I was going to post about my hopes for roleplaying in 2021 a few months ago but I kept putting the post off. The reason? I wasn't quite sure I knew what I wanted. But now I know. I want to play in Glorantha, preferably Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha but if I'm honest the "system" is irrelevant it's the world I want to play in. Whether I GM or play I don't care (although I believe a mixture of the two will work best).

It's a feeling that has slowly been growing on me since I first purchased the RQG rulebook back in late 2018. You see, for me, this is the best RPG I've ever experienced and has now even eclipsed my love for D&D B/X. Sure I liked RQ 2e, my longest played, most experienced and best loved character was in RG 2e but I only ever played (back in the mid to late 80s) and never GMed and just as I was writing material to run myself the group I was playing with moved onto other systems.

I'm actually now wondering why we moved systems. If I'm honest I can't remember; it's too long ago but I can remember Shadowrun, Rolemaster & Aftermath! all being played and I while I enjoyed all those systems back in the 90s but I can't help feeling in an alternative universe, given a second chance I'd like to see what would have happened if we'd have carried on with Runequest.

Anyway, that's all irrelevant. What I have found since getting back into the hobby late in 2017 is that despite many enjoyable games under many different GMs and groups of players is the thought that I want to be playing in Glorantha. That's not to say I want to exclusively play in Glorantha, just that I want to playing it in the mix. I'm lucky enough that I've GMed a RQG campaign since around March 2020 which has been immensely pleasurable and up until recently this has allowed me to scratch that itch, 

However, the next step is to play in a regular Glorantha game. I joined a game run by Che Webster running Six Seasons in Sartar but that has just folded and I was hugely disappointed (but if you are reading this Che please take that as a compliment in that I enjoyed the game so much). I've reached out to another group and may join their campaign in RQ 2e if schedules match and joined a couple of Discord groups related to Glorantha that I've tracked down.

If I fail to find another game I think I will offer to run another campaign, but one starting with 16 year old characters in the old timeline of 1615ish. 

So what has attracted me so much to Glorantha? A number of things starting simply with the breath and depth of the information, the quality that Chaosium are producing at the moment, discovering the quality of the Avalon Hill 1990s supplements, and the intelligence and helpfulness of the Glorantha community. Chaosium themselves are active on social media. The people who run the company are active in various groups, answering fans questions and offering advice, keeping us up to date on what they are working on. The Jonstown Compendium has been a roaring success. This is fan based material published by Chaosium on DrivethruRPG.

I'm even writing a scenario for publication in the Jonstown Compendium myself, although whether I ever actually finish it is another matter ;)

My Glorantha shelf before late 2017 consisted of the softback RQ 2e book and for a reason I cannot explain a single Games Workshop hardback publication, Runequest, Land of Ninja (which I can't ever recall actually reading). It now contains probably 50 publications.

My current Glorantha collection guarded by Yinkin

I am firmly in the belief that we are in a second golden age of RPGs (if you take the late 70s/early 80s as the firs golden age) and this is lead by Chaosium. 

One of the things that truly puzzles and frustrates me is why other RPG players cannot see in Glorantha and Runequest what I see and why it is so superior to those other systems. But then I guess that what makes us different!

2020 GMing Review

So over 10 months since my last blog post. Where did the time go? Well mainly it got taken up with Covid related issues but also pleasingly a lot of table top roleplaying.

After re-reading my post, My Plan To Run Some RPGs, from November 2019 I was quite surprised to see I'd largely met the goals I set out, although in different ways than I'd outlined in the post.

Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha

First up was running Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and while I did manage to run at least one session at Bean Gaming RQG really took off online when I ran a campaign with sessions every two weeks, on Saturdays, pretty much constant from April and still ongoing now. This included two players from our gaming group that started in the 1980s as well as Tim Challis, who I'd formed the East Midlands Runemasters with and two new players to me, Richard & Kevin.

The characters we have are:

• Dogmaz, a member of the Black Spear Clan and Humakti initiate
• Darin, a Grazelander and follower of Lankhor Mhy
• Ælfflæd, from Wilmskirk and a Chalana Arroy initiate
• Jarang, from the Narri clan and a follower of Orlanth
• Saronil, from the northlands around Alone and a follower of Odayla

We use Roll20 for the virtual tabletop; dice rolling, handouts and maps and Discord for audio. The sessions run from approx 12:00 until 16:00, although we usually try and wrap up once we get to 15:00 and we have a couple of 10 minute breaks during the session.

