Recent Gaming (spring 2025)

Lots of gaming lately. Here's some highlights:

My Amber Diceless Roleplay campaign continues to go strong. It's rolling on 5 years now, roughly twice a month, so we've recently crossed our 100th session with the same characters. Dworkin/Oberon's universe was destroyed, and the action now takes place in Corwin's universe and another universe that Fiona created, plus the occasional scene in the tiny islands of primal matter in the Abyss that were left when the old universe imploded. Those are basically the only place where Brand can exist without the "immune system" of the other universes trying to destroy him.

I just wrapped up my Feng Shui 2nd Edition campaign about a week ago. The players foiled a really major push by the Ascended to conquer 2 of the 3 Junctures they didn't already control. This caused a Critical Shift (the second one of the campaign) and after a truly epic battle we ended with the PCs stepping into a portal to a future they don't know.

For the same group (as played Feng Shui), I'm now prepping a Cyberpunk Red campaign. Scroll down to my last post, from earlier this week, to read about that. 

It was a bit of a toss-up among the group whether we wanted to do Cyberpunk or Pendragon, so in the next few months I'll be reading The Great Pendragon Campaign and the Book of Uther and doing bits and pieces of light GM-prep for that, so that when Cyberpunk wraps up, I'll have that in my pocket and ready to go. But, given that the last two campaigns for this group ran multiple years each, I'm not too worried about getting Pendragon ready in a hurry.

I'm also now playing in an RPG as well. A friend of mine is running Night's Black Agents, aka spies vs vampires. In NBA designs their own vampires and determines whether vampirism is supernatural or superscience or literally infernal demon hell-powers. Our campaign is taking place in the 1980s, so in the two sessions we've played thus far, we've had to sneak across the Berlin Wall three times now. Our characters have rescued a journalist, and the goons who were holding her captive had weird mysterious creepy stuff going on, but we haven't really connected that they (or their leader) is a vampire yet. There's one of them that makes us instantly nauseous when we get near them, but we haven't really figured out why. A different one jumped on top of our car and ripped the roof open trying to kill the journalist, but the roof-rider burst into flames when we shot the heck out of her. We're not at all certain what to expect, or what we're up against. Unraveling the mystery is pretty fun, and the uncertainty makes it easy to tap in to the fear and bewilderment our characters are experiencing. 

This weekend I got together with some friends and played the card game Innovation and the board game Thunder Road.

Innovation is really good, but kind of overwhelming the first time you play.I had really good early turns, or so I thought, as I was in the lead in points and achievements.  Unfortunately, in the mid-game I just could not manage to draw cards with any synergy at all. Well, really the problem was that I had a great hand, but I foolishly commented on it, so someone Melded a card that they could then use via Dogma to steal my hand. I didn't even know that was a possibility... but, duh, I should have, it's not like this is the first game to ever let you steal cards from another player. I just never recovered. Good game, but boy does it have a ton going on.  It's sort of a civilization-builder, where every card is an invention or cultural breakthrough. You start in the stone age, and end in the far-future. Every card in the game is unique, and they all have multiple unique ways to play them. So while I liked it a lot, I imagine its' not going to be good match for everyone.

Thunder Road is much simpler. Just good chaotic Mad-Max style shenanigans. Sort of like if Gaslands or Car Wars was a streamlined racing boardgame. We played with the Chop Shop expansion, which adds cool asymmetric super-powers to your cars via a drafting mechanic at the start of the game. I enjoyed it a great deal, and may end up buying the game and that expansion. Based on just one play, it seems like the core game without that expansion is very light beer-and-pretzels without much depth, but that expansion made every turn interesting and unpredictable. 

I continue to play the occasional solitaire-RPG or solo-skirmish miniatures game when I have insomnia. For the solo-RPG I've been mostly running D&D, with one PC (a Satyr Circle of Stars Druid) and a rotating cast of lower-level NPC sidekicks. When I started I had to lean a lot on the Solo Adventurer's Toolbox and its sequel. I'm a little more freeform of late, but that book is great for getting you started and comfortable with solitaire play.  

And every once in a while I boot up Cyberpunk 2077 or Baldur's Gate 3, but I have to be careful with those because man can I ever lose an entire evening just rearranging my darned inventory. When that happens, I feel like I've wasted a resource (my life, my time) that I'll never get back... and yet, I love both those games so much.

Meatwagon In The Time Of The Red

Starting a new campaign soon. It'll be Cyberpunk Red, with the PCs being the crew of an REO Meatwagon Combat Ambulance. If you've consumed any flavor of Cyberpunk, you've probably heard of Trauma Team, the premiere combat ambulance medical extraction company. REO Meatwagon is the low-budget disreputable version. 

I'm setting it up like an episodic TV show. Every session will have an A-Plot and a B-Plot. 

The A-Plot is "this episode's story" that's usually going to be an emergency call, where the PCs show up in the middle of a terrible situation and have to try to get their client out alive. Often this means going in guns-blazing, but sometimes it will be more of a puzzle or require subtlety.

The B-Plot will be a few roleplaying scenes around the edges of that, which tie in to one PCs backstory or personal arc each session, or perhaps advances "this season's simmering meta-plot" in the background.

I've done something similar to this in a one-shot before, and it worked great. Now I'm going to find out how well the idea holds up for a longer campaign.

Planning to assign IP a little differently than the books suggest. 

