Week of 2022-12-16

 I'm still neck-deep in my job transition, so that's got me more than a bit busy. I'm trying to write these weekly updates even if they're shorter than normal just so I keep up the habit. If there's something you'd like me to write about, please let me know.

What I'm watching, reading, and listening to

I just listened to the latest Fear of a Black Dragon podcast (about The Isle of Dread). As usual, I'm excited to go off and run a lost world adventure, or maybe just work some of those ideas into my Land of Ten-Thousand Thousand shrines Dungeon23 project. 

I also picked up a new podcast, Fine Blueprints, and listened to their episode about Bump in the Dark. The podcast seems like a good addition to my queue, and I'll be listening through the back catalog. Bump seems like a great game, and I'm left wishing I had so much more time to play all these cool games. 

I mentioned this in my #Dungeon23 writeup, but Ben Laurence's Catacombs of the North Wind post is an awesome trove of Zyanese goodness. It's an example of what a Dungeon23 project can be like if set in an existing world, drawing on lore that already exists. It's also a teaser/trailer of incredible things to come from the Through Ultan's Door line of zines. 

Graphite Prime wrote a good post about improving the playability of non-room, transitional spaces in dungeons, Liven up Those Corridors. 

Luke Gearing has written three (so far) posts recording his Pariah campaign. You should read part 1, part 2, and part 3 for a good look at what "Old School Roleplaying When the World Was Young" could look like. I'm excited to read future updates.

What I'm writing and drawing

For the first location in the Land of Ten-Thousand Thousand Shrines, I redrew an old map of a monastery using my new digital tools/workflow and touched it up with ideas from Liven up Those Corridors. I'll be releasing it next week on itch in my map collection there. I'll be doing the same thing for the next two sets of maps I'm going to use in my Dungeon23 work, a catacomb beneath the monastery and a reworked The Climbing Tomb. These will also get some significant Jaquaysing to help improve them. 

I'm also working on the maps for Fettered Factory, a commission from the Kickstarter. 

I've got two little writing projects that are just waiting for the new job and commission loads to subside - one on city crawling, transitional spaces, and eliminative lists, the other is about relationships and renown. Tell me which you think I should pick up first.

What I'm playing, running, and planning

We only played two of our regular games this week, and the next couple of weeks will also be disrupted by holiday schedules at work. On the other hand, I'm planning on running a game of Mausritter for my wife, son, and daughter-in-law when we visit them over Christmas.

OSE - Winter's Daughter 
The group avoided combat with the floating skeletons and explored a couple of additional rooms. They're now in the statuary room and I don't know if they realize that something important is hiding under all that mold. We'll get to that in the New Year though.

Hochheim 
We were missing a player so instead of following up on the main group, we used the Downtime in Zyan zine to run downtime activities for other PCs of the players in the session. (Playing an old school game, each player has a couple of PCs with retainers so they can pick and choose which character to play on any given adventure.) They're in a small fishing hamlet that has swollen to four times its size due to troop movements in the civil war/invasion that are happening in my campaign. The illusionist attempted to gather intelligence about the enemy forces in the next town but rolled a 3, and failed to find anything useful. The ranger went Carousing with the troops, we had some fun with a couple of role-playing bits there, including (accidentally) nearly encouraging some troops to desert and chase after treasure in a nearby dungeon. The thief was thinking about investing in one of the temporary bars to create a local institution, so I created three possible options for the thief to choose from:

• Leon Radnitzer's dockside shack, where they fish in the morning and sell cheap booze and fried fish at night.
• Basti Schau's farm, where the widow sells pies and drinks in the old barn on the property.
• Jacob Henschel's egg farm, where he's sold poultry and egg dishes alongside mead and cheap ale.

Sadly, the thief didn't bite on any of these. 

Next week, we'll snap back to the revolt and duel at the bugbear encampment in the Forbidden City. The players will run Shuzgrap and Yrak. I'll be adding a pair of clocks (a la Blades in the Dark) - a 3-step clock to turn the crowd in favor of the chief and a 4-step to turn the crowd in favor of Shuzgrap. 

When we finish there, we'll turn to the battle between the fishing community and the next town over, using the Battlesystem mini-rules.