A few small goals for 2026:

🌊 Get back to swimming

🎲 Run Vampire: Dark alAges and/or Chronica Feudalis #TTRPGs

🪶 Write more of #LangobardRPG

🌿 Realise and resubmit poisoning proposal, and

📖 hope that *this* will be the year my first monograph finally goes to print

We shall!

And, yes, I'll definitely be bringing #LangobardRPG and running at least one or two sessions 😁

Looking forward to gaming with you again! 🎲

Making my way to Cornwall for my dad's 80th 🥳

Also to do:

📜🔥 Prepare paper on arson and verbal repetition in the Lombard laws #medievalsky

🎲💀 Revise character creation for my Re-Opening #TTRPG (a one shot spin-off from my #LangobardRPG)

🎲🧛🏼‍♀️ Run Masquerade for Hallowe'en

Had a great session today with my #TTRPG and #medieval studies discussion group. "Ergodic research" being a fancy way of saying we ran a game session 😉

We took #LangobardRPG into mid-770s Italy, and set some post-conquest Lombard legal officials to investigating a reopened and robbed grave!

🎲✨️
🪦🪏☠️

1. First #TTRPG you ever played - Call of Cthulhu

2. First you ever ran - Elric!

3. Played the most - ?Rifts, maybe

4. Run the most - Vampire: the Dark Ages or Elric!?

5. Favourite - still deciding 😉

6. Most recently played - D&D

7. Most recently run - my #LangobardRPG last month/tomorrow 🎲

But I'm very glad that you likes the game design itself, and incredibly happy to have finally had that chance to get you to the table and trying out #LangobardRPG

Next time, let's hope for a longer session (we left your character putting away the horses, and on the other side of a barred door!)

Another great day at the Historical Games Studies workshop in Durham, ended with a short play test/demonstration of #LangobardRPG, with:

🎲 @drhelenroche.bsky.social
🎲 @katexe.bsky.social
🎲 @vinicius-marino.bsky.social

1. Call of Cthulhu
2. Elric of Melnibonè
3. Vampire Dark Ages
4. V:DA or Elric...
5. Check table: 2d12+Mood mod. 😉
6. D&D 5E
7. #LangobardRPG (my homebrew)

I'm absolutely in favour of this (as a GM it's what i keep my stash of the good XP for)

For #LangobardRPG i've brought it into the mechanics, so that by talking about how what you're trying resonates with your motivations (basically feelings) affects the chances of success when the dice clatter
🎲✨

Went to Belgrade again last week and didn't get more dice to commemorate the visit... #SadDiceGoblin

But did:

✨ Have a fun trip to the national museum

📜 give a lecture on poisoning as a crime from Lombard law to Lombardist legal studies

🎲 Playtest #LangobardRPG

And, last but not least, very slowly preparing a TTRPG based on the Lombard laws, that is more in my head than written down, but which I do enjoy play testing every now and then... #LangobardRPG, in which players investigate (or commit!) crimes in Lombard Italy in the second half of the 7th century.

Why is it easier to work out mechanics for this TTRPG when posting them as (sarcastic?) posts about why the idea doesn't/shouldn't work, than it is to just write them in a document 😉

Incidentally, I think I've fixed the problem with the mechanics for conspiracies in #LangobardRPG 🤣

Mostly academic of late (chapters on Magic & the "Dark Ages" in medievalism TTRPGs finally drafted)

For my #LangobardRPG I'm working on the conspiracy mechanics, to give players points they can spend to retcon events as a scheme unfurls. For things their characters foresaw, but the players didn't 😊

Creator goals for 2025

- prepare a good draft of #LangobardRPG

Love the evolution of a chapter idea in the "writing-as-research" phase. This week, the chapter has shifted from:

1. Magical practices across the Lombard laws, and how to adapt them for TTRPG

2. Focus only on laws on arioli [soothsayers]

3. Laws on arioli as case study for design of #LangobardRPG

Well, that sounds fantastic, and depending on the when (because, geography), I'm theoretically interested in hopping over to join in. And will happily talk about medieval studies and TTRPGs, the ongoing process of turning the Lombard laws into a TTRPG and/or run a play test of my #LangobardRPG :)

Oh, that's always fun! I hope you get a chance to play it soon 😊

I find having special dice always adds something extra - the D6 numbered 0-5 are for my #LangobardRPG, used alongside D10s (read as 0-9), to add a bit more colour and depth into the rules without getting too complex and 'crunchy'.

