TTRPG Babble: Ironsworn Starforged

For some reason, this particular post feels very difficult to write. I guess it has to do with the fact that I don't consider myself a persuasive writer and the things that I enjoy the most tend to require persuasion? I dunno.

Ironsworn - Starforged is a TTRPG that can be played solo, co-op (without a GM), or with the traditional GM-and-player setup. I would say it's primarily designed with solo in mind, but it provides you with the tools if you wish to play with friends.

Setting

Where the original Ironsworn had you roam the lands of a gritty fantasy scape, Starforged is a science fiction game inspired by the likes of Battlestar Galactica and Firefly. Your character is an Ironsworn: a capable person who takes on quests in the form of Iron Vows - just like the previous game - but you're travelling the vast space of The Forge as opposed to the Ironlands.

The Forge is a large cluster of systems and planets that orbits your character's galaxy of origin. Due to cataclysmic events (defined during the setup of the game), your character's people fled their galaxy to inhabit the Forge and has resided there for two centuries now.

Amazing art by Joshua Meehan

Setup

As with its predecessor, Starforged embraces 'prep is play' and the first thing you'll do is set up the circumstances your character will find themselves in. Things like religion, information technology, horrors, medicine, magic, laws, etc. are all covered in the setup so that you have a rich and unique environment at the start of the game. 

The second thing you create is the immediate sector of space your character will find themselves in. Starforged has an amazing range of oracles to assist with everything from the planets' habitability to the settlement's law enforcement. You're never really without help when setting up the circumstances of your character's journey.

And then finally, you'll create your character. Are they augmented in some way? Are they a sword wielder or do they shoot their gun from the hip? There are so many options that you can decide from. 

Character creation

I feel I should elaborate a bit on this aspect. In Ironsworn Starforged, your character has five stats that remain static throughout the game:

• Edge - agility and distance fighting
• Heart - courage, empathy, sociability
• Iron - physical strength and close-quarters fighting
• Wits - expertise, knowledge, and observation
• Shadow - sneakiness and cunning

These stats make up your character's immediate strengths. But then comes the asset system. In the beginning of the game, you select a number of assets that defines your character. As you progress through the game, you can gain experience points which essentially act as 'currency' to either purchase more assets for your character or to add features to an existing asset. 

The book says it better.

Game Mechanics

Inspired by Powered by the Apocalypse, the game has a number of moves that can get triggered by your character's actions. Once a move is triggered and a dice roll is required, you roll two 10-sided dice and one 6-sided die. The d10s are your challenge dice; your score will hopefully beat both for a strong hit or one of them for a weak hit. The d6 is your action die which is rolled to help determine your score. It along with the relevant stat and any bonuses will form your action score which you compare to the numbers of the d10s.

So pretty much the same concept as I babbled about in Ironsworn.  

How to get it

Purchasing the PDFs are fairly easy and can be done via DrivethruRPG, but getting the print version might be a little trickier. As of the time of writing this, a reprint is planned next year as most of the books have been sold out. For all the info of pdf and print copies, see here.

Thoughts

Ironsworn Starforged gives you the opportunity to have a rich adventure within the vastness of space that's only limited by your imagination (and the dice rolls). The rules are similar to the original Ironsworn, with very few changes, and yet it feels like an update to the original recipe. If you're into solo roleplaying and science fiction is a thing for you, then I'd heartily recommend Ironsworn Starforged.

To nanowrimo or not to nanowrimo?

 So, if you've been following this blog for the past couple of years, you'd know that I frequently participated in a funny "little" exercise called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). To make a long story short, the exercise is to write a story of 50 000 words in a month - specifically the month of November.

I last participated (and floundered spectacularly) in 2021 when burnout hit me so hard I would have been seeing stars if I wasn't so exhausted at the time. Last year, I didn't even consider it because the burnout bug bit me again. This year....?

I don't know. 

Part of me wants to do it again. It always feels exciting and then grueling and then delightful when you succeed on whatever your target was - be it the 50k or whatever else. I feel like I have the energy this year that I didn't have in the past two years. My problem is that I don't exactly have a story in mind. 

See, my favourite activity is not the actual writing. It's the planning. And by planning, I mean PLANNING. White boards and markers, pictures and notebooks, the whole nine yards. I love when I have something that I can explore, prepare, consider, work on. I spend an unending amount of time on it.

