love getting lumbered with terrible burdens. Give them what they want, I say! Fallout is one of the key ways to push PCs to act in certain ways and that pushes the game forward so it’s win-win, innit?
I took this quite literally. I made sure that the busted old crate they were transporting their dodgy mushrooms in was leaking the kind of spores that some sado-masochist might pay a large amount of coin for. Every time they rolled against the resistance of the delve or when they made any dangerous movements or just when nothing else was going on, I got them to roll Endure+Wild to resist the effects of the fungus. If they failed, they got Mind stress and if they got Fallout from that, they got one of the following:
FALLOUT: Traitor Brain, MINOR Mind – You relive a moment of regret ad nauseum. Always at the worst possible time. All actions increase in Difficulty by one step (ongoing.)
FALLOUT: What Did You Do? MAJOR Mind – You witness the effects of your worst mistake on those it affected. It is a gut-punch to the mind. When you mark Mind stress, roll two dice and take the highest (ongoing.)
This had exactly the effect I wanted. And if you engineer it right, you can use this sort of technique to bring about some really cool moments.
Pregens
Shellaine Dawn-Breaks-Darkly Character SheetRedeye the Cleaver Character SheetDolwyn Oldshire, the Witch Character Sheet
Speaking of engineering things… making pregenerated characters for this game was the best decision I made. I had to combine it with a few tweaks to the rules, but, if I were to recommend doing one thing for your Heart one-shot, it would have to be creating and assigning pregens yourself as the GM.
I created three pregenerated characters, one Gnoll Cleaver with the Heartsong Calling, one Aelfir Deep Apiarist with the Enlightenment Calling and a Human Witch with the Penitent Calling. I gave them their starting abilities, picked their equipment, I even picked their names and answered some of the questions presented in the Calling and Ancestry sections that rounded them out as characters. I even chose their names and starting beats! I left a couple of answers up to the players, namely the ones to the questions about how their characters were associated with one another. Having them answer those gave them a sense of belonging and of fellowship with their adjacent weirdos.
Anyway, the character creation took the bulk of my prep-time, easily, but it was very much worth it. Here’s my thinking: I wanted to make sure we did this thing in one session so didn’t want anyone dithering over the details, and I didn’t want to have to explain all about every aspect of a Heart character before we even got started playing. I wanted to be able to have an inkling of the beats they would reach for to make it easier on myself to improvise them in the moment during play, I wanted to be able to plant connections to the PCs lives here and their and I wanted to be able to use the Heart itself, to make it feel like the Heart was reaching into their souls and coming out with their greatest desires. The Fallout that I wrote above? I wrote that with the idea in mind that the Penitent Witch might need that to confront her greatest regret, why? So I could introduce the last ace up a Heart GM’s sleeve, the Zenith Beats and Abilities.
The Zenith
They had been hitting both minor and major beats throughout the session and taking new abilities as appropriate. I allowed them to hit as many as they wanted. I had given them four each in their pregen character sheets. But that wasn’t enough for me.
Just as they were exiting the delve and entering Hang Station with their psychedelic cargo, I asked the players to refer to the book and take a look at their Zenith Beats and Abilities. I only pulled this out near the end so they wouldn’t know it was coming. Luckily each Calling only has two Zenith Beats available and each Class only has two or three abilities. So it wasn’t too much to look up in the moment, and, as soon as I told them this, I knew I had them (or two thirds of them anyway.)
I made it clear that I would be lenient in judging whether or not they met the conditions of the Beats because I know how good it is when a Heart PC hits their Zenith. So we made it happen. By the end of the session, each of them had brought about their own personal apocalypse and it was a thing of red, wet beauty. The Cleaver destroyed and replaced the Beast in the bottom of Hang Station, transforming the landmark into a swampy forest in the process, the Deep Apiarist summoned the Heart itself into the space just long enough to squash her into a red, wet stain and the Witch brought the Deep Apiarist back from the dead, sort of, as a clone made from the Heart itself, a clone that will always return no matter how many times it dies…
We wrapped the whole thing up neatly in about three hours. If I hadn’t cut the Butcher encounter and combined those two delves early on, it might have gone another half hour. Either way, a nice, diminutive package, I think you’ll agree.
If you had to choose one, dear reader, which one would it be? If you are one of my potential players, which one would you like to play?
Anniversary Posts
More anniversary guest posts coming soon. In the meantime, have some musings.
Old School Rut?
