Trudvang's Wildheart

In 2017, I supported the KickStarter (KS) for The Trudvang Chronicles, a Swedish RPG based on Nordic and Celtic sagas and myths. What drew me to the game was the amazing art.

I was finally able to run Wildheart, a 65 page campaign that came with the KS. The game took about 4 sessions (4 hrs each) to finish, but the game could have gone longer, but my players were getting tired of the system and game.

One minor issue was bad copyediting and awkward translation from Swedish to English. I ran into several issues in the core books and in Wildheart also.

The campaign requires experienced PCs and none were provided with the campaign, but I found pre-gens in the back of the Game Master's Guide, otherwise character generation would be a session in itself. Riotminds provided online tools for character generation if you supported the KS.

The system requires you to take into account armor and weapons which affect your initiative. The number of times you can attack are based on your weapon speed. How many Combat Points you want to spend on each attack is also kept track of. Basically, this was too crunchy (and record keeping) for my group of players. A lot of prep work is need to be ready for combat. Basically, it helps if PCs have a menu of combat options pre-calculated before a battle. Otherwise, there's a lot of number crunching and decision making during combat. For instance, if you plan on parrying, you need to hold back some Combat Points during your attacks.

I just found the combat system a bit too cumbersome for my tastes.

What I really liked was the take on religion and magic and of course, the illustrations.

Below are spoilers for Wildheart and ideas on how to improve the campaign, so don't read further if you plan on playing it.

=== SPOILERS BELOW ===

The whole premise behind Wildheart is that it's an enchanted forest where creatures get trapped in it and the only way to escape is to find the questions and answers to at least 4 secrets. There are mock secrets which are questions and answers which do not count towards the 4 needed to escape the forest.

The history behind Wildheart is that it's a magical forest, but at one point the dragon Elmtongue was slain there and his blood corrupted the forest. If any intelligent life (things with souls vs animals for food) is slain in the forest, its blood feeds the taint in the soil. If enough blood is shed, Dark Dwellers emerge and will slaughter those responsible. So, the old inhabitants of Wildheart know this and shy away from bloodshed, but some are not against asking any ignorant newbies to do their dirty work for them, asking new arrivals to do away with their old enemies in the forest.

I liked the individual encounters and each one had some very interesting take on fantasy tropes, but on the whole, it fell apart. The main issue is that the secrets don't hold the game together. I think the GM needs to tie the secrets into a solution for ridding the Wildheart of the darkness, not just collect 4 unrelated Q&A secrets and get out of jail. Also the secrets were just questions about Wildheart and not riddles per se which I would have preferred.

How would I change it?

Maybe have the secrets reveal the origin of Wildheart and by understanding its origin, figure out how to tame it.

For instance, have the PCs learn about how the sword Alpdeed slew Elmtongue and that it still has power over the dragon blood seeped into Wildheart. Alpdeed is obtained from the Braskelwurm either by theft, conquest, or trickery. The Braskelwurm offers the sword (not naming it), if the PCs kill the Lundwurm and return with its eyes as proof. In my game, the PCs encountered the Lindwurm after meeting the Braskelwurm and decided they couldn't survive combat with the Lindwurm and left, but they noted how the Lindwurm's eyes looked and hunted large game and used an Elk's eyes to trick the Braskelwurm.

If the PCs befriend the dwarves looking for Timil, have them forge weapons in Runvid's Smithy (or get Herlaug the Blacksmith to do it) as payment for helping them escape Wildheart. Those weapons would be effective against the Dark Dwellers.

Obtain the Demon-Killing axe from the Bleeding Giant Tree.

Then go to Oltur's Den and have a diseased tree growing out of Elmtongue's ribcage. Have a tell-tale heart beat slowly thudding in the cavern. Inside the tree is the still beating heart of Elmtongue. The Demon-Killing axe is needed to cut open the tree bark and blood wells up from the cut tree, Dim Dwellers rise from the ground and attack, protecting the tree. Once through the bark, Elmtongue's exposed heart must be killed a second time with either Alpdeed or Brenag's Dragon Knight sword. Then the darkness and curse would start to fade away.

So, if this is the solution to Wildheart, then I'd change the Q&A to reflect this such as:

Q: If a tree bleeds, what's are its seeds?
A: Dark Dwellers in earthen cellars.

Q: Wildheart, blackheart, depart?
A: Once slain, it grows, twice slain, the gallows.

=== Misc Notes ===

Before running the game, I pre-rolled the weather and encounters for 30 days of travel. As each day elapsed, I checked off each encounter and day of weather. Also after the PCs got into the rhythm of hunting, I removed that aspect of the game and just told them, you know the drill, we'll just assume you continue doing that, but it's off screen.

p.25 Dead Forest Trolls. It is not clear from the description, but I inferred that the trolls died of hypothermia. The Forest Trolls are 1/2 human size.

p.26 Dead Hunter. After careful reading, you'll have to infer what happened since it's not spelled out explicitly. The hunter shot his arrow into the air hoping that the arrow would leave the forest. Attached to the arrow is a note warning others away from it and to burn down the forest. Well, after wandering through Wildheart, he finds his arrow which was still in Wildheart and dies there in despair as even his best efforts amounted to nothing.

p.27 Entourage of Dwarves. These are Timil's relatives looking for him. My players had run into Timil earlier and offered to take them to Timil. These wound up as allies.

p.40 Kvaler and the Raven. I decided that Kvaler had made a mistake and was tricked by the Raven. Kvaler had almost gotten all 4 Q&A and was only missing the answer to #1. So why would he have agreed to a game of Kroke's squares with the Raven? I think he assumed it would have been a quick game and a quick exit from Wildheart, and also he wasn't sure if he had some mock secrets, so he agreed to the Raven's terms and got trapped in a hundred year game. I had the PCs note that the grass was visibly growing as time was sped up. The PCs tried to sabotage the game by overturning the board. I let them do it, but since no one would agree to the last position of the board, the NPCs wanted to cheat, the game had to be started all over again. When the PCs left and rejoined the Entourage of Dwarves at Runvid's Cairn, the Dwarves noted that the PCs were gone for a long time. If the campaign is modified, Kvaler can become some sort of ally that returns later as I assume Kvaler had other epic things to do once freed. Kvaler may also help them rid Wildheart of the taint, but he must leave in order to return with greater magics to tame Wildheart.

