What are you running in Dark Sun? Modules or something else?
Always wanted to try dark sun but haven’t gotten around to it. Saw a forbidden lands hack of it a couple of years back that seemed cool.
Official 2e modules plus some fan-made or magazine-published stuff.
From what we have already played, you’ll be better off doing your own material running sandbox-style using the setting books and supplements, rather than running published modules (most of them are quite sub-par and lean heavily on the railroad side, sadly).
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started working on an open table megadungeon campaign in Stonehell. Not the most exciting dungeon, but it’s ready to play and easy to use, so ultimately should be a fine time :^)
probably launching in the next two weeks
On session 2 of SILENT TITANS. and whoa boy. WHOA BOY. my head hurts.
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Damn, I admire your ambition. How un-runnable is it so far? I love the vibe of it but heard it’s kind of a mess
it is runnable. with heavy, heavy prep. including reading up on various online guides, as well finding blog posts from Patrick Stewart that include information that never made it into the final version that is pretty critical to running it.
I would say, once our get over the complete lack of proper presentation/organization/editing, there are some very compelling locations with very compelling situations. everything comes together very dynamically. at its core, its quality stuff. my only fear is that there isn’t much grounding the players. its anti-cozy. they might tire of it before it runs its course.
im running an open table, play by post game of longshot city, but we’re making Rocket City as we play. 5 players, we run duet to the full team, 2 are regular posters, the other 3 have played a few times. its fun though. i like the troika system, and i think it works really well with superheroes. its rocket tag but the ko table really lowers the stakes, which i like.
After a long season of schedule instability and general life craziness, I am putting a one-shot of Public Access on the calendar. I’m a little nervous because I haven’t run a game in so long, but I am excited!
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A few weeks ago I started running Cairn 2e for a couple of my old DnD 5e players. Out of my old 5e group, these were the two who were the least interested in combat, and the most likely to interact with the secondary world instead of game mechanics, so they took to OSR play like ducks to water! I ran The Temple of the Blood Moth, starting them in medias res as kidnapped villagers in the basement dungeon. My players avoided going deeper into the further levels of the dungeon with all the gross cool moth monsters, but snuck their way to the above ground levels. They planned carefully (and got pretty lucky with their encounter rolls) and ended up ambushing the big bad in his bedchambers. In classic D&D fashion they used arson to solve their problems, lantern molotoving the cult leader vampire-wizard in his coffin before ganging up on him. We’re supposed to play again next weekend, so we’ll see if they decide to go deeper into the dungeon or flee. If they flee, then I think the rest of moth cult will make a great reoccurring villain faction.
And last night I ran Mausritter for my little cousins ( two boys two girls, ages 9-15). I ran Amanda Lee Franck’s excellent adventure “The Wizard of Arms and Armour” from The Estate box set. It was a perfect intro adventure for them. They did some fun role-playing, coming up with justifications to be given a tour of the wizard’s tower then causing distractions to sneak off. They defeated the big bad evil wizard (with a flaming arrow to the butt, classic), freed all the imprisoned mice, and befriended a bat. I was hoping to keep them busy for a couple hours, but we played for closer to five hours and everyone was locked in. Afterwards the two youngest were asking me questions about how to GM, so who knows I might get to be a player one day, haha!
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I am starting a campaign for Leo Hunt‘s The Shrike next month using a modified version (dare I say hacked?) of Grave, a Knave 1e hack by Jason Tocci.
I am very interested in finding out how the big OSR campaign module works out at the table.
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These days, I’m only playing solo games. Mythic Bastionland, Pendragon, The One Ring, Black Sword Hack, Ironforged: Starforged.
I’d love to find geo-local players, but that’s not likely given my rather rural location. So I play the solo games.
I should start doing the solo games to just keep the blood flowing. I did get Ironforged once and will have to dig though my PDFs to find it again.
Of all the systems, Ironforged (Starforged) really shines for solo-play. The oath mechanics and various “clocks” that you track really create the structure for narrative tension.
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I may have that as well.
Dives deeper into the ol’ TTRPG trove…
Last week I finished an 8-session Open Table of Electric Bastionland. It’s interesting, my players were so risk-averse (after one PC died in session 2) that they hardly rolled any saves. Most sessions, the only rolls were my own (usually luck rolls).
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The group I’m in is getting close to completing our campaign of Vampire: The Masquerade. Unfortunately, scheduling issues are getting in the way of the finale, but I hope that we’ll stick the landing.
Meanwhile, we’ve talked about our next campaign, which will be in OVA: The Anime Role-Playing Game. While it’s been a long time since I watched anime, I love this group enough that I’ll get some anime watching in for inspiration.
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Your feelings about Bean Barge are similarly felt–as soon as we started Hex-Crawling, all tension disappeared.
As a player in an ongoing Cloud Empress game, I think that the lack of interaction you noticed in the dungeon also expands to the hex crawl. For example–there’s a BIG WAR going on in the eastern half of the map, and as players we didn’t feel any lead up to it until we found ourselves right in the thick of it. Very strange tonally.
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Last 1-2 years;
Forbidden Lands
Dragonbane
Shadow of the Weird Wizard
Enemy Within (using Warlock! as system)
Alien RPG, by Free League
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