Switching Campaign Gears Today

Depeche Mode and Pile O' Maps

Just Can't Get Enough...

Of Dave Gahan or OSR maps;)  My plans today were to draw maps of either a wizard's tower or a dwarven delve for the online game I want to run.  I decided to outsource the work and get it all done this afternoon.  Digging through my hard drive yielded gems from a couple of Bundle of Holding acquisitions from last year.  I got a variety of maps to kick the campaign off from Dyson Logos' Dodecahedron Review 2016 and ACKS Lairs & Encounters.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy drawing maps, but I need to get moving on running a G+ Flailsnails game before G+ washes away like a sandcastle!  I know I could just move over and run on the Discord Flailsnails server, but I want to get at least one G+ game in just 'cause.  More work on this needs to be done before I can schedule a game, but it was good to get the mapping squared away.  I need to work on the home campaign, too, before I run it this weekend.  The "Mimic Chasers" (this group needs a name, this will do for now) are knocking around Halwic with their investigations, but I need to turn the heat up for this next session!

Links To The G+ Flailsnails Red Tide Related Posts

https://mockorangecairn.blogspot.com/2018/09/diy30-day-twelve.html

https://mockorangecairn.blogspot.com/2018/09/diy30-day-thirteen.html 

https://mockorangecairn.blogspot.com/2018/09/diy30-day-fourteen.html 

#DIY30 Day Thirteen

Lentil Tacos With Vegan Ranch Dressing

Taco Fortified

After eating a pile of lentil tacos and watching an episode of the show Van Helsing, I was ready to GITURDUN.  I fleshed out the Makerite temple a bit.  I named it Temple of the Iron Prophet Allia Howe.  It has a few named NPCs and a conflict tag (grasping noble.)  Mr. Grasping Noble has a few details like a name (Beremud Schmidt) and a household servant (Tancred.)  The city of Hohnberg has a noble (court location.)  He (Thusundi Amalric Gram) has a tax collector, Hui Niu.  I rolled a couple of ruins on a random table, but haven't written any details down for them.  There is a wizard's tower and a dwarven delve.  I'm not sure yet which will go near the city and which will go near the Makerite Temple.  Those are decisions for another day.

Assistant DM Vega

#DIY30 Day Twelve

Today I Had to Say "Fuck Module Adaptation"

Couldn't do it today.  Wasn't gonna happen.  I've powered through seven out of eight of Week One's bulleted projects, but today I needed a break from "Strange Bedfellows."  So I decided to work on the beginnings of my G+ Flailsnails campaign.  I'm going to work on this tomorrow, then get back to finishing up the work I'm doing with "Strange Bedfellows" over the weekend.

The Sun Is Rising on the Sunset Isles

Out of the five campaign settings I was deliberating running, I decided to go with Red Tide by Kevin Crawford.  I have the details of the city Hohnberg sketched out.  Tomorrow I'll be working on a remote Makerite Temple and some ruins.  I'm excited both to use this setting and run my first online game!  I'll be running this with LotFP rules, but it's a Flailsnails game, so players can bring whatever characters.  I do want to take the Shou character class from this and do whatever conversions from Labyrinth Lord (the system Red Tide is written for) to LotFP to offer as a character option. 

#DIY30 Goals for September 2018

My #DIY30 Mission Statement:

I will be using these thirty days to create (or adapt) campaign materials for my #YearoftheGoat home campaign and my as yet unnamed online campaign that I want to run for the G+ Flailsnails community.

 #DIY30 Preparation

Yesterday I spent five or six hours organizing and re-familiarizing myself with my #YearoftheGoat campaign materials as preparation for this #DIY30 writing challenge.  At one point this stuff was organized well, but the deterioration crept in last year and I'm just now getting things back in good order.  As I sorted yesterday, I began to see what I would be tackling for #DIY30.  What will follow in this post is a rough weekly breakdown of the writing, adapting, and cartography tasks that I've identified while organizing.

Caveats

Just as my campaign is a work in progress, this post will be as well.  I'm not sure how fast I'll be working, so I'll be coming back to update Weeks Three and Four after I see how Week One rolls out. 