p.47 Chamber of the Dragon. As per my earlier musings, I'd put a Giant Bleeding Tree growing right out of the ribcage of the dragon skeleton. And a faint drum beat can be heard throughout the chamber.

p.50-51 Runvid's Cairn. 2. Trap. These traps a bit repetitive and stupid. At the bottom of every stair is a pit trap. After a while, the PCs tripped every pit trap seeing if there was anything more to them. The windy intestinal corridors that lead to nowhere were also tiresome. I'd recommend removing the windy corridors and make the map more straight forward.

p.52 Smithy. I put a smorgasbord of runes on the anvil. I decided the Entourage of Dwarves were not only interested in finding Timil, but were interested in tidying up Runvid's Cairn, resetting the traps, and using the Smithy to forge some magical weapons which they were going sell to offset the cost of their travels. I decided Thuul dwarves with Thuul Forging were immune to the cursed aspect of the anvil.

p.52 Sacrificial Place in the Marshlands. The slipperiness of the stepping stones became an odd issue. As the PCs retried multiple times, they eventually were able to reach the small islet, so I wondered why even have them make these skill rolls. Then it came to me. It's preparation for when they have to flee. When the dead reanimated, the PCs couldn't defeat them, so they ran. This is when you should have them make skill rolls. Maybe when they approach the islet, have them roll once, just to demonstrate how slippery it is and those who failed would just slip off and fall into the water, but they all make it to the islet. I also didn't activate the Draugr until they touched the altar. The PCs also dug around the marsh as I put some rotted ropes and chains on the surrounding trees, they eventually found some human remains which reanimated as the Draugr.

p.57 Sarcophagus. Why are there urns of ashes if there's a sarcophagus? So, I removed all the urns and left the bodies in the sarcophagi. And I engraved the name of the occupants and death notes on the sarcophagi.

p.58 Timil's Elk. The picture on p.59 is Timil's Elk, but no girl is riding him. I assume the girl is Goldglitter from p.61. So, if you show the picture, tell the players there's no girl riding the Elk.

p.57 Brenag's Sarcophagus. "An ornamental Dragon Knight sword of iron (masterful quality)" This is way incorrect. An ornamental sword is for show only and is not functional and used for dress events. This really confused my players. It should really be A Dragon Knight sword of iron (masterful quality) with adornaments.

The Fall of Delta Green - Play Test and Impressions

I ran "Operation: Aladdin's Cave," a play test of The Fall of DELTA GREEN in March 2017. I was under blackout rules and couldn't talk about it until pre-orders were available. This is a review of the play test materials, not the final published book.

I found this a great translation of the Delta Green (DG) rules to GUMSHOE. All the new rules in DG showed up in The Fall of DELTA GREEN: Bonds, Lethality, Adapting to Trauma, Automatic Weapons, etc.

What's new for GUMSHOE?

• Rules for generating characters belonging to the military and intelligence services during the Vietnam Era. Also templates for other professions such as an Activist (protester).
• New Modern Skills such as Criminology, Military Science, HUMINT, Data Retrieval, Fringe Science, SIGINT, Traffic Analysis.
• Lots of new combat rules and options: Critical Hits, Called Shots, Disarming, Evasion, Sniping, Suppressive Fire, Autofire, Walking Fire, Shot Dry, Weapon Jams, Heavy Weapons (such as grenades, mines, mortars, bombs, missiles). These new rules add needed flavor to the generally dry GUMSHOE combat rules.
• Rules for Drugs and Addiction. I mean, what's the Vietnam War without drugs and alcohol?
• Chase Rules including Multiple Pursuers, Ramming, Attacks During Chases, using Investigative Abilities during the chase.

I loved the combat options and how Lethality was implemented.

The play test didn't have pictures or any setting material on Vietnam, so I can't comment on those things, but I do hope they'll add setting and background material for the Vietnam War. Otherwise, you'll have to watch Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Good Morning Vietnam, The Deer Hunter, We Were Soldiers, Hamburger Hill.

The play testers went through "Operation: Alladin's Cave" pretty quickly and enjoyed it. It was a good introduction to the game.

Overall, I found this a good solid book and highly recommend it.

EndGame 3d6 RPG Con 2018

Saturday March 4, 11am-5pm (6 hours)
Scenario Title: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1970's
GM: Todd Evans
System: Savage Worlds
Setting: Hazzard County
Character Level: Heroic-Legendary
Characters: Provided (The Bandit, Daisy Duke, Elvis Presley & the Memphis Mafia, Philo Beddoe and his orangutan Clyde, Foxy Brown, Evel Knievel, and Kolchakthe Nightstalker)
Number of Players: 7
Description: The Southern Division of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are sent out on an urgent mission to deliver the powerful telekinetic Carrie White to a supernatural prison before she wakes up from her magical slumber. Devil-worshiping Boss Hogg is set out to grab her from the League’s convoy and deliver her to his master Satan as another weapon in his unholy army. Can the Southern Division of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen transport the girl in time or will the Devil win the day?
Rules/Setting Downloads: https://tevansdesign.com/league-of-extraordinary-gentlemen-1970s-edition/

Character Sheet on a 8-track tape.

This game had the most amazing props imaginable and it also hit my nostalgic childhood sweet spot. My only issue is that it used Savage Worlds and it was a mini-heavy, combat-heavy game, so the four combats took up most of the game and there was less time for role playing. Also with such long combats, I ran out of cool moves to make. You can only do so many cool things in combat. I think the game might have been better using Spirit of 77 RPG instead.

The scenes were interesting, the GM did a great job, did great NPC voices, the props were top notch. I mean, who would make a character sheet out of 8-track tapes?

Overall, I had a fun time.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

Initial setup, where Cannibal Pork Farmers with Dogs attack us. Our mission, to deliver the sleeping magically bound Carrie to a safe location.

Our combat got cut short as Daisy Duke did a gymnastics move into the cab of the still running pork delivery truck (the bad guys') and backed it over most of the bad guys.

Our second combat was during a road convoy and we got chased by wolf-men on motorcycles. This combat got a bit long as we started to run out of ideas as we defeated pack after pack of regenerating wolf-men.

