Call of Cthulhu Wild West - finally living the Dream

 

I've run three major Call of Cthulhu campaigns Since I was a teen. Two set in 1930's Los Angeles, and two in 1930's New York. Ah, memories. that last one was about 10 years ago for my long running Santa Monica group. I ran a lot of 1st ed over those years, but also managed to get in campaigns (of various lengths) of a bunch of genres. White Box DnD, Metamorphosis Alpha, Runequest, Traveller. But that Cthulhu one, though only maybe a dozen sessions in length, was fun. I called it Fangs of New York, and the first session was set in a Times Square upper story banquet hall at a new years eve party. 

I recall though having fun with that little campaign, but even at that time I was sort of pining to run the system in other time periods. Ancient Rome, Ancient Sumer, maybe even the Old West.  I felt like I had my fill of the 20's-30's. 

Up until the recent holiday season I had a decent 5th ed DnD group going. A fun bunch. Everybody was from off the Roll20 forums, and by this time I had learned to vet prospective players. Heavily. There is a lot of chaff to shift through to find the goods. And everybody was very cool. The most fun for me was a young couple, maybe in their early 20's, who were very enthusiastic noobs and I had a lot of laughs with them. But of course if you have a couple in your group, you aren't just getting somebody who might leave the group for whatever reason. You are typically losing TWO. That is the nature of a couple. They usually want to play together. But whatever is going on with them, we have not heard from that besides one chime in last month saying the wanted to play one night, but it has been silent since. The way I figure it, the thing young couples do best is break up. So my assumption is there. 

As it was the holidays, I called a few weeks break mid-December. I had not taken vacation time from my job for months, and wanted to use some of it. 

By the time New Years Eve came around, I had gotten the notion to try and get a Western themed Cthulhu thing going. It just popped into my head. Hey, if the DnD campaign is done, I want to jump right into something else. 

 I tested the waters with a post in the Roll20 forums, and just like my expectations told me I did not get much reply. I tried a few spots in other places, and eventually was lucky enough to stumble upon a Call of Cthulhu Facebook page with a huge membership. My post there got a huge response. 

I did not vet that hard. This was a niche genre, but plenty of people were interested. I actually had to choose several from a dozen or so inquiries. I had a couple of shortish Discord chats. The only one who did not continue by the night of the first game was a guy who wanted to run a Paleontologist. He had been running Cthulhu for years, but not in the format I wanted to do it. He wanted to play with Zoom, with video, and with theater of the mind. Well, in face to face or online I use battle maps, mini's/tokens, and Discord for voice. And everybody else I chose were into it. 

Ultimately, I ended up with mostly folk from the FB page who had played CoC, and also some of the remnants from the D&D group. 

So three easy going sessions so far. I mean, this is not DnD, and it has been years since I ran CoC. So I had to get more into a narrative style. Not relying on constant combats. Though I had to look for balance. Unlike my usual old campaigns of CoC, this was a more violent environment, and almost every character had guns. I set this campaign in 1886 Washoe County, that includes Reno, Carson City, and Virginia City. Towards the end of the gold rush in the west, and towards the end of what could be called The Old West in general. I mostly picked the time because most western weapons and tropes were around, and also because it was the year the University of Nevada opened in Reno. 

So far the characters are A female Doctor, a teenage female Chinese carnival trick shooter (both from San Franciso just hours away by train; and of course I'll want some adveturing there eventually), a two-fisted banker (from Virgina City who has survived dozens of robbery attempts), A writer based on Beauchamp from the movie Unforgiven (Duck of Death sez I), and former nun turned entertainer/dancer. 

Jordan, from the DnD campaign, has been on a long Canada trip so has yet to make it. Not even sure what he would run. For both of the guys from the DnD, they were kind of noobish to DnD, so for sure had zero CoC experience. They were not very interested until they heard I would be doing old western theme, and also they saw it was an easy peezy system, so they were in. 

So yeah, so far so good. So far just sort of settling into their lives in Reno, and encounters with cultishness related to Yig (losta snakes!), and Yidhra. 

I was at some game shop many years ago reading through one of the books and saw her entry and was fascinated ever since. She was for sure not a Lovecraft invention.

"...where Yidhra walks, the hills do not forget"

So yeah, as a believer in positive visualization I finally get to not just use this Outer God, but in a Western Cthulhu game. Boxes checked! I hope this campaign goes awhile!

Cheers

Overdoing the DM NPC

 

I had first heard of the term a DM NPC in some forum or another around 11 or 12 years ago. A DM NPC was one of the campaigns NPC's, but usually had a more negative connotation. Not just meek shopkeeps and street sweepers/walkers. But the terms "precious" and "favored" NPC's were thrown about. 

There seemed to be a real thing about this. Many folk clearly had a bad experience with DM's about NPC usage. And I guess I can see that. I remember about 12 years ago going to a Star Wars Saga session at this guys dad's apartment, me and 3 or 4 other full grown adults sitting on the floor playing in the guys Saga game (I only went because I was to run the system and wanted to experience it). I don't remember a lot other than the black dude in his 20's running a game while me and a handful of others in our 40's sitting there on the floor smoking pot. But one thing I remember is his main NPC, a well painted jedi miniature, being all over the little model buildings set up on the floor, doing almost everything while the rest of us kind of just waited our turns. But this kid loved his NPC clearly, and just wanted his favored guy doing most of the work while we watched. An extreme case to be sure. 