I was idly been thinking about this for my #LangobardRPG, and have just realised that journalling a solo-play version is just drafting a paper on a given law... 🤣🎲

Me: *writing a funding proposal for a postdoc project* oh yeah, this extended character background's coming together nicely!

Having a put-crosses-on-the-to-do-list day:

sent:
✨ Book review
✨ Chapter revisions (Lombard inheritance laws)
✨ Thank you email (offprints of codicology chapter)

And I've even got half an hour free! I could start the next (pressing) item, but i think I might ponder my #LangobardRPG instead
🎲📜

the word "uirgoria" written in brown ink on parchment in a caroline minuscule script ofte second half of the eight century. From a lawbook of the early medieval Salic laws (version "A") now held under the shelfmark: Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS Weißenburg 97, fol. 28v, l. 10.

huh, the Frankish legal term "wargus" uargus" (from the Salic laws on grave re-oepening) being spelled as "uirgoria" really make me want a story at the intersection of outlaws, werewolves, grave robbing... and Astrology ♍🐺🤣

there's a #ttrpg plot to port into #LangobardRPG anyway 🎲⚖️😉

This is very important!

Had a character in my game last week roll a fumble¹ while trying to push a fallen tree off the path into a fast flowing, icy river. Could have made them fall in and freeze - but much better to give a chance for rescue 😊

🌿🎲⚖️✨

¹ 1st fumble while playtesting #LangobardRPG !

Ha, the historically-themed game I GMd last night included numerous diversions where I pontificated on the source materials... Really must work on integrating that more into the story rather than just lore (law?) dumping 🤣

#LangobardRPG

Just ran an evening playtest of my #LangobardRPG which went nicely: tweaks to the system seem to work well, and the players got enmeshed in the story - so we're hoping to continue tomorrow... When they'll find the victim of the "Striga"/poison and start to investigate in more depth 😊

🎲⚖️🗡️🌿✨🦉

Schedule of events I'm presenting in at the IMC. Tuesday 2nd July, #938 roundtable. Middle Ages in Modern Games, Maurice keyworth building, room 1.09, 19:00-20:00 Wednesday 3rd July, #1304, paper "Morth and the unfree in Lombard Law", Esther Simpson Building, room LG08, 17:30-18:00

On my way to Leeds for #IMC2024 😁🛩️

📜 roundtable on medievalism & gaming on Tues

📜presenting thoughts on _morth_ [secret killing, murder] and the unfree on Weds (as part of the #PresentDead project)

🎲🌿⚖️✨ and will hopefully run a playtest or two of my #LangobardRPG
(Tues ~20:30? Thurs, 15:00?)

Also, just realised that #LangobardRPG might need another skill adding:

oO Deridere [to scorn, mock]

but, CW violence against women,

...is inspired from Edictus Rothari, §191, where abducting a betrothed woman places her husband-to-be in a state of turpe [disgrace] or derisiculum [scorn]

And here's my #MAMG24 paper:

middleagesinmoderngames.net/mamg24/rebel...

I see the questions are already focused on when will #LangobardRPG be available, beyond meeting with me at a conference... I really need to work on getting it into a sharable form soon!
🎲📜🌿⚔️⚖️

Somewhat idly preparing for two (maybe three) upcoming playtests of my #LangobardRPG - the first in late May, the other(s) in July, and debating whether to do something new or actually test run the sample scenario I've run before on poison/magical critters (which one playtester has already seen) 😊

I like this strategy, last year I ran a few tests of my #LangobardRPG and did some where players investigated until a truth emerged, which worked really well. So I'm looking forward to diving into Rosewood¹ Abbey in more detail soon 😊

¹ I also realised I renamed it "Hexwood" Abbey in my head, oops!

I've been looking at #ChronicaFeudalis (Keller 2010), and love how the "mentors" system defines starting skills and inventory at character creation, but also gives you a social network of NPC allies, in game already.

It's inspiring a revision of some sticky elements for my own #LangobardRPG 😊

#LangobardRPG update:

- Good news: just had flash of inspiration for making the setting chapter work, while integrating it into RPG mechanics & historical materials. Which I didn't even realise *was* my stumbling block before... Feeling motivated!

- Bad news: where is the time to pursue this? 😉