The Middle Kingdom -- a Metatopia Roundup

Soooo...

We're back from Metatopia. It was freaking awesome. I came, I saw, I tested my game, it actually functioned as a game, and I have a zillion things to re-do, but I feel basically good about it.  I had some wonderful experiences and panels and thoughts about the con itself and the atmosphere which I need to think on some more, but which are broadly good.

Also, I played some amazing stuff, which I will more or less try to describe herein.

First thing, Friday I played a psionic cop game called Psicom, by Jim Dagg, which was awesome both for being pretty much my whole raspberry jam, but because of the other two playtesters, who were these dudes. Seriously, if you can play a game that has action in it with Stras, DO THAT THING. He is a full on Anime hero at the table and it is everything. John is also the nicest dude, though Jim is also the nicest dude, so it was all very happy. Instaback, instabuy.

I didn't do much else on Friday since I was stressing about my Hi-Test, which I also won't go into, as I wanna unpack and do design talk for it on another post. So skipping to Saturday, when I played Immortal Flight by the incomparable Shoshana Kessock. It was really neat; I am allll about playing some Nephilim just living in the world, and it's incredibly evocative. "The Midnight Song". Shivers. and there was a Rabbi at the table too, so we got fully down with it. Mechanics are interesting; I'm really looking forward to this one moving forward.

Another playtest for me, then we played Throne of the Void by the above mentioned Stras and John of Off Guard Games. Harbinger puts it most eloquently here:

This one was especially interesting because we got to play with Rob Donoghue, who is a political cutthroat in intergalactic space politics, but who I mostly chat with as a fellow Scrum Master and Agile development evangelist. Seriously, he did Lean Coffee Friday and Sat morning of the con and it was awesome. Also, it was my first real experience with a Forged In The Dark game by folks who really Feel that system, and I am into it.

Last game Friday was Wracked, by Matthew Malis, another ATL dude who Harbinger knows from LARP-stuff. Really strong concept-- dead folks who have escaped hell and are working for the Reaper in order to secure Redemption. So thematically similar to Immortal Flight in some ways, but not in others. Very strong Vice/Virtue mechanic, which I liked better than the way such is used in Mage, tbh. Dice mechanics were a lot like the ones I'm currently using in At What Cost, which is not a bad thing-- great minds and all! Definitely had fun, and am looking to see where it goes.

Sunday, I had one more test, and then B and I played a game called Vigilance, by AquaVertigo Games. It... was about people who come from the dead in pre-antiquity and function as Living Laws tied to constellations.

...as you can see, I maaaay have played to a theme a bit in my game choices.

Vigilance had a really cool dice pool mechanic, and was again, thematically very strong. The personal story mechanics, once I got them, are very evocative and pull you in well. Yeah, I pretty much hit the jackpot on all the games I played for subject and intensity. While many of them did deal with similar themes, they had interesting and unique things to say about them, and contributed something different in their own way to the craft.

Also psi cops and space politics, which I am forever here for.

And that is Metatopia Roundup #1, and the one I most wanted to get out, because whatever else, the awesome games I played deserve some shoutouts, and the awesome people who ran them as well.

G'night to all of you out there, and here.

In which there was Content.

As of Sunday, I will be actually running a game again! My first time running some 5e, so it ought to be interesting. I am a huge fan of the megadungeon, so we'll see how that goes down, especially since it will be my first time running D&D for Shieldhaven at all. Not the first time I've run a game he's played in; the first (and only) such being my Nobilis One Shot of great antiquity (that I never actually posted about ><). Anyway.

My setting, which is called Liel, is the oh so original idea of taking a Sigil like crossroads and making it a whole world, rather than just a city. So pretty much all races and gods are available here. To reduce burden on myself (for some values of reduce), I re-wrote most of the PHB races to get rid of subraces, and broke some of the subrace options into a cultural bonus for being an immigrant (more recently come to this work) or being a colonist/native (originally from the world, or having immigrated so long ago it makes no difference). I also changed some things because the default races are different (humans are common, but not even a little default), and yeah. The important thing here is that the natives/colonists all have an option to take a feat at first level, and I know you're surprised that pretty much all of the PCs are doing that. Go figure!

