Mysteries of Montreal

Another bumper year of gaming, with 93 sessions over the last 52 weeks, 30 as a GM, 63 as a player.  A few gaming highlights were playing Legend of the 5 Rings (1e) with John Wick as GM in January (that's a post of its own). 2024 was of course a NecronomiCon year, which brought a bunch of Highlights (I'm going to call out 2 games with Oscar Rios as the games that have stuck with me). This was also the year when I started to run Masks of Nyarlathotep again, and getting through 2 chapters, plus a couple of self insert mini chapters was also fun, however, since there is a new prologue chapter of the campaign, I am yet to reach mu own high tide mark for running that campaign (London), but we are a total of 18 sessions in all so far, with more to come in the new year.  Special mentions also to Ten Candles, Heirs to Heresy and Deathmatch Island as games that I really want to play/run again. Now, on to the facts and figures. Games Played Games Ran In that selection of games for 2024...

  I've joined the Wood-Paneled Webring .  What is that you ask? well, it's a TTRPG webring for creators, artists designers etc. Oh, you mean what's a webring ? Well, gather round children and let me tell you a tale of the old ways. In the before days of the internet, back in the 1900's there was no Google, there was just Jeeves. It was in this time that the webrings were formed, from the very elementary units of the initial internet. They allowed you to find sites of interest to you by grouping these sites together, and adding a little link box somewhere to allow you to follow the trail of ethereal breadcrumbs from one site to the next.  Why this exercise in nostalgia? Well, for the same reasons as I initially started this blog, communication. As the social media landscape as we know it crumbles and fractions and continues its route to silofication. As search engines are eaten alive by the AIs developed to improve them. Where are we to turn but to the old ways. The ways...

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.