Session Report: Keep on the Borderlands #3 – The Owlbear Boys Ride Again

This was one hell of a night of fantasy adventure gaming: amazing feats were performed, characters died for reasons poetic, combat was cleverly avoided (until it wasn’t), and the tech stack stayed the hell out of my way.

We started the session back at the Keep, of course. A week has passed so the PCs had to do some financials for room and board, which left them pretty cash strapped and also really clarified the old school play loop: of course they’re going back to the Caves of Chaos – they’re fuckin’ broke. They chose to not hire any help but two players did run two characters each, including a new Fighter. Great news, right? Another sword never hurt!

They hoofed it back to the Caves under a grey cloudy sky and while deciding whether or not to re-engage with the Kobolds, Earl the Thief caught a glimpse of a Goblin lookout taking notice of them, which the party interpreted as evidence of an impending attack¹. Rather than leap from the frying pan into the fire, they went with Door Number Three and fled towards an as-yet unexplored cave (the surely-not-that-bad Shunned Cavern).

Staying true to the “as written” nature of this…I guess it’s a campaign now?…as the players searched the bones and gristle at the cave entrance, I rolled for wandering monsters and wouldn’t you know it? A grey ooze falls from the ceiling. Now, these players have had some bad experiences with grey oozes, though obviously, the PCs have not. They role-played the situation beautifully, though, with the dewey-eyed Cleric urging peaceful co-existence and the Dwarfs just wailing on the thing. Alas, one of the Dwarfs got hit by a gooey blow, which dissolved her armor and revealed the fact that she goes commando, which condition persisted the remainder of the night. The new Fighter turned tail and ran out of the cave, claiming to be looking for “rocks to throw or something.”

Eventually, the ooze was dispatched and the party moved quite cautiously deeper into the caverns. They’ve adapted to old school play, so it was slow going and ten-foot-pole prodding. They came upon a nest of giant rats, though I finally remembered to perform a reaction roll and the rats weren’t too fussed. They moved quietly enough to begin to hear the sounds of something big snoring in the distance. Rizz McSwag, the other thief, decided to investigate, and dear reader, hand to God, this motherfucker had the hottest dice you’ve ever seen.

First level thief needs to move silently? Dude rolled a 9 on d100. Check. He comes upon a slumbering fuckin’ owlbear and decides to backstab it. Double damage die nearly maxes out, taking 2/3 of the thing’s HP². Rizz wins initiative, hits again, and another near max damage roll and just like that, he’s killed an owlbear by himself and trust me, that didn’t do anything for his humility.

The party resumed their exploration (after dubbing themselves The Owlbear Boys), and upon discovering the shallow pool and yet more oozes, they quite cleverly attempted to lure an ooze away with a trail of “owlbear chunks,” because boy did they want the bejeweled chalice at the bottom of the pond. While the lure was successful, they didn’t count on yet a third ooze, and rather than risk a fate worse than a topless Dwarf, they decided to ditch this cave and try another.

Climbing up the hill a bit, they discover a cave entrance festooned with signs promising “Safety,
security and repose for all humanoids who enter – WELCOME! (Come in and report to the first guard on the left for a hot meal and bed assignment.)”

Again, props to the player whose Cleric bought it hook, line and sinker³. They went in, found the guards, who offered the good Reverend Cherrycoke a skewer of meat and then ran him through with the same. The battle was joined and well, the party’s luck ran out. When the dust settled, the Cleric, the new Fighter (who didn’t fight shit), and the gruff-but-sweet married Dwarf/Elf couple lay dead and the two ranged-weapon-preferring thieves and the free-swinging Dwarf were hightailing it back to the Keep.

Looks like The Owlbear Boys⁴ are hiring…

Miscellaneous Notes

• A combination of Quest Portal as VTT and LegendKeeper as map/manager worked perfectly.
• Really enjoying this foray into B/X and the roots of the hobby. This group has three other campaigns going, including my own Low Fantasy Gaming campaign which is about six sessions away from completion, so we’re moving on in the rotation. I am very strongly thinking about shifting this game to another night and running it as an open table for now.
• Descending AC really isn’t that hard to work with, you cowards.

