ttrpg – Slice of Beef

Stars Without Number Campaign I: Finale

Over the summer, I spent a fair bit of my time helping out with an annual online event, and this meant that pretty much everything else went on the backburner. I still ran sessions, but things like updating my blog became a fairly low priority! I had a backlog of session summaries for my Stars Without Number campaign to write since the last one, and I just didn’t have the time or memory to get them all in! Alas!

However – last week my SWN campaign actually came to its final conclusion! So I’ll do up a brief little bullet-point synopsis of the main events here, chaotic as they are:

The party lands on the planet Thorunn, where they investigate some Psionics shenanigans, get arrested (Blanche is released on bail and has a court date), and become higher-profile targets of the Ragni. Caitlin’s grandmother assists in their escape.
The party headed towards Teus, stopping for a few days at a nearby system to upgrade their spike drive. Here, they also ran into the rival party (Tizzy, Omen & co.) and placed a bug on their sip, to track their messages.
The party then headed to the planet Teus, to both collect the sample (at which point I made a deeply embarrassing accidental Homestuck reference) and do a job for Hermes, whose hacking prowess was requested in an anonymous email. The job involved the party delving underground into an ancient pre-tech ruin – Tizzy, from the rival party was there too, helping out his oppressed people.
The party decided they did not want to deal with whatever was going on down here, and left before the final chamber, leaving Tizzy to speak with the ancient cryogenically frozen pre-tech being who told him (and in turn, the Ragni) where the super-powerful planet-destroying weapon is. It is, in fact, the Spire itself. The party learns of this later, thanks to their information bug and strips Tizzy’s report. The Spire requires the Lion’s Lily (for some reason), and the Ragni are preparing to go get it.
The party quickly rush to Terra Purr’ma to collect the Lily before the Ragni do, collect some with the help of a friendly botanist, Nepeta (another unfortunate accidental Homestuck reference – which caused several ‘if I had a nickel’ memes to sprout up in the Discord) and manage to destroy much of the wild population and get the local government to enact protective sanctions on the rest. They’re warned of its potential misuse.
Blanche virtually attends her court date and gets off as not guilty.
Medicine Man also arrives on Terra Purr’ma, and tries to break into the botany lab, but is stopped by the players, who stabilise him, kick him in the balls, and then have local law enforcement take him away (they really don’t like killing people).
The party decide that it is not safe for Blanche’s family to stay here, and Blanche takes them to a nearby outpost (where she also remains – the player had to leave due to some scheduling changes).
Caitlin’s grandma as it turns out was kidnapped by the Ragni – Alan Ortovsky in particular, who uses her as a ransom for a large sum of money from the party. They quickly head back to their home planet, Ilnar, to rescue her.
The party tracks down Alan, takes out his bodyguards, rescues Grandma… and then lets him live, in exchange for information.
Turns out, Alan was actually in line to replace the now-dead leader of the Ragni, but since the party exposed his connections to the organisation, plans changed. There is a new leader- but who?
After some investigation (and by investigation, I mean mostly an attempted ritual with a doll of Blanche they made out of her leftover fur) the party figures out it is Rocky Brickman, Hermes’ old manager at work, who has also been promoted within the shell company he ‘works’ for. They also discover that the Spire as a WMD has been kept relatively secret, even within the organisation, and manage to interrupt a meeting, preventing the release of the knowledge of its power and secrets.
The party decides to anti-climactically poison his coffee (successfully), and get the fuck out of metaphorical Bel-Air. It was so underwhelming and perfect at the same time, I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Knowing that the Spire is relatively unknown, they decide to cut their losses, and head to the nearby Paradise World, where they build up their drug enterprise, retire rich and drink cocktails, and Hermes’s player sends us this video in chat:

There would, of course, be longer-term repercussions for the things they left behind, and there are a few extra details I left out of this summary, like the newly discovered lost system… but as I wanted to wrap up before the holidays…

That’s all, folks!

Stars Without Number Campaign 1: Session VI and VII

Skipped a week as two players were sick, and then I didn’t quite have time to finish my write-up for the last session, so you get two in one! Today’s session summary includes a lot of medical drugs, as usual. Continuing on from last time anyway, The group decided to pursue a few more trips into the ‘Spire’ dungeon in order to get enough sellable pre-tech artefacts to fund their ship…

Okay, so GM-talk time for a minute here – I didn’t map out this dungeon at all. No plans, just hell! Instead, I used a combination of ruin generators (room type, # of exits, etc.), thematic ideas I pasted on paper/modifying what I rolled to make sense for the situation, and encounter rolls for any incidents. The theme was going to be ancient pre-tech aliens, and water-based shenanigans (which ended up not being explored), and I had a few monstrous encounters rolled up.

The party once again immediately disregarded the ‘this route has been pre-plotted, and there’s a mysterious artefact at the end’ area I’d lifted from a campaign module, and forged a new path through the monolith. Heading back down to the hall of yellow pools explored last session (though I don’t know if I actually touched on that – ah well), the foursome chipped through the wall and found themselves in a slowly sloping downwards, slick hallway, culminating in some kind of trash chute waterslide (a waste receptacle of sorts) which they opted to not jump headfirst into (alas).

Being stuck at a dead-end, this meant there was no way to go but back, and after some humming and hawing about taking out the abominations from last session, the four of them entered another unknown area of the complex – this location filled with a thin layer of oily dust – it had been untouched for a long time. In the first room, dozens of tiny tunnels had been established, dug out by small six-legged rat-like creatures (which the party coaxed out of their holes with some sardines) destabilising some of the nearby exits. A momentary thought of keeping these rascals as pets crossed the group’s mind, but decided that perhaps putting an entire rat creature capable of digging through dungeon walls was best left wild and free.