I'm currently running the third campaign arc, the first one was travelling across Sartar trying to find a way to destroy a chaotic musical horn they had discovered, the second arc was travelling and participating in the Battle of the Queens and the third arc is travelling to New Pavis, where they have just arrived, and acting as emissaries for Queen Leika of the Colymar with instructions to report on Argrath's movements and intentions.

I wrote all the scenarios/encounters myself, initially because the players were familiar with the published scenarios and later on because I actually enjoyed writing my own content. 

OSE Wilderlands

I also ran an OSE Wilderlands campaign weekly, every Thursday from April until mid December with only a handful of sessions missed. These sessions were based on map 6, The City State of the World Emperor starting Tell Qa. I started with three players and over the course of the 9 months we had at least 9 players and ended up with 5 fairly regular players.

I again used Roll20 and Discord to run the game online. Sessions ran from 19:00 to 21:00.

It was a very enjoyable experience. I mainly wrote my own material but did run The Palace of the Silver Princess, a module I last ran back in the early 80s. I think three characters died (including one in the very first session) and we potentially had one TPK after all the characters failed their saving throw versus a Harpy. However, I got the harpy to send the party on a quest.

I called a day to the campaign mainly because the latest lockdown in the UK meant my kids are being home schooled and with my wife's health being poor at the moment I am pretty exhausted in the week and just not up to preparing and running a weekly weekday campaign. I may try and resurrect it if the players are still interested once lockdown in the UK ends.

Summary

I've GMed more (around 50 sessions) in 2020 than any other year since I discovered roleplaying games back in 1981 so it's been a massively successful year. In fact I've probably GMed more than I've played.

I've also found that RQG has become my favourite RPG over the course of the year. It's not a case of liking OSE/Wilderlands less, I've just found I've liked the RQG ruleset and more importantly the world of Glorantha more and more as I GMed it more. 

OSE In Dolmenwood Sessions 1 & 2

My name is Pithwilder Dennygere, Dowser and a member of the retinue of Crump Ravious, Knight & third son of the family Ravious of High Hankel. I was assigned by my liege to Crump's retinue to assist him to return some holy relics.

 It was on the 13th day of Lymevald that we set out from High Hankel, taking King Pusskin's Road to the north. Our party was lead by Crump and consisted of myself, Jaspar a Friar of St. Clewed, Shank a Veteran and Crump's right hand man and three retainers;  Young Chaucer, a man at arms armed with a crossbow and armoured in chainmail, Urla a latrine digger & Bullan another man at arms armed with a club, dagger & hand axe.

As we travelled on the road Crump explained that our initial destination was Lankshorn, a village on the edge of Dolemwood where we were to meet up with Father Dobie, a vicar at the Church of St. Pastry. We met a centaur along the way who seemed friendly enough and offered us some advice. Arriving at Lankshorn Crump put us all up at the Horned Stouts rest.

The following day, 14th Lymewold, we located Father Dobie at his home, a short distance along the Ditchway to the east. He told us the story of St. Clewed fighting a Black Unicorn to both their deaths and at that location, on a hill, the ruined abbey stands, on the NE shore of Lake Longmere. Father Dobie said that the missing artefacts, still thought to be located at the ruins of the abbey, were a cross, a pattern & a chalice.

With the map that Crump had been furnished with we were able to see roughly where we thought the abbey might be and it was decided that we'd make our way first to Dreg, a village on the river with the hope of getting more information about the exact location of the ruined abbey and obtaining some waterborne transport to take us  as close to our destination as possible.

It was midday by the time we set off and within a short distance we met our first obstacle, two huge hawks landing on the path ahead of us feasting on some sort of animal. Our party backed off and Shank and Young Chaucer attempted to move up onto the north side of the Ditchway to take us out of the hawks line of sight and gain the protection of the dense trees should they decide to attack us. Unfortunately Shank stepped onto some sort of large worm and was attacked by it. Young Chaucer was so startled he set off his crossbow and landed a bolt on Shank. Crump might not be the brighest of leaders but his courage cannot be denied as he immediately went rushing up to aid his comrades and after landing a blow the worm constricted him and secreted an acid that reduced his polished plate armour to something that a lowly retainer would be embarrassed to wear. Fortunately the combined prowess of Crump and Shank was enough to defeat the worm.

Shortly after the battle with the worm the hawks flew off and so we travelled a short distance

eastwards along the Ditchway before camping for the night .As Shank & Crump were injured they rested up whilst the rest of the party performed the camping rituals of gathering firewood, starting a fire, cooking, pitching tents and I was given the task of filling the water skins.