—

1. In reality, it was just the DM trying to add a little of that “the world adapts to the characters’ actions” flavor. The goblin was actually telling everyone to lock their doors, those assholes are back. ↩︎
2. 22 HP (5 HD rolled at the table). ↩︎
3. I wish there was a way to reward posthumous XP for roleplay, but alas… ↩︎
4. Again, to be clear, only one of the Owlbear Boys killed an owlbear, and one of them isn’t a boy. ↩︎

Session Report: Keep on the Borderlands #2

It was a rather unique session last night, in that all of the characters survived, but it wasn’t until this morning we got confirmation that all the players did.

One of the group is on vacation but did not let that prevent him from showing up to the game absolutely shattered on cheap Portuguese wine. He put in a good effort, but faded fast. The last ten minutes he was with us was just his chair on video chat. Then his laptop battery died and poof, he was gone.

Thematically, I feel like this was right on point for Keep on the Borderlands.

The game itself was super fun. The PCs hocked the necklace they got last week and used the proceeds to hire a few retainers¹, having clocked the deadly nature of the Borderlands (and on a meta level, old school play). One of the players decided to run two characters as well. Again, perfectly in line with the module’s advice!

I also decided to fast track their discovery of the Caves of Chaos because this group has done plenty of wandering in the woods in other games and I’m not sure how long I can hold their interest in my old school reset². 

Upon finding the Caves, I read the block text right out of the module (again, the challenge is playing it as written, full stop) and they got to hack and slashin’. They found the goblin cave first, and while it looked like the goblins might parley, steel was drawn and pretty soon the caves were littered with little green bodies. The ogre was, of course, summoned, but the retainers³ made quick work of it, and the party emerged from combat mostly unscathed.

Upon discovering that the cave also houses women and children, they had a bit of a moment of conscience and quite cleverly waited for the remaining goblin fighters to run for the battle before tiptoeing their way back to the cave entrance and exiting.

There was still daylight left, so they trudged over to the kobold cave where a PC and a retainer promptly fell into the pit trap (both survived, but barely) and a kobold war party attacked. A couple PCs took some damage but eventually the party came out on top, freed the trapped folks, and started actually sneaking deeper into the cave. One of the thieves nailed their Move Silently roll and they did enough recon to realize that discretion is the better part of valor and heading back to the Keep to rest and recover was the smart play.

In terms of finding fame and fortune in the wilds…I think they cleared about 2gp apiece, though they did get a modest pile of XP for their troubles. 

All in all, a very solid night of old school gaming. Some housekeeping notes as the DM:

• Quest Portal continues to shine as a perfect VTT choice for this game. The scenes and music set a good tone, and there’s just enough token functionality to keep numbers straight without it devolving into a bad video game.
• Planning the session, I wanted to be more diligent in my application of reaction and morale rolls. I did okay in this regard, though the players did remind me a couple of times – mostly out of survival instincts. I also need clarity on when to roll morale: at the moment it’s appropriate or at the end of the combat round. Advice welcome in the comments!
• This is definitely an old school D&D game in that it got a little samey-samey with the combat. I feel like this is about 60% just the way the module is written, but 40% me not doing enough to spice things up. The bad guys could use a few more tactics, yeah? That’s on me.
• Next week I need to lean into the faction play a bit – see if I can get the PCs wrapped up in some intra-cave dweller drama.
• I gotta buy Keep in PDF format. I need to make notes about what’s been cleaned out, but I am loathe to mark up my vintage original module!

At the end of the day, I’m still super glad we decided to play Keep. I think it’s going to pay off for our group⁴ in the long run when we get to the “real” open table sandbox game I’m planning.

