Gumshoe for sure, but specifically it’s been The Yellow King RPG. I’ve run most of the published material and even started writing my scenario for the Paris setting.
Visible Forms
But, every Friday is now Cassilda’s Song, our playtesters continued from the Paris setting, completing the Wars and are about to start Aftermath.
That’s easy, though I could have waited until tomorrow afternoon to make it Bees of the Invisible, but I’ll go with Liminal by Paul Mitchener. A Manchester-themed adventure called The Edge of Reality, with the edge being Alderley Edge, a renowned UFO spot and the site of many an ancient myth.
Liminal by Paul Mitchener
The writer and GM is Jonathan; he leaned heavily on his local knowledge, seamlessly blending it with The Hidden, the Liminal dimensions that contain fae, Werewolves, vampires and ghosts.
I’m doing Autocratik’s RPGaDay 2024, see the link.
Today the question is First RPG Brought this year?.
Luckily Drive Thru RPG is my friend and I found out it’s The Dying Earth by Pelgrane Press. It may have been the first physical game I brought by Pelgrane, possibly via eBay as I didn’t have the pdf, until now.
It’s been oodles of hard work but we are less than a week away from the start of Pelicon 2024!
Pelicon 2024
Pelicon 2024 is a “replacement” for Gen Con Online, focusing on all the offerings from Pelgrane Press and a few more associated games.
One of the many helpers to get us to this point, suggested I should do a podcast about the journey, well, maybe for a later date, in the meantime here are a few statistics - 42 games, 25 GMs, 182 registered players, and over 100 players.
After Session One of our CoriolisMercy of the Icons campaign, I am now into double figures when it comes to Darkness Points. So what? And what are Darkness Points anyway (also known as DP)?
The Darkness Between the Stars
So in Coriolis the GM “earns” DP as the players push their rolls by praying to the Icons, there are other ways, but this is primarily how the GM gets them. The GM then uses this meta currency to mess with the players; triggering events, powering NPC special abilities, jamming their guns, etc.
In which we finish off the Coriolis Great Dark quickstart and do a quick ponder on what was good, bad and ugly.
Moon Ruin
We’d left the team halfway down the Delve, trying to balance Action versus Supply. This is a common theme as we’d gone through the scenario, Player: Let’s do X GM: That’s fine, but it will cost you n supply. It’s feeling very algebraic and transactional at times.
A fun first session running through the Quickstart adventure, we managed to get through the surface interactions and down into the delve - on the whole, it worked well mechanically, although it's easy to get into a slightly repetitive mechanical mode for the Delving, but probably needs more practice to make this a bit more natural and pull other players into the action and interaction.
The Gas Giant Moubarra
There is quite a lot to track and manage in terms of Blight Areas, Shifts, Supply, Hope, Heart, Health and Gear so very lucky to have the excellent FoundryVTT module handling all this from Miguel, see here. I can see this working well at the table, for example, the GM slowly removes your pile of supply tokens one-by-one as you get deeper into the cave system.
This UK TTRPG convention is the brainchild of Simon Barns, usually he's found dabbling with Dragon Warriors, but he's broadened he's oveure to take on a range of "Old School games.
Dahn Sarf 13th July
None of this debate on the definition of OSR, if Simon Says, then it is. Though from the lineup it definitely looks like a homage to the past. Some fantastic classic systems and scenarios.
Our Travelers left Littleville, continuing their Journey to the next Stop. Bruised, distraught, but feeling a spark of Hope, that light in the dark that keeps them moving forward...
Highways and by ways
So ends the first play through of The Electric State. An alpha pdf, so a fair few sections are missing and those that have been delivered are subject to change.
Four on a road trip. Four in a car. Four feeling tension. But four share a destination. One in the rear dreaming of a world without Neuronics, one behind the wheel who has to keep moving, one next to him but a hundred miles away - their gears softly grind and one in the middle grinding their teeth, a glance over her shoulder, "Is it safe?".
On the rear of the roadmaster
The car enters town, the sun casting vibrant red light over the Sierra Nevada, streetlights flicker, then blaze, then go out.