But this year, unless the idea lightning bolt hits me in two months, I would be writing without a plan. Which means there's already a 50% likelihood of not making my target. I'm one of those "fail to plan, plan to fail" people who can't pants anything. (pants = flying by the seat of your pants)

I do have a couple of options for if I do pants this thing:

• Colostle: This is a solo-rpg game I've babbled about before that I was very impressed by. If I were to use this as a mechanism to generate content, I will be set for at least... 10 000 words? I think I would be challenged to do a lot of worldbuilding and it would definitely take the form of a journal with 'daily events'. It is a possibility. I think my hesitation with this is that there are so few hand holds in the game and it's so free-flowing, that it's almost too reliant on my own creativity: which makes it daunting. The rules are painfully simple though. It's not something I'm going to get stuck on. It will just be "Can I think up what to do in this situation and stretch it into as many words as possible?"

• Ironsworn Starforged: I haven't babbled about Starforged on here yet, but I have talked about Ironsworn here and here. In Starforged, I think there's a bigger possibility to generate more words than I would in Colostle, but it will have its own challenges. Starforged is a 'prep is play' type of game, where you spend hours worldbuilding and then the story can start. I've done a bit of it, my brother brought me the books when he came to visit, and I immediately jumped in and started playing. The challenge I have is the fact that I still need to come up with an inciting incident. In Colostle, that's supplied. Your character has a list of possible motivations to choose from. But Starforged is very much a blank canvas and I don't know if my ol' noggin will come up with something interesting to start off with. Once I do get started, it's going to be fun. There is a LOT more mechanics and rules to the game, but because of how much I've played Ironsworn, I'm not too bothered by that. The biggest challenge will be the dice rolls. My dice hate me. So I might end up with a dead character. Fortunately, once you've done the world building, it's easy to just generate a new one and tell a different story.

Yes, I'm definitely leaning more towards Starforged, I'll be honest. Maybe my next post should be about Starforged just so that people can know what it is I'm getting myself into.

Other possibilities:

• Fanfiction: I used to be very into fanfics. I know it's controversial because some authors are okay with it and others are absolutely appalled by the very notion that you would dare think of writing a story with someone else's world. I'm of the opinion that it's writing practice and, so long as you're not an asshole about it (trying to claim the author stole your ideas and whatnot), it can explore aspects and situations that might even be insightful. I tend to stick to game fanfiction though as opposed to book fanfiction. The lines feel a little less blurry. But what would I fanfic about is the question. I'm still too angry at Bioware to give Mass Effect a chance. (Yes, yes, I know, it's a game, I should get over it, but I think this grudge might stay with me until I stop breathing). If I do write fanfiction, it might be something like for XCOM or such... but I don't know. I don't know if I'm in the mood or have the capacity to come up with a decent idea. 

• D&D: I think I play too much D&D and spend too much time prepping my homebrew to actually write in it. I think this still classifies to some degree as fanfiction... But anyhoo, I don't know. Here I would have to have a decent plan of action and something I want to write. I've done D&D playthroughs as writeups for Nanowrimo before. It works, it's just not very interesting to me.

• Original fiction: The least likely thing to happen - me coming up with an original idea set in an original world (it would be either fantasy or scifi-ish) is not currently within the capacity of this writer. My big problem with original fiction is that I love world building and can come up with some things that would interest me, but the actual main story? Pffft.

Regardless of what I do, I don't think I'm going to go into the social aspect of Nanowrimo. It used to be a thing: meeting other participants, going to write ins, etc. Heck, that's how I met the person who would eventually get me into D&D. So I am not going to knock it and say it's stupid or something. I just think I don't want to use the full machine that is Nanowrimo and will rather go with the barebones that is the initial concept. 

If I do end up taking the plunge, I'll probably share some of my progress here... maybe. 

D&D Babble: Finishing off Waterdeep Dragon Heist

I did it. It happened. After 38 sessions, the game which started in January 2021 was finally concluded last night.

It went well. Lots of laughter and one big 'whoops, maybe I shouldn't have done that', my chaos goblins chose the side of light and was still handsomely rewarded (because in my world, good deeds aren't punished... just a nice little shift from reality, no?).

Feedback has mostly been positive. Just one big glaring negative: not enough combat. This is both a flaw of mine and of the particular campaign. But this is also a group that's a bit more combat-orientated, which exacerbated the problem.

What was funny to me is how every victory had to be celebrated. Like a player rolled a natural 20 (I think it was the only one for the night) and pictures had to be taken. I love that. I love that the small things can be big things in this game. The group worked very well together, which was also great. We had long discussions about what to do, plans were constructed, reconstructed, scrapped and re-reconstructed. All good fun.

I think from my perspective, the biggest flaw of this group is scheduling. It was an utter bastard. It was also not a case of preplanning. Time was very fluid and last-minute cancellations were not uncommon. For the ISTJ, mega-planner, wanter-of-schedules this was quite a challenge. But I'm glad we stuck to it and got it done.

