Busan Con 2026 Day 2

 The second day of the 2026 Busan Con was yesterday (Sunday), and I had a full day. 

The first games started at 9:30. I was in an indie game called Goblin Quest. Matt was the GM (although the game says it can be played GM-less) and guided us through making our five goblins each, creating the quest we would go on, and then adjudicating the wacky hijinx we got into on the way. None of my goblins survived, but we managed to complete the quest just slightly over the time limit, and had a lot of laughs along the way. It's obviously a very narrative first/improv RPG, with lots of stuff decided on the fly and super simple rules. 

Fellow players included Elyse (my friend, who plays CoC and sometimes D&D with us), McKayla (who played in M&M the day before), Leo (who I'd met the day before and said M&M was a good idea to fill the niche of modern-era non-horror RPGs), and another guy whose name I've already forgotten but who only lost one goblin the whole adventure. 

After a too short lunch break, it was time for my Star Wars d6 game. Charles (one of my regulars), Ling (who played in my Classic D&D game last Fall), Jacob and Cindy (a couple who I just met) were my players. Rowan, one of the organizers of the con, was scheduled to play, but she was exhausted and over-stimulated so bowed out that the last minute, and I don't blame her.  

The adventure was the Coruscant Grand Ball, an adventure I'd originally run four years ago with my regular group. Charles hadn't joined us yet, so it was OK for him to play. He'd wanted to play in my M&M game on Saturday, but he'd just run through that one two weeks or so ago. 

The adventure played out pretty differently from the first go around. I made a few changes, as well. Instead of "social combat" I made a chart of the three suitors' attitudes towards the five debutantes, and their pre-scripted interactions were set, but then PC actions could countermand or enhance the effects of the events that were scripted to play out. 

This group of players actually spent a lot more time BEFORE the event, trying to tarnish the reputation of the other debutantes or learn what might help endear Marjon the Hutt to the other suitors. I had to shorten the interactions of the Ball itself in order to fit into the time slot. I also dropped the Zygerian slaver attack, although I had that waiting in the wings. 

In the end, everyone had a good time (and too much Tattooine Spice), and we never had a combat. Also, yes, they got Marjon to dance with the hunky Togruta playboy, rather than the nerdy Bith artist or the biz-bro Arcona exec's son. 

We had a bit more break time before the evening game, so I went to a nice Japanese restaurant nearby. Rowan and two of her friends dropped in when I was halfway through my gyudon, so I joined them and we discussed Stranger Things Season 5 as we ate. They had very different takes on the season than me, mainly stemming from the lazy writing (which I agreed with) and their disappointment with the teased Will-Mike romance never happening (something I didn't think the writers were actually teasing, but that's my straight perspective vs their LBGTQ+ perspectives). Despite the disagreements, we had a civil discussion. 

Anyway, on to the final game. Richard (our usual Keeper) ran Call of Cthulhu. I pulled up one of my old characters who'd survived and not gone mad, the rum-runner Monte Perrineau. Fellow players included Rowan, Chris (who works at the same uni as me, but we've strangely never played an RPG together until last night), Keith (who ran Cyberpunk for me last fall and in Daegu last year for Flynn) and his girlfriend Cray (who was also in the Cyberpunk game), and Alan (who I've been acquainted with through Halloween events for quite a few years, and who delivered a big box of 1/72 miniature knights and a castle to me on Saturday so we can maybe play some Chainmail at a future event). 

We all did our best to stay in character, using our funny voices. I was exhausted from the long day, and still a bit jet lagged from our recent trip to the USA, so I struggled a bit, but managed to stay awake through the whole game. Rowan was also yawning a lot at the end. But we managed to "solve" the mystery, rescue Rowan's character's friend, and only Alan's doctor went a little crazy. It was a good time, but it finished at 11pm. Long day. 

Scott and Shane had been giving out tokens all through the two days, and had prizes that could be purchased. I had one after the CoC game, and got a capsule with a bunch more tokens. That got me an RPG setting book I'll probably never use (for 5E) and a set of mini dice. 

And that's about it for the con. A successful event, and much bigger than the one Justin and I put on last fall.  

Runaround and a Red Herring Avoided

Just finished up a session of Missions & Mayhem: Cryptids & Conspiracy. 

The mission was to investigate strange things going on in a small Indiana town. Why Indiana? Well, first of all I went to college there so it's an area I know well. Second, Indiana is sort of the liminal space of U.S. states. It's just so bloody normal that you know weird things have got to be going on there. 

Anyway, for this mission, there were obvious attempts by the shadowy conspiracy group to divert them from their mission. Also, competition to solve the mystery first. There didn't end up being a showdown with agents of the conspiracy, but the party fairly quickly diverted from the red herring (not knowing yet that it was a red herring) into the clues that led to the actual mystery. 

It was a lot of talking, and not much die rolling. I got to play a bunch of quirky small town NPCs (many based on or at least inspired by folks I knew either growing up in Illinois or from my uni years in Evansville). The players seemed to enjoy it, especially when one of my NPCs struck a chord and they could recognize that exact sort of person from their own experience. I did a few voices, but mostly stuck to impressions of mannerisms and different speech patterns to differentiate the various NPCs. It was pretty fun for me, too. 

Before we got into the adventure, we went over the Cryptids & Conspiracy advanced classes. Jada's Hero (PC) Sarah doesn't qualify yet, but she's interested in taking the Occultist class to get some ability with magic. We haven't done any occult/spiritual/undead adventures yet, but that will probably be coming soon. Next adventure, I want to lean into the psychic ability rules. Justin suggested they all make new psychic powered PCs and we do a power battle. 

I could probably run with something like that. Maybe the psychics and battle minds have to escape from captivity in a secret research institute run by the conspiracy group. Then we could go back to the regular PCs who are investigating. The players will have new knowledge of the conspiracy group, like when we get to see scenes in a book or movie from the bad guys' perspective. 

A collection of mini-games

 Up until 3rd edition, every edition of Dungeons & Dragons has been a collection of mini-games. Combat is d20 rolls. Interaction (reaction rolls, morale, recruiting hirelings) and turn undead are 2d6. Lots of exploration abilities are x/d6 (or x/d10). Thief skills are d%. Magic is Vancian. The adventure day (wilderness), the exploration turn (dungeons), and the combat round are all procedural mini-games. If there are rules for strongholds, followers, magic item creation for high level play, they probably have their own bespoke mechanics. 

These days, most OSR games that come out that aren't close clones of an older edition tend to strive for the unified mechanic idea. Especially the "rules lite" games like Black Hack, PBTA, etc. 

I'm taking a game with a unified mechanic (d20 Modern) and trying to backwards engineer it into a game with a collection of mini-games. And it's interesting where I'm finding the lines to draw. 

I want Missions & Mayhem to be simple and easy to run and play. So far, I seem to be hitting that goal. A week ago, we did a play test of a mystery (no combat, although there was potential for it depending on how it might have played out). Before we started, a few players needed to bump their PCs up to level 2. Denis added a second level of Strong Hero to his PC, so that was easy. Justin decided to add a level of Charismatic Hero to his Dedicated Hero PC, but that turned out to be really simple and easy as well! 

Playing the adventure, things went smoothly for the most part, but I'd realized something I'd added in the edit was overly complicated. So this week, I'm taking it out. This has me streamlining how to run all the general proficiencies, and it's become a unified mechanic for those tasks (combat is still run differently, as are a few other bits and pieces). 

The bit I added then took out were "Basic Tasks" that any PC could do. They were % based, each starting at 20% but modified by ability score modifiers and character class. I realized, though that having all of the General Proficiency areas start at a Basic Level (roll 2d4), then have them progress to Skilled (roll 2d6) and Advanced (roll 2d8) would work better than having % basic tasks, some proficiencies at 2d6, others at x/d6 chances. 

