Just Going For IT

Posted on April 25, 2025 by First Age

The ‘Legendary Thursday Nighters’, provides an opportunity to play out a whole host of games, accumulated in a wish list that we can, over time, play through. As such, our european roster of players (I think of myself as such despite being UK based!) are primed for shorter form play to tick off dusty games that need playing. In reality the mini-campaign duration is not set in stone, and the group mood is much more ‘relaxed gaming fun’ than ‘completist game-finishers’.

In such a spirit, and realising my own goal of getting some Heroic Fantasy to the virtual table, I have offered up my own game for some play. I’ve really wanted to give this game some play, and to make some use of the Foundry VTT sheets that I have cobbled together using the Custom System Builder. In joyous frame of mind, I have eschewed a meticulously planned campaign, and just ‘gone for it’, with an empty map and some ideas to tie us into the possibility of travelling to the Gods of the Forbidden North. This campaign is a sprawling epic, designed for OSE, but easy to adapt to any fantasy game, especially one as light on its feet as Heroic Fantasy.

For now, I am revelling in not having a plan. We are using some of the narrative elements of the game to sketch out some truths in the fantasy world we create together.

Character generation is quick. Essentially, you select a kindred, archetype (class) and then transfer the abilities onto your sheet. Heroic Fantasy charcters get all their special abilities up-front at 1st level. As they ascend up to 10th level, their numbers get better. It’s more than that though. Freeform traits, called ‘Aspects’ provide setting or character flavour, with characters starting with two of them (or three if human). Adelheid is a jewelsmith and has an intense stare. Both of these will say something about what she can do and how she approaches her interactions. In game terms, these give Adelheid a Help Die (roll with advantage) for certain tasks. The intense stare may instead give her a Hinder Die as she unnerves her contact!

Characters also have ‘Deeds’, which are signature events that will make the character remembered in the legends. One is allocated at every level, building up a story of the memorable tales of this notable hero. I look forward to seeing what stories will be told.

There is always something compelling about a blank map. Our game starts with a fairly blank canvas, which we will fill in together. Our female elf paladin, Aeryndel Sunwarden, is from the forest relam of Gilfinar, so that goes on the map. I’ve added a shattered empire, filled with haunted ruins and a rising dark power to frame the early adventure. I won’t be putting anything more on until we start playing and see what the players come up with.

Returning to Heroic Fantasy took me back to DrivethruRPG, where the game continues to garner positive feedback.   

In fact, with my Age of Arthur writing largely complete for now, I’m feeling a touch inspired to return to the game and publish a second, complimentary, volume, building out elements of the game. I’ll also pt out a hardback, which I have already managed to do, but didn’t publish as the cost was much higher. A range of typos could be squashed across all versions.

Gaming fun times…

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Clash of Steel

Posted on April 17, 2025 by First Age

We are living in legendary times, when lightweight and flavourful sword & sorcery rpgs are strewn like a carpet of glittering jewels over lands of high adventure. Clash of Steel from Zozer Games, sits high on the raised dias of play possibilities, delivering a simple to play game infused with genre tropes, rollable tables, mass combat, naval voyages and battles, kingdom building, and solo play.

The core game is a simple 2d6 for a 10+ using a small number of attributes to determine success. Combat is covered with opposed rolls of each Combat Value, made up of your Might attribute added to a weapon bonus. Damage is inflcted by the winner based on the difference between the rolls. An armour value grants a number of d6 to protect, where if a ‘6’ is rolled on any of the dice, the damage is negated completely.

