These Japanese-style houses on stilts were printed and painted for use with Ozaka. They depict the "Rice" and "Food" kanjis.
The little bridge (of which another appeared previously) really adds to the overall look and makes it look like ancient Japan.
Giants... I really like them. These two fire giants are much different.
The male is the same model as the frost giants - the sculpt I really like. I made him much bigger.
The female is a different character, one for a product I had in my backpocket for years now but that I never was truly satisfied with - the Fire Witch. She is much smaller than regular fire giants but makes up for it through the use of magic and other means... Devious means...
The other set of creatures are scaled up Bloodhound of Khorne (The sculpt is very basic). They will serve as hell hounds in DND and in other games.
The big one can serve as a Cerberus proxy.
A few short models... Three werewolves I painted up and a zombie dire wolf. Basic paint job.
More demonic creatures...
The first set are marilith, these six-armed snake-women serve as generals for the demonic armies, leading from the front. However, they are intelligent and brutal.
The second set are the vrocks. These cruel vulture-chicken really took a level drop in 5th edition and they really became bland and boring... However, one of the things I liked best about them in 3e was their dance of ruin ability that allowed them to blast all non-demons around them. The only way to stop the dance was to destroy them until there were less than three. I plan to add something to make them fun again and perhaps will create another "Demonic Forces" book.
These demons are straight-up warriors, whose main use is to smash through enemies and break things. My players did not approve my use of three goristro after they witness what one did in Pikemaster...
If you look closely one of the hezrou has a bikini top... that one is a named character in my Monday night campaign. I expect the players will both cringe, shake, and laugh at the reveal (which is coming).
I responded to a post on Murfreesboro D&D Facebook Group earlier when another member, Stephanie-M said that she tried GMing and it wasn't for her.
What prompted this post was her comment about NPCs talking between them and have extended conversations...
So my first (and quick) response was: "Don't have complete conversations between NPCs." There is no point in having any of the details of such conversation. Yes, it showcases how you can have a chat with yourself but it rarely brings much to the story as players' eyes glaze over. Then they ask you "so what did he say that was important."
I've been guilty of this. A lot. I don't ever recall doing this for the purpose of showing off my prose skills (I still think they suck), no. Thinking back on some such discussions, I usually wanted the PCs to understand some element of the NPC's personality or motivations.
But all I succeeded was to glaze eyes over.
And burn through GM voices during weekends.
So how can a GM accomplish this without boring everyone else? Here are a few tricks and ideas I've used I believe make the encounters more dynamic.
First off, a few predicates.
- The players are the main characters of the campaign. They are to be involved in the most significant parts of the action. The focus is on them.
- Not every word spoken by the NPC deserved to be immortalized on stone tablets. Do not be attached to EVERYTHING they say. A few sentences at most...
- The intent is usually sufficient.
- Know what the scene should convey. What do you want the players to learn?
Instead of talking about a hypothetical, let's say you want the PCs to learn that the king's advisor is really a crooked guy. The players returned from their quest and are telling the king about the dragon they killed.
- Describe the situation, the king sits on his throne as the players describe what they saw. Every revelation, they give, the advisor whispers into the king's ear.
- PCs wanting to listen in may make checks to overhear words like "tavern," "mercenaries," or "exaggeration."
- They may try to read the King and discover that the longer the story goes, the less does he pay attention.
- The advisor only interacts with the players to highlight the most comical or fantastic part of the story.
- So there is no need for the advisor and the king to have a prolongued exchange.
- If the PCs are not there, have someone TELL them what the NPCs said and interact with THEM about the conversation.
The best trick I can give you is: Try it.
Try it. Fail. Try again. Fail better.
The following are a collection of huts and houses. The round ones are two different styles: one made of bricks and the other made of wood.
The two larger structures are the same model with tweaked dimensions.The simple paint job really came through beautifully. It really comes through. I gave them multiple brushings to give them that look.
Another frost giant warrior. This guy is also a storm giant painted and used as a frost giant.
These pieces are scatter terrain. The stones have magical runes over them, meaning they can be used for a variety of things. I decided to go with a whiter colored stone to break from the grey.
And as a personal painting challenge.
These not-so-small pieces are massive archways as scatter terrain. There are so many uses for them. They were very large and a challenge to print on my small printer.
