Mysteries of Montreal

 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...

 RPG a Day 2024, day 28: Great gamer gadget ? Gadgets for gaming? To me, the best gadget is one that will improve the experience at the table. I did think about answering dice, but they are more inherent to the experience than the word gadget suggests. A well built random table. Random tables are hard to get right, but a good one is a source of inspiration (either random or chosen) for many a session. These are simple tools that can really add to the experience both sides of the screen.

The convention is not only about games and panels, it is about so much more. Indeed any visitor to the con can only see a fraction of what is available. What else did I do? Well, here's a selection. Ars Necronomica I actually stumbled into the Ars Necronomica event by accident. I had indeed planned to look it out, as my previous visit had left me rather impressed. As it was, this year it was not in the same place, but in a vacant storefront in the same arcade as the Lovecraft Arts & Sciences bookstore . The arcade itself was sadly much less populated than on previous visits, with most storefronts lying empty, so I guess it was an easy space for them to have access to. I was less than impressed with the space, and indeed with the number of works on show. While the website linked above admits the scope of the show to be 'curtailed' from previous years, it was still rather disappointing, and I was in and out in about 10 minutes. I think I was more impressed with the art ...

 RPG a Day 2024, day 27: Marvelous Minature I rarely if ever use minis when I'm role-playing. Never have. We didn't get into the habit of it back in the days of black-and white, and we rarely play(ed) games where miniatures helped with combat. I do like tactical combat of the kind that miniatures go well with, but it's a separate hobby for me, minis-gaming anf RPGs are two great tastes that I don't mix. Indeed, I have a separate blog, just for minis. Lead and Paint . I started it before this one, but it has lain dormant recently, as has my mini-painting.  Minis I like, that I have painted? Well, the gang I painted for Frostgrave is up there, and includes some cools minis from various companies (including an Olaf that I commissioned from Antoine )

As previously mentioned, I had planned to go to more panels this year, making the most of this side of the convention. In previous years, I had indeed managed quite a few, but mostly on the gaming side. It turns out that was mostly the case this year again, but I tried. There was talk that more of the panels would be recorded and made available in some format, probably on Youtube once they've been edited. Once I hear where and how to access these, I will be sure to post that on the blog. Writing this out and reading it back, I seem to be more down on the panels than I thought I would be going in. In a way, this is just me working through what I think. Take these reviews with a pinch of salt. Literary Panels I made it to two solely literary panels. The first being: The Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe and its Long Shadow Michael Cisco, Christa Carmen, Frank Coffman, F. Brett Cox (M), Levi Leland, Sean Moreland. This was an early morning session, and one of the first of the Con. Four academ...

 RPG a Day 2024, day 26: Superb Screen I assume we're talking GM screen here. I have a few, yes. I think my current favourite has to be the Keeper Screen for the Masks of Nyarlathotep Campaign. I don't need the rules on the inside of a screen for Call of Cthulhu, but the info at your fingertips for that whole campaign, in terms of geography or NPCs? That's priceless.

 I have been back from the con for a few days, and I'm finally in a place to put up a couple of posts of my experiences.  This was my third trip to NecronomiCon Providence, but I've not been for 5 years due to circumstances beyond my control.  I had planned less gaming and more attending the other parts of the con. The panels, and other event surrounding the con. Well, that was the plan. We'll see in the other posts to come how much of the rest of the Con I managed to see. For games played, I had signed up for 3 games in advance, with no game planned on Thursday evening. I had wanted to go along to the opening ceremony. However, our travel timings didn't allow for that, and in the end I had an evening free.  Turns out, there was a space at the Delta Green table Mathieu had a game at, so I joined in there. We played through Music from a Darkened Room , with Handler  Tim Deschene . This was my first time playing Delta Green with the actual Delta Green rules (and ...

 RPG a Day 2024, day 25: Desirable dice ? I'm actually not a big one for dice. Of course I have a collection amassed over the last 30 odd years, but it's surprisingly sparse compared to many. My favourites? Well, i still have the first set of dice I bough from Beatties, a defunct hobby store, possibly in Falkirk or Stirling. I really like them. I think the d20 isn't the original, but the others are all there. As for more modern sets, I do like the dice for the One Ring, but the 1e sets over the 2e sets.