• Making any serious attempt at the A-Plot scores everyone on the team 50 IP, even if they fail. 
• If they save one or more paying customers, and deliver them safely to a Hospital (or other place the customer says is safe, provided the customer's not bleeding out or KO'd) the group +10 IP per customer saved. 
• Engaging with the B-Plot in any way (e.g.: not just hanging up on the NPC) scores an extra +5 IP for the team.
• If that B-Plot scene is a real dirty suckerpunch that seriously complicates the character's life, hits you in the feels, or someone's roleplaying really impresses the GM, everyone gets +10 IP bonus (beyond the usual +5 from the B-Plot)

The intention then being that the PCs gain 50 to 75 IP per session, which is a little higher than the average the book assumes, but not crazy high. Doing it this way to motivate the players to engage with the plots in particular ways, so there's just a little extra push to try to save a customer. Also to give you a reason to include NPC friends or family in your backstory so it's not just "I'm an orphan and a real loner" as many people seem to love to do with Cyberpunk. I find there something about dystopian futures that really make folks want to create dysfunctional lone-wolf bad-asses by default. 

The Comte de Stradivarius Gray

 Random idea that just ran through my head, for a plotline for some sort of Urban Fantasy game, that I'm not likely to run anytime soon, but don't want to just lose. In a nutshell:

The big bad is the Comte de St. Germain. (Not sure what his evil scheme is, and for the moment it doesn't matter. I tend to think of him as a villain due to first learning of him via the Continuum RPG, but I realize to many he's more like a mystical wiseman.) 

In case you don't know who the Count of St. Germain is, here's wikipedia: Count of St. Germain - Wikipedia.  

He's a historical figure, probably a conman or series of conmen, with some mysterious wiggle room for something more interesting if you want to read him as a 18th Century spy's secret identity,  a genius prophet and polymath, a vampire or other immortal, a gem-melting alchemist, a reincarnated old soul who has access to many lifetimes of skill point budgets, a time-traveler, etc. Even the most prosaic interpretation paints The Comte de St. Germain as at the very least a rich eccentric who plays amazing violin.

So naturally, we want a more interesting interpretation for the sake of the game. His immortality is linked to a Stradivarius Violin he owns, in sort of a priceless musical instrument version of Picture of Dorian Gray. The PCs are hit with an ethical dilemma that in order to defeat their opposition they must destroy a ~$20,000,000+ musical instrument. It's a piece of great musical and cultural heritage, as only 650 Stradivarius instruments have survived to the current day. 

And then, after you've given them ample opportunity to make that decision of whether or not to destroy this priceless artifact, you reveal that he's not alone. All 650 owners of such instruments are secretly the immortal rulers of the world. They're probably the Bavarian Illuminati as well, since we're clearly in some conspiracy-theory/trope domain here.

The Blood Nebula and The Devil's Armpit

 Ran my first session of a new Spelljammer campaign tonight.  (5e Spelljammer gets a lot of bad press, and I only agree with some of that. I'll probably save that critique for another post some other time.)

The PCs are Pirates, and/or friends-of-pirates. The PCs are also delightfully weird. 

• Captain Kiera Glitternoodle is a Fairy Bard Pirate. She has a damaged wing (so that her full Flying Speed won't unlock for a few level-ups, because level one PCs with flight gets kinda crazy). Her hated rival is a Bullywug who is the Captain of a ship called The Pennywort. 
• Rrrprr Mrrdrrmnn is a Thri-Kreen Artificer Noble. Everyone calls her Ripper Murderman, because those are the words that the clicking buzzing thri-kreen name sounds closest to. She's a princess, her mother is the great Empress Mrrrdrrdrrdrr, whom Ripper is sort of rebelling against. 
• Dawg Grippe Tumbuckler is a Water Genasi Druid Wild Spacer. A skilled hand aboard spelljammers their whole life. They had a harrowing run-in with the Necromancer/Vampirate who is the Captain of a rival ship known as The Cenotaph.
• Grimsbee is a Firbolg Fighter Sage (Astronomer) who is traveling the spheres because of a prophecy (we're still working out the details of the prophecy, as this character was made about a day before our first session).
• Lia Galanodel is a blue-skinned Moon Elf Warlock Archaeologist. She's equal parts Indiana Jones and Liara T'soni (from Mass Effect). Her Warlock Patron is The Celestial, an Empyrean named Var. 
• Oldarin Blue is a Mind Flayer Wizard Astral Drifter. He had a run-in with Corellon Larethian that changed him forever, and he no longer eats brains. We cobbled together a Mind Flayer PC write up from a few we'd found online. The psionic blast power is being modeled as a modified version of the Sapping Sting Cantrip from the Explorer's Guide to Wildemont. Short range low damage attack spell that knocks the target Prone if they fail their Intelligence Save. Instead of doing extra damage at higher levels it will affect multiple targets (extra targets added at the same progression as Eldritch Blast, but can only do one instance of damage per target) and eventually upgrade to single-turn Stuns. It's possible that it will be broken as sin when we get to Level 11 where Prone turns to Stun, but I'm happy to risk that chance if we end up playing long enough for it to matter. 

The characters are a lot of fun, and the players really got to ham it up in the first session. When the most "normal" character in your campaign is "blue-skinned Indiana Jones", you know the game is going to be memorable.