The main thing this does is make it so that I feel better about starting at first level, rather than going with my 3e inclination and starting everyone at 3rd.

When I last ran this setting for 4e, I had a pantheon of gods that granted a background feat to their worshipers. Feats being tiny and fiddly, this was a lot of good fun to come up with. I wanted to do something similar for 5e, and funnily, it actually fits better. Because there are so many gods available in the world, the most common form of worship is called Giedame, where the worshiper selects six gods of their choice and focuses their piety upon them. Technically, a PC could choose gods not listed below (historically, Dragonlance gods are popular in the world :P), and I'd try to come up with something for that, but I've only actually written things for the gods I made up myself. So... below the cut I have:

• 1 new feat
• a bunch of boons (about 1/3rd of a feat to mix & match)
• 3 new spells (2 1st level spells (one of which is a ritual), 1 cantrip)

And a bunch of gods for spicy flavor. Enjoy!

Where she been, Oooh she been gone! (Sporadic Roundup #3)

Over the past... several months, I completely forget what I've been doing. So let's talk briefly about what I've been up to lately:

• Dungeons and Dragons 5e -- I'm playing two games at the moment: Shieldhaven's Aurikesh game (as I was, and will be, amen), and also a game called Reborn- a mostly online game run by a friend that I will call Mr. AWESOME. In the former, I am continuing to play my Veytikka Fighter and Beruch Warlock, and have now added a Kagandi Parthé who is a Royal Sorcerer. My Warlock has been the subject of a lot of tinkering and fussing, but really, it was the addition of a couple of new cleric cantrips of Haven's that really helped me have fun in combat (I'm a tomelock, see). So it seems like a lot of the problem was that most of the cantrips at base just weren't interesting enough. Well, and the combination of a) needing to take Agonizing Blast (even though I didn't), and b)  invocations being a little too much like build traps (see item a). But I digress. Hopefully, I'll also get to play a bit of Lost Mines of Phandelver fairly soon, so that will be cool.  
• 13th Age -- we started a game of 13th age, run by another friend I will call Batgirl, and I'm hoping we'll get to play more of that. I am playing something completely ridiculous, but it's been long enough I can't recall a lot of specifics. 
• Life is Strange -- a Square Enix story game. I bought the season pass, and am on my second playthrough of episode 3, having completely fucked up the second episode in one playthrough. Or, well, allowed something bad enough to happen that I had to have a second one to see the other primary outcomes. There's 5 episodes total, and it's interesting to see how they handle the branching consequences. So I'm liking that. 

Also, I am working on a Twine game about books that change based on the order you read them in. I need to brush up on my JS skills so that I can possibly write some macros around more robust array functionality, because a lot depends on whether I can make conditional content around whether one item has a higher or lower array index than another. On the subject of a lot of fiddly, branching consequences. Anyway, when I have a playable demo, I will doubtless post it here-ish. 

I have not been working on either of the tabletop game ideas I have; the one about psions, temporarily called The Red Ones, and the one about cities, working title: A City of Dolls and Monsters. 

And that's the news in brief. 

Iron Edda WaRP: Kickstarter Stretch Goal Project!

Whee! I've been tapped to head up a stretch goal for Iron Edda:War of Metal and Bone; implementing it in the WaRP system, which I lerve from playing Over the Edge, as those who have read this blog for any length of time may know.  There's some interesting possibilities here, and the Kickstarter begins in January, so there will be some time before we know if this will actually happen, but if so, I'll be posting my thoughts and progress here.

Many thanks to Tracy Barnett of Sand and Steam for the awesome that is this project, which is set in the world of the extremely cool novel he kickstarted previous, Iron Edda: Sveidsdottir. Coz yeah!

Also, check out the other extremely cool system options for this setting, throughout the Sand and Steam blog.