The Luminous Scroll

Today, we recorded our second episode of RPG Test Drive. I ran Mythic Bastionland as a one-shot, essentially for two hours of play-time, using Chris McDowall's Speed Shot approach. I'm thrilled to be part of this project, and working with a highly talented group of roleplayers and GMs. The group went in largely cold and had established their characters within the first fifteen minutes. I can't wait to be able to share the episode when we release it!

I had a fantastic time at KublaCon Prime this year.

Nostalgia was strong when playing Space Hulk, still one of my favorite games in a narrow category. I managed to make one extremely poor move in the second game we played, which totally collapsed my position within two turns. This game is brutally unforgiving of mistakes, especially those made by the Space Marine player. An absolute classic that I hope to see back in print someday.

On a total impulse I ran a 4-hour popup game of Mothership's The Haunting of Ypsilon 14, and I have to say I'm sold on its tri-fold format. Just enough information to allow me to run the game almost totally cold, without being too cluttered to scan in the moment. I could easily run this as an eight hour session with more (OK, any) forethought and prep. The first piece of advice I have for anyone running this for the first time is to make a plan for where all the workers are when the PCs arrive. Think in shifts. The Team Leader Sonya doesn't have a written pitch for the PCs, and I think she makes for a weak patron anyway. Much better to have an NPC disappear while the PCs are unloading their delivery and getting sign-offs.

My third run of Within the Charnel of Dreams was a solid success, at least by my estimation. Running Ypsilon 14 the night before left me confidently fluent in the rules, and previous tweaks had streamlined the game substantially. Without spoilers, all three groups I've run this for have executed mostly similar plans to survive the worsening situation in the prison complex. Unlike in prior runs, this group really didn't rage against the dying of the light, instead roleplaying their descent into self-serving compliance with storytelling finesse. The grotesque additions I made to the madhouse that is the berthed freighter really delivered, as this group avoided many other parts of the complex where other groups had discovered meaningful information. The group was gracious enough to give me some useful suggestions for further tuning. I'm not sure I'll run it again at a con next year, but I will aim to publish the scenario... maybe in that neat tri-fold format if I can make it work.

As a total palette cleanser from the gnawing death-spiral horror of my game, I dove headlong into a DCC After Dark session – Blood for the Serpent King to be exact. The whole group knew exactly why they were there, and our Judge delivered all the gonzo, pulpy old-school goodness we could want: from Ziggurats, belligerent Serpent-Men and larceny-gone-wrong related consequences. I am seriously contemplating running Crypt of the Devil Lich with Jon Wilson's crew next year.

Over the last few years, my goal at tabletop cons has been to try at least one new thing each time. I mostly failed this year, but last year that one new thing was the scavenge and skirmish miniatures game Zona Alfa. I met Tim dePertuis last year, who introduced me to not only the game but the inspirational source material: the novel Roadside Picnic and Andrei Tarkovsky's mesmerizing adaptation – Stalker (which is now one of my absolute favorite movies of all time). This year I had the privilege to play again at Tim's stunning Zona Alfa table, complete with buildings glowing from the inside with insidious witches brew, and the forgotten corpses of unlucky flatniks. My three-man crew managed to mostly avoid the lure of vodka caches and racked up a respectful score in loot from anomalies and other mission objectives. My fellow players were new to the game, and I think we all shared in the enjoyment of gamers discovering something new and awesome together.

My good friend Matt Steele was running multiple seminars over the weekend on how to GM. I stopped by his round-table discussion on DM 101. We discussed problems ranging from dealing with the needs of younger players around emotionally sensitive subjects like character death, setting up your first group, and how to move beyond rote mechanical cycles of listening at doors, checking for traps, etc., to breathe atmosphere and energy in basic dungeoneering games. I'm somewhat inspired to run a seminar on how to describe action in RPGs to build drama and player-engagement, while relaying the most important information at the right time.

All-in-all it was a good con for me. I was able to connect with friends and reconnect with most of my pre-pandemic DCC group from Fremont Game Kastle for some much needed reunion time. The absence in our party is a void that can never be filled.

This coming weekend, I'm excited to be running Mythic Bastionland for a recorded playtest project I'm tackling with good friends, the brainchild of the aforementioned Matt Steele. More on that once we start to release our videos.

As an extra bonus to close out the weekend, I was able to watch the newly released trailer for the next Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries DLC – Chaos Reign. PGI really pulled off a coup here. I'll have a lot more to say about this in a future post. Information is ammunition.

I'll be running a Mothership 1e game called Within the Charnel of Dreams at Kublacon Prime 2026. Rules-light Mothership mechanically leans into roll-your-own sci-fi horror themes with deadly combat that encourages flight over fight, and a well-wrought panic mechanism that pushes the PCs further down the death-spiral through a cascade of poor life choices – if you like that sort of thing. My game draws on influences from the cassette-futurism of Outland, remixed with a little of Michael Mann's Tangerine Dream scored and smoke-machine drenched horror-war-flick The Keep. Without giving away too much, there's some in-your-face H.R. Giger inspired aesthetics if (or rather when) things go suitably wrong.

I debuted this game to friends at the Dead of Winter Horror Invitational last December, and also ran it at Dundracon earlier this year for a great group that really leaned into the genre. I intend to publish this scenario (and several other convention one-shots I've run over the years) under a Creative Commons license on this site in the future.

Stop by and say hello if you're at Kubla.