At a recent trip to my FLGS , I was browsing through a new influx of previously loved games. There was what looked to be the whole series of Zweihander (I will not post a link to that, if you know you know), but I do not have either the space mentally, or physically for those books in my house. What I did find that was of interest, was the almost complete set of the 2000's version of Dragon Warriors . I had heard of the original British RPG, but I have never seen or played it. These books I did pick up, as the price was more than reasonable. So I am now the owner of an almost complete run. Only book not to be included in the hoard was In From the Cold . Apart from hearing of this system through podcasts like the Grognard files , the main reason I picked these up was due to the wonderful Jon Hodgson covers. I did buy the Fabled Lands books that were released back in the 80s, by the same author, and I thought they were a clever take on the choose your own adventure genre. I have fl...

RPG a Day 2024, day 24: Acclaimed advice ? Over the years, I have amalgamated a great amount of GM advice, from the books themselves, from playing with others and seeing different styles, from reading books of advice, be it Robin's Laws of Good Games Mastering , the little book of Keeper Tips , or the Ultimate RPG Guide series by James D'Amato. All of which I recommend, and have taken things from. If there is once piece of advice that I can remember clearly when and where It sunk in, it was back with MERP. One thing that the rulebook tries hard to get across was game balance . Now I do not pretend to believe that what I thought of as game balance back then and what I believe now are the same thing at all, but that concept of game balance was required for a game as swingy as MERP, and it meant that even back then, I wasn't throwing things at players that they couldn't handle. This was a game that was really trying to tell the GM that in a case of GM vs Player, the GM ca...

 RPG a Day 2024, day 23: Peerless player Pick a peerless player? Of all the players I have played with? No I won't. It's like asking who your favourite child is, yes, we all know that we have one, but you never say which one out loud! What a rude question. (disclaimer, my favourite child varies day to day, depending which one did something to annoy me last)

 RPG a Day 2024, day 22: Notable non-player character ? As all GMs know, the most notable NPC in any campaign is the one you make up on the spot , that the players love/loathe so much that they have to keep coming back. However, this post will mot contain such an anecdote. What I will discuss is the raft of great NPC found in The Two-Headed Serpent . The Caduceus Organization is central to the plot, and is the organization that send the Heroes out on missions. It has a wonderful array of NPCs that the players can interact with, from the quartermaster who gets them the kit they desire, the secretary/assistant who they must deal with to get in touch with the higher-ups, to the squabbling family in charge of the Organization. No spoilers, but I think my players really got to know these NPCs, and when he twists and turns of the plot hit, they were sometimes in a real moral quandary as to how to interact with these people. I recommend this campaign for many reasons, but it's the NPCs fr...

 RPG a Day 2024: Day 21: Classic Campaign ? The use of the word classic almost made me miss a trick here. Of course, there are a great many classic campaigns. I have written a bucket list of some of them, and am happily working my way through them. HotOE, Masks, Enemy Within, The Great Pendragon campaign, Darkening of Mirkwood. All considered greats. Classics, and deservedly so. I'm going to take a detour here and suggest something not on that list. A Pound of Flesh This is a 51 page A5 booklet, which is literally cover to cover crammed full of information, mostly in the form of random tables, for running a campaign on the space station Prospero's Dream. This booklet includes multiple factions, their goals, the locations they control throughout the space station, and how their goals change and advance depending on what the players might do when interacting with them and the other various plotlines woven throughout the booklet. If you never buy another book for Mothership, buy t...

 RPG a Day 2024, day 20: Amazing Adventure There are a great many amazing adventures out there, and many of them are home-made GM written. For todays prompt, I will stick to published adventures, as through these, we build a community of shared experience. If, however, I have to pick one adventure, then I'll go with Dissociation. Dissociation is a scenario written by Matthew Sanderson, and is published in the Fears Sharp Little Needles book of scenarios, published by Stygian Fox . I won't spoiler it, but I have run this scenario twice, and had a great time both times. This is a modern day Call of Cthulhu scenario, with a classic Lovecraftian monster, but the title of the scenario works for both the investigators and the players. There are a few twists and turns, and a great end point. I love it. However, if you want to know more, a quick search on Youtube should hit you up with a couple of spoiler filled reviews.

 RPG a Day 2024, day 19: Sensational Session The most sensational session for me is the next one. Anticipation of upcoming games is something that get's me through the week. I know I am very privileged as I have 2 regular sessions a week, but the anticipation of them keeps me going. If I'm GMing , the anticipation and preparation for the next session is in some ways a larger part of the hobby that the time at the table. So yeah, the next session I have planned is always sensational.