Our 3rd combat was in a bar where the Blues Brothers were singing Raw Hide. When Fat Elvis volunteered to sing, he got dissed as an Elvis Impersonator. Bar Fight!

Our 4th and final combat was between Elvis and Gene Simmons, the KISS Demon.

In the end, Evel Knievel jumped his motorcycle into a giant evil monstrosity from hell and blew it up.

After everyone had their epilogue, I got to do my epilogue, Evel's.

A government helicopter shows up after everyone leaves the scene.

The dialog between the guys picking up Evel's body:

1st suit: That's a lot of money, are you sure?
2nd suit: We'll make him, faster, stronger, better.
1st suit; $6 million, that's a lot of money. You better be sure.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

Morgan's Dead of Winter 2017 Adventures

Another interesting Dead of Winter with some old faces and some new. This time I'm going to talk about GM choices and how that affects a game.

I hide spoiler sections with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript turned off, you can skip the spoiler sections I have marked. 

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Saturday, 11am - 5pm
Game System: Bedlam Hall
Scenario Title: ‘Twas a Very Dreary Christmas
GM: William Lee
Variations: N/A
Power Level: Rather Low
Number of Players: 6 (Alicia H, Arthur W, Colin F,  Laurel H, Lis H, Morgan H)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description:

Ah, Christmas, that most magical time of the year. By magical, I mean, of course, the alignment of the stars in the Winter Solstice sky makes the walls between dimensions, uh, a bit porous. Eldritch energies and inconceivable horrors from beyond can easily toddle on over to our world for a cup of tea. (They may even stay for supper…) 

This is certainly true here at Bedlam Hall. As the holiday nears, the Blackwood family becomes wrapped up (even smothered) in the spirit of Christmas. Lord Blackwood wants to try his hand a summoning Yog-Sothoth, again, despite the unfortunate incident with Aunt Agatha last year. Lady Blackwood begins a regimen of bathing in blood to look her best for visiting friends and family. And young Matilda, well, she seems to have broken out of the dungeon again! How festive! 

And you, my lucky friends, are the hapless servant staff of the Blackwood Family, tasked with maintaining a semblance of order within the House while vying for prestige and privilege among yourselves. Jolly good fun, isn’t it?

This was an interesting game. I played in a similar game set in Downton Abbey in DoW 2013, run by Gil, so I had a data point to compare games with. The Bedlam Hall game engine is Powered by the Apocalypse. The issue I ran into was that when a character gets a partial success or failure, there's a menu item to choose advantages and disadvantages from. The menu is supposed to add to the storytelling, but game designers forget and put various +1/-1 to the menu item, so instead of helping with storytelling, there's a bit of analysis paralysis when confronted with meta-choices such as +1 Prestige to you, -1 Prestige to target, +1 advantage to you, -1 disadvantage to target, etc.. So, what happens is that you decide to make a move on a PC, then you roll, then you have to pick something from the menu and figure out what that means story-wise. During this time, the whole games comes to a screeching halt. Then the next PC or NPC does a move, and you rinse and repeat. It makes the game feel like a car with an engine that's about to stall. It lurches forward to a stop, lurches forward, stops, etc..

The game is setup so that each servant was given a different task to complete, so my issue was that each player got 5 mins of screen time as we round robin-ed through the PCs. So, in the first third of the game, we were all separate. Later, we started to get together, but we never got more than 3 PCs together at the same time. This led to a lot of down time for the players. The GM did a great job playing all the NPCs, so he got a lot of screen time, but not the players. In Gil's game, the PCs started all together and a major event happened as we all watched, so we all got involved early. I think that worked much better.

Lesson to be learned: get all the PCs involved early on and don't give different tasks to every PC, best to have a common goal at the beginning.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

In the game, each NPC household member had various tasks they wanted to accomplish. The Lady wanted to bathe in the blood of virgins. The Lord, perform a ritual at a standing stones. One son, eat human flesh. And of course, all this happening during the chaos of setting everything up for a Christmas celebration.

The problem was that when one PC was given a task that PC would order an underling PC to help perform part of the task, so that other PC would try to complete a part of that task alone, so there was a lot of PCs acting alone.

I must have done something right because in the end several PCs ganged up on me and murdered my character. Mine was the only character death.

Part of the game was gaining Prestige, in order to change your pecking order in the household. I think this would work better in a longer campaign vs a one-shot.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Saturday, 7pm - 1am
Scenario Title: Three Nights of the Magdalene
Game System: Call of Cthulhu 7th ed.
GM: Josh Clark & John Castillo
Variations: Slight alterations to 7th ed.
Power Level: Terrified Schoolgirls
Number of Players: 6 (Andrew W, Bryanna H, Dovi A, Jack Y, Morgan H, Shannon M)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: It’s a hard-knock life for the girls at the Magdalene Laundry.

Josh and John spent two years building out this game and it showed. The game is based on real life Magdalene Laundries which weren't shutdown until 1996.

This was a great game. And everyone got their Irish accent on. The role playing was excellent which added a great realism to the game.

Lesson learned: Fully bake your game before running it. Half-baked games aren't as good.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

The game starts off with one NPC, a friend of all the other PCs, put into "The Box" for misbehaving. The issue is that the PCs have already put together a plan to escape the Laundry and the escape was to be this night. The NPC in the box had already arranged with a handyman to leave the keys to a truck in the industrial laundry part of the premises. The PCs sneak a coded note during mass to the handyman hoping that the note would be given to the NPC.

The PCs try to escape during an evening thunderstorm and find that the NPC is missing from the box. Their escape is curtailed and they wind up following the ghost of the missing NPC to an underground feasting hall. The PCs are given the choice of eternal happiness (and death) or returning to the land of the living and pain and suffering.

The PCs decide to return to the land of the living and found the feasting hall is actually a charnel house with the bodies and bones of missing girls and babies. The nuns of the Laundry (and their bullies) attack and capture the PCs. The charnel house was directly beneath the box, connected by a sewer grate.

The PCs are locked up in their dormitory again, but are sent one-by-one to confession with the new head priest. The PCs learn during the confession that the head priest is not what he seems to be.