I also remember back in the day in my early teens going to the local Jewish community center in Santa Monica a friend invited me to because there was an older (probably around 30) guy running D&D for anybody who wanted to play. The main thing I remember was towards the end our characters were in trouble and were going to get killed by a local gang or something. And older DM dude having our characters having heard of this NPC, clearly his own character from some other campaign, and seeking his help. I remember the NPC confidently walking down the street with us, casting haste on himself and twirling a pair of swords around as we walked. I think that NPC mostly took care of the final fight. 

So yeah, I get it. Both of those are probably extreme examples, but if anybody was in the hobby long enough they probably had similar experiences. But how guilty am I? I suppose its subjective. 

From early on in my DMing my "precious" NPC's would be present. And more often than not they started as my early characters, and I incorporated them in my fledgling game world because, well, I wanted NPC's to be around other than shopkeeps and wenches. So here are two examples of my earliest D&D characters/NPC's (started in the latter 70's).

Arcturus Grimm - A ranger. He was probably among my first couple of characters ever created. I think from the original Greyhawk supplement where ranger was introduced (or maybe an issue of Dragon). There was no 1st ed Players Handbook yet.  He was exceptional and though we used 3d6 in order, I rolled nothing lower than 14, and the stats included 3 of them 16 or higher. As I was practically a kid I probably didn't realize how rare that would be. I made him a ranger, a strong 6'5" man (maybe based on one of my older brothers who was that big, and an all city athlete in school). His name was taken from a couple of my fave comic book characters. He was raised by bears in the northern Darkwold Forest. I had Arcturus Grimm be the elvish words for "Archer Bear." He was raised in the deep woods, and was fairly naive. 

When I soon started my own world, and began rarely sitting down as a player, I just injected Arcturus into the new setting (mostly just a tavern and a dungeon.). Over those early years Arcturus was there as the world grew. I expanded his background as being the adopted son of The Woodking Armis, the leader of an ancient order or rangers in the Darkwold known as The Woodlords, which I also added to the world. An early teenage sweetheart playing the game eventually would have a character marry Arcturus (making things awkward setting-wise when we broke up). But as characters, players, and campaigns came and went over the years through the 80's and into the 90's, Arcturus was here and there.

 Not hogging glory or fighting the fights for characters, but he would be around. Cameos as PC's adventured or playing a bigger role as wars and other major world events went down. At one point in my early 20's a girlfriend ran a daughter of Arcturus. New ranger characters might have heard of the Woodlords, and maybe aspired to join at higher levels. And Arcturus would be there. I have him pop up rarely to this day, still mortal but somebody of very high level who dallied with gods and other major spiritual beings. His adopted sister, Sheenara (or Sheen) rose to a minor woods deity status. Over 120 years of game time has gone by in my games, but Arcturus is actually 3rd elf so is not all decrepit yet, but far more mature than the young man I started him as when I was very young. Of all my characters/NPC's I probably had the closest affinity for Arcturus. I lived his ups and downs in the game world along with him.  

Over the decades I used various miniatures for him. Ones older gamers like me would recognize. 

One of the few minis I still have since the early 80's. Of any mini I used for Arcturus, this one looked the least like him. I suppose it is relative from a distance, but this does not convey the sense of a 6'5" dude. Just a basic ranger figure. Like most of my minis I got it at Aero Hobbies where I played a lot (but not as Arcturus) in my early teens. Owner Gary Switzer offered to paint it, and despite my descriptions proceeded to paint him how he wanted. I already did not like that the mini had a mustache, at a time Arcturus was clean shaven. And he gave him light hair instead of dark brown. But what the hell, it was a mini.  Early on as a character Arcturus had a Pseudo Dragon familiar (we levelled up fast when we were kids), so he used epoxy to put it on his shoulder, which was a nice touch. 

But more recently for brief cameos in Roll20 games I used this image:

Also his sister Sheen has made and appearance or two in the matters of druids:

These appearances are more for me than anything else. A brief touch of nostalgia. In most cases the players have no idea of the greater history I have with them. But I have had children of his (he left many of them throughout the lands after the Woodlords disbanded) appear in more recent games, specifically the twins Frend and Frenda, who are rangers encountered working for local caravans and what not. They appeared in the last couple of campaigns but nobody knew their parentage. So another insider bit for myself. 

Montigar Silverglen - he was an elvish fighter/thief I did up to play maybe a year or so after I created Arcturus. He was a high elf raised among wood elves and was an adventurous spirit who dallied with player characters here and there. He fought primary with two swords, and yeah when he became an NPC in my world I pumped him up a bit. 

Through the 80's and 90's he popped up here and there, usually meeting new characters in new campaigns. Every time he was encountered he was into something else. He was a dualist, a privateer, a Bon Vivante, a highwayman,a monster hunter, and a hero of two kingdoms, human and elf. I somehow ran him very charismatically; no less than 3 women in my games over the years had characters romantically involved with him. A romantic triangle between him and two other player characters (neither of them were girlfriends of mine, though "T" who I often mention is still one of my players) ended in death for one of them (his former girlfriend character, a fighter, killed a mind-controlled character of T's thief (the players were actually roommates then) who was his current girlfriend. Rather than restrain her, the fighter killed her. It was wild. No ending of friendship with the players, but this was a memorable moment that just became another part of his storied history bards would eventually sing of (which actually happened in recent games. Keep reading).  

One interesting aspect of Monitigar is his father was Whirligar, a high elf illusionist who was looked upon as a deity by gnome illusionists. Just one of those weird facts you come up with as a kid. 