 

Week One- First Things First

I will be starting in the area of the map around the city of Halwic.  The PCs were camped just south of Halwic when the campaign went on hiatus last August.  They were investigating leads regarding The Mimic Crisis.  Halwic has just experienced an outbreak of plague and a fire has devastated a district in the city.  One of the PCs is hoping to have his newly crafted sword blessed (enchanted) by a prominent leader of the Church of the Covenant.  I have Halwic itself roughly mapped and some locations detailed, but not mapped.  I'm counting on Vornheim to get me through any citycrawl stuff that comes up.  Locations nearby needing more work are the estate of Lord Vortulak and the small triplet of farming communities to the southwest of the city.

     -A follower NPC is in the city scouting ahead.  Are they alive or dead?  If alive, what information did they gather?  Where will the party re-unite with them? Done
     -Create relationship map for prominent city NPCs. Done
     -Create relationship map for the Abby of St. Forsythia (Church of the Covenant) NPCs. Done
     -Set a hook to the mega-dungeon Maze of the Blue Medusa (reading to be done on this, but I think it involves placing a specific painting....) Done
     -Figure out where to locate the Maze on my campaign map. Done
     -Write a description of Lord Vortulak's estate. Done
     -Make a map of Lord Vortulak's estate. Done
     -Finish the adaptation of the small farming communities southwest of Halwic.  These are from a pre-written module, so the work is less creating and more editing or adapting. Done

Week Two- Finish Week One's Bullet Points Before Moving On 

If week one was front-loaded too heavily with pieces to work on, then I will be continuing to work on those until finished this week.  While working on my home campaign is my main goal here, some effort will be made to start preparing for my upcoming online game world.


     -Finish all of Week One's bullet points before starting anything on Week Two's list.
     -Decide on a setting for my upcoming online game.  Choices I'm deliberating are as follows:
          +The Midderlands
          +Operation Unfathomable
          +Yoon-Suin
          +Red Tide Ding, ding, ding!
          +The Dark of Hot Springs Island
     -Once a decision on which setting to run the online game in is made, determine a starting area and make sure there is a city/town and a dungeon/lair/ruins nearby. Done
     -When a setting with it's starting point is determined, schedule a start day and time.
     -Make a G+ Flailsnails post with an invite to play.

Week Three- "20 Quick Questions"

I've answered 13 out of 20 of Jeff Rients' "Twenty Quick Questions for Your Campaign Setting."  Getting a few done this week maybe?


Week Four- 

Update 9/11/18
Welp, the votes are in and the group would like me to run them through Curse of Strahd.  So looks like I'm going to need to read that and start adapting it to LotFP and the specifics of my Year of the Goat campaign.  That's going on the end of the list, though, since it's so large it might take me awhile.

     -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.
     -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.

         

#RPGaDay2018 Day Twenty Six

Day 26 Question:  What is your gaming ambition for the next year?

I have more than one ambition for gaming over the next year.  I'm looking forward to this time next year when I can re-read my own blog post to see how many of these ambitions I've turned into actions.

1.  Start running my LotFP YotG campaign again for my home table.  I've said before that I've been wanting to run the 5e adventure Curse of Strahd with LotFP rules and OSR sensibility, but I want to confirm that my players are on board.  Once I get confirmation I can get into whatever preparation I deem necessary to run that.  If they aren't on board with Curse of Strahd, we'll continue with the game where we left off.  The players were just about to ride into the city of Halwic to investigate the ongoing Mimic Crisis, recent rumors of a plague, and a devastating fire.  Halwic is FUCKED UP, YO.

2.  Run games online.  Specifically run either a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly game on G+ for the Flailsnails community.  Right now I have a pretty open schedule and could conceivably achieve weekly, but I want to give myself enough leeway in case my schedule changes and only allows less frequent gaming.

3.  This RPGaDay2018 writing challenge has been a good way to blow out the cobwebs and get into a near daily writing habit.  So for September I'm going to roll right into the #DIY30 challenge and get some progress on my pile of half-finished RPG writing projects.  So expect to see a post with more thoughts on that go up on the blog on August 30th or 31st.

4.  I want to run LotFP demos at a game store next year on Free RPG Day 2019.  It was fun to do that back in 2016.  I'm not sure what I'll run, yet.  It's a little far off, so I'll make a decision closer to spring.  A Stranger Storm from the Grindhouse Referee Book was a good adventure, but I might try another published adventure or even come up with my own.