A full nights rest meant Shank & Crump's wounds were able to heal a little and on the morning of 15th of Lymewold we continued along the Ditchway towards Dreg. The day was largely uneventful. The only event of note was finding owl carvings on some trees and passing through a major ley line! We made camp by the side of the Ditchway and spent another uneventful night, allowing Shank & Crump's wounds to heal some more.

On the 16th of Lymewold we made it to Dreg around midday. We noted a castle on an island in the river that had not been marked on Crump's map. There was some discussion how to proceed from here. Crump sent Shank out to garner information on what transport was available and  he reported that there was a ferry available over the river at 1sp per person, a river boat captain was prepared to take us as far as the entrance to the lake for 4sp or a merchant called Valan would be prepared to pay us the princely sum of 6sp per day for guarding his two wagons all the way to Fort Vulgar

Crump elected for us to stay at the Cock 'n Pig Balls Inn. I think Crump must be running low on funds as we all, including Crump, stayed in the common room overnight. Jaspar our Friar was delighted with the meal of sausages, mashed potatoes & pickled eggs and I concur that it was a memorable meal for all the right reasons. However, Crump now appears fully healed from his wound and Shank shows little signs of his wound. It was here that Crump awarded Young Chaucer the title of Hunter for his bravery in standing his ground against the Worm a few days earlier. I fancy it was put a ploy to bolster the young man's confidence as the wound he inflicted on Shank was taking many days to heal.

On the 17th of Lymewold we set off escorting Valan who had two wagons and two drivers with him. We took the ferry across the river and proceeded up Creek Road, northwards towards Prigwort, where apparently Valan intended to pick up some more goods and stop overnight when we reached it. Our sleep in our overnight camp was interrupted by a display of strange lights in the sky which started off in the distance but moved so they were directly over our camp for a short period. I was on watch when this happened and woke the rest of the camp as I had no idea if they would prove to be friend or foe. However, the lights proved to be neither and after a short while just disappeared. Our future description of this episode drew blanks from local people.

On the 18th of Lymewold we reached the town of Prigwort, by reputation the largest settlement in Dolmenwood. I felt somewhat sorry for Crump who is obviously somewhat impoverished. He has been unable to purchase any replacement armour for his current rather tatty plate mail and when faced with the cost of the first inn we tried elected for us to stay at a cheaper inn, The Rap & Tap. I was able to detect a ley line to the north of Prigwort.

On the 19th of Lymewold we set off from Prigwort around midday as Valan had business to attend to in the morning. Our path took us over a creek and through the forest until mid afternoon we were able to see a rocky hill with what appeared to be a ruin at the top. We believed this to be our goal for retrieving the lost artefacts of St. Clewed. It was very noticable that a large flock of black birds were circling the ruin and at sundown they appeared to descend into the ruins, presumably to rest for the night.Valan agreed to pitch up camp a short distance from the hill and we spent an uneventful night.

Early in the morning of the 20th of Lymewold Valan gave us permission for a short expedition to the top of the hill to explore the ruins. This we did and were fortunate to locate all the missing artefacts. We noticed what appeared to be young children digging in the graveyard that was part of the ruins at the top of the hill. Unable to get close to them before they took refuge in the Mausoleum, we elected not to pursue them as we had located the items we needed to return and were keen to get them back to Father Dobie as soon as could.

And this is where our current tale ends, ready to start off from the ruined abbey to Fort Vulgar!

We have gathered a number of rumours on our travels and I must speak to the rest of the party to gather the rumours together and put quill to paper so we have a written record.

System: Old School Essentials
Setting: Dolmenwood
GM:Che Webster
Players: Andy Sutton (Pithwilder, Crump, Young Chaucer, Urla, Bullan), Ian Roberts (Shank, Jaspar)

This is a play test of Nercrotic Gnome's forthcoming Dolmenwood player's book. The sessions played so far have been Friday 14th & 28th February 2020. Each session was around 3 hours.

The characters have currently gained just over 300 XP, about 15% of what they need for next level!

Dungeon Room Descriptions

I don't know whether it's just me but I generally find room descriptions in scenarios pretty poor. This thought was highlighted when I read through the "Tower of Zenophus" scenario in the back of the Holmes D&D Ruleset. It's a decent dungeon crawl scenario which I think still holds up today (as long as you can suspend your disbelief about why and how certain rooms are populated) and which I enjoyed running a few weeks at local games shop, Distinct Gaming, over in Belper. My beef with room description is more in the format than the content. They just generally seem to be written in a fairly haphazard way that requires reading the entire description before they can be summarised for the players.

