Diceology Podcast

Twilight 2000 RPG - Battle for the still finale!

After 3.5 sessions of some intense combat, the players have won back their alcohol still but at a high price!

Legacy: Life Among the Ruins

Sessions 0 and 1. The All Moons festival is celebrated at the Tsukumogami landfill - and some guests disguised as Tsukumogami try to steal Amuro, a mecha head and the greatest hero of the last war.

Cy_borg RPG

Session .5 In New Old Fremont, a haven of sorts in the AI wars, A burnt-out hacker/droid is threatened with getting salvaged if it can't pay its debts.

Apocalypse World: Burned Over - L.E.O

Playing Low Earth Orbit with Judd on Twitch.tv/actualplay. Bastet, an angry Operator, and the unstoppable Lup, the Weaponized. A trifling old grudge sends a Kill Team to a teahouse.

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Prepping or Writing

* Atma for future cons

* Five Parsecs from Home using 40K Kill Team models and lore. 👀

* Villians & Vigilantes RPG 1e.

* #Dungeon23

Consuming

* Dumas The Three Musketeers - for all the obvious reasons.

* JSA #1- What Happened to the JSA?

* Batman Inc.

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My guests, Jason Lutes and Paul Beakley, and I get lost in the West Marches game style. Jason is currently running his second West Marches campaign using Freebooters on the Frontier and Arden Vul as the setting.  I’m currently playing in Jason’s Arden Vul game. Valentine Berrygrove is my halfing wizard character.

I get an incredible amount of joy from running West Marches campaigns, and geeking out with both Jason and Paul on the subject was good stuff.

I am very, very sorry for some of the audio. I recorded using a new audio platform and discovered issues with Paul's audio in the recording that didn't appear live. Hopefully, my audio sorcery is potent!

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Easily the week of the West Marches. Starting with my halfling wizard’s Arden Vul adventure to helping my local gamers launch their own IRL West Marches games. It’s got me thinking about other non-fantasy applications.

On the Gauntlet, we’ve wrapped up a three-session run of Fading Suns with Lowell Francis at the helm. He also hosted a Zoom talk about Legacy 2E: Life among the Ruins. Best practices, some thoughts around running the game, hacking the game. Pretty much talked me into running Legacy again on The Gauntlet using some of these new insights. Also wrapped up Rebels of the Outlaw Wastes with Micael Addison of Nerdy Pup Games. Rebels of the Outlaw Wastes has players exploring a hyper-saturated dystopian world that's being controlled by a tyrannical collective of powers.

And the usual suspects - Twilight 2000, Cortex work on Lifted: Indomitable.

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Fading Suns

Fading Suns on The Gauntlet. Lowell Francis trying out the system, and you can tell he’s down his prep. I’m playing an Ur-Ukar witch with TK-like abilities. We’ve taken up a mission from a noble to be his escort and eyes and ears in a hostile system. Fading Suns has pulled at me for some years now; I’m hoping to jump-start my future runs of it by playing it first. At its core, it is a Skill + ability roll under system. This was our session one, and we got a small, easy skirmish under our belt so far.

Into the Odd

In Dragonslayers, using Into the Odd, I play a reluctant tailor pressed into military service against the dragon empire. The dragons have won, and we're left in the aftermath of many battles. This was mostly session zero, making characters and setting up things. Our first act next session is to free our captured griffin riders and griffins!!

Judd also runs games out on StartPlaying.games, and I paid to play his Spelljammer + Into the odd game: Rock of Braal. (I’ll have more to say very soon about paying to play and GM-for-hire) I played a warden, one of two survivors off a gith vessel. The other was an Illithid captive. We both took on a bounty from a ghost pirate to recover his stolen goods. Into the Odd is a great system for getting folks in fast and keeping them hooked through the session. I forget I much I LOVE combat mechanics where there is a free & clear declaration step, followed by the dice then reading the outcomes!

Rebels of the Outlaw Wastes - Session 01

Centered in the apocalypse of Florida, I play an ex-Imagineer, (ex-jackboot in Outlaw parlance) trying to escape my former employer. With the help of an Abe Lincoln animatronic, an Alligator-Man hybrid, and a gothic biker with electricity powers. We flee into the swamp -bogs of Florida chased by Imagineer security on hoverboards!

Big thanks to Michael Addison of Nerdy Pup Games for running his new game on Actual Play!

Champions Now - Lifted.

The KC Defenders get stomped by Protheseus agents during a simple recon of the downtown train yard. The rail house was, in fact, not abandoned or empty. I still get a kick out of agents as hazard rules in Champions Now, especially when player characters try to ignore the agents!