After a bit of walking, the players found themselves in a hallway filled with delicately constructed decorative pillars, and a large set of double-doors which they managed to pry open after some effort. Inside was a cylindrical room filled with a gigantic, floating, glowing orb, radiating off immense amounts of heat (they fried a sardine on it to check if it was safe to touch – it was not). Tall, headless, alien statues lined the walls. Pillboi opted to touch one of them, peeking inside at a smaller, ice-cold glowing orb within the covered center of the statue (keeping the rest of the complex from overheatng) and nothing seemed to happen. Confused and awed by whatever this was, the group left to explore other rooms.

Down the hallway – faced with what appeared to be a giant washbasin, the group slipped down and lowered Blanche down the centre drain and pulled out a few discarded, accidentally-dropped pre-tech artefacts. Blanche could have headed further down the U-Bend of the drain, but decided not to push her luck with the unknown. The party began heading back to turn them in when they noticed additional footprints in the oily dust – in the shape and size of the statues from the other room. Hurriedly following the steps back, they found themselves face to face with the footprints ending at the very statue Pillboi had touched (he’d activated it by touch – it went off on protocol to inspect one of the other similar power-source rooms as there was a disturbance there – more on that in a moment). The party found themselves able to ‘charge’ the small devices they’d found by placing them in the proximity of the orb in the centre. Confused and impatient, Hermes threw caution to the wind and approached the statue – attempting to remove its central cooling orb. The statue, of course, activated a defence sequence and began grappling Hermes, lifting him up and pushing him towards the superhot power core in the centre. The party, panicking, managed to stall the beast as a single shot managed to pierce and burst the core – the statue itself crumbling into oily dust.

As none of the other statues seemed to activate (they’re still ‘asleep’), the group followed the footprints the other way, curious to see where the thing had gone, and found themselves in a near-identical power room – this one, however, was significantly dimmer, and many of the statues were either gone or just dust piles on the floor. Not wanting to remain here, the party took some notes and hurried back with their meagre prizes and drawn maps to sell them off to the Heritors.

They regrouped, and headed down into the Spire one last time, down another unknown path offshoot from the main vestibule, and found themselves in a half-submerged room, filled with the yellow liquid from earlier. After throwing a sardine into the water to test for acid, and cautiously plunging a hand in, the group decided they weren’t cut out for swimming and headed back into the vestibule down an alternate route. There, they met a young unnamed 18-year-old and their dog, Buddy, clearly inexperienced and brandishing a sword they didn’t know how to use, who told the party that they should “prove themselves” to be just as intelligent and powerful as they are and to please find a way to get rid of the ‘ghosts’ in the nearby passage. These ‘ghosts’ were actually brain-copied imitations of dead adventurers (their bodies could be found below) unbeknownst to the adventurers, but with some quick -thinking of her psionics, Caitlin managed to ‘grapple’ them in place while the distortions were shot away by the fellow party members. Not wanting to explore any further, and as the session was drawing to a close, the group headed back to get paid for their ruin maps – letting the young adventurer know that unfortunately they couldn’t figure it out, and “sometimes it’s best to take a break” and encouraged them to leave the complex as well.

The players have some neat ideas about what the Spire is (a ship, a home…) – it’s actually a pre-tech planet destruction weapon – abandoned, and broken, and with folks removing parts, perhaps it will never quite work precisely the way it was meant. But it’s operational if the right folks figure it out. Or the wrong ones. I’m still torn on if I should conveniently have it activate during the player’s campaign/lifetime (and destroy Shan – that’s conveniently where it’s pointing), or if it’s one of those things better left alone. Time will tell, but it really brought them in on it. They loved the mysteries of it and I adore exploring the unknown. I do feel a bit bad that half of this was made up on the spot, but I think the emergent storytelling that came from it was pretty fun.

The following session begins with the group heading out of the system back to their home planet – Ilnar (which I have described as essentially cyberpunk Earth), and collecting a few supplies. Ilnar is more Pillboi-focused (as much of Blanche’s life is either work or Terra Purr’ma based), though I have a few ideas for Caitlin and Hermes to explore in the future as well. To that end – Pillboi received an email, from a genderfluid acquaintance named Patches, letting Pillboi know that there might be some ‘good info regarding Pillboi’s late mentor, the Professor’ to be had, but he ought to ask in person, as he didn’t want to leak it over the comms.

Landing on-planet, the group realised, however, that there was a bit of a problem: while the ship had been stripped of identifiers, Caitlin was wanted by the Ragni, Blanche had technically stolen the ship (though her employers weren’t off-planet), and Pillboi hadn’t been around to pay his local drug lord his fees. Hermes wasn’t in any sort of trouble, and so he opted to take Blanche with him to shop for disguises for the group. The two of them settled on three brightly coloured cat-kigurumi pajama sets, and poorly-printed glossy face masks for the humans, and a realistic human face mask, a la Mr. Clean, and a muscle-suit for Blanche. The perfect disguises.

Caitlin is horrified, and uncomfortably went out in her hot pink cat costume (but with added sunglasses). Pillboi opted to wear his as more of a… scarf accessory, and Blanche and Hermes went out loud and proud into ‘Pharmacy Street’ – the main off-colour hangout district for all kinds of cons, crooks, and dealers – Pillboi’s home. He wanted to pick up a few things, and meet Patches for that info that he had mentioned. Patches greeted him upon his arrival, and let him know that The Professor had potentially left behind a vestigial AI upload of his brain, and Pillboi may glean some information from his ‘copy’ regarding a new drug formula left behind by The Professor, that Pillboi can’t figure out.

