#RPGaDay2024 for 27 August: Marvellous miniature

Today's prompt: Marvellous miniature

I loved the concept of the Ral Partha three-stage mini: a set of three minis that represented your character's arc from wet-behind-the-ears novice to practiced journeyman to supreme master.

There was always one small problem, of course.

Whose character survived to high level?!

And this wraps up my participation in the #RPGaDay2024 challenge, a few days prematurely. I'm heading out of town for at least a week to the wilds of Idaho, and a combination of limited time and even more limited Interweb access means I'm tying a bow around this one right here.

#RPGaDay2024 for 26 August: Superb screen

Today's prompt: Superb screen

There can be only one.

#RPGaDay for 24-25 August: Triple-double!

Saturday's prompt: Acclaimed advice
Sunday's prompt: Desirable dice

Game time is of utmost importance. Failure to keep careful track of time expenditure by player characters will result in many anomalies in the game. The stricture of time is what makes recovery of hit points meaningful. Likewise, the time spent adventuring in wilderness areas removes concerned characters from their bases of operation - be they rented chambers or battlemented strongholds. Certainly the most important time stricture pertains to the manufacture of magic items, for during the period of such activity no adventuring can be done. Time is also considered in gaining levels and learning new languages and more. All of these demands upon game time force choices upon player characters, and likewise number their days of game life. - "TIME IN THE DUNGEON," 1e AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, p. 37

So, like a dozen years ago or so, I started theming my dice to whatever game I was playing at the time, based on the color scheme of the cover of the box set or rule book - yellow and orange for Boot Hill, black, white, and red for Traveller, purple and red for Chill. When I started planning a new Flashing Blades campaign, it was time to put together a new theme.

Kinda like the way these turned out.

If you're looking for some really spectacular dice, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the incredible creations available at Cassiopeia Dice - some terrific videos on her Twitter feed.

#RPGaDay2024 for 23 August: Peerless player

Today's prompt: Peerless player

Let's call him Rich, 'cause that was his name.

I met Rich at The War House FLGS in Long Beach, talked old school roleplaying games, and exchanged phone numbers, with an eye toward maybe playing sometime. When I learned he loved 2e Boot Hill but never played any of the published TSR modules, we decided to run a campaign linking the five adventures together. Rich was a USAF veteran wtih a good job in upper management, a family guy, and a big Wild West buff. We were different men outside of gaming, careful to stay away from politics by mutual understanding when we got together to play. As gamers, we were sympatico.

The campaign ran for a couple of years, and we'd just about made it through the last module when Rich informed us he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the summer of 2018. The cancer metastasized to his liver and gall bladder; his treatment was confined to relieving symptoms, and he was given six to eight months to live. It would be great to say he outlived his prognosis; instead he was gone by the middle of October.

Some people play with an established 'friends' group, but I tend to find new groups for the campaign I want to run each time, rather than relying on a set cadre. I'm glad I do, because I might not've met Rich otherwise, or played in one of the most memorable campaigns of my life.

#RPGaDay2024 for 22 August: Notable non-player character

Today's prompt: Notable non-player character

One of the few features of 3e D&D I really like is giving monsters character levels, a quick and simple way of making any monster unique, or at least different from its peers. I mentioned this on a forum twenty-odd years ago - probably EN World or the pre-Gleemax Whizbros forum - adding that this was somethig I'd liked about 1e AD&D as well. Demihumans, liches, lycanthropes, and vampires as described in the 1e Monster Manual may include character levels along with their given abilities. As a referee, I took full advantage of this to create interesting encounters with which to challenge and bedevil my players.

Enter Vlad Tolenkov. Appearing in Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits as one of Lolth's allies, Vlad occupies a castle in The Nightworld, a sunless realm located in an alternative part of the Prime Material Plane imediately beyond a portal from the Demonweb. In addition to his powers, Vlad is also a 15th level magic-user, with all that entails.

I first started refereeing toward the very tail end of 1977, using our kit-bashed 'edition' of D&D - the Holmes blue box, the 1e Monster Manual, Blackmoor, and The Arduin Grimoire - so right from the giddyup I'd used AD&D monsters with character levels, but seeeing a vampire magic-user in an official module almost three years later was still pretty cool to teenage me.

