Tabletop RPG Podcast and Roleplaying Resources

Month: August 2015 (Page 1 of 2)

50 Fathoms: Session 10-A Free Jomba Town

Jomba_Angry mob_1A Free Jomba Town

Characters:

  • Mordecai
  • Liam
  • Daxon
  • Bracus
  • Rodrigo

Date: 8-29-15

XP: 2

Recap:

After the defeat of Ian and the freeing of the slaves the Crew discovered that he had been working on a cage to capture a Yellowback for bounty from New Madrid. The city was offering a tidy sum for a live specimen..

Mourning the loss of his four warriors Eti was anxious to present Ian’s body to the spirit of his father Jomba and free him from his torment. Waiting till twilight the Crew and Eti laid Ian’s body on the road and when the sun set Jomba appeared. This time he was in a more corporeal form, of his own mind, and able to talk. Jomba was grateful that Ian was killed but unfortunately his curse was for him to slay Ian on the Ghost Trail…not for others to do it. While Jomba retained his mind he was bound forever to the Ghost Trail. He vowed to protect the Trail from those who sought to bring harm, but could not linger in one place too long and drifted off.

The Crew decided to help Eti take over Jomba Town from the Council and started their march back up the trail towards Jomba Town. On the way back they remember Ol’ Owens tail of the “Money Pit” and Bracus convinced the Crew to spend some time digging it up. They found digging in the pit to be a dangerous and futile endeavor but also discovered that the pit was somehow leaking sea water. Daxon, Eti and Liam explored the flooded cave systems under the island and while fending off schools of BloodFish found the underside of the Pit and the Treasure! Through some heroic underwater work the Crew was able to gather the treasure intact and be on their way.

Far richer than before (to Bracus’s delight) the Crew made it to Jomba town.

Liam used his buddy that worked for the council to arrange a meeting to discuss their payment for solving the Ghost Problem. Liam was also warned to keep his priest friend from stirring up trouble with his soup kitchen.Of course Rodrigo would hear nothing of the sort and set up shop next to the Council favorite tavern, the Shackle.

In response, the Council sent a heavily armed group to attack the priest but the Crew was able the turn the tide, kill the thugs, and get the locals to take up arms against the Council. In full riot mode the Crew lead 200+ locals and Eti’s people against the armed fortifications of the Council. Through bravery and some bloodshed, the mob was able to overrun the city and capture all but one council member (Crimson Sparrow- Kehana). The Crew set up a court to judge the Council members but at this point are unsure how “fair” the trial will be. While the rest of the Crew were mopping up resistance and capturing Council members, Bracus found his way to the town’s money vault and made sure to secure the promised bounty payment (with a bonus) before turning it over to the people. Eti provided guards to protect the wealth while a government was formed and things settled down.

 

Tresure_1


Captain Liam

Captain’s Log,

Jamba town has shaken off the shackles of tyranny.  For many of our group, slavery was the issue.  It even changed Mordecai a little.  He’s crossed a line very few men come back from in his pursuit of ending slavery.  I always found the tyranny to be the real evil corrupting Jumba.  A council that wasn’t elected by the people ruling over its subjects like some puppet master, who’s only concern is growing his own wealth at the expense of others.  Not any more.  Jumba’s citizens now rule themselves.  I only hope they do it well.

 

As soon as we finish our business here, we’ll be off to New Madrid.  We’ve finally managed to save up the needed funds for a new ship, and there are plenty of options in that port.  While this skiff has been good to us, it barely qualifies as a ship.  The brig we’ve had our hearts set on does, however.  It may not be a ship of the line but they’re fine vessels, and can accomplish a great deal with the right captain and crew.

 

It’s safe to say this is one of those rare times where everything seems to be going our way.

-Captian McCormic


 

 

Hex Mapping Middle-Earth

Author’s note: this page has a lot of high-res images. Be patient as they load. Don’t forgot to scroll down to see all the images and comments!

I’m doing some long term planning about an epic, multi-year Middle Earth RPG campaign. One key element my game group guys want is Kingdom building rules, so we’ll likely hack the Pathfinder ‘Kingmaker’ OGL rules to serve this purpose. Kingmaker rules presume you have 12 mile hexes, and they have rules about exploring and settling (and defending) hexes, so this should work well. But — we’ll need an epic map to make this work like I want. Here’s my prototyping so far.

