#i’m definitely seeing some GM experience coming through here

[simul16]

The Newbie Guide to GenCon -- Stolen and Updated!

But then start all the other questions. Questions that start “it’s my first time going to GenCon… “ and end with “… HELP!” And I’ve noticed it’s sort of the vogue for bloggers to waste a week writing a “Guide to Surviving GenCon” every f$&%ing year. I was going to do something actually useful about narration and running games and s$&%. But no, people are DEMANDING I write this crap instead. So you get this. See, the thing is, all the GenCon advice out there doesn’t really tell you everything you absolutely NEED to know. It’s all these thousand word, top-ten-list style bits of bulls$&%. Me, I’m going to give it to you straight. I’m going to tell you about experiencing GenCon for the first time along with some awesome tips.

- The Angry GM (Scott Rehm), "How to Even GenCon: The Complete Noob Guide"

Gen Con is just around the corner. And as is traditional for this time of year, places are putting together 'guides' for how to enjoy Gen Con, even if you're attending for the very first time. Sadly, though, most of those guide are pretty lame, as the Angry GM notes above. So what to do?

Well, the Angry GM's own guide from 2015 is still fairly good, so I thought I'd just link to that. Except as I read through it, I realized that the guide definitely could use some updates and clarifications, because (shockingly) the guide as originally written by Angry is long on his perspective, and short on others' perspectives (the section on etiquette notwithstanding). So I thought I'd provide a service and update Angry's classic Gen Con guide for newbies, updating it for the (almost) post-COVID era.

So let's roll!

Okay, let’s talk quickly about WHY you’re going to GenCon. Because the biggest mistake I made the first year was not knowing why the hell I was going. And most people don’t. They are going just to go. Here’s the deal. GenCon is big. You just won’t believe how awesomely, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. You might think your local gaming convention in the basement of one hotel is big, but that’s just peanuts to GenCon. Listen… Every f$&%ing fandom imaginable is at GenCon, including weird crazy-a$& s$&% you’ve never heard of like SuperWhoLock. There’s RPGs, card games, board games, video games, war games, and LARPs. There’s video games, consoles, PC games, MMORPGS, MOBAS, MUCKs, indie games, all that s$&%.

That last sentence is actually a bit of a reach. If you're going to Gen Con with the idea that you're going to get the same sort of video-game experience you'd get at PAX, then you're going to be disappointed. You can find video games at Gen Con, if you look hard enough, but not a lot, certainly not compared to the board games, TTRPGs, and other games that are there.

But the larger point kind of still stands -- there's a lot to do at Gen Con, and why you want to go is important. For the reason why that's important...

So, why are you going. What do you want to focus your time on? You don’t have to devote all your time to your focus, but it’s a good fallback to have. When you don’t have anything to do and you find yourself lost, you can fall back on “well, I meant to come here and play plenty of RPGs, let me check the schedule and see if there are any games coming up.”

That's solid advice. You can go with the idea that you want to soak in as much of the Gen Con ambiance as you can, but it's good to have an idea of the main 'big thing' you want out of Gen Con and be able to use that as a fallback in case you find yourself awash in options that all seem really cool and you're at the risk of analysis paralysis.

To Angry's advice, I'd add just one thing: try to find one thing, an event, a panel, something, that you wouldn't otherwise consider doing if it was just something a bunch of your buddies back home decided to do. Find the one weird thing that you can only do at Gen Con and do that thing. Even if you don't end up liking it all that much, you'll have a story worth sharing (and you don't have to do that thing again next year if you really didn't care for it all that much -- you'll be able to find other things).

In case you have never been to GenCon or any other large convention before, here’s how GenCon actually works. Your badge gets you into the convention itself. That lets you walk around and enter the big public spaces. And that’s about all it does. Anything else you want to do generally requires you to register and have a ticket. There are whole bunches of official events scheduled. Everything from seminars to games to moving showings to dances to knitting classes. Every f$&%ing thing imaginable. Each event has a certain number of tickets available. If you buy a ticket to that event (which might be free or it might cost anywhere from $2 to $20), you can attend that event. At the event, your ticket will be collected and you will get to be in the event. IN THEORY. See, there’s a few things that f$&% with that system. First, you’ve got generic tickets. Generic tickets are wildcards. They cost $2 apiece and you can use them in a couple of different ways. Many events that don’t have a set number of seats ONLY ACCEPT GENERIC TICKETS as buy-in. If you want to play an official D&D game, for example, or play in one of the Magic: the Gathering tournaments, you need to bring generic tickets to cover the cost of the event.

That last bit is no longer really true. In the past, it was easier for event organizers with large number of events to just rent space in Gen Con and only take generic tickets rather than list out all the events they planned to run, but that's not really true anymore. Pastimes, the main orgnaizer for Magic events at Gen Con, have 456 different ticketed events in the online event catalog, while Baldman Games, who runs the official sanctioned D&D events that make use of the current Organized Play system for D&D 5e have 155 different ticketed D&D events. They will still accept generic tickets, if there is space to allow generic ticketholders into the event, but they will all prioritize actual ticketholders.

As far as I can tell, the two reasons for this are:

Gen Con has upped their administrative game, making it easier for these large event organizers to submit their events, and

The benefits of actual ticketed events outweigh simply accepting generics only.

What do I mean by the benefits of ticketing? Say you're Pastimes, and you check the online event catalog a month prior to Gen Con and notice that not only have none of your scheduled 8-player Commander drafts sold out, but most aren't even half sold, while your Pauper win-a-box tournaments have been sold out since the week of event registration. You can make the decision to cancel some of those Commander drafts, knowing that most of the players affected by those cancellations should be able to pick up seats in other still not sold-out drafts, and instead schedule more Pauper win-a-box tournaments which people actually want to play in. This is a great tool for organizers, and they have embraced it; as a result, generics are significantly less important than they used to be.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea to have some generic tickets available, on the off-chance you find an event in the catalog and can't get ahold of an actual ticket. You can definitely get into some events, even 'sold out' events, using generics (mainly if other ticketed players don't show up). But since generics can't be refunded -- only returned for system credit -- it's not very helpful to buy $30, $40, or $50 in generic tickets on your first trip and find out you only end up using less than $10 worth. You can always buy more generics if you really feel you're running low.

I'm skipping the entire 'Knowing Your Way Around' section, because it's still largely accurate.

Don’t touch anyone with permission.

The 'General Etiquette' section is very good, but this should clearly read, "Don't touch anyone without permission."

Putting that crap aside, this is the big one: Indy loves GenCon. The businesses love GenCon. Partly because they bring a huge amount of money into the city and partly because Indy thinks geeks are really nice, harmless, friendly, happy people. It’s true. Ask them. They all say the same thing. They love us. They love us more than the sports fans. Don’t f$&% that up. It’s actually kind of nice that the whole city basically becomes Geek Valhalla for four days and you can run a Dungeon World game in a hotel bar for three hours and no one looks askance at you. It’s neat that you can dress up like Slave Leia and still get served in a restaurant without anything thinking it is remotely weird. It is nice to have people genuinely think you’re a good person because you’re a geek. And you know why that works? Because most of the people who go to GenCon are actually nice, friendly, happy people just having a good time. If you like that experience, deserve that experience. You be nice too. You’re an ambassador for GenCon when you’re at GenCon. It’s part of the price of GenCon. Accept that. Oh, side note: lots of business try to get into the spirit of GenCon by changing their menus or offering special geek-themed stuff like a burger called The Desolation of Smaug or a cocktail called The Winter Soldier. It’s kind of cool. And some restaurants really go overboard. But… they only do that for like five days out of the entire year and most of the staff aren’t geeks. So a lot of those words are gibberish. I’ve seen geeks get annoyed with wait staff who have to confirm which burger the Eye of Sauron actually is. And that pisses me off. Don’t do that. The servers are working their a$&es off to make you feel comfortable by trying to celebrate your subculture. Cut them some f$&%ing slack.

I've copied this entire section because it suggests a point that it doesn't make -- the businesses in downtown Indy will say they love Gen Con -- especially places like restaurants that are busy pretty much the entire weekend. This doesn't mean that everyone working for those businesses loves Gen Con or even tolerates it very well; if you worked in a downtown where two days out of the year you could count on needing 45 minutes to get lunch or an hour to drive out of downtown at the end of the day, I'm sure you'd be a bit irritated as well.

And, despite how much the folks whose jobs it is to be nice to you want to be nice to you, they only have so much energy and stamina; don't just cut them some slack if they don't know the geeky names for their menu items, also don't actively be a jerk by complaining that a restaurant ran out of 'the only entree I'd eat in this restaurant' on Saturday night, or by showing up at 11:55 on Friday night when the kitchen closes at midnight demanding to be served.

In spite of capitalism, being treated nicely at Gen Con isn't a right -- it's a privilege, and one you should help maintain for all other attendees.

'Your Gen Con Bag' is excellent advice. No notes.

And here’s where I can give you an expert pro-tip. If you fly in, you will need a taxi to take you to the city from the airport. And you want to do two things. One, tip that cabbie extremely well. Like $5 to $10 well. Two, get that cabbie’s card. That cabbie is now yours. They will prioritize you. And, most importantly, they will prioritize your trip back to the airport on Sunday or Monday, provided you call about 30 minutes ahead. Keep tipping that cabbie a buck or two per trip, but if you don’t have extra change and you skip a tip, that cabbie will be okay with it. Because that cabbie is yours. You bought them.

I do have some notes on this paragraph, though:

$5 to $10 isn't really all that great a tip for an airport-to-downtown taxi ride (or vice versa), and cab fares have also gone up since Angry wrote his original piece. Expect to pay $40 or more for a cab ride to or from the airport; if the fare is slightly over $40, paying $60 and having the cabbie keep the change will have the desired effect. However,

The one time you really don't need to take a cab is from the airport to the convention center. There are shuttles that go past all the major downtown hotels surrounding the convention center, there is a bus line that goes directly into downtown and drops off right in front of the ICC, and there are other rental options. One year I went with a friend, we made acquaintances of a number of folks on the plane with us, and we all decided to go in together and rented a limo to take us into downtown. It might be more expensive now, but it worked out to about $10 per person then, so may still be worth looking into if you have a big enough group.

With that said, if you are not at a 'connected hotel' and need the option to cab back and forth from the ICC to your hotel, getting a cabbie you can call repeatedly over the weekend and who knows you tip well is an excellent option.

In general, any event is skippable. And if people know they can show up with generics and take your seat, that doesn’t have to be a problem. But still, show a little bit of restraint. Don’t sign up for things if there’s only a slim chance you’ll go. In that case, the proper thing is for you to show up with the generics and try to get an open seat. Just know that, just because you have a ticket for an event doesn’t mean you are bound to that event.

This is probably the thing I most disagree with in Angry's guide, and I'll illustrate why with an anecdote.

My wife and I met Irish folk dancing at a pub, and when we noticed there was a Sunday morning Irish folk dance event at GenCon where we could get the last two available tickets, we were pumped to go. We got up early Sunday, raced to the event, and then sat for 25 minutes as literally none of the other ticketholders showed up. Since most Irish folk dances require more than one couple, the organizer really had no choice but to cancel the event, and though we were able to get the cost of those tickets refunded, it didn't make up for the lost time, the inability to get into a replacement event, and the simple crushing disappointment at not getting to do an event we had our hearts set on.

Obviously, there are limits. If you are actually sick, then don't go to the event. But if you find yourself filling up your schedule with events you're not excited about, and you start skipping them, maybe turn the other tickets you're not excited about back in. Gen Con is huge, but that doesn't mean every event at Gen Con is huge. Otherwise, if you have a ticket for an event, make more than a minimal effort to get to that event. If you really don't want to be there, and you can see there are others there with generics who are happy to take your place, then go ahead and let them. But at least in this case, you're doing the polite thing and helping to ensure that the event still gets to happen for the people who want it.

Most of the advice in 'The Dealers Hall' is good, but...

And now comes some stuff about money. Look, lots of geeks deal in plastic rather than cash. And most booths can take credit/debit cards. But you’re best off using cash for several reasons. First of all, like flea markets, convention dealer halls are notorious dens of identity theft. And it’s easy to lose sight of your card as the staffer walks over to run the transaction through the dealie. I am not kidding about this one. It’s becoming a HUGE problem. Second of all, if you have a set amount of cash to spend, you won’t overspend and then discover you can’t afford a meal or a cab fare later. Third of all, the dealers prefer cash for a variety of reasons. In fact, if you pay cash and have exact change (and often, they will round off prices to make that EASY), the dealers will usually cheer you on. Seriously, there is an Exact Change Cheer many dealers do. It’s kind of neat. In fact, in general, even if it is not your normal habit, you should deal in cash. Cash makes it easier for cabs, to split checks in restaurants, to leave tips, to use vending machines, and so on. Get in the habit of pulling cash out for the day’s activities. If you budget well, you can actually leave your plastic safely in your hotel room safe.

The world has changed since 2015, and this entire block of advice is simply wrong:

Most places who do business in the dealer hall have adapted to e-commerce and now make use of Square or similar card-readers that are portable and will read chip cards without you ever having to let go of your card. In this environment, the odds of identity theft are virtually zero. If a vendor is small enough that they do need to take and swipe your card on something, they'll likely also be small enough that you can see them do that, and if you can't, feel free to refuse to use your card for that purchase. It won't be common.

Budgeting is a good thing, but you should be able to set a budget without carrying around large quantities of cash. Not to mention that carrying large quantities of cash is a great way to lose all that cash if you get your pocket picked or otherwise lose track of your wallet. Not saying it's common, but it is a danger.

Dealers do not necessarily prefer cash. There are some vendors who will actually refuse to take cash (this is actually getting fairly common in Artists Alley, since purchases tend to be large there), since keeping track of cash is a hassle and a headache, and electronic payments don't just walk away during the close of business.

The world, including Gen Con, has grown accustomed to dealing with electronic payments. Take advantage of that where you can to keep your own finances safe.

First of all, try to eat three meals a day and try to eat them at the same time every day.

Good luck with that. Not saying it's bad advice, but unless you're doing something like a full day of D&D where meal breaks have been worked into the schedule for the DMs, you probably are on your own for figuring out when your schedule allows you a meal break. Gen Con as a whole does not set aside any blocks of time where 'everybody' goes and gets a meal. If you're putting together an eclectic schedule of events, you're almost certainly going to end up with eclectic mealtimes as a result.

Breakfast is the hardest meal to find at GenCon.

This is true, but breakfast is also the easiest meal to work around, since you can eat it before, on the way to, or even during your first event (depending on the event). If you're flying in, you can certainly fit granola bars or breakfast bars or some other shelf-stable, high-energy option in your baggage. If you're driving, you have even more room to plan out meals and snacks, such as the classic PB&J. If you're addicted to your morning coffee, though, then I feel for you, because short of bringing your own coffeemaker (or using whatever is in the hotel/your room), there's few good alternatives.

Honestly, coffee is the biggest damned problem at the whole convention.

True.

Stay away from the food courts and vending machines inside the ICC. They are expensive, slow, crowded, and they serve s$&% food.

In a pinch, you can probably survive a hot dog from one of the ICC food vendors, but unless you are a young person with an iron stomach, you don't want to make the ICC food vendors a habit.

Last point, because it's not one that was a 'thing' back in 2015: do not harass, belittle, or even comment on other people at your events or in public spaces that choose to wear masks during Gen Con.

With all that said, if this is your first Gen Con, here's hoping you have a great time!

[qichin]

Not All Hexcrawls are Hexcrawls?

I went to my first pubcrawl during a good friend's bachelor party. Late in my life, I guess, but that's beside the point. I had never heard of such a thing before, and it was explained to me that we meet at a pub, have a round of drinks, amd then collectively leave to head to the next pub. Rinse and repeat. The process seemed alien and bizarre, but I understood the term: you crawl from one pub to the next and do whatever it is you do in a pub.

When you look at the RPG scene, more so around the OSR, you find terms like “pointcrawl” and “pathcrawl” coming up. It took me a moment to realize what these were talking about, and especially the difference between them, but looking back at my pubcrawl, I started to understand.

In a pointcrawl, you start out at a point, and you can see a number of different points you can travel to. You make a choice, travel there, and experience whatever happens at that point. Rinse and repeat.

What a “point” is depends on the content you wish to fill the crawl with. Dungeon rooms, landmarks in the wilderness, houses in a city under siege, conversation topics, or pubs. So really, a pubcrawl is just a specialized version of a pointcrawl.

A pathcrawl, then, would be where you are on a path (or rather, the end of a path), and you see several other paths leading away. You don’t necessarily know where these paths lead, but you can tell that this path leads through a forest, that path goes along a river, and a third path is a paved road, and you can make a choice based on those factors.

Again, with some creative finagling, I’m sure that what exactly makes up a “path” can be varied and fit to the exact nature and content of the crawl.