Of course, that means I had to revise the General Proficiency list, and also now I'm revising the mechanics to how to run/adjudicate these actions. It's a fairly big overhaul, since I need to be on the lookout for areas that might be influenced by the new proficiency areas I added. But in the end, the streamlining will hopefully make the game even easier to explain and run. 

And this is just the base "tool box" rules. Once I add campaign settings (modern-day monster hunters, cyberpunk, zombie (or regular) apocalypse, X-Files/Stranger Things style aliens/dimensions weirdness, etc.), there will be more mini-games added to cover certain areas. So it will get worse. But hopefully, having familiar old-school D&D combat, and these simple 2dX general proficiency rules as the base, it will be easy to graft on other systems as needed. 

The 2025 Busan Tabletop Gaming Con Was a Success

Last Sunday, November 30, was our first game con. I picked up Justin around 9am, and we arrived at the cafe just a little before 9:30. Richard was already waiting, as well as Jonathan (Kojaq) who I only had interacted with online before this. We got everything set up, and most players, and Peter the other morning GM, made it there by 10am when we were scheduled to start. But Kurt, the cafe owner, didn't show up until around 11 so we had to make due with water or drinks people brought in from outside for a bit. Kurt had given me the door code so we could get in early, if you're wondering. 

In the morning session, I ran Classic D&D, using the same dungeon from the previous Online Summer Con arranged by Amae's Seoul group. This party followed the same route at first, but had a TPK in their first encounter. Four carrion crawlers took out a party of five 6th to 8th level PCs. As they can, especially if the party only has a cleric as a caster. The players got new PCs from the pre-gen pile and set out again in a different route. They didn't have time to make it to the dragon, but they had a great time anyway. 

Just before the thief misses on a backstab and everyone fails their saves (the Dwarf is already down).

Richard's Call of Cthulhu game only had one character death, but that PC died, was brought back, and died again. 

Richard brought his King in Yellow robes.

 

I didn't hear of any PC deaths in Peter's Black Sword Hack game, but everyone said they had a great game. 

Justin's BSH character sheet

We took a lunch break, and more people arrived for the afternoon games. A couple of people also went home (or elsewhere, anyway) after the morning games. I was a player in Keith's Cyberpunk Red game, which was a lot of fun. I got to play the Solo (combat character), which is always nice. But our new player David (who played his first RPG ever in my morning D&D game) was the star of the show. Of course, Richard's PC managed to shoot Peter's PC in the back...twice! None of us died, though several gang-bangers and scumbags died at our hands. 

The start of the game, in our gang's alley base, dealing with druggies

Jonathan's Mothership game was really good, too, from what I heard. There were definitely some PC deaths as well. 

An alien gestated inside one of the PCs. You'll never believe what happened next~!

Both Scott's 5E game and Elyse's Pathfinder game went over time, but this is something they'd planned for, and the players were aware of this. Scott did have one PC death. Elyse runs a more story-forward sort of game, so no PC deaths in her game. She did a think where players started with blank, or nearly blank character sheets, and had to discover who their PCs were as they played. 

Scott's got a lot of style when he runs a game. We could hear lots of laughing and some shouting from them.

Elyse's players were all really intent on the story that unfolded. 

Then it was the dinner break time. Most folks went home (or elsewhere), but a stalwart few soldiered on through into the night. Peter, Richard, Elyse, Jada, Justin, and I were there the whole day. Keith and his partner CC stayed for evening games, too, but they weren't here for the morning session. 
 

Justin had his group (Jada, CC, Elyse) play board games including Whitehall Mysteries. They also played a few smaller games. Justin had planned to play 1775, a tactical wargame of the Revolutionary War, but I guess they never broke that one out. 

London was scoured for clues.

 

My evening game was Gamma World. Richard, Keith and Peter chose their mutants and set off to explore a ruined tower. They dealt with crumbling infrastructure, hungry mutants, friendly mutants, and at the top of the tower androids intent on capturing Richard's mutated ape PC. Keith dropped to negative HP twice, and Peter once. At the end of the game, Richard escaped with his companions' bodies, evading the androids to survive the horrors of Gamma Terra. We had a blast. 

Peter's altered human scout is down thanks to poisonous two-headed bat mutants. The espers are about to meet the androids. 

It was a long day, but very much worth it. And we plan to do it again sometime soon. Scott wants to do the next event in May. I'll be back home for my son's high school graduation that weekend, but I'll probably help with the organizational side of things as best I can. 
 

 

 

Prepared

The 2025 Busan Tabletop Gaming Con is in a few days (Sunday). I'm ready for the game. I'm running D&D in the morning, playing Cyberpunk RED in the afternoon, then running Gamma World in the evening. It's gonna be a full day. Luckily, my Monday schedule will be light on Dec. 1st. 

We're ready for the event. The cafe is prepared for us. I've got all the schedules and games sorted. Justin bought some supplies (name tags, extra pencils/paper/etc.).  I guess I could make a sign-in sheet to make things feel more official. But with fewer than 25 people involved, I don't think that's completely necessary. 

I ordered dice sets online, planning to give a set to each GM as a thank you gift or as a reward to their MVP player, whichever they chose. The listing said it was seven sets (49 pieces) and we originally had 14 games people were prepared to run, so I ordered two. They arrived yesterday and to my happy surprise, there were ten sets of dice in each pack. And we're down to only 9 game sessions, two of which I'm running. So enough for me to give each GM a thank you set and an MVP player prize set. And I'll have some sets left over to keep for another time. 

For my games, I've got a dry erase mat, some board markers, minis for the creatures in both my D&D and Gamma World games (close enough on the GW side) organized, adventures and pre-gen PCs printed. I tried to write up the adventures so I'd have minimal book references during the games, but I'll bring the rulebooks anyway. 

I'm ready for the first (hopefully annual) BTGC!  

Arrangements

It's happening. After years of me considering whether to do something like this or not, Justin and I, with help from Scott and Rowan, are finally hosting the first (hopefully annual) Busan Tabletop Gaming Convention. 

The date is Sunday, Nov. 30, at Cafe With, a privately owned cafe with a really cool owner.  It's not a big event, but in just one day we have a bunch of games planned. 

In the morning (10am to 1pm), we have six games, including Call of Cthulhu (Richard), Tales of the Arabian Nights (board game, run by Justin), Black Sword Hack (Peter), Perils & Princesses (Jenifer), Despair (Shane - read about my playtest experience here), and Classic D&D (me). 

In the afternoon (2:30 to 5:30), we have five games (plus Shane's Despair game is expected to go long): Dread (Justin), Cyberpunk Red (Keith), D&D 5E 2024 (Scott), Pathfinder 2E (Elyse -- maybe, she's been ignoring my request to detail her game), and Mothership (Jonathan). 

Finally, in the evening (7 to 10), we have three games: Gamma World (me), Whitehall Mystery/1775  (board games run by Justin), and Clank! Catacombs (board game run by John). Scott's 5E game may also go long into this time slot. 

Unfortunately, the cafe couldn't fit us in on a Saturday, because they have other events planned. And the later Sunday games may not get many players because some people are coming in from out of town, and even people in the city taking public transportation may take a while to get home. And most of us have to work the next day. 

Still, I'm excited to see how many players we recruit. I'll be sending out that pitch this weekend. Hopefully Elyse gets her info to me on time.  

Mutant Year Zero: Zone Wars

Yesterday, I met with Justin and a guy we met on the TTRPG in Korea Discord group to play Zone Wars, a tactical tabletop skirmish game based on the Mutant Year Zero RPG. Peter wanted to get some war gaming in over the long Chuseok holiday. Sandwiched between National Foundation Day on Friday the 3rd and Hangeul Day (Korean written characters get a holiday...yeah, a day to help prevent Koreans from overworking) on the 9th, we've got an entire week off, 10 days in a row for people who can take the 10th as a holiday. 

