FOE just released its latest product through the DM's Guild. This is a short product including a collection of handouts for Curse of Strahd. Within, you will find over 40 handouts for your players to allow them to review and annotate.
It's price can't be beat: Pay-What-You-Want!
Available now on the DM's Guild.
On the 23rd of November, my buddy Donan and I took a trip down to Tuscaloosa, AL to watch the football game between the University of Alabama and Western Carolina University.
Morning came too early. It was 3:06 when I rose from my bed. Met Donan at a Waffle House off I-65. I was too early for food so we drove on.
No sooner did we hit I-65 that rain began to hammer the car. I mean beat the car RELENTLESSLY. I slowed down to make sure we got there safely. The walls of water fell and fell. There were a few breaks on the way to Birmingham with Donan keeping an eye on the weather as the copilot.
We got there around 8 with the rain having stopped a short time before. We walked a little, down the walk of fame where the statues of the coaches who won football championships are, before taking a spot on the Walk of Champions. For those who don't know, that is where all the players walk from the bus to the stadium.
We were in the front lines. Well I lets a bunch of little kids stand in front of me. They did not even block my view! The team passed by and I can say that there are quite a few large dudes on there. I'm not small myself, but these boys are BIG.
After that, our package included a club meal, which we enjoyed. Before heading into the stadium.
From there, we got inside and walked right next to the field where we watched the players warm up and looked around. That stadium is absolutely massive! I could not help but think of the Roman Colosseum where the fighters were enclosed in every direction by masses of screaming fans.
Then the game started. To let you know, it ended 66-3 for Alabama. There never was an expectation that WCU would be a tough opponent. They played their best against a team that was in a higher level.
The game over, we began the long drive home.
At some point, there was a sign that read "Game Day I-59 Alternative". Now I know and saw enough horror movies dealing with the backwoods of Alabama that when given the choice. I told Donan "Adventure it is!"
Yes, I can hear you call out to your screen "YOU FOOLS!" and you would be right. I did tell Donan that we would not stop for anything for fear of getting Deliverance'd. I could hear his nervous chuckle. He thought about that too.
After a close call with a crazy driver we made it back to the interstate safely! We conquered the backwoods and emerged victorious from the deadly threat that loomed over us.
Dinner then home to watch some hockey. And sleep in front of the TV.
I survived Alabama.
Here is a short update on FOE Products that should be released in the next month. We have 2 adventures and 1 supplement.
This adventure came to me from a reddit post. Reading the post, I thought "man! That is way more interesting than what is in the book."
And from that short idea, a full-on book sprang!
When inspiration comes easy, it is a wonderful thing and I was able to blast through this to bring an early alpha draft to my own gaming group. From there, the adventure evolved further as I refined more and more elements.
What I really like is that this puts an alternate spin on a story that is otherwise rather uni-dimensional. Adding and alternate perspective was something I had a real blast laughing.
This adventure was writing last year around this time. Since then, I sat on it for many reasons.
Then after Gencon, I decided I would revisit this project and see where I could take it. The adventure as I initially wrote it was too big for just one adventure so I decided to make it two adventures, creating the Giant Problems of Kajara series.
Splitting the two allowed me to focus on both parts separately. In this one, I added a massive encounter at the start of the adventure. Something to get the PCs in the action quicker than the original work.
Now that I am done with this, it seems like this story could be used to expand and continue Storm King's Thunder as they were written for levels 11-14.
This sourcebook is a collection of handouts to use with Curse Of Strahd. This product contains the writing on each of the forty tombs in the massive crypt of Ravenloft castle.
I came up with the idea as I began preparing for the exploration of this massive room.
I wanted something clean and simple to give to my PCs. As many of the names have a humorous tinge to them, giving a handout should allow me to keep a straight face as they figure out the meaning of the names.
Edit This was now released. Get it on DM's Guild
Je me suis joint à un groupe qui joue une partie de True20 sur JDR D30. Voyez comment mon personnage, Urto le Mesquin, a mis au monde pas seulement un mais deux bébés le même jour!
Notre MJ, Francois-L est un type que j'ai rencontrer via un groupe Facebook il y a maintenant quelques années et avec qui j'ai fait plusieures parties de type One-Shot. J'ai toujours bien aimé son style. Donc quand il m'a demandé si je voudrais participer à une petite campagne, j'ai accepté sur-le-champs.
