Gods’ Isle Brainstorming

Dark Souls 3: The Ringed City DLC – Beating Slave Knight Gael ...

For thousands of years the Gods reigned. Having formed creation out of the primal waters of chaos, breathing life into mankind, and blessing us with their gifts they ruled over use for a multitude of generations, a true golden age.

As the years waned on the Gods bestowed upon us civilization and the rights of kingship. They showed us how to conquer the wilds, build tools, raise cities, and even how to shape reality with powerful magics. After fostering us the Gods departed for their home, a gleaming city on the Isle in the Center of the World.

Mankind gave thanks to the Gods in the form of offerings, and would send their dead in boats to live out the afterlife with their Creators.

But something changed eons after their departure. The sun hung low and red in the sky, and the moon slowly faded into the black of night. The dead were found listing the coasts in the wasted vessels they were sent out upon. Those few that retained any semblance of speech told of a massive, tarnished city hidden in the fog. No gods found in attendance, only ravenous ghosts.

After the dead returned, so did the first adversaries. A multitude of beings whom the gods wrestled and bound, the unmakers of reality tore through fissures in the veil, setting themselves upon humankind.

City after city fell the unearthly incursions, and those from within who believed us lost in our ways, deserving of damnation. You are one of the many sent on an arduous voyage, to find the gods and plead for their aid, or to find the tools they used against the demons in the time before humankind.

Quick Update

I’ve ran quite a few sessions of my Doomed Reach game. While been a lot of fun, the only downside is that the player scheduling portion of the setup hasn’t been too successful. Initially people jumped on gaming slots, but as this progressed it kind of became a situation where I started prodding certain players, so it essentially devolved into a traditional game, only with a lot of players and a lot of open threads.

I also ran Winter’s Daughter using Old School Essentials for friends and coworkers. This was a lot of fun, and I would like to write up what I recall of the actual play.

On Sundays I have been running an open table game using Old School Essentials, we’ve started with Winter’s Daughter and have played through three sessions. I think the group is almost finished with that particular dungeon, so I will be interested to see where it goes from here.

I have also been bitten yet again by the Glorantha bug, and am trying to find a game of RuneQuest or HeroQuest online. If I don’t soon I may have to run RuneQuest, but I am not sure if that will be too many games for me.

RPGaDay 2019: Day 9 (Critical)

I have a love/hate relationship with the ideas of critical rolls. On one hand, I love ridiculous tables, things driven by chance, etc.

On the other hand, I often dislike that something can be completely won or lost by a roll alone. I tend to like these sorts of things to be eventual outcomes of a successful plan or a stupid idea. The chance that something can just get a 5% roll, which will happen frequently enough, and maim or murder a character or npc outright is a little too frequent for me.

Because of this I have mostly modified my “criticals” in OSR games to require the person being critted upon to make a saving throw before any effects are levied, and even then I end up using a temporary wound chart.

Continue reading RPGaDay 2019: Day 9 (Critical)

Back From GenCon

I don’t have too much to write home about. Overall it was a really fun GenCon. I ended up working quite a bit for Games on Demand, but I was able to run Mothership as well as Maze Rats. I also got to play a bunch of games like Zweihander, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e, Star Crossed, and For the Queen.

I have a jiu jitsu tournament coming up that will take up most of my time, but I am looking forward to doing more design and writing afterward.

Insight, napkin-note edition

I have been replaying Bloodborne and recently been running Burning Wheel with a group of players that are majorly magic users. Both of these have got me thinking about Insight and risk-reward style systems in rpgs.

I’ve been toying around with the idea of Insight as it exists in Bloodborne, and I think I have came up with something I want to toy around with more. Here’s the basic top-of-my-head version with no amount of play-testing or really running it by other people for quality control.

Continue reading Insight, napkin-note edition