Free League link

Board Game Geek link 

The game plays pretty similarly to Stargrave, which my son and I played with Justin a while back. I thought I'd posted about that game here, but apparently I didn't. Both games have players managing a tactical team across the "board" to defeat the other teams or collect enough loot to win. 

When we played Stargrave, I quickly realized that the loot collection was the key to winning, so getting loot and getting my figures off the board was my strategy. And it worked. 

Zone Wars has a similar strategy. There are artifact tokens across the board (it's a post-apoc setting, after all) that score victory points. But you also get points for defeating other players' figures.  To cut to the chase, Peter used my strategy from the Stargrave game, while Justin and I were more into duking things out. Peter won. 

The initial set-up. I'm yellow, Peter is blue, Justin is green.

The game has four factions (two in the base game, two in the expansion): mutant humans and mutant animals (base), androids and psychers (expansion). There are five characters/figures for each faction, but you have to choose three of them for your team (at least for the first scenario that we played). 

Justin's dudes teamed up on my gatherer, and stole his loot.

Each comes with starting equipment and mutations set, but with a bonus random mutation. Justin took the mutant animal team, I took the mutant human team, and Peter played as the android team. And we all seemed to take one tough/melee figure, one ranged expert figure, and one balanced figure. I'm not sure about the other factions, but the two I left behind were another ranged expert and another balanced figure.

My melee guy takes out Peter's sniper just before 30-50 feral hogs rampage through me!

The game has a lot more randomness than Stargrave. Not only do you roll dice for actions, but the initiative is done by pulling chits from a bag. There's one chit per figure, and four Zone chits, which trigger events. And there's a ticking time bomb in the form of Trigger events that scale up the acid rain which will kill anyone still on the board once four have been drawn. 

Land Shark! (unfortunately, no one was eaten)

The random mutations and events, and the ability to not only switch factions but experiment with different teams within your faction should add to replayability, but will also make the game take a little longer to really sus out the best strategies for each faction/team composition. There's obviously an optimal strategy of grabbing loot and running over fighting (due to the built in time limit of acid rain), but where's the fun in that time after time? 

My runner recovered and knocked out Justin's dudes with his mutation...but my sniper was downed.

Anyway, we're planning to meet again in a few weeks, hopefully with a fourth player if we can find one, to play it again. Peter also seems interested in trying Stargrave or Frostgrave, so we may try one of those out as well in the near future.  

A robot named Bender grabbed a bunch of loot and made it off the board before the acid rain fell. Fitting.

 

TTRPG in Korea Online SummerCon is Finished

 So, the Online Summer Con is over. I think the game I was in Sunday evening closed out the event, since we went about 30 minutes over the end time (and the new semester started yesterday so I was introducing my courses on not enough sleep). I wasn't involved in the start, though, since I didn't play anything Friday evening. 

The games I was in were all really fun, although the three I was a player in all had different styles. 

Saturday morning, my friend Justin ran a Monster of the Week/Jinkies! mix game (both are PbtA games, so he used MotW on his side, but we used Jinkies! playbooks for our PCs). It was called The Coffin Nails, and was a mystery game. 

I played Jimmy Switzer, a college dropout and loner (The Tough One playbook). A player with the online nickname Mildew played Cal Whitmore, the local newspaper editor (The Leader playbook). A third player named Kojak played Antoine Pier, the university librarian (The Smart One playbook). We made our PCs before the game.

The mystery involved a pair of researchers at the local university trying to cover up a failed insomnia experiment that led to people acting violently. There was also a ghost involved. We managed to solve the mystery, but unfortunately, not in time to stop the researchers from getting away and getting a lucrative contract with a defense contractor. 

It was a fun, goofy game, with us mostly laughing our way through the tense moments our PCs found themselves in. 

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Saturday afternoon, I was in a Mothership game run by Michael (first time meeting him). He ran a module called Gradient Descent that Justin told me was pretty good. And it was. It was also a mystery game, but with more action and also very much a Philip K. Dick style mindfuck. Sorry, some spoilers in this game description follow.

I played Mifune, a Marine. Michelle played Blaise, a Scientist (botany specialty). LP played Emmanuel, a Teamster (pilot). Carly played Bianca, a Scientist (surgeon). Kinsella played Amirah "CIB", also a marine. CIB stood for "Cast Iron Bitch" and she really played that up! We also made these PCs before the game started.

The jumping off point was that we were going to an abandoned space station to loot it, but just as we board, we get knocked out and wake up in a trash heap deep in the station. We've got some good loot, and need to get to the top of the station where our hired ship is waiting for us, but the station AI thinks we're all androids and its property so we can't leave. 

We managed to get to our ship in time, without loss of PC life (we lost an android friend we picked up along the way), but one PC was suspected to be an android replicant and our crazy Russian pilot wouldn't let her board. So that PC volunteered to stay and the rest of us got away...but with lingering doubts about whether or not we had also been replaced and didn't know it, or if the one we left behind was actually human or not (there was evidence that she WAS human, but also evidence that she'd been replaced). 

This game was fast paced, tense at times, very funny at times, and required some lateral thinking along with some gung-ho bravado. 

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Sunday afternoon was the game I ran, Into the Dragon's Den. I had revamped an old dungeon from 20 years ago, and used my TS&R rules but with BECMI style race-as-class demi-humans. This was a fairly straight dungeon crawl, with a variety of challenges to exploration, combat, and puzzles but the party bypassed quite a few of the puzzle type encounters (which is totally fine, I made quite a few paths through the dungeon). 

Richard (my CoC Keeper friend) played Grimsteel the Dwarf. Ian (who plays in Richard's CoC game and I met IRL in Seoul last week in the Perils and Princesses game) played Peralay the Elf. Kinsella (CIB in the Mothership game) played Aleena the Cleric. Zen played Morgan Ironwolf the Fighter. Ren played Ismene the Thief. Yes, these were pre-gens I made, and yes, I stole names and art from the BX, BECMI, and other TSR books for the pre-gens. The players had selected their PCs before the game started.

I gave each PC a different set of rumors, including rumors about the various ways into the dungeon. The town wanted them to either slay Kelek the Wizard or Grimflame the Dragon (or maybe both). They decided to try the wizard, and started exploring the most difficult way in first, but then decided to move to the easiest way in. They found a hidden passage in the first room which led them to Warduke (Kelek's captain) who they defeated, then up to find Kelek who they also just managed to defeat without losing any lives. They also found Kelek's stash of anti-dragon magic items along the way, so maybe I'll see if these players want to have a second go at it and try their luck with the dragon some day.

We went over time, because no one wanted to stop until Kelek was dead. I think everyone had fun. I definitely had a great time running it. 

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Sunday evening, I was again a player in a Dungeon Crawl Classics game, run by Marley. This was the first time I've had a chance to play DCC, and it did not disappoint. Marley's DMing style was a bit different, though. She had us pick pre-gens at the start of the game, asking us each to run two or maybe three. We all picked two, then she asked if anyone wanted to run three. I said why not, and picked a third. Then two other players picked third PCs...so we kinda had too many PCs in the game. Should have kept my mouth shut, maybe. 

I played a Thief named Jinx, a Magic-User named Alexy, and a Fighter named Torgo. I didn't write down all the other PCs names/classes, but Dee played a Dwarf and a Thief. Zen (Morgan Ironwolf in my game) played a Cleric, Magic-User, and Thief. Gheist played a Dwarf, a Cleric, and an Elf. Marley had a bit of characterization to each PC for us to use, but we got to pick names for ourselves. 