—

1. One of the PCs did more than just hire their retainer…a little dwarf love in the hinterlands never hurt anyone, right? ↩︎
2. One big reason I wanted to play Keep with the Basic rules as written is because I want to go back to the beginning of the game and really understand the fundamentals. I feel like it’s practicing drum rudiments or drilling armbars in jiu jitsu. You have to grok the basics if you want to be able to perform the fancy stuff. ↩︎
3. In retrospect, I may have overcorrected a little from last week’s TPK and made these henchmen a little too badass. ↩︎
4. While introducing ourselves to our drunken player’s wife on video chat, we dubbed ourselves the “Sunday Night Dirtbags,” and for sure that’s going to stick. 75% chance there’s going to be a podcast with that name launching in the near future. ↩︎

Session Report: Keep on the Borderlands #1

We celebrated the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons in the most appropriate way: with a total party kill in the very first encounter.

Let’s rewind, just a touch. We knew the anniversary was approaching, and I’ve been wanting to play some different systems. I also just so happened to find my original copy of Keep on the Borderlands, along with my original copy of Tom Moldvay’s Basic D&D rules (plus some other assorted gaming goodies that will no doubt be featured here at some point). So I pitched it: how about playing Keep using the Basic book as written? My group, of course, was all in.

They rolled up their characters during the week – we ended up with three dwarfs, an elf, and a cleric (the player made him a cleric of Graxus, a god that features quite prominently in our long-term Low Fantasy Gaming campaign). No backstories, minimal equipment, and barely any hit points. Yup, we were going old school for sure.

Keeping our “as written” edict in mind, I read the introductory paragraph right out of the module, and we were off. The players introduced themselves to the men-at-arms guarding the Keep (a great little conceit) got the tour from the corporal of the guard, and then found themselves standing in the courtyard staring at each other. They’re experienced roleplayers, so very quickly we had established one of the dwarfs cheated on the other dwarf with the other dwarf’s sister, the elf was here on something like rumspringa, and the priest was here to spread the word of the Iron God. They hit the tavern¹, one of them sang for his supper², the ale flowed, and the next morning, they tromped down the road and into the Borderlands.

Long story short – they followed the river into the fens, encountered the lizard men, steel was drawn, and, combat was joined. Side initiative, phases of combat, morale – we went By the Book. And as it turns out, first level characters are not what you would call hardy. More blows were missed than landed – by a wide margin – and pretty soon, we had five dead PCs (and one dead lizard man, credit where due) and at least another scheduled hour of game time to fill.

Luckily, it’s easy to roll up characters, which we did. Just like that, we had a party of ne’er do wells ready to step in. Again, my group saved the fun by deciding that this party, led by the aggrieved dwarf sister above, had been shadowing the first party with an eye towards ambush. The dwarf wanted revenge, the cleric wanted to kill the Graxian heretic, and the thieves wanted, well, money. They lurked in the bushes and let the lizard men do their dirty work. Then they looted the bodies, finished off the lizard men, and returned to the Keep with a necklace to sell, a story to tell, and honestly, a shockingly meager helping of XP.

Holy shit, was it fun! 

Going back to brass tacks was refreshing, and it’s fascinating to see the echoes of these rules in the games we’re playing today. There are grey oozes in the Caves of Chaos, and a big ol’ grey ooze got our current LFG campaign started. Maybe it all really is the same game after all. 

On a nuts and bolts level, the players are going to have to adjust their mindset, but so am I as the DM. I need to remember things like morale and reaction rolls, which could have helped them avoid that fateful encounter – they’re not kids. They can use their words and I probably should have let them take more of a stab at that³.

Finally – a note on the technology. I wanted to stay aligned (see what I did there?) with our “as written” philosophy, so I tried to keep it as theater of the mind as I could, though we are a remote group so some concessions do have to be made. We had fillable PDF character sheets and I used Quest Portal as our VTT, which was perfect. We had shared dice rolls, music and background pictures for flavor, and only used grids and tokens to keep track of numbers and zones.

All in all, it was a super fun – and honestly meaningful – celebration of this game. The group is into the idea of continuing Keep, which is great, because I am, too. Shit, I gotta see if they can make it to second level.

—

1. They met the tavernkeeper Cein something or other – an NPC I apparently rolled up when I was 11 and entered into the back of the module in thick black marker like an asshole. But if you’re getting back to first principles of RPGs, of course they gotta start in the tavern. ↩︎
2. This PC death really bummed me out – he was already delightful! ↩︎
3. I did have genuine regret, I swear! ↩︎

Too Much Tech?