Pillboi, planning on heading to his old lab anyway, brings the rest of the party with him to investigate. The lock is missing on arrival, and the entire place is a dishevelled mess of papers and appears to be torn apart. The Professor was never organised, but not this bad – someone else has been here. Rooting through the areas Pillboi knew about, he eventually finds a secret switch revealing a hidden room in the lab – containing a chair and what looks to be, upon Hermes’ inspection, a cobbled-together whole-brain emulator. They find a dataslab with what appears to be a mind on it – likely The Professor’s. The party disconnects the dataslab and the brain device, and loads it up onto a cart to take into the ship, and begins heading out of the lab…

The gentleman who unofficially runs Pharmacy Street calls himself ‘Medicine Man’. He’s basically a gang boss and Pillboi left Pharmacy Street not only because his mentor died, but also because Pillboi doesn’t want to deal with him. Medicine Man is, ironically, in service to the Ragni (but nobody knows about this), and as the party begins leaving, is seen strolling down the street, towards the group. Hurriedly rushing his companions inside, Pillboi uncomfortably confronts Medicine Man, who lets Pillboi know he has a debt to pay – two months ‘rent’ for the time he’s been away, and would like to invite him over for dinner tonight before Pillboi leaves permanently Sweating bullets- Pillboi agrees to dinner.

The group quickly return to the ship with The Professor’s mind upload (and machine to create copies – a nice way to backup themselves if they wanted to mess with it), and Pillboi and Blanche (as his plus one) go out to get ready for the dinner. Meanwhile, Caitlin and Hermes head over to Caitlin’s eviction-notice-filled apartment (which seems to have been broken into; nothing is missing, however) to collect some of the personal belongings she may have left behind from their drunken escape.

Pillboi and Blanche arrive at the drug lord’s ‘mansion’ and head inside past a few armed guards. Medicine Man knows about the Professor’s formula – and he wants to know what Pillboi knows. Pillboi refuses to admit to knowing any information, but the Medicine Man doesn’t believe him, and presses them to reveal info about the plant, the Lion’s Lily (we finally named it) that grows locally on the planet. Medicine Man forces Pillboi to agree to a deal – head to Terra Purr’ma, bring back the Lily, and he’ll let him go. One of Medicine Man’s cronies prepares to inject Pillboi with a tracking chip to ensure he doesn’t renege on the deal, and Blanche, not wanting this to happen, begins hacking up a hairball, which, of course (thanks to some very good rolls), is hacked directly into Medicine Man’s open throat, distracting the lackey to assist him with the Heimlich manoeuvre. Pillboi and Blanche make a run for it, dodging bullets left and right, and rush to the ship and have Blanche initiate a rush spike drill. A risky manoeuvre, but she pulls it off, and the four take off, heading into the nearby Thorunn system.

Hermes, while the crew was at dinner, set up The Professor’s mind copy so that it would be accessible through the ship’s computer. After debriefing each other on their escapades, the party booted it up, and Pillboi was face to face with a copy of his old mentor, from prior to his death in October of last year. The Professor (now integrated into their ship’s AI – fun!), is a little rattled and will need some time to organise his files, but lets Pillboi know about the extra ingredients for the special drug created via the formula – it involves a plant on Terra Purr’ma (which the party was already keen on looking for, the aforementioned Lion’s Lily), but also speciality ‘dust’ from Ias, in the Teus system. The stuff is near impossible to come by – the whole damn system it’s in is quarantined. It is freely traded on the world, and the planet’s denizens consider it ‘refuse’ from some genetic engineering project they’re up to, but bringing it elsewhere is usually an invitation to a long prison stay or worse. “Don’t do anything stupid carrying it, okay?” But if Pillboi can convert it with the plant matter, whatever gets made will be highly, highly valuable. Enough to set you for life. The party thinks about their next move and plans a course to pass through the system in a few jumps…

With that, the session draws to a close, the party with a more focused, linear goal in mind. We’ve moved away from the sandbox a little bit but these are all things the players’ requested to follow, so off we go! I’m really glad that we got to start digging into backstories more – Pillboi’s player said I played Medicine Man very well, and the whole group loved him (they’ve made a new enemy, hurrah) and, conveniently, the system they hopped to, Thorunn, contains a planet with a well-known Psionics academy on it, and Caitlin’s player has expressed interest in having Caitlin’s estranged grandmother be a tenured professor at the institute…

On Time

Speaking of my missed session last week, and combined with some other things I have been thinking about, I would like to talk about time. Session pacing, session scheduling, spot-light sharing, in-game calendars: the works. This is sort of my typical ‘patchwork’ style of writing, so it’s a little about a lot of things without any depth. Maybe I’ll move on to writing more interesting, complex, specific articles someday? Probably not. Enjoy this for what it is, instead:

First up, session pacing. I’ve heard, on multiple occasions, that I am a “god of well-paced sessions, I wish I could run games like you”, as well as simultaneously someone who said I “could use a lot of work, it feels like the characters don’t accomplish anything”. These comments come from multiple different players from different backgrounds, all in the same month-ish timespan. So, am I good at pacing or not? The answer, unsurprisingly, comes down to it depends on the table. Both yes and no. Nobody wants to hear this, but I genuinely don’t think there’s a science to it. Maybe an ‘art’ – people have tried, bloggers have written dozens of articles about it, and while there are definitely plenty of tips that you can (and should) follow, like “bring a man with a gun through the door” when things get slow, or alternating high-intensity situations with lower-intensity downtime scenarios, and these things will help you improve your ability to control pacing… your mileage will inevitably vary, no matter what you do. I feel like even if I mastered and put all these skills to work as intended by the authors and game designers, someone, somewhere, is going to play with me and tell me it sucks anyway. Someone will also tell me I am incredible. Perhaps even two people at the same table. Maybe even the same player. My best advice, for learning how to pace sessions, then, is to set up a situation where your table has the level of trust in place that the GM is able to ask for and receive genuine feedback, where they can start tailoring to the specific group and find out what works. This is the actual trick to pacing – whatever’s fun, let the fun parts happen. Get rid of the stuff your group finds boring. Even if the fun stuff isn’t full of meaningful choices, it’s okay to still have all your shopping trips play out if the table finds it fun. Earlier this week, in session four of my Stars Without Number campaign, I spent probably far more time on the dance competition than was necessary, and I could have resolved it in a single roll…. but it was fun!