Sci-fi West Marches

Reading the Gateway saga. Looking to use the premise of an abandoned alien space station and its network of ships and unknown routes as a column in a Sci-Fi West Marches game. Currently hacking BX via OSE to get the play experience I want.

Prepping Remember Tomorrow

Another Gregor Hutton jam that holds up great n these modern times. It’s a cyberpunk RPG, GM-less, but best with a facilitator. You play troupe-style Gibsonesque characters at odds with various factions.

What did you play last week?

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The last couple of weeks has been a lot of fits and starts for some of my games. I've been playing Trophy gold with Judd on some Friday mornings. I hope to get back on track once we’re back in the school groove here at home. Also in fits and starts is Glorantha using Mythras. My friend Dave has been running, teaching, and lecturing these sessions on Tuesday evenings. We’re three sessions in and have made our way to Pavis and the big rubble. We have been ambushed by rock lizards, rebuffed by the cowardly soldiers from the Real city, and we've defeated the likes of the Scorpion men in the caves underneath a section of the big rubble. I've also been playing Masks on some Sundays. I'm playing a character named Ring, using the doomed playbook. He's hiding in a simulacrum of reality from hostile council members from his world.

Twilight 2000 Saturday mornings is still hot! We’ve got a strong grasp of the sandbox procedures and game rules. I need to incorporate the player’s big dreams and moral codes more.

I’ve tweeted about my kid running D&D 5E for his friends and his anxiety about running games like “Dad does it.” He's been watching the games, I've run online, we've gone to conventions, pre-pandemic, and recently here locally. I said: No, man, all you have to do with your friends is just have fun, Whatever that looks like. If that means you guys sit around, talk about the world and make characters for three or four sessions. And that's fun. Do that.

“All you have to do with your friends is just have fun.”

In our Sunday, Actual Play stream, I'm running A|State, and we've got three sessions in the troublemakers have broken a piece between warring factions, they ferreted out an agent provocateur, and they're still uncovering secrets. Our every other Sunday game will begin playing Rebels of the Outlaw Wastes with Michael Addison from Nerdy Pup Games.

The Gauntlet community open gaming is at the end of September. I believe you can still submit games but certainly come on out. It's free. Come on out and play some games with us. And you can catch me at RinCon in Tucson, Arizona early September. I'll at least be running Twilight 2000. Not sure what else yet!

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I jump into the lake of Glorantha and Mythras! Rasta son of Ros and Terargh the Shieldless (my character!) have made their way to Pavis, to the Big rubble. After a little sightseeing of the city, they venture into the rub - as it is known. They chat with a farmer and then get ambushed by rock lizards as they move thru the ruins heading south. This was my first play in the world of Glorantha, and having an experienced guide running the game makes it all go down easier!

A|State - We're doing this! We got session zero in the books. We have an Activist, Dinginsmith, and Lostfinder. The Barge district has just experienced the enigmatic withdrawal of the Three Canals Authority from the district, now the Daylight syndicate and the Softwalkers, and the Barge council scramble for control of the power vacuum.

Horizon Zero Dawn BG - Max and I have been running through hunts in this semi-coop board game. It's a Max game-pick and he's digging the card play and the movement mechanics of the game. It's been fun, a quickstart would have been nice, but YouTube, right?!

I’ve returned to BX D&D. I’m running a local IRL west marches-styled game called The 99 Scrolls. There are only 99 spells in the world. Many of them are unique, owned only by one sorcerer. I'm running with some lines from the Dying Earth series where spells are energy entities and in this post-apocalypse fantasy world, there are a limited number of spells. It’s a work in progress - but it’s been fun so far. Spellcasters start the game between 3rd and 5th level, non-casters 1-3.

Oh...and I'm running a Kickstarter for my people with powers game called Lifted Vol1. It's primed by Cortex. Come check it out, we’re close to funding but I could use all the shares, and pledges I can get!

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My guest for this episode of Last Week in Gaming is Judd Karlman host of the Daydreaming about Dragons podcast. He is a gamer I admire for his style of GMing and asking players questions. He has the uncanny ability for generating gameable premises. He is the author of the Dictionary of Mu, a favorite sword and sorcery setting of mine. He's the host of the Daydreaming About Dragons podcast and my current Friday morning GM for Trophy Gold.