The adventure we were sent on was that a bunch of low-level losers were sent to stop a world-ending bad guy from destroying the world by solving the mystery of the dungeon. The dungeon itself was a big puzzle, and we spent way too much time in the second room with the primary puzzle, trying to figure it out, before Marley clued us in that the rest of the dungeon had clues to solve the primary puzzle. Of course, we failed to stop the demon thing from emerging, and almost all of the PCs died in one hilarious way or another. 

Marley's DMing style was interesting. After a very exposition heavy start, she just sat back and waited for us players to do something once we got plopped into the dungeon. And she had an assumption of incompetence for our PCs. For example, if we wanted to light a torch, we had to roll to see if our PC knew how to do that. It was interesting. Very different from the assumption of competence I give PCs in games I run. It did suit the game style, though, were we were supposed to be in over our heads, and likely going to fail anyway. 

As I mentioned, this game also went about 30 minutes over the limit since we all wanted to see how the last few PCs would die or escape screaming from the dungeon. My PCs all died. 

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Final thoughts? Next time, I will probably DM more and play less. And not the late night slot on a night before I need to go to work the next day. It was fun to try one game I had never tried before (DCC), and to get to play a few games I had played before but in different styles. And Justin, Scott and I will probably be meeting soon to plan a face to face Busan game convention. Since I'll be one of the organizers, I'll also probably run a game or two but likely not play in anything, so I can be available to manage things at times when Scott and Justin run or play something. 

TTRPG in Korea Online SummerCon has Begun

 The TTRPG in Korea SummerCon has begun already. I'm obviously not playing in any games right now (Friday night) but I've got a weekend chock full of gaming coming up. 

 Tomorrow morning is Justin's Monster of the Week/Jinkies (PbtA mashup) game.  I'm playing Jimmy Switzer, an outcast and college drop-out. A little bit punk/metalhead, a little bit incel, and a little bit weirdo.

Tomorrow afternoon is a game of Mothership where I'll be playing a space marine named Mifune. He's probably gonna die. We'll see if it's in a blaze of glory, or cowering in fear. 

 On Sunday afternoon, I run my TS&R game, Into the Dragon's Den. 

And Sunday evening, I'm playing in a Dungeon Crawl Classics game. I've never played DCC, so I'm really looking forward to this game. But it's 8pm to midnight, so we'll see if I'm able to stay awake after all the gaming before it. Not sure who/what my character(s) will be in this game. 

I'm off to bed a bit early tonight. Gotta get rested up for the all-weekend gaming.  

Gaming in Seoul: Perils and Princesses

I was up in Seoul most of this weekend (Sunday evening as I type this) for an academic conference. But I was free Friday evening, so stopped by Dice and Comics Cafe (formerly known as Dice Latte, which a lot of people still refer to it by). 

There was some sort of Western RPG in progress when I got there, but the owner told me that most pick up games start around 7pm. So I ordered some food and listened in on the Western game while I ate. I didn't interrupt to ask what game system it was, but it was definitely not Boot Hill. It had a mundane setting (no magic, undead, or steampunk from what I could tell), or at least the encounters I overhead didn't include anything like that. 

When other people started arriving, I joined them. There were two games brewing, a Call of Cthulhu game set in space, and a Perils and Princesses pirate adventure. I joined the Perils and Princesses game. Ian, who plays in Richard's online Call of Cthulhu games, was also in this game but all the other players were people I had just met. 

Perils and Princesses is an NSR type game, similar to Black Hack, Into the Odd, Mothership, PbtA games, etc. You play a princess with certain magical gifts, and need to survive adventures by wits, resolve, and sometimes swinging swords. 

Morgan was our GM. 

My princess was a knight/healer named Valerian.  

Ian played an alchemist/water mage princess named Talia.

Margot played a wild card/con man princess with a pet parrot named Whistle (the parrot was named Polly).

Oliver played a scholar/thief princess named Clara.

Riley played a barbarian/beastmaster princess named Fern. 

The adventure we went on was basically The Blues Brothers. The orphanage we were raised in (yes, we're princesses, but also orphans. Stop over-thinking) was in danger of being bought and torn down by an evil merchant. Luckily, we heard of these pirate ghosts with treasure in a sea cave south of town, and an old matron in town gave us a map if we promised to recover her family heirloom cursed dagger.

Well, after romping through town for a bit, we set sail for the caves, and avoided, fought and befriended various monsters. We recovered the dagger and other treasure to save the orphanage just in time. We literally played until the shop was closing, so had to wrap up the game in a hurry. 

It was fun, and like a lot of NSR games, it was easy to pick a character and just start playing. I'm not sure it would have a lot of long-term campaign value, though, as there only appear to be four levels to the characters (we were playing at level 2). 

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In other news, I've almost completed my revisions to Flying Swordsmen 2E. I need to read through the monster section very carefully one more time. I've also been pondering ideas for a short campaign to play test the game with my local group. People in one of the RPOL games I play in have been asking when it will be available, so I should get to work polishing up and testing the rules.

In other other news, next weekend is the TTRPG in Korea Online SummerCon. I'm in two games on Saturday as a player. Justin is running Monster of the Week in the morning, and in the afternoon I'm in a Mothership game. On Sunday afternoon, I will run a TS&R(ish)* game, then in the evening play in a Dungeon Crawl Classics game. And then classes start on Monday...

 *I'm using my TS&R rules to run the game, but I found an old set of BECMI pre-gen PCs that I wanted to reuse, so Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling are classes for this game, and all the Clerics, Fighters, Magic-Users, and Thieves are Human. No Druids, Rangers, or any of that AD&D add-on either.  

Daegu One-Shot TTRPG Extravaganza

As I start to type this, the Daegu One-Shot TTRPG Extravaganza is just wrapping up (according to the schedule). I wasn't there today, but yesterday Flynn and I woke up early and drove up to Daegu for some gaming. It started Friday night with one game session slot, then three on Saturday (we were there for two), and then two more game slots today (Sunday). 

We arrived at Cafe Panoplie in central Daegu at around 8:45am, and they let us in at around 8:50. The first game session was scheduled from 9am to 1pm, but of course people were gathering, buying their first drinks, saying hi to old friends, meeting new people, and all of that. We probably didn't actually start to game until after 9:30. 

My first game was my 2nd choice game for that time slot, a whimsical heist adventure (5E D&D). The DM, Tabi, let us roll up some slightly overpowered 3rd level PCs before the game started. I made a Dwarf Fighter (Noble) who was gruff and a bit pompous. Another player, Rachel, had rolled up a Fairy Barbarian (Gladiator), who acted all nice and sweet until she started to kick ass. The third player, Kimberlee, was new to RPGs, but had played in a 5E game on Friday night. So she used her 1st level Halfling Rogue (unknown background) from the night before, and bumped up to 3rd level. The 4th player didn't show up. 

The adventure was to steal a magical gauntlet from the Magistrate. Using our various skills and backgrounds, and coming up with an intricate plan that we botched the most important part (we paid for a counterfeit gauntlet to be made, but forgot to pick it up before infiltrating the Magistrate's mansion), we bumbled through the mission and succeeded, just at the last minute (real time).

Flynn played a Traveller game called Death Station in the morning slot run by a GM named Nicole who I don't know (this was both of our #1 pick for the slot). He said it was a mission to explore a ship that had been wiped out by a contaminant and they had to science their way through the adventure. He enjoyed it, and was wondering if there is a computerized version of Traveller for solo play. I'll have to look that up. [Or someone in the comments, please give us a link!]

We had found an American style Chinese restaurant on the map and wanted to go there for lunch, but it was closed. Korean style Chinese food is very disappointing compared to the American fare (or Japanese style Chinese). Since it took about 15 minutes to walk there, and there was only a 1 hour lunch break, we ended up going to Lotteria (Korean fast food). 

