Pleased to get ‘Always Be Prepared’, a Cepheus Deluxe Adventure, published on DrivethruRPG. Took some hoops a leaping, and learned a lot on the way. Maybe the next one will be easier?!
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/399746/Always-Be-Prepared–a-Cepheus-Adventure
It seems a good time for the Homeworld 2D20 game that is due to arrive out of hyperspace when the book is fully validated by Gearbox, with current indications being August, just over a month away. I wasn’t too much of a computer gamer back in 1999 when the title first landed, and not in 2015 when the game was delightfully remastered. The RTS title, highly rated back in the day, and still pulling a great experience out of your screen today, is now available at a significant discount. A Father’s Day gift from Cameron brought it to my screen, with the age of the game ensuring that my rig could run it smoothly. I’m one mission in and we’ll see how I fare…
For me, this is all way of background for the Modiphius 2D20 TTRPG, which I seem to be looking forward to immensely. It’s very much on the light end of the 2D20 family of games, with six attributes and six skills that can be mixed and matched depending on the task. These are tweaked by Focus areas and Talents that bend the rules in your character’s favour through exception based design. It looks as though it will play out very well, and with a lot less heavy lifting than Infinity. Much as I love the big early Infinity, it is fiddly and really does go on for ever. You may loose some of the fine grain, but for some broad high octane action I think that’ll be OK. I haven’t gone tot he light end of 2D20 before, having bizarrely missed out on Star Trek Adventures, which I hear nothing but good things about, John Carter but a mssed opportunity, and Dune a hand wrinigng ommission. I have since been gifted a Dune core book PDF, so I will be able to erratically read across the dunes.
I have pre-ordered the Gamesmaster Bundle, delivering a core book, some 2D20 and D6 dice with a screen. The Quickstart is already consumed, though I missed out on a physical copy on Free RPG Day as, ironically, I was running North Star Convention!
Keen anticipation then until the game drops into the real and I can pour over it. It’s a tingle game, one that I am impatient to get to the table. I think the theme of a desperate quest for home, when your world is destroyed and inimicable forces surround you, captures my current dispair at the state of the UK and the government running us. A yearning for better, and possibly against the odds. Plus of course, some highly accessible 2D20 space opera sounds just perfect for me. Without realising, I seem to be on a bit of a 2D20 kick at the moment, with Conan and Infinity both getting played and delivering good games at the table. Homeworld will round this off rather well.
Sometimes The Fates are kind and through a breezy verisimilitude everything falls into place. No sooner had I started to wibble on about how much I was looking forward to this game when Play Role, one of my core VTTs, and Modiphius announce a partnership, with the full Quickstart being prepared as a free ready to play game on the platform. The platform is also free to use.
It’s the D&Ds, not helped by a marathon weekend of Castles & Crusades set in Athas of Dark Sun on the Dungeon Muser’s YouTube Chanel. A really fun weekend. It’s been sometime since I have got up for a 2am session!
Castles & Crisades brings together Old and New styles of gaming in an approachable, flexible system. It’s as close to AD&D that I’d be happy to regularly play. I may get some more gaming in with the Dungeon Muser, so the stats I provide below may get augmented with some new streaming play.
Here are the scores:
Good gaming!
I’m zeroing in on finishing a small scenario book for Drivethru. It’s going to be print and PDF and gets some Cepheus Deluxe off my brain and out there.
In theory I now follow this up with the full Eventide subsector. Thirty plus detailed worlds and a sense of the subsector and its place in the bigger setting.
In some ways, the big news for me is that I’ve managed to wrestle enough with Affinity Publisher to functionally use it and get some layout going. Making the document look good, ah well that’s on me and a challenge.
This will be the first title released under the new ‘First Age Entertainment’ label. I have a lovely wrapped cover image. This needs to be added to to make a full cover, and configured to work with the book size and page count.
This will be the first title to e rleased under the new ‘First Age Entertainment’ label.
Fun times, now that I have retirement time. I am paying a bit more for my Foundry VTT upkeep. In addition to Forge hosting, I am paying the developer of the Livekit AV integration via his Patreon. This gives me access to maintained Livekit servers and, I hope, rock solid AV for my games.