We talk about some of the games he’s currently running like Trophy Gold, Worlds of Dungeons, and Dungeons & Dragons 5E. I’m playing in the Trophy Gold game on Friday mornings and it’s unnerving! The manner the mundane and the strange come together in a Judd session is fantastic. I met Judd, IIRC, 100 years ago in New York at a Burning Wheel convention. I missed his session where folks played adventures who just slew a dragon and have to manage the aftermath of the Dragon’s treasure, other treasure seekers and 99 other dragon-killing problems! I did get to play a b*****d noble character in a more gritty-intrigue setting in a later session. We’ve been friends ever since.

In true RPG nerd conversation, we end up all over the place from our Twitch.tv/ActualPlay games like Hutt Cartel | Cartel RPG to designing game artifacts using  Canva. You can catch up with Judd on his blog: githyankidiaspora.com or podcast: https://anchor.fm/daydreaming-about-dragons.

Straight Outta Kalisz Saturdays

We are 17+ sessions strong. Being down our scout player we did some base upkeeping chores, and trading with the village to the east. Lots of leads were discovered via radio scanning and during watches. I am still fascinated by how inspiring the 52 deck of encounters can be.

Barbarians of Lemuria

Tues have been cursed for us lately, but we’re back on track…I think! Corvinius the sky-pilot navigates their newly stolen sky-ship toward the Tower of the Moon, ruins where pirates, outcasts, and the like have a haven. Only there’s smoke and wrecks of other sky-ships about the tower. We spend the session exploring the ruins, saving trapped survivors, and discovering necrophages! We leave Corvinous, Crassus the merc, and the black-speech sorcerer Nur-Yunna on a cliffhanger - an encounter with a Necropede!

Ruins of Symbaroum

Just got this beautiful set in this week and am devouring the contents. Symbaroum is a great setting and game on its own. Ruins of Symbaroum is a 5E conversion and it’s done well, new classes, races, and new systems! I will be running this soon! The pull for me is this great, ancient, dark forest with an older, darker secret. There are elves that protect it from trespassers…treasure hunters. Many of the folks in the area are refugees, exiles, and outcasts. You can play goblins, ogres, or a changeling even! OG Symbaroum has a nice Neo OSR feel to its rules and now there is a 5E version, bravo Free League!!

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Join the Mad Jay Hustle!

You can find the full discussion on Patreon/MadJayZero.

I’ve recorded this conversation with Geoff and Neil from my Twilight: 2000 Saturday morning game. This group, this time slot, and the game are a magical thing for me right now, and I suspect for the four players as well. I wanted to get their thoughts and feels 10 sessions in about the game, the group, and whatever else comes up.

Content warning: Twilight: 2000 is a survival sandbox game set in war-torn Poland in the 2000s. There are parallels with the current invasion of Ukraine and we talk about the early stage of the war in Ukraine.

We’re using Free League’s setup for Foundry VTT and it’s been incredibly useful. ICYMI check out my post The Promise of VTTs.

BIG shout out to The Gauntlet and their Open Gaming program. This game grew out of a one-shot I ran for an Open Gaming weekend hosted by the Gauntlet.

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Here’s a summary rundown of my games last week.

I started a run on Mothership with Judd. I'm playing a character inspired by Fox Mulder. The pitch: Two scientists investigate the disappearance of their professor and the crew of a science vessel. I’m digging the new post-Kickstarter materials that have been rolling out for this game. Character creation feels especially tighter, it had me groaning about options —that’s a good thing! 

Twilight: 2000:  The discovery of a dead soldier stashed in the woods and a convoy heading toward Barnes's occupied Polish town,  sends Bard and Justin off to extract Tracy and Janush. They decide to confront the polish spook, Phil before sneaking out of the encampment and back to their base in the woods.

Here’s some politics in your games. If you don't know, Twilight: 2000 pre-supposes a World War Three that occurred in 2000. It plays with that timeline and kicks off that war in that space. In the game space, it is Poland that is the middle of all things, and it's got a lot of parallels with what's happening in Ukraine today. I’m not your dad, but sometimes IRL things bleed into our gamespace and you’ve got to make some decisions. I’m a veteran of the Gulf Wars and I’m talking up my Twilight: 2000 sessions. I am not tone deaf, I feel for the Ukrainian people, I hope they find a resolution and peace, quickly.

Legacy 2E: Gale and  Manta-ray kill each other in the Endless city over control of the "Hand"  artifact. Gale's death move sends both players to an eternal hellscape. The artifact is lost to the Endless City. And the Third age begins. This PBTA game has been a giant lesson in being the reactive GM and honest GM prep.

These morning games have a nice energy to them. I’m excited to show up, catch up and then dive into where we left off. I feel like I’m getting away with something! We’re approaching the last two sessions of Legacy 2E. I am already thinking about what game to run in that Sunday morning spot come April. Suggestions?