All this, then leads to to the granddaddy of all crawls, the hexcrawl. A hexcrawl is a system used for overland travel, typically through some wilderness, utilizing a map that has a hex grid overlaid on it. Here’s the rub, though: the hexes didn’t actually do anything, they were just a convenient ruler to help the GM keep track of the party’s position in the wilderness. You might have a system here or there that included things like placing a random landmark within a hex, but overall, you used the hex as a guide to calculate how far the party has traveled. Players are usually not even aware of the existence of hexes, and never interact with them in any way.

Is that actually a hexcrawl? To have a definition in line with those above, a hexcrawl would entail that you start out in one hex, and then see that there are a number of hexes surrounding it, and travel to one of those, doing whatever it is you do in a hex. Rinse and repeat. Kind of like how board games or many 4X games like Civilization handle it. Hexes aren’t just a measuring tool, they are a player-facing game mechanic. Content isn’t just placed on a map and happens to fall into one or the other hex, hexes are intentionally filled with content for when players engage with the hex itself.

I realize that I’m in no position to singularly redefine a term that’s been in use in the hobby for longer than I’ve been alive, and that’s not my aim. Instead, I read an amazing post by A Knight at the Opera talking about hex content and these two styles, and tried to suss out what that post was talking, in addition to thinking about the meaning of some other types of crawl.

Then again, a dungeoncrawl would be moving from dungeon to dungeon...?

#TTrpg #hexcrawl

[inkdemonapologist]

[BatIM Call of Cthulhu Masterpost]

REMEMBER BACK WHEN WE GOT INVITED TO A MASQUERADE??? And we figured out the masquerade guests are definitely the sacrifice meant to summon their eldritch deity and that the party will probably be the location of the final ritual? ANYWAY WE’RE CRASHING THE PARTY, which means we need costumes.

The party is Alice in Wonderland themed; Sammy hasn’t read the book but got kin-assigned the March Hare by Joey, so naturally i’ve been doing nothing but drawing this loser in a dapper rabbit costume for an entire week

---

Anyway have a little smattering of out-of-context quotes from session 11

[Sammy is played by me, Joey is played by Boo (inkyvendingmachine), Henry is played by Maf (inkcryptid), Jack is played by Mochi (whatyouwantedmetosee) and Thren (haunted-hijinxer) is our GM!]

[Sammy] Sammy just has no magical powers. [Jack] YET. [Sammy] Yet. Correct. ...He doesn't want any. [GM] Half of him doesn't want any. [Sammy] That's... accurate, yeah. Half of him ALSO wants the OTHER half of him to stop having magical powers. [Jack] No Magical Girl transformation? [GM] *laughing* Is that what that is? [Jack] I'd watch a magical anime where the main character drugs themself and then becomes a weird... religious... madman! [Sammy] That does sound compelling! Maybe you should see if you can find a franchise that contains that element, and then become a big fan of it and draw a bunch of fanart for some reason. [Jack] Yeah, I dunno, I mean... it's so tiring getting into new media, I need to get a friend who will drag me into it. [Henry] And then you guys can start a roleplaying game with it and drag me into it! [GM] There's an idea! [Jack] Yeah! Someone should get on that! [GM] And if there was such a theoretical game... people might have to figure... what they're doing when they wake up!

[Sammy] We were put in a situation before where we were told that the only thing we could do was kill the host, but we found a way around it last time, [Peter] What way was that? [Sammy] Complicated.

[GM] Henry is the first to notice the apparent cultist, camping out, looking tired, trying to spot you guys. [Henry] Uh, Henry is just going to tap Sammy on the arm and point him out. [Jack] Bros! You've got to unionise! Look at these working conditions! [GM] Maybe one of these days you won't spot them, right? Hope springs eternal!

[GM] Okay, you can make an intimidate! [Sammy] Okay! *rolls* FIFTEEN IS -- this is the only thing Sammy's good at now -- fifteen is a hard success!

[Jack] I'm proud of him! [Sammy] Someone has to be.

[GM] Allison chats with everyone, and gets you into the costume room! Everyone seems relatively friendly! [Sammy] Except Sammy. Sammy doesn't seem friendly.

[Joey] My idea was, Joey would be Mad Hatter -- [Sammy] Because he needs a hat, [Joey] --Yeah, so he can have a hat -- I was thinking Sammy could be the March Hare, Jack could be White Rabbit, and then Henry could be the Dormouse, [Sammy] Yes! And then the Haiti boys are all the Mad Teaparty, which is great, because the Mad Teaparty is canonically trapped in a time loop. [Sammy] Because we tHOUGHT ABOUT THIS TOO MUCH,

[Jack] Kin-assign Pete! [GM] He's content to wear anything that looks like it fits him, as long as people aren't trying to push a co-ordinated effort. [Joey] (Pete can be Caterpillar,) [Jack] Catter-pete-lar [Sammy] Oh my goodness. Completely unnecessary. [Jack] This is a pun that Jack might make, out loud, to Pete [GM] Pete laughs, despite himself! [Sammy] I feel like, Jack would make this pun, and then Jack would be SO pleased with himself that Pete would laugh, because Jack was so happy about it. [Jack] Yeah that sounds canon. ....It IS canon!!

[Jack] You can like, actually pretend to be people who decided to come to this party to enjoy it, and not just steal and/or murder!

[Henry] I want someone on the help, because I feel like we would have more control if we had someone on the inside, [Henry] And Henry does have a very forgettable face, apparently!!

[Joey] What are the staff wearing? Target red shirt, khaki pants? [Sammy] Perfect! Everyone will fall for it! Based on my experience wearing red shirts into Target!

[GM] I guess this does mean Joey misses an opportunity to dress up Henry. [Joey] *excited gasp* Wait, wait, [GM] What? [Joey] Sorry, this has nothing to do with anything that's happening right now in the roleplay, but I just suddenly realised that (1) when Henry got married, was Joey his best man, and (2) did Joey get to pick out his tuxedo for him [Henry] UHHHH... I feel like, Henry usually defaults to Joey for outfits and stuff, but he would hesitate a bit to ask his best friend who has an obvious crush on him to help dress for his heteronormative wedding!

[Joey] There probably is at least one of the wedding photos where Joey is insistent on standing very next to Henry -- while Henry's next to Linda! -- but, [GM] ...but also, Joey is here, [Joey] But also Joey is here. [Sammy] ...absolute disaster of a man... [GM] But the tuxedos look good! [Joey] Yes. Henry was properly fitted.

[Sammy] I don't want a full-- I don't want a freakin' fursuit, because-- [Henry] (FNAF in the distance)

[Sammy] But I feel like, since both White Rabbit and March Hare are, like, dapper rabbits, they could do something like, yeah, splicer mask and also a hat. [Jack] I mean, Jack's not opposed; Jack likes hats. [Sammy] Jack absolutely should have a hat, I agree. [Jack] He's getting so many hats! So many hats, and so many boyfriends, [GM] He can't be stopped! [Jack] >:3c He shouldn't be stopped.

[GM] I'm still just stuck on the phrase "Dapper Rabbits."

[GM] If Joey and Allison are talking further away, I guess it's moot. Though Allison did see Prophet Sammy! He changed in her room. [Sammy] Well, nobody explained him to her. Sammy just showed up the next day and hoped that we wouldn't talk about it, and then we didn't! It was great. [Jack] Sammy's over here, hoping that Allison is distracted by Joey so that none of this conversation is being listened to, [Jack] MEANWHILE, smash cut to the other side of the room, where Joey is explaining SillySam,

[Joey] A lot of Joey's lack of giving information was to keep her out of it, and not paint a target on her back... but now? She has a target on her back, so... Sure! You can also sacrifice yourself, for the greater good!

[Sammy] I'm sure someone in this party will thank Allison. It won't be me. But I'm sure someone will.

[Henry] Henry's already smearing his blood on people, he's gonna agree to whatever at this point.

[Sammy] DEFINITELY not a cult, now hold still while we put this guy's weird glowing blood on you, it's fine. [Jack] Welcome to the flock!

[GM] What does this mean for Prophet Sammy's sacrificeability rating on Henry, though? Now he's potentially long-term useful... [Sammy] I mean... [Jack] The Prophet isn't here so he doesn't need to know about this! [Sammy] ...I feel like, if something has greater value, then it's an even more impressive sacrifice. That's why you sacrifice an unblemished sheep, traditionally. If it's not a blemish-- [Sammy] Like, that's most of what he was worried about, like, “does this make you not fit for sacrifice.” But if it's actually a really cool thing, ...!

[Sammy] Sammy's nervous. [Jack] Jack is also nervous. [Henry] Henry is also nervous! [Jack] Oh, that's always a good sign, [Joey] Joey's going to be confident! [Henry] ...Of course he is. [Joey] Someone has to be! [Jack]...is he "Confident" or "Confident (Fast Talk)"? [Joey] YES. That last one. [Sammy] *muttering* That's the best we got, unfortunately.

[Sammy] If Jack or Henry express nervousness, Sammy agrees with them. If Pete is nervous, then Sammy will very aggressively say that Joey knows what he's doing.

[Sammy] Allison, don't use a spell to bind people's souls together in order to avoid crunch,,, [GM] You never know when something might be handy! [Sammy] I mean, [GM] Waste not want not!

[Henry] Does Henry have to draw in blood on himself...? [GM] No, Henry has a lot of his own blood on his person.

[GM] Aw, man, Bendy should've commented on the rabbit outfits! I'm sure he'd find that hilarious. [Joey] ...why...? [GM] WHY? It's just objectively funny! No additional reason is needed!!

[Joey] Joey will go through his notes, and confer with Henry and Bendy on, okay, shall we try this, and see if we can help Bendy as well? [Henry] Henry is down to try! [GM] Bendy is worried about Henry overexerting himself. [Henry] ...Henry is down to try!

[Jack] Worst case, Jack looks at the symbol, and then he can be seeing-eye rabbit for the rest of the group!

[GM] Norman wonders what the plan is! [Henry] Bold of you to assume,

[Sammy] We're having such a good sleepover! We did a weird blood ritual, and we're braiding each other's hair~ [Joey] Having a fashion show, [Sammy] Yeah! We went out and got clothes, [Jack] Can't believe Joey called a boy, [Sammy] Gotta ask Joey about the boy he likes... wait, no, don't do that. [Jack] I'd say it's time to play seven minutes in heaven, but I think we, we did that early. [Sammy] WE DIDN'T DO A VERY GOOD JOB,

[GM] Norman wants to see how this plays out. [Joey] Okay, well, try not to get sacrificed, then, [GM] He laughs, and thanks you for the advice! [Sammy] *Hypnos Hadesgame voice* "Try not to get sacrificed, okay?"

[Henry] Allison is very helpful, and not weird at all!

[Joey] We already have the banjo case full of ritual circles, and Joey would rather have the emergency circles than Sammy carrying around bOTTLES OF INK. [Sammy] WHY, WHY WOULDN'T YOU WANT THAT TO BE HAPPENING? WHAT WOULD BE THE PROBLEM WITH THAT,

[GM] Make a sanity check! [Jack] Wait, what's happening? [Sammy] Joey was trying to think too hard.

[GM] Sammy does manage to catch that there's a little-- next to the kitchen, when you go into the place where they're serving food, there's a sign that says "Sheep Shop" over it. And there's a person wearing a sheep mask, handing out food. [Sammy] OKAY, THAT'S FINE,,, I don't feel like Sammy has actually read Through The Looking Glass, so I don't know if he knows why this is happening. I think he's just concerned. [GM] Excellent. Ideal response.

[GM] And Joey has NEVER seen the symbol EVER because he's incredible at not looking at creepy symbols! Which you wouldn't expect. [Sammy] I'm sure Joey will put this in his autobiography.

[Jack] :/ No Hashtag Gay Rights at this party,

[GM] Seems to be another party-goer; in fact, you recognise the voice! [Joey] Ohhh. Kyle -- I don't know his actual name, but -- [Sammy] (Dennis!) [GM] (Yes, that's-) [Joey] -- Kyle.

[Henry] Henry is going to try to sneak up on Moonlight while he's distracted! [GM] OH! ...Okay! He's very distracted, Sammy just screamed! [excited noises from everyone beCAUSE NO ONE EXPECTED THIS] [GM] You successfully sneak up behind him! [Henry] I'm going to grab the staff! [GM] Make a Brawl check, with advantage! [Sammy] (He has SO many limbs that don't work my dude, you got this,) [Henry] That's a success! [GM] You snatch it! [Henry] I RUN!!!

[Joey] We're just both escorting Jack, now. [Sammy] Would you say Jack is late, for a very important date? [Jack] Well YEAH, his Face Removal was scheduled like 2 dreams ago!!

[GM] He'd have to roll for it, to see if it felt familiar to his trip to Carcosa. [Jack] Extreme success! [GM] Then he would pick up that familiar feeling! [Jack] Oh, nice and homey at this party! Really nice. Nostalgic! It's been a while. [Sammy] Hm, [Jack] Maybe he should go play the piano, for old time's sake! [Sammy] NO

#call of cthulu: haunted hijinx #sammy lawrence #Jack Fain #Henry Stein #when in doubt just keep drawing #Henry has a daughter he knows how to do hair #Joey's going as the Hatter so we match for Mad Teaparty purposes #I can't believe we put Sammy Lawrence in a rabbit mask and NEVER made the vanny connection how is this possible

[felassan]

Check out this video interview with Mark Darrah, ‘On Anthem’s Launch, Dev Advice, And Leaving BioWare’. It’s interesting and pretty substantial. He talks about a bunch of different things, including his YouTube channel, things BioWare could’ve done differently, crunch, whether he’ll write a book about his gamedev experiences, gamedev pitfalls, Anthem’s troubled development, the development of projects he worked on including DA2, cancelled projects (and what happened to them) including Jade Empire 2 / ‘Jade Modern’ / Revolver and Mass Effect: Corsair, the reasons why he left BioWare and Dragon Age 4.

I recc giving the whole thing a watch, but if you’re not able to, here are the Dragon Age 4-related quotes and other especially interesting-to-me portions transcribed for ur convenience! (under a cut due to length):

Mark: "There is a tendency for projects that are small to think they're amazing, because it's so much easier. Like when I ran Sonic [Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood] - it was a 20 person team - it's just so much easier to make things go smoothly than when you have a 200 person team. So I think that we've made progress, but as Dragon Age pivots into production and that team gets bigger and bigger, it will be interesting to see if that's true or if it's just the blindness of being a small team. Like when Inquisition was in the throes of shipping, both Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem would love to talk about how they were 'doing things right!' and then they fell in totally different holes, but still fell in a bunch of holes after Inquisition shipped. So I do think that there is a hubris that comes from a project in early development where you feel like this time you've figured it out."

---    Mark: “As Dragon Age [4] was moving towards production, I could see that like, the team, I've been told by people that they've never met a team that more wants to be in production than Dragon Age team. But what ended up happening was, in order for the team to really explore the space properly, we had to sort've train them to be in pre-production. But that meant that that team no longer really wanted to be in production, they wanted to be in pre-production. And so, looking at what was going to be required to pivot that team into production, it wasn't a challenge that I thought I was up to any longer. I think that team, once they get into the mindset, is capable of moving entire mountains, and will move entire mountains, but they need someone that can lead them through that."

Interviewer: “Yeah, from the outside it's striking that you and Casey Hudson left at the same time. It sort’ve definitely implies a ‘fuck this’ moment for the two of you. If it was just you saying ‘I can’t do it’ then it’s understandable.”

Mark: “Yeah, no, I mean, it’s hilarious, because, we definitely were not coordinated. That was, as near as I can determine, there was nothing that triggered us on the same moment other than maybe just a sort’ve mounting, just, like, this friction, being at the, I would say, the GM and EP, the point at which the [something?] friction and the project friction meet, and you’re just sort of grinding there. But I don’t think there was a massive injection of anything late last year that triggered that. Not that I can point to. For me, yeah, I do think it was, weirdly, a coincidence. Casey and I have stayed in touch, we didn’t leave to go form a studio together or anything.”

---

Interviewer: “Are you being torn apart a little bit internally about that pressure of, ‘I know if I just made a video that said, The Secrets of Dragon Age - not even Dragon Age 4, whatever the hell that thing’s called at this point - but just, The Secrets of Dragon Age: Origins’, like, you know that  audience surely would show up. I imagine there’s that community that’s screaming at you, like, ‘Tell us something we don’t know about Dragon Age, tell us about the future!!’, versus, trying to play it a little more straight and actually offer gamedev advice.”

Mark: “Yeah, for sure, absolutely, like, looking at, there is an entire segment of YouTube which is ‘Dragon Age fans talking about Dragon theories and watching the trailers and picking them apart’ and I could do that, and that would be, I feel like that would almost destructive to everybody, because I could deflate all the theories, some of which are completely completely wrong, some of which are amazingly right. But I think, like, I don’t think the community actually wants that. They might sort’ve think they do, but I think if I just sort’ve pulled away the curtain, I think it’d be like, ‘Ohh.. but now what are we gonna talk about? :(’ Like I don’t think that anybody wants that honestly. It would be great for my metrics but I don’t think anyone really wants that.”