Certainly, if you were re-publishing the game as it happened into a book, perhaps you would cut out a lot of that content to make it more fun for the readers. Or perhaps if you ran a stream for a live audience, you want to keep things exciting for the majority (that’s a whole different can of worms). But in our case, the only ‘readers’ that need to enjoy the game are the people at your table. After that – you can always consult the advice blogs for your specific situation, but on their own, in a vacuum, it won’t work. That’s the trouble with GMing, there are ~~almost~~ no wrong ways to do it. I’ve had a lot of personal struggles with doing lot of GM theory-crafting and then when I put it to the table it turns into a mess. That’s a whole other subject, but yeah. Relax. My advice is to just run the game how you think feels best in play, if you find yourself spending too much time on one thing and not enough on another, check in with your players, and then try using different skills to speed it up or to slow it down. You’re always relearning everything with every new table you put together.

Putting those tables together is a whole different beast, though. You’ve heard it countless times: the greatest enemy in tabletop games is real-life scheduling. Players get married and need to take a month off for the wedding, suddenly have kids and need to work around their bed times, call in sick and can’t make it one week, or even end up leaving the table permanently for all kinds of reasons. I’ve had my heart broken several times over by a Numenera game last year that just didn’t work out – people weren’t communicating, we had different ideas on how often to play – things had changed over the past three years. I was left frustrated and upset and I don’t think there’s anything that I could have done to make it better.

Honestly, the best thing I can say here is to state your commitments, find people who are open and honest about their scheduling, communicate often, keep the overall game relatively short (i.e. only 10 weeks versus expected three years), and run regardless of attendance (one on one sessions can still be fun!). Or run an Open Table for as long as you feel like it. There’s not much to say, except it’s frustrating. The long-term things, the multi-year epics… those only complete with luck, a lot of player turnover, or a lot of money. With a lot of vetting practices (maybe I’ll do another post on how I acquire players) and good communication abilities, you absolutely can get a group that plays together and stays together, though, so don’t give up!

All these different players you do manage to get into the same timeslot, though, have other problems: Returning to the ‘fun’ talk, what happens when one player loves shopping trips and another finds it incredibly boring? The easy answer is ‘play with people who all find the same things fun’ and there’s no problem, and there are definitely some aspects of gaming that you cannot compromise on, but the likelihood of actually finding people who all love the exact same things and can bring enough fresh perspective to make the narrative interesting is probably somewhere in the 0.000000000001% range. As much as I love telling people to kick truly uncooperative players, and screaming bankuei’s everlasting great advice that you should be meeting at the game, there are always going to be situations where you have to acquiesce to the other person’s wants. So, the solution is ‘sharing the spotlight’. Make sure, at the end of the day, that most people are having fun, and get as much of a share of the ‘spotlight’ on their fun parts as they want.

Notice how I didn’t say ‘equal’ share. I could almost post an image of that ‘standing-on-boxes’ equity picture; I won’t but it’s the same idea – make sure everybody is having fun the way they want. Usually, it’s that you need to make sure everyone, including the GM, has roughly the same amount of speaking time – however, there are exceptions, such as one of my SWN players who deeply prefers to ‘spectate’ and only have small portions of personal roleplay per session. I have talked to him about this on multiple occasions; talked to that table about this, and everybody is on board with the situation of him mostly listening and putting forward his opinion when it matters. It’s all down to your table and what works for everyone, and listening to your players and adjusting as you go.

I left a game of Burning Wheel recently for this exact issue: it wasn’t the Game Master’s fault, per se (though I think I would have appreciated a more compromising response to my feedback), but it definitely wasn’t the right fit for me. We typically spent multiple hours of session time on a single player, with the expectation that ‘eventually everyone will get a solo session’ of sorts. This didn’t sit right for me, not because it’s terrible game mastery, but because it wasn’t what I found fun. I didn’t want to essentially spectate on a podcast for three hours, and I also didn’t want to ever end up in the situation where I had to narrate my own PC for two hours straight. Perish the thought. I don’t like being the main character, and though I absolutely want good sections of focus – I require a balance, and that table just didn’t have that. I spoke about it and the GM’s decision was final – this is how we’re running it. Back to bankuei – they decided to play a specific “game – for this specific rpg, this specific campaign you’ll be playing, and this particular group of people” and either the expectations earlier had some crossed wires, or I agreed to it and decided it wasn’t what I wanted. I’m not sure, but they’re having fun, and that’s what matters.

So, however you finangle your spotlight to your group, the point is keeping an eye on the clock and making sure you’re actually meeting the expectations of everyone. This shouldn’t be just the GM’s job, but the majority of the responsibility does fall on them to keep an eye on things, and it can be very easy to lose track of time if you get caught up in something the GM personally finds fun (see: my dance competition – I made sure to do a scene swap midway through to give the other players something to do that wasn’t just playing a dance minigame). However this works for you – whether that’s setting actual timers, or just making sure you have a very visible clock in your direct view, doesn’t matter, but you do need to be mindful. That’s far more important than overall pacing – making sure everyone is getting their fair share of what they want out of the game.