Wrath & Glory: Exotic weapons have been turning up in skirmishes on Gideon Prime. Tasked with investigating the origins of these weapons our favorite Tech-Priest follows a trail that leads him to the Spacehulk - Veritagous. Max and I return to the latest version of Wrath and Glory. I’m using a point crawl map to handle exploring the vast space hulk that has emerged from the warp. We’re going very analog with this game, breaking out minis, chips, dice, mats..all the physical things!

Playing Elden Ring - dying, wonder, dying, exploring, and dying.

Prepping Barbarians of Lemuria: Treachery at Axos Mountains. We have a fully leaned-in sorcerer, a sky-ship pilot, and an amnesiac mercenary being pursued into the Axos Mountains where they hope to find a haven of outcasts to go to ground at. Foundry VTT has a French module we’re navigating for play. The code is opensource so I’m making translations where I can.

Improv for Gamers 2e will be on Gamefound by Evil Hat. I've got a piece in there as well as a cornucopia of amazing folks, check it out.

And GauntletCon Open Gaming end of March. C'mon out and play!!

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Welcome to the 10 degrees morning version. It's cold outside baby! I’ve been running a Tuesday night WhiteHack game. In that last session, we go into the bottle city for the first time using a passage through a crypt. I used a zine by Bloodthorn press called Dungeons and Dilemmas to build out the crypt section. I've built Dungeons, plenty of Dungeons, plenty of crypts, and tombs before in the past. I wanted to do something a little bit different. All I knew was there were giants buried in the tomb and it was a tomb or crypt built by giants. But Dungeons and Dilemmas walks you through a few thinking exercises, some prompts, some lists. And you end up with a kind of a situation over time that lays out the status quo of that Location that you're building. I would use Dungeons and dilemmas again, going forward. It does a great job of adding character and giving you elements to riff off of.

We're about five sessions in our Whitehack series and it's time to have that talk…right? Do we continue playing another three, four sessions? Do we call it? Did we have enough? I would say sitting here right now. I feel like the folks I'm playing with and myself, we're bringing the experience, the magic, and not the game. We're all on the same page about the tone and the environment we're playing in and everybody's bringing their ‘A-game’. I don't think that Whitehack is responsible for that. I'll see what these folks say, but for me, I don't know that we couldn't have had this experience using something else.

Twilight: 2000 — Straight out of Kalisz Saturday mornings.

This is still my current favorite game. It's like old-school Saturday morning cartoons. I get that excitement when I wake up and hop online! We're 10 sessions in and we moved into the beginnings of base building. I've got a big post up on play fearless covering the lase session and sandbox gaming. Twilight 2000 has excellent tools for sandbox play. The generator tools made a big impact on our session. Our game is moved into a different space. Things have gotten a kind of serious, a little bit real, and the players more invested. The situation on the table has a real possibility of losing two characters.

Legacy 2E, Life among the ruins

I believe we are four sessions into this series. A full table of four players, four families, the playbooks all over the place. But the game isn't bonkers or zany. That's always, my fear with Legacy is you've got so many different families across tones and genres without some conversation you could end up with something really bonkers. I think we're a session out from turning the first age. The big threat is a band of Future-time entities making a beachhead in the Lost City. The online virtual dice roller escalated a simple threat into something epic!

I'm building out my first Foundry VTT module, using legacy with the permission of the UFO Press folks. So my hope is to once I get it built and let those folks review it and then release it to everybody out there in the world.

On Twitch.tv/actualplay

We've roped Plus One Forward’s Rich Rogers into running Bounty of the Week on Thursday nights. It’s been fantastic. Our last bounty was to capture a bad Gungan. What's worse than a bad Gungan? Zombie Gungans!! Bounty of the Week is a hack based on Michael Sands Monster of the Week and skinned for Star Wars.

So also for Actual Play Judd Karlman of Daydreaming about Dragons, is running Godbound: The Northern death Pantheon. I'm playing the Castilian of tombs, a buzzard-headed God of death. I think we're all aspects of death. Death is the ‘word’ or power we all share for free. All the gods have been asleep for some time. I watched over them during this slumber and suddenly we've been awakened. That was our first session. And you can catch that on Twitch.tv/actualplay.

For the Emperor!

Max and I are returning to the revised version of Wrath and Glory by Cubicle 7. We're going to update his tech priest. He's got some ideas about the starting situation around investigating a skirmish involving humans with some Xeno tech. We will eventually end up visiting a space hulk.

That's my week in gaming. Tell me what you're playing, what you got on your table. How are you staying warm this winter?

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