I had a teenage sweetheart who ran a wood elf thief named Noradama. She identified with this character the same way I did with Arcturus. She and Montigar hooked up and were a famous power couple in the mostly city games I tended to run in my later teens and early 20's. This was the first time (but not the last) I would experience personal relationship role-playing, and my GF and I spent late nights acting out these characters as if they were in an inn room. Sometimes it can be extra good being the DM. I imagine other people must have experienced this. 

Much later, after the 90's, I had Montigar be a bit of a tragic figure when he appeared, someone who had bards across the lands sing of his many adventures and misadventures. Triumphs and failures. But I thought of him as somebody who was tired of the death and violence and doomed romances. He was a lone soul who never lost a fight but always lost in love. 

The first of many times I used the old Apple Lane setting for D&D in the early 2000's, I had characters encounter him living out the song Margaritaville there, working for the weapon trainers and drinking day and night, pestered by various would-be legend killers coming to make a name by taking his life.  

As a kid I got my hands on some Ralph Bakshi LOTR minis, including Legolas. I would eventually use the Legolas mini for Montigar, adding two longswords to the mini. Though Legolas was fairly effeminate looking in the film, the mini was a bit more butch.

Yep, after many decades I still had this fucker, though with an arm missing. One of my first ever paint jobs, and it shows. But really, now much better was Gary's paint job for the Arcturus mini.

Prior to the most recent games I think characters in a couple of campaigns the last two decades ran into him living the more or less quiet life. Probably several years since the last. But recently he appeared in my current Roll20 thing. 

The characters were on their way to the dungeon just beyond the southern border of the kingdom (taking several games to do so), and when they came to Shire's End, a remote village at the southern frontier of the Halfing Shire, I was brainstorming encounters there. Three families control the place, mining families who have concerns in the mining town a couple hours south near the dungeon out in the Grass Wilderlands. As the place had not much in the way of kingdom security (army outposts), the place had its own force of volunteer halfling frontiersmen, but also I decided this would be Montigars latest hang out place, being a Regulator for the families in return for a nice tower to live in and a modest stipend.

 The characters show up to the area and are chased by a hill giant but make it into the walled village. There they eventually meet Montigar, who is happy to see other than mining material and lumber merchants and invites them up for a party in his well-appointed tower in the merchant family inner compound. Here is the image I used for later in life Montigar, with scars and all.

Montigar spent a lot of the time manning his
minibar. "One for you, one for me, one for you..."

There is an issue with a hill giant, wandered up from the grasslands, menacing folk and stealing sheep. Long and short of it Montigar will deal with it, though he does not want to kill it because he is tired of killing things in his long life. The next day the characters go out to help him (he says maybe with their help he can subdue it over killing it), and it turns out there is a female one as well that was hidden in the copses of trees. With help from the characters Montigar got the giants to submit, and he offered the big dummies the opportunity to stick around to help protect the area and be helpful to the inhabitants in return for regular offerings of sheep, pigs, and bags of potatoes. Montigar asked the characters to stick around for another night of partying. 

I added the minibar to this map!

Despite my hopes that the wood elf bard Xanthia of "T" and the wood elf ranger Myrnigan of "L" would hook up at some point, given his history I thought it would be just right for Montigar to get the Xanthia hookup. I mean, she is super-hot. Tall, built like a female volleyball player, platinum locks, and a high charisma bard. Who would not want to experience that?

Or maybe I just have a thing for a cartoons

Ultimately, she wasn't having it. That is until Montigar asked her to do a duet of a famous old love ballad from their hometown of New Denaria. Luckily there was something nice in elvish in the jukebox to play and set the mood.

It won her over, though there was no nookie for ol' Montigar. Not yet, but it was on her mind. We'll see if that hookup comes down the road. The dungeon is only two or three hours away, so...

BTW, Evador the young cleric was taken with him, and snuck up later the last night to be with him. Xanthia the bard actually followed her up to the den to see what happened, and was glad to see Montigar nicely turned the Tanmoorian teen down, said she was too drunk and so was he, and sent her back to bed. Xanthia seeing that put her in the "I like Montigar" camp even more. 

So yeah, that DM NPC appearance was fairly self-indulgent. But what the heck, "T" enjoyed seeing an NPC from the past she knew of, and B and L thought he was cool. "Like a character from a fantasy romance novel" one said. 

But this is a rare case. I'm coming up with NPC's for games all the time, some regular, some more interesting. But jeez, I've had this game world a long time. It's nice to drag out old NPC's that have been around since my youth out of mothballs now and again. Not all of them are still alive. But why not use them?

Above: any Dragonsfoot Grognard who 
might read this post

Cheers

"Relics of The Dungeon Age"

Note: I'm not going to do session reports on the current ongoing dungeon jobber, though some of this post will seem kind of like its going that direction. As if. But I do want to get into what its about a bit, more or less, to point out some thoughts and ideas in relation to such a campaign. It seems every campaign these days has me getting the privilege of touching upon beloved old school notions, while also exploring new things with the latest edition. Yes, I do believe these things can live together.

So,

One of my "things" as a DM of old school persuasion who is doing a dungeon-as- tentpole campaign is to delay the actual dungeon crawling for several games (at least). There are a lot of reasons for that. Sometimes it's to let the characters settle into the campaign, and maybe go up a level or two. An extreme example would be my Night Below campaign for the old ongoing group back in my home city of Los Angeles almost 10 years ago. It was maybe a 30-session campaign of almost a year, with the characters, when all was said and done, were in the neighborhood of 8th or 9th level (traditionally high levels in my post-teenage years). And the first three or four of those were just bumping around the surface towns and villages getting to the point of being strong enough to go into the Night Below (which I believe counts as a dungeon as much as the old Descent into the Depths was). 

