Circle of Dar Janix

Tonight, I finished my CoC adventure for my friend's 'zine. It wound up being quite a bit longer, and taking more effort, than I originally estimated, but I am pretty happy with it. With that out of the way, I can turn my attention to prepping my online SWN game. We have our Session 0 on the 6th, so I have a couple of weeks to get ready. I plan to let my players dictate a lot of what the setting will look like. I will leave it up to them whether we have psychic powers, AI, and aliens. I plan to rough out the sector and some other details. I will cover that process here. I went to the first Fairfax Comic Con today. It was a bit bigger than I expected, for a first effort, but it was still pretty thin on events. I didn't take any pictures, because there wasn't really anything worth photographing. I did pick up a cheap dinged paperback copy of DCC and another copy of the Moldvay Basic Set. The box is a bit worn, but the books are practically new. This week I read R. ...

This is from Trails in the Sky not DCC. It can be hard to tell them apart. This weekend I focused on getting further in Trails in the Sky and working on a Call of Cthulhu adventure for my friend's 'zine. I also worked on pulling together the online Stars Without Number games I am planning on starting next month.  On Saturday night, my regular group play tested a DCC module one of our members is working on.I will now attempt to summarize that insanity. I have written this from the perspective of my characters. They are unreliable sources of information. It was a funnel game, and there were 6 players, so there were a lot of characters. My four characters were Kenny Rogers, a Gambler; Jeremiah Johnson, a Trapper; Osarb, a Mendicant; and Delta Burke, a Healer. Our characters started on the world of Osarb (no relation), which was just coming out of an ice age. As inhabitants of the town of Halbrinx, we were tasked with preparing the annual sacrifice. This was neither as dar...

On Saturday the Second Saturday Scrum Club played Steve Jackson's The Fantasy Trip. As a long time GURPS fan, I have been interested in trying The Fantasy Trip for a while. The current reprint Kickstarter seems to have brought the game to the surface again. The seed that would become GURPS is clearly present in The Fantasy Trip. You roll under a number on 3d6 for your action check, you use a primitive point buy system, there are only two classes and they can learn each other's skills, and fantasy items are priced in greenbacks. The group on Saturday consisted of me, Joe, Steve, and Francesco. Steve was serving as the "Dungeon Master" by guiding us through a programmed adventure. I played a wizard, and Joe and Francesco each played a different take on the warrior. Joe played a missile/stealth focused warrior, while Francesco's was more tank oriented. This customization highlighted one of the strengths of the system. The adventure involved us exploring a mys...

This is a game about herding sheep Video Games: I have logged about 45 hours in Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky over the last few weeks, and I am really enjoying it. I believe this was originally an early 2000s PSP release, but I am playing the PC port. This game is right up my JRPG alley. It is in the early PS1 style, kind of like Grandia. The world building is excellent. While there are not as many books to read as in an Elder Scrolls game, the ones that exist are more focused on relevant information. This allows the game to feel like it is set in a bigger world. I also really enjoy the combat system. While it remains firmly in the traditional turn-based JRPG mold, it adds just a touch of Final Fantasy Tactics inspired strategy. While there is a bit of anime goofiness, it is not too heavy handed. I also started Persona 4 Golden on my Vita. I loved Persona 5, so I have been really looking forward to this one. Stars Without Number: I am looking for a few more players...

After seeing me run No Thank You, Evil at GenCon, my daughter became very interested in playing it again. We started out with the "Race Against Time" adventure found in the box set. She has actually played this one before, but did not remember it. At the end of that adventure, when Whizbang asked what time she wanted to go to, she answered, "Fairy Time". So I quickly sketched out Fairy Time. I decided I wanted something that would be simple enough for a 6-year-old to grasp, but complex enough for me to iterate on as she matured. This is in keeping with the way NTY,E is designed. The game rules are in tiers of increasing complexity. I decided that the fairies were created by the All Tree, the fruit of which is the source of all life in the world. The fairies were made to defend and serve the All Tree during its long sleep after taking root on Earth. As the tree has to be defended at all times, there must always be fairies defending it. Because of this, there are ...

I once again have let this blog lapse for over a year, mostly because the communities I used it to  interact with largely faded. One of the groups that I game with now has several people who write  gaming blogs, so I am incentivized to pick it back up again. GenCon has always represented the  beginning of the gaming year for me, so returning with a recap of that event seems fitting. GenCon has changed a lot over the last few years, both for me personally, and as a whole. I have  noticed a positive shift in the demographics to a younger, more diverse crowd. The convention has  also expanded its support for families, and “cons within the con” like Contessa. On the whole, it is  a bigger, better, and more interesting convention. For the last three years, my wife and daughter  have come with me, and there is plenty for them to do (my wife is not a gamer). Along with the change of bringing my family, the con has changed for me personal...