For my current D&D game, I printed and painted up a number of giants. I used a dwarf model, a storm giant, a druid, and some anime character to create variety.
These giants are one of the major factions in my planar extravaganza. I painted up variety or models so they are not all the same. I have more on the painting desk... They will follow along later.
Another edition of the Winter-edition of Festival Draconis is in the books. It's over. We now have two editions of this convention, one in-person during the fall and the winter edition on-line. Living so far from Montreal, I can only attend one...
The fun thing about it all is that it brings together players (and GMs) from the province of Quebec, France, and Belgium (if people came from other countries, I did not get to speak with/ meet with you guys this weekend). Oh and some strange guy living in Tennessee!
This year, my Draconis started months ago when I was contacted by Stephane who asked if I wanted to be a judge for the "Jam." The Jam is a contest for people to submit games based on a theme, this could be any type of game. You know me... Of course I agreed! The theme we judges agreed upon was "Le Rêve/ The Dream."
I had no idea what to expect when I opened the six proposals. (They all appear on the Jam Draconis 2023 on itch.io). It is an interesting set of games. Many are mini-games that could be used in other campaigns. Great efforts and one thing I thought was really cool is that ALL six entries received one favorite by each of the judges (we had 3 to give), which is a sign to the variety of interests from the jury.
By the same token, EVERY judge give a favorite to the eventual winner! As I said on the stream, the winner managed to get six gamers to agree on one thing!
Six. Gamers. Agreed.
...
So on Friday, I started my Draconis by giving a talk about the OGL situation, recapping the whole situation and provided my personal thoughts on what will happen. I think I made it all entertaining and fun.
After that, I joined my regular Friday night group as they fought through the many challenge they themselves dug themselves into. Again.
Saturday morning, I ran the first public game of Ozaka and first play-test of the Gencon adventure "Lady Mijiko's Journey". And a journey it was. The biggest problem with the adventure is its length. I had to rush a fair bit, which I always hate. However, what I will do is merge two encounters into one. Not a big change overall, but it will allow the game to flow and allow the PCs to discover and interact with parts of the adventure in longer details.
Excellent.
Great times as my old friends Alain, Phil-D, and Yves and new friend Philippe-L.
Saturday afternoon, I had it open so I went game-hunting. I eventually settled on a Savage World with a Horror them. It was interesting. I played "Hubert Centé" a doctor with a bad Italo-Spanish accent suffering from serious indicisiveness. I'm not 100% sure that we saved the world, but we did our best. I'm surprised that the others did not agree to my idea of torching the house as we left. Would've made a great visual...
The intrigue was inventive as there were so many clues scattered around the house. Clues that provided us only part of the puzzle but that in hindsight really made a lot of sense. There was no one-clue-to-rule-them, rather pieces and bobs that came into focus by adding two or three of those, pointing us to one clue or another. It was a well-constructed set of clues.
One interesting thing is that the NPCs were present - as it was set during a soiree in an expansive manor. Only the main host was not available to us (at least, we did not seek to speak to him). The rest would make veiled references to what was happening. My thought was that they were not fully clear about what they were gonna do themselves, but each had an inkling or a prefered version of the truth.
Again, a well constructed adventure.
Right after Savage Worlds ended, I volunteered to MC the Jam result announcement. We had a few technical snafu that may the thing even funnier... Such as Thalie jumping while we thought we were muted to the live stream to say "Hey guys, we hear you!" Hahaha! Oh well... If you were live, you may had previews of what was to come. But in the end, I think the conversation as we shared our feebacks about the games made for a dynamic and fun exchange. What more do you want?
Then Saturday evening, I was set to run again but had no one signed up. I had a player show up but playing 1 on 1 D&D... at a con... So we went out separate ways. I joined a Delta Green RPG game.
My love for Delta Green started when it first came out in the '90s. Simplified as "Cthulhu meets the X-files" (which is a good description too), I knew Pagan moved away from the Basic/Cthulhu engine but had not played this new one. So I was excited to play this one.
The system remains very close to Basic but adds some interesting twist. I like the Bonds system where if you are faced with a sanity loss, you can instead lose your bond. These bonds ground you to the world, so you are no longer a Cthulhu-hobo, going from investigation to investigation without any care or attachment for anything. If you lose points in there, at the end of the adventure, you should play a short scene that describes the impact on you and your life.