Here we are on to the final games and some thoughts on how it went and what's next.
So, to Fear Itself Mr. Hector "Fiasco" Trelane tried to gather as many victims as he could to try this sometimes ignored, but brilliant iteration of Gumshoe. He'd picked out the classic scenario Ocean in the Forest from the 1st edition of Fear ItselfFear Itself
Players were gamers themselves, attending a LARP camp where there was a competition for a sizeable prize. But the enthusiasm started to boil over into naked aggression, the players showed ingenuity and won a few team games, before the whispers began and the horror descended!
We come to the final games and start with a cracker, Timewatch from Paul Baldowski, a scenario called Sink or Swim. Not only did Paul take us back 300 years and then another few billion, but he also provided us with memorable PCs Ambrose Bierce, Theo Burr, and Louis Le Prince plus, the debatable star of the show Kwasi Kwarteng. Paul graciously made these available for free see here.
Timewatch into the past!
A complex plot across just a few scenes and a few NPCs shows how much you can fit into a Timewatch one-shot! Much thanks to Paul for taking time out of a busy schedule to run this game, do check out his brand new game SANCTION, universal rules for challenge-driven games, like The Dee Sanction.
Moving on to The Fall of Delta Green and Mr Fabio, a Raspy Raven regular GM pulled out all the accents for his 1960s investigation into a hippie cult. The scenario is On a Bank by Moonlight. You can still get this free scenario, released as part of RPG Day in 2018.
On a Bank by Moonlight
It's hard to talk through this without giving away major spoilers, but it seems the group dived into the initial investigation with aplomb. Then things started to fall apart, as the authorities muscled in on the action and everything went to hell. Luckily no one was badly injured and apart from a major ear-bashing from their superiors, the group could class this as a marginal success. Much kudos to Fabio for his North American drawl in portraying the hippies at the commune.
GrogLove/Law comes around quicker than you think, but is now a UK con that is a regular for me, usually running twice a year in Feb and Oct, it's the hard work and inspiration of Jim Jim, DaveP and Alex. It's also a tribute to them that this small London con is always so full of variety and enthusiasm as well as being brilliantly organised AND on my doorstep.
For the love of Grog!
I'd left home in plenty of time, aiming to get to The Marquis Cornwallis for 10am. Unfortunately, a distraction looking for the latest 2000AD and Doctor Who Collection at a rammed Euston (nerd credentials confirmed!) and then a Discord PbtA point of order got me distracted, so I arrived around 10.15, sat at the wrong table like someone's discombobulated grandpa, before being gently led to my gaming table and Game 1...
So you want to have some fun? Break out the big guns
Here's a quick run-through of how I've put together my Esoterrorists scenario for a season of Gumshoe games on my discord. If it sounds ga-ga or fairly tongue-in-cheek, it's because it is. This is how a right-brained person and a specific individual i.e. me, put this together. I do not recommend this method for sensible scenario design. I've put my other scenarios together in a much more logical and structured fashion, but this is the way this one came out.
Here we go, the final part of my plans/manifesto for 2024, this time we are looking at my Discord, The Raspy Raven, and the wonderful GMs and Players on it. In particular, we have a few community projects and plans for more in 2024.
Now we come on to what I want to play in 2024, this is a tough one, I get more enjoyment out of running games, but I still have fun playing and it also means I'm learning how to be a better GM.
But I don't have much time to devote to RPGs, probably less so in 2024, so I need to choose wisely...
Here we go for a Raspy Raven and jwmuk proposal of games to write, run and play, inspired in no small part by Neil oldscouserrping who did a brilliant rundown of his 2023 plans and how they turned out... plus Paul Mitchener'sMitchfesto, a fantastic thread of his RPG ideas, ideals, principles, likes and thoughts. Both are well worth your time.
What will the dice say in 2024?
So I've decided to be a bit more specific and braver in setting out what I want to achieve myself in 2024 and I've split it into games I want to run, games I want to play in and community events on The Raspy Raven. Let's see this time next year, how it all turns out. So, for part one...