A Skill attribute covers most tasks, with a panolply of Feats gained through profession and social choices, that give you auto successes and some extras on very specific tasks. The combination looks to give fast play with enough specialisation to make your character stand out.
Reputation grows as the hero becomes more experienced, giving social advantages as you stride the world making a name for yourself. Advancement is linked to XP per session and the expenditure of heaps of silver. The silver flows, easy come and easy go.
Sorcery is dangerous and suggested to be for your villains, though player character sorcerers are also catered for. The system is simple, based on domains and freeform effects, with difficulty modified upwards as the magic tries to achieve more impressive outcomes. Make sure you have some bound lesser demons to whisper their duplicitous advice.
Packed into this 200 page book are lots of short sub-systems to manage journeys, create taverns, dungeons, cities, wilderness encounters, and designing kingdoms. A bestiary and section on the impact of the gods all add to the tools you have to create that sword & sorcery oily glisten. 
I’d like to try the game as written, but you could also use swathes of the book to inform any sword and sorcery setting you might care to play in. A Role VTT sheet or two is surely to follow.
Although the game is available in A4 print at Lulu.com, the layout is perfectly sized for A5. So, as with Dom’s excellent A5 rendition of Zozer’s Cepheus Universal, I have produced my own A5 version of the book.

Time for a riotous, player led, tub thumper? Perhaps…
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Fading Suns Fun

Posted on April 15, 2025 by First Age

I have recently returned to one of my favourite games through reading and playing its most recent 4th edition: Fading Suns. What is it with me and 4th editions?!

Fading Suns is a medieval factional space opera, set in a jump web of alien gates at a time when the suns themselves are waning. The heady dollops of tech, psionics, theurgy, dark powers, guilds, medievalism kind of sort of shouldn’t work, but it does magnificently. I’ve been with it since the first edition in the late 90s, noting that the authors very much defined the White Wolf style of games before moving to this game. Factional intrigue, dark magics, lost secrets, power plays, purging war against the symbiot plague threat, aliens, machines, sin, desire, a complete passion play. You can pick up and play the game accentuating one or more of these themes.
As fun as reading the lore is, it is great to experience it in play. I’ve got the game to a live stream on Youtube, flexing my tech to provide a 1440p resolution four hour game.
Fading Suns with friends from the Dungeon Muser’s Community

The fourth edition delivers a traditional and meta currency heavy design. It’s a bit like 2D20 on steroids. Recognisably the same mechanics from the first/second edition, ‘Victory Points’ now feature large, a metacurrency that enables choices after the task roll. I can see why some people have recoiled from the game. It is not a ‘fade into the background’ kind of system. the system drives a lot of the action through the deployment of VPs. Your character has a bank of them which can be saved and used when needed most. So, as players, you need to be comfortable having a meta currency in the background, which you explain through narrating your actions and the character energy being used to succeed. It works for me.
Fading Suns doesn’t have a Foundry VTT system, so I have been playing on Role, which works very well for a streamed game. Role’s limitations on asset management might soon overwhelm, but for a short game I can treat most things as tokens to enable multiple asset display during play.
Role with multiple tokens over an image of the Jump Web

I’ve been checking through the Streamlined Rules supplement for Fading Suns 4e. The main game is preserved, but instead of managing pools of Victory Points that you can bank and spend, you have one or two to spend for each turn, and they provide you with something like a ‘stance’. Do you keep defensive, go for effort to take out resistance or precision to increase your success chance? Your Goal roll also creates some more VP effort, if successful, and the higher the roll the better. Essentially, the numbers of VPs is roughly halved.
Although I think I like the streamlining, I’m happy enough to continue with the more voluminous full VP rules when we return to our one shot in June. I can see the streamlined rules forming the base for the 5th edition.
On which topic, it looks like there could be a new edition of the game. Hard copies are now hard to find, and Fading Suns PDFs are currently in a sale. Any edition will benefit from the great setting, but a lightening of the resolution mechanics would be welcomed. I’m happy to play either way. You can find hacks everywhere, to play in the Fading Suns with a ruleset of your choice. I’ve used Wordplay in the past.
Sometimes it is good to go back. Fading Suns delights.
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Designing a Basic Roleplaying RPG

Posted on March 23, 2025 by First Age

I’m confessing to a return to my roots with some Basic Roleplaying game building. This is something we did endlessly in my early years of the hobby in the 80s, using Stormbringer as the chasis, to play out great games with a solid design core with our own flavouring dolloped on top. The recent BRP ‘Universal Game Engine’ book is a great toolkit, from which you can select components and approaches to quickly build the game you want. I’m in the midst of a ‘design checklist’ that documents the decisions I have made when presented with options. Although you could be radical about those choices, my nostalgic brain mush is crafting a recognisable BRP core. I’m tailoring a Major Wound table and then moving onto approaches for magic. Chaosium’s Magic World game, based on their Elric!/Stormbringer 5 games, is also informing the build, which feels like a proper return to the old times.  

