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Building Bhakashal – The End of the Gaming Year and Summer Break My two after school groups have wrapped up for the summer, it looks like both want to continue next year and may want to do a summer camp later in August as well. But for now, my weekly D&D games are paused for the summer. I will be playing with my online group and my home group intermittently for the rest of the summer, so there…
Building Bhakashal – The Quantum Bandit The concept of a “quantum ogre” in a TTRPG is an encounter that will happen no matter which of two paths the PCs pick. The DM doesn’t decide which side the ogre will be on, if the players go down the right side, the ogre is there, if they go down the left side, the ogre is there. The idea is that the PCs picking a path creates the encounter, sort of like…
Building Bhakashal – To Sea! My Thursday group have become Bhakashal nobility, and the task they took on to achieve noble status was to unite the fractured thieves guilds, which they did at the end of last year’s game. This year they have been dealing with the challenges of being in charge of the guild. They don’t direct day to day things, that’s the responsibility of the Red Arachne, the leader…
Building Bhakashal – Letting it Ride – Spell Casting Edition Something happened in our Thursday game that got me thinking. We had a new player start three sessions ago. He created a spellcaster (a conjuror) and was stoked to use his new powers. In the first session he played in, he decided to cast a summoning spell. Now, these spells are his bread and butter, his primary class ability, like…
Building Bhakashal – Session Report – Back to the Underworld! My Friday group has been tooling around in the underworld, they spent the last campaign year building a teleport circle between Bhakashal and the underworld, and while they were back in the city a group of drow tried to commandeer the circle. They were stopped by the circles guardians (a pair of purple worms and a group of chitin –…
Building Bhakashal - Session Report - Fight! My Thursday group had a busy session. The first thing they did was to meet up with two NPCs that they “rescued” in the marshlands. The NPCs were plants sent there by a rival House to infiltrate the group. So far the party believes that the NPCs were genuinely at risk when they found them, and have no idea that they are spies. The PCs met with the two…
Building Bhakashal – Session Report - Dad’s Game April 7 Tamoachan! The lads finished off last session 2 weeks ago. The game has got to the point where I don’t make the arrangements anymore, the players organize the date and time, I just show up. They are super stoked to play, and making it happen on a regular basis. That’s the sweet spot. They started in the cat room, which they had explored the…
Building Bhakashal – Session Report My Thursday group is still split into three parts, each part got a slice of today’s session. Group 1 – The Raiders The party Spartan (monk) had joined in with the raiders on the Domino , with the Captain, Emberi Thaumaturge Thurva The Thrice Damned and her Malu Mercenary henchman Kalima Thrine. They were chasing a merchant vessel, the Astrolabe , and last…
Building Bhakashal - Session Report - Dungeon Crawling! As it happens, dungeon crawls are not common in our game, but this week my Dad’s group continued their delve into Tamoachan! This is a great opportunity to show how crawling works in Bhakashal and discuss adjudication. I have yet to run a game where there isn’t at least one or more instances where I have to make a ruling on something that…
Building Bhakashal – Session Report – They Split the Party! Today’s game was a good example of how to handle a complicated session. My Thursday group split up to do different things: Group 1 stayed behind in the city to address some housekeeping tasks, one of them wanted to spend a week training his new pet baby wyvern, the other wanted to train for a week riding his new mount, a Kestram (giant…
Building Bhakashal - Session Report My Friday group has achieved status as Bhakashal nobility, based on their successful execution of a task, namely building a teleportation circle between the underworld and Bhakashal. A few sessions ago one of my players asked if we could do a “classic, old-school module”, his dad had played AD&D BITD and had a bunch of modules at home. I was, of course, happy to…
Building Bhakashal - Session Report My Thursday group had a fun session this week. Bhakashal has rules for generating ships and crew so you can have naval battles. Most ships have a spellcaster in the crew, something that makes it even more interesting. A former group spent 8 months traveling across the globe on a ship having adventures, and I ran a solo-campaign for a friend who played a warlock…