5.  I want to play more in local gaming stores.  I'm not sure what form this will take, whether I try running something myself, play in something like D&D Encounters or something else.

6.  Playing in public.  I want to run a game in a bar, restaurant, coffee shop, library, or park.  Or maybe in the dining car of Amtrak!

7.  Play one of the games in my collection that I haven't played, yet.  It doesn't have to be a huge campaign.  This past year I had this as a goal and I actually achieved it!  I hadn't played Call of Cthulhu, yet, and we played a scenario of it this summer.  We've played three sessions so far and will probably wrap up on the fourth session.  Not sure which game I want to play...  I might make this into a blog post down the line!

8.  Sell some of the game books I know I'll never play.  I've been doing a bit of this already.  It started with giving The Dresden Files RPG core books to my boyfriend's co-worker about a year and a half ago.  He happened to be a huge fan of the fiction and had two daughters just the right age to get into roleplaying.  I've sold some stuff on Ebay over the last year.  All the World of Darkness 20th Anniversary Edition books I had accumulated, Don't Rest Your Head, Don't Lose Your Mind, A Penny for Your Thoughts, Vampire the Masquerade 2nd Edition, and some of the Chronicles of Darkness supplements I know I'll never use.  Still trimming that last category (CoD) down.

I've never been someone to make New Year's resolutions, and this question strikes me as akin to that.  But I believe it's good to write goals down for yourself and try to hold yourself accountable, so that's what I'm doing with this post.  Like I said up above, I look forward to looking back on this post in August 2019 and seeing how far I've come with these ambitions.

#RPGaDay2018 Day Twenty One

Day 21 Question:  Which dice mechanic appeals to you?

I think the advantage/disadvantage mechanic from 5e is elegant.  I've borrowed it for my LotFP home game and will probably use it when I run LotFP online in the G+ Flailsnails community.

#RPGaDay2018 Day Six

Day 6 Question: How can players make a world seem real?

Another pass.


Day 6 2015 Question: What was the most recent RPG you played?

I played a B/X type D&D game on Google Hangouts with some folks from the G+ Flailsnails group.  For those of you not in the know, Flailsnails games are any type of OSR system the DM wants to run and the players show up with any character from an OSR compatible system.  The DM has veto power on whether your character is appropriate and may set level ranges, but it's a pretty loose affair.  That's what makes it fun!  I need to get my shit together and run something on there.  I'm leaning towards The Midderlands, but a few other contenders are The Dark of Hot springs Island and Operation Unfathomable.

http://monkeyblooddesign.co.uk/epages/48e22cbf-79d8-4df7-bc38-7ed74676d5b2.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/48e22cbf-79d8-4df7-bc38-7ed74676d5b2/Categories/Purchase/The_Midderlands

http://shop.swordfishislands.com/the-dark-of-hot-springs-island/

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/233145/Operation-Unfathomable

UPDATE 8/19/18:  I'm kicking myself for forgetting the Yoon-Suin setting as a possibility!  When I was starting prep for my LotFP YotG campaign I had just gotten that book and it influenced some things about that campaign although I haven't used any material from it, yet.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/144820/YoonSuin 

#RPGaDay2018 Day Four

Day 4 Question: What is the most memorable NPC?

I think because I DM more than I play, I don't want to answer this question, either. So like yesterday, I'll dive back to a 2017 RPG a Day question.

Day 4 2017 Question: Which RPG have you played the most since August 2016?

Going by the number of sessions, it looks like I've played 18 sessions of 5e D&D (as a player,) 12 sessions of Lamentations of the Flame Princess (as a DM,) and I've played about 5 sessions online in a variety of OSR type systems in the Flailsnails G+ group.  Honorable mention game is Call of Cthulhu at 3 sessions with a 4th imminent (I'm the keeper aka DM for this game, we'll play as soon as I get my prep for the next session complete.)

39 games divided by 24 months = 3.5 games a month!  Not bad, but I hope to bump that up this year.  I predict the  Flailsnails group on G+ is going to facilitate my being able to play more games, I'm hoping to run something there, too.