So, a little Roll20 campaign with a handful of my besties. A journey to one of the last remnants of the time of dungeons, or the Dungeon Age as I like to call a time period now mostly past (in my setting and in D&D in general). And I love the title "Relics of The Dungeon Age" because I can kind of see it having multiple meanings. The dungeon itself a relic of a time past. Old relics you actually find in the dungeon. And perhaps the players themselves, wanting to delve into a dungeon, are themselves relics of that age in an analogical sense. 

As a nice change from dealing with often oddball strangers of the Roll20 forums, this is an intimate little campaign with my very closest friends. 

 Best friends. Almost family. There is no more comfortable gaming than with people you have known for a long time, or feel close to for whatever reason. Not "D&D" people, but just some people who sometimes play D&D. That was always my sweet spot, especially in the 90's. Private groups filled with people you already know who want to play. 

So yeah, several games of just travelling south to get to the dungeon. So the deal with the delay is: B &L are new to Roll20, so I thought a series of basic overland and town encounters would kill some time till they were up and running with it. But I also wanted them to be a little higher in level than 1st when they entered the dungeon for reals. Why? I mean, a classic dungeon is just made for, you know, 1st level dudes on the first level. 2nd level on the 2nd level. Rinse and repeat. 

But c'mon. Does it have to be that ginned up for fairness in leveling. Was it ever? Back in the day in the Caves of Chaos you would) fight kobolds and goblins at 1st level?  2) orcs and gnolls at 2nd? 3) ogre and Medusa at 3rd-4th?

OK, CoC really isn't a levelled thing classically. But you know what I mean. 

Naw. I mean, when trying to go full classic every few years with a self-designed magical dungeon, it was fun to go "ok, rats and kobolds on 1st level, the orcish clan on the 2nd, a 3rd level with minor undead, blah blah blah." That is fine for the oldest of old school. But with this edition I think I can stray from the formula. You know, what they consider classic dungeoneering gold on old grognard sites such as Dragonsfoot.

"...AND EVERY THIRD ROOM SHOULD BE
EMPTY AND FULL OF DUST!"

So these guys would eventually enter the dungeon, probably through the entrance that goes to the 1st level, and they shall be around 3rd level when they do. 

So we started the campaign in a rural hillside town in the human shire south of the kingdom proper. Overtown in the shire of Overton. 

A location I have used for decades. I love rustic shires as a break from city games or deep wilderness slogs. Out in nature but still in civilization. 

And just to the south the halfling shire of Bundtland. But Overtown was the furthest south human dominated town. The last before things get all hobbity. With B's young sorcerer Ruvan, and L's wood elf ranger Myrnigan (a gal running a male character...grrrr) a team was forming. 

Ruvan the sorcerer. 

Myrnigan the wood elf

Ruvan is from the sparsely populated Riverlands just east of the shire, and Myringan from the nearby Blackwood Forest; a far cry from the metropolitan wood elf community/city of New Denaria a few days east of the city Tanmoor. These are areas I wanted to develop for a long time. My setting has been built in large part from character backgrounds and birthplaces, and these are two new towns/villages I can put on the map. 

T was not present for the first session. I wanted to do a little work on getting B and L up and running with characters with the nifty Charactermancer, and some character set up. They were knew to Roll20.

With an eventual party of 3, I need a 4th. So in comes the DM NPC, Evador, who is a young cleric of the healing god Billick. She is "a Blue Heart on the Red Path," a cleric of Billick who wished to be an active field cleric for the faith. So she chooses a dangerous mission of a personal nature to complete as sort of a thesis to impress the leadership at the Billick cathedral. She hooks up with Ruvan and Myrnigan during a barfight at the tavern they get swept up in. Evador explains her mission, to go and enter one of the worlds last true mythic dungeons. She asks them to accompany her. 

I have fun with this NPC. She is a former rich party girl from the city, who had a year or two of college then discovered the religion of the healing god Billick. Despite her rich kid rearing, she is taking the religion seriously, but I also have her dealing with physical stats that are not optimal for fighting monsters. I portray her as a tall girl who is a little awkward physically (in the most recent encounter she missed with her mace five times in a row). 

T's (wood elf) character Xanthia, playing tunes as a bard at the tavern, would be there to meet the other characters in the second game. Evador was seeking her out, because Xanthia had been to the dungeon before.

 

..and looked fabulous doing it.

Yeah, my very first little Roll20 campaign where T first ran Xanthia about 3 years ago was to this very dungeon. They got to the second level, and got to mess with its magical pool room, a staple of my mythic dungeons going back to In Search of The Unknown. I thought it would be fun for her to go to The Meadowlands Dungeon again as the sort of mentor about it to the other characters. In the first game she was still 3rd level while the others were 1st. It was a fun dynamic. Both T and I played with the notion of her coming off as the seasoned vet and Defacto leader. 

Off they went, heading south into the halfling shire of Bundtland. I already posted about their encounter with the halfling witch Emerelda, and their starring in a dating game show at her festival.

Fun in the chill halfling shire. Xanthia knew Governess Cymbaline Garlandheels from the previous campaign and ran into her and her entourage at the festival. This time there was to be a party at the estate. After helping out with some giant spider problems in the area, they boogied down (more or less) with local personages and interesting locals. A halfling high society deep dive. Good contacts. And a good way to gain a quick 5 lbs. 

I'd had Cymbaline as the governess of the shire forever. Tall and more slender, I always referred to her as a "Manling," a rare half hobbit half human mix. Be when all is said and done probably just a "Tallfellow."