Interviewer: “And not to offer you advice, but like I think there’s somewhere in the middle. Like when they have the next teaser trailer for the next Dragon Age project, you could do a reaction video to that and it would be your most viewed thing by a mile, and you wouldn’t be stepping on anybody’s toes.”

Mark: “Yeah, I have thought about that exact thing. Cause we’ve now moved, I think, beyond the horizon of anything that comes out of Dragon Age at this point, like if they’re at EA Play, and I don’t know if they’re at EA Play or not, then whatever that is will be something that I didn’t have anything to do with, so we’re reaching the point where I can now, I feel like, start to provide, yeah, reaction videos from the perspective of, an incredibly well-informed outsider.”

---

Interviewer: “And you must know, even though you’re not inside the studio, like, just have an appreciation how much that [MELE’s good success and good reception] can do for the studio’s morale. I’d imagine it’s just night and day.”

Mark: “Oh, absolutely, like. Andromeda and Anthem being the last two things before the remaster, that is a cloud that hangs above the studio for sure.”

Interviewer: “Yeah, I mean I remember visiting for Dragon Age: Inquisition, it must have been, and it was still, like, the Mass Effect 3 ending, I feel like, even visiting the studio for two days, you could feel that like, funk, of just like ‘ugh, good Christ, we’ve gotten the crap kicked out of us’.”

Mark: “Yeah, I mean. The Mass endings is an interesting one for me. Because, it’s not the choices I would have made to end the game, but those are the choices that were made. I wonder... I don’t like ultimatums, and I feel like with Mass 3, the team kind’ve gave into an ultimatum. The community was so angry that we then released new better endings to ‘fix it’, and it’s not that that’s a bad piece of content, that’s a good piece of content, but I just worry that, the internet today, seems almost like... a reaction to the Mass 3 endings. Almost like, the internet learned that if you just yell loud enough you get what you want. And I don’t think that’s real, because it’s Mass Effect, it’s not Star Wars.”

Interviewer: “But I mean, if it wasn’t the ending of Mass Effect 3, it would have been something else in that era of Voices On The Internet Being So loud that it causes a big company to pivot and be like ‘Okay, we’ll try and make you a little bit happier, please just relax everybody’.”

Mark: “Yeah, totally. So I mean, I don’t think Mass Effect bears the brunt of the blame of toxic fan culture. But certainly it’s one of the very first examples of that culture managing to make something happen.”

---

Mark: “Now I do feel that maybe I overlearned that lesson, because, something that I did a lot on Anthem was talk about how, you know, ‘this is not a BioWare-style game, this is not gonna have the storytelling that you’re used to’. And I think maybe I overstressed that. I do think that at the end of the day where we are with Anthem today, if you were a BioWare fan that liked all our other games, and you play Anthem with an eye to playing it as a storytelling game, it’s certainly not our best, but it’s not bad.”

Interviewer: “So Anthem marketing and messaging was hurt because you were overlearning the lessons from Sonic, that’s the takeaway?”

Mark: “I do think so. I do think that like, I don’t think it was from the marketing perspective, but I do think that both Casey and I overstressed [that]. We didn’t want people to get mad at us for making a game that wasn’t a very good storytelling game, so we wanted to get ahead of that message and say like, ‘it’s not a very strong storytelling game, it’s a game about all this other stuff’, but, at the end of the day, it is a storytelling game, it’s still in there. And those are the people that stayed away. And if those people hadn't stayed away, I’m not saying the game would have suddenly done [awesome], but it would’ve softened the narrative a little bit, I think.”

Interviewer: “Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’m sure you understand this better than anybody, but that’s such a loaded term to say ‘This is a BioWare-style game’, and obviously there’s that era of EA where they were trying to say that every project within EA was a ‘BioWare-style’ game and so, it’s interesting to hear you kind’ve, hemming and hawwing about how much to lean into, ‘no no, this one is 100% BioWare, this one is 73% BioWare’ - it’s such a murky thing.”

Mark: “It absolutely is, I mean, and I even said these things. Like we made MDK2, well, we made it, so I mean is that a ‘BioWare-style’ game? Is Baldur’s Gate a ‘BioWare-style’ game? But if it is, then how is Mass Effect a ‘BioWare-style’ game, and certainly I don’t think anyone would argue that Mass Effect is not a ‘BioWare-style’ game. So that term has to evolve as the studio continues. But I think for whatever reason, for a variety of reasons, I guess, with Anthem we were worried that maybe we’d pushed it a bit too far. And then I guess we did.”

Interviewer: “Did you enjoy any part of working on Anthem, or was it just a matter of putting out so many fires that it was just nothing but stress til the end?”

Mark: “It was stressful for me. I mean. I have a weird - the last ten years of my career at BioWare seemed to involve a lot of helping people land their planes. And that’s what Anthem was for me, I wasn't there from the beginning. I was helping to land it. I think there’s a satisfaction that comes with landing a game, with finishing a product, and I felt that with Anthem as well, and there were a lot of talented people on that project that I’d never worked with before, and that was great. It was great to, y’know, figure out these people that had only ever worked on a Mass Effect, that I’d never worked with before, their skills and abilities. I really like understanding the strengths and weaknesses of a person and building around that. I didn’t really have an opportunity on Anthem to do that because y’know, we were just trying to get the plane on the ground, but I think, having learned about what those people could do, that’s very gratifying because it lets you imagine what you could do with them in the future.” 

Interviewer: “Yeah, if things aligned magically, but for you you realized it never was gonna align, and it was always just right on the horizon of being able to cobble this amazing talent together and focus it down.”

Mark: “Yeah, I mean - I think that I, the mistake that I made on Anthem, I think the biggest mistake, was I’m used to getting a team that pushes back on me in a certain way. So as I’m sort’ve pushing the stick down to get the plane to hit the runway, I’m used to pushing it sort’ve too far, because I know that the team is gonna push it back and then we’re gonna end up where it should be. And I think that given the state of the team on Anthem when I came on, and given the differences in personalities of the leaders there, versus the ones that I’d been working with for ten years, that’s not what happened. I think if anything, I pushed it down, and then they grabbed it and pulled it even further, because they were desperate for help in decision-making, and I was providing decisions. And they were grabbing onto that, and so I thought we were on this glide slope [motions], I was aiming at this glide slope expecting that we were gonna be like [this], but instead we were like [this], and so we, yeah, we landed that pretty rough. But, I mean, it was my call, I’m the one that said we shouldn’t push to move this, not because I thought it was perfect, but because the only path I could see to making it way better was moving it a lot. And when you’re in the last eight, nine weeks of a project, I could only see like, if we were gonna move it, we [would] have to move it like a year. And that’s - in a public corporation that’s a hard argument to make.”

---

Mark: “One of the most expensive things a project can do is slip. Because, your team, when you do that your team is at its maximum size, so if you got 200 people working on a project and you move a month, well that’s 200 staff months, you just got a bunch more expensive just by moving a month. Whereas actually adding more people, well if you only got a month left, to add 200 staff months to a project, you gotta add 200 people, that’s a lotta people. Moving the date is one of the most expensive, and you can reach a point where it’s like, look, it’s not worth it, if we move the date it’s gonna cost more to continue this project than it’s gonna make, so we’re not gonna. But rarely is that the case, you’ve already spent the money you’ve spent, so the only cost that matters is the cost going forward.”

Interviewer: “So, do you regret not pushing for Anthem to be delayed a year or was it good just to get something on the ground so that we could start building to take it off again with a living game?”

Mark: “Yeah, honestly, I don’t regret it, the [team/game?] was tired and it didn’t have another year in it, and I think a lot of the things that are super obvious now, some of them we knew, some of them we knew, like the balance, we had done one, clean balance pass, by having QA come in and hotseat their way through the game over Christmas break. Like literally playing the game 24 hours a day. We’d done basically that once. So we knew that, we knew that. But a lot of the other things kind’ve only came out once it was out in peoples’ hands. I think the path that I wasn’t capable of seeing at the time that could’ve maybe resulted in a better game would’ve been to put it into beta, like a real beta, in the state that it was in, and run it like that and then release it a year later. But I don’t know if there was the will to do that frankly. There might be now... I think Anthem taught EA a lot of lessons.”

Mark: “[on Cyberpunk] I think many of the same things happened there [as with Anthem]. They had a team that was tired and it wasn’t ready but they couldn’t see the path to getting it more ready. If the team is too tired, just taking another two months just isn’t gonna get you what you think it’s gonna get you.” [source]

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #video games #long post #longpost #mass effect: andromeda #anthem #mass effect

[vodkassassin]

world state: refresh, chapter two

Last chapter: “—From the description, it’s basically the same as the synopsis of your run of the mill VRMMORPG anime, except the virtual games are real worlds.”

“Sure, but if they’re real worlds, then what does being a Game Master mean?”

Shen Yuan grins down at him.

“Hey, Airplane,” he says. “How do you feel about being an actual god?” [Read ch. 1]

—

“Oh, yaaawn!” She throws herself back onto the plush surface behind her and stretches her arms above her head. “Man, what a chore! Hey, Dorazou, make a note to always double check the Mission Rating before accepting an Assignment in the future. No way in hell am I gonna be doing that again!”

“AwRAWRight!” The tiny avatar cheers, pumping a little red scaled fist into the air. “Reminder set! Hey, Host, if it’s any consolation, this system thinks you totally aced it!”

“Hmm,” she crosses her arms and stars at the collection of screens that have popped into existence before her. “The mission grading will be the judge of that. Let’s see, here…. Oh, awesome! I earned a double S score! You know what that means!”

Dorazou gives another little roar cheer that sounds more like a kitten's mew than anything. Ah, so cute! “Host may close her next Assignment! Congratulations!”

The agent gathers her hair up into a loose and messy bun at the top of her head, breathing out a sigh of relief. “Awesome. Let’s choose something easy, why don’t we? That last world was only an A-rank, but it gave me a lot more trouble than I bargained for. It should have been labeled at least S-tank! Dorazou, bring up all available Assignments. B-rank or lower only, please!”

“Gotcha!” The tiny dragon-themes sprite gives a little twirl, it’s clunky arms flailing adorably. “Assignment list set to: Easy!”

“Perfect, thanks! Let’s take a look, now… Otome-world…. Fantasy style cooking show star, haha. I have zero talent in that area, so please decline it for me, Dorazou…. Another Knights Order needs a Pure Heavenly Maiden for such and such ritual, ah, that honestly just sounds so sinister, decline! And here we have yet another otome assignment, damn. These things are such pests. Oh, what’s this?”

Sitting up, the agent leans in and peers closely at the screen, eyes bright in excitement. “Hey, Dorazou! This one calls for a team of agents!”

“That is correct!” Dorazou says, beaming. The dragon floats up to sit comfortably on the girl’s shoulder. “System Agents 74 and 81 have put in a request for additional manpower in the Game Master Assignment for World-120MAX. If Host accepts, she and four other agents will be tasked with working under the leadership of Agent 74 in creating and managing a Game World.”

She tilts back again, kicking her legs up into the air with some excitement. “What’s the deadline?”

Dorazou is quiet for a moment as it studies the screens. It gives a hearty cheer and pats the agent on the head. “No deadline! Host will remain on Agent 74’s GM Team until it is decommissioned by the Team itself!”

She jumps off the beanbag entirely to float up into the air, catching the little dragon sprite and hugging it to her chest. “Awesome! So it’s basically a neverending paid vacation, if we want it to be? That totally rocks! Dorazou, we lucked out with this one!”

“AwRAWRight!” The tiny system cheers, looping its scaly arms around her neck in a hug. “Is Host choosing this Assignment, then?”

“As if I’d ever turn down a chance like this! System Agents hardly ever get to work together! Dorazou, please confirm my acceptance!”

“Assignment chosen! Does Host wish to rest in the home space before starting?”

“Nah, I’m way too pumped now,” she clenches her fists and grins. “Dorazou, let’s go meet our new friends!”

“RAWR! World-120MAX loading! Twenty-eight percent! Fifty-percent! Eighty-three percent! World load complete! Entering database now!”

The agent grins as she dissolves into light. This is gonna be sweet!

—

“Nice to meet you! My name is Myra Khol, System Agent 23! I’m here for the Game Master Team Assignment!”

“The what?” The boy says, expression just positively befuddled as it has been when she’s first loaded into the world, and Myra tilts her head in slight confusion. Has this guy never met another agent before?

She hops down from the tree and steps over to him, a little surprised when he takes a step back in return. Man, this guy is shy! How cute!

“Wait a minute, did you just say ‘System’?” The boy straightens up, his eyes going even wider than they’d already been. “Does that mean you are also a transmigrator?”

“What else would I be?” Myra huffs out with some bemusement. “You guys clearly haven’t put any people in this world yet, so the only ones you’d be seeing are yourselves or another agent.”

“Agent…” the boy echoes, holding the fan up to his lips in thought. It’s an endearing gesture, something so old fashion being slightly out of place with the futuristic fantasy design of the boy’s outfit, and yet it still somehow fits him.

Myra blinks at him, and then decides to take pity. From the looks of it, this kid is a noob at the job. She remembers when that had been her. The good old days!

“Didn’t your Systems explain it to you guys yet?” She asks.

At her words, the boy’s expression darkens. “The System? No. Why would the System explain anything?”

Oh. That sounded like anger, there. Myra reaches out a hand and nervously scoots her precious Dorazou over until it’s hidden behind her back. The little dragon makes a tiny noise of confusion, but goes along with it.

The boy narrows his eyes at her action. “Speaking of systems… is that one yours?”

“Um, well,” Myra coughs. “Yes? But! Dorazou is such a sweet little thing! Wouldn’t harm a fly! Please take care of it!”

The boy looks confused. “Wouldn’t harm a fly! Have you never been threatened with Punishment Protocol?”

Myra gapes, aghast. “No! That’s reserved for triple S class worlds on the highest difficulty setting! Why would an Assignment like that be given to newbie agents?”

The boy stares at her, face pale.

“Oh.” Myra presses her hands over her mouth, staring at him in horror. “I mean, I’ve heard it happening only once. Someone being given an extreme-difficulty Assignment for their very first world. It was basically an impossible mission, but she luckily managed to complete it successfully. The Assignment Parameter glitch that led to it was suppose to have been fixed since then, though. Are you really saying…?”

The boy lets out a weak sounding laugh, bowing his head. He rubs the back of his arm across his eyes, and Myra feels something in her chest ache at the sight. These two agents… they’ve really been through the wringer, haven’t they?

Clearing her throat hesitantly, she asks, “The Assignment said there were two agents behind the request. Since you’re here, where’s your partner?”

“He’s on the other side of the Level, touching up on some persistent glitches that are occurring in quadrant five,” the boy releases an aggravated sigh. Then, he glances at Myra in surprise. “Oh, I haven’t introduced myself yet, have I? My name is Shen Yuan, it’s really nice to meet you.”

Myra grins back at him, relieved. “Is it? For a moment there, I thought you weren’t happy to see me.”

“Are you kidding?” Shen Yuan laughs again, and this one is much lighter. It suits him way better than the faintly grieved sound from before. “I am ecstatic to meet you. It’s nice to know that we’re not as alone as we thought. Here, I’ll take you to my… partner. He should be about finished by now.”

Myra bounces onto her toes in excitement. She grabs Dorazou by the tail and troops after Shen Yuan when the boy turns his back and begins to walk away.

“Man, not being given a tutorial world really sounds like it sucked,” Myra says, side eyeing her new teammate as she comes up beside him.

Shen Yuan has an odd smile on his face when he replies. “It was… definitely something, yes.”

“You want me to lodge a complaint with Management?” She asks, a pinch of worry between her brows. “If all three of us do it, they’ll have to take another look at the glitch and make double sure that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

Shen Yuan is quiet for a long while as they walk along the quaint little dirt path. The silence stretches into minutes, and Myra decides to leave him to his thoughts, because it looks like he’s pondering something pretty deep.

She busies herself with checking out their surroundings as they move along. Shen Yuan has called this area the Level, and she’s assuming it’s the first of its kind, and therefore intended to be the Starting Area for the Players when they enter into this world. She’s done her reading while loading into the Assignment, so she’s fairly confident in her ability to assist Shen Yuan and his partner with whatever sort of administration work they need help with. So far though, from what she’s seeing, the two of them are actually off to a really good start. One or both of them must have some sort of experience in world building.

What a perfect Assignment for them, if that’s the case.

Especially if what Shen Yuan says is true, and he really had suffered through a triple S class of extreme difficulty for what was suppose to be their tutorial world. He really deserves a paradisal vacation such as this, where he can recuperate from the troubles he’d faced.