On a final note, despite me personally being fine with what happened in my Burning Wheel situation, I do want to point out that generally this really should be a ‘per session’ or ‘per two sessions’ basis. No one should be left out of a game’s fun for an entire session – if such a situation were to need to occur, just run a solo session or smaller group for the players it matters for and maybe give players a short summary to read. Offer them the choice to listen in or not. As mentioned when complaining about scheduling – we only have so much time in our lives. We want to spend it on things that matter, and every three to four hours of gameplay should be fun for the entire table. That is, if a particular player hates combat, it’s okay to have an hour of combat they slog through – but if the whole session is going to be four hours of combat, maybe telling that player to skip that week is better than having them there and suffering. Or, you know, don’t make sessions that are going to be four hours of combat if you know one person hates it.

Time in games is wiggly. For every real-life week, an hour could pass in the game world. Or It could be four months of content (see pacing, earlier). I actually had this article in my drafts when Adventure Forecasts by PCD was published (great article, go read it) and felt I should also add in a note about it, so here it is (if a bit awkwardly placed, it still fits the theme of the post). I’m not a very talented OSR blogger in particular, so I don’t think I have many important personal opinions to say, but here are my opinions on the above:

A living game world is a lot of work. A game where everything you do is realistic and makes sense is a lot of work. Even just writing a calendar of events is a lot of work. I can barely put my own life’s calendar together. The dream of pre-planning all these potential events is something I both want to strive towards, think this article is 100% right in recommending, and something I know is ridiculous for the average layman GM try to achieve. Maybe a professional who only goes GMing as a full-time gig could have the time and resources to spend on it. I think using the technique of having pre-scheduled, missable events in smaller doses throughout the campaign to add verisimilitude, while also keeping ‘static’ events that happen whenever the players interact with them, is a good mix that will keep your mind sane. A GM’s time in real life is just as important as time in the game itself. Don’t go burning yourself out writing potential hooks for every non-player character’s birthday in the game, or countless planet’s worth of holidays. Only do this if you genuinely have fun writing such things.

Time is the only thing we can’t get back in our lives. Spend it on things that create fun.

Stars Without Number Campaign 1: Session II

Another week, another night in Las Vegas – err, I mean, the J’Ordain Casino… If any of my players are reading this, stop here, as I do kind of get into some potential future tangents in the post below, so spoilers abound! Don’t ruin it for yourself, okay? Other warnings for the general public include mentions of prostitution, drugs, and gambling.

Anyway, now that our group has gotten their feet wet, the game has opened up to full sandbox play! From here on out, I’m along for the ride, and am mostly just improvising based on hex keys and loose mini adventure ideas. I ran a few iterations of Sectors Without Number, added in the places the group had visited in areas they made sense, and then created a cute little mouseover hex map in Foundry. To finish it off, I did some drawing up of the three main factions – we have the Space Mafia (I need a better name), the Interstellar Influence Navy (the galaxy-wide ‘space police’), both of whom will remain on the hexes they’ve been placed on until interacted with, and the courier company that Blanche and Hermes used to work with (I’ll randomise their potential encounter location every session). There are also the space whales, which move around the hex map as the players do (I roll for them), and are mostly there just for fun. Rare that they actually manage to make it to a system – rarer still that the party will interact with them. But just knowing they exist fills me with joy, so I don’t mind if the two groups never meet.

I don’t own the rights to any of these little token images, so forgive me.

The session started with some housekeeping (they decided to name their ship the Joint Enterprise), picking their next destination (I didn’t even need to list off the other potential hexes, the players just really, really wanted to get shitfaced and gamble at the casino station), and then the weekly audio transmission log. These audio transmission logs will contain news bulletins, direct messages, etc., and happen every spike drive drill the group takes (so, first thing every session, roughly). Depending on who is staffing the communications area, they’ll also have access to their personal emails from their dataslabs/compads. Caitlin was manning the comms station today, and listened to two direct messages from Basil (“Hi. i’m going surgery few days. thanks support.” and “p.s. guys rescue is ok, paying for”) as well as a few ‘spam’ messages: from Geico insurance regarding their spike drive, some lottery winnings that the group definitely didn’t enter, and a reminder on student loans payments that Caitlin opted to skip through.

Funny thing, the Geico insurance notice is actually legitimate. In two more jumps, and after two more warning notices, their tier 1 spike drive will fail. If the group actually listens to the message, they’ll find out that they can get it swapped out for free, or a potential upgrade for 50% off. The group has enough money to pay for a replacement outright, so even if they continue to ignore the warning, they’ll survive – but it will put an awful dent in their funds. They may even potentially upgrade their drive before then, totally unaware of the discount offer… On the other hand, taking up the replacement offer comes with other problems: if you recall, the group swapped the ship’s identification in order to go off the radar, and is currently not recognisable by the courier company. But if the group takes up the insurance offer, the courier company it originally belonged to will get pinged, alerting them to perhaps something fishy going on – beyond just a potentially dead pilot and blasted ship!