The PCs escape onto the grounds again and perform a ritual to banish Nyarlathotep (the new head priest) who was behind all the evil in the Laundries throughout Ireland.

The plot is very straight forward, but what was rich were the PCs, the bad situations, and the choices we had to make.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Sunday, 11am - 5pm
Scenario Title: Family Feud
Game System: Kult: Divinity Lost
GM: Colin Fahrion
Variations: N/A
Power Level: Family Members with a Dark Secret
Number of Players: 6 (Alicia H, Laurel H, Matt G, Matt R, Matt S, Morgan H)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description:

“It’s time for the Family Feud! Introducing the Thurston Family and the Undercliffe Family! On your marks, let’s start the Family Feud! We have a special episode for you today as we hear that each of these two families have a dark secret! There’s no telling what will happen today folks!”

I heard great things about Kult and wanted to try it. Unfortunately, this was the newest version which switched to a new game engine, Powered by the Apocalypse. Again we ran into the same problems as Bedlam Hall, but less so, because there were less choices, but it still happened. I'm beginning to dislike the Apocalypse World system.

Colin did a great job of bringing to us Family Feud (other than a few tech hiccups). The PCs were interesting and special in their own special way.

My only issue was that we had split the party and one half was in a fight for their lives, whereas the other half were in a very boring elevator ride. And the GM intercut between the two groups, and the elevator people didn't get much screen time since there wasn't much to do in the elevator. I felt that was a bad GM choice. Either there should have been no intercutting or we should have had something to do in the elevator.

Lesson learned: Intercutting between an action scene and a non-action scene works in a movie, but probably not too well in a RPG. The main criteria is to keep the players from being bored and to give them equal screen time.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

The game started with 3 players in one family and 3 players in another. As we played Family Feud, strange things started happening and the questions started to get more and more personal to each family. I liked this aspect of the game and it would have been more fun if the questions had gotten really personal, but the game show fell apart pretty quickly as the veil around the world lifted and we saw the hell we were in.

Since we were split into two families, the game did lend itself to a split party working against each other.

At the end, we wound up trusting each other and working together in defeating the big bad. And we also found out that we were actually related and were actually one family and not two.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Sunday, 7pm - 1am
Scenario Title: Deep Sleep of Dread
Game System: Call of Cthulhu 7th ed.
GM: Dave Sokolowski
Variations: None
Power Level: Modern
Number of Players: 6 (Aaron T, Anthony B, Leon G, Matt S, Morgan H)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description:

Washington DC – Today. Congresswoman Denise Grey (D-NY) has fallen into a coma just three days before her speech to the UN on human rights. From this coma she continues to perspire saltwater, which covers her body, soaks the bedsheets and fills her lungs. At this rate, the doctors say she’ll be dead in less than a week, but missing the speech will also be a serious blow to the oppressed people she has promised to represent. She has many enemies and time is short. 

You are a member of the Advocacy — a team of supernatural fixers, soldiers and researchers who work discretely to solve problems in and around the home of the world’s largest bureaucracies. You have the best technology and resources in the world at your hand, which is important because your adversaries don’t play by the rules and often don’t even come from this world.

Dave told us at the beginning that this was a playtest for his scenario and it was supposed to fit in a 4 hour time slot. Matt S. immediately reminded Dave that we had a 6 hour time slot. Dave then told us that there's an hour of background material and PC info to go over, and a wrap up after the game session, so it'll take the 6 hours. I think we did take something like 5 hours for the scenario.

It didn't help that this was the last game session and an hour of background material didn't help me stay awake.

The Advocacy which is the group our PCs belonged to was mainly a modern Delta Green-like group, private instead of governmental and given various rules that makes it a more gentler and nicer Delta Green. One of the rules was to be wary of magic and not to use it.

The investigation wound up very difficult to solve. At one point Dave asked if we wanted hints and we all said, "Yes."

Aaron did a great job as an occult practitioner. Oddly enough, if he didn't use magic, we probably would have never solved the mystery.

Lesson learned: Don't run a complicated investigation game on the last day / time slot of a gaming convention.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

In the game, the Congresswoman, suffering from "Breath of the Deep," was dumped by an unmarked van in front of her condo,  We also learn that she was attacked several times earlier by unmarked motorcycles by Asians with swords and crossbows.

None of the vehicles had license plates and CCTV gave us no IDs. Checking the Congresswoman's home we find a self-recorded video tape and mummified dog. CCTV from the condo complex shows a suspicious blonde woman enter the building.

Following the Congresswoman's cellphone GPS has her disappearing after visiting two Asian embassies.

The Congresswoman was working with a co-sponsor on a bill about Asian sex-slave trade, targeting three Asian countries.

We researched what components were needed to cast the spell on the Congresswoman (her hair) and then Aaron's character created a magical detector to find the fetish used to cast the spell on the Congresswoman. We followed the detector to the home of the co-sponsor of the bill, we confronted him and defeated him in combat.

Without that magical detector we would have SOL.

We learned that the co-sponsor was working with one of the Asian embassies who supplied the muscle. The co-sponsor was a spell caster who also shape changed to appear as the blonde woman.

Overall, the mystery was difficult and in retrospect, it didn't make any sense. Why abduct this woman and throw a spell on her? Why not just kill her and dump her body somewhere? Why the shape change-foo. We actually thought the blonde woman was a paid amateur spy.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

Musings on Murder Hoboing

I got into a very interesting discussion on FaceBook about D&D and murder hobos.

First let me explain what I mean by murder hoboing. I don't mean you just murder people randomly and take their stuff. You are a murder hobo not because you murder hobos, you are a hobo who murders. You travel from town to town, village to village, murdering things for hire and taking their stuff (treasure and magic items). When you are done, you move to the next town. You have no home. Your sole purpose is to kill things. When a village sees adventurers arrive, they send you off to the nearest dangerous place, a dungeon full of orcs, a cave with a sleeping dragon, or whatever might be threat to the town because they know adventurers will destroy their town without entertainment and so point the way to adventure, hoping the murder hobos either get killed or eliminate the threat. A win-win situation. D&D when I played it in the 1970s was murder hoboing.