“It shouldn’t have happened in the first place,” Shen Yuan finally says, voice so quiet that Myra wouldn’t have heard it if the rest of the world around them wasn’t dead silent. It seems the audiosphere hasn’t been set up, yet.

Myra glances over to her side, and finds Shen Yuan staring down at the ground with a frown on his pretty face. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides.

“You said they already patched the glitch, so it shouldn’t have happened. They — whoever they are — clearly didn’t do their job.”

Myra bites her lip, and hugs a strangely quiet Dorazou to her chest. “Yeah, so we should file a complaint, right? And we can get the rest of the team on board with it, too, once they get here. I’m sure they’ll agree, too.”

“The rest of the team?” Shen Yuan asks, frown still present. He flicks his wrist, and the fan opens with a sharp snap and a skillful flourish. Myra stares at the action in awe. So refined! So graceful! And the fan itself was exquisite.

“I’m sorry, could you elaborate on the… Assignment Parameters you mentioned before? Xiao Lei and I just needed help, and the system said we’d have it. It didn’t explain what that help was, or where it would come from.”

Xiao Lei must be the other agent, Shen Yuan’ partner. Myra files the name away and directs a bright smile in the direction of her new teammate.

“Sure thing! Basically, your request generated a new Assignment in the listings for agents. It asks for five agents to form a team directly under you and your partner, though Agent 74 is suppose to be the team leader. That wouldn’t happen to be you, would it?”

Shen Yuan blinks at her, before his frown returns in full force. It looks faintly irritated this time, and the boy calls out, “System, what is my, uh, Agent number?”

There’s a faint sound of static, before a slightly stilted and robotic voice replies, “Host is filed as Agent 81.”

Myra glances down to see a Siamese cat, tail poised elegantly in the air and ears perked upright, weaving between Shen Yuan’s every step like a ghost. The cat glances up at her and blinks it’s bright blue eyes at her with an indifferent gaze.

“Oh, is that your System? It’s so cute!” She squeals.

The cat glances away from her, and Shen Yuan huffs.

“It’s an absolute snob, is what it is,” the boy refutes.

His system doesn’t look back up, and Myra feels a little bad for it, but…. Well, she supposed, if she’s been trapped in an SSS-rank hell world for her first Assignment, she might have some resentment toward her system, too.

She clutched Dorazou to her chest at the terrible thought, and is comforted when the little dragon spite turns around to nuzzle her back. It seems she’s really lucked out, huh?

“Does your system have a name?” She asks, scratching Dorazou behind the ear.

“Does it need one?” Shen Yuan asks coldly.

Myra cringes, glancing down at the aloof-looking cat that darts between his legs. It doesn’t even twitch at the way that it’s host speaks about it, and Myra decides to change the subject least the air becomes too awkward.

“So, um, I guess your partner is the designated team leader, then!” She tries, her smile fixed in place.

Shen Yuan shrugs. He flutters the pretty fan in front of his face and holds his other arm behind his back. He looks like some sort of regal young master of an ancient dynasty, with a posture like that. Myra wonders what the setting of his last world had been. Imperial court drama, perhaps? That sort of plot was almost always a guaranteed S rank.

“It suits him,” Shen Yuan says. “He has the most experience in creating worlds, so I guess I’d follow his lead even if he wasn’t the boss. Though, I’ll definitely be there to advise him, so he doesn’t get too carried away.”

“Carried away?” Myra wonders.

“It happens, sometimes.” Shen Yuan grimaces. “If it’s true that we’ll be a team, then I’ll be counting on you to keep an eye on him, as well.”

“Yes, of course!” Myra is a little confused, but Shen Yuan obviously knows his partner best, so she’ll take his words to heart. She salutes him. “You can definitely rely on me for that!”

This gets her a faint smile, and she inwardly cheers. This boy is surprisingly difficult to get a response out of. Myra hasn’t met someone like him in a long time.

Suddenly, Shen Yuan pulls to a stop, and gestures ahead of them. “We’re here,” he says, and then sighs. “Looks like he’s not finished… I wonder….”

Myra looks ahead of them, to see a huge structure looming in the distance. The forest they’ve been strolling through has given way to an open plain, grasslands mixed with an opaque sandy desert. A few hundred meters away sits a hulking building, which in closer examination is not a building at all, but in fact some sort of autonomous being. It’s collapsed on its side, limbs askew, a central panel of its torso gaping open to allow its mechanical insides to be strewn about throughout the grass and sand around it. There’s faint noises of metal hitting against metal coming from within it, and when Myra squints, she can just make out a tiny figure perched on the very edge of the thing’s opened chassis.

Shen Yuan takes a step forward, and Myra keeps back. He closes his fan with a satisfying clack and slips it into the pocket of his shorts, and then cups his hands around his mouth. “Hey, Shang Lei! Come here!”

Oh, so the other agent’s name was Shang Lei, not Xiao Lei.

Myra pokes at her lip in thought as she watches the distant figure poke it’s head up out of the mechanical innards of whatever creature they were tinkering around inside of. Shen Yuan, Shang Lei… those names both sound pretty Chinese to her. And in Chinese, Xiao is often used as a diminutive or an endearment. So, this must mean that Shen Yuan and Shang Leo are actually very close friends, right? Myra covers her smile with a hand.

Due to context gathered from Shen Yuan's earlier words, it must also be likely that they were partners in their last world. Meaning that Shang Lei also experienced what was, in layman’s terms, called a Hell Assignment. And it is likely that the Hell Assignment was also Shang Lei’s first Assignment, given that Shen Yuan has no idea about a lot of System Agent common sense.

If they were partners all this time, if Shang Lei had previous transmigration experience, he’d have schooled his partner on it by now. And yet, Shen Yuan was ignorant of a lot of things.

Myra presses both her palms to her cheeks and sighs quietly as she watches Shang Lei approach them. Shen Yuan has stepped up to meet him, but she can clearly see the hesitant way that Shang Lei holds himself, the wary way that he eyes her. The way that he slides himself into the shadow of Shen Yuan’s barely taller stature when he realizes she’s looking back at him.

She sighs in her heart, as well, and clutches Dorazou in one arm like a teddy bear. Her system pays her on the hand.

“—apparently posted an assignment asking for other agents to come and lend us a hand.” Shen Yuan is explaining quietly to his partner — his friend. He gestures at her with a hand. “This is Myra Khol, the first one to accept the mission.”

Myra steps forward the smallest step she can take without it seeming like she’s wary of them, too. It still makes Shang Lei duck even further behind Shen Yuan. She does not let it dim her smile.

“Hi, I’m Myra, System Agent 23! I’m pleased to meet you, boss!”

Shang Lei peeks out from behind his friend with wide eyes. There’s a complicated expression on his face.

“... Nice to meet you, too,” he mumbles, and curls back behind Shen Yuan as soon as the last word is out.

That is it! Myra has decided! She will help these two to the best of her abilities, not because it’s the Assignment, but because she wants to!

Dorazou! Edit Assignment self parameters!

[[Host!]]

The dragon sprite makes a soft noise from within her grasp. She sees the way that Shang Lei’s eyes dart down to it, and the frown that graces his face as he glances shyly back toward her with an expression that almost looks faintly concerned. For her. And given the fact that it’s very possible that Shang Lei’s opinion of systems is the same as Shen Yuan’s, due to their not-so-great past experiences, the look that he’s sending her now makes Myra’s heart melt.

[[Assignment parameters, self edit mode!]]

Myra’s smile broadens.

Take care of Agent 74 and Agent 81! Priority!

#scum villain's self saving system #bofuri #cheating men must die #world state: refresh #update #vodkassassin fanfiction #cucumberplane #vodkas ocs

[zashamalkin]

Full article below the cut.

Kris Letang never wants to play for another NHL team. He thinks he will, though.

In the days following the Penguins’ loss in the Stanley Cup playoffs qualifying round last month, shortly after sharing with team officials his desire to retire a Penguin, Letang told several teammates he expected to be traded this offseason.

Interviews with more than a dozen team and league sources revealed that Letang, the most accomplished defenseman in Penguins history, is at a crossroads similar to the one teammate Evgeni Malkin found himself at after the 2018-19 season. While Malkin always has brushed off any indication he could be traded, Letang has taken it seriously since first learning of reports and speculation in the 2012-13 season.

He fears it more this offseason than any other.

But neither ownership nor management believes the Penguins will be better without Letang, who has two years remaining on his contract. And the return of Todd Reirden as assistant coach is the first part of the Penguins’ plan for Letang to “be that guy again,” a team source told The Athletic.

“If I’m running things in Pittsburgh, I’m looking at Letang and thinking about what my team would be if he got back to having great years,” one league source said. “And why wouldn’t Jim (Rutherford) or (Mike Sullivan) think that way? Didn’t they have the same thought a year ago about Malkin? And didn’t they figure it out with him?

“Maybe it’s just Letang’s turn for them to take a different approach.”

Still, despite being told by Rutherford that a retooling plan does not include trading him, Letang has told those close to him he expects a trade from the Penguins could happen during the offseason or sometime next season, multiple team sources said.

In recent conversations, Rutherford has asked opposing GMs if they were “interested in Letang,” according to multiple league sources, who cautioned the Penguins’ GM wasn’t trying to trade Letang as much as “feeling out what value Letang would have.”

“Honestly, it doesn’t sound like they know what the market is for Letang,” one league source said. “Jim was fishing. That’s not exactly trying to trade the guy. But the word’s out that Jim wants to know what he could get from one of the teams Letang could go to.”

Letang will count $7.25 million against the salary cap next season. His cap hit is slated to rank 13th all defenseman and he will be one of 15 defensemen in his 30s making at least $7 million in actual salary, as recorded by the Puck Pedia website.

He might not be a bargain, but Letang provides the Penguins with good value when healthy. He is their lone returning defenseman to have ever scored at least 10 goals or 50 points in a season, doing so seven and five times respectively. Also, he is one of only two returning defensemen to have averaged at least 25 minutes in multiple seasons, with Letang hitting that mark in seven of the past eight seasons.

Combine those factors with championship experience, the ability to run a power play and an under-the-radar leadership style, and Rutherford’s decision to even gauge colleague’s interest on Letang caught more than a few in Pittsburgh’ organization by surprise.

“How is it ‘win-now mode’ if you trade our best defenseman?” one team source said. “Trading him just doesn’t make any sense.”

Another team source described Letang as “misunderstood.”

“He cares a lot about our team and what people here think of him,” that team source said. “Tanger’s honest. He’s hard on himself. He’s been through a lot as a person, not just a player. He’s made his family here. This team matters to him. If you know him, Tanger will work harder than anyone to make it work.”

Letang trade rumors started shortly after he signed an eight-year, $58 million dollar contract in 2013. He wanted a full no-trade clause in the contract, but Ray Shero, GM at the time, balked because he had already granted such clauses to Sidney Crosby and Malkin. They settled on a modified no-trade clause that grants Letang some, but not total, control.

Negotiations nearly fell apart before the contract was finalized. Letang wanted the no-trade clause to go into effect immediately, but the collective bargaining agreement prohibited the clause from taking effect until the first year of the new deal (2014-15), which meant Letang would play the 2013-14 season without trade protection.

“Kris was upset because Ray wouldn’t say, ‘I won’t trade you next season’ instead of Ray saying, ‘We’re not giving you this contract so we can trade you,’” a league source said. “It was obvious Kris wasn’t going to be traded. … He just had it in his head that he would be the odd-guy out.”

Shero and Rutherford had treated Letang similarly before this offseason. Other teams could call, but it would take a lot to pry Letang from Pittsburgh.

And even though he took calls last summer and is currently gathering intel on Letang’s value, Rutherford has also confided to associates that he believes the “right thing is for those three players” — Letang, Crosby and Malkin — “to retire as Penguins for-life,” team and league sources said.

Rutherford’s moves in the weeks following the Penguins’ latest early exit from a postseason confirm what team and league sources described a “joint decision by ownership and management” to stick with the win-now approach for the next two seasons.

That means definitely retaining Malkin and likely keeping Letang, who each have two years remaining on their contracts, and adding talent where it makes sense.

The Penguins believe the acquisition of winger Kasperi Kapanen from Toronto makes their top six as good as at any point in the Crosby/Malkin era. And others in the organization believe Reirden’s return will benefit all defensemen, but especially Letang.

“The way I see it, Pittsburgh is doing with Letang what it did to Malkin a year ago — get through to him, get him to change some things and get him back to where they need him to be,” one league source said.

“That’s why Reirden is back. I guarantee that’s what went into Jim’s thinking.”

Malkin and Crosby in recent seasons have proven willing and able to make on- and off-ice adjustments to remain elite players into their mid-30s. However, a few of the franchise’s highest-ranking officials believe Letang has “better to give,” multiple team sources said.

Sullivan, in particular, has grown frustrated with Letang’s occasional resistance to play within the system, according to multiple league sources. Sullivan often would hand off Letang to either Jacques Martin or Sergei Gonchar, two of three assistants whose contracts were not renewed by the Penguins.

“The thing with great players is they want to do so much,” one league source said. “When you get older, doing less does more. But not every player understands that.”

Hiring Reirden as Sullivan’s top assistant should “get Letang’s attention,” a league source said.

One former Penguins player from when Reirden was Dan Bylsma’s assistant said “Todd’s great at making you feel like it’s a conversation, not a one-sided talk — and that’s going to help with whatever the message is to Tanger because he responds best when he feels like he’s part of the discussion.”

Reirden cut his NHL teeth as an assistant on Bylsma’s Penguins staff from 2010-14. His primary responsibilities were coaching defenseman and running the power play, and it was in those roles that Reirden won hard-earned respect from Crosby, Malkin and Letang.

Multiple team sources said there was no indication those three players thought as highly of Mark Recchi, who ran the power play the past three seasons. And though Malkin, Letang and Crosby each hold Gonchar in the highest regard, Letang’s history with Gonchar as a teammate in the late 2000s became seen by top Penguins brass as a hindrance to their player/coach relationship.

“Letang is still their best defenseman,” one league source said. “If he’s lost a step, I didn’t see it. Maybe a half-step? But I didn’t see a guy who looked noticeably different as a skater.”

Rutherford said he waited all of 30 minutes after Reirden’s firing as head coach of the Washington Capitals to give him a call and discuss a return to Pittsburgh. A few minutes into their conversation, Rutherford and Reirden were exchanging thoughts on Letang, team sources said.

“I’ve talked to Tanger about Todd. He loved him,” one former Penguin said. “And if there is a better level from Letang at this point in his career, Todd is the one coach who can probably help him get there.

“If he does, and Sid is healthy and Geno comes back as dedicated as he did last season, that’s going to be bigger for Pittsburgh than anything else Jim does in terms of trades or signings.”

(Top photo: Derek Cain / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

#kris letang #the athletic #rob rossi

[hglog]

PBTA Spelljammer GLOG Thing?

Recently, my father dug up his old Traveller and MegaTraveller books for me, and after having a lot of fun reading through them, I can definitively say I don’t ever want to GM the system. But it got me in a space-gaming mood and my mind turned to two things. First, the Uncharted Worlds game I was once a player in, which seems to have borrowed a lot of the good aspects of Traveller and put them into a PBTA system, which I love very much. Second, the AD&D setting Spelljammer which is an amazing science-fantasy fever dream that I’ve unfortunately never gotten to experience firsthand. Naturally, I decided I’d make an RPG. And, ever since I discovered it, GLOG has basically consumed a large part of my mindspace whenever I think about RPGs.

Now it’s about a month later, and I have a lot written, but even more still to write. My biggest issue is getting my thoughts organized. I’m always a lot neater when I know other people are going to see my work. So, in a hope to make things more coherent for myself, I’m going to let you in on what I have to far.

What I like about Spelljammer

Science fiction minus the science

Practically any science fiction trope you can think of fits into the setting, but when it comes to the actual science, it’s this weird-ass mix of a classical Greek and medieval alchemist understanding of the cosmos.

You don’t have to worry about players “um, actually”-ing you about what happens in the vacuum of space, because it’s actually not even a vacuum!

Magic = FTL

Despite the previous point, its science is actually still relatively “hard” when it comes to internal consistency and logical consequences to its different laws of reality than our own. The magic, on the other hand, is magic. My headcanon is that the speed of light imposes a hard limit, but magic is the one thing able to ignore it.

While people could theoretically pull off a no-magic spacecraft launch (if they had a few thousand more years of technological development), for the most part, if something is in space, it’s probably because a wizard decided they wanted it to be in space.

Weird-ass spaceships

Since a spaceship is “anything you can put a spelljamming throne in,” you get a delightful mix of regular boats, classic pulp sci-fi or space opera spaceships, weird organic tentacled things, and whatever else strikes your fancy.

What if a dragon died and all the kobolds that worshipped it somehow got enough spell slots to just pilot its corpse into space and start fucking shit up?

Sadly, Spelljammer doesn’t offer a lot of customization, instead just relying on a wide catalogue of weird ships used by different aliens.

