#DIY30 Overflow & #MOCKORANGECAIRN100 Goals

Art from Warhammer Armies: Skaven 6th Edition

I Should Have Written And Posted This A Month Ago Or More, LOL

Instead of having to refer back to the wall of text known as my #DIY30 Goals blog post made back in late August, I'm regrouping the unfinished goals from that here and the goal is to get to 100 blog posts by December 31st, 2018.  That goal is somewhat arbitrary because when I finished #DIY30 I was at post number 83, so it seemed like a good way to stay motivated to keep working on RPG stuff and blogging about it. Four and a half weeks are left and 9 blog posts left to go after this one!  I made up a goofy hashtag for this little pet project of mine #MOCKORANGECAIRN100.

The list of stuff I'll be working on or that I completed in October and November are as follows:

     -Mapping for the G+ game I want to run
     -Answering the remaining questions from "20 Quick Questions for Your Campaign Setting"
     -Strange Bedfellows conversion DONE
     -Life During Wartime Part Two blogpost.
     -The Temple of the Fractured Snail- adventure location idea I had.      
     -The Seclusium of the Orphone- I started making a seclusium from this book and it was tedious af, lol, but I want to finish it so I can drop it in my campaign somewhere. DONE
     -Scenic Dunnsmouth- I think I got my SD local map finished, just need to figure out where to put it on my campaign map and set hooks/write a rumor table.
     -Curse of Strahd adaptation.

Rat my cat Porchy killed yesterday DONE

Putting a Pin in the Seclusium

Tower Map, Location Map, Some Notes

As In It's Done!

I finished my seclusium map and key today.  All that's left with this is to get it on the campaign map.  Since it's going on a part of the map we haven't adventured towards, yet, I'm going to leave that to be done later.  It will be going several hundred miles south of where the PCs are currently and there will be more mapping to do "down there" when the time comes.  Now I can move on to finishing up whatever I had left undone with preparing "Scenic Dunnsmouth."

Ground Floor and Second Floor

Third Floor and Fourth Floor

Fifth Floor and Basement

Wednesday's Seclusium Stuff

Drinking an Almond Milk Chai While I Work On Orphone's Seclusium

This My First Post Composed On Tablet

Typing this way sucks, maybe I should get a little keyboard for my tablet.... anyway brought my notebook to Starbucks and worked on the last questions of Section 6 of The Seclusium of Orphone.  Done with that, just need to finish up mapping and then I can move on to another project.

I've Lost My Compass

Canning Rings=Improvised Drawing Tools

I Needed to Draw Some Circles

But my compass was nowhere to be found.  I've done so much minimizing in the last two years that I don't know whether my cheap little compass was a victim of my purging or not.  So I brainstormed for a minute and figured some canning jar rings would make the right size circles for the tower levels I needed to make for Orphone's seclusium.  I was able to map out levels 1-4 , completing level 1 (or ground level) enough for use and roughing levels 2-4 out with the intent of adding more detail next RPG work session.  I still need to map a subterranean level (doesn't have to be round) and get those Section 6 questions answered; so maybe a work session or two away from getting this Orphone business behind me and on to finishing the prep for Scenic Dunnsmouth (maybe, we'll see what I really feel like tackling!)

Orphone's Tower Levels 3 and 4

Building A Seclusium

Building A Seclusium, Here We Go

Lingering Unfinished For A Little Over A Year

I have owned The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions by D. Vincent Baker for about four years, but I didn't get around to trying to use it until a little over a year ago.  For those unfamiliar with this product here's the back of the book blurb,

     "This book provides the rules, guidelines, tables, and suggestions for creating wizards' seclusia for your own campaigns, and features three sample seclusia in various stages of completion, including the Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions."

For those of you wondering "WTF is a seclusia?"  the back of the book also gives these four definitions,

     1. A place to which a wizard withdraws from the world to pursue mastery.
     2. A place of magic and plasms and grotesques and horrors and treasures and doorways to other worlds.
     3. A place which, when abandoned by the wizard but with its treasures and dangers remaining more or less intact, is a terrible and antic catastrophe in process.
     4.  A place which makes for marvelous location-based adventures.

So last year I thought it was high time I bust this book out, make a seclusium and place it on my campaign map somewhere.  A combination of laziness and name preference led me to choose the most completed sample seclusium belonging to Orphone of the Three Visions.  By the way, this isn't a review, just an anecdote of my experience using the book as intended for the first time.  Once the PCs actually interact with this location, then I'll write up a review, as I don't want to review materials that haven't seen actual campaign or one-shot play.

I was able to complete five of the six sections of this seclusium last year, but stopped due to tediousness in the process and non-urgency (this encounter location wasn't going anywhere near where the PCs were at the time.)  I vowed to complete this back during #DIY30, but got bogged down with other projects and am just now picking this up again.  Today I was able to narrow the work left down to five questions in Section 6 and although I have a rough map of the island where Orphone's seclusium is located, I need to draw a map of the tower and key it.  Not sure how much of this I'll get done tomorrow, but after I get those tasks complete, I'll place this location on my campaign map.

"Strange Bedfellows" Conversion DONE!

Coming In Under The Gun With This Week's Second Blog

I'm happy to say I've completed my conversion and adaptation of the Swords & Wizardry adventure "Strange Bedfellows" for my Lamentations of the Flame Princess Year of the Goat Campaign.  I knew this was going to take me awhile, but I had no idea how long, lol.