Building Bhakashal – Session Report - Domain Play My Thursday group is knee deep in domain play mode, last session they executed a task to pay back a Lord from their House and head of one of the House factions, Umani the Onyx, who had voted in their favor and helped them gain full control of the newly united thieves guild. Umani wants to gain control of the trades guilds for House Quannar, and the…
Building Bhakashal – Session Report – Dad’s Game – Tamoachan! All of my gaming groups adventure in Bhakashal, and their primary adventures have been urban and wilderness. The classic dungeon delve is less common in my game. I run a campaign for a group of dads (fathers of my kid’s friends), and I realized over the break that they hadn’t done any classic TSR modules, nor had they done a proper…
Building Bhakahsal - Session Report I run a “dads” game, and we had a session last night. I decided to write it up in detail as it exemplifies a Bhakashal session, it highlights the travel rules, it demonstrates how game play works in a shared world setting with multiple player groups, and it shows how the factional politics of the setting can drive adventures. This one had it all. They were fresh…
Building Bhakashal – High Level Faction Play Image by Don Maitz. One of the advantages of Bhakashal is extensive play testing. For the last 5 years multiple play groups have been testing out the system, players have shaped the direction of their campaigns, and I have adjusted based on experience. Few systems have had this much playtesting. My after-school groups are continuing this year, two of my…
Building Bhakashal - Session Report Building Bhakashal – Session Report Strap in, this is a long one. My Thursday group started back in September, they were originally booked for 6 sessions to learn how to play and run the game, but they decided to keep me on for the year. We had our penultimate session last night. They started the campaign as agents of Quin Faal the Iolite, a powerful Bhakashal…
Building Bhakashal – Sandbox Style Open World Gaming I’ve been running sandbox style open world games for about 15 years now, and I’ve noticed that there are a lot of misunderstandings about how this style of game works. I thought I would say a few words about them here. Sandbox style open world games have two primary features: 1 – Agency : The players can do whatever they want 2 –…
Building Bhakashal - Session Report It's been a while since I updated with a session report. Session reports get next to no engagement, so I stopped with regular reports a while back. Having said that, we had a session that helps to show what happens when you play in a factionalized setting, so I thought I would share. Since September of last year my Sat group has been gunning for a big dog, the…
Building Bhakashal - Session Report Image by Tooth Wu - Artstation - https://www.artstation.com/tooth My Thursday group did not meet this week as the players all had a school commitment. My Saturday group meets biweekly, and this was their week off. My Friday group has been poking around the Bhakashal underworld on a quest, they have to slay 4 illithids and use their blood to inscribe a…
Building Bhakashal - Session Reports! Three of my regular games started up this week. I’m going to try something different and I will review each here rather than doing them separately. Giddy up! Thursday Game This is my theatre kids game, they are all new to D&D, the party consists of a Spider (thief), Warlock (Magic-user) and a Mercenary (fighter). Their first task for their patron was to…
Building Bhakashal - Session Report - Splitting the Party My Saturday group met on the weekend, they have been trying to get to the Guild master of the Raosk branch of the Brass Blade Spider’s Guild (Thieves Guild). To get to him, they are trying to get to Maur Hoguelen, wealthy Bhakashal merchant who controls the mount trade. They made themselves known to Hoguelen’s organization, working up from…
Building Bhakashal – Session Report – Discovery and Play My Friday group has been illithid hunting for a while now, and they finally got their opportunity this session. They got intel suggesting that a flayer was leaving the underworld illithid city and heading out through the main caves. They left a day ahead of it to prepare an ambush. Last session they saw off a group of Nareen cultists with a…
Building Bhakashal - Session Report - Factional Play and Alliance Building My Thursday group played their last game of December, we will be meeting again in January. This has been my first all-girl group, and they have really leaned into the game. This is a group of theatre kids, all of them have parts in musical productions at their school, and they quite often either break out into songs from…
Building Bhakashal – House Rules! Time for a hard truth. Everybody house rules. Even people who play strictly “BTB” and “RAW”, they house rule too. There are several varieties of house rule, and it would save a lot of electronic ink if we got them straight. A house rule is just that, a rule that applies in the “house”, e.g., at a particular gaming table. For example, “on a natural 20, you do…
