Starships Riding Fire Across The Sky

Posted on September 11, 2021 by First Age

Starships riding fire across the sky. Heroes and villains exchanging laser fire. Desperate spacers struggling against an alien monstrosity. Vast planetary vistas, flying cities, moonscapes, mad robots, and first encounters. In short: high-action science-fiction adventure that stimulates your sense of wonder. Cepheus Deluxe puts you in the shoes of an adventurer visiting distant stars and encountering the unknown. Whether you are a seasoned player looking for a rules-light game, or a new gamer wanting to experience what science-fiction roleplaying games are all about, Cepheus Deluxe opens your way forward.

The future awaits!

Do you still get that new game tingle? Or even a new expression of a loved game tingle? I have recently tingled. I’m looking for some SF contrast in my GMing as I plan how to wind up some of my Fantasy D20 fun. My focus had been on getting Genesys back to the table with the Twilight Imperium game coming out sometime at the end of this year or probabaly into next. I expect that’ll still happen, and a watch this spaaaace. Now, I have found the recently released Cepheus Deluxe and my head is in a spin.

Traveller is my always. Playing it early in my gaming life, probably ’81, I have played the game ever since. The ultra light base mechanic, the modular family of options, and being able to tinker and build anything, from characters to sectors of space, from critters to starships, has made it a sure fire winner that continues to delight. I have bought and played most versions of the game over the years. Mostly I have gone with the flow, and persevered even through the TNE house system days. I didn’t go T5, but had a passing happiness with T4 despite the errata laden nature of it. It was great to see the Mongoose Publishing version come out. I felt it brought us back to the simplicity of the early game, but with a lot that made it hang together well for a modern audience. Despite myself, I took to Mongoose’s 2e version, and found an even more refined version of the game which seemed to tick some more of my boxes. That was it then.

But no, along comes Cepheus Deluxe (CD), a new iteration of the Open Gaming Licensed version of Traveller, based on the Mongoose 1e version. I must say that if I were to create my own 2d6 version blend I would aspire to create one as very good as CD. There is so much I like about what it has done with the game.

It manages to maintain everything you would expect, whilst simplifying areas of complexity, and creating engaging sub systems for operatic play. It is still very much Traveller with the usual assumptions, the DNA is all there, but I think this comprehensive book delivers an extremely approachable and dynamic Traveller experience:

Some highlights:

  • Simplified skill list that dispenses with specialisations
  • Pick your skills, roll your events
  • PC Talents that give them ‘advantage’ edge in certain signature situations
  • A simple PC advancement system (from Sword of Cepheus)
  • Task Effect is the total number above the Difficulty – easier and more impactful
  • MgT2 quality Autofire rules (always a bugbear of mine)
  • Damage factored seperately on two tracks (Stamina and Lifeblood) rather than off attributes – looks good
  • Boxed options for cinematic play using Hero Points and other edges
  • Rolling for ‘Position’ simplifies and ‘theatre of the minds’ vehicle and starship combat.
  • Chase rules
  • Starship construction takes us back to simple stats and location based damage effects
I have heavy skimmed the book, and got the tingles. I want to run it and check out how it plays. The world creation is almost entirely compatible with Cepheus and so open to use with online sector generators. Starships are built quickly using the familiar volume and component system. Fuel only realy applies to Jump to keep things simple and the elctronic systems are varied enough, without needing to buy software packages for the ship computer. The armour system for constructs has been simplified to a None/Light/Heavy/Massive group of ratings which cross references with weapon grade to determine the damage table used. It sounds cumbersome as decribed, but looks very workable and will get a good range of effects in a straightforward way.
Of course CD also introduces some more to the 2D6 modular library. The toolkit is further enriched. I tingle to run this as a solid base, drawing in other elements as and when and if I feel I want to.

As CD propelled me towards actual play, I took a moment to reflect where I should run a game. Third Imperium and associated Charted Space is a default and a superb one. I have also started to look elsewhere. I’ve picked up the rather good looking Cosmos – Age of Sail from Drivethru. There’s a lot going on for not a lot of financial investment. It’s quite possible that I will end up seeing starships sail through the alternate dimension of the Aether, thanks to their Kessler Engines and Schechtman Crystal capacitors. A new expression of the game in an alternative Traveller universe.

Feeling a bit like an excited pioneer, I have also considered firing up a sector generator and do it properly. Maybe, just maybe. Tingle.
I’ll be able to devote some time to it after Furnace.
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My RPGaDay 2021 Thread

Posted on September 1, 2021 by First Age

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D100 like it’s 1986

Posted on August 22, 2021 by First Age

I’ve had an old times blast today. Inspired by Che Webster’s Roleplay Rescue Podcast, episode 911, I have gone back to old roots and started to build a Chaosium ‘Basic Roleplaying’ game that feels right to me. I suggest 1986, only because I was deep into RuneQuest 3rd Edition by then, rolling around with Stormbringer and other offerings. For a long time some form of BRP concocting was my default game system creation. Since then we have seen some great developments of the core game, in particular out into the Mongoose ‘Legend’ branch of the family.

