The Psychopomp, or My Take on Fall of Magic

We finally managed to play Fall of Magic with the Blog crew. We did have an outside ringer to play this with four players.

What is Fall of Magic? Its actually an interesting concept. The main draw is the scroll, which depicts a map, or more like an itinerary. The idea is that you start from a certain point and you unroll the scroll as you move forwards, thus revealing new places and more information. The plot hook is that there’s a magus, who is on his way to the well of magic, because magic is failing (as per the name). The players represent the maguses entourage. Its a journey, and in fiction journey’s represent personal growth, so in my mind that should be represented in some way, although I chose to take a different route.

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Season of the Witch, Part 5

It is quite remarkable how a few random words can make a big difference. I though I was having great time yesterday while playing Eldritch Sigils but once we were leaving Mikko‘s place after the game one of the players said something that not only made my day but also made me think (again) about how and why we play. It wasn’t a big thing at all – he just said: “I didn’t remember to mark down my exp.”

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Season of the Witch, Part 4

session4bThough it seems we have more than enough of timing issues with this campaign we are managed to have an awesome fourth session yesterday. And even though we have been using Eldritch Sigils for a few years for the campaign it seems we can still find minor details that need correcting.

It seems like ages ago when I was GMing ANKH to my friends after school and just had to tweak the rules of the game to suit my taste. It might have been twenty years ago but I’m still doing it. And for the life of me I cannot see the reason why?

Why cannot I be satisfied with the rules as written?

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Underdark Without Nightvision #5

spoilerSpoiler Warning! Underdark Without Nightvision is a based on my experiences on playing Out of the Abyss campaign as a human ranger (deep stalker) and will include a host of spoilers. Thread carefully!

It took us four sessions (and then some) to get into the ages old question in a roleplaying game: Who is our party leader?
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Underdark Without Darkvision #4

Out of the Abyss #4Spoiler Warning! Underdark Without Darkvision is a based on my experiences on playing Out of the Abyss campaign and will include a host of spoilers. Thread carefully!

Thanks WotC for ruining my perfect blogging title. After the third session I reached the 3rd level. I was going to choose hunter for my ranger as an Archtype but Mikko brought to my attention that Wizards had published an Unearthed Arcana that included a new Archtype for rangers – Deep Stalker.

In essence this means that I got darkvision and the whole concept of my character was about to change. I even joked about not choosing this path but while thinking about my character it seemed like to natural way to go.

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Underdark Without Nightvision #3

Spoiler Warning! Underdark Without Darkvision is a based on my experiences on playing Out of the Abyss campaign and will include a host of spoilers. Thread carefully!

After the second session I was not that sure if I liked where things were going. I really do not have a lot of free time for gaming anymore and I usually like to spend it on games that are interesting and entertaining. And lets face it – random encounters are not high on my list of “interesting and entertaining”.

I was a bit hesitant about the third session but Sami (DM) had been telling me that he had been planing the upcoming session and was prepared to enhance the story aspects of the game. And since the undertone of Out of the Abyss is quite excellent I (luckily) came to my senses and took part to this third session.

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Underdark Without Darkvision #1

Spoiler Warning! Underdark Without Darkvision is a based on my experiences on playing Out of the Abyss campaign and will include a host of spoilers. Thread carefully!

D_D5E-RageOfDemons-OutOfTheAbyss_1024x1024This week we started yet another campaign and in this one I get to take the seat of a player for a change. The game in question will be the Out of the Abyss campaign for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition.

Sami will be the DM for the campaign (he ran the famous Duck Tales game as well as the Sailor at the Starless Sea last year). He introduced this campaign to me as a “horror game set into the Underdark” and I was immediately sold. We are trying to play this biweekly and hopefully get to finish this (not a given fact considering our past success with campaigns…).

In this series “Underdark Without Darkvision” I will discuss the game as it progresses. I will be playing a human ranger without darkvision (hence the name).

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Starting “The Season of the Witch”

As roleplaying games go our “Sins of our Fathers” campaign is the longest I have ever participated in. Last Tuesday we started “the sixth season” and this time the action takes place in colonial America right after the raid on Joseph Curwen’s farm in 1772. As with the previous seasons we will use the refined version of my Eldritch Sigils game system that relies heavily on the AWengine.

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[Door of Shadows] Timey Wimey Off-Road

11011000_1017491551614136_8276613320657869187_nAs discussed earlier I have granted the players a lot of narrative power in our current the Door of Shadows-campaign. One of the more surprising twists that I certainly wasn’t prepared for was that the characters decided to take part on an expedition to Egypt.

Though this post will be mostly about describing the events of an actual gaming session(s) it includes a couple of (more) interesting points about GMing – even if you are not into reading about other peoples sessions. I must also add that this post is a bit lengthy.

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[Door of Shadows] Creating the Campaign Setup

The Pull

Randomizing the characters

We started a new campaign at the beginning of the year (as discussed in my previous post).

This campaign is linked to the Wayward Sons-campaign I ran last year though it takes place 40 years earlier. And even though I jump started this “discussion” about the campaign with the experiments I have had with a Mythos Tome I decided that our first session also deserves to shared.

As first sessions go it wasn’t an actual playing session in a traditional sense but more like a conversation of what we were going to play. Vincent Baker‘s Apocalypse World advices you to do something similar but we took it a bit further.

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