When we got back, I chatted with my friend Scott a little about the organization of the event (he was an organizer), and he said he's willing to pitch in to help Justin and I if we organize something like this in Busan later. Nice. Then we went to our game tables. We were both in our #1 picks for the afternoon slot (2pm to 6pm), thanks to Scott. 

My afternoon game was Dragonbane, run by the GM Amae. I knew Amae online because he's the admin of the TTRPG in Korea Discord group. He had five pregens  for us. I got the Human Magician. Lem was the Wolfkin Warrior. Lexi was an Elf Archer. Abi was a Halfling Thief. And the fifth player, whose name is escaping me at the moment, was a Mallard Knight that we nicknamed Duck Tank. I didn't know any of these players before the game started. 

The adventure was called The Sinking Tower. We were after treasure, and the tower that rises out of the sea once every 20 years was slowly sinking back down. We managed to bumble our way through most of the puzzle/traps, and a couple of combats. We managed to loot a few small treasures and also got one of the great green emeralds from the top of the tower, with a tense last minute scramble by Lexi's archer. It was a blast, and I'd love to get a chance to play Dragonbane again. 

Flynn's afternoon game was Cyberpunk Red, run by a fellow Busan gamer named Keith. Flynn told me they were a low level street gang, running deliveries of drugs and bootleg chips for Razor, their boss. They got into a deal way over their heads, but somehow managed to charm one of the criminal syndicates, who helped them defeat the cyberninja that was pulling the rigged deals. Flynn's character was a street rapper, and Keith had him use ChatGPT to come up with lyrics for his rap songs during the game, which Flynn enjoyed. 

Keith running his game. Flynn is in the NASA shirt. I don't know the other players.

The Cyberpunk game went down to the wire (6pm). We went across the street to Shake Shack for dinner. Even though we had burgers for lunch, my Dragonbane group had gone there and invited me along. I waited for Flynn, so we showed up a little late and had to sit at another table because another gamer had joined them. 

After that, we headed back home. All in all, a really fun day. And we got to meet some cool new people, and play some games we probably never would have gotten a chance to play if we hadn't gone. I definitely want to run something like this here in Busan in the near future.  

Looking Ahead

Happy New Year, everyone! I know it's a little early to wish everyone this, but if you look at my posting rate this month, it shouldn't be a surprise. 

2024 wasn't a great year over all, but gaming wise, it was pretty good. My TS&R Jade campaign is going well. Everyone is enjoying it. My side campaign of Star Wars d6 is also going well. We just played it yesterday, and had a good time. The Call of Cthulhu game was pretty fun, and hopefully it continues into next year [This one isn't actually a campaign, as we make new characters for each scenario]. And here and there, we got to try out a few smaller games as one-shots. 

In the realm of play-by-post, the long running 1E game had a reboot, with new PCs starting at level 1. It's not so bad, when the other option was the DM shutting the game down. I really enjoyed playing my primary PC in that game, but at times I was thinking it was time to retire him anyway. The one 5E game I still play there has been pretty slow due to the DM's real life schedule, and honestly, I keep forgetting to post there. I got into the ground floor of a RECON game, but different player styles/expectations frustrated the GM, and now maybe one of the players will take over. We'll see. 

The two games I'm running there, Gamma World and Star Wars d6, are moving along just fine. 

Looking forward into 2025, I see these trends continuing. Well, hopefully the 5E game picks up the pace a bit. Otherwise, things seem to be going well gaming wise. 

On the game design front, I'm plugging away at Flying Swordsmen 2E. Over the weekend, I made some character templates as the equipment chapter was kinda boring me. I'd been somewhat reluctant to get into the weeds of templates, but so far, it's been kinda fun trying to figure out the basics of different martial arts/wuxia stock characters within the framework of the game I'm creating. 

The other thing that's been on my mind lately is an idea I've had of converting the Isle of Dread for my TS&R Jade campaign. It would be a fairly superficial thing, but at the same time it would take a fair amount of rewriting. I'd want to change the Isle's native culture to be less Polynesian and more SE Asian in nature. And of course the wandering monster tables and a few of the encounter areas would need to be reworked to include more SE Asian style monsters along with all the dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts. 

But do I really want to put the breaks on the local campaign to send the players off to a multi-session arc on the Isle of Dread? I mean, it's a fun module, but I'm not so sure it's the right thing for the group. Maybe I'll make some notes and then throw a few rumors/hooks their way. If they bite, I'll finish fleshing out the idea. If not, then I'll drop the idea.

First Turn at Mapping, and Using His Head

 Last Sunday, I ran my TS&R Jade campaign. Only three players showed up: Steven (my 10yo), Charles, and Nate. They hired half a dozen men-at-arms, purchased a few torches, and headed into the Pits of Lao. For some reason, Nate and Charles thought it would be fun to let Steven be the mapper this time. It took him a bit of practice to get used to translating the descriptions into lines on the map, but once he got the hang of it, he did really well.

Steven had been thinking about the campaign rumors over the weeks (scheduling nightmare) we weren't playing, and he had a plan. We'd been discussing the use of his locate object spell. One rumor was from a former adventurer who had located a machine that allowed him to find a big score of treasure and retire. He wanted to find that machine. I told him that his locate object spell could help with that. 

When they got down to the second level of the dungeon (there is a set of stairs leading down from the entrance room), they bribed a group of bakuto (gambler yakuza) who collect tolls there with some wine, then went on their way. At first, the spell didn't detect the machine. It has a radius of 120', and the target was a little out of range...but none of them realized they had explored and mapped to just a room or two away from the target. Luckily for them, they decided to explore east instead of west or south, and moving to the next room allowed Steven's PC to get a ping with the spell. 

The next room had some low level Taoist mages and their ashigaru bodyguards. Reactions were positive, so they discussed trading information. I had to come up with a reason why the mages were examining the room they were in, and I decided they were doing an inventory for the Lao family (the last Lao, the crazy wu jen daughter of the Venerable Lao, having died 100+ years ago). This led to a brief discussion of the Dungeon as Underworld for the benefit of Charles, who is new to RPGs. After the game, I sent him a link to Oakes Spalding's blog, which has a copy of Philotomy's Musings on the subject. He was thankful for that. 

Anyway, the party found a well with treasure but the "water" was actually acid, and didn't try to recover it after Saro, Nat's PC, got singed. Then they wandered up and fought some giant toads, but had a surprise round so they weren't in any danger. Finally, the locate object spell led them to the Fighting Ring, an area they'd been to before, where you can summon a Level 2 Random Encounter to fight for cash prizes, while phantasmal fans cheer on the fight. They'd been here before. 

Just beyond it was the room with the Potion Transmuter machine. The machine has two settings: healing potion and potion of treasure finding. After a bit of examination and experimentation (a healing potion poured in became a potion of treasure finding, wine poured in became ruined wine). Nate's henchman had another healing potion, and he decided to convert it as well as Saro's (the first experiment). Then Saro drank his potion and off they went, trying to find treasure. 

Pro Tip: I had marked my dungeon map with gold dollar signs using a colored pencil in any room with monetary treasure, and with blue stars for any room with magical treasure. That made it easy to let them know which direction the nearest treasure was. Of course, the nearest treasure to the transmuter machine was the gold down the acid well that they had already found... But there was more treasure beyond that. 

They ended up with a really nice haul in the end. Slider, Charles' Thief, made it to Level 4, so Charles can make a henchman for him. He's considering a Wu Jen. Niko, the henchman of Citizen Snips (Steven's character), also leveled up. It was a good session, and I'm really happy to see Steven getting into the game a bit more, rather than just trying to make jokes and do silly kid stuff.

Cathartic Play in Action: The Despair System

Yesterday, I was introduced to Shane, a game designer living nearby, who is working on a narrative (Forge style) role playing game that he calls The Despair System. As you would guess from the name, it's about putting your characters through Hell to see how long they can hold out against creeping doom and hopelessness. 