But we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. After spending several days in metaspace, the crew arrives at the J’Ordain Casino, a buzzing space station locale of drinks, drugs, and sexual freedom. There are flight crews spelling out dazzling advertisements, laser beams, thick clouds of cigarette smoke flooding the halls, and a race course around the station for ships to make use of (more on that later). Prep-wise, I pulled a few gambling card-games-turned-dice-games from the internet and kept them on hand (blackjack and poker) and drafted up a little 3d6 slot machine mechanic in a few minutes so the group could do any of those if they liked. Pillboi and Blanche opted to play a few rounds of Poker – Blanche losing terribly and borrowing credits from Pillboi, who was trying to sell drugs on the sly to the rest of the tables. At the end of it all, the two headed off to the bar and came out 100 credits richer each (though how much of Blanche’s money was actually Pillboi’s is up for debate). Caitlin wanted to schmooze up some rich folk, and went straight to the bar area – grabbing the business card of a big beautiful drug-smoking woman named Clarice, who has been spearheading a longtime industrial project a few systems out creating a gigantic solar array. Caitlin convinced her to exchange contact information and gained a new potential big client for their future drug enterprise once they get their hands on the psychoactive plant in Terra Purr’ma. Caitlin also offered her body for sale, and spent a few hours with the woman (but unfortunately ended up breaking even after needing to pay for Clarice’s drycleaning due to a wine-spilling incident). Hermes, meanwhile, scoped out the place for some money-making opportunities… he had worked on the slot machines before, and knew how they worked, but preferred to try counting cards at the blackjack table (I improvised how that worked and I’m not sure I loved how I ran it, so I’ll probably revisit the idea later). The staff got suspicious after a while but not enough to want to do anything about it, and he slunk off to the bar after a while to meet Caitlin and the rest.

With the four of them enjoying some drinks alone in Clarice’s private booth (she left to take a call), an announcement played over the casino’s intercom system: the betting counter was now open for bets on the next ship race starting in a few hours. This race is interesting- the casino is hosting a few well-renowned ‘Formula 68’ racing pilots for the week, and one particular pilot, Pelkan Wales, is an almost guaranteed win (the house is expecting to pay out a fair amount of cash on this, but it’s worth it for the advertising and sponsorship money).

The four hatch a plan – they immediately want to rig the race, and manage to grab some pit uniforms for Hermes and Blanche to head down and mess with the ships. They don’t think they can make it so one person wins, but they do think that they can spread out their bets and just prevent Wales from winning. The first uniform they drugged a nearby employee and stole his outfit. For Blanche, they tried to grab a very sketchy, nervous catfolk’s uniform the same way but failed in trying to knock him out with a frying pan, and he slunk off (strangely, not alerting security of the incident…), but ended up just sneaking into the staff lockers to grab a set. The two of them (mostly) get away without suspicion while doing this, and thanks to some incredible rolls down at the shipyard, get to not only call attention to some much-needed repairs on one of the “worst drivers in the circuit” (Gioli Brusso)’s ship, but also sabotage Pelkan’s in such a way that he struggles to handle it. The race is on – Pelkan falls behind, and (I did roll for this), the worst driver in the circuit (thanks in part to the repairs on his ship), pulls ahead for the win with 13:1 odds, netting the party a 23000 credit profit on their bets (they spread them out across the other drivers). The group quickly decides to cut and run, just in case, and take off in their ship, ending the session.

Overall, the session was fine- a bit of a slow pace today, but most folks were tired and I honestly had a lot of fun regardless! I loved the characters I came up with (the racers, the pit staff, Clarice – all improvised but all have clear motivations and backgrounds). Though, I am never sure how actually-playing-gambling-games-with-dice feels during a session, but everyone seemed to like these ones fine so I think it worked out. I do think I ought to flesh out the factions a lot more by next session – I got away with it this time as they haven’t been interacted with yet, but I’ll need to get a clear grasp on their galactic game plan to help shepherd the players into potential meaningful antagonists and allies. I also fear that I’m not going to be able to obey the “law of conservation of NPCs”, so I’ll need to keep careful track of the names this session and figure out how I can incorporate them later.

So, what’s on the menu for next week? Well, Wales was suspected of driving under the influence due to the poor handling of his ship during the race – the next audio transmission logs will contain a few news stories about his ongoing DUI investigation and scandal (he actually was under the influence of both drugs and alcohol from the casino). This doesn’t directly impact the party, per see, but I think it may open up some opportunities for their drug dealing operation in yet-unknown ways. I’ll leave it to them to think about it. Also, that sketchy catfolk who didn’t alert security of the woman who literally tried to knock him out with a frying pan (and then played it off as a joke)? Well… who knows what happened with that, but during the chaos of the surprise win upset, the casino happened to be robbed, and over ten million credits are missing from their internal digital banking system. There’s a bounty out for those that have any information regarding the incident…

Actually, why don’t I like D&D5e?

Somewhat related to the last post, Leaving D&D5e, I should probably specify why I don’t like the system. I hadn’t actually grokked the reality of my feelings until earlier this morning, where I managed to write something in a conversation that I think was incredibly thoughtful and truly struck a chord as to answering why I don’t like the system, beyond a simple “it doesn’t do what I want out of a game” or “the rules are broken”, and even reflects on why I don’t like FATE Core, my problems with my home system of Numenera, and why my review of Ryuutama was so lukewarm!

Someone asked, a bit tongue-in-cheek, while we were discussing alternative systems, well “which [system] is the objective best”? The answer, of course, is that there is no such thing, and my friend replied as such – “there’s no objectively best system because they all answer different questions”. Therefore, then… The problems with systems come in when they fail to answer the questions they say they want to answer. This is where you get gripes with D&D5e, Shadowrun, etc. – most of my disliked systems are not disliked for their mechanics specifically, but because the mechanics and goals of the system seem to have failed to connect. Ryuutama had a weird amount of lethality to it for something that was thematically Ghilbi-esque, Numenera‘s combat and initiative system makes no sense for the logic-based rulings over rules guidelines, and FATE Core (review incoming)’s problem is that none of the mechanics actually work together to create something cohesive that answers goals. You hear time and time again from people who have played Shadowrun that they “love Shadowrun, hate the system” because the mechanics are just not conducive to the theme.

