For what feels like a year now, I’ve been working my way through Dragon’s Dogma. I tend to play in bursts, usually doing nothing else for a weekend or for a few week nights in a row, and then moving on to somehting else for a while. Most of the time, I wind up getting distracted by a new game that feels more urgent than the relatively ancient Dragon’s Dogma which doesn’t even have a release year for its sequel. One time, I got frustrated with a bug and losing three quarters of an hour of inventory management, so I set it aside long enough that I forgot what had caused the bug in the first place and promptly ran into it again when I went back. I’d saved more recently, this time, so it was easier to fix the problem, but it did keep me from diving too deeply into the game that round. The past couple weeks, though, as I try to save some of my recently acquired Switch games for my impending trip, I’ve focused more of my time on Dragon’s Dogma and discovered that the real reason I stop playing most days is because it takes so damn long to get anywhere.
Continue readingFantasy
Genre and Storytelling as I Move Out of My Comfort Zone
As I look at running new types of Tabletop Roleplaying games, I am confronted by the fact that most of my creative storytelling work and experience is fairly comfined to the Fantasy genre. I’ve written, read, and played fairly extensively in it and all it’s offshoots, so I feel most comfortable working within that context. I’ve also dabbled in Science Fiction as well, as you can see in some of the writing I’ve posted here (most notably, of course, my Infrared Isolation series). I tend more toward near-future in my sci-fi reading and distant-future in my sci-fi gaming, but I feel like I’ve explored enough to work in the space in a very general sense. When you drill down into the specifics, though, I tend to feel a lot less comfortable and I’m being forced to confront that discomfort pretty broadly these days now that almost half the games I’m advocating to my players are Mech games.
Continue readingMy Most Expensive Vacation Fantasy
Around this time last year, I was fantasizing about taking a trip somewhere. About entirely escaping from my day-to-day life and just going off to do any number of things. Maybe sit in a hottub in a remote cabin in some snowy woodlands somewhere. Maybe spend a night or two in a luxurious hotel room with a large bathtub so that I could finally immerse my entire frame in the water. Maybe just going someplace quiet and secluded so that I could finally just exist in silent peace for a while. Any of those, and more, would have been such wonderful experiences, but I just couldn’t get the money and the time together. Eventually, I did go on a summer trip with two of my siblings and two of our friends which ticked some of those boxes. It was nice to get away for a while and I hope to do something similar again soon. Probably not this year, what with the busy calendar I’ve got through the end of May, but someday.
Continue readingWildermyth Is Great In Single AND Multiplayer
I’ve been steadily working my way through Wildermyth during my vacation. I meant to play a bunch of other games during my winter vacation time, but I wound up getting sucked back into Wildermyth thanks to a combination of my Wednesday night gaming evening with a friend and watching the VODs of a collection of the Friends at the Table crew playing through one of the stories (something they started doing as one of the donation goals from their charity stream back in July). I don’t regret it, aside from how much I’ve wrecked my sleep schedule by “one more task before I stop for the night”-ing my way to four in the morning, because it’s a lot of fun to grind my way through mechanically and narratively. The battles are satisfying, the random events are interesting, and the storytelling is always fun to read through. It really is just a great game to sink my time into.
Continue readingThe Sword And The Alchemist
Tej slipped silently through square, disappearing into moonshadows as she neared the park. Even the guards at the entrance didn’t see her, despite their torches.
Once inside, she moved swiftly, heading for the column of moonlight over the plinth. As she neared, she saw the familiar glow of the blade magnifying all the light that struck it.
She took a moment to observe the churned mud surrounding the plinth. So many tried to free the sword and earn the Xendran crown. Who wouldn’t be tempted by that much power?
Certain she was alone, Tej slipped into the moonlight and laid a hand on the pommel. The blade began to brighten and she leapt away. “Shit.”
