Month: September 2020

Nausicaä FKR Setup & Session 1

Since FKR style play is getting more attention I thought it would be a good time to pitch an open table game using my Primeval 2D6 system over on one of the Discord servers devoted to the style.

I met up with other members and pitched a few games – running a West Marches style game, an investigative horror game, an Ars Magica-alike, as well as a game set in Hayao Miyazaki’s setting where the Nausicaä manga takes place.

Almost everyone immediately expressed interest in Nausicaä being their top pick, so we started discussing the game, potential places to play, character ideas, and we landed on playing somewhere out “off the map” so to speak in our own corner of the world, making it easier for players to drop in and out without knowing the plot, as well as letting us handwave a lot of details.

I should preface this and probably every session that I am notoriously anti-canon. I want to draw on the imagery, themes, and broad-level assumptions of any source I’m using – Nausicaä included. So if something contradicts established lore – that’s the canon of our game. This is by no means to disrespect the source material, the creators, or the fans, but rather to allow our table to celebrate the world in the way that’s the most fun for us.

chargen and session follows

Barrowmaze Open Table Session 10

Summary

The party explores a number of tombs over the Barrowmaze, and take heavy losses.

Player characters

  • Donnie the Bard, played by Malley
  • Grick the Half-Orc, played by Modest Mace
  • Sky the Druid, played by Captain Caveman
  • Ulrik Ironsworn the Paladin, played by Isaiah
  • Uriel the Ranger, played by Dante

Hirelings

  • Arnd the Dwarf
  • Bran the failed magician
  • Garbash, Cleric of Crom
  • Irya the Archer
  • Manks, Cleric of Hathor
report follows

Less Rules To Do More: Advancement

Advancement rules are another aspect of roleplaying that sees heavy mechanization. Which I totally get – I agree that games are about what they reward. How these rewards are illustrated, handed out, and utilized, however, has a variety of methods they can be handled with – and like everything else in this series I think you can get away having a fully featured and rich set of rewards without explicitly mechanizing them.

continue reading

Failed Career: Magician

You get

A pointed hat, a set of trick rings.

Why did you quit magic?

  1. Prosecuted: A series of witch hunters swore to have you drowned.
  2. Debt: While performing a routine stage show, a being born from the shadows cast by your candles offered you power for your soul, mistaking it as a potential part of your act you obliged.
  3. Loss: You mastered the ability to make things disappear, but you could never find where they went, eventually every pet you ever had was lost to the ether.
  4. Heckler: One especially insensitive lay-about child always snuck into your shows and would shout just the worst jibes, to the enjoyment of your measly crowd.
  5. Sabotage: Someone snuck into your storage and ruined your saw box, leading to your on-stage dismemberment of an audience participant.
  6. Thievery: The look-alike you used for tricks stole your entire routine and has completely drawn your crowd away from you, painting you as the fraud.

What trick was your specialty?

  1. Mentalism: You have a significant chance of being able to guess a card drawn by another being from a deck in your control.
  2. Escapery: A few classes of knots pose only a moderate threat to your freedom. You can also probably regurgitate a swallowed key or small item with repulsive frequency.
  3. Death Defiance: Surviving being submerged for several minutes was something you routinely practiced, or at least you are able to suppress panicking before losing consciousness .
  4. Levitation: Floating a stationary target weighing no more than 12 stones was a trick you received the least lukewarm applause for.
  5. Iron Jaws: You’ve discovered the correct technique of eating glass and a variety of other traditionally inedible substances.
  6. Spiritualism: With a bit of setup, smoke and mirrors, you have a very minor chance of convincing someone that a partner of yours is their deceased loved one.

Inspired by Electric Bastionland, Knave, and Ten Foot Polemic.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Barrowmaze Open Table Session 9

Summary

The party attends a Winter Elf play and enters into a living myth to retrieve a magical harp from a paranoid Frost Giant.

Player Characters

  • Barkface the Druid, played by EvilTables
  • Donnie the Bard, played by Malley
  • Uriel the Ranger, played by Dante

Hirelings

  • Arnd the Dwarf
  • Bran the failed magician
  • Garbash, Cleric of Crom
  • Irya the Archer
  • Manks, Cleric of Hathor
report follows

Primeval 2D6 Layout Update


Trying out my hand at learning Affinity Publisher, so I tried to make a two column spread for Primeval 2D6. I also tried to cut through my verbosity and trim it down to one page, hopefully I was successful at making a more usable text.

I am currently working on an example of how I use the game as a framework to play in a world along with an adventure. Let me know if you have any feedback or recommendations for a “Play worlds, not rules” sort of product.

Also let me know your thoughts on the changes to the document, as well as any recommendations or tips while I am learning this stuff.

Thank you!

Barrowmaze Open Table Session 8

Summary

The party decides to search the immediate southern portion of the barrows, running into a variety of figures and learning a few details of the tomb.

Cast of characters

Player Characterss

  • Barkface the Druid, played by EvilTables
  • Donnie the Bard, played by Malley
  • Grick the Half-Orc, played by John
  • Groolgrod the Dwarf, played by Directsun

Hirelings

  • Arnd Cobblestone, dwarf
  • Cravos (deceased), thug turned fighter
  • Garbash, cleric of Crom
  • Irya, archer and former squire
summary follows

Less Rules to Do More: Wounds

One of the things I have done when running Primeval 2D6 is to get rid of the more abstract notion of hit points, number of hits, etc. in favor of a more descriptive form of injuries.

This has coincided with my attempt to move all of my old school-styled gaming away from discussions of numbers and mechanics, and instead towards a discussion of the fiction as much as possible.

details follow