Epic Adventure

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Latest news from around the world of table top roleplaying. On this episode, Mike and I talk WOTC and AI Art.

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I love historical roleplaying games.

Ok, maybe not straight up historical games, but I love games that take place in a world not too different from our own. I like to be able to use real pictures, real maps, real places, and in some instances real people to flesh out my games.

My fantasy games tend to be low magic with the Vandals facing the Romans. I love Call of Cthulhu for its basis on our own world. Sci-fi games just build on tech we have now.

And then there is age of sail. I love that period in time where swords and pistols share space. Where man has conquered the vast ocean and cultures collide. Where piracy is at its height.

That was running through my mind as I strolled the convention floor at Origins last year. I was looking for a pirate game, one that was more historically based then some of the fantastical stuff I was seeing. That’s when I stumbled upon it.

Pirate Borg. A pirate game based in the Caribbean, but taking all of the crazy horror elements of Mork Borg. It had a quick and easy game system, naval combat rules, and some really cool artwork. I picked up a copy and wasn’t disappointed.

Limithron is the company that created Pirate Borg and Luke Stratton is the man behind Limithron.

Luke has a fascinating background, from musician to event technician to artist and game designer he has brought that diverse background into Limithron and the results are truly fantastic. I had the pleasure of spending some time talking to Luke about Pirates, Pirate Borg, AI art, and his upcoming releases.

https://www.limithron.com/

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Welcome to Epic Adventure’s You Heard it Here Last.

We find ourselves talking about gaming news before we record the podcast. Who did what, Who is making what, who screwed what up, so we decided to start recording these little news discussions and sprinkling them in with our regular episodes.

So here we go, just chatting about gaming news that caught our attention. 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/gamemaker-accuses-netflix-stealing-ideas-rebel-moon-franchise-1235603686/

https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/pathfinder-humble-bundle-offers-exciting-dd-alternative-for-2024-2452732/

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Anticipation is the excitement you feel waiting for something you know is going to happen.

As we kick off the new year, I thought it would be a great opportunity to talk about anticipation, and particularly those things that we are looking forward to in 2024.

Games, books, movies, events, conventions and really anything that gets us excited.

But before I put Mike and Christina on the spot lets take a quick look back at 2023. Oddfish Games launched Radiance though a very successful Kickstarter, GenCon Blew up, and the Epic Adventure Podcast went from discussions after gaming sessions to a real thing. I’m not sure any of us would have predicted those events, but sense we didn’t do a podcast to hold us accountable after the fact, we are safe to claim we saw it coming. This time it’s going to be a little different. This time you will be able to look back and see if we got anything right.

So, Mike, Looking ahead at 2024, what’s one thing you are excited about on the horizon?

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Downtime is that nebulous period between game sessions where the characters have an opportunity to pursue long term goals or simply handle a little organization, rest, and repair before the next big adventure.

Players can use the downtime by announcing what their character will be doing over the next couple of weeks. Anything from buying equipment, crafting magic items, fighting in the arena, building a castle, or getting sloppy drunk at the local inn is possible. The game master rolls some dice and tells the players the outcomes of their characters actions. Weeks go by in minutes.

Everyone ready to get back to the adventure?

Cool.

And back into the dungeon we go.

Over the years downtime has evolved to a full set of rules in D&D 5e. But that wasn’t always the case.

In Gary Gygax’s original rules for dungeon and dragons everything happened in real time. Including the time between games. If your group got together on Sunday afternoon and began exploring the dungeon, they had better come to a good stopping point before calling it a night because if a week of real time passes before the gang can get back together again then a week of game time passes in the campaign world.

Minute for minute, hour for hour, day for day.

Personally, I love that idea. 

It’s often called persistent roleplaying and is most commonly found in Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games such as Everquest, Lord of the Rings Online, and Star Wars The Old Republic. But you can do the same thing with your table top games.

By utilizing concepts like play by post, emails, discord and other online tools the game doesn’t have to stop when the players call it a night. All of the traditional downtime activity can occur, but in a more fluid roleplaying sense. Instead of rolling a dice to see if the Paladin started his new church use discord to play out the relevant planning, conversations, and problems that arise during the week. When the players come back together for the game, they will have a rich history to share with each other, improving roleplaying all around.

Does this take work. Sure it does. The game master will have to be available to read the messages and respond in kind. The players will need to responsive to the questions and interaction created by the game master. But really you are only talking about an extra 20 minutes or so a day to have a persistent and ongoing world to adventure in. Instead of turning downtime into a series of random rolls we allow are characters to live and populate the adventure world we have created. This doesn’t eliminate the concept of downtime, on the contrary it elevates it to a whole new level.

Because everyone needs downtime.

As a matter of fact, Mike, Christina, and I need some Downtime ourselves. With the holiday season upon us it seems like a perfect opportunity for some downtime. We are going to take December off and level up.

In January we will be back with all new episodes for Season 2 of Epic Adventure.

And Mike, Christina, and I will be sporting new level 2 characters with a better THACO and maybe even a +1 quip here or there.

