Wow, I have been flat out this Easter break. I am a teacher (in real life) and I got Good Friday to Easter Tuesday off this year and I have been flat out through it. Friday and Sunday were family days for me and Saturday saw me finish the build on my boat as handled by my previous post (my effort for tabletop day). But that was only the start of the gaming goodness I have been involved in over this break.
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| What my new Fudge Dice look like |
On Sunday as my family got ready to head to the movies I joined in one of +Jonathan Henry ‘s gamer chats and was talking to him about various systems that I have played and he was giving me some suggestions on what to play also. We play in a Fate Core game together and he was talking to me about the changes that they had made in the draft document for the game and this inspired me to finally get around to reading the document from back to front. He also talked about a game called Hulks and Horrors that I had never heard of so after I logged out of our meeting I went to DrivethruRPG to buy a copy of it. While I was there I spotted another special on a game system I have always wanted to try, the Dr.Who RPG and I picked that up too! Just to cap the day off with purchases I also logged on to my online hobby store of choice, Military Simulations, and purchased my first ever set of four fudge dice for my dice collection too!
I transferred all my new material onto my iPad and started to read Fate Core solidly through the next few days. I love this system. I have stolen bits out of it and placed them in my online and in person Pathfinder games! The more I read of it the more I like of it, though a lot of the examples in the book do tend to be a little overly wordy or not concrete enough and can cause confusion. It is also very strangely set out with some sections I am reading in the book heavily relying on rules sections that occur later in the book making a cover to cover read a challenging task at the best of times. Still, I intend to run a Fate session or two in the near future as it is a great mechanic for an RPG.
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| The mini notebook is my new purchase along with my quill and ink set! |
Sunday afternoon my family and I went and saw a movie and then travelled along to an antique store in Latrobe, Tasmania called Reliquaire. It has bunches of antiques mixed with new stuff, geeky stuff, heaps of board games, some LARP stuff, and a variety of other bits and pieces. While I was there I was chuffed to pick up a miniature version notebook of my larger notebook that I normally carry around with me and a full on quill and ink set. Take the virtual tour on their website of the store. If it is anything half like the store you will not be disappointed by the trip! I have an idea or two about how to combine the notebook with the said quill and ink set for a bit of a unique role playing experience. If it pans out I will blog about it. Need to practice with the quill though as my writing is awful and I press too hard!
The Monday came around and I had organised to spend some time with my in-person players doing the wind up for the Serpent’s Skull adventure path. We got together and talked about where to from here, handed out the treasure parcels that they found after the battle and gave them their final XP award. I was expecting a lot more direction from the players than what I got, but that is OK. They were excited to dole out the treasure and plan some things for their own characters.
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| All finished for the time being… |
Seleca (the Cavalier) has decided to stay on with the Pathfinders in Saventh-Yhi as she is romantically involved with the Captain of the Guard there and she wants to see how things pan out while keeping an eye out for any resurgence of the serpent folk. Janthir (the rogue/sorcerer/arcane trickster) has taken the skull of Ydersius and placed it in a portable hole with a Mages Private Sanctum spell with Permanency cast on it and teleported to Absalom where he has rented an apartment and he means to further research the destruction of the skull. Seroquel/Hank (the alchemist/master chymist) has decided to return to Smuggler’s Shiv where this all started. He wants to destroy the altar there and turn the Shiv into an Adventurer’s Wilderness Tour kind of place where he will populate the island with all manner of dangerous and intelligent creatures whilst setting up challenges for money. He also hopes to create a trade haven for the Shackles pirates to take advantage of also. Finally, Kaleb (the monk/cleric) intends to either set up a monastery where he can share his skills and teachings or make a pilgrimage back to his own monastery. Whichever he chooses he too is also attempting to find out a way to destroy the skull of Ydersius for good and thus kill the god once and for all.
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| I don’t think I have a career as a professional model ahead of me |
After this was done I had a little bit of time to get planning on the Reign of Winter campaign that I was running that night! I hopped on to roll20 and adjusted some maps to be able to use dynamic lighting and headed off to my mates place to get the Google+ Hangout up and running. It was a good game overall and we got to the point I had hoped to in the end though it was another near four hour game so I have to be a bit more rigorous in calling the game at the three hour mark in future. These late nights are beginning to slow me down a little. The players moved on from the lodge that they had taken, had some trouble with an icy bridge and a cranky ice mephit, found a dead hunter and then the thing that killed him and finally ended up on top of a hill at a hut with a creepy doll in it.
The video for the game is embedded on this blog if you want to find out the details but it still does not include any of the screenshots of roll20 at this stage as I need to do some testing to make sure that the game is not negatively impacted by the fix for showing the screens. And if it is I need to look at a different service for providing the video. I can do this from my desktop without making it an “On Air” event but we will see what happens with my tests this week.
So, on to Tuesday where I spent a lot of the day preparing for my in-person gaming group for Tuesday night and the first game of the Skull and Shackles adventure path! I had to cook a roast at the same time and this made me feel a little bit rushed when I got to the game, so much so that I forgot until the last minute to get all the miniatures and cardboard cutouts for the game together. This was OK as we covered the new rules about Aspects (that I have stolen from Fate Core ) and how they would apply to my introduction of Pathfinder’s Hero point system (which the players renamed Villiany Points) and we got into the game. I had a great time with the game as the players got “volunteered” (read press ganged) onto the crew of the Wormwood and spent their first day getting beaten up by a displeased boatswain and first mate.
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| The ship has not yet been used in game, it will come in near the end of the first module |
The players (well three quarters of them anyhow) have worked out that there is swift punishment on board the Wormwood for any that step out of line, though the Drow in the party is having problems bowing to the discipline of dirty humans and looks extremely bruised, with several whip marks across his back after a day of being too proud to accept orders. I left it at the end of the first day with two of them pushing on to late in the night and will be waking up to face the gruelling tasks of being a swab on the ship already fatigued. I picture quite a few more whippings for day 2 of the game!
So, that has been my Easter and Tabletop Day round up finally blogged about. I am busy thinking of plot hooks for this evenings Traveller game and also that I need to make a few more characters for the night as I have a few more people interested in joint the game. It is about time I closed the game to new players as I think this will make about 9 or 10 possibly active players in the game! I probably should have closed it after last week, but I want to see where this game goes.
I will try to find some time to blog about what goes on in the Traveller game tomorrow! Until then, thanks for reading!