Wizards

What I like about PBTA

Adaptable to basically any setting

There is a great wealth of hacks I can draw from

These two points go hand in hand. I haven’t, however, been able to find a specifically spelljammer-inspired PBTA hack, so that’s why I’m doing this.

The PBTA games I’ve read through in creating this (so far) are  Uncharted Worlds, Dungeon World, and the original Apocalypse World.

Encourages little preparation

My biggest challenge in running a game that’s interstellar in scope is my instinct to pre-prepare everything, which is already problem if I think I need to make an entire country, let alone an entire planet. But now we’re talking not only a planet but every planet.

While you can do worldbuilding as the GM for a PBTA game, you can also not do any, and let the players do all the work for you upon character creation. Dungeon World is especially good at this.

It’s fun

I’ve enjoyed every PBTA game I’ve been a player or a GM for, no exceptions (so far).

It’s extremely easy to teach people

Most of my friends are not as into learning new systems as I am. But most of them have already played at least one PBTA system, and if they haven’t, it wouldn’t be as much of a hassle as say, AD&D or Traveller.

What I like about GLOG

The four-template class blueprint

If PBTA character sheets are streamlined, I don’t even know what I’d call GLOG character sheets.

I don’t know if I’d shave my classes down quite as much, but I’m definitely taking notes from GLOG’s designs.

GLOG spellcasting

This is one of the things I like most about GLOG.

Spell dice to power FTL? Maybe 1 die per 30 light years or whatever, and the sum determines how fast the trip can be made? Doubles and triples can be malfunctions or space pirate attacks or something.

A shit ton of classes

I think I’d like to limit it to 10 or so classes, but I’m definitely going to get inspiration from some of the weirder GLOG classes along with the classes fighters/wizards/rogues.

An emphasis on interesting problem-solving

I think this is more just good game design than GLOG itself.

Encourages taking a weirder spin on fantasy lore that’s often taken for granted

Again, this seems like it’s just good worldbuilding, but a lot of GLOGgish writings do this, and I’d like to follow in their footsteps.

What I like (and dislike) about Traveller

I don’t like how obtuse it is

Reading the book sort of overwhelms me. It’s like they didn’t even try to make it accessible. It’s just endless black text on a white background, tables and diagrams strewn about haphazardly, and no art, not even just at the beginnings and ends of sections. The cover is a black void to symbolize the state of my mind after reading three pages.

When it comes to spaceships, I like a lot of crunch and granularity in their design

Something I found myself wishing for when playing Uncharted Worlds was a more involved ship design process. While they did clearly take notes from Traveller, it’s nothing like the original.

I don’t know what it is about spaceships. Characters I like simple and streamlined, but I guess reading through power plant matrices and choosing software and balancing it all on a budget gets me into the headspace I actually believe a spaceship creator would be in, whereas I don’t think the creation of a person usually involves that sort of design process.

I'm neutral on the crunch for everything else, but I think it's at odds with PBTA sensibilities

Plus, as I sort of mentioned in the PBTA section, I want my mostly 5e-playing friends to be willing to test this with me.

I like the psionics

I really like psionics, and I think Traveller properly captures the feel that I like for them.

However, I’m not a fan of “anyone can test their psionic abilities and then roll to maybe get powers.” I’m going to have a psionic class, which a character can start in if they want to have psionic powers, or they can multiclass into later if they want to discover their psionic potential later on. If they don’t want their character to have latent potential, they can just never take any levels in the class.

I dislike the highly-defined setting

I know it’s supposed to be adaptable to most sci-fi settings, but the books reference their own universe and history so much that it doesn’t really feel that way.

How do I synthesize this all into one game?

Setting-wise, I’m mostly drawing from Spelljammer, as well as Star Wars, Numenera, and my own imagination. I don’t want to define many specific planets or empires or sectors or whatever since I prefer most of the worldbuilding work be done by players during character creation. Also, if you know of any very low-science space fantasy fiction that I should read, please send it my way.

I do have very specific ideas about how I want spaceships and space travel to work, which I think need their own post later. You might get a pretty good sense of what I’m going for from the Spelljammer and Traveller sections, though. My plan is to take advantage of something like Traveller’s very granular and in-depth ship creation to let players make their own completely batshit Spelljammer-style spaceships. I think a ship needs its own character sheet.

I’m doing the PBTA thing where each class has a character sheet. I haven’t decided whether I’m doing the standard 6 stats or making up some weird ones. The former is definitely easier to sell to people but I think the latter is cooler.  Also, since you need a spellcasting class to have FTL what do you do if nobody picks one? I don’t want to get in a situation where I have to tell them “one of you needs to switch classes,” that just feels bad and could create animosity. A solution I’m slightly leaning towards is having only one of each character sheet, then making sure there’s always one fewer non-spellcasting class option than there are players, so by pure mathematics someone will end up able to power the ship, and I don’t need to force anyone to change on my own. The issue there is then I can’t have more than 3-5 non-spellcasting class options depending on party size, and I’d prefer a larger and more varied class pool. Another option would be to have magic hirelings available, but I want spellcasters with the ability to do FTL to feel like these big, weird, and powerful personalities, so having them just available as hirelings sort of it cheapens that in my opinion.  Maybe it’s not actually important that the party always have access to their own interstellar travel? I could see the PCs being like a bunch of interstellar hitchhikers. Very Douglas Adams. 

That’s just about everything that I don’t think needs a separate post. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have any thoughts about this potential horrible chimera of a system I’d love to hear them! You can reach me here through Tumblr or at Robot_Face#7919 on the OSR discord server.

#Spelljammer #PBTA #GLOG #tabletop #dnd

[inkdemonapologist]

Been a lot of emotions in recent BatIM Call of Cthulhu events!!

Prophet Sammy slipped and sank into the mud in the swamp and immediately went into DROWNING FLASHBACKS from his inky death back in the Star Pools. Stunningly, panicking and thrashing around did not help and in fact only got him more stuck.

Henry was the one to pull Sammy out, which is a bit weird, because the Prophet didn’t actually... expect them to... want to help him??? Henry was also leaking gold blood out of his face from doing some intense magic (???), it’s fine, don’t worry about it.

Prophet Sammy ran out of ink, which he has to drink periodically to keep himself from changing back into normal Sammy, and JOEY... GAVE HIM SOME OF HIS OWN INK SO HE COULD HAVE A LITTLE MORE TIME???? Both me and the Prophet were absolutely flabbergasted.

We rescued Jack’s old boyfriend Peter, that newspaper editor guy from before! He was trapped in another world and Jack managed to guide him back to this one and we all pulled his reflection out of the Lake and fought off the eldritch horror that tried to follow him out to our world! THERES A LOT HAPPENING IN THIS GAME

As always Boo has the summary posts for a more detailed description of events, but if you’re here for out-of-context quotes IVE GOT YOU COVERED, here’s some quotes from Session 7:

[Sammy is played by me, Joey is played by Boo (inkyvendingmachine), Henry is played by Maf (inkcryptid), Jack is played by Mochi (whatyouwantedmetosee) and Thren (haunted-hijinxer) is our GM!]

[Henry] *rolling dice* Some nice dice clacking for the auditory experience, [Sammy] Call of Cthulhu ASMR [Joey] Some clacking dice, some screaming,

[GM] But you are on the shallower end of it, so you're not sinking. You are SUPER muddy. [Joey] That's fine-- [Jack] Noooo!! Jack's sweater!!!!!

[GM] Jack's turn! Make a luck roll, Jack! [Jack] *rolls terribly* ...hrrMMM... [GM] Okay. We'll just. We'll just keep that. For later. :)

[Sammy] Sammy is scrambling and panicking and yelling! [GM] Make a strength check! [Sammy] Cool, I'm good at those. *rolls* Success! [GM] You strongly thrash yourself about waist-deep in the mud. [Sammy] [Sammy] OKAY, um, [Sammy] That is. Uh. Worse. Than it was previously, yes? [GM] Yeah. :) [Sammy] OKAY, COOL,,, JUST CHECKING,

[Sammy] I don't think it's good when the GM says "Fun!" I think that's bad.

[GM] *flipping through notes* Where are your stats. Where are your stats, sir. [Sammy] "Young man, where are your stats?" [Jack] If he didn't do his homework, then all his stats are zero.

[Henry] Nope. I'm gonna accept my fate. Henry's goin' to space. [GM] The angel doesn't try to claw Henry, but it does pick him up! He's in the air. [Henry] Bye guys!

[GM] A gunshot does come from the brush also, and it hits the angel next to the one that's got Henry. [Henry] (Thanks, Norman!) [Jack] Does Norman have a gun??? [GM] Norman's not going to go into a cult swamp without a gun! What kind of crazy person would do that?!

[Sammy] I'm sorry if we lose your hat, Jack. [Jack] D: Nooo it's not his hat! [Sammy] Yeah I know, well I'm sorry if we lose it. [Joey] Yeah, sorry. [Jack] Noooo he needs to give that back! [Joey] well then he should wAKE UP!!! [Sammy] Love the idea that Peter later comes through here and finds his own hat discarded on the ground and is like, OH NO, JACK! [GM] Make another luck roll, maybe it's still on. [Jack] Okay dice! This is the ONLY thing I need you t-*sound of dice bouncing off the desk* whoOPS--

[Henry] *still held aloft by eldritch horrors* I'm guessing I don't hear anything either [GM] No, you're just having a nice little roller coaster ride.

[Joey] Ohhh... I guess we wouldn't need to breathe in space, huh. [Joey] ...AM I BREATHING???

[Joey] What time is it... are we at like, 8:30, 9ish? [GM] Well that's highly specific! What happens at 8:39?!

[Joey] Joey's still not willing to let random cultists carry Jack, unless they can do something to convince him??? [Sammy] I feel like the main convincing tool at this point is GUNS? Pointed at us. I think that's the main thing.

[Jack] I guess Jack is the imposter, since he's not doing human things like "breathing"

[GM] And shove all of you into a hut! With Norman-- no, that's right, he didn't get caught, I keep forgetting, his Hide skill is higher than I thought it was. Norman's still at large! [Jack] NORMAN, IS LOOSE, IN THE SWAMP [Joey] What crimes will he commit!

[Jack] This is why you don't smear your weird glowing blood on symbols that are known to watch!!!

[GM] They probably did take away a lot of your cooler stuff. [Sammy] I didn't have any cool stuff. I just had a coat. [Joey] You had ink. [Sammy] *muttering* I wasn't going to mention that that was in my coat.

[Joey] Joey is going to grab Sammy's face... and give him some of his ink. [Sammy] *stunned* Oh...! [Joey] We don't need a passed out Sammy!! [Jack] Only ONE unconscious man in this party!

[Jack] How has Cthulhu AU made "Joey feeds Sammy ink" wHOLESOME in some way?!?

[GM] They've got him in a robe now, and they've painted that yellow sign on it -- possibly in Henry's blood, because why not! [Joey] Excuse me, you did not get license to use that; I'm going to sue you in court now, [Jack] Unethically sourced! [GM] ...Did you just call Henry's blood your IP?

[GM] *startled laugh* my husband just said "Intravenous Property,"

[GM] The other prophet guy seems to be having a grand old time. It is even-odds whether he might just look over to see if Sammy's looking, just to smirk at him. [Sammy] oHHHHHH BOY. I hate this guy! I hate him. [Jack] Okay, well, I wanna-- [Sammy] *still going* I know who I'M sacrificing. [Jack] --Sammy, no. [Joey] You want to make a GOOD sacrifice, not give him trash. [Sammy] ...*sighs* Yeah, yeah, you're right... [Jack] You don't want to give the Masked Messenger a McDonald's burger.

[GM] It's Pete! [Sammy] Oh! Sammy vaguely knows who this is. [Henry] I'm gonna make a check to see if Henry recognises this guy, in the heat of the moment. [Jack] In the Pete of the moment. >:3c [Sammy] *groans* Why would you do this. Everyone was being so well-behaved.

[Sammy] I'm gonna... I'm gonna wait. Gonna be actually, a little bit smart. Trying out this new thing.

[GM] One of the angels is definitely heading your way. [Jack] Oops. [Sammy] ...what if we just... close the door.

[GM] And a sanity roll from Joey and anyone else that is watching this. [Sammy] *sarcastic deadpan* Oh No. I'd Better Look Away. *scoffs* Why would I NOT want to watch my lord work?

[GM] It does a d8 + damage bonus, which, I don't think Joey has one. But it does a d8. [Joey] Does Bendy have one? [GM] No! Bendy's damage bonus is NEGATIVE TWO because he's a tiny cartoon character! You don't want his damage bonus. [Jack] You attack and there's a squeaky hammer noise,

[GM] Peter doesn't seem to have a reflection. [Sammy] ...Do we? [GM] Yeah [Sammy] Okay. That's cool, that's nice, luv 2 reflect. [Jack] *whispering* Peter vampire???

[GM] Sammy thinks this is a spawn of the Yellow King, something that happens to people who dabble too much in his worship. [Sammy] Again, MORE reason why this guy is an idiot and trusting the wrong god! [Sammy] ...Sammy knows all this stuff and is still like "yeah, but the Masked Messenger is cool! I'll definitely be rewarded for my service!"

[Jack] Jack didn't learn how to ASTRAL PROJECT for Pete to get eaten by something!!

[Sammy] Did they steal our ink??? [GM] Looks like they poured it out. [Jack] Pour one out for their FAKE LORD,

[Jack] Rescued. From a cult. By a second, different cult! [Joey] Our cult is COOL, though. [Henry] the coolt

#call of cthulu: haunted hijinx #sammy lawrence #joey drew #Henry Stein #when in doubt just keep drawing #wHEEZES THIS SESSION WAS #A WILD RIDE #I LOVE THIS DANG GAME I LOVE THIS WEIRD AU

[bongaboi]

Kansas City Chiefs: Super Bowl LIV Champions

LEN DAWSON FORMER CHIEF, HALL OF FAMER

“The excitement you’ve brought to this city reminds me of that magical season when we won the Super Bowl 50 years ago. It’s now your turn to bring the trophy home.” — Dawson, the Chiefs’ Super Bowl IV MVP and Hall of Famer, via KMBC-TV in a message to this year’s team

GEORGE BRETT ROYALS LEGEND, HALL OF FAMER

When we called him, he was running home to pick up his iPad so he could watch Chiefs highlights at the gym. “Well, what DON’T you like about the Chiefs? I watched the Chiefs’ comeback against the Texans the other day. Then I went home and I watched the Royals’ comeback in Game 4 (against the Astros in the 2015 American League playoffs). I’m going, how could this happen? To the same city, against the same city?”

MELISSA ETHERIDGE SINGER-SONGWRITER

This rock icon from Leavenworth has sung the national anthem at Arrowhead. How many people can say that?: “Last Sunday (Jan. 12, vs. Houston), when (Daniel) Sorensen made that tackle on the fake punt, my eyes welled up with tears because I felt it: that heart, that soul, that, ‘We are doing this for KC’ feel. It’s hard to describe, but it’s why I have been a fan since the 1970 Super Bowl.”

Join the conversation on Twitter Go to Twitter and tell us what you love about the Chiefs. We may use it in an upcoming story.

#MyChiefsLove DAVID KOECHNER ACTOR, COMEDIAN

Koechner, a native of Tipton, Missouri, who attended Mizzou, has an allegiance to the Chiefs that goes back to Christmas 1971 and their double-overtime playoff loss to the Dolphins. “Which we all know didn’t turn out right. Because the Dolphins cheated. A lot of people don’t know that,” he said with a laugh during a recent Facebook Live session with The Star. Count him among those enamored with this season’s team: “Wow, it just keeps getting better. You know, we had that little hitch in the middle of the season, but that’s the right time to have it. … You can’t help but think we’re in great shape.”

TECH N9NE RAPPER, ENTREPRENEUR

The rapper, producer and entrepreneur who’s still based in Kansas City, and whose lyrics often include nods to the city or things related to the region says, “What I love about our players is they are FEARLESS! Executing plays as if it were their very last game on Earth ... at least it feels that way to me!”

WENDY GUILLIES PRESIDENT/CEO, KAUFFMAN FOUNDATION

“In so many ways, this team reminds me of the 2015 Royals. It feels like their time — they have a will that’s undeniable and they find ways to win. They are quintessential Kansas City: full of heart.”

NED YOST FORMER ROYALS MANAGER

“I’m sitting here in Georgia, but Andy Reid is my coach, Patrick Mahomes is my quarterback, (Travis) Kelce’s my tight end.” He says this season’s Chiefs are like the 2015 World Series champion Royals because of how close they came the season before: “The experience gained is invaluable. And now that they’ve been there, they understand what it’s like. And once you get a little taste of it, it’s like a mountain lion with blood: Once you get a little taste, nothing’s going to stop you.”