Mythras (RQ6) is the most elegant and complete expression of the game today. Pete Nash and Lawrence Whitaker have fashioned a detailed and balanced version of the game that, for me, stands taller than any other. I am looking for a slightly simpler expression of the game and though I could have gone with Mythras: Imperative, I pulled off my relatively new OpenQuest (OQ) 3rd edition, that takes from the Legend SRD and delivers a more streamlined expression of the game. Truth is, I’m probably looking for something just a little different from OQ, but it can form a substantial base for my game.

Blending sourcebooks 

In additon to the blending ingredients above, I have access to the Mythras Classic Fantasy books, that take Mythras into a more D&D like experience. It is very strange for me to be heading back to BRP through the lense of recent D&D play. There are strengths to both, and a slight blend isn’t obvious from the purer documents in the illustration.

Legends of Anglere is a fun Fate implementation of heroic fantasy that I never remotely got to the table. It is choc full of stealable concepts, though how far I extract and re-purpose them I don’t know. I could equally take 13th Age, or indeed D&D 4e, and do the same. The blend will always be recognisably OQ though. I’m not in much danger of encumbering OQ with so much extra crud that I lose the simplicity of the base design.

Having said that, in bullet form, what do I have so far:

  • OpenQuest as the base expression of the game
  • A revised and slightly expanded skill list. I may retract back, as OQ’s simpler list is very much a strength. Having a few more skills will help with the niches below.
  • No hit locations.
  • Hit Points equal SIZ+CON. An oldie but a goodie that I have played with for 35 years. Slightly more survivable heroes 
  • Minor and Major Wounds as per BRP Gold Book
  • Passions from Mythras
  • Basic Magic is reskinned as ‘Talents’, extraordinary effects that heroes know how to do. This is simple chicanery to assuage my 40 year aversion to everyone having magic. I come back to this from D&D 4e, where everyone has Powers and it just works for me. This is unnecessary of course as Basic Magic can be described as all sorts of things, but taking out the name ‘Magic’ is an important step in my adoption of the game and keeps the fun of the effects. I shall probably rename quite a few of the Battle Magic spells and possibly rebalance some. Heal for example will be ‘Heroic Recovery’, only applies to battle wounds, and only for the individual character. Of course I may decide that an ‘inspiring word’ triggers a recovery in others. Surge on.
  • Characters choose a Profession/Concept/Class
  • Professions provide a template for initial generation of Skills and Talents (Concepts in OQ) 
  • Profession defines the Talents that your character can access
  • A Critical Hit delivers double damage, though I will need to consider how this stacks with some Talents, which  may lead to quadrupel damage.

Thanks to OQ and other sources I probably already have enough to bodge together a game that could actually see the light of day and play. A simple Google Doc character sheet would seem in order to make it happen. There are rough edges to what I have, but that’s fine, as my flavour leans on rock solid design over decades. 

Why? Well, simply put, I have had a bit of a tiring week, and wanted to regress to an early state, where I designed games with a simple pallette. The range of colours has expanded now, but the experience was terrific and really took me back. 

Maybe I’ll put on a game for old times’ sake?

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Danger in Highfort Pass

Posted on July 29, 2021 by First Age

A Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition game set in Kallahn.

With the eastern lands of the Kal crumbling to remorseless Kestolian pressure, Haldun, King of Thrail, has commissioned you to uncover a new threat to the north. The pass through the mountains to the fortress city of Menelcar has fallen silent. This critical trade route to Thrail’s most northerly sentinel city must be kept open! Trade caravans have not returned. Rumours abound that old Highfort, deep in the pass, has fallen to some nefarious evil.

A major quest that calls for heroes, and you qualify! Can you uncover the truth of the pass and clear it once more for safe travel?

Thrail and the North

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Talking with Ron Edwards about D&D 4th Edition and Con4eR

Posted on July 25, 2021 by First Age

 It was great to have the opportunity to talk with Ron Edwards about Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition and the running of the Con4eR online convention. Check out the video link on Ron’s Adept Play site:

https://adeptplay.com/seminar/conversation-about-4er

We’ll collaborate some more as we go for a second outing for Con4eR later this year.

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A D&D 4e Stack Tour

Posted on July 16, 2021 by First Age

I take a tour of the big stack of books… 

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My First 4e D&D Convention Game

Posted on July 11, 2021 by First Age

 I’m organising a quick pop up D&D 4th Edition convention online at the moment. I’ve talked about the process and how easy it is to do. There’s been some great play at Con4eR so far and it is heart warming to see people getting together and playing this edition of the game.