For example, my character had attachment to my third wife, and my kids. If I chose to lose the point with my wife, the scene would showcase how my relation becomes strained, leading to divorce, affairs, or worse (we are talking a Cthulhu-clone here so some scene may get dark real fast).
I played "Cornwell," a profiler with the FBI (think Criminal Minds).
The game was good but game dragged and became a terrible slog. Why? The GM was good. The scenario was good. The characters were fine. The players competent...
For the first 1h or so, we only succeeded at irrelevant skill checks. I did not succeed any rolls until the final confrontation. Criminology? Yeah! I've 70% in that... Rolled 74, 84, 72, and like 93... Oh! Humint (sense motive/ insight)? I have 80% in that. Rolled 93 and 82...
AND THAT'S JUST ME the other two guys rolled the same way throughout the game. Which led to a somewhat rushed conclusion because when we got to the final location, we rushed our work (and did not trust our dice rolls). We ended up doing something to stop what was going on. Maybe. We think.
We did not dare to make a dice roll to know...
I finished my evening on the live post-day stream talking with the crew: Marc, Thalie, Stephanie, Stephane, Matthieu, and Christophe. (I'm sure I forget people)
Sunday morning I had a third offering of "Lady Mijiko" but it did not happen either. Sad. So I jumped on something else. I joined a table of Star Wars D20. Our GM, Halley, had updated Star Wars D20 with Pathfinder. I enjoyed the story but my biggest issue was that we were put in a pure sandbox with no motivation or goal other than "you are poor an in this bar". So we spent an hour of gameplay just trying to find an adventure. Once we finally found and settled on a hook (well two actually), things got really fun.
I was Lenox Dren, the gambler whose terrible perception skills (I did not roll above a 5 on a Perception check) so I spotted the Hooters, the lingerie models, or cute girls, but nothing that was immediately
His sandbox approach is great and super interesting for a campaign. He had done a TON of work to make Nar Shadaa a living-breathing place. Showed. I gave him that feedback and am likely to look for his games again next year.
We also spoke about making some sci-fi work together... Which I plan to look into after I'm done with everything I need for Gencon. I'm excited about it.
For the last slot, Sunday afternoon, was the final slot for the con. I joined a table of Numenara. I knew about its setting but had never played before, the super-science fantasy is not really my thing. Still, playing games is always something I like to do and during conventions, committing to four hours should give me an idea whether I want to play more or not.
After playing many intelligent or charisma characters, I went for a warrior. I got a barbarian-type, a guy seeking heroic situations and who was typically lucky enough to come out of tough spots in a better situation. But I had no interest in dealing with the numenara/magic things. I was there to loot and enjoy the ladies.
We had a good group with many different powers and abilities. Due to time, we did not really get a proper conclusion to the adventure.
I thought the system was interesting and fun, a little crunchy perhaps but workable. Then again, maybe the problem is linked to the fact that we played on Roll20 and each roll required like 6 clicks to make a single roll. In-person, you could easily roll 3d20 and analyse the results. So my main annoyance has more to do with Roll20. I found the specifics were rather elegant and interesting. I thought it interesting the GM did not roll a single dice. I would be open to playing some more.
The game over, that was it for Draconis. I did a short stint on the end game live.
More generic quick-hit things to do going forward:
- Run more games in French
- Start thinking more seriously about sci-fi game
- Participate again next year
So a big thank you to everyone who put together the con AND those who participated. You made this a great weekend.
Again.
Wow! Dark Gifts of Ravenloft has just reached the distinction of being an Electrum best seller! This collection of handouts for Curse of Strahd makes running the Amber Temple easier by not having to speak out some secrets that should whispered and not spoken...
Instead of reading out loud the dark honeyed words, give a handout that will whisper to the players... Their answers can be secretly recorded as well, so their fellow players do not know how the answer the Dark Powers...
Get your copy of Dark Gifs on DriveThruRPG today.
Small pieces of scatter terrain. This barn was a multi-part and the hay bales fit inside, allowing up to 10 bales to fit inside, making the barn usable multiple ways.
This large female giant does not yet have a family to trash any small people she encounter.