This whole concept of monsters who were once human, or human-adjacent, touches on the notion that the most dangerous and terrifying creatures lurking in the dark places of our imaginations are funhouse mirror images of ourselves - the horror of Jordan Peele's Us, for example, leans in hard on this. I suppose Nietzsche's, "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you," applies here as well. Monsters who were once human, or are similar to humans in outlook, increase the range of motivations available in presenting the challenge - they can even imply a familiarity.

#RPGaDay2024 for 21 August: Classic campaign

Today's prompt: Classic campaign

Classic PUBLISHED campaign? The Giants campaign for 1e AD&D. Just well thought out with terrific locations and a fun backstory. I got to experince the modules as both a player and a referee.

Classic AD HOC campaign? Our 2e Boot Hill campaign a few years back, in which we strung together the five published modules for the game as a single camapign set in southeast New Mexico c. 1873 to 1875.

Classic HOMEBREW campaign? Merchant princes with LBB Traveller - started with a free trader and worked our way up to a 2K or 3K dton hauler plus a patrol escort for security. Our last trading mission brought home close to a billion credits profit!

#RPGaDay2024 for 20 August: Amazing adventure

Today's prompt: Amazing adventure

Released in 1979 by Phoenix Games, The Lost Abbey of Calthonwey is my favorite published adventure because it does so many things well. The abbey and the dungeon beneath it are thoughtfully designed as both an intriguing environment to explore and a space for adventure. It leaves open the possibility of further adventure with undefined lower levels upon which the referee can expand. It has a terrific backstory that allows it to be dropped into a homebrew campaign. It's filled with non-player characters with motivations and relationships that reward players who didn't take Charisma as a dump stat.

What makes it stand out for me is how the design of the abbey itself reflects the events of the backstory. Spaces built for a purpose by the brothers are re-purposed in ways that are interesting and make sense. This is a really big thing for me, as it adds a feeling of history to the location that doesn't involve timelines or pages and pages of exposition - it's something the adventurers can see in front of them rather than having it read to them. I'm not sure how much I did this before Lost Abbey, but it's been something I include when designing a feature in a setting ever since: how has this place changed since it was built? what are visible clues to its builders and their intended purpose?

#RPGaDay2024 for 19 August: Sensational session

Today's prompt: Sensational session

The next one. Always the next one.

#RPGaDay2024 for 17-18 August: Two-fer Again!

Saturday's prompt: An engaging RPG community
Sunday's prompt: Memorable moment of play

The RPG Pub is my go-to for gaming-talk and more recently running a Flashing Blades play-by-post. It's a good mix of useful site features, outstanding moderation, and a critical mass of posters who aren't completely full of crap.

My most memorable moment of play is only dimly remembered: my first character was a fighter, playing blue box D&D, and he got punked by an orc or something. That wasn't the memorable part, clearly. What's memorable to me is the feeling of grabbing the dice and making a new character, to keep exploring the dungeon. It was in that moment my lifelong conviction that adventure games are about the setting, not my character, took hold. Adventurers come and go, but the dungeon remains.

#RPGaDay2024 for 16 August: Quick to learn . . . or not

Today's prompt: Quick to learn

Honestly, I got nothin'.

So let's go to the alternative topic generator. For the 16th, the alternative topic is Dungeon, and I roll an eight: Present an idea for a Random Encounter.

Dungeon. Random encounter. Okay then.

First, I need a random encounter, so I'll go to the tables in the back of Flashing Blades. One of the dungeons - and yes, there are more than one - in my campaign is located in the basement of the hôtel de ville - city hall. I roll a 5; the encounter is with a Lawyer and a possible Patron. The offered patronage is a 7: "The Patron wishes to have a message taken to someone in a dangerous position (a prisoner in the Bastille, perhaps, or a soldier on the front)." Perfect.

Next, what's the story of this encounter? I grab a handful of Rory's Story Cubes - since this patronage is about delivering a message, I grab the Voyages collection for inspiration and roll the following: Amoeba, Spectacles, Puzzle Piece, Map, and Domed City. Oh, this could be good.