Their port of call is in The Blood Nebula, a huge cloud of red mist in which are hidden several asteroids and the calcified body of a dead god. Several pirate vessels have signed a Compact declaring the God's Body neutral ground. Pirates are agreed to not murder each other within sight of the God's Body. So it works like Port Royal of Black Sails, or Tortuga of the Pirates of the Carribean. A port where you can fence your stolen goods, take on crew, and have drinks with rival pirates that you'd definitely try to murder if you ran into them on the open sea. Every pirate captain knows a half dozen safe routes through the nebula, and you sneak in and out while trying to avoid nastier rivals in the mist. This will let me handle the first few sessions as sort of stealthy Wrath of Khan / submarine warfare motif, with enemy ships stumbling upon each other at short range. As we level up, I'll probably gradually fold in the Star Wars -ish dogfight system from this video and pdf: 

 

In one part of The Blood Nebula, there's a single giant arm of a dead god that's called The Devil's Armpit. It's a long curved armlike asteroid that bends around a natural bay. There's a current in the nebula that causes derelict ships adrift in the mist to crash on the banks of this arm of land. For several years, a particular pirate crew camped on that arm, and grew fat on the salvage of ships that drifted in. But one day a few years back, a ship crashed on their shores that held some Prince's personal zoo. Now The Devil's Armpit is infested with Cockatrice, Rust Monsters, and other less savory things. Not the sort of place you visit frivolously.

At the start of the campaign, Kiera (not yet a captain) was high in the crow's nest of a ship that she hated, working for a captain and crew she detested, when she spotted a derelict ship in the mists adrift and headed toward the Devil's Armpit. Rather than reporting the sighting, she waited till her ship got to port, then went AWOL. She gathered up a few trusted souls, former co-workers that she didn't hate, and old drinking buddies from the local tavern, and they rowed out on a Jolly Boat to find this derelict ship. 

The derelict was once a Living Ship: it had a Treant for a mast once upon a time, but several decades back some Gith marauders shot the ship full of holes, chopped down the Treant and ripped its roots out of the Spelljamming Helm, and left it all drifting uncontrolled in The Blood. As the PCs explored the ship, they discovered the Treant wasn't actually dead, but was now more of a viney shrubbery growing over the aft castle. (This allows us to use the fun concept of a Living Ship without the combat strength of a CR 9 Treant overshadowing the PCs.) The Treant's name is Fraxinus. Botany nerds will recognize that's the genus of tree that has those "helicopter" seeds. I do my best Treebeard impression when he talks, but we'll see how long anyone has the patience for that pace of conversation.

The ship is badly damaged, and Fraxinus has been starved of light and water across decades drifting in the nebula. So the hope is that if they can sail out for a while, Fraxinus' health and abilities will improve. (Slowly growing into full Treant stats as the PCs level up.)  

Also aboard the ship was a feral, broken, seemingly drunken lizardfolk sailor. He had been marooned here, and was taking shelter aboard this derelict. At first they couldn't figure out how he'd gotten so terribly drunk, with no empty bottles about, but by the end of the first session it was clear: Somewhere down in the bilge is some sort of monster whose magical aura makes you terribly drunk. Oldarin and Grimsbee failed DC12 Constitution checks and became instantly bumbling drunkards. For one hour, they will have the Poisoned Condition, and an extra clause that if they move more than 1/2 pace they fall prone. (The monster as written in the rulebook I stole it from is brokenly good. It requires you to make this save every turn if you're within 20 feet of it. That's nonsense, so I dialed it back by adding a clause of "if you make the save, you're immune to the effects for 12 hours".)

We ended the first session with the party tracking down the critter deep in the bilge, with initiative to be rolled at the top of the second session (in two weeks). If they can kill or chase off the Rum Gremlin, and then get Fraxinus some water and sunlight, they have their very own ship.

The session was a lot of fun. Mostly goofy roleplay shenanigans, with some exploration. They also found part of a map in the captain's quarters, so we've got a hook into a larger adventure. Not bad for a first session.

Target Swap

 Had a session of Feng Shui tonight with a fight that went twice as long as I thought it was going to.  It was one of those situations where each villain had a specific weakness that corresponded to a different hero, and the PCs noticed, but chose to fight different foes anyway, at least until the fight was nearly over.

 One NPC had a Defense of 12 vs Ranged Attacks, but a really strong Defense 15 vs Melee. So the team's biggest Melee hitter went after him, and kept missing by 1 or 2 every attack, while the team's shooters chose other targets entirely. And since he kept just barely missing, no one came to his rescue, as the shooty characters all assumed he'd wrap it up with one lucky roll.

 Meanwhile, one of the other PCs has a special power that lets them change their damage to be +1 higher than the damage rating of the foe they are attacking. He ended up dueling with the lowest damage rated foe all fight long, so they just nibbled each other towards death very slowly. 

 It was interesting, in that everyone was having fun and things were lively, but like I said the fight was at least 50% more challenging than intended, and ran nearly double the length I expected it to. If 2 or 3 of the PCs had traded targets, it would have been a much shorter fight.

  The timely application of the "Flying Guillotines" Schtick by the main villain meant everyone was excited and involved at all times, even if a lot of attacks failed to hit big. There's something pretty engaging about an enemy that can zap you with a weapon that's an all-but-guaranteed kill unless a nearby hero helps you escape from it. A lot of "somebody help!" and "I'll save you!" moments, so it kept things tense. At one point a PC with a Flying Guillotine wrapped around their neck had to jump out a window to reach to the only person that could possibly save them before the scissoring blades would have decapitated them. If that dynamic hadn't been in play, it might have been a boring match up (and I might have had to have the other NPCs try swapping targets to pick up the pace).

Is Ape Pagoda Dead?

Amusing silliness from the Feng Shui campaign tonight, as we went way off-script and into the weeds.

For context, The PCs were traveling in 690 AD and had managed to not screw up their chance to meet with Her Majesty Emperor Wu Zetian, Queen of Kings, Mistress and Commander of the Dragon Throne, Holder of the Mandate of Heaven, the Living Incarnation of the Devi of Pure Radiance, yadda yadda yadda.

