Mysteries of Montreal

As I mentioned ever so briefly here, back in the review of games played for last year, I have been involved in the playtesting of FiveEvil. This is a game based on the d20 system of the "fifth edition of the most popular TTRPG on the market", aka 5e. FiveEvil takes this base game that many people know and love, and modifies the system and rules to allow the game to work for a horror setting.  The game is currently under development through Handiwork Games . 5e is often used as a system to run any type of game. Mostly because it is the biggest game in the TTRPG space, and has therefore has the largest player base. However, any time the though of using 5e to run a horror game comes up online, this raises the hackles of the horror game community, as at its heart, 5e D&D is a heroic fantasy game where character  agency is front and centre, whereas horror games require putting that character agency on the back burner, and put them in situations where they do not feel in contr...

I am looking to start a Vaesen campaign. This will be a novelty to me in two ways. One it's a new game to me, and secondly, I plan to co-GM this with another of the members of our Thursday gaming group.  We both want to run the game, but as with all games like this, we both also want to play. Moreover, Vaesen is a game where if you have read the adventure, you can't play it. More so that many other games. And the other co-GM had already read a bunch of the scenarios, and so can't play them. With that in mind, I will run through The Lost Mountain Saga , and they will run other, interweaving adventures. Vaesen will hopefully work well for this with The Society being great for this kind of troupe play. With that in mind, I set off looking for a Vaesen character sheet. There is one freely available on the Free League website , but it's kind of basic, and there are surprisingly few variants out there. It's also not form-fillable. So I made it so. Link to the form fillabl...

 RPG a Day 2024, day 31: Game or Gamer you miss . Yay, I made it to the end! Go me. Last time I completed one of these was back in 2017. Reading back, I see I had the same plan then as now. Write a bunch of posts at the start of the month when momentum and time were high, then schedule posts to arrive on time. I see that back them was also a NecronomiCon year.  So we're ending on a high note...? ...oh, no, that's a bit of a downer. Game or gamer I miss?  Well, there are a few ways I could go with this. I miss not having all my 1e L5R books, and I have no idea where they ended up. Nah, too material. I miss all the people I gamed with in Edinburgh at GEAS. I am in contact with many through social media, either through the dying facebook, or the various discords we share membership of. So there. That's a bunch of gamers that were part of my life for a good 5-6 year period that I no longer game with in any fashion. Know that you are missed.

 RPG a Day 2024, day 30: Person you'd like to game with. I've been incredibly fortunate in my gaming career to have gamed with a lot of good people (you know who you are). I've even had a chance, mostly through Necronomicon, to play with some gaming luminaries, at least in the Call of Cthulhu world (including Mike Mason, Scott Dorward, Keeper Chad, Lynne Hardy, Oscar Rios, and many others). One of my bucket list people to game with was John Wick, of Legend of the 5 Rings fame. I say was, as earlier this year, I played in his Shadow Throne game. This was really great. My favourite clan in my favourite game run by a writer and GM I have long respected. I learned a lot. Unfortunately, for reasons, I could only play in 3 sessions, but I had a blast. I may go into this more in another post. Stay tuned, and comment if you want more info. So, who does this leave? I think I'd like to get to the table with Kenneth Hite, or even Robin Laws. That would be a real coup.

 RPG a Day 2024, day 29: Awesome App ? My first thought is that I don't know of any apps that I use. Then I thought some more, and yeah there are a couple. There's the character generator app for the new version of Mothership, Mothership Companion (I have not yet tried it), there's the dice app for Genesys that I have used (as I am not buying those dice. Our GM had to buy 3 sets for the game to work). Then I got to thinking, what apps do I actually use in gaming, and the answer was obvious. Discord . I use discord as an app and in my browser all the time, and the app on my phone for online gaming.  Discord was a lifesaver when the pandemic rolled around, and Roll20 had a very poor voice/video interface. Discord has become a place of community/communities online where previous platforms have lost usability. Discord is an awesome app.

I did go to this years NecronomiCon with an increased budget from years passed (I had had 5 years to save after all). I planned to make the most of getting stuff, and being able to drive back across the border and not have to pay the exorbitant shipping prices that prices many of these products out for me. When you pay as much or more for shipping as you do for the book in the first place, well, you just don't. With that in mind, I may have gone a spend crazy. Just a little. I regret nothing that I bought, and a couple of things that I didn't. Gaming Stuff The first stop was a trip to the Chaosium stand, where I picked up the brand new, and not yet publicly available Gaslight Investigator's Guide. This is a beautiful hardback book, as are all of the main Chaosium books. I will say no more on it, as once I cam hoe, it went away as a birthday gift. Next stop was the other Call of Cthulhu Licensees stall, where books were being sold by Stygian Fox, Golden Goblin Press, Bayt Al...