Recently I played Scum & Villainy, a “FitD” system that probably could merit its own review post, but I’ll just bust a quick one out here: I loved it. It did exactly what it was meant to do and the mechanics and the gameplay went perfectly hand in hand with the theme of the game we were playing (‘idiot assholes do shady jobs in space’). But I actually do not often care for PbtA-built systems, which is where FitD was born out of – but I liked this because it worked well. I love Numenera and nearly loathe Cypher because the system caters to Numenera‘s settings and goals and disconnecting the cyphers from that setting makes Cypher, well, not as impactful. It doesn’t feel good as a universal system.

What questions is D&D5e trying to answer? What are the goals of the system? One could say that it is in the name, ‘Dungeons’ and ‘Dragons’, but plenty of other bloggers have gone into the problems of the game no longer teaching people how to play or run dungeons, and how the mechanics of attrition seem to be fading away in favour of more narrative approaches. I think in order to become a better system in future iterations, the designers really need to lean into that more and change the rules to accomplish the goals that the designers actually want to achieve. But, they probably won’t, because D&D5e makes a lot of money as is… and that is why I think people should get away from 5e, not because it’s just, completely bad, or wrong, but because it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to be doing, and you have so many options that actually do a) what “D&D” is supposed to be and/or b) what you want to do in a game.

Leaving D&D5e

Woof, this title’s a bit of a misnomer, but it gets the idea across. This is a bit of a spicy one. As an early caveat, if you like D&D5e, keep playing it, and don’t tell me why it’s great. This blog post isn’t for you.

The first game system I ever played was Numenera, and I played it for about 2 years before moving on to trying other systems. I’d call myself fortunate, in a way, that my introduction to the hobby wasn’t Dungeons & Dragons, but for the most part, a lot of people’s first game system is going to be Dungeons and Dragons 5e (the current edition as of this writing). Dungeons & Dragons is arguably the very first TTRPG series to come out of wargames, and it makes sense why it has continued to be a mainstay in the tabletop community – it has clout. More recently, Podcasts and shows like Critical Role or Stranger Things have really brought a lot of new people to the hobby, and if you look on any ‘Looking for Group’ style community, such as on roll20, a huge majority of the people looking for games are going to be playing or running D&D 5e.

And it makes sense – D&D was always fairly easy to grok the premise of: everybody knows now what ‘medieval fantasy’ is. You have dragons, heroes, elves, wizards and all that stuff – you don’t need to explain to your grandma what a dragon is. She knows. While there is a lot of different worldbuilding in 5e with the Forgotten Realms setting, a lot of it is still on that Lord of the Rings-esque premise, and it’s easy to know what’s going on. Genres like sci-fi are also easy to grok, but it’s still a “nerdy” niche that a lot of people are going to be unfamiliar with past a certain point. Medieval fantasy is easy. Numenera combines the two into something truly strange – and getting people into understanding the setting takes effort, an effort a lot of people aren’t necessarily going to want to look into before starting a game – sure, (though I will say it wasn’t required of me in my introduction).

However, the mechanical rules of the game are a different beast. If people say that D&D5e is “easy to pick up and learn”, they may be referring to the above setting grok, but the game itself is hard to figure out. It’s not beginner-friendly. The game has baggage, rules that don’t make sense, misprints, overcomplicated sections that everyone has trouble with (grappling, action economy), and when someone comes to me and says “5e is great, it’s so easy to get new people to play it” I think those people are wrong. And normally, I’d say to each their own, but tabletop games are such a wonderful hobby, and if someone tries running D&D as a new Dungeon Master, and they find it hard, they’re going to think that any other game system is just as difficult to get into, and they’ll either quit the hobby altogether, or continue to try and desperately pull the things they want out of the hobby out of an unsuitable system for their needs and spend their days feeling frustrated.

D&D5e is popular for a reason. If you don’t know anyone else interested in TTRPGs, it’s a great way to find new players and friends to play with. I’ve run it for an Open Table before just because I wanted that cast of rotating weekly players (though now I might run Moldvay’s D&d instead). But it’s not my go-to for tabletop gaming, and I don’t think it’s helpful to encourage everyone to start with D&D 5e, or to tell them that it’s the ‘easiest to get into’, because it sets up that new GM for failure if they meet any sort of resistance (which in D&D 5e’s case, could be very often). There are so many different game systems out there that are so easy to get into – literally you can pick up and finish Honey Heist as if it were a board game in less than an hour or two, and get the idea of what a tabletop game is supposed to feel like. It sets the wrong kind of precedent for the TTRPG hobby as a whole, that tabletop games are a lot of work and heavy-duty commitment; so many games don’t have near as many rules as D&D 5e does or require that 4-hour-one-a-week-for-two-years commitment.

I hear time and time again from people who love D&D5e who say that trying a new system sounds hard. They say that it’s hard because they look back at all the work they’ve put into learning to play 5e (or 4e, or 3.5e, even) and think they have to put all that work in again. It’s not fair to say ‘most people don’t have the time to invest in a new system’ because often the systems being recommended actually have a very low cost of investment to start. To quote a friend, “there are some vicious cycles going on in this space too, where the thing is popular, so people play it, and because people play it, it becomes popular” and I think that discouraging anyone, especially yourself, from trying other systems under the premise that it’s ‘too much work’, or that D&D’s popularity and rapport are more important than anything mechanical, doesn’t help break that cycle, is setting a poor standard with D&D 5e, and it doesn’t help the hobby grow.

Old School D&D & Looking For Group

Okay, I couldn’t come up with a good title for this, so that’s what you get.

A bit of context; recently (late last November), a campaign I’d been in for the last three years finally broke down to communication issues. I left, mourned, and thought about what I was going to do next.

