Lazy post today; here are some recent gaming treasures that came in the mail. I had been holding out to get a copy of Weird Adventures at Gencon, but Brendan offered one during the LOTFP campaign, and I'm delighted to finally get a chance to read it - it looks fantastic. Thanks Brendan!
I loved the Red Tide Setting and its use of tags to quickly generate locations, so I was pretty interested to see Sine Nomine adapt Stars Without Number (and the tag system), for a grittier post-apocalyptic setting - Other Dust. That one just came in, after RPG Now had it on sale a week or so ago.
The DCC RPG hype was too much, and the thought of having to wait until next year when the book is reprinted convinced me to help them clear out the warehouse sooner. I don't know how it would play in The Black City, but I'm certainly open to checking it out. My concern is the heavy use of tables during play might slow the game too much, so a playtest is warranted. I have high hopes!
These were my top 3 wish list books before Gencon, so that leaves me looking a little further down the list for items to seek out while I'm in Indy. Anyone familiar with An Echo Resounding, the mass-combat and domain book for Red Tide? I'm hoping to leaf through a copy at the OSR booth and make a call on it. I may also look for the Mongoose hard cover of Stars Without Number, if they have any. My recent interest in feudal Japan could have me seeking for an old print copy of Bushido, but its probably easier just to get the PDF - I don't know even know if vendors bring out-of-print books. I didn't spend too much time in the dealer's room last time. (Edit: Apparently FGU is still selling it new, too!). I'll be picking up a copy of Night's Black Agents over by the Pelgrane booth, and seeing what kind of Trail of Cthulhu goodies they have that I'm missing.
I've had a little bit of experience with "An Echo, Resounding". I used a combination of that, Red Tide, and to be truthful, your own posts on sandbox design to create my current campaign setting. I haven't used the mass combat rules much yet, but I found it very useful, along with the tag system, for giving some basic characteristics to the place names on the map. Part of the idea is that, in the background of the player's adventures at low levels, there's constant politicking, battling, building and whatnot going on. The PCs may never run into it, but when they do, it gives them a real sense of the world outside the dungeon. So in one domain turn, I had the city of Bittersedge spend a bunch of money building a chain that could be raised to protect their harbor. Not the most exciting event in the world, but when the characters sailed out of their, they saw workers out on the edge of the bay building towers. When they were hiring guards from the town of Weaverham, those guards came with horses and bows, because I had already set up that town with a unit of mounted archers. At worst, "An Echo" gives you some jumping off points for worldbuilding. At best, you get a whole new dimension of play- solo, or with the participation of PCs, that they can become involved in organically. I highly recommend it.
ReplyDeleteAlas, I didn't have time to prep things for the OSR booth this year, so Sine Nomine stuff won't be turning up there. And Mongoose has run out of SWN hardcovers, so those might not be had. But I'm working on getting a fresh typo-scrubbed edition up on DTRPG around the end of the month, in both the Mongoose cover and the free edition's starfield cover, since some folks have expressed a preference in that regard.
ReplyDeleteNo trace of Anomalous Subsurface Environment 2, no Sine Nomine at the OSR booth; why am I even bothering to go to Gencon? I'll have to drown my disappointment in copious games of Heroclix with some of the kiddos going along with us. Hulk smash.
ReplyDeleteThe tables don't really slow DCC RPG down. Bookmark the crit tables for both PCs and monsters and make sure your players note which pages their spells are on for quick reference. These are literally the only times a book is opened in my games, and I've been running this game 2 times a week since it was released.
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