Sandbox Games and Worlds

As a general rule, I like a larger sand box for my games. However, this can often lead to players not really knowing what they can do or should do. We need to give gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) hints as to what is available for them to do. Some games give characters a specific goal during character generation. There is no reason not to do so even if not part of this process. For me, that is part of session 0 when I start a new game: unless I have something specific, I try & get what the players want to do.

Sadly, this does not always work out. I am also guilty of this when I am a player: what does my character want to do? And until I get into the game, I tend to follow the other players. 

Opposing this is the set adventures. I have a lot of them that I've yet to actually run (and that was part of the nucleus of starting to track the stuff I do have. Which I am failing at. As mentioned - I love organization but sorely lack the ability to do so. Case in point: running the Fantasy Trip game over the weekend and could not find the cultist minis I knew I had. I finally found them but not where I expected them to be. I have a lot of minis and while some are sort of sorted, the rest are scattered) I just worry about railroading with pre-made adventures. Though I've had some luck using them and feeling like I am not forcing the players down a single path. 

I have 3 books so far on running games: the XDM book (which, wow, the hardcover there is $125! Maybe I need to sell my copy!), So You Want to Be a Game Master, and the Secret Art of Game Mastering books, and they all pretty much say the same thing: find the sweet spot. But that also really depends on the group you are with. I think I need to do a bit more handholding for both my groups (and due to some family dynamics, the Sunday gaming may be on a temporary hiatus, though we all want to play). 

Back to the sand box: the Ten Foot Pole review site which I sporadically read has some strong thoughts about sand box "adventures" vs usable adventures. And that is the crux of a lot of my issues: I can create vast worlds and all that, but if they are boring to the players due to me not expressing the world in something they can use and really interact with, it is just so much wasted time. Well, not wasted as I have a lot of fun doing it, but it is not as much fun for the players. But I'll keep reading, and practicing, and knowing that I have run fun games in-between the more boring ones, I'll keep trying.

a wash and dry brush later

statues, as statues then attacking! pre-painting

And speaking of organizing, I have several statues (including those new ones that have both the standing still statue and the "hey, is that statue attacking?!" pose. These are from Next Level Miniatures (pretty good price, but whatever plastic they are using seems to defy my glues sometimes). I need to add a container for statues, though it needs to be pretty big as I have 2 from the Greek set from a Reaper Kickstarter. Which I have used in two games (same place, different game groups. And the 2nd group snagged the 1st groups' dropped blunderbuss and used it in our last game)

But I really need to organize my notes and minis well before the game starts. Just adulting is hard - finding the time when I can do this seems to escape me. I actually bought a metal clipboard case for when we were playing our skirmish games: figured I could put the minis, notes and rules in it. Now I realize I can put the minis and notes for my RPG sessions in there! Maybe not the big ones, but the NPCs and stuff like that. While I do usually type my notes, I have a laser printer I bought specifically to be able to print things out cheaply!

TFT Game Recap: A Battle of the Sects

Okay, only 1 sect. When we last left our group they were at the Olmstead farms, a day or so outside of Edge City. Having collected the vetch ("weeds" to Hexis and Akx, Axe? I've yet to get the character sheet so not 100% sure how the goblin rat-catcher's name is spelled). Anyway, they head back to the city, get the crop to Eleanor the apothecary, and are trying to remember what they were doing next. The downside of it being almost 2 months since the last session (as mentioned: adulting is HARD!). 

They are met outside the shop be a well-dressed Ord, Sorgulg. Who has a job for Hexis and his companions. The leader of the city wants a bit of scouting up north. Behind the scenes, having heard from the guards that this group seems to work well together and is not afraid of the sewers. And there is deniability should they get caught by the Ironskull fighters. Having the Orc Fist gauntlets described, our group decides that there may be good reason to go there.