So the party was swell. Xanthia playing tunes with the band. Myrnigan dancing with the young halfling gals with a crush on him. 

It was cool, but there would be more parties before the dungeon was delved. 

Next: Overdoing it with a DM NPC

 

Getting that dungeon crawl going

 

Around the time I posted last, I started a new job in healthcare. Previously my later-in-life health care career transition from a couple of decades of entertainment business management back in LA included a major regional hospital during the height of the pandemic, but the most recent gig is for a healthcare insurance plan company, and it includes some new perks. More money than I ever made since leaving my home city, and the biggest change of all was working from my home office most of the week. 

But despite this being a somewhat demanding position, I have managed to do a lot of gaming. OK, most of that gaming is video games on the weekend. I play Elder Scrolls Online a lot less, as it started to feel too unchallenging. I will pop in for an hour or two with my old pal T, who is still enchanted by the game and plays a lot of it. But I need variety in my games. I still have a Mad Max game and GTA 5 I dabble in on XBOX, plus I recently downloaded an old favorite side scroller, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild remains a favorite, and I also like to play a little Cuphead here and there on Nintendo Switch in handheld mode while taking a little break in the workday. Man, what a hard game!

My Roll20? Well, I have mentioned my besties "B&L" (currently on the other side of the country helping L's mom run her bar...I will see them in fall and Winter when they come back to town for a while) and also my Los Angeles homegirl "T" who has played in my games on and off since the early 90's. The three of them make up my current little group, playing every couple of weeks. A classic dungeon crawl campaign. 

This is for sure giving me experience in online dungeon creation. I do have a couple of purchased modular dungeon packs from Roll20 (about 5 bucks a pack). I built the first few levels of a dungeon for me very first little Roll20 campaign that went for about 15 sessions. So pretty much reusing that same dungeon, but will be always tweaking. I built the first 4 levels back then, though the party only got to level 2 back then (just like the current things I had about 7 or 8 session working towards the delve...little adventures on the road).  

As it's not exactly a huge labyrinth, I hope for us to more or less get to level 5 at some point, maybe by late summer? But historically I have always ended up getting fed up with a crawl and found a way for the characters to do other things. So it may not make it that far. 

But this little dungeon has a bit of history in my setting, going back decades. So I think I will talk it up a little more next post. 

Cheers

Big Fun with Dynamic Lighting in Roll20

 

I had been doing stuff on Roll20 for a couple of years now, but only now getting around to using dynamic lighting. I have always had an advanced account (that you need to us DL), but that was mostly so my players would not be pestered by ads. 

In my last campaign I refrained from experimenting with it because I was running for mostly masters of the platform, and I did not want to take time to learn as I went with them. I just used Fog of War, which I found functional enough, and pretty nifty. But now that that campaign is done, for the foreseeable future I am going to be doing a campaign with friends I already had. This is a great time to experiment, as the games will be much easier going. I can fuck around without alienating "experts."

The gang is more or less noobish, and when I announced that we would be trying DL out, they were jazzed. We got down to it, and when the time came to go in a cave I did the set up.

I was starting small, just a three or so room complex. As DM your first move is to have the cave walls outlined so vision does not pass through them. You hit all the right buttons in page set up to prepare. 

Then when the characters enter you must go into each characters setting and do up how and what they can see. For those with night vision you enter the distance, along with how much of that distance starts to dim after a certain point. Then you do up torch or lantern users (or light spells) depending on those items capabilities. I like to give firelight a nice yellow glow. 

this is all me looking from a player's POV, but
I also get to see outlines of the complex

This small-scale experiment was good, as I need to work up to the larger dungeon the campaign is heading for. Everybody loved it, but I guess my goal should be for it to eventually become old hat. Second nature. But it really adds a cool element you would be hard pressed to get on a face-to-face tabletop (without thousands of dollars of equipment).

More experiments to come. But so far so good. 

Cheers

"Official" D&D vs "Folk"D&D and the pitfalls of playing with strangers

(this post may qualify as a rant. Take it with a grain of salt)

 I've recently been seeing a bit of this lately, the use of the term "Folk" over the usual "Old School" designation.

"Official" is of course the rules (more or less) as written, while "Folk" is a name for people who rely less on whatever the current editions and settings are, and "do what thou whilst" hodgepodge gaming. I like the word Folk for this. The term "Old School" is getting, well, a little old. 

As a D&D person myself, this is sort of hypocritical I guess, but I find gamers, D&D players especially to often be an odd lot. I suppose I always considered myself Old School, but maybe less so in recent years. When I got hipped to the OSR (sometimes derogatively referred to as the "blOwSR") around 2009 or so, I got involved a bit. I started this blog not long after starting a 10-year group where I ran a variety of genres, but mostly 1st edition. I'd say about 60% of that experience was great, and the rest, well, often when more or less unfulfilling, and often the drizzling shits. I feel this is because it was gaming mostly with strangers. Sometimes weird ones. And I found this to my experience with the modern crop of players, especially gained on Roll20 forums. Maybe chock full of more oddballs than Grognard places like Dragonsfoot. 

Most of my gaming life since I was a teen was about me running campaigns, of various genres, for friends I already had. People who often had no real D&D experience. They came in fresh, and just wanted to enjoy the play without a bunch of expectations. Open minded. In any genre I ran. And these were my most happy gaming years. Dungeons and Dragons, Champions, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Traveller. Kind of a bummer that this was 20 years and more ago. 

As a teen I knew that playing at game shops or cons was not for me. So many of the people turned me off. 