I put some real thought into the actual format I think is the best after listening to Goblin Henchman's podcast episode, 12 - Audio Dungeon | not that one, which puts forward an idea of creating a dungeon based on audio messages of dungeon dressing sent into his podcast. (His blog also has a post dedicated to the idea - Collaborative Audio Dungeon). My initial room description was around two and a half minutes so I spent quite a bit of time refining it down to a minute. And this process of refining lead me to rethink the format.

Currently I working along the following lines for my ideal room description format.

Initial Description

I want a brief description of that the characters will initially see, hear and smell on entering the room. Variations between what characters with Infravision or with a light source see need to be noted.

Detailed Description

Each objection/area within the room should be described in turn, separated by paragraphs so depending on the order the party examines the room it is easy to access descriptions of what they find.

Events likely to occur should then be detailed.


Undoubtedly I'll refine this format as I get back into writing room descriptions but I think it's a good starting point.

Is Mapping Really Old School?

This post is to support my podcast of the same name, Is Mapping Really Old School?

I'm a big fan of player mapping but sadly it seems to be something I've seldom encountered in games, the exception being a monthly B/X game I play in where a map is produced each session.

Personally, I find mapping one of the most enjoyable parts of a session and enjoy mapping both Dungeons and Wilderness. I always find it particularly amusing when a map seems to go back over ,usually because of an error, and that in itself can often lead to amusing player character interactions and often ongoing jokes about map making abilities.

As you can see in the maps below the fact I have little to no drawing ability has not held me back from producing the maps. I have no definitive legend, although I try and stick to the old, "standard" symbols but I can be inconsistent at times.

I play a bi-weekly face to face GURPS 4e/Dungeon Fantasy game and a couple of sessions ago we ventured into the Dungeons of Thraal for the first time. I took it upon myself to do the mapping and came up with the map you see. It uses approx 10' per hex.

The Dungeons of Thraal

At the latest session I added to the original map and needless to say the map immediately went off the square paper, a common issue with mapping. When this happens I usually add the same letter on each piece to denote where they join together.

This map is one I did retrospectively of an online game I played in mid week using the Black Hack system. It was theatre of the mind so the map is produced from the written notes I took from the GM's description. The scale of the rooms should be fairly accurate but not the corridors.  I produced it mainly to see how difficult it was to produce a map from a written description, bearing in mind my written notes may have been inaccurate. It quickly became apparent to me that corridor lengths were something that we'd deemed unimportant. I made this 5' per hex to allow for more legible drawings to be added. 

My Plan To Run Some RPGs

Although I'm playing in plenty of RPGs at the moment, I play in weekly AD&D 1e, Bi-Weekly GURPs 4e, Monthly B/X,  D&D 5e, DCC & One Shots arranged on the Audio Dungeon Discord Server (Barbarians of Lemuria, Black Hack, Bushido & Low Fantasy Gaming arranged so far) and a proposed 13th Age Glorantha Duck Campaign, I rarely get a chance to GM a game. I really need to change this as I ran some D&D 5e, D&D B/X & RQG last year and enjoyed it very much, although I was very rusty for the first few games.

To rectify my lack of GMing I'm starting a three pronged attack.

1. I've setup three dates early Next Year, Jan 12th, Feb 9th, Mar 8th, all on a Sunday to GM some RGQ over at Bean Gaming in Leicester and agreed to run a RGQ at Glorantha Games in April. I've also tentatively had agreement from my long standing (30+ year) RPG group for me to run some RGQ in January.
2. I've put some feelers out on Audio Dungeon Discord to see if there is any interest in a Old School Essentials Wilderlands session.
3. I intend to put some feelers out to see if there is any interest locally in playing OSE. TBH I don't hold out much hope as most people seem only interested in playing D&D 5e.

Runequest Glorantha

To run the RGQ I need to re-read the rule book and concentrate on understanding Shamans and become more familiar with all the magic spells. I also need to re-familiarise myself with the Broken Tower starter adventure and finish writing up my own adventure, Bye-Tore & The Snow Dog as well as putting the next couple of adventures down onto paper as they are currently sitting exclusively in my head. I was intending to format my notes using the Jonstown Compendium Creators Circle templates, which I also need to look at.

Old School Essentials & the Wilderlands

Old School Essentials (OSE) is the system recently published by Necrotic Gnome via a Kickstarter. It's effectively a re-formatting of the D&D B/X which is my favourite RPG system. The Wilderlands is Judge's Guild campaign world which first saw the light of day as a published work in 1976 as The City State of the Invincible Overlord. I created my own implementation of it over at scabard.