Having been DMing a 4e campaign, I’ve become much stronger on the core game rules, which are some of the most straightforward and unambiguous versions of all the D&Ds. It’s a joy to run. A four hour convention slot comes with all the usual challenges, including new players to either the system, or the VTT, or both! I went with Role as it is the most familiar to me, and the Foundry 4e system isn’t quite there yet.

My setup on Role

I took a classic ‘Delve’ from the 4e Dungeon Delve book and set the game at 5th level, eschewing the obvious ploy to set your game at 1st level to streamline options. Mostly, the game went down really well for all at the table. There was a lot of fun in the session, but it was ‘full on’ throughout.

I started with a lightning tour round the VTT and player character sheets. I’ve setup clickable sheets for 4e that is designed to speed up dice rolling. There are currently limits to the flexibility of the sheet template system on Role, which they are addressing over the summer. For now, I have a character management sheet that looks after resources and dice rolls.

Inevitably, there is a trade off in providing succint and usable information on VTT function and getting into an actual game, and I was as quick as i could be, hoping that any kinks would be worked through during play. Again, mostly, I think I got the balance about right. I had offered an orientation session before the game day, but in the end i needed to do the walk through as part of the game introduction. understandably, some players clicked on the wrong things, due to the sheet not being completely intuitive. We got over that after the first time different things happened, so no biggie.

There were a couple of things that cropped up as we got into the game. It wasn’t obvious to new people how to make guest accounts to enable them to log in to the table. I haven’t done that journey, so haven’t tried to replicate it, but they were truly stumped.  They got there in the end, but the signing up for the $8.99 was much clearer and suspect the options tree at that point needs to be more clearly expressed.
Another is the need to explicitly and manually clear a dice roll creates too many clicks in the process. One player started to shout “CLEAR” to remind him to do it, and I would respond “Dice in the hole!” The main problem is that uncleared rolls were merging with sheet created new rolls. It was unintuitive and slowed everything down.

As a Role long timer I’ve got used to this change, but I think it needs to be revised.
Acknowledging the usefulness of an uncleared dice roll perpetuating results on screen (we also now have the dice log), I would like to see a timer on dice rolls, so that they auto clear after an elapsed time. Given player ’rounds’ in 4e, the player switches from ‘to hit’ rolls ‘to damage’ quite quickly. If there isn’t a consensus on this then you could have this set as a parameter at the table info, where the game organiser can choose between immediately, never, or a time in seconds entered on screen. I think I would set it to about 10 seconds. I have provided this feedback to Role.
The game itself was a dungeon delve and thus accentuating the rich tactical combat that comes shining through in 4e.
The Barony of Harkenworld is in chaos. A raiding army from out of the carcass of the southern Empire of old have attacked and taken Harken, the castle and the Baron. The ‘Iron Circle’ have command of devils and all manner of evil has become emboldened, striding freely amongst the scattered settlements.
Heroes of the North, you have responded to a crisis out in the East of the Wold. One of the lieutenants of the Iron Circle, Tal Lorvas, has terrorised the settlements that nestle by the Briar Hills and is said to be uncovering some ancient magics in a rumoured tomb of a banished Empress, Nemeia of Bael Turath.
You are in pursuit to prevent Lorvas gain control of the cursed treasures of the tomb. Our adventure begins as you arrive at the uncovered maw of the tomb entrance, breathing a fetid stench from its long deep and dark throat…
#Dungeon Delve, #PG-13, #Co-operative play

Or, Delve 5 in the book!. I re-drew the maps in Dungeondraft so that they would pop out and scale well on the VTT. I was pleased with the results; it’s proving to be a really useful tool. 

Thanks Dungeondraft

Tokens were created using Token Tool and linked to images of the characters that were created from scratch using the offline character builder. The characters were exported through One Note out to images that were embeded in Google Docs to facilitate easy sharing. During the game I had tabs open with each of the character sheets to check on powers and rules questions. That seemed to work well, as the main challenge for players was to get on top of their power options in game. The players were awesome, picking up the variety very well and, on the whole, swung into the groove of working out what they wanted to do whilst they waited for their turns.