I’m not sure how it happened but, recently, all I have been playing is OSR, trad and adjacent games. With the exception of Dungeon World, which is about as close to D&D as you can get while also flying the PBTA banner, its been wall-to-wall, dragon games, Borgs and Troikas. And this week? It’s Dragon Age, DCC and maybe some Black Sword Hack or UVG (which is pretty trad in its ruleset to be quite honest.) Am I in a rut or have I just naturally gravitated towards these games? Maybe I have found my niche and I’m occupying it. I don’t think that’s it. I think it has more to do with the ease with which I can roll out one of these games, if I’m the GM, at least. It’s also pretty easy to fall into one of them as a player when you’re familiar with the overall concepts, rulesets and themes. And, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m not enjoying them. But it is time for a change, I think.
Options
So, I have a few options of non-OSR, non-D&D, non-trad games to try out in the near future. My current game of Troika! will be coming to an end next week and Dragon Age probably only has a couple of sessions left in it, for a while. So, some calendar spots are opening up! I’d like to fill them with something completely different.
The Triangle Agency Normal Briefcase EditionInside The Triangle Agency Normal Briefcase EditionNice One Idiot
Triangle Agency – I’m reading this at the moment. I have to say, so far, I’m loving the way the game is presented, the really original ideas, the surprisingly bare-bones ruleset and the way it treats the GM (General Manager) as as much of a player as the Agents. It has gotten me excited to play it and I am trying to get potential players excited about it too. The downside is that I feel like I still have a lot to read before I can think about getting it to the table.
Slugblaster GOTY EditionInside the Slugblaster GOTY EditionPanic Energy DrinkName Your CrewSlugblaster Two Page Spread
Slugblaster – I got this great boxed set for Christmas and have yet to crack the spine of the rulebook in anger. But I have been listening to the excellent My First Dungeon actual play of the game over the last several weeks. It has made me want to try it out despite having little to no understanding of skate culture. I know at least one player who would be very interested in playing so I’m sure I could get a few more. Once again, the difficulty is that I have not even skimmed the rules yet. This is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that I’ve been learning how to play while listening to the podcast.
Blades in the Dark Front CoverThe Devil’s in the DetailsSilkshore
Blades in the Dark – Although I was a player in a campaign of Blades last year, I still haven’t run it as the GM. I think I would enjoy doing it and it is such a classic, it would be a shame not to put a game of it together. And it is the basis for games like Slugblaster and The Wildsea, which also feature on this list. I have been nicking enough rules from it for my D&D game, also, that I feel confident I would mesh quite well with the ruleset. At least I have read this one cover to cover and played it before, so that’s a big tick in the “pro” column for Blades.
The Wildsea Front CoverThe FoxloftThe Threat of Death
The Wildsea – I wrote about this already last year and still haven’t managed to run it! Essentially, this game imagines a world where the entire surface has been covered in a vast forest and your players are sailors across the canopy, using boats with giant chainsaws attached to sail. Take a look at the last post about it if you want more info. I have rad a lot of this and could probably run it ok, but I am afraid of doing another game where my players are sailors as I am already doing that with Spelljammer and kind of, with UVG.
Deathmatch Island Front CoverTrust BuildingCompetitor Registration Forms
Deathmatch Island – I also wrote about wanting to play this around this time last year. I having been feeling the urge to scratch the Lost, Severance type itch over the last few months. I watched both of those shows in the last half a year and they have stuck with me a lot. I think Deathmatch Island would be perfect for that. Also, I have read it completely and would be very excited to try out its mechanics. Here’s my post about it from last year.
Apocalypse Keys Front CoverThe ShadeThe Basic MovesOrbital Blues Front CoverThe Crew ShipRogues GalleryEasy care Galactic Wear
There are a couple of outsiders as well, Orbital Blues and Apocalypse Keys, both of which I purchased on something of a whim (and a sale.) I’m curious about them but have barely opened either. I know Apocalypse Keys is a PBTA game and that it is beautifully illustrated, but that’s about it. And I know Orbital Blues is a game of sad space cowboys ála Cowboy Bebop and Firefly so that is a big tick in its favour as far as I am concerned.
If you had to choose one, dear reader, which one would it be? If you are one of my potential players, which one would you like to play?
Each one of these moments brought tears to my eyes and became a part of the scene itself.
HBD TDP
That’s Happy Birth Day The Dice Pool, in case you’re wondering. Today is the dice pool dot com’s first birthday and I have invited a few friends over to jump in. It’s a pool party and a pot luck. So today, I have something a little different. For the first time ever, I have invited a guest author to the blog. Next week, I’ll have another. I’m hoping this will become a more regular occurrence as the blog grows and changes.