Last Part of "Strange Bedfellows", The Silverblossom Tree Village

Chipping Away At My #DIY30 Overflow

Silverblossom Tree Village Ground Level

I wasn't nearly as productive with game stuff in October as I had hoped to be.  Probably a combo of being a little busy with other stuff and a little burned out from #DIY30 in September.  I'm nearly done with the conversion/adaptation of the Swords & Wizardry module "Strange Bedfellows."  Yesterday I banged through the ground level of the Silverblossom Tree Village portion of it.  My intention is to get the upper part of that village converted this week.  Then I can move on to the other undone projects from my #DIY30 goals. 

OSR Guide For The Perplexed Questionnaire

OSR Guide For The Perplexed Questionnaire 

By now you are probably aware of G+'s recent announcement to shut down by August of 2019.  As a response to that news, Zak Smith of Playing D&D With Pornstars Blog has written this questionnaire for those of us in the DIY D&D game scene to 

"explain, talk about, extend and preserve the breadth of what the DIY game scene has achieved and means by just talking to each other about it—and helping out any newbies who may just be stumbling on the scene now (there are a surprising number)."

(Clicking on Zak's quote above will take you to the questionnaire if you would like to check it out.)

Let me preface that I've wanted to read others' responses to these questions, but have waited to do so until I wrote my own.  So any unoriginal answers are authentically mine, lol.

 

1. One article or blog entry that exemplifies the best of the Old School Renaissance for me:

It's a tie between James Raggi's I Hate Fun blog post and Matt Finch's A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming.

The I Hate Fun screed really resonated with me when I first read it back in 2013.
  
Finch's Primer was useful for me to read as I was transitioning my gaming from New World of Darkness (now known as Chronicles of Darkness) Changeling the Lost to Lamentations of the Flame Princess and other OSR games.  I go back to it a couple times a year, usually as I'm starting up anew from a gaming/DMing hiatus or at the start of a new game, like when I ran Call of Cthulhu for the first time this year.   


2. My favorite piece of OSR wisdom/advice/snark:

Every once and awhile Zak Smith pops onto G+ with his "RPG Magic 8-Ball" and answers questions from followers about anything RPG for a limited amount of time.  So like campaign, monster, rules/mechanics, this vs. that, etc. queries get answered in useful, sometimes cryptic, and sometimes snarky ways.  Sometimes a combo of all three!  I hope he keeps doing those on another platform when G+ closes.
 
3. Best OSR module/supplement:

Fuuuuuuuuck.  This is like asking which is my favorite cat (out of the three I have.)  I'll try to narrow it down to three.  It pains me to leave out so many other gems, but here we go.

      1.  Vornheim -  It inspired me to go back to D&D style games and has been invaluable in presenting cities in my Year of the Goat campaign.

     2.  Yoon-Suin -  If you don't have this, you're missing out.  I love the setting, love the utility/toolbox design, and love the art.  It's on my campaign map, but the PCs haven't gotten over there, yet.  Can't wait to actually be running this! 

     3.  Red Tide -  I came to the OSR from running WOD Changeling the Lost.  I had run D&D back in my early teens, but I mostly played.  What I'm getting at here is that I needed help getting my shit together to run a sandbox style hexcrawl campaign.  Red Tide combined with Vornheim and Yoon-Suin and reading various blogs helped me run a game that has been the most fun of anything I've run to date!  It has a campaign setting folded into some great campaign generation tools and tables. 

4. My favorite house rule (by someone else):

I like the die-drop equipment tables from blog Dismaster's Den of Unfinished Thoughts.  They are a great way to streamline character creation if players have analysis paralysis during the buying equipment phase.
 
5. How I found out about the OSR:  

I'm not sure how I found out about Playing D&D With Pornstars, but it was my entry into the OSR in late 2012.  Soon after I purchased Vornheim.

6. My favorite OSR online resource/toy:

I have a couple of favorites.  Abulafia.  The D&D Web Apps by Ramanan S on his Save Vs. Total Party Kill blog.
 
7. Best place to talk to other OSR gamers:

G+ has been the best place for me to talk to OSR gamers.
 
8. Other places I might be found hanging out talking games:

Instagram and more recently I got a Discord account.  I'm on Twitch as well, but I haven't made good use of that account, yet.
 
9. My awesome, pithy OSR take nobody appreciates enough:

I am neither awesome nor pithy.

10. My favorite non-OSR RPG:

Changeling the Lost.  I haven't run it in 4 years, not sure when I will again.
 
11. Why I like OSR stuff:

It all mixes and matches quite well.  Lots of great imagination on display in the writing and art.  Creators who are trying to innovate and succeeding.  Usually a very high quality in the printed materials.
 
12. Two other cool OSR things you should know about that I haven’t named yet:

Again, I can't narrow it down to two!  How about these eight:)

The Midderlands and The Midderlands Expanded

The Dark of Hot Springs Island

Petty Gods

The Dungeon Dozen

Slumbering Ursine Dunes, The Misty Isles of the Eld, and Fever Dreaming Marlinko 

13. If I could read but one other RPG blog but my own it would be:

Playing D&D With Porn Stars

14. A game thing I made that I like quite a lot is:

It's rough, but I love my campaign map.

 

15. I'm currently running/playing:

I'm currently playing in a 5e campaign.  When it wraps up, I'll be running my LotFP Year of the Goat campaign again.
 
16. I don't care whether you use ascending or descending AC because:

I use ascending these days, but when I started playing in 1990 THAC0 was the way it was done.  The LotFP Grindhouse Referee Book has a conversion chart, so if I'm running a module that uses descending, no big whoop.
 
17. The OSRest picture I could post on short notice:

Purple Worm En Scene by Luka Rejec

This illustration and more can be found on Wizard Thief Fighter.