The sheer amount of software I use to play D&D in 2024 is absurd.

I’ve got my virtual tabletop (Foundry¹), my campaign manager (LegendKeeper²), and a folder full of PDFs. We use Discord or Google Meet for voice or video.

Of course, to get a dungeon into Foundry, I either have to buy one on DriveThruRPG or build one in Dungeondraft, spending a few hours getting the walls and the lighting right. I might just jump over to Dungeon Scrawl if I’m super pressed for time. Then I have to export and upload, and once it’s in Foundry, I need to make sure all the monsters and NPCs are statted out, have tokens, and placed in the appropriate areas. If they don’t have tokens, I have to go chase down some good art on the internet and run it through Token Stamp 2. 

I have a full and robust tech stack, all of which has been deployed to approximate the experience of sitting around a coffee table in Neal Evans’s basement. 

And even when everything is working , I still end up tracking initiative on a piece of paper.

Man, I miss the way we played D&D in fifth grade. Someone would draw a dungeon on graph paper during class, and then after school, we’d go through it. A bag of dice, the rulebooks, maybe a DM screen if we were playing with Darren whose mom bought him everything, and we were all set. 

No troubleshooting audio issues. No fucking with fog of war or token vision. No waiting for a PDF to render.

Look – most of this is in service to the virtual tabletop experience. If your users are all staring at a computer screen, you have to give them something to look at. It starts with dynamic lighting, then flickering torches, then animated maps…and then suddenly, you’re spending way more time setting up your software than you are coming up with challenging scenarios or compelling NPCs.

The answer, of course, is to start clawing my way back to a slightly more analog experience. Fire up the ol’ Theatre of the Mind. My group is still going to be virtual; no way around that. We’re scattered across New England, California and elsewhere. We even have one of them exotic Canadians playing with us. And I do think if we’re interacting online, we need at least as much visual engagement as your standard workplace Zoom call (“Can everyone see my screen? No? How about now?”).

Right now, I’m thinking we keep video so we can all see each other’s pasty faces, which I feel is fairly fundamental to that group experience, combined with a virtual environment that lets us all share dice rolls while some visuals and music help set the mood. You know, creepy pictures of a dark dungeon hallway instead of an interactive map, that kind of thing.³

The only real downside I see is that my players will have to actually start doing a little math and understand why they’re rolling what they’re rolling (right now, they just click a button and everything is added up for them). 

And I’ll have to work on my trust issues and give those dirtbags the responsibility of managing their own character sheets. This may be the hardest part.

How about you, dear reader? Have you figured out a way to run games for your friends online without it devolving into a really weird, slow video game?⁴

—

1. Don’t get me wrong – I really like Foundry. ↩︎
2. And I love LegendKeeper. ↩︎
3. I think I can leverage Foundry to accomplish this – but there are a couple of other contenders that seem to be leaning into the TOTM VTT thing (namely Alchemy and Quest Portal).  ↩︎
4. This is the AI-generated summary of the above post, which honestly kind of creeps me out:
   
   In 2024, the author uses an array of software for D&D, like virtual tabletops and campaign managers, to simulate the in-person gaming experience. However, they long for the simplicity of pencil-and-paper gameplay. Considering a return to an analog experience, they propose a mix of video interaction and minimal virtual components for their dispersed group. ↩︎

Playtest Island – Update 1

The plan was to keep it simple.

Generate a random hex map, maybe chuck a dungeon or two on it, and then use procedural play to try out different fantasy game systems. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

So I used Watabou’s Perilous Shores to whip up a quick map. And then I created a new project in LegendKeeper¹, which turns out to be absolutely perfect for managing a hexcrawl, and my placeholder sandbox world is rapidly becoming, like, a real sandbox world.

I started populating hexes on this stupid little island, and now a whole backstory is evolving, and my “hex a day” creative goal has generated a couple of factions, a real sumbitch of an NPC, a cavern delve and some big ideas. It remains to be seen if the cool stuff will stay cool even if we’re engaging with it via different systems.