BOBBY BELL FORMER CHIEF, HALL OF FAMER

Bell, the first Chiefs player to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, helped the club to a pair of Super Bowls, including their victory 50 years ago in Super Bowl IV. “What I love is they’re winning games, big games. ... They’ve got a lot of character. We haven’t seen anything like this in how many years?”

DONNA MAIZE KCFD CHIEF

“Besides that exuberant feeling of community you get walking into Arrowhead Stadium on game day, what I really love about the Kansas City Chiefs is the excellent teamwork utilizing everyone’s strengths to achieve a common goal, which embodies what KCFD excels at each and every day.”

ALBERT PUJOLS MLB ALL-STAR

Pujols, the three-time National League Most Valuable Player and two-time World Series champion who played high school baseball at Fort Osage in Independence, said: “I love the determination from their core of young players and veterans. It seems like they only became hungrier after last year’s AFC Championship Game.”

BILL SELF KU HOOPS COACH

“I think they’re ... what did they call the Rams back in the day? The Greatest Show on Turf? And this may be the Greatest Show on Grass. I’m just amazed with how many weapons and how fast ... it doesn’t matter who you put out there, it seems like they can all make people miss, and then you’ve got the most talented guy in the league orchestrating it all. I think they’re so fun to watch. But not being a football expert, I think defensively is where we’ve gotten so much better. ... We’re flying around, and even if people score points, the defense has to feel good that, ‘Hey, if we only give up 21, it’s going to be a good day for us.’”

TOM WATSON GOLF LEGEND

The winner of eight major golf tournaments, including two Masters championships, is a lifelong Chiefs fan who wants to see them “make amends for Super Bowl I against Green Bay. I love the intensity and fun with which they play. To see their joy and passion in playing a game. You can see it in how the team plays, how the players respond to each other ... that’s what I love about the Chiefs.”

TRAI BYERS ACTOR

Star of the TV drama Empire and the movie Selma and native of Kansas City, Kansas: “The grit, the fight and the next-man-up mentality is exactly how we ended up here! And EXACTLY why the road to the Super Bowl goes through the world’s loudest stadium with the world’s best fans. LETS GO CHIEFS.”

ROGER MARSHALL U.S. REPRESENTATIVE, R-KANSAS

“They’re just so exciting. I mean, I’ve got to tell you, in my conversation with the President — we had an hour together — I bet we spent 10 minutes talking about the Chiefs and just what an exciting game that (win over Houston) was. You know, I’ve got a buddy there in Kansas City, a pledge brother, we’ve been waiting now for 50 years to go to a Super Bowl. I grew up with Len Dawson and Otis Taylor and Jim Lynch and Willie Lanier and Bobby Bell and Ed Podolak. We watched some great teams and so we’ve been waiting anxiously for this team.”

ROB RIGGLE ACTOR, COMEDIAN

Riggle, who attended Shawnee Mission South High and KU, has been obsessive for as long as he can remember about the Chiefs and Royals, once telling The Star that their fates and his are entwined. “I love this year’s team,” he said in a recent Facebook Live session with The Star. He said Patrick Mahomes changes everything. “I definitely think he creates things. Not only like a broken play, but whatever he sees out there, he’s always making it up. A lot of it, you have a plan, but the defense has a vote in that plan. A lot of times it gets screwed up, and so you have to adjust. And he is one of the best at adjusting on the fly, and he’s got all the physical skills to make that happen. Yeah, I’d say he’s an improv genius.”

TONY GONZALEZ FORMER CHIEF, HALL OF FAMER

Gonzalez, the NFL’s most prolific receiving tight end ever and 2019 inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, spent 1997-2008 with the Chiefs. “With Patrick Mahomes, I love the ad-libs,” said Gonzalez, now an NFL studio analyst for Fox. “The magic in anything is in the ad-libs. When there’s a breakdown and things go awry, that’s what gets us out of our seats. When the pocket breaks down, guys get open, Tyreek Hill over the top, it’s so much fun to watch.”

CLAIRE MCCASKILL FORMER SENATOR, NOW TV ANALYST

The former Democratic senator from Missouri puts it like this: “Well, how can anyone not love this team? Last week showed the country why the Kingdom is having so much fun. And while Mahomes is breathtaking, Reid’s creativity and a much-improved defense is our ticket to Miami.”

KEVIN HARLAN VETERAN BROADCASTER

A resident of Mission Hills, Kansas, Harlan punctuated his calls with his trademark “Oh, baby, what a play!’’ as radio voice of the Chiefs from 1985-93. He’s now an NFL play-by-play man for CBS Sports. “What I like about the Chiefs is how they continue to compete every season,” Harlan said. “That is such a difficult thing to do in the NFL. … I love how they’re continually good, because we know that for so many years, there wasn’t hope and the level of their play was not close to this. Every year now, they’re always in the conversation, and that’s what I like best.”

HEIDI GARDNER ‘SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’

Says the SNL star and Kansas City native: “What I love about the Chiefs is they’ve got each other’s backs always. On the field and off the field, they’re brothers. They’re all accountable and step up when called. It’s not offense, defense, coaches, all separate. It’s one big family. And I love that.”

JOE CARTER FORMER MAJOR-LEAGUER

Carter, who hit the walk-off home run that won the 1993 World Series for the Toronto Blue Jays, has made his home in Leawood since the end of his baseball career. “I see 53 guys having fun who love one another. It’s a big family, and that makes it fun to come to work. It starts with Coach Reid and goes to Mahomes and goes down. When you’ve got a special guy like Mahomes leading the charge … you’re going to be happy for the next 15 to 20 years.”

MITCH HOLTHUS VOICE OF THE CHIEFS

“Resiliency,” said Holthus, radio voice of the Chiefs since 1994. “They embody the spirit of what makes up the people of the Chiefs Kingdom. They reflect this region. Hard-working. Tough. On task. Take nothing for granted. They’re a neat group.”

KATHY NELSON KANSAS CITY SPORTS COMMISSION

Says the president and CEO of the Kansas City Sports Commission (and championship team parade planner): “There is so much energy and excitement around the city! Driving home at night has become an emotional high to see so many buildings lit up in red. And wearing red every day of the week has become an anticipated challenge. How can you not love these guys? Sundays can’t come soon enough right now. It’s becoming easier to visualize and plan another parade, this time in red.”

CARL PETERSON FORMER CHIEFS GM

Peterson, the Chiefs’ president and general manager from 1989 to 2008, revived a struggling and stagnant franchise by turning the team into an annual playoff contender and creating the frenzy in the parking lots and seats that continues today at Arrowhead. “I love their never-say-die attitude. They never think they’re out of a game and have proven it a number of times, and the Houston game proved it big-time. A great deal has to start with the quarterback. He’s exceptional.”

PAT WARREN KANSAS SPEEDWAY

Warren is president of a track that plays host to a NASCAR playoff race every year, so he knows something about postseason pressure. “This team has a confidence in itself unlike anything I’ve seen in professional sports. They always believe they can win. It’s a culture that exists in a team, and it’s a culture that breeds winning and is cool to see. When they were down 24-0 (vs. Houston), the attitude was not defeatist. It was, ‘How are we going to get back in this thing?’”

RICK SUTCLIFFE FORMER MAJOR-LEAGUER

Sutcliffe, of Independence, was the National League Cy Young Award-winner in 1984 with the Chicago Cubs. He attended Chiefs games with his grandfather and has established relationships with Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce. “I love them more as people than even as players,” Sutcliffe said. “That’s so important to a community. That’s the reason you see so much red in Kansas City. You fall in love with them even more once you get to meet them.”

QUINTON LUCAS MAYOR OF KCMO

Weeks after his inauguration last year, “Q” stood atop City Hall and envisioned a championship parade for the team he has cherished forever: “What’s not to love about this team? I mean, you look at the excitement, the happiness they have to be around each other, the fact that they have a young quarterback who can come back from 24 down. … This is the sort of thing you want to follow. It’s infectious. There’s joy every day. They hang out together. They care about Kansas City.”

DICK VERMEIL FORMER CHIEFS COACH

The former Eagles, Rams and Chiefs coach who keeps as busy as ever with his Vermeil Wines operation in California, still follows the Chiefs closely and loves this group for several reasons. His email on the topic: “# 1, I love the coaching job Andy (Reid) & his staff have done! #2, I love how they get the ball down field in the passing game. # 3: I love the improvement in the defense coordinated by Steve (Spagnuolo) & staff! Go Chiefs!”

KEVIN WILLMOTT WRITER, KU PROFESSOR

Kevin Willmott, a professor of film and media studies at the University of Kansas who won an Oscar for co-writing “BlacKkKlansman”: “Have been a fan since fifth grade when I got a Chiefs vs. Vikings electric football game of their Super Bowl win for Christmas. Exciting time for Kansas City.”

TRENT GREEN FORMER CHIEFS QB

Green, the Chiefs quarterback during 2001-06, now serves as the club’s preseason television analyst and is a commentator for CBS television and radio. “The excitement they bring is infectious. The offense has been that way for a couple of years, but the defense has brought a lot of energy. The additions of Frank Clark and Tyrann Mathieu … there’s a whole new attitude on that side of the ball.”

DAYTON MOORE KC ROYALS GM

“I mean, I’m a fan like everybody else and like to see action on the field and athletes playing against one another. But from my viewpoint across the street, I think it begins and ends with the great leadership that they have in their organization. That speaks to the consistency, and that’s what I admire about it. Regardless of what happens going forward — because what happens on the field, as we all know, is very unpredictable at the professional level — the steady, quality leadership is something that I notice and pay attention to.”

LIDIA BASTIANICH CHEF, AUTHOR

The proprietor of Lidia’s Kansas City says: “The Chiefs are amazing to watch and cheer for. It is extraordinary how the team energized the city and makes Kansas City rally together. The comeback by Patrick Mahomes (against Houston in the Chiefs’ playoff opener) shows that if you put your mind to something, you can do anything. I am so proud that Lidia’s is a part of Kansas City’s fiber and a cheerleader for the longstanding tradition of the Chiefs.”

BILL HANCOCK COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF DIRECTOR

Says Hancock, who calls Prairie Village, Kansas, home: “What I love the most is the balance between the offense and the defense. They are very good on both sides of the ball, and I always enjoy that in a football team. You don’t see it very often.”

JAN STENERUD FORMER CHIEF, HALL OF FAMER

Stenerud, the first pure kicker inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, made all three of his field-goal attempts in the Chiefs’ victory over Minnesota in Super Bowl IV. “In addition to their tremendous talent is the impression I have of the whole team, that they’re nice young men. I like the way they represent the organization. Every time you see someone interviewed, I’m impressed with the way they handle themselves. I’m proud of them.”

CHRIS GOODE FOUNDER/OWNER OF RUBY JEAN’S JUICERY

“As a lifelong Kansas Citian, the biggest change I’ve seen is the depth of camaraderie the players have amongst each other. There’s this sense of family that we have in Kansas City and I believe the Hunt family, along with coach Andy Reid, have found a nucleus of guys that not only mesh on the field, but off as well. You can see them genuinely supporting each other’s community endeavors and lifting each other up when there’s a dropped ball, or when we’re down. That energy is reflective of what is so special about Kansas City and makes me admire this Chiefs squad. It reinforces the sense of pride I feel to call KC home.”

VLATKO ANDONOVSKI U.S. WOMEN’S NATIONAL TEAM SOCCER COACH

“The excitement around the Chiefs in Kansas City is just awesome. We have a great community feeling in Kansas City and the Chiefs bring everyone even closer together, so for them to be having such a successful season is fun for everyone. I really love how entertaining they are and how they play aggressively, creative and fast. Coach Reid, the assistant coaches and all the players have done a great job and I appreciate how much they want to win for the fans. I know they can get to the Super Bowl and bring a championship back to Kansas City.”

KAY BARNES FORMER KCMO MAYOR

“Remembering the Chiefs’ Super Bowl win 50 years ago, I’m just as excited today about the Chiefs hopefully winning again.”

JOE POSNANSKI AUTHOR, FORMER KC STAR COLUMNIST

“There are so many things to love about these Chiefs, but I think you have to start with Patrick Mahomes. How can you not? What a joyous presence. What a fantastic player. But even that doesn’t quite cover it. I was in Kansas City for so many Chiefs heartbreaks. And the thing that stood out was that the Chiefs simply couldn’t find their own quarterback. Trent Green was a fine player, but he had bounced around for a few years. Elvis Grbac — we all remember that. Rich Gannon came and went. Joe Montana stopped by for a time after already becoming a legend. You couldn’t help but wonder: When would the Chiefs ever have another quarterback who owned the town the way Len Dawson did? And this kid came along and he played fearlessly and the Chiefs are back in the Super Bowl. He’s the screensaver on our oldest daughter’s phone. I don’t know what else you need to say.”

GEORGE TOMA GROUNDSKEEPING GURU

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Man has served as a groundskeeper for all 53 Super Bowls, and No. 54 falls on Feb. 2, his 91st birthday. The longtime groundskeeper for the Chiefs and Royals was selected as head groundskeeper for Super Bowl I after then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle admired the pristine green grass at KC’s old Municipal Stadium. “This team has a hell of a coach in Andy Reid. I took care of his practice fields in Jacksonville for the Super Bowl when he was the Eagles’ coach, and he was so gracious and I think the world of him.”

CHRISTIAN OKOYE FORMER CHIEF

The Nigerian Nightmare led the NFL in rushing with 1,480 yards in 1989, when the Chiefs’ offense was built on a power-run game. “We were exciting when I played, but it’s totally different now with Mahomes and how he plays,” said Okoye, who runs the California Sports Hall of Fame, which he founded in Ontario. “What I love about them is not giving up. When they were 24 down, and fans were going home, I looked at the players, and they didn’t flinch. I saw Mahomes talking to his teammates, and I told the people I was with, ‘We’re going to win this game.’”

JASON KANDER FORMER MISSOURI SEC. OF STATE

“Like the ’14/’15 Royals, this team feels truly connected to the community and they help people around the world learn more about this awesome town. Plus, watching the Chiefs win takes me back to my childhood growing up in the ’90s. I can almost taste the Velveeta queso.”

MATT BESLER PRO SOCCER STAR

Besler, a Sporting KC and U.S. National Team veteran who attended Blue Valley West High, says this: “Watching the win against Houston as an athlete, with seven of my teammates, I couldn’t help but notice two things in particular about this special Chiefs team. The first was the tremendous enjoyment that every Chiefs player displays on the field. We saw firsthand the passion they have for the sport, the passion they have to compete and the passion they have to represent Kansas City and its amazing fans. The second thing that stood out to me: confidence. They’ve shown it all season long. No matter who they play, where they play or what the score is, this Chiefs team believes it can win. They’re not afraid of anyone.”

HARRIS FAULKNER TELEVISION NEWS ANCHOR

Faulkner, anchor of Fox News Channel’s “Outnumbered Overtime,” spent 1992-2000 as a news anchor at WDAF-TV (Ch. 4) in Kansas City. “Loving the Kansas City Chiefs is first driven by my fascination with sports. ... There are a lot of NFL superstars out there but, through the 50 years leading up to this moment, Kansas City players have carried a banner of passion and talent that fans can be proud of. Glad to count myself among those loving fans this Super Bowl Sunday — GO CHIEFS!”

DAVID COOK MUSICIAN, AMERICAN IDOL WINNER

David Cook has worn, and continues to wear, many hats: musician, American Idol winner. Broadway star. Blue Springs native. And unabashed fan of the Kansas City Chiefs. “I love this team’s resiliency and focus. They remind me of the vibe surrounding the 2015 Royals. No deficit feels too large, and no moment too big.”

WILL SHIELDS FORMER CHIEF, HALL OF FAMER

Shields, the Pro Football Hall of Fame guard, has started more games, 223, than anyone in Chiefs history: “The simple fact is they’re putting up big numbers, they’re winning games, and are electric in what they do. They give you that optimism of saying, ‘We have a chance to get to and win a Super Bowl.’’’

DAVID DASTMALCHIAN ACTOR

Overland Park native and co-star in the Ant-Man movies, Blade Runner 2049 and next year’s The Suicide Squad, which is now filming: “I’ve never thrown a Super Bowl Party before. I’m having preposterous amounts of KC BBQ shipped to an undisclosed location where I’m working on an undisclosed film with a handful of undisclosed individuals. A couple are 49er fans, so they won’t be getting any of my BBQ.”

WILLIE LANIER FORMER CHIEF, HALL OF FAMER

“All of the games that you’ve participated in in your life start trying to give you some answers to an illogical situation,” said the ever-analytical Lanier, an anchor of the Chiefs’ 1969 Super Bowl champion team and Hall of Famer who went on to a distinguished business career. When the Chiefs found themselves in a 24-0 hole against Houston, Lanier considered their plight to be “aberrations of the moment” as he waited to see what it would lead to. The result was testimony to experience and a group dynamic he considers essential in a championship team, like the trust and accountability that buoyed those 1969 Chiefs.