I’ll introduce the guest blogger in a moment but I just wanted to first take the opportunity to thank everyone who has supported this blog in the last year. A few of you have been here since day one and some of you are more recent readers; either way, I appreciate you. If you have only ever read a few words or if you somehow have the patience to peruse every post, you’re a scholar and a gentlebeing, in my book. I am still doing this for me, mainly. If that weren’t the case, I would have packed it in about eleven months ago. I find that, sometimes, when I’m writing for the blog, it focuses my thoughts about certain subjects like in my last post about the Quantum NPC. I refine my opinions while I type, like I did while writing my review of After the Mind the World Again. Doing this has been a challenge but in a good way. Still, it’s nice to feel the love sometimes too.
Now on to today’s special guest blogpost. Tom of the Media Goblin’s Hoard is a great friend and has been a stalwart of my gaming table for the last six years or so. They jumped at the chance to write a special anniversary blogpost for the dice pool dot com and they have chosen a wonderful subject for it, weaving an emotional narrative through retellings of some very memorable gaming moments. I also want to draw your attention to the artwork in this post, all of which was created by the talented and amazing members of our little RPG community, Tables and Tales.
Crying at the Table
by Tom Ball
Every week I will sit around the table with a group of friends, bring out the snacks and drinks, and live out some of the greatest stories I’ve ever heard. It’s in sharing and creating these stories that I feel a most genuine and strong connection with the others around the table, and it grows with each game played. Playing TTRPGs, I feel, has elevated my bond with my friends in a way I previously would not have known. It sounds cheesy but in the moments we play I feel myself step away from my own life and inhabit the life of my characters. Their ambitions, their bonds, their goal on the horizon and their friends and foes, all become real. For an evening we all step out of our lives into the stories of a shared adventure. Like all good things, it eventually comes to an end for the night and we step back into ourselves, the same as before except now with another shared experience together.
There’s a common phrase repeated by players in TTRPGs “never split the party” because we’re all stronger together. Our characters won’t make it to the end without each other no matter what background they come from, what they have done in their past, or even who they are as a person. In the end, they will rely on those closest to them in order to achieve the impossible. I feel this is a good analogy for life itself, I wouldn’t be where I am now without those closest to me and every week I get to see those I hold dear do the most incredible and creative feats.
Throughout the many stories told, there have been cheers of joy where what was thought to be an impossible feat becomes reality, and moments of tension so strong it’s impossible to cut through. Hidden between these are the instances of tender and emotional impacts that shake me to the core and have brought me to tears on multiple occasions. I am quite an emotional person as it is, and in the moments where the story shifts I look around and see everyone else, eyes glistening like a quiet lake on a star-filled night moments before the waters fall over the edge of the eyelid in a wave. We are all there riding that surf together. I’d like to mention below some of these highlights where I have been brought to tears and felt my bond with my friends grow ever stronger still.
A High Elf and his Humans
Art by Isaac Wilcox @lostpathpublishing
Deep underneath the towering city of Spire is The Heart and an Aelfir, Crowns-Under-Heaven, suited in armour of scavenged trains, steaming and pumping to keep him alive. He was obsessed with the hopes of bringing back the ancient Vermissian transport network and he teamed up with two humans to complete this task. Though he loathed it, it seemed these two were just as close to the brink of insanity as he was. Perhaps they would make handy tools or servants, at least?
The Seeker, an esoteric man who spoke of prophecy in between mad ramblings. Once dead, now back alive dancing between purgatory and the mortal world, his own death now a forever companion, both of them cursed with an intoxicating song sung by The Heart itself beckoning him ever closer.
Riley Rollins, an eccentric person whose pursuit of arcane majesty and wanderlust for the winding deep corridors and depths of The Heart could take them and their companions to the very end, witness the impossible and entangle them with a Queen from another world…
The trio’s companionship was rocky, Crowns-Under-Heaven would expect the other two to act a lot like cannon fodder. Seeker would often vanish into The Gray, abandoning the group. On top of that, Riley had a connection to the Drowned Queen, an ancient and ferocious being hellbent on flooding the depths claiming The Heart as her own domain, becoming ever stronger. The team had a lot of growing to do together.
When the finale came around Riley went to face the Drowned Queen and Seeker went with Crowns-Under-Heaven to reactivate the network. However, he came face to face with his obsession and the truth. The Vermissian Network was doomed to die and fall into ancient myth. In a long forgotten city where the Heart lay just a cave away Crowns was gifted with the Heartseed for his travels, the last source of energy for the doomed network system. This source of wild and limitless power was able to power his armour and by extension himself to a status beyond living. His adventures underground and with his companions had changed his old steam powered heart. He would become an unstoppable force within the cities and tunnels below. travelling the winding depths saving those on the brink of Death and becoming a figure of myth and legend. He looked to his human companion and said his heartfelt goodbyes. Knowing this would be the last time that Crowns-Under-Heaven would lay eyes on his friends.
