Messages from the Far Havens

I trust you have all recovered from your Black Friday / Cyber Monday purchases? There did seem to be some real bargains for RPG PDFs and books, and I picked up a few. Although I have plans for both Symbaroum’s ‘Throne of Thorns’ and Warhammer Fantasy 4th Ed’s ‘Enemy Within’ campaign, I failed to resist picking up volumes 1 & 2 of Gods of the Forbidden North at a knock down price. This is a sprawling campaign, designed with Old School Essentials in mind, but easily playable with your fantasy game of choice.

On the arctic frontier, at the border between the mountains and the wastes beyond, looms Castle Thar-Gannon. For centuries, the Skull God ruled his domain from his blackened throne. But twenty years have passed since the routing of his armies, and the castle lies abandoned with riches unclaimed. Yet, death still lurks in the shadows of the ruins. An ancient doom arises from the depths of this place…

A frigid sandbox, with broad enough shoulders to also provide an adventure path journey through its 480 pages (Book1). Book 2 heads into subteranean realms, with a final book 3 due to arrive in 2025. It’s a vast yet accessible campaign landscape, full of bite sized adventures.  The player characters have travelled to the Forbidden North, and not without purpose. They have seized a valuable Inilgaan artifact, the Eye of J’karaa, from distant ruins. Pursued by their rival, Zarcand the Black Magician, the heroes race to elude their enemy and profit from the heirloom’s secret. 

It’s really tempting to get this to the virtual table straight away. Although Dragonbane is an obvious system choice, I thought I’d branch out and use something else.

Recent play of both Warhammer Fantasy and the slightly more accessible Zweihander, based on an earlier edition of Warhammer with some design changes, have got me tingling. A grim and perilous set of rules cast out into the Forbidden North seems like an excellent ice frozen combination. I’d be playing it on Foundry VTT, my online gaming home. Zweihander is due a new ‘Reforged’ edition in about a month’s time, with some Kickstarter promises for a Foundry module in 2025.

This will either prompt me to be patient and wait for the Foundry module to arrive, or forge on with another game engine. My thoughts turned to my own Heroic Fantasy, a simple Black Hack based game that could quickly be brought into this campaign. An advantage to this game system is its light and flexible approach to describing things, which would make any conversion work a chilly breeze.

Heroic Fantasy emulates early D&D, very much the base for Old School Essentials. Although the two differ mechanically, they occupy similar traditional game space. This prompted me to pick up the Heroic Fantasy book and remind myself of it! I still like its unpretentious and simple mechanics, shallow power curve, and largely player facing rules. It feels a bit ridiculous to waver on offering Heroic Fantasy to possible players due to it being my own game (albeit based on David Black’s solid framework). I think it is a confidence thing.

As I looked through the game I had an idea for a rules variant on difficulty modifiers, so have written it down here to remind me! 

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This is the one that almost got away. I have to go back to October 2020 for the end of the Kickstarter campaign for Here Be Dragon’s ‘Monte Cook’s Diamond Throne. In that dim, dark plague epoch, I was in the midst of some Cypher system love which, paired with my endless exuberance for portentious heroic fantasy, seemed like a great combination.

Since then, Cypher has faded somewhat down my list of go-to systems, though it’s core simplicity and player facing mechanics continue to appeal. High heroic fantasy has most recently arrived in the shape of more inventive F20 with Shadow of the Weird Wizard, and fantasy in general is now dominated with anything Dragonbane. The Lands of the Diamond Throne are chock full of tippy toe high fantasy treats, a gorging of magic and protentious heroics against carefully mechanical odds.

So, four years then. Well, I just remembered that I never got the books that had been sent out. I think, sometime in 2023 I said to the company, Here Be Dragons, that’d wait for the last big thing, The Width of a Circle epic campaign. Of course, it never arrived, although it looked as though it was being worked on. So that patient approach almost cost me everything, as the whole thing slipped from my cosciousness as I was very busy retiring and loafing about.

Cut to today and I went on a quest of my own, to navigate old email threads and dust strewn Kickstarter pages to work out how, or even if, I could still get hold of my pledge books. After some faffing about, I discovered a whole sequence of coupons available to me on my account at Monte Cook Games’ webstore. For a shipping cost of £14, my Kickstarter rewards would be shipped to me. Hoorah! I still think that the campaign pack will be produced and sent through at some point, but I will forge on without it.

Worth noting that the slipcase set of the two core books are about to become available through retail at the MCG Store. 

An unexpected turn, and a curve ball to my gaming plans, which will see some Cypher in my play, at the very least at some conventions. My immediate next step is always to see what is available on Foundry VTT. As far as I can tell, there is a fairly rudimentary system sheet for Cypher play, which is better than anything I could put together, so I have something to work with.  The character creation process of assembling an “I am an adjective-adjective noun who verbs” is just as much of a delight now as when I was fooling with it a few years ago.

Perhaps this will be my Tier 2 group of heroes:

• A Fierce Human Fighter who Was Foretold
• An Honourable Dracha fighter who Performs Battle Rituals
• An Intelligent Human Channeler who Attunes to Mystical Forces
• A Contemplative Human Emmisary who Delves into Akashic Memory
• A Tough Verrik Wanderer who Reveres a Totem Spirit

With the first half of 2024 in the rear view mirror, I thought I’d take a peek as to how my own ttrpg play is going.

 81 sessions.

As is customary there are a few stand out campaign games, with a swathe of one-shot fun, thanks to my convention attendances.

My online streamed game of Mongoose Traveller 2e – ‘The Borderland Run’ has been a continuous joy, with the first story arc reaching a conclusion in a few weeks, but with a new arc to follow, heading into the Pirates of Drinax Though fortnightly, it has run consistently, and I do what I can to prioritise my Sunday early evening to get to play. It’ll go down as one of my classic games and a delight to play. 

Trudvang setting, Dragonbane rules has been a core part of my GMing this year, and I have greatly enjoyed the combination. I have a lovely group, sized well to accommodate a couple of players who have been busy and not able to attend so consistently. I had hoped to stream the game, but one player doesn’t want to be live streamed (and fair enough), so I am private streaming the game to finesse the technology and get the volumes right. I hope the game continues to entertain as we head into the depths of Snowsaga.

Dom’s ‘Achtung Cthulhu’ continues with a breadcrumb trail of clues and encounters, as our heroes uncover Nazi meddling with things what should be left alone. I like this iteration of 2D20, which covers the action very well. It’s interesting that the group dynamic has encouraged me to take a more backseat and supportive role. Although I am being swept along, I am enjoying others play, and intrigued to see how it builds to an inevitable ending.

And thanks to Dom for using Tripod for the Longcon ‘Stormbringer’ mini campaign. It was great to play with this light and flexible game again, and so encouraging to see it effortlessly handle the scale of the conflicts, mesh in the powers of Chaos and Law, and resolve the intensity with exciting outcomes that resolve in a couple of dice rolls. Using Tripod helped us to enjoy the majority of the two pack scenario, and be well timed for a late afternoon ending on the Sunday.

I expect the doughnut will expand a little with different systems in the second half, with my top three growing in session numbers. As Age of Arthur wanders into early playtest, it should make an appearance in some measure. I sense either Shadow of the weird Wizard or Symbaroum may make some in-roads, but I am expecting to be surprised by what emerges. I will stream a mini campaign of something this year.

This is the most gaming in six months I have done, possibly ever. High quality too. Such is the way of retirement, desire, and a gaming community of great GMs filled with play opportunities.