When you introduce an NPC with that many titles, you never know if that's just going to trigger the PCs to mouth off and get into a battle in the middle of court. Instead, they impressed the Emperor by showing themselves to be knowledgeable worldly traders and explorers, and also via dramatic displays of horsemanship. 

She's the only reigning Emperess in Chinese History, but the word is gender-neutral in Chinese, so I'll be calling her Emperor below. The Emperor's a polo-playing athelete, so the horsemanship scores highly in her book.

There were three PCs present in the scene, two female westerners and one a supernatural fishman currently concealing his non-human nature behind a mourning veil. So the Emperor orders them taken to the bathhouse to be cleaned up and dressed more appropriately to have dinner with her. This was actually me putting a hurdle in their way, like how do you not piss off the Emperor but continue the charade that your fishman is a human woman? Instead, the fishman just strips down at the bath-house and dives right in, because he loves the water. I'm about to narrate servants and attendees screaming in terror, when a player points out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_in_Chinese_mythology ... and that amuses us all to no end.

A couple of interactions later, and the fishman is all the rage in Wu Zetian's court. Everything I'd planned for the second half of the session is thrown out the window in favor of wacky hijinks. Emperor Wu Zetian is in a power struggle with one of her children, whom various sexist ministers want to put on the throne in her place, and she's considering having her own child exiled or even executed, but to do so would mean no heir to the throne. "So Mr Fishman, can you please place your blessing of fertility upon her?"  *Long Pause* "To be clear, I am NOT asking you to have sex with the Emperor..." *Long Pause* "...unless that's how your magical blessing works." Etc.

There's a language barrier, as most of the PCs are from the modern day, and the Emperor is from 690 AD. Feng Shui encourages you to only worry briefly about language issues, and only if it's amusing or meaningful. So without thinking about it, I narrate the Emperor as understanding and even speaking fluent English. 

Then a player mentions that English as we know it doesn't even exist yet in the 7th Century. So I suddenly need an explanation for where she learned it. Off the top of my head I decide she was taught it by a previous time-traveler who had visited her court, but they needed to be dead or out of the picture, because more or less the point of this Juncture in Feng Shui is that whichever faction manages to win over Wu Zetian to their cause could gain control of the timeline. She's recently purged the Court Eunuchs (tools of the Lotus-Eaters faction) from the Palace, so her source is probably some other faction, and I want them to stand out as an obvious Chi Warrior... so maybe a Jammer or someone from the New Simian Army. Either of which, in the great tradition of Feng Shui uplifted cyberapes, would need a terrible monkey-themed pun for a name. (Canonical cyberapes include Furious George, Thrill Kill Mandrill, and Battlechimp Potemkin. Yep, Feng Shui is that kind of game.)

And thus was born (and retroactively killed off camera) the Emperor's dear friend Ape Pagoda. Which was amazing to riff off of, given that Abe Vigoda played the character Fish (on Barney Miller) and the existence of the "Is Abe Vigoda dead?" meme/site. The rest of the scene was laden with in-jokes and multi-leveled puns. It was amazing, and I'm so glad I just rolled with this nonsense instead of trying to stick to my plans for the big combat at the palace I'd initially envisioned. Good times.

Oberon: Zero, Brand: Thirteen

 We're 40 sessions into my Amber campaign, and one of the PCs may have just brought the dismembered parts of Brand out of the Abyss, and convinced two other PCs to help him keep them alive in the hopes that it might grow back into a Brand*.  How cool is that? 

*=Or maybe even grow into 13 distinct individual Brand's. It's complicated.

Star-Forged: The Eluss Fold

 

Occasionally playing a bit of Starforged in the evenings. (It's the sci-fi/space version of Ironsworn.)  The above is my map of The Eluss Sector, which I assembled from Assets available on Roll20. The Luminous Coil is my PC's ship. The Cacophony is a derelict ship he investigated. The Ophidian Mantle is a enemy vessel we've tangled with twice.

A Horse Of Another Timbre, Log 23

     The following is the campaign log for the 23rd session of my current Amber Diceless RPG campaign, entitled A Horse Of Another Timbre. 

You might want to Start from Session #1 or check out the index of my Amber articles. 

Campaign log: 5 July 2021, turn by turn

Nearly a year behind in posting these. Details below the fold:

A Horse Of Another Timbre, Log 22

     The following is the campaign log for the 22nd session of my current Amber Diceless RPG campaign, entitled A Horse Of Another Timbre. 

You might want to Start from Session #1 or check out the index of my Amber articles. 

Campaign log: 21 June 2021, turn by turn

I try to post these after a few months delay, so I can add GM's commentaries without spoiling surprises that come up in subsequent sessions. However, I'm currently like a year behind, so maybe I need to shotgun these out and/or give up on providing embellishments.  Details below the fold:

Log 21, A Horse Of Another Timbre

    The following is the campaign log for the 21st session of my current Amber Diceless RPG campaign, entitled A Horse Of Another Timbre. 

You might want to Start from Session #1 or check out the index of my Amber articles. 

Campaign log: 7 June 2021, turn by turn

I don't get around to posting these very often, so I'm nearly a year behind. Details below the fold:

Horse Of Another Timbre, Log 20

    The following is the campaign log for the 20th session of my current Amber Diceless RPG campaign, entitled A Horse Of Another Timbre. 

You might want to Start from Session #1 or check out the index of my Amber articles. 

Campaign log: 24 May 2021, turn by turn

I don't get around to posting these very often, so I'm nearly a year behind. Details below the fold:

A Horse Of Another Timbre, Log 19

   The following is the campaign log for the 19th session of my current Amber Diceless RPG campaign, entitled A Horse Of Another Timbre. One of my players keeps a log of the scenes, and another maintains a quote list.  As usual, I have combined them with a few extra notes of my own after the fact.  I post them here several months after... nearly a year later, as I've not been updating this blog... which allows me to add in a few little clarifications without worrying too much about spoiling future plotlines for my players.

