Week of 2022-11-11

This week I've seen a veritable explosion of newsletters, which is kind of what I'm trying to do here. I'd love to see these become cross-linked conversations with the kind of longer-form thinking that is so hard to do on Twitter and other social media sites.

Two things

Since I needed some locations for the Keep in my upcoming OSE game, here are some that you can share.:

The colorful market square surrounds a fountain where the folk of the Keep gather water. Lines run from the fountain to the buildings and walls around the square and small flags in blue, yellow, and green flutter from them in the wind. On market days, the square is crowded with farmers selling their produce. There are three more or less permanent stalls here as well. A glass blower, a barber, and a potter all work here and sell their wares.

The Crag's Top is a simple tavern serving the local community and any travelers. Garren, the barkeep, and their wife Lydia watch over the establishment and serve warm comforting food alongside a small variety of drinks. Garren's brother is among the outlaws that dwell in the forest near the Keep and Garren sympathizes with them. A 'peddler' who stops by the Keep every 10 days or so serves as a contact between Garren and the outlaws.

What I'm reading/watching

One thing that really struck me this week was Jon Harper's video on Game Rhythm & Calling For Rolls, more on that below. I also liked the recent Fear of a Black Dragon episode on Feast, which has me thinking about how things are progressing in my home campaign with the cult of the King in Yellow and the Cult of the Lost God both coming more and more to the surface. With the looming destruction of Twitter, I've been jumping on more mailing lists. The Indie RPG is currently running a series looking at cities in games. This week's email was on The City. Their Links of the Week section also got me restarted thinking about reincorporation (again more later).

What I'm writing and drawing

I'm putting together the sketch of the 3rd set of caverns for my mushroom caverns set on itch. It hasn't sold as well as I'd hoped, so I think I'll also draw up the final map of the 2nd set and tick the status forward to that point. I've been playing with some hex grids to make that easier. 

I'm also kicking around a renown system based on Ben Laurence's Downtime in Zyan. I'm going to try to get this into a semblance of order so I can post an early version of these thoughts soon - maybe this weekend.

What I'm playing, running, and planning

Seven Sons

In this week's game, I tried two approaches that I think will help change our game. The first is being more explicit in declaring what I wanted to achieve with my actions to let the GM better respond. This is an idea I've seen a lot of recently, e.g., in John Harper's video (see above). The other is reincorporation, my most recent sighting of this idea was Table Techniques: Reincorporation. 

Here's an example of being more explicit. Our characters were following a merchant named Kohl, who we suspected of being linked to a cabal of rich merchants trying to overthrow the government. When we confronted him, I led off by telling the GM, "I plan on dropping names of other members of the cabal and watching Kohl's reaction." With that framework laid, we played through a very direct (and somewhat shorter) interaction between the PCs and the NPC. 

Since the GM knew what we were looking for, he was able to frame his response in a way that made more sense for the setting and aim. This felt more respectful of our limited time at the table and made it easier to role-play a social interaction. I really liked the way it felt and plan on using this approach more as both a GM and a player. Using reincorporation as a player was a bit harder to do, but I love how it paid off for us. 

After our interaction with Kohl, we pulled back to observe him, After a little while, he rushed off. After a quick tail/chase, we followed him to a large building that looked a bit like a tavern. The building was secured, guarded, and not open to the public.

We found a kid on the street and asked them about it. They said it was "a private club for rich folks". Knowing that, I thought about the wealthy NPCs that were on our radar and asked about them. This opened up a second discussion about one of the bigger villains we've encountered and gave us more info about them. 

Hochheim 

This week the players met the mongrelfolk in the Forbidden City. A good reaction roll and some difficult parley (aided by a pair of comprehend languages spells) led to them teaming up. The mongrelfolk offered to teach the PCs the trade language that is in use in the ruined city (It's far from the PCs' home, so none of them speak the local languages) and teach them about the various factions at play. They wanted the PCs to eliminate the threat of the nearby bugbears.

The druid shapeshifted again to do some recon. Based on the info they gathered, the PCs came up with a basic plan to deal with the goblinoids - though they also discovered a potential rift within the bugbear camp. I'm interested to see how they leverage that. 

Set up for OSE

I kicked things off in the Keep so that the players can gather some information if they want (as described in Winter's Daughter). I just listened to a Blogs on Tape episode about The Keep on the Borderlands, which is coloring my thoughts as I prepare for our mini-campaign.