A Pinch of Salt - Part 1

A story I wrote for Zeo Genesis has just started being serialised!

www.zeogenesis.com/blog/a-pinch...

Prepping to run a short campaign of 7th Sea. It looks like it could be a lot of fun - if I can keep up the pace it seems to demand. Just getting into 2nd Ed as 3rd Ed is about to come out - always moving with the times, me.

The first is very reminiscent of early Hellblazer, with two junkies attempting to decode the necronomicon through music, while squatting in a crumbling flat and imbibing mass quantities of drugs. It gets steadily weirder as it goes, eventually touching on almost every major mythos story (and RIFTS).

Been on a bit of a cosmic horror kick recently. Two great podcasts I can thoroughly recommend:
- The Witness of Kitab al Azif by Aaron and Drummis
- Modes of Thought in Anterran Literature by Wolf at the Door

I was ordering furniture for work the other day. The phrase "Previously loved furniture" hits different after hearing those stories about JD Vance...

D&D: The PCs had enough of the interdimensional East India Company that are "civilising" their country, and attacked the "Star Fort" that has been built outside the capital city. So far they've succeeded in causing extensive damage to the drains and unleashing a hostile titan as a distraction.

D&D: The party's castle was attacked by the winter-themed tag team of an ancient white dragon, a remorhaz and an abominable yeti. It was a hella close battle, with two PCs being swallowed by the remorhaz, the bard being killed outright and every character being on death saves at least once.

They decided to sabotage the derelict ship they were towing, so Daisy's engineer disabled security, snuck aboard, fatally damaged the nuclear reactor so it would slowly melt down, then snuck back and re-engaged the security. Amazingly, succeeded on all rolls with no freakouts.

Alien RPG: The PCs are getting twitchy about the synthetic science officer, who seems to be keeping secrets about the biology of the strange girl recovered from the derelict terraforming vessel. The captain seems to be losing the plot and the crew are engaging in acts of atomic mutiny.

D&D: the heroes raided the tomb of a gnomish warlord, noticing that it seemed constructed to keep something in rather than out. They assumed undeath, but he had actually become an archangel of a war goddess (along with his dire-horse and squire.) The gnomes had been happy to see the back of him.

Cryptic crosswords are the jazz saxophone of the crossword world. This is the hill I will die on!

D&D: The heroes returned to their friend, an extremely buff merman-whale-giant who the lusty wizard kept on referring to as "Sea-Daddy". Unfortunately, the giant was being controlled by an aboleth, and the heroes had to fight off hordes of brain-sucking parasites in order to free him.

D&D: Party descended to the lightless depths of the ocean to find the lair of dead dragon turtle. Having no hands or pockets, said turtle had been eating treasure and pooping it out, so PCs faced sifting hundreds of giant turds. Mordenkainen's Mansion provided an efficient way of doing this.

Good lord, Wes Streeting really is a slimy piece of crap, isn't he? While I'm quite happy to see Starmer go, the idea of that smug sack of effluent replacing him is nightmare fuel.

He's clearly about to wheel out the same calibre of "experts" for mental health as they did with trans issues.

D&D: The heroes continued their assault on the airship, backed up by their wizard, who had only teleported in to ask if they had seen her keys. After a terrible battle which saw the heroes frozen, stunned, electrocuted and poisoned, the ship crashed and burned in the ocean.

D&D: The group saved the city from a steampunk dirty bomb, fought off assassins wearing unpleasantly rubbery suits, gained the favour of the sea-elf queen, raided an embassy, sold their absent wizard to a symposium on molluscs and magic, and then, oh yeah - raided a massive airship!

D&D: The party undertook an aquatic adventure, battling an underwater "Wild Hunt" led by a froggy fey prince. MVP from the GM's perspective were definitely the giant sharks, who the nature paladin refused to hit even though they were tearing the rogue and the bard limb from limb.

Ran the Fallout RPG, and it was good fun. The group followed an elderly "historian" on a perilous quest to raid the tomb of the ancient war-leader, "General Motors". After fighting off ghouls, radroaches, and raiders, they managed to steal the general's shining chariot - a nuclear-powered truck.

I love using Owlbear Rodeo, but I don't run online often enough to remember how it works when I use it. Currently I mostly take a laptop to games, and have playlists set up on Spotify.

I always like the look of your big sheets covered in graphics. Like the corkboard of a crimescene investigation.

I have a selection of "radio" music, but I'm not sure if the players will just find that annoying. Apart from that I was just going to use soundtracks from the games.

I guess I probably should have made sure to get a bunch motown tracks for playing in Detroit.

Hopefully going to run the Fallout RPG this weekend. I have been playing about with some of the fan-made tools, and managed to cobble together a map. Yes, it looks very basic, but I was working with MS Paint.
(Yes, I'm aware the geography is grievously wrong)

So much treasure that they had to spend all winter moving it back to their fortress. They've now spent about 20k building a Scrooge McDuck style vault to hold it all.

D&D: Party agreed to do weird and dangerous tasks for a bunch of genius loci in return for patronage. The decision to sacrifice a dangerously incompetent ally temporarily led to PVP. As part of making up they all hiked out and fought a dracolich together, resulting in a ludicrous ocean of treasure.

D&D: The party got a Bag of Beans as random treasure, and promptly spent the whole session planting them and then dealing with the various catastrophes it unleashed. No beanstalk rolled, but they did create a geyser of mayonnaise and an enraged gorilla that made bloody snow-angels using the rogue.

Despite my general dislike of GURPS, I have been enjoying playing GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. Luckily our GM knows the system inside out, so he can translate for players. It is like playing old-school D&D. TBF, it's probably a better system than original D&D.

Every now and again I get nostalgic and read through the original Deadlands tpg. The system was gimmicky and needlessly baroque, and it was apologist about the South, but it was a great background. Also, it gave a good rationale for women and poc having equal agency in a civil war era setting.

D&D: The party ventured to the twisting underworld of a foreign god, defeating multiple kappa, a tianak, some evil mirror eyeballs and several hellish magistrates and their guards. They finally located the elder jiangshi and his nest of minions and burnt them to ashes.

Characters in Alien have a "Personal Agenda" that's kinda meant to make you do stupid/inconvenient stuff. It's pretty optional, though.

The game runs in 3 Acts, and the idea is you make a new Agenda for each Act. Also, there's cinematic play for one-offs and campaign play for long term.

Alien RPG: PCs woke to find their transport ship diverted to an old Weyland Corp distress signal. Boarding the research vessel, they found the remains of multiple UPP soldiers and a patrolling soviet synthetic with a flamethrower. Inexplicably, they opted not to open the welded-shut bio-lab aboard.

They also dealt with the some extremely passive-agressive dwarven builders, who proposed strip-mining the local beauty spot, leaving nowhere for local young lovers to 'take a stroll' together of an evening. The dwarves countered that it would look more romantic once stripped to the bedrock.