Entumbled (Or, I Also Have A Tumblr Now; Or, Welcome to Worldforge)

I tweet and I blog, yet some ideas are the wrong size or shape for those places.

So here I am, becoming entumbled. Yes, I have started a tumblr. It’s called Worldforge.

I plan on posting ideas and thoughts there that don’t have anywhere else to go. Sometimes they will be something I think is great. Sometimes they’ll just be something I need out of my head. Some will be about roleplaying games or stories or other worlds. Some will be about whatever.

Sometimes I see pictures and things I want to interpret and comment on: an ecology for a creature, the origins of an item, what’s going on in the place depicted. Those sorts of things. You may see them here from time to time. I’ve already done some Dungeon World stats for some cool art I found online of a creature called The Mushroom King (yes, you can see Alice in the foreground of the artwork, but I was imagining the thing about the size of a wagon. So I say that’s shrunken Alice, not giant mushrooms… though maybe there is a giant Grand High Mushroom King. Who knows?).

Other things are likely to appear from the Worldforge too.

Right now, it is all experimental. What could possibly go wrong?

—

So, that’s paraphrasing my introductory post on my tumblr from yesterday. Why do I need to tweet, blog and now tumble, too? Mostly because I have some ideas or sometimes find cool things, that are too big to tweet but that I don’t feel warrant a post here. As I said, it’s also an experiment. You’ll find non-roleplaying stuff there too.

Anyway, if you’re interested, my tumblr tweets every post I make, so you can grab the RSS of Worldforge or just follow me on Twitter. I hope that tumbling will let me make and share some new and different content.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

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Dungeon World: Sarrenor Rules Compendium

Dungeon World’s Kickstarter is finally here! It’s a great game, and it’s come a long way.

Reading the latest Beta last week inspired me to make some custom moves for my homebrew fantasy campaign setting. I’m really proud of the document and can’t wait to use it. In the spirit of Dungeon World’s open approach, I’m sharing my homebrew rules.

Fair warning: none of this has been playtested. I’ll let you know about any updates.

If you want to get straight to the goods, you can download the Sarrenor Rules Compendium as singles or spreads (same content in both, just singles prints as a booklet better and each is viewed better on certain devices). 

If you want to hear a bit more about the setting first, read on… Continue reading…

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Monsterhearts Actual Play – Edgegate, Part 1

Joe Mcdaldno, creator of Monsterhearts, asked me “What happened in your session? What were the big highlights?”. I thought this deserved a separate post to make it easier to find. I’ll probably do a follow up post too once we have our second session tomorrow.

For those who just want the highlights, here they are:

  • Cole, the chaos ghoul, made another student’s lab experiment explode, probably killing the poor NPC. Cole jammed the door as gas filled the room, to create more chaos, yet when he finally stopped pretending the door was stuck and dragged the unconscious NPC into the hallway he was hailed as a hero!
     
  • Jane, our part-machine Hollow dealt 3-harm to an NPC with a Terminator-strength bitch slap in a cat-fight, hospitalising her.
     
  • It was subtle, but I really liked that Aurora and Cole shook hands on a promise and both lingered slight, both rolling 10+ on to turn each other on. In the backstory, Cole has had love rekindled in his dead heart after seeing Aurora frolic naked in the woods. Before we even started play Aurora had 4 Strings on Cole, now it’s 5.
  • More than anything I loved how the game played, how we all suggested how things could go and how as the MC I didn’t have to strain to come up with where things would go next. Snowballing and chain reactions are awesome.
Read on for the long version, including downloads of our home room, gossip about NPCs, and wallpapers for our lacrosse team, the Edgegate Eagles!
 
Gooooooooooooo Eagles! Continue reading…

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Monsterhearts: ‘Ask Questions’ Reference Card

I just MC’d my first session of Monsterhearts yesterday and it was awesome! We all had lots of fun and I highly recommend the game. It was also the most fun group prep work / character building stage we’ve ever had. Making the home room was lots of fun and set up lots of triangles and messy relationships between PCs and NPCs.

One of the Principles of MCing Monsterhearts is to ‘Ask provocative questions and build on the answers’. Joe Mcdaldno, the author, has given some great examples in the text of reasons for asking provocative questions. As soon as I read them I thought it’d be handy if they were pulled out onto a reference card to prompt me during play.

I made this quick reference card, and seeing as it now exists, I thought I may as well upload it for fellow MCs. I’ve included three versions: one sparse, clean one with just the question prompts, a second one with the example questions from the text, and a third that’s just a copy of both in the same document because why not. Enjoy.

 

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Pyres of Vam Word Cloud

Saw this word cloud maker on Google+ recently and threw my website in there.
Here’s a word cloud of what I’ve been saying here.

Click to embiggen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obviously, Reverb Gamers is prominent after a month of posts. Some of the other words are just things tacked onto the end of each post. But it’s  interesting to me to see the size of the other words to give myself an idea of the content I’ve been putting out.

