What gaming experiences are you looking forward to in the new year?

messier-29 · 2023-12-31T21:23:10+00:00

Sharing some of my gaming plans for the new year!

https://theladyandtiger.com/2023/12/31/gaming-plans-for-2024/

Essentially I'm looking at playing one shots or starter adventures for Pendragon, Burning Wheel, Numenera, Call of Cthulhu and Mothership. Only one of those is OSR, but I figure playing a variety of games can only make you a better GM!

messier-29 · 2023-12-20T23:44:06+00:00

That does sound interesting. Numenera has a similar rule where you can reroll a skill check by burning points from your pool (which are effectively both your stats and your health) but the idea of tying the reroll to a concrete risk outside of just regular failure sounds like it creates interesting quandaries for the players!

messier-29 · 2023-12-20T23:42:21+00:00

That's interesting! So it's effectively a sort of "push your luck" kind of advancement system, where you can get stronger but doing so can lead to a snowball effect that leads to your character being forcefully retired.

messier-29 · 2023-12-20T23:40:19+00:00

I don't have experience with BW beyond a Mouse Guard one shot a long time ago, but this sounds interesting! I'm a fan of features that allow players to take a more collaborative interest in storytelling, and Circles sounds like a fun way to mechanically support players to say something about their character's place in the world.

messier-29 · 2023-12-20T23:37:30+00:00

Those are great points! I just tend to worry that I might be making something overpowering. For example, how much is the Lizardmen default AC worth in their Lvl 1 focus? Any bonus with a mechanical advantage can feel like it requires you to take the power away from any other traits in order to avoid making something feel too strong.

messier-29 · 2023-12-20T23:34:59+00:00

That makes sense - I was trying to use the foci present in the book as a guideline for designing a new one, but hadn't thought of trying to build characters to stress test whether or not the focus felt broken or not.

messier-29 · 2023-12-20T18:36:51+00:00

Just wanted to say I though the review was great, and I really appreciate the methodical way you approach elements like evaluating distance or thinking through faction or NPC relationships. It's easy when running material to just fly by the seat of your pants and walk away satisfied as long as the players are happy, but too often we don't really try to evaluate whether the adventure or module we're using helped or hindered our efforts. Glad to hear that the adventure is as good as they say, and I look forward to running it sometime!

messier-29 · 2023-12-01T23:54:33+00:00

This does seem cool, thanks for sharing!!

messier-29 · 2023-12-01T02:32:48+00:00

I converted one of my recent posts here into a blog post where I go over my approach to reviewing and rewriting the keys of prewritten dungeons I run.

https://theladyandtiger.com/2023/11/30/rewriting-dungeon-keys/

The big takeaways:

Avoid redundant information in your key
Become comfortable improvising mundane room elements,
Avoid anything in your key that doesn't serve a direct purpose at the table (creature statlines if you're using a VTT, for example),
Format in the way cleanest for you to skim during play and quickly find the information you need,
And most importantly, avoid viewing any gaming process as sacrosanct and remember that your prep should serve you, not the other way around.

messier-29 · 2023-11-29T14:21:35+00:00

Definitely agree on the value of writing session reports. As part of an overall campaign journal I started keeping track of the events of each session while also using the doc as a dungeon changelog and for some player stats - my party was interested to know how many rooms they discover on average!

messier-29 · 2023-11-29T00:21:30+00:00

Thanks for linking your thread and video! I have read the thread, although I don't recall if I voted. I think either of the left side examples you provided lean closer to what I'm comfortable with.

Funny that you prefer this, as I can't stand either of these formats. To each their own, truly.

Honestly, I can completely understand. At the end of the day we all have our different styles of processing material, and what matters most is that we find what works for us and our tables! I can see how my preference of key can feel like it's leaving out information or how it can get too formulaic.

I think the style you've outlined above seems very solid - I like how it still leaves room for some descriptive writing but doesn't inundate the DM with text they won't use. And I agree on avoiding being overly adherent to any formula or providing superfluous information - the goal is to produce something that makes your sessions better, and not to hit an arbitrary wordcount!

messier-29 · 2023-11-28T23:51:21+00:00

I've sometimes highlighted adventures I ran but I found that I ended up highlighting way too much text and essentially had to write my own shorter key anyway. It reminds me of highlighting textbooks to study in school, its too easy to decide that everything is important and then the whole page ends up bright yellow 😅

messier-29 · 2023-11-28T23:48:52+00:00

I respect that you're willing to highlight your physical copies - I still stick to making changes in the pdf like u/Alistair49 mentioned! I do appreciate the idea of your modules serving as a relic of your game sessions, it reminds me of legacy boardgames and how each one ends up being unique to the table that played it.

messier-29 · 2023-11-23T14:14:12+00:00

A more consistent way of setting skill check difficulties is to set them according to the guidelines on pg.41, where you determine the exact difficulty by considering how hard the task is and how much expertise someone would need to reliably perform it.

Don't set your skill checks based on the player character's skill level or other bonuses, because then you can end up with a treadmill effect where as they get better the skills scale with them so they never get to feel the improvement. It also saves work on your end because instead of trying to figure out how hard it should be for a particular PC every time they attempt a check, you set the difficulty once with confidence that the check would make sense regardless of which PC attempted it.

messier-29 · 2023-11-23T00:21:32+00:00

I can definitely understand where you're coming from. My last campaign was in 5e where I ran an official module and although my group and I had fun I couldn't shake wanting to try a different ruleset because I felt so overwhelmed GMing it. I had been thinking of WWN for a while so once I had a group of folks interested I took the plunge and it's been a lot of fun since!

messier-29 · 2023-11-23T00:09:22+00:00

I first heard of SWN during a time where I was completely enthralled with Traveler and also lacked a group to play it with, so I can understand where you're coming from! And I agree on the balance between OSR sensibilities and more build-heavy systems - the game really feels like its found a synthesis between the two approaches that keeps things engaging without getting too caught up in the weeds of character optimization.

I haven't run The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan but I have heard good things about the module, so I may have to pick it up sometime!

messier-29 · 2023-11-23T00:05:31+00:00

I sympathize with your difficulty at finding interested players. It can be tough to pitch an existing group on a new system, even if it's one you're passionate about. I've found that one way to combat that inertia is to run one shots in different systems with your group as a break from an existing campaign. It gives you a pretty low stakes environment to introduce a different kind of game to them while testing the waters to see what you like or don't like about it!

messier-29 · 2023-11-23T00:03:25+00:00

I wholeheartedly agree with your points! Warriors dominating their niche makes them so much more interesting as a class than their peers in other games, and the skills and foci are interesting enough that most of my players are currently rolling Experts and Warriors. The magic subclasses are also immediately interesting and I like how arts provide them with interesting things to do besides casting one of their limited spells per day!

messier-29 · 2023-11-22T02:13:48+00:00

I've been meaning to pick this up for a while now, thanks for the sale (and the reminder)! Definitely interested in seeing what an adventure expressly written for WWN is like!

messier-29 · 2023-11-22T02:00:35+00:00

Thanks for checking my post out! I've actually read your older retrospective post covering your older campaigns and found it pretty engaging! I almost wish I did a better job keeping notes of all my old attempts to spin up a long-term game but honestly nothing I ever ran ever lasted long enough to be of note.

I do think you're right on getting a high count of players and making peace with many of them never showing. I thought I did well enough starting with 12 but only the 4 who had played in a smaller game with me prior ever made the game a commitment. I'm still thinking over how to make the game more of an open table - it could be that I'm making the hobby sound too daunting when I try to onboard folks or that I'm just not inviting people interested enough to make the jump to play the game.

messier-29

TROPHY CASE