A procureur - procurator, a legal professional like a solicitor - named M. Bondurant approaches the adventurers with a proposition: he needs a prisoner in the dungeon to look (Spectacles) at a document and confirm whether it's genuine or not. If it is, the procureur believes the document will be exculpatory when presented to the magistrate, but the gaolers will not let him see his client, by order of the consuls - aldermen. If the adventurers can get the document to the prisoner to confirm its provenance - bribing the guards is trivially easy - Bondurant will be very grateful; a small satchel of louis d'or and free legal advice will be offered for their trouble. If asked why he cannot see his client, Bondurant will claim that one of the consuls holds a petty grudge against the procureur from a previous case.

The aforementioned document is a key to a map (Map) in Bondurant's possession. The key is written in a code (Puzzle) that only the prisoner, a renegado - corsair, or pirate - named D'Enfer can decipher. The map is to a city in Barbary (Domed City) where a great jewel stolen by D'Enfer is hidden and it's Bondurant's intention to retrieve it; he also intends to double-cross D'Enfer and leave him to his fate at the hands of the consuls.

Somewhere in here is a disease (Amoeba) - in the dungeon? in the corsair city? - that presents a threat to the adventurers, or D'Enfer, or Bondurant, or everyone. Will D'Enfer share the contents of the key with the adventurers? Will the renegado attempt to double-cross Bondurant by enlisting the adventurers to recover the jewel? Will the adventurers try to put one over on both the procureur and the corsair?

#RPGaDay2024 for 15 August: Great character gear

Today's prompt: Great character gear

I'm a bit obsessive about playing dress-up with my characters.

I want to know what they wear, what it looks like, what it's made of, if it's patched, embroidered, previously owned, how it changes with the weather and the seasons. I want to know about their accessories - jewelry, hat bands, knife sheaths, spurs, baldrics, kerchiefs, plumes. I want to know what's in their pockets - a whetstone, a pack of chewing gum, a jackknife, a pocket comb, a string of rosary beads, an engraved silver matchsafe, an old love letter.

And truth be told, this goes beyond just clothing. My Flashing Blades character has a "library card" - the index card on which I keep track of all the books in his collection. My Boot Hill character ordered custom saddle, boots, spurs, chaps, and gunbelts, all with embossed crescent moons in honor of his last name, Luna, and when he received a charro suit as a gift, the silver conchos were moons as well. My Traveller free trader captain designed his crew uniforms including the patches for his ship and his trading company; the same logos were painted on the ship and its air/raft, and on the walls of his office in his cabin.

A big part of what immerses me in a setting is material culture, "the aspect of culture manifested by the physical objects and architecture of a society." I love authors who tell me Arbuckles is the brand name on a sack of coffee beans, or directors and set dressers who put bottles of Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray soda in their characters' hands. It draws me into the world, brings it to life, makes it real, and a bit of obsessive styling or collecting does the same thing for my characters.

#RPGaDay2024 for 14 August: Compelling characters

Today's prompt: Compelling characters

As a player, I'm very strongly a Develop-In-Play guy, letting characterisation emerge through the events of the game rather than trying to have a strong sense of who my character is right from the giddyup. That's a little tougher as a referee, especially with my emphasis on intrigue - a big part of my prep is creating a social milieu for the players to explore - so my approach to non-player characters is a bit more like many gamers approach their own player characters.

So what are my basics for creating non-player characters with whom players are likely to interact?

• Relationships: characters have spouses, children, siblings, close and distant relations, coworkers, friends, romantic partners, allies, rivals.
• Goals: characters have personal preoccupations, avocations, ambitions.
• Strengths and weaknesses: characters have abilities and deficiencies, insight and blind spots, mastery and inexperience.
• Quirks: characters have hobbies, interests, habits, 'a distincitive way of looking at things.'

It doesn't take much to do this, honestly; because of my extensive use of random reactions and morale rolls, my goal is to "prep to improvise," so often just the non-player character's basic attributes - and I lean heavily on generic characters for this - plus a couple of tags or keywords or something can be enough to help maintain consistency in characterisation.

In my experience, non-player characters should feel like real people living in a real world, and my prep and referee roleplaying is toward that end.

#RPGaDay2024 for 13 August: Evocative environments

Today's prompt: Evocative environments

Way back when I came up with random dueling locations - I present to you these fields of honor . . .

This Field of Honor
F is for Field of Honor
Yet Another Field of Honor

#RPGaDay2024 for 12 August: RPG with well supported campaigns

Today's prompt: RPG with well supported campaigns

There are many roleplaying games out there with literally dozens of campaign modules.