Just for fun, here are the Wikipedia articles for role-playing games, magic, zombies, superheroes, cthulhu mythos deities, and Bas-Lag. Click any of them to enlarge. Favourite thing out of this: Batman is hanging upside-down in grey just under ‘comics’. Continue reading…

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Savage Worlds with Aspects Revisited

In the comments of my old post about Savage Worlds with Aspects, LordOrlando asked me if I could share my experience using this system. It was a well timed question, as my wife and I are just reworking how we approach aspects in our new Savage Worlds campaign. I thought my response would get pretty long – and I was right – so I’ve made it a brand new post, rather than just a comment on that old post. So, here we go. Continue reading…

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Let’s Back Monsterhearts

Monsterhearts is a story game by Joe Mcdaldno (@mcdaldno) about the messy lives of teenage monsters. Short and sweet version: go here to read about and back this great game; you’ll get some other cool game PDFs too and help an indie developer out.

Not convinced? Interviews with the developer are here and here. Example of play here.

Read on for why I’ve backed the project and why I think you should too. Continue reading…

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Savage Worlds Moonlighting Downtime Mechanics

Some games get pretty ridiculous, with characters going from farmers to gods in a matter of in-game months. Sometimes, for various reasons, you want to have a few weeks of in-game downtime between or during sessions. Apocalypse World has a great mechanic for this and I’ve altered it to make a Savage Worlds version that we’re now using in my 1-on-1 city-based home game. I’ll present the mechanics, then a little explanation on the design.

Moonlighting

Whenever there’s a stretch of downtime in play, or between sessions, choose a number of gigs to work. Choose no more than the number of dice you have in Smarts. Describe a gig then roll your wild die and the relevant skill, like Fighting for protection gigs, Stealth for picking pockets, or Investigation for academic research.

  • On a raise, you get profit from the gig you chose; if you get multiple raises that means exceptional success, perhaps extra pay, recognition or connections.
  • On a success, you get profit but with some complication (or failure but you got out of it clean: no profit, no fallout, no hard feelings).
  • On a failure, you failed the gig and suffer some fallout, like lingering wounds from a protection gig gone wrong, fines or jail time for criminal activities, and maybe someone is mad at you.
  • On snake eyes, double ones, you can’t roll for any more gigs this session and your failure was a fiasco: someone is definitely mad at you, you’ve probably lost something you care about, and the trouble is immediate.

The GM should discuss any profit, complications or fallout with you. If you didn’t roll snake eyes, you can now roll again for any remaining gigs.

Continue reading…

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Revamping Skeletons

Jason Morningstar, creator of Fiasco, proposed an interesting challenge on the Story Games forums a few days ago.

OK, Story Games global brain trust, let’s make skeletons cool and unnerving. What are the key components in skeletonry? What will make them badass and memorable? I want players to pee their pants when they hear that dry rattling down the corridor, not snicker and pull out their blunt smashing tools.

It’s a great thread, full of inspiring posts. Check it out. People offered up some very cool inspiring ideas. I was struck with a new take on skeletons, which I wrote up and posted on the forum.

Click that link or read on for the comment in full, a cool reply from Jason Morningstar and a Dungeon World move for these new ‘Mockingbardian Skeletons’, as Jason has dubbed them. Continue reading...

Kobold Quarterly #14 for Free!

So, do you read Kobold Quarterly? It’s pretty great and has stuff from Pathfinder, 4e and AGE. Also, non-crunch stuff. Still not sure? Well, it’s your lucky day. Download Kobold Quartlery #14 for FREE up until February 14th. Some info about the issue:

Issue #14 was the extra-big Gen Con issue, and in its pages you’ll find:

  • Exclusive Pathfinder content, including two articles by Paizo staff
  • The Ecology of the Tengu—in Golarion and in Zobeck
  • An interview with 4th Edition D&D lead designer Rob Heinsoo
  • Treasure Trove articles with phat loots to improve your game and bring smiles to players
  • Paladins, secret languages, and aasimar PCs
  • Secrets of Game Design by Monte Cook
  • So much more that it makes us dizzy to even think about it!

All you need to do to get your PDF copy is go to the KQ Store, add issue #14 to your cart, and enter the coupon code KoboldWelcome at checkout. Enjoy!

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WHAT YOU'VE GOTTEN YOURSELF INTO

Pyres of Vam is run by Mockingbard and his alter-ego(maniac) Vam. It focuses on tabletop roleplaying but you'll find other things here too.

Mockingbard loves roleplaying, worldbuilding and stories. He posts setting ideas, session recaps, gamemastery tips and the like for fun, for himself and to get his creativity on.

Vam posts from the villain's point of view: debunking monster myths, providing adventure ideas for villains, and helping fellow villains and dastardly GMs deck out their lairs and complicate the lives of filthy adventurers.

We write this stuff because we like it :) Hopefully you'll find something you like here too.