Rather than endlessly tinkering, I’d like to get something ‘good enough’ to get into actual play. I’m even comfortable that the edges of the game can change and adapt informed by the play itself. The core is solid enough to take some maleable fringes. I had been designing my own KSR inspired D100 game called ‘Century’, but have found the BRP approach to be quick and enjoyable.

Now, of course, I have Dragonbane, Free Leagues silky smooth iteration of Sweden’s ‘D&D’ based on the original 1982 Magic World and Basic Roleplay booklet ancestry. Any home made BRP game has to stand up next to this bouncy BRP newby. I also have perhaps the most elegant and intricately designed expression of the BRP family – the Design Mechanism’s Mythras. I think what I will end up with a reminiscent and comfortable antique, with some extra designed components that will give it a freshness for play. It may be the explicit permission to tinker and build your own that draws me to BRP, even when there is a spectrum of very good designs already out there and being supported. I doubt I will get as far as publishing this under the ORC license, but you never know. 

A Publisher powered character sheet and some setting and we are off for a game. I’ll post up the design decision list and character sheet when it is complete enough (and that doesn’t need to be very complete).

Even whilst my GM gaming foreground is full of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and various convention games and game reading, it’s nice to have a backburner that you keep returning to. This one has a nostalgic warm glow for me, with the design options now honed and well presented in the text. I might even get an enjoyable home game out of it.

Here’s to very old friends!

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QuestWorlds

Posted on February 25, 2025 by First Age

Chaosium’s QuestWorlds RPG has now arrived in POD at DrivethruRPG. I have a long history with the Hero Wars and HeroQuest game line, with my favourite being the excellent Mythic Russia.

Although I will be applying a slightly more traditional approach, by having pre-set recording of story object resistances, to enable a reproducable base consistency in some contests, I’m looking forward to giving QuestWorlds a spin.

It’s great that there are lots of ttrpg games for different tastes. My personal ‘other world verisimilitude’ openly struggled with the application of the QuestWorlds predecessor, HeroQuest2, ‘story logic’, as I wanted in-world conflict consistency to at least be part-based on story object integrity

HeroQuest 2 spurred me on to write my own ttrpg, which was a much better response than just being dissappointed! Tripod is the current iteration of that game, where you can still see the echoes of HeroQuest design. I think Tripod is much more me, not just because of the lovely d6 dice pools. Both QuestWorlds and Tripod provide a scalable and generic framework to resolve conflicts.
With such a long history, it is a delight to pick up QuestWorlds. This is a refined and well written version of HeroQuest that opens out so many worlds and adventures thanks to the ORC licensing. As ever entwined, this also reminds me that once Age of Arthur writing is finished, I should really return to Tripod and get some more ideas out there.
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Playing Dragonbane

Posted on February 20, 2025 by First Age

 I’m a big fan of Dragonbane, the BRP derived fantasy RPG from Free League that has set the gaming world on fire. I’ve been running the game for just over a year, setting the light and flexible game rules in the Trudvang setting, former home to the games very different preceding iteration when owned by Riot Minds. The game also serves as our Xmas family RPG, which has become a much enjoyed part of our festivities.

It isn’t often that I get a chance to play the game as a player. Recently, I managed to play and thought I’d jot down a few reflections.

The game was streamed online, presenting an introduction to the Shadows over Gloomshire adventure. Our starting PCs were given two sets of five increase rolls and, at my suggestion, an additional Heroic Ability. So, these were slightly uplifted characters, and I feel about right for a starting game. Each character was also given a plot-filled Act 1 ‘push’ and an Act 2 ‘reveal’, so that PCs could seamlessly provide background details organically in play. This was really well done.