Tej threw her cloak over the blade, leaving the hilt uncovered. After a deep breath, she pulled it free and set it on the ground. She could see the blue and gold glow pressing against her cloak, so she worked quickly. It had taken weeks to convince people it had been struck by divine lightning after the first time.
She poured both her flasks into the plinth and stirred the liquid with a stick until it began to stiffen. Careful not to toss aside the stick, she grabbed the sword from the ground and plunged it back into the plinth. The light beneath sputtered and disappeared as she tore free her cloak’s hem to wipe the adhesive from the plinth and wrap up the stick.
As she snuck away, she checked the sky. By the time the sun rose, the sword would be sealed in the stone again. This recipe should buy her enough time to finish negotiating with the Aluskan Empire. Better to sell the crown and disappear with the money than be assassinated like the last four fools to pull the sword free.
Adaptation Versus Adoption Across TTRPG Genres
I had the idea for a superhero themed D&D game. The idea originated in an idea on how I could adapt the Monk class and the various subclasses, but many of the various other classes and abilities could be represented as super powers if you give them the right flavor. I’ve been stewing over it in my mind for a while, mostly just as a fun thing to think about when I’m not doing anything else, but I haven’t done any concrete work to develop the idea beyond the conceptual stage. See, as someone who is tangential to many circles on Twitter, I usually get a pretty good grasp of the drama that has taken center-stage at any given moment without getting embroiled in it myself. One of the big, long-running pieces of drama is that games other than D&D exist but the popularity of D&D tends to eclipse them in such a way that, when people want to play non-fantasy games, they tend to work on adapting D&D rather than finding a game that was explicitly made for the type of genre they want to play.
Continue readingLove and War
Bennel slumped down at the table with a sigh of relief. As his pack clattered to the floor and his cloak settled down around his shoulders, he put his head down and heaved another sigh against the surface of the table.
Tem placed one of the drinks they carried in front of the young warrior priest and clapped him on the shoulder with their now empty hand. “Rest, young one. Rest, eat, and drink! You have earned a taste of life’s pleasures after a battle such as that.”
Bennel winced as Tem’s hand slapped against the still-healing hole in his shoulder. “Careful, you rock monster. Magic might patch up wounds quickly but they still take a long time to fully heal.”
Continue readingThe Horror Game Is Off To a Great Start!
After approximately a month and a half, I got to return to my main weekly D&D campaign and run the next session (the first full session) in the extra-universal domain I built way back in 2020 when I was bored due to only working alternate weeks. I set up a whole mystery thing I was going to unveil for a different campaign since one of my core players loved mysteries, but she wound up withdrawing from the campaign because only doing stuff online became too much for her, so I recycled it into a different D&D campaign. Now, one kidnapping and a side character later, my players have fully immersed themselves in a world of betentacled eyeball sunrises, screams instead of clock chimes to mark passing hours, and a massive mystery to solve before the constant wear of terror and nothingness grinds down their very souls.
Continue readingSome More Pandemic Reflections For You, On This Second Winter Holiday Season
There are few things as dreadful in modern life as going to the grocery store during peak shopping hours. As someone who has taken great efforts to practice safety in this pandemic life we’re all living, I have done my best to ensure that I will not be crowded or around too many people when I must leave the house. As rules and prohibitions have loosened despite the resurgence of illness thanks to the Omnicron variant, I have begun feeling even more anxious about meeting the demands my life as a responsible adult are making of me. Especially now, amidst the holidays and the last-minute shoppers who seem determined to ignore all sense and precaution as they valiantly venture forth to acquire whatever last minute necessities they overlooked.
Continue readingDungeon Master Chris’ Complex Custom Content
One of my strengths as a DM is my ability to create customized, interesting content. I normally wouldn’t assert this because it includes a value judgment and is based on preferences, but part of the nature of customized content is adapting things to fit the interests of the people involved. It can be incredibly exhausting to do when the various players have very different interests (shoutout to my lovely but incredibly interest-diverse D&D group that meets no more than once every other week), but it is incredibly satisfying when it works out.
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