C'était la premiere alors qu'on essayait le jeu. Si vous aimez Mutants and Mastermind, ben c'est la version fantastique...
Ma Caméra est pas fameuse...
When I completed the first draft of this adventure, I was very happy with it. However, play-testing revealed that while the adventure was good, it needed a few more things to get to that next level. There was good story and a decent plot but a lot of it the PCs just could not find.
I took this adventure back to the design stages and worked on it some more, adding to those parts I felt missing and focusing a few others. Then I re-played the result with my home Akhamet group. Now the adventure reached the right balance of information and misdirection.
Parties playing every parts of this adventure may have over 16 hours of play-time. Although this adventure is set in Akhamet, it can easily be moved to any campaign setting.
You can get it now on DriveThru RPG.
I picked this audiobook rather randomly. Being in a Sci-Fi mood, I picked this book because I wanted to space stuff. Arthur C Clark is one of the leaders in Sci-Fi as the man who wrote 2001, a movie that both intrigued, terrorized, and interested me all at once.
The science element is strong and interesting. The description of life on Titan and how the frozen volcanoes work and some of the unique elements of the planet and space travel. ACC really knows his stuff when it comes to the space race.
We see a lot of elements that we are just breaking today (cloning, holographic projections, space travel) and others that are well established (smart phones, internet). He spends a lot of time describing these devices. Unlike other writers who do this, ACC's devices ARE things that are useful, realistic, and that seriously help mankind.
The story is set on the 5th centennial (2276 AD) and a big celebration is coming with representatives from all over the Solar System: Earth, Moon, Mercury, Mars, and Titan. Each of these nations developed their own flavor and culture - even if the story mostly focuses on Earth and Titan. Duncan Mackenzie comes to Earth as the representative of Titan he also plans on getting himself cloned as he cannot have children (long story).
Duncan's trip to Earth is a trip to the Eastern USA locations viewed 300 years in the future. He visits locations and places that exist today but in the future.
As the story evolves, we are introduced to a series of characters... None of them are particularly engaging or endearing. Kalindi, his youthful love interest may be the only one that has some sort of realistic plot. Every character, including Duncan, is bland and flavorless. They have a short discussion. "Is that guy trustworthy" "Yes" And he is.
Whatever interest the start drew from me quickly gave way to boredom as the reader was terrible. It felt like a robot reading. Gah, it was painful. Very painful.
He approaches many social elements I do not share his views on, one of the biggest reason is that these changes happen within 300 years. Other elements he hints at but rather than completing his approach, he simply drops the situation rather than create a serious discussion. Topics include alien existence, cloning, people living underground, veganism/goo-eaters.
The one element I found myself seriously at odds with his views was in the subject of love relationships. In the future (300 years, not a million. three centuries), people live a mostly debauched lifestyle when young, having kids left and right then forming strong and tight families with a mom and dad.
No. Just no. Human nature is not that way. Strong families and super-promiscuity do not go hand in hand, particularly in frontier areas like Titan. My position on those is that in such situation, you would have tight families with a mother and father at the center. Should one become widowed, the surviving parent would remarry, forming a Brady Bunch.
BTW, there is nothing "imperial" about Earth in there. Earth is a decadent place where people only look at the past.
The best element of this story however, and the shining jewel of this dreary, boring story, is its conclusion when we get Duncan's address to the United Nations. That speech, not only ties the story together, but is also a view into the future. Even though mankind turned away from the stars to look at how we can screw up the Earth, the stars and future are where mankind eventually will end up.
So rating this book... Well overall, this is a solid 2/5 but a 5/5 if you only read Duncan's final address. I kept finding myself nodding at every one of his points.
I bought this book for the kids at Halloween Free Comic Book day. I am not a huge fan of modern comics, not enjoying the pace and politics in the stories.
This is not an origins story, which I like. Instead, we find a 17 year old Bruce Wayne who is about to turn 18 and take over the Wayne Fortune. An interesting take.
I won't spoil the story, which I found more interesting than I thought. In a vein similar to Joker, this is not a superhero comic but a sort of coming-of-age story. The events shown here will mold Bruce Wayne from a child into the billionaire-playboy/Batman of the future.
I really liked the story. It had interesting twists and characters that were more than one-dimensional (though many of the side characters are effectively just that, cardboard cutouts). The pace was extremely fast. The art top-notch, in a fake two-color "black and white" works amazingly to evoke Gotham.