You can also Start from Session #1 or check out the index of my Amber articles.

The PCs are:

•     Dalziel, son of Prince Bleys of Amber. A scientist.
•     Maarit, daughter of Princess Sand. An orphan with a magic pendulum.
•     Medore, nonbinary orphan of Princess Dierdre .
•     Spinturnix, (aka Nix), son of Prince Julian. Grew up in Forest Arden.
•     David Weyreth is a retired officer from the militaries of Amber.
•     Abn Haram, the human-shaped son of Lady Nykae of Chaos, and the long-dead Prince Osric of Amber.  

Most of the NPCs are from the novels, such as Fiona, who always seems to know more than she should, and Corwin, whose main schtick is essentially the opposite despite being exceptionally well read.

Some NPCs are unique to this campaign, such as "Blinky" (real name Argos) who is a dragon with extra eyeballs all over his body and is guarding Dworkin's cave: sort of an upgrade from Wixer (the griffon doing the same duty in the books). Bellantine and Armistaud are "Acquisitions Specialists" from a library world called Oberon's Loupe: they may be operating on special instructions from the dead king.

 Campaign log: 10 May 2021, turn by turn

Timeless Undying Love

 As I mentioned the other day, I've now played 4 games of Thousand-Year-Old Vampire, a solitaire journaling RPG, where your character is a Vampire, and game play covers centuries at least. You come up with a brief sketch of a historical figure, and the vampire who converts them into undead, and then the game provides random events that bounce you forward in time. You create a big weirdly-sprawling timeline of experiences and memories, many of which get lost of mutated such that by the end of it your character is grappling with uncertainty or insanity.

Today I'm going to list my full game logs from the 2nd session I ever played of TYOV, which was probably more than a year ago, maybe even from the early parts of the pandemic. I didn't think to put a date on it.

This playthrough was a bit longer than one I posted this weekend, and as I recall it entertained me for several nights of play. As a result of the length, and how that interacts with experiential limits hardwired into the game,  the vampiric main character had a lot more memory issues. They kind of lost all sense of self before the end. Their fragmented timeline runs from pre-Roman Etruria up through an unspecified modern conflict that was probably World War 2. The usual Stoker-and-Hollywood vampire tropes are here, but supplemented by characters inspired by Etruscan Mythology, and some uniquely weird textile-arts and sutured-wings nonsense conjured from my own demented psyche (or, I guess, from the intersection of vampirism with an Etruscan goddess best known for her love of scissors).

Trigger Warning: Again, this is the play log from a horror game about weird vampires. This log will elude to violence, body-horror, sexual predation and literal carnivorous predation. While I don't go into a lot of detail, it does get kind of gory. If you've got a weak stomach, easily-offended sensibilities, or just horror's not your thing, you should turn around now. 

Full game log can be found beneath the fold:

Cyclopean Viking Vampire Horror

 What follows is the play log from an entire solitaire game of Thousand Year Old Vampire. Sort of a weird fragmented non-linear short story of the unlife of a vampire.

I have played three games of TYOV before this one.  This time, I began the game in pagan Scandinavia, with a young man named Torgny Hjalmerson who dreams of being a successful viking raider like his father was before him. He descends quickly into madness and villainy, and makes especially horrible relationship choices.

There's no default setting for TYOV, so I'm blending Norse Myth, a few standard vampiric themes from elsewhere in folklore and mythology, a bit of the trappings of sensationalized hollywood-style satanism, and some weird new stuff unique to this tale. (Not to mention anachronism and historical inaccuracy.) 

This was a ton of fun, and definitely a game I'd be happy to play again. It also works well as character-building exercise for Vampiric NPCs in other RPGs. (That's actually what I did with 2 of my 3 previous plays of the game.)

Trigger Warning: This is a log from a horror game. There's a good deal of violence in what follows, including mutilation, body-horror, blasphemous devilry, and violence against women. While I don't get overly lurid with the details and everything is kept kind of brief, there's some seriously awful stuff in what follows.  If you've got a queasy stomach or are easily offended, you may want to skip this post entirely. 

Full log follows below the fold:

Bright Red Party Hats!

 Had two great sessions of D&D over New Years, about 15 or 16 hours of play across 2 days. Hardly any combats in that time. The PCs avoided every fight I intended them to get into, by way of clever actions and occasionally good luck. Then they picked a fight with one encounter that was intended to be an info dump. It was huge fun, but very unpredictable.

The best part was right at the very end of the second session: the party's Paladin accidentally adopted a Redcap. The Redcap was assigned to a Pixie noble by his boss, and the Pixie was kind of hoping to get the Redcap killed so they wouldn't be supervised any more. The PCs managed to subdue the Redcap via quick thinking, and then, axe to his neck, said something along the lines of "try any more funny business, and I'm keeping your Redcap". To which the Pixie replied "It's a deal! You want him, he's yours!" A few minutes later, a contract was signed on a mushroom stalk, and ownership of the Redcap had transitioned to the goodie-two-shoes of the party. The Paladin didn't understand at that moment that in D&D, Redcaps need to murder every 3 days or else they shrivel up and die. 

Corruption and deals with the devil have been major themes of the campaign, so it was some kind of wonderful for the moral-compass of the adventuring party to accidentally volunteer himself to be the keeper of a literal murder-monster. Good times all around.

The King Is Dead

 Crazy session of Amber tonight. Semi-accidentally killed off King Random. 