I hope so, because I impulse bought Worlds Without Number and now I gotta add that to The List!²

Next update: what happens when I pick a first system and throw some adventurers into this world?

—

1. I am absolutely ride or die with LK. Every time I start flirting with some other tool, they introduce a new feature and I fall in love all over again. ↩︎
2. Right now, the list is BFRPG, Hyperborea 3e, and WWN…oh, and Forbidden Lands! ↩︎

An Actual Play Mea Culpa

When I stopped playing tabletop RPGs, the internet wasn’t even really a thing. So I missed a lot, including so-called Actual Plays. When I came back (in fits and starts, as detailed elsewhere¹), actual plays were a well-established form of entertainment that I sort of became aware of through osmosis. I certainly didn’t watch any.

I for sure didn’t let that stop me from having strong opinions about them.

It sure looked to me like a lot of pretty actors using RPGs as a way to get more screen time. My degree is in theatre and I spent 27 years on the road as a comic. Believe me when I tell you I am all set with precious performer types trying to get seen. And for them to be using the foundation of my nerdy childhood to do so was doubly offensive to me². I wanted no part of it.

And again, that analysis was based on absolutely zero data other than basically seeing pictures of Matt Mercer’s hair a few times.

So imagine my surprise this weekend, when, desperate for something to listen to on an 8-hour drive taking my kid back to school³, I took a flier on an Actual Play Traveller podcast ⁴because I saw it had motherfuckin’ Seth Skorkowsky on it. I figured if nothing else, it would be Skorkowsky demonstrating system mastery while the pretty people stared in awe. 

Boy was I wrong. 

It was amazing. Like, not in the way where we call everything amazing these days. I was genuinely amazed at both how fun and engaging it was and how seriously they took the game. Character creation, dice modifiers, discussion of meson cannons and jump technology, party bonds, the whole god damn schmeer in earnest. These folks (who are all super engaging and hilarious) were absolutely committed to playing an RPG in the most fundamental way. 

They developed in jokes. They figured out tactics. They went in and out of third and first person comfortably. They made their case for using one dice mod instead of another. This was a bona fide gaming group forming before my very eyes ears.

Honestly, they schooled me. Halfway through the first episode, I started to think, “Hmm. I might pick up a thing or two about running a game here.” But as I listened, frantically, to each episode, I found myself wanting to be a better player of games. I realized that when someone else is behind the screen, I am not nearly as engaged and committed as every member of this group was. I could pay better attention. I could commit. I could give the rest of the table so much more to work with.

Son, I was humbled.

Last night we had a Sessions 0 and 1 of a game a friend is writing. It’s definitely more modern and abstract than my usual fare. But believe me when I say I took character creation way more to heart than I may have prior to this weekend, and when I found my attention drifting (so many screens!), I thought of the cast of that podcast, re-focused, and held myself to that higher standard of play⁵.

Needless to say, I am still devouring episodes and trying to finish Season 1. And for sure I’ll jump right into Season 2. But after that – what am I missing? What should I try next? There’s an entire genre of media my eyes have been opened to. Gotta catch up. 

—

1. A Love Letter to Low Fantasy Gaming ↩︎
2. There’s a whole ‘nother post in here about residual emotional baggage I carry from growing up a nerd in the 1970s and 1980s, when so-called geek culture was not nearly as widely accepted. I very much retain an “us vs. them” mentality I need to let go. But I digress. ↩︎
3. The Culinary Institute of America, thank you very much. ↩︎
4. The Glass Cannon Network’s Voyagers of the Jump. ↩︎
5. In retrospect, it’s pretty obvious that watching other people play games could be inspirational for, you know, playing games. I am such a petty dumbass. ↩︎

Iterative Dungeon Design

One of the guys on my team at work is a die-hard fantasy nut. He devours every Sanderson novel, posts theories about the Kingkiller Chronicles, and has shockingly intense opinions about J.R.R. Tolkien. So imagine my surprise to learn he’s never played D&D!

