Welcome to this week’s newsletter! This week on the blog the most popular posts were: Dungeon, Inc., A First Review, The Destined Heroes Playstyle, Close and Distant Playstyles, Dolmenwood Resources for You and A Dolmenwood Retrospective. As always, if you like this newsletter and want to get it in your inbox every Saturday, just click the subscribe button!

Discord Discussions

We talked about moving between systems during a game, which is something that people apparently do rather often (I’ve never done so, so my mind boggled a little bit). One motivation is to bring a beloved character from one game into another, while others simply tire of systems and want a bit of a change. This can be relatively unproblematic, but sometimes you are trying to move from D&D 5.5e to Cairn, as one participant described moving a high level dragonborn paladin. The question is always, in these situations, what do you want to lose, what do you want to gain, and what do you want to keep.  Apparently the switch to Cairn went fine.

Oh Deathbringer. The gift that keeps on giving. At any rate, this week we did discuss satire, as Danny Fist suggested in Deathbringer’s Satirical Commitment Issues that it was a basic failure of satire (this blog has the fantastic suggestion that the “Deathbride” should just be the Deathbringer with a little Ms Pac-man bow). A lot of others commented that they didn’t think it was so much satire as wish fulfilment. My take is that it’s a sad comment on our current society that it’s basically impossible to satirise extreme violence because there are always a bunch of people that think that no violence is too extreme and even John Wick, slaughtering hundreds because they killed his dog, was acting in accordance with rational principles, while on the other hand satirising anyone who wants to talk and make peace is very easy. 

We spent quite a long time discussing what was a sandbox, what was a linear adventure, what was a railroad. Besides the taxonomical debates (which I leave as an exercise to the imagination of the reader), there were a few design principles that came up that I thought were interesting. When playing in a sandbox, people who disliked that form of play often felt “directionless” and that there were not enough hooks. I also noticed this when I first came to play more open adventures, and I advocated at the time that the DM should make more hooks. Now, having played and read more old-school modules, I think that in many sandboxes and location-based adventures, rumours have the same function as hooks, except that the players should seek them out, rather than the DM delivering them. Thus, my view on sandboxes is more that you need to be very clear in your session zero about how hooks are delivered (whether as a player you can expect to stumble into them or whether you are seeking them out), and maybe this advice should be written into more adventures. Similarly, the criticism of linear adventures (among those who don’t like them) is that players don’t get choice about what to pursue but are shunted from one scene to another. But we discussed the effect of scale on this issue. Most people agreed that the further the pre-determined goal was from the players and the more freedom they had in how to get there, the less “railroady” the adventure was. An adventure to get the McGuffin in an otherwise open dungeon (like Magical Murder Mansion) has a lot more player agency than one when you have to hit five or six scene beats in order. Again, it pays to be clear with the players on these aspects.

Blog Posts to Read

• Renee Devereux in Next City writes I Started One of America’s Biggest D&D Communities. Here’s How To Design a Third Place. in which she emphasises that people, not necessarily place, make a difference. Loved this article
• About 4 years ago, Dice Goblin wrot Time, Gear, Skill: A Different Approach to Skill Checks. I really use this framework a lot, and I recommend it to you as a heuristic in whether you call for a roll or not
• What if We Called it the Flax Age Instead of the Iron Age. As a huge textile nerd who thinks a spindle is the original magic wand, this really speaks to me.
• On the business side, the Tabletop Game Designers Association published a review of contracts available in the tabletop space that I found really fascinating (link opens a PDF).
• Starting a sandbox game? Theo at Starships and Scoundrels Press has you covered with Into the Sandbox, a great post in how to connect characters to the sandbox so that the players can generate gamble goals. Excellent post, easy to read and apply.
• Skeleton Code Machine writes Maps as Data and the relationship between cognitive maps and maps on paper
• Viridian Void writes Join Me in Just Prepping What’s Fun and not prepping other things. Fun!
• Liza Corsillo at New York Magazine discovers that Toddlers Love This Giant d20 Dungeons and Dragons Die
• Lizzie Magnolia at Magnolia Keep catalogues Deathbringer’s Last Dance
• Clark at Weeping Stag gives us Emergent Setting, a contrast (or complement?) to the spiral-campaign approach.
• Valeria Loves writes Wages of Sin Gave Me a Midlife Crisis and if you like Mothership you should read this review.
• Arrowed writes Railroad Me, Daddy about the joys of picking up what the GM is laying down.
• Rise Up Comus! turning out another banger with Two Haunted Ruins (Middle-earth Hexcrawl). A talented designer who is extremely on his bullshit so you’d be a fool not to grab these if Middle Earth appeals.

Projects to Bookmark or Download

• Now that shipping is more expensive, we’re binding our own. Here’s a tool for creating signatures and doing superpositions when binding your own books – Bookbinder JS
• Arrowed has made a His Majesty the Worm character creator called Guildbook – useful for my game for sure
• Inkwell Ideas has a bunch of NPC decks and they are available on Bundle of Holding this week, fantastic value for non-AI generated portraits

Play Reports

I’m down to GMing two one-hour games per week and honestly I need the rest, three games is too many for me to run. I’m waiting for the new WoTC adventure Deadfall to see if I want to continue the Szass Tammery of it all, otherwise when Szass Tam is done I’m leaning towards a hexy sexy open world campaign

• This week in Magical Murder Mansion, the cleric Ern joined his wife Droc at the pearly gates, where they were welcomed by the voice of the angel they slayed many sessions ago. And we in the the party welcomed a witch and a delver to our party. They were carousing and getting to know each other this week, next week we’ll be back in the mansion itself. 
• In Szass Tam Stole My Life, the party, stranded in the desert, fought an ambulatory tower of undead and a radioactive crystal scorpion. We then proceeded to the city of Orofin, where they are trying to get the drop on some bandits who are holding a harper for ransom. We do the combats in session and other stuff by text for this one-hour 5.5e game and I am enjoying seeing the downtime moves of the players as well as throwing them in ever-more-ridiculous fights. Next session, level 7!
• In our Castle Automatic session 0 I created Regan of House Morwent, unwilling chirurgeon, highborn senator and aspiring rebel, seeking the sword to depose the Iron Emperor, who is crushing our beautiful city. The Orphans of Orpheus to the rescue! Such amazing stuff in this game plus a fantastic DM and fellow players means cannot wait for session 1 next week.
• In our buddy comedy HERO Academy Rejects we talked down the ambusher and her Goodest Boy shadow mastiff and found ourselves a lead to a nearby Dark Castle (and maybe a way out of municipal maintenance).

Poem

This week’s poem was written as a companion to a painting of the same name, Dante Gabriel apparently having too much talent for an ordinary person, though perhaps not quite as much poetic talent as his sister Christina.

A Sea-Spell
  by Dante Gabriel Rosetti

Her lute hangs shadowed in the apple-tree,

While flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell

Between its chords; and as the wild notes swell,

The sea-bird for those branches leaves the sea.

But to what sound her listening ear stoops she?

What netherworld gulf-whispers doth she hear,

In answering echoes from what planisphere,

Along the wind, along the estuary?



She sinks into her spell: and when full soon

Her lips move and she soars into her song,

What creatures of the midmost main shall throng

In furrowed surf-clouds to the summoning rune:

Till he, the fated mariner, hears her cry,

And up her rock, bare-breasted, comes to die?