Over the past 15 sessions or so, a villain was using a network of special jewels to cast devastating attack spells at a distance, blasting anyone who had one of these gems. Two or three sessions previous, this had nearly killed 1 PC and her mother (Princess Sand), but the actions of 3 PCs working together had saved them both. One of them figured out how to use the Pattern Lens to seal the gems that Sand and the other PC had on them so they couldn't get blasted, and then rushed the injured Sand to a high-tech sci-fi hospital to save her.

These 3 PCs, it should be noted, all really liked King Random, and would genuinely want to save him.

Tonight, one of them was present when suddenly the King started getting blasted by the same methods, only through the Jewel of Judgment instead of these other Spikard-y stones. The first two shots incapacitate him, but since the one of those 3 PCs was nearby, and he knew the other 2 PCs were present at a high-tech hospital, they spring in to action. He Trumps his cousins, and passes the King's unconscious body through to the PC who had sealed the other gems. 

Who then doesn't seal the Jewel, and instead loads the KO'd King into medical scanner (kind of like an MRI tube) to diagnose his injuries, and leaves the King alone with just the NPC scanner technician while he steps out of the room to make a call.

This is a really bad idea, so before I pull the trigger, I subtly remind him that the King is wearing the Jewel and he could do something with it. 

This instead makes him consider running off with the Jewel for himself. Steal it, head to Amber to attune to it, draw his own Pattern, etc. He thinks about it a bit, and then ultimately decides to be better than that. He leaves it on the King, because there's a chance the Jewel might be all that's sustaining his lifeforce. 

(Which, to be fair, is a thing that does happen in the books, more or less. Corwin gets stabbed and says the Jewel may have saved him. But he's not really sure if it's saving him or dooming him, so Corwin stashes the Jewel in a compost heap.)

So, having resisted the temptation to steal the gem, the player instead leaves the KO'd king in the medical scanner, still wearing the Jewel that they know for certain was just used to blast him with sorcery twice. It was a great little moment of temptation and moral victory. Good stuff.

"Okay," I say to the players a few heartbeats later, "I feel I've given you enough warnings. About that, there's a series of explosions in the other room, centered on the Jewel." 

"Enough warnings -- oh, crap! You're right, I should have realized that!"

"Oh, it's okay," says one of the other players, "I'm sure the King has several centimeters of plot armor."

Nope. No he doesn't. No one does. Mistakes like this need to have consequences.

"Oh, no! He died in my hospital, on my watch. All his siblings are going to think I did this!"

Yep. Yes they will. And my game is suddenly pivoting in an entirely new direction.

Wolf and Cat, log 20

     This is the 20th log of my Ironsworn solitaire campaign about Oddi Ice-Chosen. Character background and start of the narrative can be found at: Wolf and Cat, Log 1. 

Session length varies wildly. Some are multi-hour sessions in open evenings, others are 20-minute diversions over a lunch-break.  This session is particularly short.

Cast of Characters:

• Oddi Ice-Chosen, my main PC. Abducted by a Firstborn sorceress as a child, only recently returning to the world of men, motivated by a terrible prophetic vision. Wears an enchanted wolf-skin. Storyweaver and occasional ritual spellcaster.
  
• Sammutisel: Oddi's pet Cave Lion. 150 pounds, 4-inch fangs. 
• Kasju Frystgrotta: The Firstborn sorceress that abducted Oddi and taught him magic.
• Grassa Bitterloss: Oddi's mother. Recently reunited after 12 years.
  
• Emelyn Firetop: Blacksmith. Survivor of the destruction of Oddi's hometown. 
• Tern: Emelyn's younger brother. Werebear.
• Myrgun Bitterblad: Oddi's sister. Currently missing in the Shatterwood.
• Rygar Bitterblad: Oddi and Myrgun's recently deceased father. Grassa's ex-husband.
• Amolfir: A villager who'd gone missing in the shatterwood. I thought I'd found and rescued him, but it seems like it was some sort of imposter who promptly stole the . 
  

Session Log 20:  8/20/2021

We drag the body of Muna to the water, and I clean the ash and paint from his skin. With that gone, and the wild-eyed tension now longer contorting his face, he doesn't seem Broken any more. Myrgun flips him face-down in the water, and gives his body a shove. It doesn't float far.

We wade over to the docks, and look to see if anyone's boat is still here.

Secure An Advantage - Wits - Weak Hit, +1 Momentum

None of the Despair villager's boats remain, but the crude dug-outs the Broken used to get here are about. They'll have to do.

Getting Sammutisel into the canoe is tricky. I give him commands, but all he does is prowl about the beach.

Test Your Bond - Heart - Weak Hit - Pay 1 Supply.

In the end, I have to tempt him out on the dock with food, and then put some in the canoe for him. He tries to just steal the food from the boat, but I grab him by the scruff of the neck, and put him in the dugout.  If I hadn't raised him from a cub, and just recently saved him from a Gloom, it's unlikely he'd let me handle him this way. It takes time, and doesn't exactly impress Myrgun. I squeeze into the boat with him, and Myrgun takes another canoe for herself.

Undertake a Journey - Troublesome - Miss

That's not good. I'll refer now to the Oracle details I rolled up for the island a few sessions back. What's on The Island? Coastal Waters Location: Fleet  Descriptors: Remote and Desolate.  Quick settlement name: Low Mark  Major Plot Twist: A more dangerous foe is revealed.  

Wolf and Cat, log 19

     This is the 19th log of my Ironsworn solitaire campaign about Oddi Ice-Chosen. Character background and start of the narrative can be found at: Wolf and Cat, Log 1. 

