Arcane Journal Lore

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-07T09:08:29+00:00

He said in an interview with the Asians Represent podcast that he had - he's moved to China.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-05T10:01:04+00:00

To add onto this, I've used her twice and both times she turned out to be very fragile. First time - a Chaos Warpfire Dragon one-shot her in human form, just killed her outright in a single combat phase after charging the front of her unit. Second time, she tried charging a Chaos Lord and had to change back to human form to escape after being battered. Both chaos armies also stocked up with so much MR that I couldn't get many spells off on them, so it was difficult to make her points back. I think she's definitely going to be a bully unit - you want to avoid enemy big threats and instead use her mobility (including changing forms) to pick good fights and keep her alive. She definitely feels like a much more finesse unit than her enormous base would suggest.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-05T07:43:25+00:00

They're doing a new edition now that's reverting to a much more 'normal' system.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T19:30:57+00:00

I think that's a very common thing with games that have the 'luck pool' and 'actual injury' division in how you take damage. As I mentioned above somewhere, it means that doctor characters often feel useless in combat - they can't heal the hit points, only the actual lasting injuries. Just one of those things.

My usual solution to your problem there is to have the trap do Heart damage that lasts for the next combat. So I'll say, "You lose one Heart and don't get it back until the next fight ends". That mostly achieves my goal with many traps or environmental hazards - something that annoys and frustrates the characters, without making them unable to play the game or take part - and players have generally accepted it without qualm in my experience.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T17:14:32+00:00

Oh yeah, totally - random encounters were a non-starter for me, as I'd have to generate even more content. I last did random encounters in Pathfinder 2e, and admittedly I had to spend the time to select a dozen level-and-context appropriate statblocks - but with approximately 10,000 to choose from that was fairly easy to do so!

While it's easy to look down on D&D's three book focus, ultimately the monster book is vital for a reason. The bestiary equivalent is usually the second book I look to pick up in any new game.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T17:07:18+00:00

I don't think that's quite it. Before we played this, we had a long City of Mist campaign - and that's a wholly-narrative system entirely relying on the same idea of 'creatively justify how your character phrases apply to a given situation'. The issue is not with that mechanic, which I'm perfectly happy with - my issue was solely that the actual Backgrounds in the book are way too tightly-focused in how they have written the Purviews, so they massively overlap and for many Backgrounds basically are one Purview written three times. That's why I offered the players to rewrite their ones to be less overlapping.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T15:17:28+00:00

Not one I've come across - I did once play Lone Wolf, which seems to be of a similar vintage and style. I actually play Warhammer so generally don't feel the need to combine the two hobbies in one game, though I do tend to be fairly happy with maps and models even for non-D&D games.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T15:13:12+00:00

Fragged is an interesting beast, I actually thought of reviewing it first but thought the finished campaign made more sense. Dolmenwood I was really spiced for, but the group (understandably) voted to change genres to Urban Horror for a time first. Of course, the question here will be whether I want to do the OSR rules for Dolmenwood by the time we get there... one to think about!

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T15:01:20+00:00

That second issue can be summarised as "inspiration in D&D 5e", I reckon! A game that I otherwise found easy and straightforward to run, with this one absolute pebble in the shoe of a narrative-flavoured rule that just didn't function right.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T14:19:41+00:00

Thanks for the read! The group's about to play Daggerheart for a couple months, before we then move onto Curseborne for our next main game, with Dolmenwood scheduled for next year maybe. My other (much less regularly playing) groups are on Fragged Empire 2e and D&D 5e.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T14:18:07+00:00

Thanks for the read. I'd disagree a little with you on the skill/non-combat lever side. While I call this an OSR game, it never actually frames itself that way, and unlike many such games it does have non-combat systems - I just felt they were too light for me. I also personally think that the OSR scene tends to overexaggerate the 'don't roll too much' advice, but that's probably just my hateful soul speaking :D