Flashing Blades has exactly one. But it's a corker.

An Ambassador's Tales by game designer Mark Pettigrew put the player characters in the service of a French diplomat and agent of the Cardinal (Richelieu or Mazarin, no matter), and together they travel the length and breadth of Europe in the service of the King. The adventure sees the player characters visit Habsburg Austria, the Serene Republic of Venice (at Carnival, no less), Spain, the Dutch United Provinces, and finally England.

There's a lot to like about this adventure - action, intrigue, terrific locations, three-dimensional antagonists - but my favorite part is the potential rewards the adveturers may receive at the end. The campaign fulfills the promise in the core rules that social and professional advancement shouldn't come exclusively from die rolls. Characters may receive promotions, be knighted, and earn gold as a result of their efforts in the service of France, and it's something I keep in mind as I run FB, looking for opportunities for someone to step in and send a character to the head of the class.

#RPGaDay2024 for 10-11 August: TV and One Shots

Saturday's prompt: RPG you'd like to see on TV
Sunday's prompt: RPG with well supported one-shots

What roleplaying game would I like to see on TV? Traveller, except I already have Firefly. Flashing Blades, except I already have Zorro. Boot Hill, except I already have Deadwood. GangBusters, except I already have Boardwalk Empire. Chill, except I already have The Night Stalker. Top Secret, except I already have The Man From UNCLE.

So I guess I'm good.

I'm gonna admit I'm not exactly sure what a "well supported one shot" is - how much support does a one-shot adventure need, anyway? I'm guessing they mean games supported by one-shot adventures, in which case I would have to say Traveller leads the pack - and I'm not just talking the incredible run of "classic" little black book adventures, as outstanding as they are. If you've never seen Michael Brown's "2D6 SF Adventures," you're in for a real treat.

I should also mention the adventures for Flashing Blades. A handful of adventures come with the core rules and the High Seas supplement; there are also two volumes of short adventures plus one campaign adventure - more about that on Monday. Like the "classic" Traveller adventures, the adventures for Flashing Blades expand the world and provide the referee with reuseable non-player characters, organizations, and locations - while Traveller's adventures give you starships bases and labs and planets, FB give you taverns and theatres and villas and fencing salles and forts, and they take you to Venice and Spain and Florence and the Netherlands and the Caribbean. FGU packed heck of a lot of refereeing material in its adventures, for which I'm personally very grateful.

#RPGaDay2024 for 9 August: An accessory you'd like to see

Today's prompt: An accessory you'd like to see

A dozen years ago I picked up a book, Barmi: A Mediterranean City Through The Ages, which traces through lavish illustrations the development of a fictional city somewhere on the western Mediterranean littoral. As someone who works in land use planning, I was immediately enthralled, seeing a Stone Age settlement transformed through the years to a modern city. I was also intrigued by the possibility of using Barmi as a ruritania in my Flashing Blades campaign - it took some years, but that's the campaign I'm running right now.

Barmi is in fact only one in a series of books on fictional cities around the world: Lebek, in the Low Countries; San Rafael, in Central America; and Umm El Madayan, on the coast of North Africa, each tracing the development from pre-history to the modern day.

Around the time Honor + Intrigue came out, I was approached about working on some setting-neutral city guides for swashbuckling roleplaying games. I declined - this is my hobby, not my vocation - but if anyone was to ever take on a project like that, for any adventure game in any genre, really, these books would be extraordinary models on which to base them: a timeline of evolving city maps, punctuated by illustrated details about construction and daily life.

#RPGaDay2024 for 8 August: An accessory you appreciate

Today's prompt: An accessory you appreciate

I've been a fan of Rory's Story Cubes since I first discovered them more than a dozen years ago. I bought them to play with the Cabin Kids, which we still do, but I quickly discovered they made a great creative tool for my style of preparation, fleshing out bare bones random encounters.

Free associating with the Story Cubes helps keep me from falling into predictable ruts as a referee, as I noted in the linked post: " . . . I would never, ever have come up with anything even remotely like this on my own. The Story Cubes lead my imagination to wholly unexpected places, which is what makes them so much fun." I lean heavily into genre tropes and clichés to help with prep before the game and improvisation at the table in actual play, and toward that end I read and watch cape-and-sword fiction to feed my imagination, but what makes them tropes is their recurrence in different works. I like to think my swashbuckling 'highlight reel' is pretty extensive, but Story Cubes allow me to approach that knowledge with fresh eyes.