Playing Dragonbane

How was the gameplay? It was everything I’d hoped for. Dragonbane has simple supportive game rules that resonate with the core games that were so central to my formative play in the 80s and 90s. So that would be, skill based and roll under, low to static hit points, and more often than not, BRP based or derived.

The GM and players were all great and zoned into the well presented game. You might say that I was going to have a good time, whatever the game system we used. True, though it was quickly clear that the game itself was bringing a quick glow to proceedings and everyone was digging how it delivered a strong sense of ability and conflict with the simplest of rules.

Participating as a player in the tactical elements of the card based initiative system was great fun. Although the VTT implementation of this was cumbersome, it was very engaging to consider our order, and to move things around as we needed, to optimise our tactical position.

The Roll20 sheet was definitely ‘good enough’ for a game, though not a patch on Foundry’s implementation, which I have been used to for more than a year.

Of course, I knew what I was getting, as I know the system so well from the GM’s side of the screen. I knew not to look for anything with a deeper crunch and more nuanced factors. The system was quickly and correctly applied and fully supported our play, which is pretty much the real deal. The game was so successful that the GM is thinking of running it again in a new sequence on his channel.

I look forward to playing Dragonbane again.

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Talislanta Epic Edition

Posted on February 7, 2025 by First Age

Talislanta 6th and Epic edition has landed in the People’s Republic of Sheffield and is, perhaps, one of the heaviest roleplaying games I own. The system itself is blissfully light, but can take in a lot of factors that effectively resolve down to a couple of modifiers  that cancel out and applied to a D20 roll. Check the outcome on the results table (which has a few entries and is quickly just memorised) for the level of the effect.

I have long been a fan of the Omni/Omega/Atlantis/Tal system. It sits high in my list of trad/sim/genre flexible engines. I’m eager to see the game in actual play, and where better than in its native home, Talislanta? A lush science fantasy world of weirdness and magic and ‘no elves’ (apart from all the multi-hued sentients that might look a bit fey). It’s a wild, crazy, fantastical place that needs to be experienced.

The lush world of Talislanta

I’m going to have the game run for me towards the end of the year, but I surmise that doesn’t stop me getting it out there for a one shot or three in the meantime. I don’t see any sign of a Foundry VTT system, so I will have to roll a functional sheet of my own. I can usually get an ugly but workable sheet operating, and will try to automate the look up of the roll with the table result. If I do that, then I actually need to get it to the virtual table. Watch this space

Unfortunately, I missed the memo to swap out the D&D5e conversion book for a second Tal Core book, so I have a huge doorstop of a beautiful book that I have absolutely no need for. I will pass it on to raise funds for another core book down track if I can.

Loking forward to exploring Talislanta, one way or another, in 2025.

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Keltia and Yggdrasill RPGs in Trudvang

Posted on February 4, 2025 by First Age

As I head towards the Trudvang Dragonbane campaign end game, I was thinking of getting some play out of the Keltia and Yggdrasill RPGs. Once licensed through Cubicle 7, these French historical (with magic) RPGs have long held a fascination. They are perhaps an optimal level of system crunch for me, with a nice D10 roll and keep system with an unfashionably long skill list (that’s just about right).

I’ve run Yggdrasill at conventions with some success, but not really got either game out for a campaign run, not least because Keltia covers similar ground to my own Age of Arthur. Further to a conversation with a couple of the players in the Dragonbane game about some more crunch, I suddenly realised that the game duo would play out fantastically in my beloved Trudvang setting. So, I’ve returned to my Keltia RPG sheets using the Custom System Builder, and made some significant improvements to their functionality. 

My Keltia system sheet running in Foundry VTT 

I’m not sure if anyone still plays Keltia and its Nordic cousin Yggdrasill RPG? I think they might be another group of books that sit on shelves, having had their heroic moments in the previous decade. Why do I always call back? 