I don't want to give away too much about the system, as he's still play testing, and things are subject to change due to our feedback. But I do want to talk a bit about the experience. 

I addition to Shane and myself, Dustie and Scott who I have played with extensively online over the past few years, and Keith, who I met for the first time, were the other players. I only met Dustie face to face for the first time at Richard's last Call of Cthulhu game, and this was the first time for me to meet Scott face to face. It was still comfortable for me, since I have played with these two quite a bit, and Shane and Keith were both friendly and easy to get along with. 

For the game itself, it started off by making characters and getting some rules explained as we did that. One interesting bit is that Shane had told us to bring pens, not pencils. In this game, once something goes on your sheet, it might get crossed out, but it never changes. Things get added through play. 

The system is setting neutral, and I mentioned in my previous post that Shane had us vote on what sort of setting we wanted, and it was Vikings. We'd had time to consider what sort of character we wanted to play. I think I had given it the shallowest thought. Or maybe Scott. Dustie and Keith had much more detail in mind when we came to the character creation portion. 

My pre-planning, knowing only that it was "Vikings making one of the earliest voyages West" was that my character, Wehostan the Wanderer, had been to Gardariki (Russia) before with his uncles, and that his father was an iron miner (brothers, too) and didn't want his son heading out on expeditions, but mining was the last place Wehostan wanted to be. 

Shane gave us character sheets with six lines, each with a d6 die face, arranged from high to low, and told us the six attributes he was using for this game. The attributes might be different for other genres. In a previous play test with Scott, they had done a Wild West themed game, and the attributes were not the same. So you can customize it to fit the theme, genre, and mood. Players can arrange their six attributes as they like, putting one next to each die face. Each had a bonus of +2 (the six, four and two faces), +1 (the five and three faces), or 0 (the 1 face).

After that, each character got to select a pair of traits, one positive and one negative. My positive was Wanderlust, and my negative was Superstitious. These were each connected to one of the attributes, and if a roll on that attribute would be affected by it, it resulted in getting to reroll a die of your choice if positive, and the highest die if negative. 

The mechanics were a bit convoluted for this sort of story game. Not that any particular mechanic was difficult, but there are a lot of different types of checks (all checks are rolled with 4d6, and those +1 or +2 bonuses can be used to modify one single die that was rolled). The "game" part of this is basically bargaining your creeping Despair, which is signified by filling in pips on the die faces and the bonuses for attributes. The Referee is working to put the characters into situations where they are challenged, and have the potential to earn Despair points. The more Despair you earn, the easier it is to gain more Despair, so the game is basically build around the idea of the death spiral. Even if you succeed on a check, you might still earn points of Despair while doing so. There are a few ways to mitigate how much despair you earn, but no way to remove Despair once it's on your sheet. If a die face has all pips colored in (and the one face starts filled in), then any result of that number gives you a point of Despair. If you fail a roll, the difference in your highest number rolled and the target number is the amount of Despair you gain (in addition to any from "dead" dice). So the more Despair, the more dice will give you Despair.

The specific mechanics aren't so important to my analysis right now, though. What I found was that while the game itself is leveraging the various mechanics of your roll (or bargain to avoid a roll), the creeping death spiral of Despair is actually more effective than my recent experiences of Call of Cthulhu. Don't get me wrong, I'm having fun in our CoC game. And maybe Richard has been going easy on us. But we haven't had that much Sanity loss, and I don't think we've suffered a character death at all so far. The Despair System is designed to force Despair points on you, so that you can't escape falling victim to it if you play long enough. 

Narrative games like this aren't really my style of game, but as a one-off (or maybe two, Shane asked if we'd be interested in giving it another try), it was kind of fun. Because he was play testing, Shane skipped us through a lot of things. He would put us into certain situations, and not give us full freedom, but he did say that in a regular game there would be more player input and choice in the story, and more back and forth role play time. 

While it was a little off-putting at first to have him just dictating scenes and then making us roll (or test our abilities in other ways), after a few scenes I got used to it, and it actually made more sense. He needed us to test the mechanics, but also, the whole point of the game is to experience mounting despair in your character, as things that were easy to do at the beginning of the session get progressively harder and harder to accomplish, or at least harder to accomplish without adding more Despair points. We only made it half-way through the story line Shane had prepared, and none of us topped out our Despair, but I was pretty far gone, having lost the two, three, and four die faces, having taken on a second negative trait, and having crossed out two of my abilities (crossed out abilities could still have checks made, but at a penalty of removing the highest value die rolled on that check). Wehostan was not in good shape. 

It was an unusual experience, and I'd like to try this game again in a non-playtest mode before I make any final judgments on it, but it seems to me like Shane has put a lot of thought into how to make this game so that it provides the experience he would like for it to. Some more traditional, old school, or new school players may be put off by the game, but if you go into it knowing what it is, it can be a fun experience. And it was definitely more coherent in form and function than some other story games I've played in the past.

Enthusiasm

My Star Wars game yesterday went really well. I had not only Richard (who runs Call of Cthulhu and recently started playing in my Jade game) and Randy (new to tabletop RPGs), but Philip who plays the Brash Pilot Satt Orin returned to the campaign after a hiatus. With Denis, Charles, and my son Steven, that made for six players. 

Even though two were new to the system (one new to doing this not mediated by a computer RPG system), it was easy to get them up to speed and into the game. 

The adventure was to break into a rich merchant's house on Tatooine and steal a data cube on Boonta Eve, the day of the big pod race. Twist: Jabba the Hutt has just been killed by that Rebellion leader Leia Organa and her friends. Twist 2: It's Jabba's townhouse in Mos Eisley that they're breaking into. Twist 3: Gardulla the Hutt has also sent a team to steal the cube, which has incriminating evidence on various Hutt rivals. 

It played out really well, and everyone had a blast. Things didn't go as planned, but they worked out in the end. And some player input created some fun complications that I hadn't thought of in advance.

After the game, Steven was really pumped up. He had a lot of fun in the session, saying that it felt like they were actually in a Star Wars movie during this one. We had a discussion about it, and he's conflicted about whether he likes D&D or Star Wars d6 better. He's full of plans to spend the large amount of cash that the party received for the mission. 

Texting with both Randy and Richard last night, they also both had a lot of fun with the game. Richard played through the solo adventure in the rulebook by himself that evening...but says he came to an untimely demise pretty quickly in it. He's considering possibly doing more with the d6 system, although it might be hard to pry him away from CoC. 

Randy had a lot of questions about my methods as a game master. Since he had only played computer RPGs before, he was really curious about how I came up with the scenario and how I managed all the details. How much was planned, how much was improv? Things like that. His mom was one of those Satanic Panic moms, so he never got to play as a kid, but now regrets that he didn't get to try RPGs until his 40s. We talked about my D&D game, too, and I sent him the TS&R Jade book to see what sorts of characters he might be interested in playing if he joins. 

I haven't heard feedback from Philip, Denis, or Charles other than a bit of post game chatting, but they said they enjoyed it a lot. 

All in all, a successful game. And I've definitely got my motivation to keep running Star Wars, when a couple months ago I was thinking I was done with it.

More Star Wars (and other gaming) Coming

My May the 4th game went well, but I'd still like to try and get a few more people interested in the campaign. So I'm gonna try again. May 25th is the anniversary of the release of A New Hope, and it's also a Saturday. Perfect timing. 

I've got a very busy gaming schedule at the moment. Tomorrow evening, Richard is running his Call of Cthulhu game. Taking a cue from me, he'll be running it face-to-face instead of online. 