Session length varies wildly. Some are multi-hour sessions in open evenings, others are 20-minute diversions over a lunch-break. 

Cast of Characters:

• Oddi Ice-Chosen, my main PC. Abducted by a Firstborn sorceress as a child, only recently returning to the world of men, motivated by a terrible prophetic vision. Wears an enchanted wolf-skin. Storyweaver and occasional ritual spellcaster.
  
• Sammutisel: Oddi's pet Cave Lion. 150 pounds, 4-inch fangs. 
• Kasju Frystgrotta: The Firstborn sorceress that abducted Oddi and taught him magic.
• Grassa Bitterloss: Oddi's mother. Recently reunited after 12 years.
  
• Emelyn Firetop: Blacksmith. Survivor of the destruction of Oddi's hometown. 
• Tern: Emelyn's younger brother. Werebear.
• Myrgun Bitterblad: Oddi's sister. Currently missing in the Shatterwood.
• Rygar Bitterblad: Oddi and Myrgun's recently deceased father. Grassa's ex-husband.
• Amolfir: A villager who'd gone missing in the shatterwood. I thought I'd found and rescued him, but it seems like it was some sort of imposter who promptly stole the . 
  

Session Log 19:  8/19/2021

The mystical cleansing isn't enough, and I am unable to re-enchant my wolf-pelt this evening. I go to bed unhappy.

Advance A Threat - Roll Oracle - 85: The threat makes a dramatic and immediate move, or a major event reveals new complications. Mark Menace twice.

This is bad.  The Broken pack is at Menace 7 of 10, and we're at progress 6 of 10.

Oracle - Using the Ironsworn Dream Generator by FelMaloney at https://perchance.org/ironsworn-dream - I was just clicking on it to see another Ironsworn fan's creation and learn how perchance.org works, and when it rolled this one up which is so incredibly appropriate for my character, I just had to use it:

"You wake up as a child, under water. It is dark. You turn around and see a young boar. You look down, you are holding a hunter's bow. You suddenly appear next to the animal, they do not flee, nor do they attack. They speak in an ethereal voice: 'oppose disease'. They disappear in a bolt of lightning.  You wake up trying to understand the meaning of that vision."

I sit up straight, coughing up a small amount of water. My head is reeling with thoughts about what the Gloom showed me. There's a thing beneath the water, a thing that makes the lake bitter, and which tried to kill me as a child. Our father may have sacrificed me to it for power. Either way, it reinforces my need to help Myrgun on the island, and protect her from the Bloodsick Warrior. I can't let her do this alone. The dream boar may be out there in the dark, willing to give up its pelt. Maybe that's why the wolf-dance didn't work. I sit there in the pre-dawn, listening and peering for a sign of the boar. What comes into view is not a pig, but a man with a painted face and torso, standing stalk-still. A Broken, waiting for me to go back to sleep before he creeps up to murder us!

I whistle for my Cave Lion.

Enter the Fray w/ Edge + Sammutisel -  Troublesome foe - Strong Hit

Strike w/ Edge + Sammutisel - Weak Hit - 2 Harm, but lose Initiative

Sammutisel is suddenly near me, ripping apart one of the other Broken, one who had crept up behind me without my noticing and was seconds away from slitting my throat. I spring to my feet, but have to check over my shoulder to confirm, and at that moment the one I was aware of springs into motion. Three more ash-painted forms rush forward with ear-piercing screams and wails, and a fifth figure jumps and howls about the perimeter in uncoordinated madness. Myrgun sits up as one of the Broken leaps in her direction, and plunges his axe into the wadded cloak she'd been using as a pillow. I hurl one of Emelyn's daggers at him.

Clash w/ Edge - Weak Hit, but Burn Momentum for Strong Hit - Inflict Harm, gain Initiative, +1 Momentum

The knife buries itself to the hilt in his neck. He gurgles as he collapses. The one that lunged at me is on top of me now. We tumble, and I slip free of his grip and send him sailing away with his own momentum.

End the Fight - Progress Move - Strong Hit

He plows into the ground near Sammutisel, who is only too happy to sink dagger-like fangs into his thigh.

Myrgun steals the axe from the limp hand of the one I knifed, and plants it in the belly of the next one to close with her.

I wheel about and pull another knife from the collection Emelyn gave me. The last Broken in sight continues to hop and howl, declaring that he's going to drag me beneath the waves and feed me to his gods. The knife slices open his abdomen, and his mad dance spills out things that function better inside a human body. He stumbles to his knees, and it takes another dagger throw to silence him.


Reach a Milestone - I mark progress on my "Vengeance on the Broken" Vow - This brings us to 8 of 10.

The dawn slowly brightens the sky. We scan the camp for more madmen. Either there were only six in total, or the others scattered.  We appear to be unharmed, so we search the bodies.

Gather Information -  Miss - Reveals an unwelcome truth

Myrgun grimaces. One of these Broken is known to her. It's a man that accompanied her on her quest to the Bramblekeep. 3 days ago he was sane and loyal, this morning he was a murderous monster.

Ask the Oracle - Is this the real Amolfir?  Unlikely.  74: No, but if 2 higher it would have been yes.

The man's name is Muna, he was Amolfir's younger brother. I suggest we should bury him, so that his family isn't dishonored if family passes by. Myrgun is sterner and less forgiving than myself: she says a traitor should not be buried when so many good people were left for the crows in recent days.