So as far as 1st ed D&D was concerned, there was no arguing over rules or rulings, whereas in the groups of strangers that I ran for years later that was often the order of the day. So much of 1st was open to interpretation, it was an easy in for power gamers and rules lawyers to work their shitty magic. People who if you gave in to, would, like classic bullies, feel they could do more of it until you were worn down. They were so proud of how they viewed how things should be run.  It was one reason I treasured doing games like Champions or Call of Cthulhu. The rules were fairly clear. But eventually it would be back to D&D and "D&D People" and their particular peccadillos. It was often hard to feel like these people were friends.

When I moved to a new state it was a chance to sort of renew. I adopted 5th edition and had a couple of decent face to face campaigns, the first one was me being tapped to DM by my current beloved besties B and L. I was happy to more or less be turning my back on my old school roots. But my experiences going mostly online with Roll20 the other year was also decidedly mixed. It was mostly with strangers. Because of this I decided to hew close to the rules, but still, no matter the experience or age range, D&D players still seemed to have particular expectations, rather than just going with the flow of whatever the DM had in mind. 

 So, call them old school or new school, call them official or folk. The only main difference to me is that one wants rules as written, and the other ones want something more creative and distinct. But they still often seem to be odd people (yes, I am very much generalizing) with particular expectations. Such as "I want to run a cyborg minotaur gunslinger!" People under 40 on Roll20 are full of this kind of "hey, look at my cool character!"

But even if I stick with 5th ed, it will soon be a "folk" edition. One DnD is going to change everything. WOTC recently and very blatantly announced that the players are an untapped resource to be monetized, so part of their plan is microtransactions that themselves are well known as the drizzling shits of the video game industry. To play it is no longer the DM's who will need written material. Players will need to create online minis for their characters, and I can see a couple of dozen microtransactions for every aspect of it. Face, hair, clothing, every weapon or piece of armor. The colors. What the cost of this stuff will be is what interests me the most. In the past you could buy some paints for about 10 bucks, and a mini for about 5. Will your online mini cost you 30 bucks? 50?

But that is going in a direction that I am not at all interested in otherwise. 

Mostly it turns me off as there will be a lot more work for DM's, and likely a lot more costly for them. They will need to invest a small fortune in DND Beyond, as will the players. And as usual, you will be dealing with fickle players you often do not know along with the cost and time investments. For me, based on my hit or miss Roll20 experiences with the community at large, will it be worth it?

Nah, I will stick with Roll20 and 5th ed for now. Or maybe just try to get a campaign of Call of Cthulhu or a Superhero thing going. A break from D&D people. I think I am maybe starting to head towards being done doing RPG's with non-friends. I have a campaign of infrequent games I run for my local besties B and L, and my old player Terry, which is just great because it is just like those games of old for my friends. No weird expectations. Just D&D. A D&D game once or twice a month with true friends, with my favorite video games in between (this was a super banner year for video game), is starting to seem just right to me. I'm really kind of fed up dealing with strangers in gaming. 

So yeah, this will now be old school or "folk" gameplay for me. Until WOTC buys up Roll20 and other platforms and it is no longer supported. The time is maybe coming when if you don't want to invest in the official stuff, it will have to go back to face to face tabletop. Somewhere you don't need WOTC or their bullshit. That will be the true Folk RPGing. 

Maybe unfortunate for me, as I still feel I want to be retired from face to face. I have boardgames for that.

YMMV

Cheers

 much of 

The Question of Race in D&D and other Woke issues

 

So I read yesterday that they will be removing the term "race" from D&D.

I'm not here to rant on that. You can go to The RPG Pundit's Blog, or Venger Satanis', or any number of more conservative (does it sound logical for a satanist to be conservative? I mean, is "do what thou whilst" conservative?) spots for more passion about it. Me? I get over these things fairly easily. 

I mean, race was never the proper term. And "species" seems more appropriate, though sounds more science-fictiony. I recently had to go through the "no more racial modifiers" thing with my Roll20 material. And you know what? I love those race-based modifiers, but in the grand scheme of things? I just want to run games and make fun for others. So now you get plus 2 to something and plus 1 to something. Big whoop. Let the players decide if a mod is based on what they are. 

The main thing that irks me is how the left wants very badly to instill real world race issues into gaming. They are the ones who decided orcs and drow represent black people. It's kind of tragi-comic how the left seems to actually be the ones with racist thoughts. But whatevs.  

I'm fairly on the left for many social issues. Things I can't believe we still have to talk about in this day and age. Gay marriage. Legalization of marijuana. But I lean more to the center on most other things. Though I believe there is a lot of racism in the country (no worse than most other nations), I think the current wokist ideals at their heart include a lot of racial grift and liberal profiteering. Indoctrination of children into believing they are racists at heart and their reading of way too many Twitter posts on the issues are making them do things they will one day regret. I mean, those dicks don't grow back after you cut them off. 

The regular Roll20 campaign I've been doing for months does not seem to have especially woke players, though I don't try to test them on it. But I have tried a couple of campaigns that were nonstarters that were made up of folk heavy on the pronouns. It's bad enough that in a lot of cases off the Roll20 forums you will get people who want to go by nicknames that are awkward for me to call them, like Morpheus, Goat Cheese, or Sucknuts, but toss in an endless variety of pronouns and it starts to get kind of surreal. I'm open to learning more about people, but for games I just want to call people Mary or Joe as our campaigns roll along. DMing can be stressful enough without worrying that using the terms "He" or "She" might be taken as ignorance. 