The templates lack any CSS beautification, and I’ve done what I can as a non-coder, but they are functionally fine for playing the games. Of course, they would play so well in Trudvang… 😆

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Grogmeet 2025 and Hell Rides to Hallt

Posted on January 20, 2025 by First Age

I’m now back with my feet on the ground after a fun Grogmeet weekend in Manchester centre. I played two and ran one, with a nice slice of meal and pub socialising exquisitely dovetailed between. Throw in a slightly bizarre hotel experience at the Britannia Sachas Hotel, where I was greeted with a request for my passport, and then my driver’s licence, to be allowed to stay there. I had to have my key card on display to be permitted re-entry into the hotel by security. There’s some history there somewhere.

On Friday early eve, I tagged onto a welcoming group of Groglings who were going to explode at Bundobust, and shared a convivial meal with some excellent chat and a follow-up beer. This oiled me to a humming readiness for the Friday evening game.

Jeremy Gilbert ran an excellent ‘Midwinter Mystery’, which was an MR James-flavoured homebrew (with a touch of PG Wodehouse), using basic PBTA rules. As the conversation and action flowed, so did the generously provided port and blue cheese, enriching the sensoury experience beautifully. What a fine game, with great company, and eased me in gently to the following day.

Jeremy’s generous cheese and port 

I was drawn to Paul Baldowski’s ‘Necropolis Now’ game for the opportunity to play Gary Gygax’s rarely lamented ‘Dangerous Journeys’, his post D&D roleplaying game, venemously sued into piratical obscurity by TSR. When I got to the table I discovered that Paul had clearly decided that nobody would be foolish enough to want to experience the full game rules and had prepared the adventure using ‘Mythus Prime’, which I understand to be a simplified spin on the game. Mythus Prime has the advantage of one-shot simplicity and ease of play, even if there was little else to recommend it. The adventure had an authentic Gygaxian feel of barely decipherable puzzles, unavoidable deadly choices and TPKesque combat encounters in an Aegypt that should never have been. Paul is guaranteed to prepare and present a great game exprience, and he did so again here. Maybe next time he’ll run a game of the full Dangerous Journeys rules? Actually, maybe he got us close enough!

Paul’s group for the Gygax experience

Sometimes you need to GM a great session to give your confidence a bit of a boost. When you are in such illustrious high quality gaming company, you want your own game to be up to par. This was my first time running Warhammer Fantasy 4th Edition (WFRP), only having played the game a couple of times online. I do sometimes set myself encompassing challenges. WFRP is an intricate game, with fairly dense rules and a core opposed test mechanic that requires a calculation of success levels, that isn’t immediately intuitive. Add a plethora of ‘talents’, four (4!!) meta currencies and a further one for combat, and a host of modifiers and look up tables for criticals and you’ve got yourself a potential big clunker!
It might have helped if the rules were laid out clearly and unambiguously. Sadly, the core book has the habit of leaving a key explanatory clause wafting at the bottom of a lengthy paragraph. I read the opposed test mechanics three or four times, only to discover that I had got them wrong when I played the game. However, the game is now fairly mature, which means that there are lots of helpful resources and some new twists to rules to make things that bit easier. There is a great rules summary out there, which condenses most everything to about six pages of small font. Invaluable. ‘Group Advantage’ simplifies the edge that the group (rather than individual) can gain over their adversaries, so I created a quick table sheet with beads to manage that flow.
Group Advantage Sheet

Of the four meta currencies I suggested we focus on Fortune, the one that gives a reroll or bonus to success level. These were quickly used in play! In fact my excellent group of players did a stunning job of grasping the complexities of the game and gamefully riding on the coat tails of my adjudications. The mechanical gears whirled fairly well, and the players felt they had a good taste of how the game worked.

Although there were depths to the rules that we didn’t plumb, I was determined to provide an accurate presentation of the game, whilst maintaining the pace needed for the session to deliver a beginning, middle and end. It took some considerable study to get myself match fit, but if you are going to offer a game then it is on you to know it well. The prep paid off.
The adventure was Hell Rides to Hallt, a well constructed adventure that was a mystery brim full of ‘golden roleplay opportunities’, set in a walled town with a murder problem. Spoiler free game discussion below.
My group of players threw themselves into the adventure and into the portrayal of their characters with gusto. I had deployed some old A5 menu holders to provide character standees for display, with a short text view of all the other characters on the player facing side. A little extra to give some inter group connection and fun.