Now if I have a ding to it: the pace was breakneck. I kept flipping the pages so fast that I caused a hurricane in the Caribbeans!
In the end, I will give this book a 4/5. I liked it much more than I expected but felt it went on too fast.
I have been reading across the internet "I'm a GM and I can't get a campaign going."
- Run Short Events I cannot stress this enough. Once we leave school/college, time comes at a premium. Spouses, jobs, children, video games, professional sports, or porn: RPGs require time and you are competing with people's own time. Many WANT to play but are not ready to put the time to actually play. Running short events is a great way to do this, by focusing on a 4h "one-shot", you bring the best of the story to the table, dropping the extra fluff. It allows you to showcase your GMing style by showing off your strengths. People are more willing to devote 2-4 hours than their every Saturdays to playing a game.
It took me YEARS to run a dungeoncrawl I'm comfortable with running and doing a good job of it. I'm typically not one who enjoys running them. But that's a rant for another day.
- Run in public This is one I learned over the many years of trying to organize games. I have been lucky enough to work with a number of great stores over the years: Le Griffon Feerique, Gamers Haven, Petrie's Family Games, and now Grand Adventure Comics. (Yes I forget a few)
This helps both sides of the equation. As a GM, I don't bring in a bunch of strangers into my house, where other family members keep interrupting. Similarly, I may not be interested in going to people's homes (I have pet allergies). There are some people you do not want in your home, to say nothing of the weirdos.
Yes, you cannot use your 100,000$ super-surround sound, 3D-projector, full wall of miniatures, and other convenience. There are on-lookers breaking the immersion, you have to keep it PG-13, you cannot act out every scene, and you may have a closing time impacting your game time.
So I ask you: what is your end game? Run a campaign. Or run a campaign at home, on your own time?
- Keep it simple This is a big issue I see a lot. Many GMs plan massive arcs that take the PCs from levels 1 to 135,000 and will run for three decades. I say do the opposite. Focus on short games, ones you can resolve in one to four sessions. Again, this allows you to focus on your best elements. By doing this, you can vet your players: who is good, who is offensive, who knows his stuff, who is a noob, and allows you to remedy situations: remove a player, train the crew, adjust your own style to the group, or change based on what they want to see.
Simple allows for expansion, saving you prep-time.
I would like to call this running the game as Columbo. Columbo was a series of made-for-TV movies starring Peter Falk as the detective. The movies were tied together only by the titular detective (hey! don't blame me, I am not a fan of the series). Perhaps this lends itself better to running a series of "I'm hiring you bum adventurers for this mission, " instead of a plot where the PCs are the chosen ones.
- Participate in Organized Play Organized Play campaigns: Adventure League, [Path/Star]finder Societies, Shadowrun Missions, Living Arcanis, or even my own Legacies, are always looking for GMs. This is a good way to meet people. Not only do they reach more people than you do by yourself but it allows you to showcase your skills. Having run a few games, you will be able to invite people you like to your own campaign.
- Fail All of the above lead to this one. You WILL fail. That's fine, just get back up and try again. You may luck out or you may fall flat on your face. Like everything in life, you get back up and try again.
LIFE!
When I ordered this book from Amazon, a few years ago, I never expected the massive bible-size tome that came. Back in 2018, I decided to read it, see what this was about.
I was not quite sure what its content was either. I knew it would deal with early Christianity history, but I thought it was a particular gem when this book was written around 415AD following the first sacking of Rome by the Goths in 410. I expected - and was rewarded - with such insight.
What I got was a serious, complete, expansive, and very well-laid out explanation of Christianity. Explained in fairly simple terms are the relation between polytheism and Christianity; the relation of philosophies with Christianity; Hell; Heaven; angels; fallen angels; sin; the afterlife; the beginning and end of the universe. This is a complete exposé of it all.
Although his words are simple, the resulting content is complicated. Not the type of reading one does before going to sleep - as I did. This book is heavy and forces you to think about what is said, a book of philosophical theology. Each chapter requires some time to reflect on what was just read.
Because of the heaviness of this book, I took breaks to ready "lighter" material in-between.
As I completed reading of this book, I found myself saddened. This is one of those books that marked me and that will be with me forever. It confirmed many of my own thoughts while putting words and arguments into many others.
So, the review: 5/5 without a doubt or hesitation. If you are interested in Christianity, History, or Philosophy, you will find this book fascinating. Just be prepared to invest time into getting all you can from this.