I tell her the Grave Tale of the Masked Birth, which is about a human warrior in ages past, during the time when the Firstborn still had cities but humanity was primitive and cave-dwelling. Ezluk the Elf-Armored fought many Firstborn, and when they fell he kept their wooden masks as trophies, and dressed in armor made of the symbols of his hated foes. When he fell in battle, his tribe fled the field. The spirits of those dead Firstborn lingered in the mask-armor, and he arose as a revenant to plague the very people he had before defended.

Compell w/ Storyweaver and +1 from Bond -  Weak Hit

Myrgun shakes off my story. This is not the same, and she says I put too much faith in Kasju's magic tricks. She won't consent to letting a traitor be buried. However, she's surprisingly okay with me dragging him to the lake, and washing the Broken sigils from his flesh before leaving him adrift or weighting him down. I reflect on the hanged bodies in the Shatterwood. I wonder if my sister has a bit of a cruel or vindictive streak. For now, I decide she's just being acceptably pragmatic.

Mark Your Failure - 1 Tick

Wolf and Cat, log 18

      This is the 18th log of my Ironsworn solitaire campaign about Oddi Ice-Chosen. Character background and start of the narrative can be found at: Wolf and Cat, Log 1. 

Session length varies wildly. Some are multi-hour sessions in open evenings, others are 20-minute diversions over a lunch-break. 

Cast of Characters:

• Oddi Ice-Chosen, my main PC. Abducted by a Firstborn sorceress as a child, only recently returning to the world of men, motivated by a terrible prophetic vision. Wears an enchanted wolf-skin. Storyweaver and occasional ritual spellcaster.
  
• Sammutisel: Oddi's pet Cave Lion. 150 pounds, 4-inch fangs. 
• Kasju Frystgrotta: The Firstborn sorceress that abducted Oddi and taught him magic.
• Grassa Bitterloss: Oddi's mother. Recently reunited after 12 years.
  
• Emelyn Firetop: Blacksmith. Survivor of the destruction of Oddi's hometown. 
• Tern: Emelyn's younger brother. Werebear.
• Myrgun Bitterblad: Oddi's sister. Currently missing in the Shatterwood.
• Rygar Bitterblad: Oddi and Myrgun's recently deceased father. Grassa's ex-husband.
• Amolfir: A villager who'd gone missing in the shatterwood. I thought I'd found and rescued him, but it seems like it was some sort of imposter. 
  

Session Log 18:  8/18/2021

We find no further danger in the Shatterwood this day, and pass without additional harassment to the shores of Bitter Lake. It is twilight by the time we get there, so we decide to make a camp in the ruins of Despair. In the last rays of the sun, we pick through the ruins a bit to see if the Broken and the wildlife have left anything usable.

Resupply w/ Wits - Strong Hit +2 Supply

Our search turns up a sealed pot of pickled herring for dinner, and another of wheatberries that will make a good porridge for breakfast, and jar of mead that will help us pass the time between them. Scraps of torn cloth from loom the enemy destroyed allow us to change our bandages and pack more for the next battle.

Make Camp - Strong Hit -  +2 Health for everyone at the cost of -1 Supply

We set up camp in the husk of the building that had been our childhood home. It seems a fitting place to make up for lost time and estranged kinship. I tell her of my recent experiences here, the death of Garl the Slayer and aiding Emelyn Firetop. Discussion of Emelyn leads to talking about childish things, shared memories and eventually the fates of friends now lost or feared so.

We sit around the hearth, with splintered pieces of the former walls crackling in its fire. After a few hours and all the jar, it finally starts to feel like we are siblings again. She asks about my life these past 10 and 2, and doesn't call Kasju an elf-bitch this time. I speak to her of travels in the hinterlands and further north beyond the Tempest Hills. Of delves in the ruins left from a foggy distant era when Kasju's people, not ours, were the dominant culture of this world. Of magic pried from the fuming vents in the Frozen Cave of Zhan, and mystic dances under the gloaming moon, drawing ritual energy from an Iron Pillar not unlike the one here in Despair.

Forge A Bond with Storyweaver - Strong Hit - +1 Spirit, +1 momentum and Mark a Bond Tick.

"Magic from the Village Pillar? Can you show me?"  Before long, I am dancing the binding of the moon into my Wolf Pelt.

Bind w/ Wits - MIss!

And I am surprised when the moon fails to plant its blessing in my furs.

Oracle - Did Myrgun just steal some portion of my magic? 50/50.  14: No

Myrgun is unimpressed. I'm not sure what went wrong. Perhaps it is a lingering affect of magic from the Shatterwood, or the influence of False-Amolfir. I decide to go to the lake and cleanse my pelt, both physically and spiritually. I wash it, then bring it back and hold it in the smoke of the hearth while calling upon the rites of Rokahast, the huntress of the [Hart of Coals]. This of course results in another tale being told, as I try to regain the respect and attention of Myrgun. Rokahast who first sought to catch and warp the war-magic of fire, and instead mastered the smoke-meditation. Sometimes when you labor for a thing, you find instead a greater truth when you learn to accept defeat.

Secure an Advantage w/ Storyweaver - Miss

Myrgun is having none of it. She sees Rokahast as a failure, who gave up too early, and watched her prize and pride vanish in a puff of smoke.

Myrgun decides that my magic is less powerful than Fluugs the Tree-Troll's, but doesn't say that directly. It may come back to bite me later. Probably her opinion of Kasju Frystgrotta has fallen even lower as well.

The cleansing isn't enough, and I am unable to enchant my wolf-pelt this evening. I go to bed unhappy.

Mark Failures - 2 ticks -

Advance A Threat - Roll Oracle - 85: The threat makes a dramatic and immediate move, or a major event reveals new complications. Mark Menace twice.

This is bad.  The Broken pack is a Menace 7 of 10, and we're at progress 6 of 10.