Ox ---> Tiger Campaign Session #39

 

Session 39- The Last Life Guardian/MCC, and Afterwards 

at the Misty Isles. Give Octocrab a Hug;)

8/14/2022

• Tim and Fecus translate LotFP characters into MCC 

  characters and play through the Last Life Guardian MCC Adventure.

• Undertaker Birds 100xp x2

• Fishman 10xp

• Octocrab 250xp

• Nacho Blob 250xp

• Tanorexic Zombie 100xp

• Droid 500xp

• Tim, Fecus, Shelby, and Ferika drop off the baby naga and find the 

  exit to come back to the deck of the Golden Barge 1 hour later.  

  Back to LotFP PCs.

• Pick-up Ornie after he circumnavigated the Misty Isle in 7 days 

  having sold no hruz.

• Kill 2 Eld and destroy 2 small ships at Naval Port.

• Geoff flies up to Monument 5 with a rope.

• Eld 47xp x2

• Total xp 1404

• Tim and Fecus 468xp

• Shelby and 234xp

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.

#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 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 Five

Day 5 Question: What is your favorite recurring NPC?

Another question I'll pass over.


Day 5 2015 Question: What was your most recent RPG purchase?

About a month ago I ordered The Dark of Hot Springs Island, Frostbitten and Mutilated, and Random Esoteric Creature Generator for Classic Fantasy Role-Playing Games and Their Modern Simulacra.


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

http://www.lotfp.com/store/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=297

http://goodman-games.com/store/product/random-esoteric-creature-generator-for-classic-fantasy-role-playing-games-and-their-modern-simulacra-pdf/

The version of the Random Esoteric Creature Generator that I bought is the most recent print addition from the publisher Lamentations of the Flame Princess.  I'm not sure if it's still available, as it was a limited print run and the publisher is at GenCon as I write this.  So I posted a link to the PDF version that was published by Goodman Games.  I had been wanting a copy of RECG for years, and I gotta say I'm happy I waited because the presentation of this limited edition print run is out-of-this world gorgeous!