In the 1970s there were no boardgames other than S&T magazines with historical military wargame simulations, so we did random dungeon crawls which is now replaced with computer gaming like Dragon Age and boardgames like Gloomhaven and Kingdom Death: Monster (KDM). I rarely play video games anymore and after years of not playing them, I was convinced to play Dragon Age and I thoroughly enjoyed it and that has been the last video game I've played as of the writing of this blog post. But the game design behind all of these games is murder hoboing, tactical simulation of combat and getting stuff. It becomes a cycle of murder, taking stuff, leveling up, murder, taking stuff, murder more powerful opponents, etc. It just isn't very interesting to me. How these new boardgames keep your interest is by slowly revealing the world, the character abilities, magical items, and new monsters. They do this to keep it fresh otherwise, it'll be like mashing an attack button on a video game and you'll get bored, but underneath all of this is just a combat simulator.

Class abilities, spells, and items all lean toward combat and large area damage. Also increasing Hit Points (HPs - notice they call it Hit Points, not Health, emphasizing how many hits from a weapon you can take) as you level up makes surviving combat easier and easier, thus the escalating spiral of challenges of fighting meaner and meaner monsters.The system/ruleset focus is combat. When I was in my teens, a random dungeon encounter was all I wanted and what my friends wanted. My high school buddies used the Gods, Demigods, & Heroes book as a menu for collecting artifacts - by hunting down and killing Gods and taking their stuff. I built killer dungeons (closets of random overkill) and players brought 485th level Storm Giants, Blackhole blades, A Deck of Many Things with infinite queen of spades, etc. Very Monty Haul (a play on Monty Hall from Let's Make a Deal, where you look behind curtains and boxes to find prizes or Zoinks) and I handed out very ridiculous stuff too and took no mercy in murdering the hell out of any mistake they made. Those were good times and fun for what they were.

We never gave out Experience Points (XP) for Gold Pieces (GP) because we thought it was double-dipping because the more powerful monsters always had more gold and you used gold to buy equipment and magical scrolls, potions, weapons, and armor to better kill things. Daniel N, mentioned that they did award XP for GP, so there was an incentive to steal the dragon's treasure instead of trying to kill it. Now that he has brought this up, the possibility of just stealing the GP without combat and leveling up, a big Aha! lightbulb went off in my head - 40 years too late. We never realized that was an option. We'd rather double-dip, getting XP for slaying the dragon and taking the treasure. Thieves were useful for their trap disabling and backstabbing ability. Hiding in Shadows was for Backstabbing, not for just stealing treasure.

Murder hobos are generally not generic humans as most players pick something unique like a dwarf cleric, a half-orc barbarian, an elf mage, a hobbit assassin. So, the party is always a weird ragtag team of misfits.

In most worlds, murder hobos don't blend into the natural order of things. Rarely is there free travel and most natives, if it is an agricultural society, stay in their local area, so most communities are homogeneous villages (unless it's a big port city), so a ragtag band of misfits carrying weapons, wearing dented armor, 10' poles, large coils of 50' rope, lanterns, multiple flasks of oil, huge bedrolls, overstuffed backpacks, mules, etc, really stick out as outsiders. They're easily spotted as adventurers. See 13 dwarves, 1 hobbit, and wizard go to human village for a beer, hmm? Adventurers? See a dwarf, an elf, two human fighters, a mage, and a couple of hobbits go to an elven forest. Hmm? Adventurers? See a human with a cart of goods drawn by horses with a sign on the cart saying, "Tidwells Tinkerer and Snake Oil for your Ailments." Hmm. Merchant?

The motley crew of Player Characters (PCs) stick out like a sore thumb and if a town had a sheriff, they should be chased out of town instead of being revered like the Seven Samurai. They should immediately seen as murder hobos and trouble makers. And if the murder hobos didn't kill the sleeping dragon, it's going to wake up and set your village on fire. If the murder hobos didn't commit genocide by murdering every Orc in their underground cave complex and just murdered a few Orcs and stole their offerings (treasure) from their holy shrine (more treasure) and blasphemed their god by trampling over everything, a horde of angry Orcs will spew forth and wreak vengeance upon your poor human town (after the murder hobos have moved on, after a drunken celebration).

After 40 years, game development has evolved and dungeons are more organic and not random static closets full of monsters and treasure. KDM, though a boardgame and not a RPG, has embodied the newer philosophy of dungeon design where things are organic. You prepare for the big bad battle at the end throughout the year by making armor, weapons, and equipment from the parts of previously defeated creatures. You level up your village with skill trees. You have generational stories much like King Arthur Pendragon. Monster combat uses a card-based AI, so it's a GM-less game. Descriptive text give more of a unique storytelling favor to combat vs a generic, you take 3 HPs damage. So, RPGs have evolved and dungeons have become more realistic, but at the core, it's still murder hoboing.

Morgan's AetherCon 2017 Adventures

Somehow, this blog post is about what happens when players don't show up and when players do show up.

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Camp Sunny
System: Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed
Date/Time: Nov 10, 11am
Duration: 5 hrs
GM: Todd Gardiner
Players: 4 (of 6)

You and your friends are taking an impromptu off-season vacation from college and booked a couple of cabins in the Great Lakes. This will be just the thing to combat the stress of coursework and relax! A few days in the wilds full of peace and fun. With college far behind, what's there to worry about? Set in Modern Day (1980's). Pre-gen characters provided. Camp Sunny is an official 2017 Chaosium Convention Scenario written by Paul Fricker with Mike Mason.

The PCs were interesting in that there was an interconnected web of relationships between all the PCs, but unfortunately, we only had 4 of 6 players, so 2 were left out, the 2 PCs that I had the most connections with. My character thought the other PCs were losers and I acted accordingly.

I thought this scenario was a bit odd. Even though at the end one PC got captured, one went insane, and two escaped, we had an inkling of what was going on, but not the whole picture. At the end, the GM told us what was going on and how the clues hooked into each other. I think there was no way to figure out the whole story.

The PC got captured because the player left the game and the GM forced events on the PC as leverage on the other PCs which is a valid technique to increase tension in the game.

I did enjoy the role playing, but the whole scenario left a bad impression on me, I would not run this scenario myself as I didn't find it that enjoyable.