#RPGaDay2024 for 7 August: RPG with 'good form'

Today's prompt: RPG with 'good form'

good form: (chiefly UK) behavior that is both morally and socially correct; proper manner, decorum or etiquette.

2e Boot Hill has my favorite 'social system' of any roleplaying game, consisting of a reaction table and a morale roll. What makes it so distinctive is the reaction table, introduced in BH1 Mad Mesa, the first published adventure for BH, which isn't based on modifiers for an attribute like Charm or Charisma but on your character's earned reputation.

It's an elegant system, one I like so much I adapted it to Flashing Blades. So how does this relate to 'morally and socially correct behavior'? It's all in the modifiers. Behaviors which earn a character positive reaction roll modifiers include respect for law and order, friendship, heroism, belonging - honestly, this is way better than alignment in influencing how characters act, because it directly affects how non-player character see the adventurer, whether or not they will react favorably, offer assistance, and so on.

#RPGaDay2024 for 6 August: RPG that is easy to use

Today's prompt: RPG that is easy to use

Arguably the simplest roleplaying game I played was Metagaming's Melee and Wizard, the skirmish rules that would form the basis for - or were derived from? - The Fantasy Trip. Now, many gamers consider Melee and Wizard to be exclusively skirmish rules, but I'm inclined to believe that if the rules allow me to roleplay a character in an imaginary world, that's sufficient. Dawn Patrol and En Garde! are unquestionably roleplaying games given my personal conception of roleplaying, and based on what we actually did with the two 'microgames,' there's no reason I can see for excluding them.

I picked up both Melee and Wizard in 1978 or 1979, and indeed we used them primarily for arena battles at first, but as (some of) our characters survived more than two or three battles, they began to take on a life of their own, so we grew curious about the world around the arena and their lives beyond its walls. Whereas AD&D was our game for exploring dark dungeons and howling wildernesses, Melee and Wizard lent themselves to a sort of urban fantasy setting centered on the fighting pit - first there was a tavern where our gladiators drank and wenched and gambled and brawled between matches, then a neighborhood grew around that and a city around that.

The whole thing very quickly developed a Sanctuary feel - remember, Thieves World was published in 1978, contemporaneously with Wizard - leavened with a bit of Lankhmar, in particular a Thieves Guild that would offer bribes to fighters to throw battles, a dangerous proposition as survival couldn't be guaranteed for characters attempting to yield or feign serious injury.

In any case, this lasted about a year or so, and by then I'd largely moved on from fantasy adventure gaming for Traveller, Boot Hill, and Top Secret. The whole experience would strongly influence a 1e AD&D character I created years later, a high Dexterity fighter who I modeled on one of my old Melee gladiators.

What stands out in retrospect was how the barebone rules didn't prevent us from making stuff up on the fly as we needed it for our adventures away from the arena, and then would find their way back into the fighting pit - scaling walls, leaping, taunting, cajoling. With three stats and no skills, we still managed to have what would arguably be my first real experience with swashbuckling adventure outside of the Yaquinto boardgame. Fond memories indeed.

Sea Soldiers: Marines in Flashing Blades

MARINE
A Marine is a Soldier in the Royal Marines Regiment. Marines are trained to fight at sea, and are stationed onboard warships and important government ships. Being a Marine is quite dangerous, especially since French Marines were expected to learn by experience. They had their initial training on land, although expected to serve at sea. Characters with this background are assumed to have spent enough time on ships to have 'learned the ropes.' Characters from other backgrounds who join the Royal Marines will always start as Recruits (not Troopers) and will be expected to fight at sea. Characters with Marine background are allowed to determine starting rank normally (just as Soldiers in Flashing Blades). The Royal Marines are recruited in both France and the Colonies. - High Seas, 2.2 NEW BACKGROUNDS & SKILL CHOICES, p. 1

The piracy supplement High Seas gives us French Royal Marines as a character background and career path, along with a very good colonial "small wars" adaptation of the original military campaign minigame in the Flashing Blades core rules. Established in 1622 by Cardinal Richelieu - who was sincerely dedicated to improving France's presence as a marine power - as les compagnies ordinaire de la mer, the first royal marines were composed of independent companies commanded by naval officers to patrol the docks and man the ships of the nascent royal navy. By 1626, the independent companies were first organized as a regiment, le régiment de La Marine, and through various reformations and renamings through the rest of the 17th century, French marines would remain a fixture of the Royal Navy, though not without challenges, such as a succession of ministers of war appropriating the various marine regiments for service in the Royal Army.