At the old house where Big George and the child thief gang are, the two Elf twins, Estalar & Aleesa, are awake. They only speak High Elf, so only Dawn can understand them though Deimos picks up a word or two, her mother being an Orc. Deimos also notices some orc slave brands on their shoulders and sees them as high-order slave marks. Meaning they need to be intact and not be abuse (the lifespan of most Orc slaves is measured in weeks. And I will note that not all orcs condone slavery, but there are some warbands that do.  And some humans. My world is not black and white). Some discussions that the children are safe, and they pay Big George a bit to keep them safe. Parts of their backstory do come out: they were in their family's castle in the J'Uniperous Woods when Orcs attacked. They were whisked away, and have no idea the fate of their family (which honest I don't either at this point - we'll see where the story goes!). They were in a cell in a dark castle, managed to escape and somehow crossing through a stone arch came out someplace else, and fell in the river. Michael and 'Elspeth found them and took them to George, where they and the other children, getting bit by rats, ended up with Rats Bane, which is where our adventurers showed up. 

Deciding to go north and outfitted at the city's expense with horses and gear, they head out the next day. It is a cloudy day, and they stay at an inn that night. Dawn dances and sings, along with some dance moves from Noodles. Deimos has brought out the bear a few times, and she seems to be at least starting to accept the half Orc, half Elf. Dried salmon seems to help. The others pick up a couple of rumors: the Ironskull soldiers have sometimes been seen, but usually from someone's brother's friend. And there seems to be something that is snatching young men - a few of the young farmers seem to have gone missing.

Next day is a drizzly rain that manages to seep everywhere. Finding a good spot, Violet and Axe hear what sounds like chanting. Sneaking up, the two spot several women chanting around a large stone well, with another woman up on some stone stairs, a young man in front of her, tied and about to get bashed over the head. 

AI drawing - kinda close

AI drawing - there are some really strange arm issues!

real drawing but there was no credit so not sure who drew this

The battle was relatively swift: Dawn managed to shoot the leader twice with her arrows, Deimos used the blunderbuss they found in the sewers and wounded 3 of the cultists. Violet ran forward to attack 2 of the cultists, though another moved behind her to attack. Axe and Hexis moved in to attack another cultists and made quick work of her. Deimos launched Noodles at one, and though the bite only did 1 point of damage, Noodles decided that perhaps being a boa constrictor would be a good choice and started strangling her. The leader, seeing the devastation, ran off, and another followed. As well as a third cultist running off in another direction. Chasing them down, our group killed all of them. Bringing back the bodies, they all have a simple bronze rune on a leather thong around their necks.

The young man, jaw gaping, watched the whole thing. When asked how he got caught by the cultists: "There was this nekkid lady who wanted me to follow her. Ain't no pretty girls in town so I followed her, got conked on the head and be here now." 

Hexis was not pleased with just how, err, not-bright young Clyde is. But seeing as how Violet is close to death, he does say there is a hedge witch who may be able to help a bit. Axe has physicker, so Violet is brought up from 1 hit point to 3. Not sure is she drank the 2 health potions they have. And the players forgot that unlike "modern" games, sleeping overnight does not heal you: you need to rest for 2 days to get 1 point back. Makes you want to get some armor and more strength to be better protected! As I don't think any of them have any armor.

And that brings us up to date with the current status. I'll also include one of the player's notes here as he uses a laptop to track everything. Better than I do: I know I made notes about a lot of things, but then can never find my notes! Trying to use that Rocketbook, but I also prefer electronic notes. But I can never remember where I stick them! But I will need to come up with the little town, the hedge witch, and a few things. Though I have a month, time flies by really fast for me!

I'll have to write up the story of Stubboon's Folly: they are going to Stubboon's 2nd Stand (he had 3) and I poked around for castle maps (though will be getting some soonish maybe?). So, I had this ready in case they got that far but they did not. But it is a nice little castle.

Next post may be a bit of that history (and I came up with that in college, 40+ years ago!) Or I may start Traveller 5.10 Book 2 overview. 