Come to find out he was an Army brat growing up, so he never stayed in one place long enough to get in a game, something he’s always regretted. No way I could let that stand. The rest of the team is made up of the right kind of nerds, so I figured I’d do a little team-building by way of RPG campaign. MANAGER OF THE YEAR, MOTHERFUCKERS!

Turns out, no one on the team had played before, so I whipped up a quick six room dungeon encounter designed for first-time players (using Tales of Argosa, natch). Some very obvious traps, a couple of classic D&D-type monsters, a desert-themed random encounter table, a simple quest, done – The Tomb of the Lost King is ready to go. But before we could play, my usual Sunday night group had to call an audible. The guy scheduled to GM wasn’t ready. I figured, hey, lookee here – I have a dungeon ready to go, and we can call it a ToA playtest to boot. It went great – the guys had fun, and they gave it a thumbs-up as an intro adventure for new folks, even though we didn’t finish. 

Fast forward another week, and my fellow GM still wasn’t ready. The group asked if they could keep going from the week before. I pulled a lower dungeon level out of my ass, and we played a second session, actually ending the scenario in (I hope) a satisfying way.

What’s interesting, though, is that I now have a fully playtested two-level, Xandered dungeon that my work dudes are going to get to play. I’ve already adjusted a couple of things based on the first group’s feedback and fleshed out the ad hoc lower level. What was a decent first time tutorial is now a pretty robust scenario. And with an open table campaign in the works, I see no reason why I can’t plop this fucker down for a third go-round as well, presumably in an even more refined state. 

This is new for me – I’ve never run more than one group through the same dungeon and iterated on the design. I’ve never had a reason to. But man, do I see the value. The traps are going to be a little more clever, the monsters a little more grounded, the narrative a little richer.

I’m curious for those who feel like commenting – how often do other GMs get to iterate? It feels like a great way to level up my design and my system mastery while providing an even better experience for my players.

d12 Monthly & Tales of Argosa Public Playtest!

d12 Monthly, ToA Public Playtest doc, & more!!

d12 Monthly & Tales of Argosa Public Playtest!

I’m a huge fan of this game, obviously, and already ordered this issue of d12.

Also, I wanted to see how the “reblog” functionality works, so…

Voyage to Playtest Island

In addition to the ever-growing pile of games I want to play, I also want to continue to refine my skills as a GM. For example, I’d like to hew more closely to old school time and resource management in dungeon crawls, but right now, I feel way too disorganized to tackle it well¹.

I’ve also toyed with the idea of some apples to apples comparisons of games. Have the table roll up archetypal characters, randomly generate a 5-room dungeon, take a few hexes to get there, and see how it plays. Then rinse and repeat with the next system in the pile. 

In the coming year, my surely-misguided plan is to turn these playtests and experiments into some weird persistent mini-campaign. What if these dungeons and characters, regardless of system, all co-exist on some island on the fringes of the world? In the real world, we’re playing Hyperborea one week and Tales of Argosa the next, but in the game, reality is ever changing and magic works differently on the west coast versus the east.²

My players could roll up new characters as systems change, or port their survivors from system to system if they wanted to. That would be a nightmare for a “real” campaign, but as long as everyone remembers that we’re essentially just testing things out, I don’t think I’d need to get too caught up in conversion accuracy. But my guy who always plays fighters would really be able to decide which system lets him play the fighter he likes best. Ditto my rogue. Along the way, we’d be trying out different ways to crawl hexes, track encumbrance, manage torches, and I’d be figuring out how to keep track of it all without losing my shit.

I could also try using a variety of campaign/game management tools – seeing as how I have test accounts on a gazillion services (I’m a LegendKeeper guy currently, but I am fascinated by all the options out there…different post, Tim. Different post).

Basically, Sunday is for “real” gaming; maybe Thursday is for “trying new stuff” gaming – open table but expect less than smooth gameplay.