A Marine's duties are described in High Seas as follows (4.2.3 Marine Duty, p. 8).

Marines may be stationed either on land (as additional garrison troops for forts) or at sea. For every two months served aboard ships, a Marine may spend one month at a colonial port. While garrisoned in the colonies, Marines determine Colonial Campaigns in the same way as Colonial Soldiers. Marine troops are added to the French total in Colonial Campaigns, but are usually stationed only in small numbers (twenty or forty).

At sea, Marines are assigned to serve as boarding and defensive troops on French Warships and Merchantmen. On a small or medium sized ship (such as a Corsair, Merchantman, or Small Warship) a squad of twenty Marines will be stationed. Larger vessels may have forty or sixty Marines (two or three squads). Warships rnay carry large numbers of Marines for raids.

On board Merchantmen, Marines are only defensive. Roll for normal encounters for the ship (as detailed in section 6.2.3). If a hostile encounter occurs, use the rules in section 6.4 to determine the outcome.

On Warships, Marines rnay participate in Naval Battles (as boarders), or in land raids on foreign colonies'(as raiders). The design and use of naval battles are up to the discretion of the Gamemaster. If the High Seas players are familiar with wargaming, the Gamemaster may wish to use some advanced rules for naval battles (see the beginning of section 6.4 for a list of good ship-to-ship wargaming rules). Otherwise, the rules in section 6.4 may be adapted for small naval battles.

Marine raids on foreign colonies should be handled as detailed in section 4.2.2. Marine raiders, however, may face varying numbers of defenders, depending upon the colony and the situation (as determined by the Gamemaster). After successfully taking a foreign port, Marines may roll twice for Booty.

So, good enough as far as it goes. Can it be more?

First, in 17th century France, another option for characters wishing to serve as sea soldiers is a military Order, the Knights of Saint John, based on the Mediterranean island of Malta. Sergents, lay brothers of the order, served as marines aboard the knights' galleys, and later roundships, in their ceaseless war with the Barbary corsairs and the Sublime Porte. Sergents can also be found at commanderies - abbeys - of the order in France. A campaign of player character knights, sergents, and sailors aboard a ship of the order could be a lot of fun.

Second, does a character with the Marine background have to be a marine at all? Looking at the skills available to Sailors/Pirates and Marines in High Seas (2.2 New Backgrounds & Skill Choices, p. 2), both backgrounds offer the following skills: Acrobatics, Captaincy, Seamanship (which Sailors/Pirates receive automatically), and Strategy. Both backgrounds may take the Gunnery martial skill as well. The main differences are in bonus skills between the two backgrounds - Marines get Captaincy and Strategy, Sailors/Pirates get Acrobatics - the presence of Pilot on the Sailor/Pirate's skill list, and martial skills, with Marines getting three and Sailors/Pirates only two.

With this in mind, a character with the Marine background could take the necessary skills to be eligible to sign on for a Sail or Gunnery position aboard ship from their own background skills. This effectively makes a "marine" simply a sailor who is better trained at fighting than his shipmates.

So is a "trained fighter" really a thing in High Seas? Well, as a matter of fact . . .

Once an enemy ship has been grappled, boarders (led by the ship's Master-at-Arms) may swarm aboard. At this point it is necessary to determine how many Trained Fighters are in each crew, as shown below:

• 1/4 of a Merchantman Crew are Trained Fighters
• 1/3 of a Navy Ship or Privateer Crew are Trained Fighters
• 1/2 of any English or Dutch Crew are Trained Fighters
• All Pirates are Trained Fighters
• All Marines are Trained Fighters
• All of a Ship's Officers are Trained Fighters

A boarding party may only be made up of Trained Fighters. (6.4.7 Grappling and Boarding Melee, p. 20)

So, a "Marine" then could be a Royal Marine, a sergent of the Knights of Saint John, or simply a sailor or pirate who's a bit more badass in a fight and serves in boarding actions.