Player notes of the game so far

Next morning

Olmstead - Henry and Martha and Billy the son

we eat and head back to Edge City

we see a proper sign where the bandits attack

we drop off the weeds to the apothecary

will take a week to prepare

Sorbolg - orc - help finder for Hexis

offers a job to the north

the Iron Skull castle - orcs, goblins, kobolds

rumor of a magical items up in Stubboon

500gold pieces

find Stone Fists - magic gauntlets with lightning spell

and report on the Iron Skull

Indie hyenas are trying to get gloves too

he will offer horses and supplies

meet Sorbolg on the docks at the Old Flag Inn

Micheal came and told us the elf twins are better and awake

we go the bad part of town where George keeps the children

the elf kids said they ran from orcs

they were branded as slaves for 2-3 weeks - brand high value symbol

were not beaten

we were taken from our family from an elvan woodlands

they escaped and found a portal gate to get closer to Edge City

we sleep and meet Solbulg the next morning at the docks

we get supplies and mounts

Dusty - pony

Flower - pony

Elroy - horse

Patch - horse

Socks - horse

1.retrieve gloves

2.get intel of orcs

3.get evidence from Harlech Castle

small crystal - if shattered - cloud talk of communication with him

have maps, make maps

two weeks to the second camp - near Iron Skull Castle

small village - Stiggal (sparce, gets raided a lot)

weather is overcast

we follow the map

midmorning - rain

first day travel

Dawn performs at the coach house

for free room and board

Violet hears word of Iron Skull castle

Akx hears a evil cult grabbing men for sacrifices

head out the next day 

passed inn

we make camp at dusk

before making camp

we hear chanting in the woods

we see female cultists in ceremony

Ahx and Violet sneak up

we attack the cultists

we take out the cultists

we search them

hedge witch - ahead

6 necklaces with runes on each cultists

75XP

===============================================

===============================================

NOTES

PLAYER NAME RACE CLASS

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Danny      Hexis Mar              lizardman  fisherman/Fighter

Scott        Dawn                     elf              Dancer/Bard

Emily       Deimos                  half elf        Scribe/Sorcerer

Elizabeth Violet Applewing    halfling       Farmer/Rogue

Brian        Akx                        goblin        ??????/Rat Catcher

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NPC Johan human tavern keeper

NPC Keg construct servant

NPC Barabus human spice trader

NPC Big George human old man thief kid guardian

NPC Estalar elf thief child twin male

NPC Aleesa elf thief child twin female

NPC Toddy human thief male

NPC Eret human thief male

NPC Winna human Thief female

NPC Elsbeth human Thief female

NPC Micheal human Thief male

NPC Brigadier Smith human head of city guard

NPC Captain Vines human city guard captain

NPC Captain Loriel human Militia captain

NPC Henry Olmstead human farmer

NPC Martha Olmstead human farmer wife

NPC Billy Olmstead human farmer son

NPC Elenore Codington human Apothecary of Shoppe

NPC Sorbulg orc help finder for Hexis

NPC xxxxxxxxxxx Hyena band

NPC Stuboon human famous traveler - dead

NPC

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -

PLACE NAME                           MAJORITY

city        Edge City                      humans

farm      Olmstead                      Farm human

city        Rainy City                     humans

field       Crownretch                   fields grass

castle     Iron Skull Castle          orcs, goblins, kobolds

city         Stubboon                     city

mountain Wizard's Mountains   mountains

land         Terror lands                land

building    Old Flagg Inn             humans

village       Stiggal                       sparce - gets raided a lot

Seas Of Sand

Backed the Seas of Sand a long while ago, and it showed up a while ago. It is another setting type of book for a huge desert, but a bit unique as it makes the desert even more like a sea. Think this is the author in this reddit thread about the book. While not a complete review by any means, let's explore the book!

260+ pages with the following sections: Mapping, Ports, Sand, Travel, Sandcraft, Crew, Trade, Fauna, Flora, Phenomena, and a load of appendices, including a d100 list of tattoos for the crew of your sandcraft!