We look forward to seeing you in January.

Until then, Have an Epic Adventure.

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“When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around-bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere.”

If you are familiar with that little snippet of dialogue then we can be friends.

That’s from the Maltese Falcon, a 1930’s detective novel by Dashell Hammett. I was first introduced to the genre by the movie of the same name staring Humphry Bogart. I was entranced with the dark setting, the smokey atmosphere and the snappy dialogue. To this day the movie poster of the Maltese Falcon hangs in my living room.

After that fateful meeting I devoured everything noir and mystery I could get my hands on. Dashell Hammett was always my first, and Sam Spade has always been my favorite detective but with one sentence Raymond Chandler won the prize.

“I'm killing time and it's dying hard.”

For some of you out there you don’t go for that tough guy writing. You might prefer John McDonalds Travis Mcgee, or Gregory McDonalds Fletch. You might love Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, or maybe your go for the more modern detective like Micheal Connolly’s Bosch or Lee Child’s Reacher.

No matter your favorite there is no denying the pull and allure of the mystery genre and there is no denying the impact bringing elements of the mystery genre into your roleplaying games.

In this episode Christina and I are going to talk about the mystery genre and how to include it into your games. 

Christina, who is your favorite detective and why?

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Good tools are everything.

What’s interesting is that the same concept applies to your table top roleplaying games. Without the proper tools it’s much harder. Sure, the only real things you need is an imagination, but trust me. If you have the right tools for the job everything just got easier.

In this episode of Epic Adventure Mike and I are going to talk about tools, specifically the tools that can help you make your games epic. 

Mike, this is a topic that is near and dear to your heart. You are always playing around with new tools for gaming. It’s like you are searching for the holy grail of game tools. Why is that?

https://www.chessex.com/ For Dice

https://campaigncoins.com/collections/rpg-coins Metal Coins

https://oddfishgames.com/collections/adventure-scents Adventure Scents

https://syrinscape.com/ Sounds for your RPG

https://www.heroforge.com/ Miniatures

https://zoom.us/

https://roll20.net/

https://foundryvtt.com/

https://app.demiplane.com/home

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/home.php

https://www.playrole.com/

https://www.owlbear.rodeo/

https://alchemyrpg.com/

https://www.dndbeyond.com/

https://shadowdarklings.net/

https://cyberpunkred.com/#/

https://discord.com/

https://kanka.io/

https://www.legendkeeper.com/

https://www.chroniarpg.com/

https://www.scabard.com/pbs/

https://www.worldanvil.com/

https://obsidian.md/

https://www.youtube.com/@JoshPlunkett

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In 1981 Chaosium Publishing released Call of Cthulhu written by Sandy Peterson and it has dominated Horror and Mystery Table Top Roleplaying ever since. Today it is on its 7th edition and it has spawned spinoffs like Delta Green, Board Games like Arkham Horror, as well as collectible card games, video games, animated shows and even television shows such as Lovecraft Country. 

Today we are joined by

Mike and Jen Howlet, the owners of Oddfish games to talk about one of my favorite ttrpg’s. But it is not must my favorite. It’s Jen’s favorite as well.

Jen, why do you love Call of Cthulhu?

https://www.chaosium.com/

https://oddfishgames.com/

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As I have said before Moldvay D&D was my gateway to roleplaying. Traveller, GURPS and Call of Cthulhu came shortly thereafter. Those 4 games heavily shaped the way I felt about roleplaying, from the settings to the mechanics. They were so different from one to the next. Fantasy, Sci-Fi, historical and horror roleplaying, what more could you ask for. D20’s, 2D6’s, 3D6’s, and percentile dice rounded out the mechanics. Seriously everything had been tried, everything had been discovered.

Or so I thought.

By 2010 I had hit that lull in roleplaying that I think everyone does in their lifetime. Family, work, and life had taken up what little free time I had so the extent of my gaming was glancing at the bookshelves filled with rule systems as I passed by for other things.

What that meant was that I missed it. A sea change in the roleplaying community. Something truly new and exciting had shaken up the RPG world.

It was a little game called Apocalypse World.

The post-apocalyptic setting wasn’t anything new, but what was new was the dice mechanics, and more specifically the dice results. In every game prior to Apocalypse World when you rolled the dice you either succeeded or failed. There were only 2 options, but Apocalypse World added a third possibility. 

Success with consequences.

So now when you rolled the dice you could fail, succeed, or have a success at some cost to the character. What cost you might ask? Well, that was up to the GM and the Player to decide.

This idea created an explosion in the roleplaying world. A big bang of creativity. Hundreds of new independent roleplaying games were launched by this single idea. Today it is known as Powered by the Apocalypse and Christina and I are going to take a deep dive into the concepts, mechanics, and settings of the PbtA craze.

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Steve and Christina pick right up from where they left off with the Pirates of the Drinax campaign.

In this episode we get to see how the crew was introduced to life in the Traveller Universe from earning a living to paying a ship mortgage. We also discuss their introduction to combat and we end on some major plot points starting to develop.