This extra on the money side is propelling me to get more and better use out of Foundry. Previous post on the blog talks about my world creation shenanegans for Conan 2d20, the short campaign game that kicks off this week. I hope that goes well for us all and wins over those playing who prefer lighter VTT experiences. I’m happy right across the VTT complexity spectrum. I play in a Pathfinder 2e game on Owlbear Rodeo and Discord. It’s just fine, with character sheets accessed and maintained on Pathbuilder2 on another tab. I would run the game using the Pathfinder Module on Foundry, but it is all good gaming.
In similar vein I run D&D4e on Role, a lighter VTT, emphasising video conferencing, with a series of tools around the edges of that. My players want VTT light and I do what I can to make Role give them just enough. I enjoy map and token tactical play. Role does support this, to an extent, but has some gaps. This is quite understandable, it isn’t really what the platform was designed to promote. Nevertheless, having gone so far down that road, I kind of think they should round out that experience with some more critical features. That hasn’t proved to be their priority, and I expect that they know what’s best for their product.
I have therefore returned to the 4e module on Foundry, which has come on significantly since I last looked at it. Were I to start a 4e campaign now, it would be on Foundry.
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| D&D 4e on Foundry is starting to come together… |
The major work is to type in the Powers, Feats and Items for the player characters. There are no legal compendium, so it is just diligent graft to get the entries onto the system. The major game changer is the recent capability to import any and all monsters from Masterplan directly into Foundry. My goodness, that makes everything much more possible! I have become so enamoured of the tools and the look of the thing that I have started to ruminate on running a second 4e campaign, either interspliced with the current in Nentir Vale, with the possibility of cross-overs, or somewhere else entirely. This is crazy talk, with all these other games on my shelves, and the amount of gaming already underway, but go with your passion.
Right, I have a cleric to sort out next…
It’s been a fair bit of effort to get the VTT ready for some tabletop action. I’ve been fiddling with NPC abilities, attacks, items and the actual assets to reflect the campaign. All told it has been a more effort than I was expecting, but think it will be worth it once we get going.
I’m glad to be using Foundry, which hasn’t seen much use since I stopped running Pathfinder. Pete is picking up the GMing mantle for our Pathfinder adventures and has elected to use the much lighter Owlbear Rodeo, with players rolling dice as they will, and keeping track of characters however, be it on Pathbuilder, on paper or somewhere else.
This minimalist approach to VTTs has also found expression in my 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons game. Players never really got on with the full size Role character sheet, so I created a really light one that just kept track of HPs, and other resources. My 4e Light sheet on Role fully expects the player to have the character sheet somewhere else. The minimum I’m looking for is quick shared dice rolls, which the Lite sheet enables. I honestly don’t think my players are bothering with that either.
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| Surveying the Hyborian Kingdoms… |
So, here we are with Foundry, a big boy VTT with more options than I’ve had hot dinners. I like integrated Audio and Video cameras, to give a sense that we are all together and around a table. I’ve shifted the Foundry AV to the Livekit module, as the Jitsi module is now not being maintained. I’m told that the new Livekit is rock solid, and that it is to be fully adopted by Forge Hosting. I hope so, as this capability is costing me a patreon subscription.
LiveKit success is a big deal for me and continued use of Foundry. The Conan mini campaign may well give me some usage for my money and I would like to run Cepheus Deluxe on here too. I’m not going to say that I will be running the Free league module for Bladerunner on here, because I’m not backing that game. I’m not. No. Not at all… 😳
So, in essence, I want to get a lot of Foundry use or I will pare back to Role for everything. Or maybe even Alchemy RPG, which I’ll witter on about seperately. There are only so many subscriptions i can afford!
More on my Conan 2d20 adventures to come…
My Cepheus delight, which is a mere extension of my Traveller delight, is finding broader expression in the fantasy genre. I very much enjoyed ‘Sword of Cepheus’ from Stellagama Publishing, with its tempting open content approach for my own innovation and fantasy making.
Enter Westlands, Menagerie Press, actually doing what I merely chunter about. From the creators:
Menagerie Press is creating Westlands, a 2D6-based fantasy RPG with streamlined mechanics based on the Sword of Cepheus open game license system reference document. The 2D6 fantasy system (Traveller, Sword of Cepheus) has a true sword and sorcery feel, allowing exploration and adventure in a savage land. Action resolution is quick, putting an emphasis on story, not rules.