Again, whatevs. I'm accepting of le differance. When I left SoCal I had a transgender neighbor, and she was the first person who called me when I moved to a new state to see how I was doing. My friendship there sort of opened my eyes to more acceptance of differences. 

But the long and short of it is I just want to run a game that is fun for all. I don't want all these worries of the real-world intruding. I want orcs to be nasty and evil, and I want everybody to hate them. Even other orcs. 

YMMV. Cheers. 

The Encounter that what was meant to suck, but Didn't

 Besides my regular Roll20 campaign, "Trade and Turpitude," I've been doing a little campaign for my besties every few weeks. My old Friend and player "T" back in Los Angeles, and the younger couple who sort of adopted me when I moved to a new state, "B and L." I met them when they were looking for a DM to start a campaign, and when that campaign ended after maybe 15 sessions, I stayed friends with them because in all honesty they were the only players I didn't pretty much hate. Heh. And they were so good to me, I held on to them like grim death. They spend most of the year on the road travelling the country but were recently visiting town for a couple weeks. They took me to a couple of great shows, a showing of Ghostbusters with full orchestra lead by Elmer Bernstein's son, and a local theater doing Evil Dead the Musical. 

But while they are on the road we do some online stuff. Like digital Talisman, and now some Roll20.

I love B and L, but they are not what you would call outgoing players. They are fairly reserved. At least compared to my regular players in the other campaign. So after a couple of games in the campaign I showed them a "50 character questions" thing my player Mary gave everybody in the other campaign. Just basic things to flesh out a character. I even use it for some NPC's. I thought it would help B and L get a better handle on their characters, allowing them to be more at ease with basic role-playing. 

After a few weeks they hadn't done it. So I decided to "punish" them. Not really, but I thought I might put them through the ringer with a heavy role-playing situation that would test them, and maybe open them up a bit. But like a lot of chances a DM takes, it might well suck. But the point was to get them to come out a bit. I'm not looking for community theater, but its more fun if players can improv a bit with you. 

So I was going to be using a free Roll20 adventure for an easy-going session. It's called The Festival of Emerelda. It comes with a map of a whimsical fairground. 

Not a lot of content is there. The most obvious are some audio tracks featuring the halfling witch Emerelda and some of the festival event barkers, but they don't work great. In one instance uploading the tracks deleted all the other tracks in my Roll20 jukebox. 

As far as the festival, the contests involving drinking, arm wrestling, and other things were not really working for me as far as the rules and presentation of the games. But I mostly made up my own rules that suited me. The map has some things, like an owlbear chained up with a food bowl, and some Griffons in a pen, all things you can wing it to have some fun with. What interested me was a tent with a couples game, A Suitors Claim. The rules didn’t tickle me for this, so I decided to change it up, and at the same time put my reluctant role-players on the spot with it. 

T was running a fairly outgoing bard, but I would make an example of B and L. I would put them into this heavy role-play contest as a trial by fire. I decided to make it like a 70's dating game show. The party was divided up by two males and two females, so it was perfect. They were split into two sides and they would have to ask questions of each other. The audience would be played by me, and my reaction to the questions and answers would dictate the couple that would finally win. 

Each one of them got 5 questions of varying levels of intimacy, and each character would choose 3 of them to ask. Here are some examples of the questions I came up with:

1)      do you still have feelings for any of your exes? Tell me about it.

2)       What's the worst advice someone else has ever given you?

3)      What do you think happens when you die?

4)      Get up and Dance like your life depends on it for one minute.

5)      Lick a bar of soap.

 Describe the weirdest thing you've ever done while inebriated or impassioned

What's one thing in your life you wish you could change?

What's something you've done that you'd judge someone else for doing?

Put on womens clothing and walk through the crowd

Eat a teaspoon of mustard

I found a jazzy lounge type music in the jukebox to go along with the game. 

And it was on. So, I figured B and L would hem and haw and have a tough time with the improv. I imagined I would be cutting it off in 10 minutes, B and L having learned that they need to get more in touch with their characters just for the sake of role play. I mean, not so much to interact with me, but at least all the players need to be able to communicate openly with each other in rpgs. I got it going and was prepared for it to bomb. 

Here's the crazy thing. It didn't. OK, B was kind of hesitant. His male sorcerer was teamed up with Evador the female cleric, an outgoing rich girl. Seeing that B's shy sorcerer was having trouble with the questions, she assured him it was alright. She asked him the less embarrassing questions, not worried about winning the 50 GP prize money. This seemed to kind of spark an understanding between the two. Still, B rose to the occasion a bit, nicely answering a question about the most embarrassing thing he did drunk (getting naked on a chilly hunting trip).

T and L were far more outgoing. T was running her beautiful Elvish bard Xanthia, and L was running her male elf ranger Myrnigan, a character she created as being very dumb but a bit of a womanizer. With those traits I really wanted L to come out of shyness closet with this character, and with the help of Xanthia she did. Myrnigan and Xanthia asked each other the most challenging questions, and asked each other to perform outrageous acts, like duck quacking and dancing around for a minute. "Lick this bar of soap." They had such great fun with this and were highly entertaining. They of course won the prize. 

So what was supposed to be a minor encounter that bombed, this ended up taking most of the three-hour session! I never expected B and L to enjoy a game with almost no action, but they loved it. I tested them and they passed with flying colors despite my expectations. 

I take chances with sessions here and there over the years, doing something that I know has a decent chance of bombing, but it is so satisfying when your fears turn out to be unfounded. And in this case especially, a couple of reserved players came out of their shells a bit. Gotta love it. 