 RPG a Day 2024: Day 18: Memorable moment of play. My aging brain is not so good with the memory thing, and sometimes I need personal prompts to get the memories flowing. If there was any of the daily prompts I would swap out for the alternative, it would be this one. I have a smattering of memories from here and there in gaming, but nothing I feel is post-worthy of itself. I have memories from my early games of MERP, round my parent's dining room table, with my school friends and brother. Great memories from GEAS in Edinburgh, my first time gaming with other people outside that home group, and so many things learned. Wonderful memories from moving to Canada, and starting another local gaming table, some of those people I am still gaming with 17 years later. Here's to another 30+ years of gaming memories, and the people who help make them!

 RPG a Day 2024, day 17: An engaging RPG community. The community you build yourself, i.e. the players round your table, be that in person or online. Cop out? Okay then, the Vintage RPG Podcast discord server. A real Goldilocks discord. Not too big that you lose track of the conversations, not too small that the conversation dries up (I am in plenty of both those types). Add to this a community with similar values to my own, both gaming and politically, and we have a win.

 RPG a Day 2024, day 16: Quick to learn. There is a lot of overlap with a game that is easy to learn and a game that is quick to use. So I'm going to go with an answer that someone else gave for day 6, that I should have thought of. Cthulhu Dark . Super simple to play/run/learn, and does exactly what it says on the tin. 10/10, would play again.

 RPG a Day 2024, day 15: Great character gear ? Great character gear? Cyberpunk. Any flavour. Next question? In cyberpunk, more than any other game, it's all about the gear. This goes for most cyberpunk games, but the R Talsorian Cyberpunk games excel in this. Go look up the chrome books, or the new one, Black Chrome . More than any other game, your character is defined by their gear, and their look (fashion choices, aka gear).  Shadowrun too, to some extent, though the inclusion of races in that book alleviates the need to show niche through choice of chrome.  Our current cyberpunk game, Android, falls down on this point for me. There seems to be a distinct lack of gear. I'm playing a runner, and even there, my choices are very limited. This is one of the failures for me. I agree this might be due to my expectations set back in the day by Cyberpunk, but I will not apologise for that.

 RPG a Day 2024, day 14: Compelling characters? I'm going to take this prompt to mean what RPGs give compelling characters, as I don't think I really want to talk about 'my Bard for D&D'. I think that any game can do this, as for me this is something that is emergent from play. Many games try to do this on the page, and it can work, or it can fall flat on it's face, both for the same game, depending on what fits the players at the table. For a game that gives great characterisation out of the box, I'd turn to some of the better Powered by the Apocalypse style games, where you're sheet has everything you need and the moves are built to structure a certain type of play that is character based, and can be different for everyone at the table. I feel this is the strength of PbtA games when done right. From what I read and hear, Monster of the Week does this right, and from personal experience, I know Escape from Dino Island get's it too.

 RPG a Day 2024, day 13: Evocative Environments The One ring, either 1st edition, with the hugely evocative art of Jon Hodgson et al, or 2nd edition with the reliance of adventure sites as hubs for scenarios, there is so much going on in this game to make the environment a part of the game at the table, which is so very in keeping with the source material.  Journeys are part of the adventure cycle, and as such, players interact with the environment for both good and ill on a regular basis, and it really helps with the immersion into Middle Earth.

 RPG a Day 2024, day 12: RPG with well-supported campaigns? It's interesting that well-supported is in bold in this question. Again, this is an easy answer. Call of Cthulhu. I have ran and enjoyed The Two Headed Serpent for their Pulp Cthulhu system. I have ran and enjoyed Horror on the Orient Express , and I have recently started my 3rd or 4th attempt at Masks of Nyarlathotep. Not only are these campaigns renowned in the industry, and the classic ones have gone through multiple incarnations/editions, but the support both from within Chaosium, and from third party vendors outmatches anything I've seen for other games or publishers. No contest.

  This year I shall be attending NecronomiCon Providence . I missed a Con, back in 2022, as Covid travel rules, and other travel got in the way (we went back to the UK that summer, and I could not be in 2 places at the same time). This year, the Con seems to be back at full strength, and I am really looking forward to it. An added bonus is that there is a group of 5 of us heading down from Montreal. Two of whom I have only chatted to briefly online, but come highly recommended. I have also planned my game sessions. two with Oscar Rios, one of which was supposed to be a 1920s game, but both games are now planned as Cthulhu Invictus games. I do not mind this, as if you're going to do Invictus, Oscar is your man. I had tried to get into Matthew Sanderson's game on Thursday evening, but it booked out on 10 seconds flat. Finally, I have booked a place at the Gatsby and the Great Race game. Yes I have played this before, but I believe there is more juice to squeeze from that particu...