I pushed the combats quite hard in terms of cycling round the roster of heroes, to help people stay engaged and keep some sense of pace in the combats. We got through three meaty combat encounters during our session and fnished pretty much to time. There’s more to 4e than tactical combat, but it really does shine to that regard and I was pleased to see the players enjoying their options and the emerging team play as they riffed off each others abilities to maximise their outcomes. 4e is a real team game and it is baked into the class design. Great to see.
I had knowingly overcooked the amount of content for the game, creating two whole extra encounters, that I suspected would never be used, delving beyond the locked doors into remnants of the Tiefling connection with the ancient tomb. It was fun to build those encounters, and who knows, perhaps they will see the light of day, one day.
So much to explore and so little time

A sound room was setup for online sharing of music using RPG Sounds a very nice free application for sharing music and sound effects online. We had ambience, stirring theme music, and some growling of monsters.
Worth checking out RPG Sounds
My main reflecton is that the game was tactically intense, with me cramming in three combat encounters in the time. Some players were well experienced with 4e, others were fairly new. The players did great. On balance I was OK with 5th level, and that didn’t create too much additional complexity. I might lean into more of a Skill Challenge next time and mix it up with the combat.

A good game and inspired me to run some more 4e at conventions.

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Old Friends Returned

Posted on June 27, 2021 by First Age

 It seems that the process of redrawing the old fantasy map of my youth has brought back old friends and memories of campaigns of long ago, as much legend as reality. Early days with it and a gentle process. I’m starting to place som e nation or peoples’ names and ‘re-imagine’ some of it.

Middle Kingdoms of the Kal looking east to the reborn empire of Kestolia

As enjoyable as the process is, in and of itself, I may extend to running some games there, or at least one! It’s quite fun looking at the games I might use. If it is to be D&D 4th Ed then the old empire of Tareon will be Eladrin, with their faded palaces dotting the landscape to this day. The human Kestolians are seeking to emulate the glory of the past, but choking under the demands of their infernal advisors. The Middle Kingdoms of the human Kal are a fractious concordance of many ancestries bound by the frailties of the old clan alliances of yesteryear.  The hinterlands are wild and dangerous and in the inner lands continue to hold mysteries that beguile and threaten.

Meanwhile, placing symbols…

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Homebrew Mappage Project – Kallahn

Posted on June 19, 2021 by First Age

So, I have brought out my dusty old maps from 35+ years ago of my fantasy campaign world of Kallahn, originally a home for some Chivalry & Sorcery 2nd Edition. I’m not going to claim anything too innovative or amazing, but it was mine.

I’ve started the process of mapping it afresh using Wonderdraft…
Early work in the Middle Kingdom area centred on Palar

Having a 16GB RAM PC with decent onboard Ryzen 3 graphics, means that I can create a large map and zoom in to 100% and add detail. I think it will be a while before I get it complete, but much earlier in places to have something that can be used as a backdrop for an actual game.
With its roots in C&S2, the world was quite humanocentric, with tinges of Tolkien. Whereas I may stay with that vibe, I’m open to some re-interpretation, depending on what I want to tell and with what. Current front runners are Dungeons & Dragons 4th Ed (of course), but also True20, Heroic Fantasy, D100, or even a home for Tripod Fantasy for a light game that brings own setting and system together. Of course, it could be all of them.
Meanwhile I shall enjoy filling out the map and posting updates over here.
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Back to the sort of table you can put a pint on

Posted on June 5, 2021 by First Age

 It was always our student house joke about Logical Positivism. You can’t doubt the existence of the table in front of you, if you can put a pint on it. It was the sort of test that we were sure the Vienna Circle would have deployed, down the boozer, in the 20s.

I’m starting to think about gaming around real tables with real people. I think I may find it a challnege on a number of fronts. Virtual Tabletops are here to stay. All of my three regular games have people from other places, either in this country or much further away, so the games will go on and, in any case, I think I prefer playing online. That’s right, I think it is more me. This may place me in a minority, but that is just fine. Embrace the weird.

It isn’t just the convenience of the ‘switch on and play’ nature of virtual gaming, or that I can connect with so many more people and play the games that I really want to play. I think I like the creating of the session experience online. The ease with which you can create the richness of the surrounding assets that give the game the visual pizzazz, and the way the tabletop provides a dynamic concensus to what is going on. Accepting the limitations of the video box we sit in, the commnication tools on chat provide lots of opportunities for group communication.

You can’t go back to savoury now.

Nevertheless, I have space and a gaming table, and our local conventions are going back to the hotel venue, so I will be running realspace games before very long. Getting my current jam of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons to physical has been occupying some spare processing space. I have ordered some 5cm wooden disks to go with my 2.5cm fridge magnets to give me quick, cheap and portable tokens for grid based play. Oh yes, all hail the beauty of the grid. I may also have to say hello to Loke, not the blind alley, but the battlemat purveyors. At least I hope that’s not a gaming cul-de-sac, but something like this looks pretty good:

Dungeon Draft and printer ink may also be deployed.

Genesys is something I’d definitely like to do more with, and I have my sights on the Summer Twilight Imperium release as the space opera for me. physical will encourage me to get out the specialist dice that I have and watch them clatter around the very real table next to my pint.

Yeah, that sounds pretty good.

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