What ROLE-PLAYING have you been doing?

Just a heads up too in case anyone isn't across this and requires yet more PDFs. Itch.io is doing a fantastic 740 title 'Bundle for Racial Justice & Equality' that includes a bunch of RP stuff including Troika!, Blades in the Dark and a stack of intriguing looking indies (including another Carly Rae Jepsen Cult offering, which i didn't' even realise was a thing cos i'm not extremely online). Access is from $5 and all proceeds go to the NAACP and bail funds so get on it.

itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-...CYOXRpdnEB4kKBD2alb8

I got some of the adventures for Lamentations of the Flame Princess a couple of years ago, after swooning over the Carcosa setting for OD&D. The look and style of the adventures was dark, gritty, and ugly in a DIY sort of way, but the creativity is off the charts wild. For example, The Monolith Beyond Time & Space has a full page introduction describing it as Lovecraftian without directly referring to Lovecraft, but I'm a big fan of the Cthulhu Mythos and the Call of Cthulhu rpg and saw nothing of the sort in Monolith. Instead, I saw extremely bold and creative ideas stretching out to the far limits of imagination while still leaving a playable adventure on the page. If I had to point to a literary influence, it might be A. Merritt's Dwellers in the Mirage. And I am now slightly scarred by the idea of owls.

Andi Lennon wrote: Thanks everyone. This all sounds rad. I've got so much to catch up on since re-entering the hobby a couple of years back. The indie space is just incandescent at the moment and I'm enjoying contributing to zines but I'm in danger of feeling totally overwhelmed so realistically I'm committed to DCC, Mork Bork and 5e for the moment. Having said that though, as a huuuuuge fan of the 1980 Flash Gordon film (best sci-fi film ever, fight me) the opulent Savage Worlds Flash Gordon boxed set is sorely tempting. My only other pause is having to further lash out on the Savage Worlds core books which, on top of the two FG hardbacks is going to mean a significant time investment before i get it running. Anyone here have experience with the system and the FG content in particular?

No specific experience with the FG content.

As far as SW generally, I think it is mediocre. It is pretty fiddly. There’s cards, and dice, and long lists of advantages, disadvantages, and skills to mull over when making your character. It has one of my pet peeves in a system, which is a greater chance to critically succeed the worse you are at something. (I guess for a pulp system that swinginess might be a feature but it bug me to heck.)

I think if you really like FG it might be worth it. I liked SW’s sourcebook on Solomon Kane because my love of the source material outweighed my meh reaction to the system. SW is also good if you want to run games that elide between RPGs and minis skirmishes.

I'm no expert but SW has been good for what I've been playing the past few weeks, an Achtung Cthulhu game. In the first scenario we parachuted into Bohemia (Czechoslovakia) to investigate SS atrocities in Castle Karlstein. Now we are trying to exfiltrate Agent Wotan during Dunkirk. We are basically playing it as a skirmish game but I think the latest edition has tried to add in some options for groups that like different approaches.

Stats and skills go from d4-d12, max roll rolls again, typically you want a 4+ to succeed and every 4 above that are called raises They do use cards to determine initiative and for chases and random encounters. Characters and the GM can spend bennies, usually for rerolls but they have other uses as well.

Everything seems to work pretty well in Roll20.

And I won't fight you over Flash Gordon. I think I have everything they have put out so far. Sam Jones wrote an intro but it is based on the original comic strips not the movie.

Edit after more reading last night: They do use every source and there is a War Rocket Ajax Savage Tale.

"Dispatch War Rocket Ajax. TO BRING BACK HIS BODY! "

Oh man, you may have just sold me.

I'm sure a lot of you are across this already but 'Dissident Whispers' is an awesome new compilation of two page one shots including numerous adventures for both Mork Borg and Mothership made by a diverse, international collective of creators in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Physical copies are available via the fine folks at the Melsonian Arts council and PDF's via all the usual haunts. I've opted for both as it's a great cause and i'm a sucker for actual physical media.

Scrolling through the PDF now and it looks FANTASTIC. I hope to do a review on it for the site shortly.

www.melsonia.com/dissident-whispers-226-p.asp

Finished up a 3-shot of DEVIL, AIM FOR ME. It's a TROPHY DARK joint where the PCs are bounty hunters in a weird west setting, hunting an outlaw who is in league with Ol' Scratch hisself. Felt a little marginal at first and then galloped to a thunderous conclusion, with the devil abandoning the outlaw and offering to ally with one of the PCs instead. The one lady player used her (previously-established) skill of mediumship to coax the devil into herself and then proceeded to murder one of the PCs, run another to ground in the dead ends of an abandoned mine, while the other two frantically ran out of the flickering lantern-lit mine, one of them blowing his hand off with a missfiring gun in the process.

Any game that ends with everyone with dead, irrevocably broken, or possessed by Satan is a plus in my book. Recommended. The PDF has all the rules needed to play.

I ran a Black Friday game of Old School Essentials with some friends back in the US. We had six players, and only 2-3 hours, so I ran a one-page dungeon called Goblin Gully . I had to truncate the very end of it because of time, so it ended up being a touch easier than it would have been. But we still had a lot of fun. The highlight was when they threw a flask of oil and missed, only setting one goblin on fire without killing it. The goblins eventually panicked and tried to run back over the rope bridge, lighting it on fire and breaking it. So they spent a fair bit of time figuring out how to make it back across. It was really fun.