In Westlands, we’ve taken the core open-license 2D6 fantasy reference material and are adding extra content, including reworked (more dangerous!) sorcery mechanics, optional rules for simple firearms, and an expanded bestiary.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/394108/Westlands-2D6-System-RolePlaying-Game
It’s $1 from Drivethru, in an unaccountably unbookmarked 147 page PDF. Aside from that basic ommission, it is a nicely rendered SRD, itself open content, with some ideas blended from Cepheus Deluxe, to create a very usable light and traditional sword and sorcery game. I’d describe it as a permeation on a theme rather than a radical step on from Sword of Cepheus, though the additions and tweaks are nice.
I had backed the book project with a few squid extra as a thank you for putting in some effort on this. The release was also eagerly anticipated, as I wanted to see if this iteration would sate my itch to have a compact Cepheus fantasy game for my own table. Perhaps, Westlands would simply do all the work for me, put Wayfinder to one side, and allow me to get on with other vanity projects such as a Hopepunk Forged in the Dark game or even back to Blade and Spell powered by the Omni system. All of those more likely than me creating my self fantasised ‘Forthright’ – a complete D&D 4th Edition retro-clone.
In summary, no, Westlands isn’t quite what I was looking for, in large part because what I am aiming for isn’t this game’s target. Although there are liftable components, Westlands is going for the grittier end, with sorcery a danger in and of itself. I want lighter and more heroic. Optional Westland elements, such as Traits, and heroic Characteristic generation would be standard in my game, and the magic is going to be some form of maleable and free form system, drawing on my Atlantean past.
If anything Westlands has spured me on to keep at my own SRD, with talents for ancestries, free form magic and some meta about place and hope against shadow. I hope JRR would puff appreciatively on his pipe. A convention playtest kit would seem about right, if I can drag myself away from Eventide.
Westlands is well worth a $1 pick-up and something you could run straight away in a sword and sorcery setting of your choice.
Just messing about with classic covers.
Perhaps, If I can crack Publisher, I could get a small adventure out on Drivethru as a precursor to the subsector book?
I’m continuing to enjoy the background process of shapng the Hinterspace setting for Cepheus Deluxe. To keep me motivated, I’m using the notes and images I have created as the setting for a convention game this year.
I’ve taken one subsector, Eventide of the Cynosure Sector, and started to map it out,
Each world will be created and mapped to provide some rich setting material for play.
Much more to do, but the process is fun, and I am getting outputs to the table, so it will be used to create some fun games early in the development cycle. A scenario will also be useful to add to anything I might manage to publish.
This game was my jam in the mid Eighties. We were early adopters and actually gave it a proper go. The idealised feudal detail, with castles to manage, and the societal structures, reflected a ‘realistic’ amount of detail mirrored in the mechanics. The game was a classic of Ed Simbalist (and Wilf Backhaus), with specific and tailored rules for each step, and not much that unifies everything. But the sum of the parts made a very complete whole, producing a blow based tempo to combat and a detail of enchantment to the magick. The tolkienesque layers did little but encourage me!
The question is, do you go back? Indeed, can you go back? Ed was Edmonton, and Wilf was Calgary, two Canadians. Well, with my imminent flight to Calgary forthcoming, it just seemed right to start to dip my toe back into those fantastical gaming waters.
The lightest of skims bring back memories locked to a time when this game was the favoured centre of my gaming. In fact it was an important game and escape in the late 80s. The game itself exudes a medievalist flavour, with all the varied systems buzzing along as I had remembered. The challenge will now be to get myself to a point where I am on top of the ‘fidlly bits’, such that I can run the game. I know I can get there and, as an exercise in ‘gaming history recovery’, the preparation and offering of this, probably as a one shot, will be a fantastic journey.
I’ve been on a quest to find legit PDFs of the game. they are, for lots of straightforward reasons, nowhere to be found. I also struggled to get good scans of the two page character sheet. A quick message to the wonderful Britannia Games and hoorah, I now have something I can work with. For those who are unaware of what I am taking on, here is a reduced image of the two page spread…
With a host of text boxes, forged in the fires of Affinity Publisher, I can create some legible character sheets for a demo game. You know, for all those people who feel they have missed out when C&S 2e was in its triumphant heyday. Er, oh, hum.
All this nonsense is only happening because I am now retired of course. Getting to that one off game will sink some serious time. Really, I should be streaming it, just to showcase it for the curious disbelievers. 😆