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It was clear at the beginning that the camp owners were Deep Ones and after PCs were comparing notes with each other we knew they were trying to seduce the PCs for some reason and some glamour made the corresponding Deep One of the opposite sex seem alluring, whereas the one of the same sex seemed repulsive. But the pre-gen PCs had no Mythos experience, so we role played as such.

There was a guy who was insane who was looking for a wife that didn't exist. We did find evidence that a woman who he claimed to be his wife was present at the camp, who I saw dancing in the club house with a guy wearing an elder sign ring, but when I went to investigate, the people, lights, and music vanished.

An acid eaten severed hand with elder sign ring found under a rusty sand pail and the dancing people who disappeared were a complete mystery to us. And we weren't going to poke in a half-filled, algae-over grown pool.  After the game, the GM told us the hand, which was pooped out by a Shoggoth, was protected by the elder sign ring - yes the players knew out of game what the ring was, but not the PCs in game. We thought the people were ghosts because they disappeared so fast, but was told it was the Shoggoth impersonating people and it had disappeared down the drain. And the Shoggoth lived in the swimming pool.

We also found some old whisky and beers in the club house basement and there was a lot of decay throughout the premises, so we thought there was some time distortion going on.

In the end, we confronted the two camp owners and they called the Shoggoth to attack us. We killed one of the Deep Ones before escaping. One PC (who turned NPC because he dropped out of the game), got seduced and impregnated by the male Deep One, was captured by the Shoggoth to be returned as breeding stock, as the rest of us escaped. One other PC went insane and ran off into the woods.

Overall, I felt the pacing was very slow in this game as there wasn't much to find as we explored a majority of the camp. We didn't figure out the Shoggoth connection even when it showed up. The severed hand and dancing figures was a mystery to us until the GM explained what had happened.

The seduction, rape by magic, aspect of this scenario was a bit offputting to me. This plus the slow pacing and unsolvable mystery, just made this scenario something I wouldn't want to run.

The most interesting part of the game was the interactions between the PCs.

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Blythburgh, A Town of Darkness
System: White Wolf World of Darkness
Date/Time: Nov 11, 9am
Duration: 5 hrs
GM: Richard Chabrier
Players: 3 (of 6)

On a trip to the coast, six summer vacationing youth take a wrong turn and enter a small town where no one seems to be under the age of fifty. The oddity doesn't stop there as after stopping for gas and directions, the van won't start. Forced to stay until repairs can be done isn't too bad but the town just keeps getting creepier... This game is a survival horror. Players beware: This is not a loot or hack and slash adventure. Be prepared to role-play and solve problems. Stupid decisions and bad responses can/will get your character/team killed.

There's something to be said for designing a scenario that allows you to drop PCs when not enough players show up. In the previous game, Camp Sunny, PCs that weren't being played were dropped from the game which made GMing easier, but the experience for the PCs became weaker as relationships between PCs weren't being played out. In this game, the GM ran all of the PCs as NPCs and he did it expertly. And again there was a complex relationship web.

This was a good game, it's just a shame that we had only 3 players and the GM ran the other 3 PCs as NPCs. The other issue was that we used roll20 for dice rolls and it was cumbersome because you had to click on your attribute and skill before rolling and there were issues with clicking and scrolling, and scrolling, and clicking, and wrong things being selected, etc. It would have been easier to just roll a handful of d10s. The roll20 character sheets we used for rolling were very cumbersome and would have been better with just two dropdown boxes to select an attribute and a skill and a roll button. The clunkiness broke the flow of the game.

The 6 PCs were well fleshed out and interesting to play. Though the scenario wasn't that complex, the solution the PCs had to come up with was difficult and I enjoyed that.

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The PCs had really deep back stories and the GM took us aside to a private chat room to explain our character secrets. The funny part was that none of these secrets really mattered if the other players knew about it, so it would have been ok if it was discussed in public. After the game, we compared notes and discovered some cool stuff about the other PCs that were rarely touched upon during play.

When we arrived in town, we were struck by the completely backwards town and a large angel statue with candles surrounding it. Some old leather-bound book was clutched in its hands.

We found an old large church with old gravestones and no current burials. The inn we were sent to was also very old and the last visitor was 15 years ago, the mother of one of the PCs (who we learned deliberately came to this town in search of her, oh, that must have been one of those secrets). The inn was filled with secret corridors and a murder basement.

Did I mention everyone in this town was old? Well, we only met two residents, the garage mechanic and inn keeper, so we didn't know until the end, except for the spoiler in the game description.

One of the PC/NPCs got kidnapped and as we searched for her, three men came into the inn to ambush us. We beat them up. And they weren't old.

We then noticed a group of townies with lights were approaching us, so we went back to the garage and found our kidnapped friend tied to the angel with ropes, chains, and barbed wire. Her blood was being absorbed by the angel.

Eventually, we found out the Angel, Book, and Candles had to be taken care of in order to break the spell that kept the residents alive. The sacrifice of our friend had reversed the aging of the townies and they wanted to sacrifice us too.

The candles protected the angel and book. So, once the candles were blown out, we could damage both the angel and book. Smashing the angel re-aged the townies as they swarmed us, and finally burning the book, turned them all to dust.

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Ladybug, Ladybug Fly Away Home
System: Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed
Date/Time: Nov 12, 6am
Duration: 5 hrs
GM: James Adley
Players: 5 (of 6)

"Police are searching for a young girl who was abducted from a local department store earlier this afternoon. Witnesses describe a 'horrific scene' at the store, reporting that one of the abductors apparently committed suicide inside the store instead of allowing the police to apprehend him. The mother attempted to fight off the attacker, receiving only minor injuries, but he was able to deliver the child to a waiting accomplice outside the store who made of with the child. The police have not yet released the name of the family or any information on the kidnapping, but we will keep you updated as the story progresses. Next up is the weather, after this commercial break." - WKYC Morning Broadcast, November 9, 2017 This will be a modern scenario using Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition. Imagine this like an episode of Criminal Minds. A small, elite team of investigators working for the FBI has been asked to help with to resolve a kidnapping. Feel free to roll up your own investigator, but please choose a career that would align with the scenario (field agent, psychologist, forensics expert, etc.