Obviously I love maps, so let us delve into how a random sea of sand map is created. All you need is paper, dice, and a few colored pencils. Step 1: drop two dice on the edges of your paper, then 1d4-1 to determine how many points are along that line. Here is my map so far, using 2 d20s as I figured they would roll (and they did!) and my rune d4. 

Then I need to draw my line connecting the two outside dice and the dice dropped in the middle (all of 1 sadly). This line represents the path the WORM travelled in ancient days, forming the first sands. 

Next, we roll 3d6 for the number of islands and I get 12 islands. Dropping 12 d6 on this map randomly and the results is both the location and the relative size of that island. My bone dice are the 3d6, then a scattering of other dice are the islands. Fortunately, I happen to have 12d6 :) Traveller dice! Though I actually prefer the original black dice with red pips I got way back in the Deluxe Box. Still have those dice!

For each die, roll on a d100 table for the shape, and try and keep the relative size in mind, from 1 to 6. While I don't think I did great with the relative sizes, good enough for a trial run!

Next, we determine the type of sand that is the main route along that path. I get salt sand, which is pale grey. So I grab a grey pen and draw that main stream of sand. Sands in this are liquid during the day, and solid at night. The sandcraft actually sail the sands during the day but get locked up at night. Salt sands can carry up to 100 pounds in the solid phase so a small person could cross during the day, and a 1000 pounds at night, so large things can move on the sand at night (but if caught in the day, will sink!)

And I feel bad: I bought a bunch of pens for this RocketBook and they are rapidly drying out! So the yellow pen barely works.

But we have our three sands put out. We can put out some additional rare sands, which can make travel a lot more dangerous. Adding 7 kiln sand (same process as the islands - drop some dice, note the size, and draw shapes from the random shape table). Rinse and repeat for other sands, though I'll just add the kiln sand, but there is also King's sand, Bone sand and Vulcan sand each with its own rules.

Then we add 1d6+2 cities (squares) and 1d6 villages. We have 4 cities and 1 village. The village is placed next to the kiln sands as there is a note that villages want kiln sand: apparently it acts as a barrier against pirates! Then connect the cities to have trade routes, I did not add Kings sand but apparently trade routes will go out of their way to this fabulous sand.

Next up are havens: 1 per trade route (4) + 1d4-1 (1) so 5 havens. And a random table for island names and done! Now that I have this map, I'll probably redraw this in some software to make things a bit more flexible and sharable (and cleaner!). And yes - colored pencils would actually be better to be able to color things in.

Think I'll do that when I get some time: last weekend I was at my niece's wedding (which was really nice, and I got to hold a baby goat!) and next weekend helping my child (okay, at 23 not really a child but hey, he will always be my child no matter how old!) so won't have a lot of time. And work is getting interesting: having to update our access to a few APIs we use to OAuth which is not particularly difficult, but apparently one of our customers was using one of our private keys to check on their orders at WalMart. As they phased out the private key thing a few months ago, I was asked to share the private key with them. I did mention it will no longer work, and I also don't share private keys. Apparently, the previous developers did. Of course, there are all sorts of security issues in the software, so what's a private key? Think I got into trouble as I asked the person asking me to share this info if I could borrow her SSN card as it is sort of similar. She probably did not take that well. We'll see how this plays out, but I am more concerned with proper security than making someone's life easier. And besides: what they want is available from us already using their key to our system! We may have to add more info, but there is no way we should be giving company credentials to 3rd parties!

wedding butterfly

Running Games

I've not actually run a game in the last few weeks - adulting is hard, and getting everyone together even over a Discord channel is hard! And I've got a few things happening the next couple of weekends so still won't be able to run or even play anything! 

As per my last post, I need to come up with some ideas, then remembered that over the years I have bought a LOT of adventures. To be run. Which just sit there. And then also remembered my plan to document my game stuff (and other books as I expanded the idea). And now, months later, realized that flash of an idea did not get too far. So, trying again!