Sunday is my regular TS&R Jade game. For the past two sessions, the party has been trying to reach some dimension door portals in the Pits of Lao (the micro-mega-dungeon) to restore companions who were bitten by spectral hounds. They finally achieved that, and there are seven portals in that room, and they only know the destinations of two of them. There's also a lot more dungeon to be explored. But some players mentioned that they want to return to the 18 Chambers of Lotus Fist temple to continue clearing it out (that's where there met the hounds). So I have no idea how this session might play out! 

Wednesday next week is a public holiday (Buddha's Birthday), so I'll be heading down to my friend Adam's house to continue the Swords & Sorcery board game campaign. 

And then there will be Star Wars on the 25th. The 26th should be my next Jade game, too, but we'll see if my wife will allow me to spend that much time gaming on a weekend. Hopefully, she'll be busy with her badminton club! 

 As Wayne and Garth famously said, "Party on, Wayne!" "Party on, Garth!"

___________

In other news, I was watching a Bob Worldbuilder video on YouTube where he was praising the 5 Room Dungeon. For D&D, I find the format a bit too stiff, because it's purposefully made to mimic the rising/falling tension of a movie's five act structure. If you don't use the encounters in that order, you don't get that rising/falling tension, so why not just create a small dungeon as you like? And if you do the dungeon rooms in that order, it's railroady.

For Star Wars, however, I think it might work a bit better. The d6 game is designed to be "cinematic" and the modules I've looked at so far seem to be saying "Choo Choo, Motherfuckers!"

I may not go full on railroad with these adventures (my game the other day was set up as presenting the challenges, but not expecting any particular attempts at solutions), but the idea of an initial "guardian" encounter, followed by an unexpected complication, then a trap/setback/lateral thinking challenge, then a confrontation, and finally a reward or twist seem reasonable for a cinematic style game. 

Of course, I won't force the plot on the characters, and I'll give them plenty of opportunity to flip the script or make an end run to skip stuff, but for my notes, having a chain of encounters set up for the most passive play style seems handy. I can riff off of that when the players go "off script."

Alright, time to decide what exactly the next adventure should be about! I've got an idea involving the death of Jabba the Hutt. The campaign started shortly before the Battle of Hoth, and it's probably been going on long enough that they're coming up on the Battle of Endor (not that the players have ever had much interest in joining the Rebellion).

SWD Game: Thoughts and Player Reactions

My May the Fourth d6 Star Wars game was a success from a player standpoint, and from a referee standpoint. From a "get new people into the game" standpoint it was a little disappointing, but part of that is my own fault.

First of all, I prepped an adventure that was designed to bring various characters together. I borrowed the opening of the official module Starfall. The PCs are prisoners of the Empire, but a Rebel agent droid helps them escape. Only instead of setting it on an ISD, I put them on a moon base prison mining colony (borrowing thematically from Andor) with the map of the detention block taken from Starfall, but the upper levels of the base taken from the Hideouts & Strongholds supplement. The modules I've looked at are a bit too railroady, but I found it pretty easy to take a few ideas from them and turn them into challenging scenarios rather than storylines to play through.

The basic idea of my adventure is that the PCs are all new prisoners, held for only a week or so, and the Rebel droid infiltrator has identified them and a few other prisoners as not yet broken by Imperial slavery, and wanting to escape. This allowed the PCs some NPC assistance with overpowering the guards, but also a means of recruiting a replacement character mid-adventure if someone's PC died (none did though). 

The general goal was escape, bringing the captured and out of commission Rebel spy Walex with them for a reward beyond freedom. I gave each player a personal additional goal, which they were free to share or keep secret, as they liked, just to add a bit of potential complication. 

The part that was disappointing was that only three players showed up, and they're all in my D&D game. Everyone else was busy or uninterested. And as I said above, several friends who are not in the D&D game told me it was a cool idea, but that they didn't have free time. It's my own fault for coming up with this idea on the spur of the moment. Next year, I'll give people more notice. 

The players who did show up, and their characters, were: 

Steven (my son), playing his new Tech-warrior (modified from the Loyal Retainer template) Jim Bumass.

Denis (long time player), playing his Smuggler Nito.

Charles (first time playing d6, he's only been playing TS&R for a month or so) selected from my pregens the Twilek Gearhead (modified from the Tongue-tied Engineer template), and named him Conan (after O'Brien, not the Barbarian). Conan had an R5 astromech. 

I won't go into full detail of the play-by-play, but the PCs and the rowdy prisoner NPCs used Brawling until they secured weapons from defeated guards, borrowed uniforms, made good Con rolls to convince staff that they were the guards transporting other prisoners, recovered their gear, got intel on the mining operation, and rigged a the station's power generator to blow with a thermal detonator before hijacking the supply ship and evading the station's tractor beam to escape by an appropriate use of a Force Point by Nito. 

They managed, through clever ideas and lucky die rolls, to complete each player's secret objective and didn't trip any alarms along the way. They also avoided fights with a squad of 4 fully armed stormtroopers and the station commandant's security droids. Everyone had a blast playing through it. 

Afterwards, Charles was really enthused by how much tension the Wild Die added to every roll. Even when his Gearhead was using his 6D Computer skill, he was nervous about rolling that 1 on the die. He also liked how I had set up a variety of challenges, and he said he was trying to anticipate problems and think around the corners to come up with solutions. 

Denis felt similarly about the challenges faced, and that there were multiple ways the session could have gone. 

Steven told me, before bed last night, that he liked Star Wars more than D&D...but liked D&D more than Star Wars. He meant he really liked both, but they're different so hard to compare. He did really enjoy the fact that I broke out the minis for this game. The tactile play with the figures themselves, and the tactical use of them minis on a board, kept him a bit more interested in the session.

Our heroes (L to R): Nito the Smuggler*, Jim Bumass the Tech-Warrior, Conan the Gearhead with R5 droid. 

*Nito is human, but Denis told Steven to pick a mini for him and he picked Plo Koon. 

I collected these figures back when the Prequels were coming out, when I was living in Japan. Pepsi gave them away as freebies with every 500ml bottle of soda, and despite preferring Coke, I drank a LOT of Pepsi back then. I also visited the local resale shop often and picked up a lot more figures there. 

The figures are 54mm (green army man scale), so you can see I've mixed in a few Kamen Rider and Gundam figures I also got at the resale shop, and a few of the classic SW knock-off Galaxy Laser Team as well. I've been thinking of trying to add to my SW mini collection, but the table top games use 28mm or 35mm scale figures, so they'll look dinky next to these guys. If I ever want to expand the collection, I'll probably need to find some scalable STL files and have a friend with a 3D printer custom build them for me. I've realistically got enough minis...but there's a part of me that can never have enough minis.

So to wrap up, the game went well, but it would have been nice for me if I could have gotten a few more people out to try it. I'm re-energized about the SW campaign, though, so I'll be running it again soon, and maybe running both online and offline if I can find a few more offline players. It may cut into my D&D/TS&R time, but like Steven said, they're both good games that scratch different itches.
 

Getting the Groove Back Over the Weekend

So my last post, I was complaining that I just wasn't feeling it with RPG stuff, and hadn't been for a bit. Part of the reason I wrote that and posted it publicly was to see if it would jump start my motivation to game/work on game stuff. And I think it did. Also, thanks to JB and Dick McGee for sympathizing with me. I think it did what I hoped it would, but not completely. A few things that happened over the weekend got me fired up again. 

My son started Korean high school this month, and hates it. I wasn't surprised. Korean high school is three years of suffering in order to get the highest possible score you can on the Korean version of the SAT test. Lots of stress, lots of late night cramming, lots of competition. So he asked if we could move up or scheduled plan for him to study in the U.S. My parents agreed, so we spent last week making arrangements. At the start of April, he and I will fly to Illinois and I'll get him set up to live with my folks for the next couple of years and finish high school there. Kinda stressful, but kind of exciting, too. 