The player characters

Allowing for breaks, we probably had not much over three hours of game time, so that focused my presentation, and positioning of key clues to drive towards a resolution. I had walked through the adventure twice, testing the potential use of rules as I went, to give me confidence not only in the story and resolution options, but also how the characters will engage with the narrative using the involved WFRP ruleset. It was time well spent.

Whilst keeping the player characters at the centre, and the player decisions as key during the unfurling mystery, I will confess to a certain joyous abandon in playing the inhabitants of Hallt. Everyone, from the superstitious and afeared common folk, to pompous should know betters, drunken priests, timorous silversmiths, and the lofty govenor of the city. Our interactions over that short magical time brought us into the story with smiles, laughter and good humour.

We managed to navigate the story to a satisfying and deadly conclusion, with two of the group laid low at the end. It felt unnecessary to detail every drop of glistening truth to the players at the end. Life is rarely like that. They had uncovered enough, played their hands well, and succeeded where many would have failed.

My brilliant players (and an extra!)

The picture above was taken at the end of the session, and I’ve just noticed that we were some of the last to finish. We actually finished the game bang on time, something I think is important in a packed schedule, where players may need to get on with the rest of their planned day. As a GM, sometimes you get a session that plays out so well, it fully reaffirms and encourages you, restoring all your confidence points, even while carrying the fatigued condition. This game was a gem, which is as well as I am already committed to presenting it at another two coventions over the next couple of months. Thanks in large part goes to my excellent players, who engrossed themselves in the game and shaped it right through to the end.

My thanks also to all I met and chatted with at Grogmeet. I may only have AAA social batteries, but you filled them with friendship and fun. And of course, to the inestimable Dirk the Dice and Blythy of the Grognard Files Podcast, for making all this possible. You did an amazing job!

Looking forward to the next time…

 

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An unexpected return to the Third Horizon

Posted on January 11, 2025 by First Age

It’s the 11th january and, having just finished my concrete RPG planning for 2025, I’m running an unplanned mini campaign. I expected flagrant deviation, but perhaps not 24 hours after finishing my plans.

An end, or extended pause to Tom’s excellent Mongoose Traveller ‘Darrian Academics in Space’ mini campaign, afforded us all to pitch something to take up the fortnightly Thursday morning play. Anticipating that the vibe from some of the small group was for more science fiction, I pitched either some more Traveller, or Coriolis. Further to another very attractive pitch, we seem to have cosied up to the idea of Coriolis.

I have a slightly chequered past, and one might say ‘unfinished business’ when GMing Coriolis. I made a start running the excellent Mercy of the Icons campaign, but the game seemed to flounder slightly with my sense that the sessions hadn’t captured the imagination of one or two of the group. With a slight sense of frustration, and silent apologies to the two who were really enjoying it, I folded the game part way through the first major Act. That’s a very rare occurence for me, and a few lessons have been learned since then.

A new mini campaign, ‘The Fate of Shamshir’ had landed on Drivethru, so I decided to pick it up as a speculative pitch to the group, but also with half an eye to LongCon in July. The pitch to the group also alows me to run a game with Sqyre, my new Foundry hosting. I’m looking forward to seeing how that works out. 

Making a start in Foundry VTT

To speed readiness, I have made a further small investment by purchasing the Coriolis Core Rules module for Foundry. This provides me with a rich set of assets, without needing to enter them all by hand. We will also have the core rules to hand in the Foundry journal, which should prove useful.

The game setup will just need me to revisit the Coriolis game and setting, and transfer the mini campaign images and NPCs into Foundry. I’ve made a start with the latter.

It’s good to be back with Coriolis. I still have the first part of the Mercy of the Icons campaign as a Foundry module. Perhaps this shorter outing will encourage me to try that epic adventure again? I would reach out to my two former players if I did.

May the Icons be with you always.

  

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