And then, when the games have been tried and the procedures refined, we pick our poison and the characters sail forth and “discover” the land where the actual next campaign is going to take place, leaving the strange island behind…

—

1. Justin Alexander’s book has already been a tremendous help here. ↩︎
2. I’m currently reading Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Farthest Shore, and magic is disappearing from Ea. I’d be a liar if I said that isn’t influencing my thinking when it comes to different rules of reality in different parts of the land. ↩︎

Gaming Goals 2024

The past year has been an extremely satisfying year of tabletop gaming. My own Low Fantasy Gaming¹ campaign made it through another year (though we’re surely approaching the end), the Traveller campaign I play in has gotten very enjoyably fraught, and our group has taken a test spin of several systems – Brindlewood Bay² and Frontier Scum chief among them.

Looking ahead to 2024, like most GMs, my reach exceeds my grasp. I’ve got a pile of games to try and limited time to try them – by which I mean both my allotment of weekly sessions in our co-GM’d table and my own creeping mortality. Thus, this post, where I set some attainable gaming goals for the coming year.

Systems To Try

• Hyperborea 3rd edition. I cut my teeth on AD&D back in the 1980s and my roots are calling. I bought the PDFs, the campaign map and a module. There are no excuses.

• Forbidden Lands. This game somehow came across my radar when it was released and in all fairness probably deserves the credit for getting me back into the hobby. I played exactly one session online (a TPK). The hexcrawl nature of it seemed intimidating at the time, but I think I’ve got the chops now. It surely scratches my low magic/high lethality itch. And again, I own all the books and two campaigns. Surely my group can take a flier on it.

• Basic Fantasy RPG. In all honesty, I didn’t play B/X for long back in the day. We got our hands on the AD&D books and never booked back. There are a number of retroclones I could try, but BFRPG is the one I’ve landed on for now (the book cost just enough to help kill an Amazon gift card)³. I’m thinking of running some legit old TSR modules and finally giving Basic its due.

I also have a handful of non-fantasy systems I’d sort of like to run, but let’s be real.

Player Experience

I run my games virtually, using Foundry (hosted on The Forge), which I really like. However, the platform really is built around using battlemaps and tokens, with more and more modules providing things like animations and triggers and whatnot, all of which is cool but which also tends to steer the player experience towards a weird kind of slow-paced video game. I want to spend 2024 figuring out how to work our way back to more theater of the mind-style play but still keeping it compelling in the virtual space.

• Alchemy VTT. I paid for six months of this service via their Kickstarter. It’s built for theater of the mind, and I like the look and feel of it, as well as the slick way to fade in a battle map as necessary. I don’t know how much elbow grease it will take to make it work for my preferred systems (or the systems above), but may as well try to get my six months’ worth out of it.

• Foundry. I own it, I use it, I like it. I just need to figure out how to make it do what I want it to do to be less battle-mappy while keeping the players engaged online.

• My expensive-ass dining room table. Come hell or high water, I’m going to run something at a table, in person, rolling real dice and lurking behind a GM screen like a proper fucking nerd.

Campaign-Based Play

Tales of the Green Dragon Brotherhood.⁴ I had one goal when I got back into fantasy role-playing: a real (that is to say, long, linked, persistent) campaign in a living world, and this campaign has nailed that goal. The players have been all over the map, fulfilled quests, been hunted, been off-world, pissed off a dragon, and accidentally set loose an ancient horror. There’s not much left for them other than the endgame and the denouement. I think there are maybe six sessions left.

Beyond Ironspire. I have a notion for something West Marchy, though I may just settle for a sandbox, depending on logistics. I’ve started noodling on it in my notebooks, and I have some cool ideas. My current plan is to use Tales of Argosa for it, given that the game is really built for emergent play and I’m an LFG nut, but I’m technically leaving that decision open pending my group’s experience with the systems above. What I have in mind will work with any low-magic, gritty system.

So I guess that’s it – try a few new systems, wrap up a campaign, start a new one, and tweak the online experience for my players. How about you? What are your 2024 gaming goals?

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1. See this post. ↩︎
2. The group took to this game with gusto – a group of 50-year old white dudes playing the Murder Mavens with an intensity I could only dream of for my dungeon crawls. ↩︎
3. Yes I know it’s all free online. ↩︎
4. If you’re at all interested, the public-facing campaign is here. ↩︎