I’d never actually done the whole ‘Looking for Group’ thing before with internet strangers – my real-life Monday campaign had me initially invited to by a coworker, and the games I began running online, I initially pulled players from friends, close-knit club groups, and friends of those friends. I’ve played with ‘strangers’ online – but all those times it was finding them by accident through mutual communities like Discord. There was never a truly anonymous recruitment process. I’ve never really been through the whole ‘application & interviews’ ring as a player.

So I’ve been hitting up a few ads and throwing myself out there to mixed success – a couple interviews here, a few non-responses there, and I think I’ve found a couple personable potential spaces where something really nice and new will start. Perhaps I’ll even get to play Burning Wheel. But I’m not here to talk about those. I’m here to talk about this:

He re-worded this every other day or so.

First thing’s first: I like Old School Essentials. OSR games are my jam. But I have so many questions – first, how old is this guy? He must have shared a urinal with Gygax himself. The “This is real D&D” is a Schrodinger’s problem: is this guy an old elitist or is he just offering a very specific experience (one I’d love to have)? My spouse says I should play with people in my age bracket. He’s probably right. But this could be a unique opportunity! Against my better judgement, knowing I can leave at any time, and not wanting to make assumptions of a person I’d never met, I decided to message him. The internet is all anonymous, after all. I sent him a bit of a long-winded request, asking to chat, maybe he could give some more information? He says nothing and responds with a Discord invite:

Sweat beads on my brow as I click join. I steel myself. This is the proverbial lion’s den. No session 0. No expectations. No vetting, no interviews. Why does he trust me? Who am I? Where am I? Time will tell.

I wait a while, expecting a greeting, but none came. Before introducing myself, I decide to scroll up and see what the chat is like. There’s only one channel – the default Discord’s ‘#general’ and all I see are confirmations of time, regretfully missing a session or two, a few ‘Happy Holidays’ over the last Winter, and weekly Zoom invitations.

So, this DM is bringing people into a Discord, inviting them to his hosted Foundry game, and then sending Zoom invitations for voice and video. Why Zoom? Discord and Foundry both have integrated video and voice calling. Who is this man, really?

I’ll soon find out. The very next day I’m set to join in the session with another new player. There is no information given other than the time. I show up slightly embarrassed on being a bit late (had a call to attend) and roll my character as per his instructions. It’s actually kind of incredible – he talks about how he doesn’t use the fancy Foundry system designed for and instead had made his own system entirely from scratch. I respect it. Things feel both smooth and rustic at the same time. We don’t introduce ourselves over voice (perhaps because of my ten-minute lateness) and we immediately start playing the game.

There was a chuckle when I rolled my stats. This Fighter won’t last long.

It was…. fantastic?

I won’t get too into the details of the session, it was very standard fare. You begin in a tavern. Puzzles. A crypt. Arguments on ten-foot poles. We put on a cursed ring. A wizard, a thief, a fighter. But that’s exactly why it was so fantastic; I truly felt transported back into 1980s-90s Dungeons & Dragons. Despite the technology running it for us over the internet, the lack of physical character sheets… everything about the game really felt like how I’d seen it and described it being played back in the day. I felt as though I was actually fulfilling a sense of nostalgia (though I had been far too young to have played back then). There was definitely a sort of magic to it. I wouldn’t compare it to any other game – I probably don’t recommend this to anyone looking for something that isn’t “D&D in the late 90s like how I played as a wee lad”. But the charm of it and the transparency of the DM in what we did (he was “adversarial”, but he was also a good teacher, walking us through traps) overall felt good. He was a great DM – and weirdly, one of the best voice actors I’ve ever heard in my life.

I’ve been envious of the old GMs and DMs. Folks with decades of experience under their belt – going through the systems over the years and watching the hobby evolving. They got to be there for the original tropes, they’re able to build off of that. I’m remarkably green to the whole thing despite my enthusiasm. Being there made me kind of feel like I was able to have some of that. While I’m still cautious (he’s old, I’m young and queer – we certainly didn’t give our pronouns) – I have a lot to learn from this guy.

I’m going back next week.

Hello World!

…or something like that. At any rate, I figure I’m officially cool enough to start a blog on this blessed first day of the 29th year of my life. Welcome to some sort of critter’s thoughts on tabletop and the like – maybe I’ll post some reviews of games I’ve played, or what I’m working on – who knows! Does anybody care? Maybe, maybe not, but I’d like to document it for my own posterity. My spouse says I ought to post about our cat, Nemo, instead, so perhaps he’ll show up later.

For now, I ought to just introduce myself, a little? I am Beef (no, not my real name) and I like running tabletop games. I have been leaning into OSR (“old school renaissance”) games of late, and while I don’t necessarily focus too much on dungeon crawls and lethal combat, I appreciate the down-to-earth and logic-focused ethos that the systems embody. Games I prefer to run tend to be focused on character morality, backstory elements and relationships, usually with my players creating the central narrative thread out of their actions rather than my whims as a writer. I do have a tendency to cut corners a bit too much with that in mind, however. I definitely think I’m more of a “tabletop” hobbyist than a “d&d” hobbyist (in fact, I rarely run D&D 5e) – I playtest a new system every two weeks with my dedicated group of GM colleagues on Wednesdays, play as the incompetent – but well-meaning, noble seafaring pirate Alfonse Belle on Sundays (7th Sea 1e), had spent the last three years playing a drunken washed-up entertainer in Numenera on Monday evenings., and am starting up a curious expedition into space with Stars Without Number on Thursdays this month that I’ll probably be talking about the most.

See you all soon with… several upcoming already-drafted posts!