A Goblin and a Minotaur fall in love
Art by @auttieshi (Instagram)
In the early days of her adventures, Vidris Pipp, a bombastic and spontaneous little Goblin, locked eyes for the first time with Birch Burley, a quiet, reserved and dignified Minotaur, and she knew she had fallen in love. The problem? Birch was the daughter of the leader of their town, Undercroft. Worse still, Vidris and her friends discovered that that self-same leader, Bryne Burley, had secrets to hide. He quickly became an adversary in their lives. The hope of a happily ever after between the two was far off. However, after a chance encounter of Vidris falling through the manor’s chimney and landing in Birch’s bedroom, they were able to have a one on one and quickly became close. It did not take long for the Minotaur to find that she shared the same feelings for the Goblin.
From there Birch became a part-time member of the party and ally to the group. However, their love for each other was to be kept secret. Vidris’ mother and grandfather already plotted to revolt against the leader alongside other citizens and Bryne was, at this time, not best pleased with Vidris’ meddling in his town and livelihood.
Months later dangerous secrets, far beyond the leader’s knowledge, of ancient cities were revealed far beneath the town of Undercroft. Birch was there side by side with Vidris as the party delved deep underground to face an ancient wizard that brought death to the world millennia ago. Meanwhile, the town of Undercroft and their new found allies in the peoples of the world around them prepared to face the encroaching wizard’s army of automatons.
Believing this could have been the last time Birch and Vidris might see their parents alive, they approached their parents, hand in hand and revealed their love for each other. Their parents accepted and acknowledged their love. Bryne gave Vidris his blessing and Vidris’s mother and Grandfather buried the hatchet with their leader and pulled them both in for a hug that felt to last a lifetime.
A family brought together
Art by @cheriyuki (Instagram)
Yulla Odasdottir nearly met her death at an incredibly young age when her father and mother wished to escape the forever storm that circled the island of Erlendheim. Believing the storm would destroy the island one day, they fled and were never seen again. Yulla, however, was saved by a mysterious entity from the deep dark depths of the ocean and sent back to the shores of Erlendheim, alongside the wreckage of her family’s boat. Her skin forever changed by this eldritch touch. What was once a rich scarlet topped with little black horns now shone blue, her face glistening with aquamarine scales and a large dorsal fin protruding from her head.
She was accepted by a fisherman and his wife who came across the wreckage and then raised Yulla as their own. Yulla grew up knowing she was not blood bound to her human parents. Her adventure would take place years later and through a series of extraordinary events the party would hear of a portal that lay on the seabed floor. This portal would be able to lead the party to Sigil, the city of doors, where the answers to their mysteries at the time would unravel further.
Once there, Yulla happened to hear the names of her parents. They were alive and were high up in a faction called The Believers of the Source. After a long search she was finally able to lay eyes on them, donned in the robes of The Source. There was a shocked moment of silence and they all slowly stepped forward, all of them in disbelief. Before the family embraced and wept.
Each one of these moments brought tears to my eyes and became a part of the scene itself. If I was crying real tears then my characters certainly were too. I like to think I put my whole heart into my characters and I wear that on my sleeve. I get lost in these stories and love every moment. It’s both a testament to the DMs who bring to life the world and to the players I’m with who build the most believable and real characters. I love being brought to tears by a game and I love sharing that moment with my friends.
I’m so thankful for those I get to share these adventures with.
What is the end goal of a game of weird space horror like Graham Walmsley’s Cosmic Dark? The answer seems obvious, I suppose. If you go to see a horror movie, you want to come out feeling like you got your money’s worth in spilled popcorn, whimpers, screams and nonodontgointhereyouidiots. So you should expect something similar from a game like this, right? Well, yes, of course. In fact, the rather ingenious conceit of a game like this, is that, knowing the style of play you’re looking for, as a player, you can go into it understanding what you can do to help push the themes, the jumps, the horror of it. There’s some strange, violet rock that appears to be moving? The character might be a geologist and know that it’s their job to go examine the rock, but the player knows they’re in a space horror game, which is why they should go and examine it. And this is pretty much how our one-shot of Cosmic Dark went last weekend.
But there’s more, of course, because let’s not forget the ‘Cosmic’ bit, the ‘weird’ bit. Because, although the body horror really hit hard at times, the dreamy (nightmarey maybe,) psychological horror felt all-encompassing. There is a section in the scenario that is aptly called “Dreaming and Waking.” Unpretentiously, it refers to the bizarre dreams the Employees experience during their first night on the assignment. It gave me more or less free rein to describe immersive dreams for the characters that related back to the answers they gave in psych evaluation questions earlier in the game. Of course, this served only to highlight the dreamlike atmosphere of everything on the assignment up to that point, in my opinion. Time was behaving differently, the rocks were undulating and growing, seemingly safe spaces were revealed to be anything but… The players and the characters were on edge, really from the start. And, thanks to the mechanics, they got closer and closer to that edge as the session went on.