My current campaign includes one more option for service as a sea soldier: the marine militia. Members of the city militia may also serve aboard the chamber of commerce-owned privateer galleys as "marines" and are treated as Trained Fighters.

#RPGaDay for 5 August: RPG With Great Writing

Today's prompt: RPG with great writing

Opinions about Gary Gygax run the gamut among gamers, but page for page, pound for pound, the 1e AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide remains the most influential roleplaying game rulebook/manual in my collection. Thirty-five years on, I still reach for it for refereeing advice, written in Gygax's uniquely florid style.

Like many gamers, Gygax's writing style, in particular his vocabulary, was influential far beyond playing AD&D. I distinctly recall lying on my bed, or the floor of the family room, with the DMG spread open in front of me and my red hardcover Merriam-Webster dictionary close at hand, so that I didn't miss any of the pearls secreted in that crowded tome.

But beyond the rules and advice and the lavender prose, what sticks with me still is Gygax's depth of knowledge, of history, mythology, and literature, fantasy and otherwise that came through in his prose. This was not at all surprising in the context of the time - scratch a wargamer and you'd find an amateur historian lurking beneath the skin. A love of books shines through in references to Bulfinch, Shakespeare, and Lives of the Saints alongside Anderson, Dunsany, Sprague de Camp, and Leiber, and Gygax's affection, enthusiasm, and respect for literature fed into my own. Gary Gygax spoke directly to my love of words and ideas, an abiding passion I still feel today.

#RPGaDay2024 for 4 August: RPG with great art

Today's prompt: RPG with great art

Without a doubt, my favorite artwork in a roleplaying game product is the Dan Brereton illustrated Nocturnals: A Midnight Companion for Mutants and Masterminds. Nocturnals is one of my favorite comics, and Brereton's fully painted illustrations are a big part of that, along with great characters and a terrific setting, of course.

When I purged my roleplaying library about fifteen years ago, I hung on to 1e M&M and this sourcebook, and while I'd probably use the old TSR Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP rules these days to run a Nocturnals-inspired campaign, the sourcebook would be an invaluable resource as well as a beautiful one.

I discovered the series when it was first released in a comic book shop in Fresno, California in the summer of '95 and was immediately taken by its mix of gangsters, aliens, and undead rendered in Brereton's signature style. As I approach a signature birthday, the temptation to get a Doc Horror or Gunwitch tattoo keeps growing on me.

#RPGaDay2024 Blog-O-Rama!

Hey, this looks like fun!

I'm a couple days behind, so I'll catch up here.

1/8 First RPG bought this year
Spire: The City Must Fall by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor, published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard in 2018. I don't recall how I heard about this game, but as I was preparing a city campaign and I like to cast a wide net for ideas, I picked up the quickstart and liked it well enough to finally shell out for the .pdf. Contrasting my long-established refereeing habits with how other gamers approach the same challenges and opportunities helps me break free from imagination calcification. Spire was much more traditional than I expected and I was able to glean a few interesting ideas - unfortunately I can't share which ones just yet, in the event my players are peeking. That could actually make an interesting future post, at the opportune moment . . .

2/8 Most recently played
I'm currently running a play-by-post Flashing Blades campaign at the RPG Pub, but my last experience as a face-to-face player specifically was 2e Boot Hill, several years back. This isn't counting some Traveller, Burros & Bandidos, and Flashing Blades solo play.

I tend to be a referee far more often than I am a player. Before Flashing Blades, I ran 1e Chill face-to-face for the Cabin Kids.

3/8 Most often played RPG
Given my blogging pursuits, this answer surprises some people: "classic" Traveller. I've played and run more Traveller than I have any other game by a fair amount. Merchant princes, independent troubleshooters, mercs for hire - played 'em all off-and-on since the late Seventies. No matter what I'm playing or running at any given moment, Charted Space - my house-ruled Judges Guild sectors, not the canonical GDW OTU - is always lurking in the back of my mind.

In fact, in quiet moments recently I've been daydreaming about a lost colony Traveller campaign, set in a system behind the fringe of Charted Space, forgotten - perhaps - by Humaniti.