I purchased the latest White Dwarf from GW and was surprised to see a little promo card about the TALISMAN RPG. It was only $18 on DriveThruRPG so I figured what the hell.

An RPG in the Talisman universe sounds...kind of intriguing in some way? I am starting to read through the book tonight, it includes an introductory scenario so maybe I can convince my group to give it a try. I've been lucky enough to find 3 other people who also enjoy the random insanity of the boardgame, so maybe this RPG over Discord will be the thing!

Throughout all of 2020, we had a 5e D&D campaign going, culminating in an 8 PC (we 4 each controlled 2) v 3 big bad mega battle that took two sessions and 6 total hours. D&D does not do combat that quickly, haha. Would have been worse with the hp totals in 4e, I'm sure. My monk got the final blow on the big dracolich, giving him a solid kick in the face.

Same group is starting a new campaign with 2nd level characters tomorrow night... after playing a monk and a paladin, I don't want to be lawful this time. Thinking Warlock of the Fathomless from the new Tasha's Cauldron book.

Just finished a 9 month play thru of Tomb of Annihilation. I thought it was pretty good and a nice nod to the past(Tomb of Horrors, Isle of Dread). It's a hefty book and the DM did a great job of picking out the really good bits.
Next up is 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars. Super late to the party on this, but I'm glad to finally getting the chance to run this.

Tonight was my first attempt at being the GM for Mork Borg, the Swedish black metal RPG that is quite literally the coolest RPG I have ever seen. The $25 book is really something. Very rules light, but so much of everything else.

My friend ran 4 randomly generated characters through the Rotback Sludge, which is the introductory adventure in the book. What followed was a comedy of errors that was truly remarkable. I have never seen someone roll so many sub-10 rolls on a 20 sided die.

Three children with knives put in work, and were quite formidable as the party's first combat. But the real comedy came when they encountered a giant worm.... after two consecutive 1s were rolled, two of the party were consumed whole and instantly killed. It was quite something. Eventually the worm was felled and cut open, retrieving said party members' belongings.

Overall the adventure was a lot of fun, and the game is cool. It doesn't spell out every little thing, so you just fudge it and keep going. Good stuff and I hope to play again. There is a KS going for some zine material that I will likely purchase.

Mork Borg is practically anarchic...it completely flies in the face of mainstream modern RPG design. It does leave out a lot to give you space to just roll with it and make shit up. One of my most favorite things recently was this but in Temple of Tzun, and little pamphlet dungeon. This room has two stone pigs that are “partially” alive. They have one trait word- “bleeds”. So I decided to lean into that. The party was shocked to find that even the tiniest nick cause then to bleed profusely. Like Lone Wolf and Cub geysers of blood. They killed one and the whole room was covered in blood, effecting checks to see if they slipped and fell in it. The other pig failed it’s morale check, so it was running around squealing horribly while the party sloshed around in the blood. It was pretty horrifying.

After every Mork Bork session we are always sort of stunned at how morally bankrupt the game has made us. My man Jabu, we joke about how this game has revealed his dark inner self. Dude is just horrendously ruthless. And he’s a fanged deserter, so he’s more or less like Killer Croc with a zwrihander. LOL we had a wretched noble with a talking sword, Jabu chopped this cultist in half and grabbed the talking sword because he was sick of it chattering so he stuck in the body and left it.

Then there’s the player whose character is now a meat golem made of their own organs.

allismom3 wrote: Just finished a 9 month play thru of Tomb of Annihilation. I thought it was pretty good and a nice nod to the past(Tomb of Horrors, Isle of Dread). It's a hefty book and the DM did a great job of picking out the really good bits.
Next up is 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars. Super late to the party on this, but I'm glad to finally getting the chance to run this.

Aside from running Lost Mine of Phandelver, Tomb of Annihilation was my first long-term DMing experience. Our group had a terrific time with it, and they still tell stories about some of the wild stuff that happened. I actually think the Tomb of the Nine Gods at the end is the best dungeon I've played for 5e. Like most WotC adventures you really do need to do some legwork to make it function for your group. Its encounter density is way too low for a proper hexcrawl, and it's adventure hook as printed asks the players to essentially start wandering in the jungle until they figure out what is going on. If I were to run it again I'd probably utilize a more point-to-point system, and make copious use of rumor tables. But the actual scenarios and dungeons in the game are all really good and creative, and the Chult setting really does work well.

My group is finishing up our 5e Eberron game this week. It's been pretty fun. I think I'd be perfectly willing to never play another game in the Forgotten Realms and just stick with Eberron. It's way better suited to the sorts of games that 5e gravitates toward, and it's also well-suited to the more adventure-y swashbuckling games I like to run.

Looks like we are going to be playing Monster of the Week next. I'll be running it, and I'm pretty excited.

allismom3 wrote: Just finished a 9 month play thru of Tomb of Annihilation. I thought it was pretty good and a nice nod to the past(Tomb of Horrors, Isle of Dread). It's a hefty book and the DM did a great job of picking out the really good bits.
Next up is 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars. Super late to the party on this, but I'm glad to finally getting the chance to run this.

3:16 is awesome. Ran a 6ish session campaign of that back when it came out. Definitely left a mark on my group.