Sometimes when all the players show up, you wished maybe someone didn't. In this game one player said she had gamed two days straight without sleep and spoke a mile a minute and in a stream of consciousness, full of non-sequiturs, and odd asides to people in her physical room, but not in our virtual gaming room, and with no wish to mute her microphone. She also claimed she was signed up for another game after ours. Really? And that in one of her previous sessions, no one showed up. Hmmm. I wonder? Did they sneak off to some other room?

That said, this was a great game. Even afterwards, we didn't know if we did the right thing.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

We're all FBI agents with no Mythos knowledge. A girl gets kidnapped and all indications is that it's some crazy ATF agent who kills himself at the kidnap scene. Of course, in a meta sense, we figure it's a rogue Delta Green operative trying to solve some Mythos problem, but we pretend it ain't.

I picked being the special agent in charge because I've seen games where the whole thing falls apart when strangers meet to play online at a convention. Also, you get to send problem players away or into dangerous situations. :-)

There's a ticking clock because the girl doesn't have her steroids that keep her breathing. She has a week to live if she doesn't get her medication.

As part of the clue trail, James Alday made a website for the game (and made it available for general use):
Church of the Passover Angel
It is freaking cool. It looks a bit odd and strange out of context, but it contains clues about the cult the missing girl belongs to. There are indications they're extremists, but also that they have knowledge of elder signs, so you're not sure if they're good or bad. And the cult talks about protection and passover when the Passover Angel arrives.

Through our investigation, we find that the ATF agent's niece had tried to take the girl away from her parents before, two years ago, but she was returned. We also find the niece was working with the dead ATF agent. Two years ago and now, the Stars were Right again.

We also find that there's a countdown of localized plagues of Egypt action going on and the last plague is the death of the first born.

We actually track down the niece all the way to a motel with the little girl and try to talk her into giving herself up, but she refuses and it all goes to gun play where the talkative FBI agent takes a shotgun blast to her chest and goes down (-3 HP even with Kevlar). Even though she was unconscious and bleeding out, she kept on talking. An amazing feat. The other agent with her drags her body out to do First Aid, and the niece closes and barricades the door again.

Another PC and I tried to knockdown the door, but fail several times, and the niece tells us she'll kill the girl and herself. Desperate, we try to knock the door down again, and fail. Gunshot. Fail to open the door again. Another gunshot. Yep, it was all over, a murder-suicide. We found the niece had put furniture against the door and actually put sheet metal over the motel room window.

Even with the little girl dead, the plagues continued, but only in a localized form. After talking to the GM, we found out if we returned the girl, the plagues would actually be across the whole USA, so in effect, the murder-suicide was the best solution. Only in CoC, would a murder-suicide be a best solution.

As I signed off the game, that other player was still talking.

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Call of Cthulhu - Thoughts on Verbal Spell Casting / Rituals

How does a Call of Cthulhu ritual really work? If for instance an Investigator finds an old tome with a spell in it, how does he correctly pronounce the words? And if correct pronunciation is required for the spell to be correctly cast, how do you know the correct pronunciation? Trial and error?

For instance here's some varied readings of: "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

So how in the heck would you know how to pronounce this if you just pick up a tome with this phrase? And if this book is written in Latin, Ancient Greek, Phoenician, or Aramaic, is the phrase written phonetically? Do you use that language's intonation?

If you're trying to summon Cthulhu, I assume calling him by the right name is important. Can you imagine calling some powerful godlike being by the wrong name? "Hello, I'm trying to reach Cat-hoo-loo, I mean, Ka-hu-hu, um, Khlûl'-hloo?" Can you imagine how pissed Cthulhu would be?

Does the creature just show up out of curiosity? Not because the ritual worked, but because there's a disturbance in the time-space continuum and he's curious or pissed off at being called the wrong name?

In one game, I thought it would be a cool to have a spell book written by the Serpent Men of Valusia, but the spell caster would have to have a bifurcated tongue in order to pronounce the spells properly. So, a cultist or Investigator would have to bifurcate their tongue in order to cast a spell from the book. Imagine if you had to do body modifications in order to cast spells.

But if correct pronunciation is required for casting spells, Investigators will never cast a spell successfully. And if saving the world hinges on the successful first cast of ritual, the Investigators will always fail. So, is intention only required? Is positive thinking only required? Positive thinking, mispronunciation, and a sacrifice of POW or Magic Points only needed? If mispronunciation is ok, then can a cultist just chant some nonsense or a sing pop song and it would work? Then why even write these unpronounceable words down in the spell book?

Anyway, some food for thought.

Morgan's VirtuaCon 17 Adventures

VirtuaCon is a free online convention. Amazingly, there's a lot of Cthulhu games being run over three days.

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10/6/2016, Friday 11am
Game Duration: 4 hours

Adventure: The Keepers of the Woods

Game: Trail of Cthulhu
Game Master: Freddie Foulds
Genre: Investigative Horror 
Brief: An unexpected letter invites members of the Miscellany Society from the safety of bustling London to the isolated village of Postbridge, Dartmoor. 
Experience: Some experience needed
Pre Gens: Pregenerated Characters Provided
Run on: Google Hangouts
Maturity: 18+ Only
Seats Available: 4 

Details
January 1935 - The arrival of a letter from your friend and fellow member of the Miscellany Society, Professor Margaret Blackwood, invites you out to shadowed Dartmoor. The Professor believes that she has discovered a career defining find, and something that is of great interest to the Society members - a group who actively worship an ancient god nestled in the heart of the secluded village of Postbridge...

This was a contest winning scenario run by the writer.  We had a good table of players and I really enjoyed this scenario. The game ended in a TPK.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

The Mossy Man (Huntsman) and his Hunting Hounds were part of the local legends.

We found a stretch of road where our friend had died and it began to look like her auto accident was staged to cover up her murder. We also almost had an accident in the same stretch of road, either due to Hairy Hands or a badly graded dip in the road.

We started to find out that the Church and a portion of the townspeople were involved in a cult that was either binding something or keeping something out. The ritual area was bounded by lay lines.

Every 27 years or so, a sacrifice of 3 people were required to refresh the binding. Headstones in the Church cemetary supported this.

We found a book in the Church safe and one of the players read the book and learned the ritual and counter ritual.