Character Creation
We played the first Cosmic Dark Assignment, Extraction. Check out my preview blog post here, where I explain the way the players create their Employees as part of that scenario.
At the table, this went down a treat. Forcing players to choose their Employees’ specialisms only at the point where they are being asked to acknowledge over comms on the shuttle to the Assignment is clever and the players got a kick out of it.
But the real star of the show is the series of flashbacks they go through to get a picture of their characters. The flashback method creates memories, not just characters. The requirement for each PC to identify another as a rival or a figure of admiration or some other influence, and to include them in the flashback scenes, creates a shared history and a character dynamic that you simply can’t conjure from dry discussions over a character sheet. If you have played any PBTA games, dear reader, you might be aware that they usually include a section for bonds with other PCs. You and the other PC have to come up with some reason why you are blood-brothers or why you’re worried about the other’s survival or why you had a vision about them. But you do not act it out. You don’t, at least in my experience, role-play a scene together to elucidate the reason for the bond. That’s exactly what you do in Cosmic Dark. In fact, each player has a scene of their own and may choose any of the other characters to share it with. These scenes are supposed to be short, just a minute or two, but long enough for them to find their characters’ voices, outlooks, relationships. And the Director (GM) provides prompts to kick-start these scenes. The players are given a line of dialogue for one of them to say to begin. I was skeptical about how well this could work at a table of regular players. Up until now, I have only seen it done at a table of professional actors on Ain’t Slayed Nobody. But I needn’t have worried. Every one of my players took that single line of dialogue like the baton it was, and ran with it, inventing hurdles, falling and picking themselves up again. And the table I had? Four players with a wonderful mix of experience levels, some who have played a variety of RPGs for years, one with just a few months of play under their belts with Tables and Tales and even one for whom it was their very first role playing experience!
The aspect of character creation (it’s one of the parts that is ongoing throughout the game from what I understand) that I had a little difficulty in running and incorporating as intended is the psychological assessment. There is a moment, that also occurs in flashback, the night before the Assignment, when they are lying in their sleeping pods on the Extracsa transport vessel, the Exchange, and they are asked questions like “what scares you most about being alone?” Or “what is the most terrifying way to die?” You are supposed to. Push the PCs to answer truthfully, indicating that Extracsa will know if they are lying. This part was ok, actually. I was able to get some revealing and actionable answers from them. It was the re-incorporation of the answers into the later dream sequence that I struggled with. The idea is that you should take note of the PCs’ fears and worries so that you can create a tailored nightmare for them during the Dreaming and Waking section I mentioned above. I think this is something I would get better at in time and with practice. The main issue I had was just referring to my own notes and making sure I got the right nightmare for the right Employees in a way that made it feel like it flowed naturally.
The Assignment itself
I don’t want to go into too much detail here. Honestly, I could not do it justice. Go and listen to the Ain’t Slayed Nobody actual play instead!
But here’s what I will say. I presented an outline of the type of game Cosmic Dark was when I advertised it on our Discord. But I think there was still some misapprehension by the time we started playing. The main feedback I got in this respect was that they expected something more along the lines of physical threats. I believe this is, perhaps, the overriding influence of the Alien franchise. I did refer to Alien in the touchstones I mentioned when announcing the game, so that could explain it. There is nothing like an alien monster in this first Assignment. In fact, as they played through the scenario and uncovered one egregious corporate scheme and strategic lie after another, I think it became obvious that Extracsa are the real baddies here. And, it’s not like there aren’t ways for the Employees to die in the course of the Assignment (we had one death, caused mainly by the Team Leader hitting 6 Changed as he escaped. He flipped the rover he was driving.) And they felt as though they were in danger, clearly. As their Changed scores each hit 4 or 5 (out of 6) they all decided to run away! They witnessed what was in the future for them on this asteroid, a slow and horrific melding with the rock of the place, and they noped out of there before they even reached the finalé! Anyway, if I had any advice for prospective Directors, it would be to make sure you properly set expectations.
How about the scenario itself? So, I only had the text of the Extraction Assignment to work with. Now, this was fine. The rules are contained within it and the character creation occurs during the course of play, as I explained above. However, in the finished book, there will be useful extras to refer to. For instance, if and when an Employee rolls a 5, they are supposed to get a little bonus in the form of records, data from the Extracsa company servers that serve to shine a light on the mystery or, at least, show them how Extracsa is fucking them over. On the roll of a 6, they are supposed to experience an anomaly of some sort. Anomalies are supposed to alert them to the weirdness of the place or the situation or have a direct psychological effect that might prompt a Changed roll. Now, there are a few examples of appropriate records and anomalies in the scenario but the rest will be contained in cheat sheets that will appear in the final Cosmic Dark book. To fill this gap, I listened to the ASN actual play again and made a note of the records and anomalies Graham used in that.