And I was so busy with those arrangements on Friday that I completely forgot that I was supposed to get on Discord to make a new Call of Cthulhu character with the guys for Richard's new adventure. Luckily, Richard texted me, and after getting Steven ready for bed, and finishing up the translation of Flynn's high school class schedule, I joined up. 

I had no real idea what sort of PC I wanted to make, but everyone else did. I rolled for my abilities instead of using the standard array, and I'm glad I did. I rolled horribly overall, but Education was really good, so while my basic abilities are not good, I've got good skills for my super nerdy 1920s version of an FBI forensics/CIA analyst guy. And discussion with Richard about character generation and OD&D during the session gave me inspiration for my next blog post, about whether to roll and figure out the PC, or figure out the PC then try to build them. 

On Saturday, I finally got to watch Godzilla Minus One, and really liked it. Good film. It makes you actually care about the people in the film, while having some great (if not quite enough) monster smashing Tokyo mayhem. And that's tickling a few ideas that I might also be able to work into some game-able material. And possibly a blog post. 

Oh, and some of you may have heard that NASA put out a D&D (5E-ish) adventure! I downloaded it, read through it briefly, and unfortunately I don't think I'll be using it after all. 

On Sunday, I had my TS&R Jade session coming up, so I got off my ass in the morning and wrote up another location on the map, and have been working on some ideas for another one. I want to do a fairly Jacquaysed map, with lots of verticality and multiple pathways for this second location, so that may take a bit of time to do. But I'm hyped by the possibilities of that map and location. The location I did add is fairly simple, a barbarian encampment that could be attacked (type A treasure, after all!) or could become a resource since they specialize in animal training. If the party makes good relations with them, they could buy trained animals from them, or capture animals to take to them for training. 

And then the session was Flynn's final session before he heads to the U.S. We've got other things planned for the next two Sundays, so no more D&D. Going into the session, he was thinking of trying to go out with a bang, and get his PC killed in a fun and memorable way. But then in the game, he changed his mind and did his best to keep his PC and henchman alive, so that he can keep playing them whenever he comes back to visit. And after the session, we discussed some of the ways he could use the down time to improve his character (martial arts training, spell research, etc.) which we can do via emails or whatever while he's away. 

So, yeah, I've got my gaming groove back. I'm looking forward to getting some content up here on the blog, as well as working on the campaign and my TS&R GM book this week.

Combat As War

 On Sunday, I was running my TS&R game, and the party was exploring more of the mini-mega-dungeon. They were basically looking at their map, and trying to fill in gaps on the 1st level. 

The party consists of: 

Koles' Human Wu Jen 4 and henchman Holes' Human Wu Jen 1 (my son Flynn's characters)

Citizen Snips Human Blade Mage 4 and henchman Niko Human Fighter 1 (my son Steven's characters)

Fei Mao Crane Hengeyokai Kensei 4 and henchman Snakebite Human Mudang 2 (Denis' characters)

10 Bad Habits Koropokuru Yakuza 4 and henchman Savage Poko Raccoon Dog Hengeyokai Fighter 1 (Justin's characters)

4 Men-at-Arms, wearing leather armor with axes and short bows. 

They returned to the Underground Garden and bought some fruits, vegetables, and flowers from the treants that tend the garden. They made peaceful contact with some tengu and got a tip that it might be possible to get some swordsmanship training at the tengu encampment south-west of town (I need to flesh out that spot on the map now!), fought some astral projecting evil spirits called berbalang and got some treasure, discovered a secret door that led to one of the areas they'd explored in the previous sessions where a black bear was snacking on dead goblin rat and giant rat corpses (they used some purchased fruits and flowers to discourage the bear from following as they retreated), and then they came to the first of several locked doors. 

10 Bad Habits picked the lock, and there was a short corridor with another door. He was unable to pick this one, so they bashed it in after listening and hearing nothing. 

This was a subsection of the level that has been taken over by bandits as their lair. And a random roll showed me that no bandits were in the common area, but that there were 60 bandits plus their leader, a 3rd level Xia (martial artist/monk) in other rooms of the lair. The bandits were in three rooms, 20 per room, and the leader in his quarters.

Bashing the door made noise, but a surprise roll gave the players time to set up their forces. There were four doors into the common area that they could hear unlocking. They arranged their men-at-arms in the center of the room to fire arrows, and each pair of PC and henchman took a different door.  Koles' and Holes' weren't next to a door, but they had spells prepared for the door the others hadn't covered. 

When the bandits opened their doors, Koles' used phantasmal force to make the floor lava, and after 20 saving throws, all but three thought they were being incinerated and fell unconscious to the floor, as the arrows from the men-at-arms eliminated two more bandits in the 'lava' room. 

Holes' turned to use his sleep spell at the southern door where 10 Bad Habits & Poko were waiting, and his sleep spell took out nine more bandits. 10 Bad's backstab missed, unfortunately, as did Poko's attack. 

Meanwhile, Fei Mao used his Sweep ability to attack four times against 1HD opponents, and took out three of the 20 in the room he and Snakebite were at, while Snakebite went defense mode to avoid taking massive damage. 

Finally, at the leader's door, Niko hit the leader with his magari-yari +1 doing some decent damage, and Snips used cause fear to make him run back  into the room and cower. 

With their leader running in fear and half their forces eliminated before they knew what was happening, I rolled morale for the bandits and they failed. They surrendered, and were all tied up. 

One 4th level party took out an encounter with five times their numbers without taking a scratch. And the bandits had a Type A treasure, which was mostly jewelry and art objects, so it was easy to transport back to town with their captives. The treasure from the berbalangs and the bandits was around 34,000gp, so everyone but the Blade Mage leveled up, and Niko the henchman is 1xp shy of 3rd level due to the rule on gaining only one level per adventure. 

And now that they have access to the bandits' secret entrance to the dungeon and that easy to seal off section of the dungeon, the players are thinking to convert that to their dungeon delving base. 

This was much more fun and exciting than if it had been a 5E style "balanced encounter" with just a handful of bandits attacking at a time. Oh, and for anyone wondering how fair it would have been if the party had discovered this area while they were 1st level, the bandits aren't killers. They would have used non-lethal attacks, disarms, overbearing, etc. to try and capture the party and demand ransom from town if that had happened. I don't mind it when PCs die in my game, but I'm not out to kill them. That's just too easy.

Taking Unusual Skills

In our recent Call of Cthulhu campaign, the main Keeper, Richard, took a break for a few sessions to let his friend Brady try his hand at being a game master. For Brady's game, I rolled up a jazz drummer named Theo. He's running a module that requires all the players to have mob connections, so my jazz man is way in debt for lots of booze, drugs, and women. 

In the session last week (the third session of Brady's run), our investigators have become trapped in the boarding house where the thief we're trying to track down lives. There are all sorts of weird things happening in the house. In one of the rooms, there was a young girl playing violin, and my PC and the mob hitman ended up in that room while other players investigated other rooms. The music she was playing was strange, and the hitman checked the bedroom to find the girl's parents dead with blood pouring from their ears. 

It wasn't hard to put two and two together. As the girl (ghost? demon?) started to play again, my PC decided to instruct her on the finer points of jazz rhythms. After a bit of discussion, Brady had me roll my Arts: Jazz skill, and I got a hard success (less than 50% of my chance to succeed). So Brady decided that instead of the 2 minute performance she was supposed to give -- at which time bad things would happen -- my rhythm lesson sped up her performance and since it was over in only one minute, we were able to escape the room unharmed. 

Yes, that's right. I was able to avoid catastrophe with jazz. 

Never let a min-maxer tell you you're wasting your time selecting non-optimal skills or a non-optimal background. You never know when those oddball skills/proficiencies/knowledge may come in handy!