First up is taking a high-res fan-made map and cropping it to fit on an 18×24″ aspect ratio. This will be our World Map we work with for the campaign.

MERP Hex Map 0

Next up I zoom in on the top left corner. I could make this NE quadrant into an 18×24″ map if we decide we need that.

MERP Hex Map 1

Then I overlay a hex grid over the quadrant. Each hex is 60 miles, which is the D&D 5e Kingdom scale, which will play well with setting up 12 mile sub-hexes inside them. We’ll be adventuring in the Third Age, around T.A. 1400-1600 (centuries before The Lord of the Rings adventures). This area of Middle-Earth has several MERP (Middle-Earth Roleplaying, the old 80’s RPG) modules we may want to leverage so I think this is a great place to adventure. Also, it’s close to Angmar and near enough to the Witch-King to get into trouble with his foul minions. But I digress…

So I overlay a the sub-hex map with a rectangle that will, once zoomed, make for another nice 18×24″ map, this time portrait instead of landscape.

MERP Hex Map 2a

Here’s what it looks like zoomed in.

MERP Hex Map 2b

The above topography is simple enough we can ‘explore’ in traditional hex-crawl format and draw in features as we explore using wet-erase pens on the poster frame in which I’ll put it. Alternatively we could use the uber-awesome Peter Fenlon map from the MERP products. Looks really cool. If I go this route I’ll need to fix the colors in the scans and also sharpen and possibly re-typeset the labels for legibility.

MERP Map 4

A third option would be to use a hex map that has no details at all and we draw in features as we explore or as they become relevant. Anyway, lots of cool option.

Want to track my progress? Follow me on Google+ where I’ll share out once in a while the maps and other tools as they progress 🙂

Hex Map 18x24

Star Wars: Dawn of Rebellion — Episode 03

In the aftermath of their skirmish with Storm Troopers, the Rebels clean up the carnage. Daymont Syko hails the home-base of the dead Storm Troopers.

His ruse works. He discovers the location of Garr Juun, a Sullustan who worked with Dalin Show to betray the rebels.


Disguised as Storm Troopers, the party pays a visit to Garr Juun. Vin Sai notices that the armor seems to be a perfect fit on only one: Daymont.

The phony Storm Troopers gain easy access to Juun’s house in Tanga City.

Meanwhile, the alien—er, non-human—rebels circle around to the back.

Talk is cheap, and blaster fire is cheaper as a fight erupts. While the lasers fly, A9-LX disarms a baradium bomb with 10 seconds to spare—and keeps it as a handy souvenir.

The rebels capture Juun alive. Cornelius Vaan is all for torture, and Vin Sai almost delivers.

When Juun accidentally inhales some of the shroom-drug he deals, Dredge Myolnon enters his consciousness, and senses an evil presence—emanating from Andooweel.

And Daymont, lost in thought, recalls a time, when he was fighting against—not for—the Rebel Alliance …

How To Create Your Own Stan Shinn Classic Traveller Binder

Lot’s of folks have been interested in how I put together my Classic Traveller binder. Here’s an overview of the binder:

You can download the Referee Dashboard PDF to insert in your binder.

Stan Shinn Traveller Planner CoverIf you want to make a planner cover, you can use my OpenOffice template below. It is an OpenOffice Draw (.ODG) file. You can edit it using either free OpenOffice or LibreOffice software.

To use the template, you’ll need two fonts:

And I use a planner from Staples which you can order online:

Enjoy!

Avoiding the RPG 'Shiny'

mwpGreat advice from Gnome Stew; this is my biggest temptation in roleplaying as a GM which I need to resist!

“AVOID THE SHINY

This isn’t original with me or unique to online gaming. But it is still good advice. For the most part, you should avoid too many campaign reboots, rules changes, or genre switches in your regular game. It’s much better to work around any quirks in your particular rules system (or post some house rules) than to ask folks to change editions or systems frequently.

Now, some groups may be fine with an occasional one-off in another system or genre. In general though, if your dying to run something different, you may want to just run it at a different time and send out a general invite to your social group. While your regular players may want to play, they won’t feel obligated to play something they are not interested in.”

(Source)

« Older posts

© 2024 Dicehaven

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