The other thing I picked up in particular from Graham was the style of GMing he does in that AP. He keeps it light and breezy mainly, gently encouraging players to take unnecessary risks, reminding them about the Changed die, reassuring them that that little prick from that piece of weird violet rock is probably nothing to worry about… until the point where he informs them all they need to do to reduce their Changed score is remove that pesky limb… Listen and learn, dear reader! It worked a treat at the table!
As for the rules, I had one regret here. The rules are very light and easy to pick up, but, this opening Assignment is designed to introduce the rules in a specific order to ease the players into them. And it does a great job of that. The Changed die is the first thing that comes up, then investigation rolls and other types of actions. But I forgot to introduce the re-roll mechanic when I should have, thereby allowing the Employees a chance both to do better on certain checks and to increase their Changed score earlier on.
Conclusion
All in all, I highly recommend this game. I want to play more of it. I wanted to play more almost immediately. But I think my experience will be greatly improved by getting my hands on the full book. So, let’s make sure I can, shall we? Go and sign up for an alert on the Cosmic Dark Kickstarter!
Here’s my fictionalisation of our first session of the classic DCC 0-level funnel, Sailors on the Starless Sea. Six of us, members of Tables and Tales gathered last Sunday evening to play through the first half of the adventure. We had an absolute blast, both with the adventure and the DCC rules.
I may have taken a few liberties and used some artistic license here and there but the major beats are all as they occurred. Spoiler warning if you have not played or read Sailors on the Starless Sea and you want to be a player in a game of it, stop reading now!
The Keep of Chaos
The villagers gathered before the rusting gate of the ancient keep, as a blasphemous banner snapped above the crumbling, ebon walls. Behind the shivering mob, Betsy released a single, unenthusiastic moo as she shuffled in her protective circle. They had made surprisingly short work of the vine choked corpses on the causeway below. The burgeoning corpses of their fellows had shocked some into sobriety while only awakening a greed and opportunism in others that they had previously, perhaps, just imagined they possessed.
Only the half-raised portcullis stood between the no-longer inebriated gang and the rescue of their abducted friends and family. Edgar Hayward Blackburn Hathaway IV, assuming a leadership position, urged his fellows on into the black keep, while the gnoll-reared urchin, Bear scampered in and out, as though possessed by a great desire to poop. Stopping for nothing, most of them marched through, all but the three dwarves doubling over or crawling beneath the spiked portcullis. A few waited on the outside, curious perhaps to see how this entrance worked out for the majority. These were, perhaps, the clever few… just as the final row crossed the threshold, someone above released the portcullis to fall the rest of the way, pinning two of their number beneath. The renowned and beloved corn farmer, Maize, died instantly, skewered by one of the rusty spikes. The survivors would, for ever after, recall his broad, smiling face and his impaled body whenever they munched on a sweet, buttery cob. His little goat ran, unfettered and bleating into the be-brambled courtyard, as the remaining villagers heaved the portcullis up to release the cheesemaker, Gorgonzola, who had somehow survived the portcullis trap. Meanwhile, a bell rang out from above the gatehouse, pealing briefly, but alarmingly. The final few peasants, who had waited out front, joined the mob as they began to explore their hateful new surroundings.
Several of them circumnavigated the overgrown clearing contained within the castle’s broken and burnt walls. But two explored the well. The well seemed to call to Dáinn, his curiosity growing to almost physical strength, pulled him to it. Meanwhile, his companion pulled on the well’s sturdy chain to see what might be lurking below. Dáinn could not resist a peek over the edge, and, before he knew had pitched, headlong, into the darkness below! His companion scrambled to catch him, but it was too late… Luckily, Dáinn came to his senses as he plummeted and managed to grab the chain before he hit the undulating ooze at the bottom. The others pulled him up, but he was not exactly himself anymore… he now sported the flapping ears of a pinkish pachyderm.
Meanwhile, other villagers discovered part of the old wall in the back had utterly collapsed. They decided to leave it alone, nothing a potential for further collapse and possibly fatal accidents.
Nearby, an ancient capstone of some sort, runed and glowing slightly, was discovered. It had been concealed, deliberately or otherwise by thorny vines and scrubby grasses for years. Uncovered, the group’s scribe was able to take a look at it, but, unable to decipher the meaning of the rune, they decided it was best left as it was.