The PC convinced us that we should do the counter ritual. At this point, I, as a player, suspected this was the wrong thing, but my PC had no clue, so went along with the counter ritual.

After a climatic battle against the cult and casting the counter ritual, we released the Huntsman and the Hunt TPKed the party and the surrounding counties.

Overall, I really enjoyed the investigation and the ties into old and urban legends. I was familiar with both the Wild Hunt and the urban legend of Dartmoor's Hairy Hands, so it was cool to see this tied into a scenario.

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10/7/2017, Sat 11am

Game Duration: 4 hours
Adventure: Dark Alley Deals
Game System: Yellow King RPG
Game Master: Jon Hook
Genre: Investigative Horror 
Brief: Paris, 1895, is the cultural center of the world. Artists are drawn to this city, like moths to the flame. As young students of the arts, you are having the time of your life. Of course, not everyone in Paris is as fortunate as you. The beggars and urchins fill the alleys and gutters, but they aren't so bad. But, ever since a strange play has become popular, some of the tramps seem to acting... odd. You're sure it's nothing, but still... you can't help but wonder who that dark stranger in the shadows at the back of the alley is. 
Experience: None Required (Rules Taught as needed)
Pre Gens: Pregenerated Characters Provided
Maturity: 18+ Only - due to mature and disturbing subject matter
Seats Available: 6 

Details:
Dark Alley Deals is a scenario written by Jon Hook for the soon-to-be published Yellow King RPG. This game uses the Gumshoe engine by Pelgrane Press.

I supported the KickStarter and I'm playing in a play test of Yellow King RPG (YKRPG), the next evolution of Trail of Cthulhu (ToC), a merger of ToC and the One-2-One system used in Cthulhu Confidential. (My review of Cthulhu Confidential)

So, I was curious as to how Jon Hook would run this new system.

I enjoyed the game, but the table seemed very crowded with 6 players. In the play test, we only had 3 players. One of the PC hooks is "I rely on" and "I seek to protect" where you pick another PC. The funny thing is that in both this game and in the play test, nobody has filled this out.

But "That Damn Peculiar Business," a PC hook into the scenario is a wonderful innovation and both this game and in the play test, we used it to great effect.

I found the shocks and injuries more interesting than the ToC lack luster combat system, but finding the cards (out of possibly 100s) and handing them out are still a bit fiddly and interrupts the flow of the game. If you PC has 3 shocks or 3 injuries, your character is either insane or dead.

For me the jury is still out on YKRPG. There are things I like and things that I don't.

In this game, we mainly ran into evidence of the Thin Man affecting human affairs. In the end, only one PC survived, one went insane, and the rest were lost in Carcosa.

I enjoyed this game, but found the table too crowded.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

We found a baker puting a strange cheese into unsalted bread and handing them out to the homeless. The homeless were mutating into odd toothy sewer dwellers.

After exploring the sewers under Paris and encountering a rabble of mutated homeless, we found the Thin Man was responsible. Salt had an effect on the "cheese" and the mutated homeless.

Two PCs had decided to distract a rabble of homeless and were invited to speak to the Thin Man, afterwards the PCs were lost in Carcosa.

In the end, the rest of the PCs confronted the Thin Man. Due to how the game resolution system worked, one PC returned home alive and well (success), another returned home but insane (success but too many shocks), and the other two PCs were lost in Carcosa (failures).

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

3d6 Con 2017 at EndGame

3d6 Con is EndGame's mini-con where 6 tables of various RPGs are being played. A single day where you can play in one game from 11am-6pm.

You must pick 3 games to play in, in order of preference and a shuffler will put you in one of your three choices.

I got into Jack Young's The Esoteric Order of Dagon vs. Innsmouth Longshoreman & Warehouse Union (Local 22).

I also wanted to try out Matt Steele's Numenera game, but all the games were run simultaneously, so you only get to play in one.

Jack gave us the warning that this game was supposed to be more humorous than dark, and it was. I had a lot of fun and the other players brought their brand of wild and crazy. There were a lot of fish jokes. This game was what Jack called One Roll Engine - Light, which I renamed to Light One Roll Engine (LORE). The game was very pulpy.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

All the characters worked at the local cannery and belonged to Local Union 22.

Here's my character:

The other characters were very human though. I got the special one. And everyone in town loved Marlin, he was the town boy who made good.

The game started in the only pub in town, The Black Fish, with all the characters drinking during the prohibition and having a good time. Of course, members of The Esoteric Order of Dagon show up and have to ruin our evening. They wear ragged and threadbare robes like poor jedi. Of course they start a bar fight with us, so we proceed to wipe the floor with them.

Then we have a scene shift and we fill out a questionnaire for a couple of mooks.

We jump back in time 30 mins and are given a task of kidnapping a virgin sacrifice from The Black Fish during the fight in the pub proper. We enter the back kitchen and face the owner / cook (played by Samuel L. Jackson) and his wife. My character, Blub Blub, actually succeeded in kidnapping Maria, the Pub owner's daughter and got away. All but one of the other cultists died horribly at the hands of the kitchen staff. That one cultist surrendered.

Jack had a stamp that made a very satisfying sound when used:

We then switched back to our other PCs and we questioned the survivor and found out that they were going to get an ancient straight razor from the Innsmouth Historical Society and Library and use it to sacrifice their victim at an undisclosed ritual location.

So, we rush to the museum and wind up fighting off an extra-dimensional squid (actually just 2 giant tentacles), and get the straight razor first. Hidden inside the razor is a map to the ritual location.

We get a cut scene where the leader of the Order of Dagon (who is always under lit) cackles evilly and promotes Blub Blub for kidnapping Maria (and Blub Blub levels up.) :-)

The PCs then infiltrate the ritual location, a Goonie-like pirate ship, inside a hidden grotto and after much fighting, we rescue Maria and defeat The Esoteric Order of Dagon (before they summon Dagon).

My much beloved and super lucky mook Blub Blub wound up being a meat shield for Marlin and got melted into a puddle of goo by his exalted Leader of Dagon - death by friendly fire.

Finally, there was much rejoicing as Dagon and Mother Hydra continue to party the night away in the dark deep depths of the sea, still awaiting to be summoned.

THE END

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===