Cheers

Roll20 in-game chat makes me feel like a Twitch streamer

 

So, I think we are going on game 15 in my regular Wednesday night 5th ed game in Roll20. I could not be more pleased with how things are going. Despite almost everybody having more 5th ed and Roll20 experience than me, I have yet to lose a single player due to my shortcomings. I'd like to think its my old schoolish style and over 40 years of experience as a DM. But whatever it is I love this group. Good role players, respectful, friendly, funny, patient. It's all there. I may never have a group like this again, and it makes me want to get the most of it. 

One thing that is really awesome to me is the in-game chat box. I did not pay much attention to it for my first few games. But something it has come in really handy for is posting a spell or ability you are using, official text on the particulars. The player simply has to click on it in the digital character sheet and the spell or what not appears in the chat for me to look over. This along with the in-game compendium searcher has made it so I don't really need any books or paperwork at the table. And I use this as a learning tool as well. After a session I have one last beer (or three) and go over the chat box to bone up on the spells and things. 

And once I got in the habit of checking, I discovered something else the players are furtively doing there. They have an ongoing text chat during each session where they comment and discuss or make jokes on the current encounter or occurrence. You see, I'm too busy to always have that chat box open. When somebody makes a dice roll, I look quickly because that is where the modified number shows up. But I'm usually doing 5 things at once. 

But those chat comments. It's a special treat for me to go in after a game and see what the little dickens have been up to there. It's kind of a hoot, and a new thing I am experiencing, and extra pleasure, I never had in face-to-face games.

So, I'm not streaming, but this little feature makes me feel like I am. And it's yet another thing making me feel, more and more, that this is the format for me to DM in for good.

Roll20 Voice & Raised on Radio

Okay, okay, stay with me for a minute. It'll make sense. I hope. 

I had an epiphany about my Roll20 DMing lately, and one of the problems I seemed to have conquered. That is, the adapting to voice only after decades of having a table full of folk looking at me. 

I decided to skip using camera for the most part because I might find it distracting. In a different way than actually be in front of people physically. I just knew from various Zoom meetings for work or whatnot that seeing each other was not necessary.  

Adapting to having a narrative happen with just my voice had some challenges. For one it turns out I like to gesticulate and make hand gestures and such when I am describing things in a game. So I have a hard time of breaking that habit when nobody can see me. And I've had to change a lot of my process to adapt myself to being descriptive without using my body at all. Sometimes in the last couple of campaigns on Roll20 I would think "why would anybody do it this way?" 

But I somewhat recently realized I loved doing it in this format so much so that I pretty much consider myself retired from face-to-face DnD. For a lot of reasons, but in large part I think because I remembered the power of radio DJs. And how memorable the ones I grew up with in Southern California are still for me to this day. And why. 

The first DJ I can remember from when I was a little kid was LA staple The Real Don Steele. 93 KHJ was the most listened to station, and though nobody knew what he looked like, for locals, he was a bigger celebrity than anybody in the movies. That's the power of local radio. You feel like you know them. 

One of my favorite Tarantino films is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and one of the reasons I love it is the soundtrack is a tribute to Don Steele in a way his location work was a tribute the LA I inhabited as a child. He's practically a side character, as Brad Pitt drives down Burbank Blvd with Don Steele introducing songs and commercials. It sort of blew my mind. At one point a commercial for a shampoo or something called "Heaven Sent" plays on the radio, and I flashed back to infancy. I immediately remembered the commercial with the catchy tune. I got chills hearing it. As a kid when the TV wasn't on, the radio was on, and I must have heard the commercial a hundred times before I could tie my shoes. It was a powerful nostalgia feeling. I had to be only like 5 or 6 at the oldest when that commercial was a thing. 

And that is the power of the voice of radio. What is another power? Well, you get such an image of your mind of your favorite DJ, you get blown out of the water when you see they look nothing like you imagined.

I swear to God I always though
Don Steele was a black guy. 

It seems that every 10 years or so you get new DJ's. In the 80's we loved World Famous KROQ, and we always imagined the radio station being like a circus or something, where Devo or Elvis Costello might just be hanging out in the hallway. Richard Blade, Poor Man, Swedish Eagle, Rodney Bingenheimer, and others just seemed be magic. 

Mark and Brian were huge in LA in the late 80's and into the 90's. I'm kind of ashamed of being such a fan. They were such dorks. I remember me and a buddy going before work to some stunt at the Culver City station they were doing live. Getting lifted by a crane and dipped in fudge, and we all got M&Ms to throw at them. It was like a wild rock scene. All these hot young secretaries and retail clerks where there too, screaming like Springsteen had showed up. These guys were huge but looking back I don't think they were that funny. By the late 90's I was like "boooring..and they are just ripping off Stern." But man, the magic of radio. Of just hearing the voices. And they talked about things I Loved that they grew up on. Batman, Gilligan's Island, The Munster's.

The fucking mullets were not
all that magical. 

OK, the point is as soon as I started thinking about the power in a radio voice, the mystery of it, I saw the advantage of it in a D&D campaign using just voice. You start getting comfortable with it and do things with it. To be more articulate and descriptive. No flailing hands needed. Though, uh, I still gesticulate. No need to eliminate it really, as long as your voice is conveying what is needed. 

The mystery of radio is the mystery of a faceless voice. And I feel I am starting to harness that mystery. The DM is an omnipotent presence. Eliminate the body and I feel you can tap into that in a way you cannot when the group can see you sucking down the beers while wearing a Rick and Morty T shirt. 

As an aside, another great thing for me is the mute button. I have a tendency to interject a lot when players are talking among each other in character. So that button is a great way to censor myself.