As this occurred, Mu, the monosyllabic Dwarven mushroom farmer, investigated the forbidding portal of the nearby chapel. The terrifying visages of hundreds of demons, screaming and howling had been hammered into its heavy bronze doors, which had been barred from the outside. Mu, heedless of possible dangers, tossed aside the ancient wooden bar and swung wide the doors. Inside, resting impossibly on a floor carpeted in crackling, glowing embers, a half-dozen skeletons still roasted, slowly, in their blackened chain hauberks. A charred chest, padlocked and tempting stood to one side of an elaborately carved fountain. The hellish amphibian likeness of a stone frog belched forth an endless spring of tarry ooze from a mouth seemingly filled with precious gems. Gwydion, the elven artisan, fascinated by the construction of the fountain approached, heedless of the embers. The ooze reacted, raising its undulating bulk up and over the lip of the fountain. It landed on the fiery floor and burst all into devilish flames as it flung a pseudopod, greasy and burning, in the direction of the elf! But Edgar Hayward Blackborne Hathaway IV, always on hand to defend his companions, leapt into the chapel and attempted to fling a dart at the fiery monstrosity. His aim failed him, the strength of his arm directing his attack, instead, to his own unarmored wrist as it escaped his grasp in the worst possible way. His blood gushed, hissing and dancing over the hot embers as he collapsed, lifeless into the sizzling coals. A moment later, despite several fine hits from the other gathered villagers, the ooze’s pseudopod finally connected with his elven target, immolating him. As Gwydion fell, the others fell upon the tar ooze, dousing it and destroying it. Weary now of all the senseless killing, the peasants armed and armoured themselves in what they could recover from the dead ones in the chapel and discovered a curious item of some chaotic deity, a blackened censer and several bales of unwholesome incense that had been locked in the chest. They stowed them for later use and proceeded with their explorations.
A sinkhole dominated the northeastern corner of the courtyard, spewing forth vapours that formed terrible shapes of writhing beasts and men in the air above it. Perhaps this was the way forward? Attaching a rope to the chain retrieved from he well, Darik the hunter braved the uneven and dangerous ground about the edge of the steaming pit to get a better look, his fellows holding on to keep him safe from falling to his death. The ground, indeed, collapsed below him and he dropped seventy feet into the poisonous spume, seemingly still nowhere near the bottom. His investigations revealed nothing of the bottom nor the source of the vapours. He climbed back out and the villagers continued on to the tower in the south east corner, the only area left to investigate…
Sir Chopsalot, the woodcutter, finding the door to the tower guarded by hideous gargoyles and locked tight against their attempts to enter, hoisted his axe and got to work. He worked up a sweat and brought down the portal. McTavish, the blacksmith, his blood up, charged into the tower and was a confronted with a sight and stench of charnel destruction unlike the worst tanner’s pit. The discarded hides and skins of beasts and humans covered the sticky, malodourous floor. Mites and flies buzzed about, biting and swarming over everything. High on the walls of the tower, hanging by their tied wrists from spikes, some of the abducted wriggled and thrashed when they saw him enter, eager for freedom. But he did not have time to act, From the steps above his head, an enormous brute of a beastman, cursed with the head and sharpened horns of a great bull, jumped onto McTavish’s back, crushing him into the ground with his dreadful battle-axe. Then he turned to the villagers arrayed outside and snorted while his beastmen approached from behind. The remaining peasants quickly formed a plan to distract the beastmen while Mira ran to the chapel to fill a steel helmet with scorching embers. Combined with the oil from a flask they had brought, this could cause a conflagration in the tower, destroying the arrayed abominations. As she ran to gather the coals, Sir Chopsalot, the woodcutter, found himself in the way of the charging, bovine beastman champion and was impaled on his great horns. Another monster, with the hideous head of a beagle, speared Gorgonzola, the cheesemaker, finishing the job the portcullis had earlier begun. Mira returned just in time to prevent the rest of the beastmen from emerging into the blood-soaked courtyard. She flung the embers into the awful tower where they set alight the lantern oil. The villagers took some satisfaction in watching the demons burn.
Victorious, the survivors doused the flames and rescued several of their neighbours from their captivity. They searched through the detritus in the tower and were able to discover a map to another keep along with a letter of employment, stitched into the hem of some poor unfortunate adventurer’s cloak. But, before long, they knew it was time to proceed once more. This time, the only way on was down a set of ancient, worn stone steps, down into the darkness below the keep…
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.
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!
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.
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?
You might recall, dear reader, that last year, I threatened to put together a game of the Dragon Age RPG. I even wrote a couple of blog posts about the game which you can find here. Well, I’m back to tell you that I’m not just all talk. Sometimes I really follow through on plans to play games. Myself and four other members of Tables and Tales started playing the short scenario, Duty unto Death for the Dragon Age RPG a couple of weeks ago. We’ve had two sessions so far.