JEFF KRUM PRESIDENT OF BOULEVARD BREWING CO.

“No longer just one-dimensional, this team — like a fine beer — is beautifully balanced. With their spirit, energy and integrity, these Chiefs are easy to cheer for, and we’re proud to have them represent our city.”

BILL SNYDER FORMER K-STATE FOOTBALL COACH

The Wildcats’ coaching legend and College Football Hall of Famer knows the game better than just about anyone else, but the things he’s most struck by in watching these Chiefs start with their MVP quarterback: “Like most, I’m impressed with Patrick and Andy, but I’m also so very impressed with how well their offensive line protects the quarterback and the improvement of the defense. Above all, I appreciate the continuity and teamwork of both players and staff. No true weak links.”

EMANUEL CLEAVER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE, D-MISSOURI

The KC congressman said his three favorite things about this year’s Chiefs team are: “Mahomes’ chemistry with the Legion of Zoom; the luncheons held by our pass-rushers in opponents’ backfields every week; and Mathieu taking the defense to another level and demonstrating his superior football IQ.”

JOSH HAWLEY U.S. SENATOR, R-MISSOURI

“One thing that comes immediately to mind is I just love the creativity and almost the joyful and kind of childlike joy the team plays with. I think Mahomes really sets the tone for that. ... It just reminds me of the best parts of Little League. The sense that you’re out there, you’re loving the game, it’s so much fun. … I don’t want to be quoted as saying I’m comparing Mahomes to a Little League ballplayer, but in just the love of it. It’s just so fun.”

JONATHAN JUSTUS CHEF

Executive chef/owner of the former Justus Drugstore and Black Dirt and future executive chef/owner of Justus Drugstore 2.0. “These guys, at the end of the day, are looking you down, and smiling while licking the barbecue sauce off of their fingers and sayin’ ‘Who’s next?’”

JEAN PETERS BAKER JACKSON COUNTY PROSECUTOR

“The Chiefs stadium is truly a Kansas City experience. It’s not about the coach, any player, or the fans. It’s about the moment. The minutes before the kickoff when we collectively embrace the palpable energy and an unwavering belief that we cannot lose. It’s exciting, unifying, and a little bit scary in a blur of red. But win or lose, it’s our team, our town and our pride.”

KELLY COLE PRESIDENT AND CEO OF HALLS

“This team loves their fans as much as we love them. They are great supporters of Halls, and we appreciate them.”

PAT ROBERTS U.S. SENATOR, R-KANSAS

The senator said his favorite things about this year’s Chiefs team are: “They are a team everybody can cheer for ... whether you’re from Missouri or Kansas, you are a Chiefs fan. It really brings the community together. The Chiefs have completely changed the game this season. With Patrick Mahomes using the no-look pass, the Chiefs have become the Golden State Warriors of the NFL. ... I love seeing my Wildcats find professional success, and No. 13, Byron Pringle, the wide receiver, is a K-State alum.”

MICHAEL MACCAMBRIDGE AUTHOR, HISTORIAN

“What’s so compelling about this year’s Chiefs is that it’s not only about the Magic Unicorn Quarterback and The Legion of Zoom. In 2019, the defense has a clear identity and personality as well, thanks in large part to the man with perhaps the most nicknames in the NFL, Tyrann ‘Honey Badger’ ‘T-5’ ‘Kingdom Landlord’ Mathieu. The road to the AFC Championship Game has been tougher this time around, but this team is more balanced, more battle-tested and more resilient than the Chiefs of 2018. Also, Patrick Mahomes is a year smarter and more experienced, and — this part hasn’t changed — remains more fun to watch than any athlete in the country.” MacCambridge attended the Barstow School and was editorial coordinator of the Chiefs’ Hall of Honor. His books include a biography of Lamar Hunt and “’69 Chiefs: A Team, a Season and the Birth of Modern Kansas City.”

GARY PINKEL FORMER MU FOOTBALL COACH

“There’s a lot of things (to love). … We were shooting ourselves in the foot about every way possible (against Houston) … (then) the leadership came through. When things got really, really tough, they weren’t yelling and screaming at each other. They were encouraging each other. … That’s how you get a chance to get out of it. … (And) when you’ve got Patrick Mahomes, you’re never out of a game. There’s a guy like that in New England.”

BILL JAMES AUTHOR, HISTORIAN, STATISTICIAN

The Holton, Kansas, native and KU alum says: “It is fun for us to be the team that has that guy that you just can’t stop, like Elway or Aaron Rodgers or Brady or whoever … it’s fun that now we have that guy. The thing I enjoy is the creativity of the offense. Andy Reid will always come up with something that you haven’t seen before, and before you can process what he has been doing, he moves on to doing something else entirely. I know that he is responding to something the defense has done, but that’s all over my head: It’s like watching a chess match. I’m thinking one step behind and they’re working two steps ahead. But it’s fun to watch.”

JEREMY DANNER 4 HANDS BREWING CO.

The on-premise specialist/brand ambassador for 4 Hands Brewing Co. enjoys watching the Chiefs achieve success and says he especially appreciates what QB Patrick Mahomes and longtime girlfriend Brittany Matthews do for our furry friends: “I’m a healthy level of obsessed with Patrick and Brittany’s dogs, Steel and Silver. As a pit bull owner and advocate myself, I think their dogs are gorgeous, but beyond that, I appreciate what they do to help them serve as ambassadors for pits and Cane Corsos. Their Instagram feed is super cute!”

CHASE MCANULTY FOUNDER/CEO, CHARLIE HUSTLE

“The best thing about these Chiefs is they represent who we are as a city. They share the same values we do as citizens and embody the heart and spirit this city thrives on. A true team on the field, led by the best organization off of it.”

MICHAEL SMITH CHEF

The chef/co-founder of Farina and Extra Virgin In The Crossroads says: “Patrick Mahomes always gives the Chiefs a chance to win a ballgame. Over the years they’ve never had THE quarterback that could score in a flash from anywhere on the field. There are only a handful of quarterbacks in the NFL who can flip a game and give the fans eternal hope that the team can come from behind and win a game. That feeling and belief will be with Chief fans for the next dozen years.”

GARY WOODLAND PRO GOLFER

The PGA Tour star and University of Kansas grad says: “I love the energy this team brings. Obviously starts with Andy Reid, which it feels like every player wants to play for. Then Mahomes controlling the sideline like a veteran and playing like he’s in the backyard with his buddies is awesome. All brought together with the attitude Mathieu has brought to the defense. It’s exciting to watch.”

DERRICK JOHNSON FORMER CHIEF

Johnson, the Chiefs’ career leader with 1,262 tackles from 2005-17: “I love the confidence they play with. I had some really good years here, but they have taken confidence to the next level. They’ve raised the bar, and the Super Bowl is right in their grasp and it could make their dreams come true.”

CLINT BOWYER NASCAR DRIVER

Bowyer, the NASCAR Cup star from Emporia, Kansas, attends games when they don’t conflict with his racing schedule and was in the stands for the playoff comeback win against Houston. “What do I love about the Chiefs? Here’s a simple answer: All of it. I love it all. I love what they’ve done for the city, what Arrowhead means as a fan, to be able to watch them go to battle every week. I love the quarterback, I love Andy Reid, how far the defense has come. And I love knowing you’re an elite group in the playoffs and knowing the team you root for is the team everyone in these playoffs are worried about.”

JACK SOCK PRO TENNIS STAR

Sock, a two-time Wimbledon and 2018 U.S. Open tennis doubles champion and four-time state champion at Blue Valley North, counts some Chiefs players as friends. “They feel like my NFL family. We have the best fans in the league. I’m all about the CHOP. What’s not to love?”

BUBBA STARLING ROYALS OUTFIELDER

The Gardner, Kansas, native was the No. 5 pick overall in the 2011 baseball draft after starring in both football and baseball at Gardner Edgerton High. “I think they’ve got the potential to go all the way. … I mean, I could see the Chiefs, the next however many years, getting to that point. But it’s like, it doesn’t happen very often, just being in the Super Bowl, and, gosh, that would be sweet to go cheer them on.” One more thing: Starling was picked in elementary school to get to wear the KC Wolf costume. “The most awesome thing I’ve ever done,” he said, laughing.

FRANK BOAL TV/RADIO BROADCASTER

“I’ve been covering this franchise since 1981, I’ve never seen anything quite like this team. They are on the verge of something special and no one deserves it more than the Hunt Family and the Chiefs Kingdom. As Patrick Mahomes said, ‘Let’s do something special.’ How about a ‘sea of red’ flowing through downtown in all of our February splendor?”

COLBY GARRELTS CHEF AND CO-OWNER OF BLUESTEM AND RYE

“The Kansas City Chiefs define our city’s culture by bringing friends and families together to share great food and great memories. When we go to the Super Bowl you will always know where you were and who you were with!”

CROSBY KEMPER III DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE OF MUSEUM AND LIBRARY SCIENCES

The outgoing executive director of the Kansas City Public Library’s reason for loving the Chiefs is short and sweet: “Snatching victory from defeat.”

— Quotes collected by Randy Covitz, Derek Donovan, Pete Grathoff, Vahe Gregorian, Blair Kerkhoff, Allison Kite, Bryan Lowry, Sam Mellinger, Jesse Newell, Jon Niccum, Glenn E. Rice, Jeff Rosen, Joyce Smith and Lynn Worthy

#2020 #nfl #national football league #kansas city chiefs #haifuri #hikari ogasawara

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With a bit more than a week to go, Legendlore keeps rolling, even through the traditional 3rd week KS doldrums!

For our part, we continue to try and spread the word about this integrally inclusive setting with panels and actual plays like these:

Now, the very cool thing about Legendlore, and why I call it “integrally inclusive” as well as “Not your Father’s D&D” is that Steffie and team have taken an existing aspect of the original comic book world setting – the transference of a real-world person into this fantasy world – and designed the character generation system so that you have complete freedom to create the sort of character you want to play.

What I mean is that you can or can not be a direct port of who you are into The Realm, or you can change the characteristics and even change your species, but the choice of just what that means in terms of both the setting and the game rules is up to you. Being in a wheelchair, for example, is only a limiter if you want that to be the case with the character – maybe for story reasons, maybe for personal reasons; either way you decide.

And in a different spin on that basic setting concept, the game also explores the idea of taking your character from a different 5e setting and importing them into The Realm. In fact, The Metal Scourge Actual Play linked to above, does just that with characters from the Realms of Pugmire and the Scarred Lands!

Finally, besides all the porting in from other worlds, you can also play a character that was born in The Realm or the other regions in the world of Legendlore. It’s an amazingly flexible set of options!

If a game that is specifically designed to give players the chance to see themselves in the setting sounds like what you’re looking for in fantasy gaming, here’s the direct link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/339646881/legendlore-rpg-setting-for-5th-edition-fantasy-roleplaying-0

TC: Aberrant art by Lee O’Connor

#OnyxPathCon Follow-up

Not only did our Monday Meeting crew have an Onyx Path Virtual Gaming Convention “postmortem” late last week after we got our heads back together after the con weekend, but a bunch of us sat down earlier today with Gehenna Gaming for a con follow-up.

So here are some numbers and what they mean to us:

#OnyxPathCon as a hashtag was headed to trending all weekend, although it didn’t make it over the target to actually do it, although we had more than 1,000 mentions, which is pretty cool.

We raised over $1550 for the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, and over $1600 for the Bodhana Group! Both extremely worthy charities that we are so glad to be able to donate to. Thank you all who contributed to this effort!

There were 34 games drawn from our many game lines, and the players expressed a 90% satisfaction rate in the after-session poll. This is so fantastic to hear, as so much of our impetus for the con was to provide our community a chance to play during a time their regular gaming might be curtailed.

Let the Streets Run Red art by Oliver Specht

We were also told anecdotally that while most of the attendees were familiar with Onyx Path and played their favorite game lines, they also took the chance to try out our other games during the con. Plus, we heard from players that were trying out our games for the first time! So, from a PR perspective, the idea that we were getting fresh eyes on our games was another piece of great news.

Our convention web-site had over 7,600 unique visitors, which, you know, is more folks than some presidential election rallies, so we’re pretty thrilled about that!

Now, lest you think it was all us patting ourselves on our backs, we also looked into the operational screw-ups and miscommunications that occurred as well. IF, big if, we did this sort of thing again, we’d want to use the experience of having done this one to inform our efforts.

We would definitely give ourselves a lot more lead time, which would actually help us out across several levels. We’d be able to set up more, and more varied, games to play, and have more options for GMs, panelists, etc.

Not saying we will do another, BUT I’m not saying we won’t…

TC: Aberrant art by Lee O’Connor

Today We Talked About:

Lots of talk today about our Jumpstarts, and if we are making them as we should be. Are they providing players with enough to get them started playing the game lines? Overall, that’s what we are aiming for: a quick and easy way to start playing ASAP.

We want to be sure that we’re following through on those aims when push comes to shove with the many creative hands that add their efforts throughout the creation of any given Jumpstart.

These sorts of reviews are vital when we consider the sheer number of projects we’re doing, and sheer number of creators involved. We try not build our releases with projects that aren’t just there to fill out a part of the setting or system, but which also fill an “ecological niche” in our release schedule.

Finally, we also talked about DriveThru‘s massive fiction sale, whose link is below in the Sales Partners area of the Blurbs!. A great chance to get ahold of some fantastic stories that reveal and expand parts of their game worlds that can only be touched on in the rulebooks.

One of the reason’s we try and include fiction in our Kickstarters ties into the idea behind the Jumpstarts, too. In this case, fiction is another method of exploring the game world that doesn’t require other players to insure that you can immerse yourself in our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

Blurbs!

Kickstarter!

The Legendlore Kickstarter funded and now we’re building towards Stretch Goals: the GM’s Screen, and starting the Legendlore Companion book PDF!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/339646881/legendlore-rpg-setting-for-5th-edition-fantasy-roleplaying-0

Grab your friends and escape to another world!

You’ve found an enchanted portal — a transition point — between worlds. The portal, called a Crossing, takes you to a world you thought only existed in novels and films: a magical land where dragons roam the skies, orcs and hobgoblins terrorize weary travelers, and unicorns prance through the forest. It is a world where humans join other peoples such as elves, trolls, dwarves, changelings, and the dreaded creatures who steal the night. It is a world of fantasy — of imagination.

It is the Realm.

It is Legendlore.

Onyx Path Media!

This week: a Game Designers Roundtable with Eddy, Danielle Lauzon, Travis Legge, and Monica Speca! They completely nerd out about game design for an hour!

As always, this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

All our panels and games from Onyx Path Virtual Gaming Convention are all available on twitch.tv/theonyxpath!

All you need to do is head on over to the website and subscribe. If you have an Amazon Prime account, you can do so for free and access our entire catalogue of videos!

Don’t miss Jen Vaughn’s Legendlore actual play taking place on our Twitch channel every week on Friday night! Lost in the Crossing is an amazing story played through by a fantastic GM and excellent roleplayers, and handles the Legendlore world from the perspective of visitors and native inhabitants of the Realm! Make sure you’re tuning in every Friday or catching up afterwards by subscribing.

That’s not all for Legendlore, as we have actual plays by Steffie de Vaan and Corinne McCrory over on our YouTube channel, which you can find here https://youtu.be/UaQXSlEatDw and here https://youtu.be/ECRrErPLm64! Please give our GMs some support and tune in!

This week on Twitch, expect to see:

Behind the Screen – Scion

Realms of Pugmire – Paws & Claws

Legendlore – The Metal Scourge

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – They Came from Devil’s Reef!

Changeling: The Dreaming – The Last Faerie Tale

Legendlore – w / Steffie de Vaan

Mage: The Awakening – Occultists Anonymous

Legendlore – Lost in the Crossing

Scarred Lands – Purge of the Serpentholds

Get watching for some fantastic insight into how to run these wonderful games.

Come take a look at our YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/theonyxpath, where you can find a whole load of videos of actual plays, dissections of our games, and more, including:

Changeling: The Dreaming – The Last Faerie Tale: https://youtu.be/7-hEqJ5D2KY

Scarred Lands: Purge of the Serpentholds: https://youtu.be/HZN4IlP1PP0

Onyx Path News: https://youtu.be/kpCNbIYzB4I

What’s up with Onyx Path #1? (from #OnyxPathCon): https://youtu.be/wGvD5LnWHaQ

Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion: https://youtu.be/EXyXKxJ5usM

Legendlore – The Metal Scourge: https://youtu.be/ECRrErPLm64

Chronicles of Darkness – Seattle by Streetlight: https://youtu.be/JyOeb7X7Y5w

Subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon if you want to be notified whenever new news videos and uploads come online!