 RPG a Day 2024, day 11: RPG with well supported one-shots ? For my money, this has to be Call of Cthulhu. From the one-shots that can be run in 1-2 hours in Gateways to Terror , and the one-shots for beginner Keepers in Doors to Darkness , not to forget their range of one-shot's that include Scritch Scratch and Deadlight, Call of Cthulhu has one-shots for everyone's need and levels.  I think this is due to the nature of the game itself, where investigative games need a mystery, and these are hard to come up with on the fly, or indeed at all, so there are a good many years worth of scenarios out there to get your teeth into. You want to see support, get the Starter Set and it takes you though all the steps required.

As I prepare myself to go to NecronomiCon 2024, I was running through old posts, when I found this draft from October 2019, when I had put together links from various panels and podcasts relating to the Con, yet I had never got round to publishing the post. So here I am, five years later, and I will post this, but only one I've checked that all the links are still valid.  The first post on the panels from the 2019 Con can be found here . King in Yellow Guerrilla Panel Victory at Home and Beyond: Investigators for Social Equality  The panel I did not make it to but would have liked to. Ghost Eater HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast. May be behind Patreon paywall. Miskatonic University Podcast / Good Friends of Jackson Elias  podcast cage match And finally, although not a panel as such, but episode 182 of the MUP is a  debrief of NecronomiCon 2019 , including Oscar Rios. Of particular interest, I get mentioned. Not named, but the guy Oscar is talking about at the table...

 RPG a Day 2024, day 10: RPG you'd like to see on TV ?      My relationship with RPGs is one where I see it as an interactive/active experience, and not a passive one. Since the pandemic, my TV watching has reduced to next to nothing, whereas my interactions with RPGs is more than it ever was. Indeed, that truly passive way to take in RPGs, live-streaming/actual plays, is one that I have had very little interaction with either. I see that it has a place, but it's not really for me, so no,  I have no interest in watching a TV show based on an RPG. Is there any RPG IP that I think would translate well, that hasn't already been done? Sure, give me a WFRP TV series. Go on, I dare you!

 RPG a Day 2024, day 9: an accessory you'd like to see. An accessory I'd like to see? I'm afraid I'm just not very imaginative on this one. I love my props, and if a GM screen exists I'll get it (I need them as a shield at the take more than a reference), but I'm not a big one for gimmicky dice, or other accessories (yesterday's post non-withstanding). Dice towers or trays take up too much space, and minis and scenery I keep for my minis games.  I do love good stationary though, and inventive ways to represent your character sheet . Maybe some note books that are RPG friendly without being 5e D&D coded? Those would be nice.

 RPG a Day 2024, day8: An Accessory you Appreciate? Blades in the dark gets a lot of kudos for the game design shown in its pages, and I get that. I read it, and I see a great many tools in there that I would use. I don't think, however, it's the best publication for the Blades in the Dark system. I've read it, and I can see patches of what it is trying to do, but it seems obscured by itself. I've played it, and I'm pretty sure the GM we had was seeing things the same way, but his view was similarly obscured when translating things to the table, as what we played was a lot more of a trad-game than I think Blades actually is. So when a|state came out with a new 2nd edition that was based on the Forged in the Dark system, I was happy, and yet had similar reserves about managing to get it to the table. In stepped Morgue, with his dream fueled (apparently literally) ' table tower '. Between this and the play mat (ok, that's 2 accessories), Forged in the Da...

 RPG a Day 2024, day 7: RPG with 'Good Form ' What does that mean, Good form? Like a race-horse? Like a good chap? To be sure I looked it up. The dictionary definition of Good form is: '(noun) behavior that conforms to social conventions of the time.' Ok, so an RPG that fits well with modern sensibilities? So many games these days are getting it right. Like all hobbies, we have our retrograde imbeciles, but I'd like to think I don't buy any of their games. So do any of the games I have stand out? What about this one ? Like a great many games, I have yet to get this one to the table, but I hear good things on it's take on the PbtA style of game.