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Running Long-term Campaigns in Big Universes

July 20, 2016 / Stan Shinn

Running Long-Term Campaigns in Big Universes

Here is an interesting post that touches on one element needed for long running campaigns: a big universe where you’re usually saving a region of the world/universe (as opposed to dealing with X-Men style extinction events that literally save the world).

Having a shared universe. Not required, but I think its cool to have the ability to hand to baton off to another GM for a while, or even have multiple campaigns running at the same time in different parts of the universe.

The other things I find that helps for long term campaigns is having a rule-system that is geared for long-term play. D&D 5e, Traveller, and Chaosium d100 games all fit the bill in that they scale nicely to higher levels and you don’t have the power-creep that D&D 3e/4e and to some extent Savage Worlds do where combat starts to drag at higher levels. Also, other games like Fate are better suited for shorter term campaigns. I believe Fred Hicks said on social media at some point that most campaigns he runs are in the 6-12 sessions range, and I think the game design reflects that.

On that note, here’s how I think the most popular rules systems in our group map to ideal campaign length:

Fate — 6 to 12 sessions
Savage Worlds — 20 to 40 sessions
D&D 5e / Traveller / Chaosium d100 — 45 to 100+ sessions

GURPs might fit into the latter as well as other systems I’m less familiar with.

Leviathan Session 02: Stochastic Effects

July 16, 2016 / Stan Shinn

Last game the heroes made it to the big city. The electric fences went down; who would have thought? 🙂

An A-Pex terrorizes the city. Can our intrepid heroes save the civilians?

Emory lands the killing blow! His character poses for a shot 🙂

Later, the heroes go to repair a power generator and are ambushed by Natural Order (N.O.) terrorists. One survived: what will the characters learn once he regains consciousness?

50 Fathoms: Session 25- Donga Lives!

July 16, 2016 / Jeff Messina

Donga Lives!

Characters:

Kaliferous: Kraken mage
Rodrigo: Human priest and water Mage from Earth
Crow/Kadian: Atani guardian of the Great Tree
Kukukachoo Grael guest star Cook and Whaler

Date: 7-16-16

XP: 2

Recap:

The Crew decided to head to Tressa the Red to find out if she had any leads on the Sword of King Amemnus. While traveling they spotted smoke off the coast of Torath-Ka and discover it to be a primitive human camp along the shore which was uncharted.

They decided to investigate but was attacked by an Ukak summoned megalodon named Jinka-Tahn.This armored beast seemed unstoppable, normal shots were simply bouncing off its hide. The giant shark attacked the ship and was about to take a large chunk out of the hull when a combined attack by Kal, Rodrigo weakened the beast and the keen aim of Kukukachoo brought the beast down by sinking both harpoons into its eyes killing the shark instantly.

They arrived to camp Victoria to discover a bedraggled but living survivors of an expedition funded by Bruno Baltimus and Edward Lazenby. The expedition had erected a fortification and was able to keep the local Ukak tribe at bay but was running low on gunpowder and provision. Their leader, a big game hunter from Earth, Angus McBryde decided to seek out the Ukak Shaman and end the attacks before his people lost the siege.

The Crew decided to find and help Angus and treked through the hot dangerous jungle for several days, drained to the point of exhaustion the Crew found Angus who stubbornly refused to leave without killing the Shaman and rescuing some of his men the Ukak had taken captive.

They arrived just before the Ukak Shaman started sacrificing the men in their Blood Pools but were too late to stop their death. Sacrificing their life the Ukak were dragging the captives into the Pool in an attempt to summon some great beast. Right as the last Ukak warrior was slain he managed to one last person into the Pool.

The Pool bubbled and frothed as the form of a Giant 60’ tall Ape, Donga arose! The huge Ape instantly slayed two of Angus’s men and took aim for Kal but between the Crews combined attack and Kukikachoo’s enhanced Grual battle balls the heros managed to slay the beast before he struck again (GM note: Very lucky!)

Yet again the Crew foiled the foul blood magic of the Ukak and survived to tell their tale.

DIY Initiative Tracker for Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition

July 13, 2016 / Stan Shinn

Here’s how I do initiative for Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition. (Which is amazing by the way! Go buy it now!).

There’s a cool initiative mechanic where a player can use Tactics to grant a +6 initiative bonus to allies (and -6 to enemies), but this applies to the first round only. So initiative changes after the first round of combat if someone is using Tactics.

To make this super-easy, I took Paizo’s GameMastery Combatpad extra magnets (you can buy them here, although the style of the magnets have changed from what I have from a few years back). I use one color for allies, and a darker color for enemies. I place the magnets on a cheap magnetic marker board I got from Target.

I mark down the player and enemies names on the left of the magnets. On the right side I put the natural initiative score and add the Tactics modifier (if there is any). After the first round I shuffle the magnets around. I alway have the players ranked in order of initiative for easy scanning. I also can put notes (like die modifiers or conditions) next to their names.

You can also delegate this to another player to keep track of; one less thing for the GM to do!

DIY Vinyl Banners for RPG Battlemats

July 13, 2016 / Stan Shinn

Folks have been asking me about the battlemat I’m using for my Traveller games, so I thought I’d describe how I created it. Not terribly hard to do so give it a try!

15mm Miniatures on my Vinyl Battlemat.

I like to do DIY (do-it-yourself) terrain and RPG tools. I’ve got a couple of campaigns coming up that use 15mm miniatures. The standard 1″ grid maps used in 28mm won’t cut it when using miniatures in this scale. I like 15mm for games where shooting with modern weapons is a focal point and you need to make ranged weapons meaningful (28mm is better for Fantasy / melee combat, whereas 15mm miniatures let’s you take advantage of differences in ranged weapons).

I wanted something portable, something that I could quickly set up, and that didn’t cost a mint. I settled on creating my own vinyl battlemats and printing them from BannersOnTheCheap.com.

Vinyl itself is a great material for battlemats. Its strong, durable, and lets you write on it with dry or wet erase markers.

I bought the map image file from WargamePrint on DriveThruRPG. They have a full selection of battlemat images with all sorts of terrain ranging from deserts to jungles to seas. You can get their test printable files download for free to check out their terrain. It’s amazing!

4×10 foot vinyl mat from BannersOnTheCheap.com

I decided to print out a 4’x10′ banner, which lets me get two battlemats for a total of about $40 plus S&H and tax. The tan / sand texture I’ll cut up to be ‘roads’ to lay down on the grassy battlemat.

Vinyl Shears

You’ll want some heavy-duty Vinyl Shears to cut the material.

Trim off the edge

I used Gimp (Photoshop also works) to stitch together the enormous map files into the big 4×10′ image. I sized them so that they didn’t stretch to the border since BannersOnTheCheap doesn’t do a ‘bleed’ that prints to the edge. Use the shears to trim the edges and cut up what you want.

Close-up of printing quality

One thing to be aware of, the printing quality is a bit grainy. It’s always this way (I’ve ordered multiple times from them). Not a big deal though, from a few inches away you won’t be able to tell very much.

Final Product

Here’s the sand vinyl strips cut up and used as a road that I laid down on top of the grassy mat. 15mm miniatures and some DIY terrain on top finish it off!