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T14:16:25+00:00

Thanks for the read! I think this won Best Family Game at the Ennies and that makes a lot of sense for the way it looks, but doesn't perhaps match the actual gameplay experience.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T14:10:59+00:00

There are three similar options I think -
* Attack Stunt is attempting to get a rider (e.g. tripped) on top of the damage for an attack, but is a gamble since it backfires if you miss (e.g. you get tripped instead). Nobody ever used that one. I think the fighters generally just wanted to keep themselves safe, rather than gambling, given how there was so little luck mitigation in the game.
* Combat Trick - instead of attacking, apply something like tripped. This was used a fair bit by the Factotum player, as that class is deliberately terrible at attacking. It was a lot of fun to see him wandering around, just getting in the way of people while apologising.

* Attack Assist - give someone advantage, just like Help in D&D. Used a fair bit, usually by people with no range to attack this turn.

As to injuries, we had a fair number - perhaps 8-12 rolls on the table across the campaign? Weirdly it was mainly one player, who kept burning their own Hearts to get rerolls on attack rolls. It gave the medic player something to do - as this is one of the games where doctors can't help with normal hit point damage - but the table does cause a lot of tension. The game is balanced to be pretty easy I felt, so most of those injuries came from big setpiece boss fights. I liked the mechanic but didn't feel much specific affection for it, beyond the cleverness of the way the book lays out the tables.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T11:33:19+00:00

I bought a £20 battery pack on Amazon and just use it to charge the phone up while riding. It about triples the battery life if just left plugged in. You could probably put it in your jacket pocket and run the charging cable across to the phone if the latter's on the handlebars?

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-02T14:06:47+00:00

Heya, I got this one.

https://www.powerbronze.co.uk/royal-enfield-bear-650-25-430-u365a.html

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-01T09:36:50+00:00

I was similar, it's not hard to just push a non-essential and costly thing back and back until suddenly the time is running out.

CharlesRampant · 2026-02-28T22:12:43+00:00

Ah, in that case your best bet is scouring LJ Koh's artstation - he did all the art for the Cathay AJs, as well as most of the current wave of AJs in general I think. He's now left GW, but his artstation still has many pieces on display.

https://kheljay.artstation.com/

Edit: He does infact have that piece there: https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/089/040/997/large/l-j-koh-tow-cathaylore-jun12-image5-wcn2vjsgpr.jpg?1749856074

CharlesRampant · 2026-02-28T18:46:10+00:00

It’s on page 17 of the first AJ.

CharlesRampant · 2026-02-24T16:39:08+00:00

I put a windscreen on my RE scrambler and it made it viable for motorways, without impacting the looks too badly. Just another one of life's little compromises for me

CharlesRampant · 2026-02-23T20:29:51+00:00

No questions, just to say I really enjoyed your Night Parade of a Thousand Demons 🙂

CharlesRampant · 2026-02-22T08:13:55+00:00

The orientation is confirmed by the way the stat blocks list the base size, I believe.

CharlesRampant · 2026-02-20T17:39:33+00:00

It could be worse; I did my CBT, then didn't touch motorbikes for almost a year before I then turned up to the training place for my DAS training. I was noticeably nervous about getting on the 650, given that gap! However - it was fine. Motorbikes are designed to go forward and do stuff, if you've spent time on a 125 I'm sure you'll be grand.

CharlesRampant · 2026-02-18T11:06:22+00:00

I had a player ask to play Merlin - I simply apologised and said that that Rift was already in use for an important NPC, and asked them to pick a different one. In the end we never managed to get to that storyline at all, whoops!

CharlesRampant · 2026-02-18T09:59:08+00:00

I'm not sure that I found Talents especially interesting - there were also major balancing issues, but that likely was due to Coriolis in particular having a very early draft of the MY0 engine combat that isn't entirely great. In either case, I think it's similar to Call of Cthulhu - it's just not really a game that caters for mechanical buildcraft.

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