Plus, it gives me another reason to go through the books, zines and PDFs I have just to see if there are some good things to run. And as I have a lot of mushroom minis (and a lot more on the way since I did back that Archon caves project, mushrooms may work! And I am probably going to back the 2nd edition of the Fungi of the Far Realms so that I can give my current copy to a friend who is playing a Druid. It is a really odd book but for some reason, I really like it! And it has an ISBN so was easy to import into my slowly growing library database!

Anyway - why have I not been able to run a game? Last weekend I had an emergency work issue: while the person knew in February that the API was changing the 1st of June, they had no idea that OATH is not just new credentials but an entirely different workflow. And let me know 1 week from the deadline. So, I worked last weekend to get it all done, and it worked for at least the part we were really concerned about. Then UPS said, well, we'll give everyone another month. *sigh*

Back to games and running a scenario: in reading through I've already discovered a couple I have that will work. They will need work as they are OSR style games, and I am running The Fantasy Trip. A conversion is not difficult other than magic, as magic works a lot differently in TFT versus most fantasy games. For instance, let's look at the shrieker mushrooms.

Shriekers

Neutral, AC 7, MV 1”, HD 3; they make noise!

Not a perfect match as movement ranges always confuses me but going with the 1" will be 1 hex per turn, AC does not exist in TFT, and hit dice can be the strength of 3-18 (3d6, with the assumption the HD is a d6). Killing them is not an issue per say, but as with a lot of OSR style games, often your best bet is not a direct confrontation. I'll have to go ahead and convert the rest that to TFT and have it ready.

I've added the "adventure" tag for adventures in the Zotera software, though I may have to recheck what I've tagged, as not sure the few things I've tagged are really adventures. Ahh, there is no "just search tags" and it is searching in other fields. Still need to play with that software, and not entirely sure it will help. For someone who really likes organizing things, I am really bad at it!

And our group is transitioning from the Fate 1930s Vigilante game to a science fiction game. I've been asked to help design the system, but so far have no details on it. But as you all know - I love making planets and system maps. And speaking of maps, I started back to try and get a handle on Campaign Cartographer again. I am going to have to start over with tutorials and take it slowly. I just never seem to have the time and inclination simultaneously! There is a lot of potential there, I just have to learn to use those tools I have.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand: I've several smaller dungeons I can throw at the two groups. I do know one is running away from Edge City, being wanted murderers. The other I am thinking of moving to a quest to the north, based on those rumors about the Iron Castle. And why would they want to do that? I need to throw a few things that way: Hexis, the Lizardman, has been a good resource as a bodyguard and the Orc contact who helps find him jobs, thinks this could really help him with some good coin. And the Elf, Dawn, those two children escaped the Iron Castle. Why were they there? I am going to write some background that should draw her there, and perhaps even Deimos, the half Elf/half Orc. Though he will need something a bit more to pull him that way - perhaps rumors of a lost powerstone that would enable him to cast more spells? And the Goblin rat-catcher...that will be a harder one, but he is easy to get along with and seems to be tagging along with the group (new player that has played twice so far). 

And I remembered a while ago I started a spreadsheet to track adventures and things. Another initiative that did not get too far. But it does have an adventures section! Wondering if I should just do a personal and portable wiki? So many choices! I just have to pick one and stick with it.

And in closing, I think I need something like the Zombicide sites that give you new missions, such as this oneone for modern Zombicide. A one line of number of players, game system, levels if applicable, and notes. I could expand out that spreadsheet, move the adventures section to its own tab, and do that. Means I still have to actually DO it, but also means I may get out the stuff I've accumulated over the years and hopefully use it. And hmm, I could do it in a website as well...as what that Zombicide site does is really nice. And...squirrel, another side-tracking thing!

And in really closing - looks like I now have 25 followers! Think I only had 24 before. I appreciate those who read this, and hopefully sometimes something useful comes out of it! I know most of the time it is me rambling, part of the time game recaps which are only useful for me and my players, but sometimes I hope I say something that is at least interesting!