My intention is to run the OSE including the optional Advanced Fantasy books. I intend to run it within The Wilderlands set in Map 6, The City State of the World Emperor, around Tell Qa in the Smyrsis province. My Wilderlands setting would be a sandbox faithfully using Bob Bledsaw's original version of the Wilderlands where ever possible but taking from other sources as appropriate as well as including a lot of my own fiction. I'll use James Mishler's version of Tell Qa as the base for the city.

My Wilderlands will have a mixture of scenarios I've written and also some published scenarios, each dropped in at set locations, so the Keep on the Borderlands exists in my Wilderlands campaign, as does The Isle of Dread.

Protecting My RPG Collection

Initially my RPG collection stood on bookcase in my bedroom at my parents house. When I left for college I can't recollect exactly where I used to keep the books & magazines. I'm sure the "essentials" went with me to polytechnic but I assume the bulk of them remained at my parents house.

I never really acquired enough RPG material for storage to be an issue in those early years but I can remember that when I finally moved out of my parents house when I was 26/27 I took my RPG stuff with me and have a vague recollection of it collecting dust in a spare room in the house I was renting before collecting more dust in a spare room in the first house I bought when I was 28.

Two moves later and more dust collection and in 2003 I found myself moving abroad to take up a job in Sri Lanka and looking to rent our house in the UK out so I boxed my entire collection up in a couple of boxes and dumped them up in the attic with only a minimum of precautions. I still rue throwing my collection of White Dwarf, Imagine & Adventurer magazines away thinking I would never use them again ..

And so there my RPG books remained, despite me returning to live in the house again in 2007, until 2017 when my interest in RPGs was sparked again and I braved the attic to locate my books. Certainly more than luck than judgement my RPG books remained intact with no water, rodent or any other noticeable type of damage.

So I cleared out the book case in my bedroom and brought my entire collection down from the attic and stored it on the bedroom bookcase. I started adding to my collection rapidly and decided not to leave my RPG books condition to chance but invest in some protection for it.

40 Sheet Plastic Wallet

I decided to leave the hard backs as they were but to place all the softbacks into plastic wallets. Looking around on Amazon I soon sourced two types of plastic wallets I liked.

150 Sheet Plastic Wallet

They both were A4 sized, had poppers to help seal the wallet, ring binder holes so they could be stored in ring binders and were side opening. The difference between them was simply the number of sheets they held, one held around 40 sheets, the other around 150 sheets.

The wallets easily held A4 sized sheets and booklets and the side rather than top opening meant that it was easier to slide the contents in. The poppers were easy to open and close so all in all they turned out to be an ideal solution as far as I was concerned. I haven't yet found a softback book too large to fit into the larger of the two wallets

Left is 15mm, Right is 25mm

The next decision was which A4 binders to use. There was a lot of choice but I wanted flexible rather than rigid folders with the ability to insert a label into the spine as I intended to create my own spine labels and print them off. I found what I was looking for on Amazon and settled on two sizes, 15mm and 25mm, the size the width of the spine and consequently dictating how many pages they could hold.












Fitting the plastic wallets into the A4 binders is easy and the only issue I really found was being ruthless in upgrading the size from 15mm to 25mm binders if the 15mm binder started to get full.

The spine inserts were fairly easy to create. I just used Word and created a table with the page in landscape. It took a little bit of trial and error by printing off the page , cutting up the spines, trying them in the ring binders and then adjusting them in Word and repeating  until I had them how I wanted them.

Screen shot of my Word document

Note that the spines also need to cover space on the front of the folder too. I sourced the logos off the internet.

Old Bookcase

As I mentioned above originally I had my RPG collection in a bookcase.

New adjustable shelving

But the bookcase was soon overflowing so I purchased some adjustable shelving (I used the Algot range from Ikea) and this was a noticeable improvement!

New adjustable shelving

Of course, all this comes at a cost. Each plastic wallet is approximately £1 and each binder £1.75 so any softback books I now purchase I add at around £3 per book to include protection for them. The cost of the adjustable shelving was several hundred pounds which will probably work out at less than £1 a book when the shelves are full.

However, all in all I'm pretty pleased with the system. It provides room for all my RPG books to stand vertically with the softbacks safe from damp and dust. Of course, I need to remember to take all the hardbacks off a couple of times a year for dusting but that's really no big hardship.

Printing my own spines means I can easily identify where any books are and can easily move books between folders as I can just print off an updated spine fairly easily.