A Bunch of Gamers continue their actual play of They Came from Beneath the Sea! and conclude it with a mini review: https://youtu.be/qIMwcOZmR8k

The Botch Pit have released a wonderful new guide for Changeling: The Lost right here. Do give them a like and a subscribe: https://youtu.be/Bd0UZQZt2OM

Please check these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games! We’d love to feature you!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost Second Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And now Scion Origin and Scion Hero and Trinity Continuum Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon are available to order!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

Check out the Massive Fiction Sale at DriveThruFiction.com! Fantastic bargains on huge amounts of our fiction books!https://www.drivethrufiction.com/sale.php?manufacturers_id=4261

On Sale This Week!

Available this Wednesday, we offer the third in the Scarred Lands Vigil Watch PDFs on DTRPG!

Also available this Wednesday on DTRPG: Scion electronic wallpaper and the PDF Scion Screen!

Conventions!

Though dates for physical conventions are subject to change due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, here’s what’s left of our current list of upcoming conventions (and really, we’re just waiting for this last one to be cancelled even though it’s Nov/Dec). Instead, keep an eye out here for more virtual conventions we’re going to be involved with:

PAX Unplugged: https://unplugged.paxsite.com/

And now, the new project status updates!

Development Status from Eddy Webb! (Projects in bold have changed status since last week.):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep.)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Adversaries of the Righteous (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Devoted Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

Saints and Monsters (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Anima

M20 Technocracy Operative’s Dossier (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

Squeaks In The Deep (Realms of Pugmire)

Redlines

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hundred Devil’s Night Parade (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Novas Worldwide (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Exalted Essence Edition (Exalted 3rd Edition)

M20 Rich Bastard’s Guide To Magick (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

V5 Children of the Blood (was The Faithful Undead) (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Wild Hunt (Scion 2nd Edition)

CtL 2e Novella Collection: Hollow Courts (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Second Draft

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Mission Statements (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Under Alien Suns (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Dead Man’s Rust (Scarred Lands)

The Clades Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

V5 Forbidden Religions (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Development

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Assassins (Trinity Continuum Core)

V5 Trails of Ash and Bone (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Manuscript Approval

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Post-Approval Development

Editing

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

LARP Rules (Scion 2nd Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Book of Lasting Death (Mummy: The Curse 2e)

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (They Came From!)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Dearly Bleak – Novella (Deviant: The Renegades)

Post-Editing Development

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Indexing

Art Direction from Mike Chaney!

In Art Direction

Tales of Aquatic Terror – Handing off to Meredith to AD.

WoD Ghost Hunters (KS) – Prepping KS assets.

Aberrant – AD’d. Second new comic in.

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Mummy 2

Deviant

Legendlore – KS running.

Technocracy Reloaded (KS)

Cults of the Blood God – Rolling along.

Scion: Dragon (KS) – Waiting on art notes.

Masks of the Mythos (KS) – Notes back to Chris for tweaks, hiring artists.

Scion: Demigod (KS) – Art rolling.

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (KS) – Finals coming in.

TC: Adventure! (KS) – Shen Fei cover art finishing.

Geist: One Foot In the Grave – Contracted.

In Layout

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad

Vigil Watch

TC Aeon Terra Firma

V5 Let the Streets Run Red

Pugmire Adventure

Scion Titanomachy

Proofing

Trinity Aeon Jumpstart – Errata gathering.

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate – Inputting errata.

Contagion Chronicle – At WW for approval.

Cavaliers of Mars: City of the Towered Tombs

Magic Item Decks (Scarred Lands)

Yugman’s Guide Support Decks (Scarred Lands)

Dark Eras 2 Screen and booklet

At Press

Scion Companion – Awaiting errata from devs.

TCFBTS Heroic Land Dwellers – Prepping PoD files.

TCFBTS Screen and Booklet – Files at press.

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Awaiting color correction from printer.

Creature Collection 5e – PoD proof ordered. Traditional files sent to printer.

Pirates of Pugmire – Files at press. Prepping files for PoD.

Pirates of Pugmire Screen – Files at press.

Pugmire Buried Bones – Inputting errata.

Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition Dark Eras Compilation – Inputting errata.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Three years ago, my good friend and one of the genuinely good people in TTRPGS, Stewart Wieck, passed away. He was the White Wolf, and without Stewart it’s doubtful that all the amazing game worlds that came out of WW and now from Onyx Path would have existed. Thank you, Stew, in your ivory tower in the sky, for giving so many of us the start for so much creativity and imagination!

#Onyx Path Publishing

[ostrichmonkey-games]

RPG Highlights: Troika! Numinous Edition

Next up on the list is one of my current favorite games, Troika! Numinous Edition.

Quick Summary: Troika! is a science-fantasy, relatively “rules-lite”, random character creation-driven, wild ride of a game. d66 out of 10 stars. Play it.

Longer-Form What It Is: Troika! (the exclamation is important) is an excuse to go wild and explore a gonzo-weird science-fantasy, plane-hopping maelstrom of a game. I love it. I’m going to just quote the entire introduction, because it does some very heavy lifting in setting your expectations and welcoming you to the game.

“You are reading a tabletop role-playing game (RPG) in which one player takes the part of the games master (GM) and prepares the world and controls the people and peril in it while the other players create characters on a journey through that self same world.

You now have the context and key terms to explore the medium independently and nothing I say here can fully instruct you on what is a deep and rich form of entertainment on par with cinema or fly fishing. Treat it like you would any new hobby.

Beyond that what you have here is Troika!: a science-fantasy RPG in which players travel by eldritch portal and non-euclidean labyrinth and golden sailed barge between the uncountable crystal spheres strung delicately across the hump-backed sky.

What you encounter on those spheres and in those liminal places is anybody’s guess — I wouldn’t presume to tell you, though inside this book you will find people and artefacts from these worlds which will suggest the shape of things. The adventure and wonder is in the gaps; your game will be defined by the ways in which you fill them.”

Lovely.

At its core are a few pretty straightforward mechanics. You have some numbers established at character creation that you add to skill rolls to roll under that skill total with 2d6. So, if you have Skill 4 (base stat) and 5 Gambling (a skill) you need to roll under a 9 to succeed on a gambling check. In combat or in contests, each party involved rolls using the same procedure, but the win goes to the higher roller. Pretty straightforward. 

There are some extra rules you can layer on top, as well as an explicitly stated expectation that you will be creating your own rules as you play. The “chassis” for Troika! just begs to be hacked, and it really does lend itself to that. Skills in particular make up a big part of this. The given skill list is limited, really on purpose, and you get to come up with more skills as you go.

Another part that makes Troika! unique is the initiative system. Instead of rolling for an initiative, you assemble a pool of tokens representing both players, enemies equal to initiative scores, and an “end of round” token. You then pull at random from that pool to see who goes or when the round ends. Its, admittedly odd, but it works surprisingly well and adds some randomness and tension to initiative orders. 

The highlight of Troika! is undoubtedly the backgrounds. Backgrounds function like a class or playbook, they come with a set of starting possessions, skills, sometimes spells, and a short description. Skills and spells help define what your character can do, and offer all sorts of implied hints as to the “lore” of that background. But what does the most heavy lifting is that description. Individually they’re filled with potential hooks and stories, but if you read all the included backgrounds as a unit, it creates this wildly flavorful setting without having an actual setting section. It’s fantastic and more games should do the “implied setting” thing. 

Some backgrounds you can pick from (or roll for) include; 

Ardent Giant of Corda

Claviger

Gremlin Catcher

Journeyman of the Guild of Sharp Corners

Parchment Witch

Sorcerer of the Academy of Doors

Vengeful Child

Yeah. It’s great. 

Quick tangent, but Troika! is also just a great design space to tool around in. You might recall I dabbled in some background making, if you want to get a sense for the flexibility that this system allows for.

Anyways, lastly, I would just like to wax poetically about the art in this book (you can see some examples in the image at the start). There are several artists in this book, and all of them do a real fucking good job. Poetic.

Final Verdict: You should 100% get Troika! Do it now. I’ll wait. If you ever wanted to experiment in systems outside of dnd (and you should do that, there are multitudes out there and chances are one will fit you better than dnd might), Troika! is a great place to start (or end, but really, go on a ttrpg journey. it’ll be fun). 

You can pick up a pdf here, as well as check out the free SRD it has all the rules in it seriously. If you prefer dead tree versions, you can pick up a physical copy here. The quality of the hardcover is great, and it definitely feels sturdy and like it wont fall apart at the bindings like certain hardcovers of certain systems. Also, the pdf? Fully hyperlinked. Not even paizo does that for you. 

#rpg highlights #play troika!!!!!!!!!! #troika rpg #expect some fitd stuff up next

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: GM 41 - TBL - Warm Bodies

6-4 Regulation Loss

The season is now halfway over. It’s also got halfway to go. I suppose it’s a glass half full, half empty kinda situation. I imagine the first half of this season has evoked some pretty strong feelings along those lines of optimism and pessimism one way or the other. There’s a lot to unpack there and Midseason Thoughts will be out tomorrow so read that. This is only going to be an incomplete lookback on the first half that was. After all, there was a New Year’s Eve game last night and a big narrative coming into that game. Jeff Skinner got injured in one of the games against Boston and here we find ourselves once again down another forward. And here comes the snide remarks about the surplus of defenseman that don’t really help the problem with forwards dropping like flies. Well guess what: I’m there. I’m ready to be mad about this shit too! It’s January when you’re reading this. January 2020! Jason Botterill was hired in May 2017. He’s closing in on three years on the job. Sure he didn’t get the coaching choice right the first go around and we restarted the rebuild and yatta yatta yatta; but how has Rebuild 2.0 gone so… uh… terribly? There were poultry changes in summer 2018 after the accidentally super shit season that got us Rasmus Dahlin and then in 2019… uh… he moved out Nylander for Jokiharju. You can’t look past the Jeff Skinner trade and signing, the risk and reward of that, but barring the Henri Jokiharju trade that was far and away his best move. The defense is changed but the forward ranks are… actually remarkably similar to Dan Blysma’s last game behind the bench. That whole conversation was brewing and then came the Skinner injury. The Sabres are now the furthest out of a playoff spot they’ve been all season at five points back. That’s something we’ll talk about in Midseason thoughts. The team was up and down in the first half but mostly down. Meanwhile everyone is sorta thinking one move for a top six forward saves the day. True or not we were hungry for a move when… *drum roll*… Rochester American Dalton Smith is signed to a two-way contract so he can be called up to the NHL… uh… say what now?

This is literally the kinda thing you joke about a lazy General Manager doing. At first glance he’s just a goon you’re signing for the kinda things boomers dribble about on Facebook: he’ll bring grit to a roster the Coach and GM say doesn’t need any more grit! Smith wasn’t at Training Camp you see! His game is improved dramatically you see! He’s got… lots of penalty minutes in the AHL! Okay, I give up. I don’t know what they’re doing now. If you’re going to tell me with a straight face Smith was brought up as a Skinner replacement I guess I’ll agree he is in fact a warm body. This is just a team of Jack Eichel and a bunch of warm bodies right now anyway, eh? The most logical answer is a very unwelcomed one: the idea he was brought in to “take care of unfinished business” with the Tampa Bay Lightning. That is, the Sabres needed a guy to avenge the Dahlin injury back in November. So we used up a contract on a guy to come up from the A to punch Erik Cernak in the face? Is that the plan? Look Jason, we understand trades maybe risky, but we’d prefer you make one before going with the lowest common denominator within the organization. Remember a dozen games back or so when I theorized it was never the plan for the team to make the playoffs this season? I put together some pieces including the opinion of John Vogl who said exactly this. The huge salary opening this summer allow a lot of room for movement… but they’re also somehow in cap hell too? Is that what’s stopping you from taking this season seriously, Jason? The theory is basically confirmed now and I’m not going to lie: I am very turned off by it all. Other NHL clubs should take note: this is how you turn off your fanbase. You’re already on a pretty ugly skid? Make a really bad roster move when the obvious choice is clear as day for all to see and make it about fighting. Honestly, who was dying to see Dalton Smith fight Erik Cernak? Whose opinion of this club’s season is now changing because of him skating four shifts all game and almost getting into a scuffle? We even got a video of Cernak getting fighting pointers from a teammate at the Bolts practice! You have one of the most talented rosters of the decade coming to town for a New Year’s Eve game your billing as a big deal and you’re intending to give them a punching match? To top it all off about an hour before puck drop Joe Yerdon at the Athletic broke the news that Evan Rodrigues asked for a trade upping that number to three players who want out. Summer 2019 Sabres twitter would have gone to Defcon 5 with that news but five months without a GM has made us cold, hopeless husks. On that cheerful note, let’s do that hockey!

To be clear I am not, nor have I ever been a hockey player. Anyone who makes the NHL, even for a single game like Dalton Smith, is a better athlete than I will ever be. Each and every player on that ice could murder me quite easily. However what unfolded in the first and third periods of this game was a glorified badminton match. The shots were 10-3 in favor of Buffalo in the first, but the game did not even kinda look that way. At least two of those Bolts shots were off the post, the team MVP candidate hot on Jack Eichel’s heels. Ding-Ding-Ding. The Sabres got another impotent powerplay early on after Steven Stamkos tripped Eichel. Ralph Krueger did a very interesting interview this morning on WGR550 where he was asked about the lackluster powerplay. One quote sticks out: “Whether we score or not [on the powerplay] is irrelevant.” There is very little additional context needed, that’s the quote. He was making a point about how even fruitless powerplay help team confidence 5 on 5. I’m no hockey coach either but… uh… I think that’s some motivational bullshit, Ralph. Luckily I didn’t actually rear end the car ahead of me in the Tim Hortons drive thru when I heard that line. The slight edge the home team developed in this game became apparent late in the first and the Sabres got a goal almost by accident. Curtis Lazar peeled a puck off the Lightning as they attempted to exit the zone and shot it over to Conor Sheary. Sheary, tardy on getting out of the zone evidently, almost one-timed it and the shot snuck past Andrei Vasilevskiy to put Buffalo up 1-0.

Steven Stamkos and Jack Eichel both had shocking misses in the first; like wow, you had the whole net and didn’t get it in kinda misses. Both visibly realized their mistakes. In the second period Conor Sheary got an early assist when he put the puck on net where Marcus Johansson edged the puck in. All of the sudden the Sabres were up 2-0 and I doubt many of those assembled in Key Bank Arena thought this would be the way it would go based off everything going on off ice. Linus Ullmark and a tough defensive scheme wouldn’t hold up forever and almost inevitably Andrei Palat shot one in five hole. The powerplay goal for Tampa felt as mocking as it did inevitable. But then somewhere deep down in this team they revived the clap-back energy, just for a little bit. A minute later Jimmy Vesey takes the puck over after a fortuitous bounce and gets his first goal since the dawn of time. If you took even a minute to be shocked you’d be forgiven but you’d miss Jake McCabe doing what Dalton Smith got an NHL contract for: fighting! McCabe got into a bloody boxing match with Andrei Sergachev after a hit on Eichel he took issue with. To be fair to the cavemen not reading this, Dalton Smith did have a little spat with a player in a white jersey earlier in the period, but McCabe was the one who really brought your almighty grit. The lengthy penalty record now somehow put the Sabres on the penalty kill. Enter Jack Eichel stripping a Tampa forward on a botched pass before charging down the ice, undressing two defenseman and a goalie to backhand it in for the 4-1 lead and a shorthanded goal. That was at about the halfway point of the game. That beautiful Jack Eichel goal that will certainly be in the season highlight reel… was halfway through this game. Before the second period ended the disaster would begin: five unanswered goals started with another powerplay goal for Alex Killorn followed by Tyler Johnson snipe about three minutes later. The second period ended 4-3 Buffalo. The game would end 6-4 Tampa. The Lightning completed their season sweep of the Sabres in a comeback fitting of the next level shitty decade this club just concluded. Shattenkirk, Killorn again and then Anthony Cirelli with an empty netter, I’m not going to torture you with the details, it’s easy to imagine how that went just off experience.

Like, comment and share this blog. Tomorrow we’ll be discussing the first half of the season in Midseason Thoughts. We’ll be looking ahead to the back 41 games as well although it seems very clear they don’t matter to the Front Office. This club is within spitting distance of a playoff spot and are posturing to try and get further off by the end of the month. When I say this team is a collection of warm bodies and Jack Eichel, I mean it! I think I speak for a large swath of this fanbase when I say I’ve lost confidence. A move was necessary six months ago, but it never came. Sure I still like the Coach but if he’s going to pass off motivational smart talk as a definitive strategy for a hockey team to win enough games to make the postseason even he is going to lose me at some point! Tomorrow we get Edmonton coming to town and I doubt they’ll succumb to the Sabres quite as easily as last time. I have no more confidence in this club and honestly I feel like they’ll need to win us back when there is a playoff team in town! Well… that’s all folks. Happy New Year! Talk to you tomorrow. Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. The Winter Classic was fun this year. I wish somebody had told me Dallas and Nashville hated each other two years ago.

#buffalo sabres #nhl #hockey #blog