The first was mostly session 0 stuff. Only three of the players were able to make it to that one, but those that did make it all created their own characters. My post on Dragon Age Character Creation stood me in pretty good stead for this. We ended up with an Antivan Wayfarer warrior, a Dalish Elf (which my computer keeps autocorrecting to Danish Elf) rogue and a human Apostate Mage (who is short and hairy enough to pass for a dwarf, thus fooling the silly templars.) Our final player joined us for this week’s session so, in order to allow us to get started as quickly as possible, he selected one of the four pregens that came with the scenario. He chose another warrior, this time a Surface Dwarf who makes a decent tank.
The group has a varied experience of both RPGs and Dragon Age. We have at least one super-fan of the video games. They know the lore inside-out and knew exactly what they wanted to play when they signed up for the game. The others all have some knowledge and several have played Dragon Age Origins recently. As it turns out, the scenario I chose is set right before the events of that game and features at least one major character from it, so that’s worked out really well.
We’re using our newly renovated independent game store, Replay as the venue. I haven’t been back there with a group since about this time last year, but since they have greatly expanded their gaming space recently, and because they are open late on Wednesday nights I wanted to give it a go. As always, the staff were welcoming and the place was great. The renovations are still under way but they have done all they can to accommodate players all the same. I can’t wait to see it when it’s done.
Tabletop
A screenshot from the intro to Tabletop with Wil Wheaton.
Does anyone remember the Wil Wheaton Youtube show, Tabletop? It was part of the Geek and Sundry network for quite a while but it looks like the last video is about seven years old now. Anyway, it mainly focused on introducing people to board games but this one time, they got Chris Pramas, the creator of the Dragon Age RPG to write a scenario they could play on the show. So Wheaton wrangled up a bunch of his show-biz pals and they made two half-hour videos of it. This was eleven years ago so it was a pretty early example of an actual play. And it was really good! It taught you the basics of how to play the game and entertained you at the same time. You can find the first episode here, Tabletop: Dragon Age RPG. If you are one of my players and you’re reading this right now, please don’t click on that link!
The cover of the Duty unto Death adventure for the Dragon Age RPG.
So, the scenario he wrote for it was Duty unto Death. They released it sometime after the show went live. He has included in the published version a few notes on how the game went on the Tabletop show, where the players surprised him, how he improvised certain encounters, that sort of thing. They are fun and possibly useful little asides. It’s short, teaches the basics of the game’s rules well and has lots of Dragon Age flavour in it so it was perfect for my purposes. There are quite a few other published adventures for Dragon Age, but most of them were much longer and would have required a lot more prep time on my part, which I don’t have right now. Duty unto Death is about 8 pages long. It’s not especially involved and doesn’t get into some of the tenets of the game. There is not much in the way of exploration or, indeed, social encounters. But, I feel like it’s doing what it sets out to do very well.
So far, our heroes, a group of Grey Warden recruits, traveling in Ferelden, have been left to their own devices by their leader, Duncan. Fans of DAO will know the name. It was fun to drop it in the intro. Anyway, he had introduced them to the duties of the wardens, gave them a few lessons about darkspawn and the blight and that buggered of to the Circle of Magi. He asked the recruits to head to a village to meet another Warden from Orlais. On the way, they got into a fight with a couple of darkspawn, tipping them off to the possibility of a coming Blight.
Cunning stunts
The Combat Stunts table from the Dragon Age RPG.
That first battle was very instructive. It was the first time any of us had really interacted with the rules so we were all learning a little. After the first round, they had barely scratched these two Shrieks. It felt bad, like the worst sort of D&D, attritional combat, except for the highlight of the mage casting Walking Bomb on one of the bad guys. In the second round, people started rolling doubles and the stunts started coming. Sandor, the Surface Dwarf, added two extra dice to his damage with a Lethal Blow, almost smashing one of the darkspawn, and we were away. The players started to play more tactically, utilising their minor actions to add bonuses to their attacks by aiming, or bonuses to their defence by getting their guard up. They were utilising their class features almost immediately. I was surprised and genuinely impressive to see how instinctively my, admittedly very savvy and clever players, took to the mechanics. The combat ended with that Walking Bomb paying off, the Shriek went boom and took the other one with it, covering the entire party in black gore.
By the time they got to their destination, and found themselves in another fight, this time with some Devouring Corpses making a nuisance of themselves in the inn, it felt like they were old hands. We had to leave it in the middle of that battle since Replay was closing and we all had to go home. All in all, it has left me wanting more! Can’t wait for the next session.
The Dice Pool 