Whereto next? Dunno. I know the general feeling is to give Ris a break from DM-ing, but also that no one else seems to have time in their schedules to DM. Whatever happens though, I might suggest running the new Phandelver campaign with them in 2025. I'll only acquire it late 2024 and it will give me time to plan, create maps and set up the game on Roll20. 

Why not just purchase the module on Roll20, you ask? Well, because I wanted the book and buying both seems expensive. I just can't justify it. Plus building the module was a lot of fun. I don't know if this will be as fun... maybe I'm remembering the TONS of work fondly because of the years that it's been since I last did it? I dunno. We'll see. Maybe I'll cave. But for now, only the book.

Anyhoo, I'm rambling. Let me go do something more productive...

Babble Post 101: Talking to your players (again)

 Imagine my surprise when I realised that I've hit over 100 posts on this blog...

... no really! It was a surprise. I mean, I babble and have been babbling on here for over ten years. That is an achievement in and of itself, but then to add that I have been babbling so much that I can note that I've reached that amount? Colour me stunned.

So today's post isn't actually about all that though. I wanted to revisit a subject I brought up in a previous TTRPG-related post about getting feedback from your players.

There's something exceptionally daunting about asking for feedback in any context. Asking for it as a DM when you're not prepared for the answer could make or break you - especially if you're not used to constructive feedback, or your players don't know how to delivered it in that fashion.

But a couple of months ago, I heard of a method of feedback giving/receiving that works fairly well. This method is called Stars and Wishes. 

Now again, I suppose it depends on the type of people you have in your party. But how this works is, in your discord server or roll20 talks or whatsapp group messages (whatever you use), you allow for a channel or time for stars and wishes after each session or so. 

This is an opportunity for the players and DM to hand out Stars to someone for something they did well - be it the plan the rogue came up with on the spot or the roleplay of a particular scene. So it's not just feedback for the DM but for everyone. Stars is the opportunity for praise that you don't usually give but might think of about a particular moment, incident, or aspect.

Wishes is a mix of feedback and desires: things the player/character would like to see or encounter or would like to see LESS of like politics and puzzles, particular monsters or story beats. It can also be things like "Less talky-talk and more combat". It can be projections into the future or feedback on behaviour like "Allow the DM to explain what you see first before exploring with your tokens" or "DM, explain what we see first before showing us the map so we don't go off into the unknown."

Stars and Wishes is a really great tool to get consistent feedback without the stress of directed, scheduled feedback. It also allows a space for people to chat after a session about the things they liked or would have preferred. 

I think the negatives of Stars and Wishes is that if you're looking for direct feedback, you're not necessarily going to get it or, if you have that particular player, you might get too much of it. So whether this strategy will work or not is heavily dependent on the type of people in your group.

But yeah, just an interesting concept I thought was worth sharing.

Ramble about games

 Update: I'm still alive!

It's been a while since I said anything, mostly because I don't have a lot to say. This post is going to be a ramble about everything I've been up to... I think. 

PC Gaming - what have I been playing (a lot)

Satisfactory

I can't tell you how long have I been playing Satisfactory in my recent playthrough. Well, technically I could, I suppose, if I look at the save files. But I don't know whether I should. It's such an addictive game with a basic concept. It's been in Early Access forever, but the game is still a lot of fun to play regardless of its 'unfinished' state. It's fairly polished with only one annoying bug that I feel should have been fixed by now.

But, I digress...

Satisfactory is a first-person factory-building game where you arrive on a planet and it is your job to get its resources. If you are the slightest bit OCD, you might find yourself agonising over where to put what and how to get the squares aligned and whatnot. My character isn't that far gone though. She lives in a disorganised factory where she leaps over equipment constantly and shuns walkways. That said, I still reach my target in terms of resources submitted to the big sky via sky elevator, so I'm not doing all that bad.

I'm having a lot of fun with it.

Baldur's Gate 3

I have to admit, as much as I love D&D, I can't say I'm completely enthralled by BG3. It's good, no doubt. With the interactive world and poor dice rolls my character makes, it's almost a bit too real. But I've just never been able to get into games like it - from the original BG to Divinity: Original Sin. I think the game is brilliant and well thought out. I just don't know whether I can say I like it. Still, I'm open for correction, so I spend a couple of hours here and there mostly dying due to poor choices and die rolls... again art imitates real ttrpg...

Battletech

I've always liked the revamped XCOM-style top down tactical strategy games. Battletech is that with far more finnike parts. The problem is that, while I enjoy these types of games, it doesn't mean I'm any good at them. I'm not a master strategist who knows about bits and bobs that you put on mechs. Still fun though. I've lost so many hours on this game...

TTRPGs - DM-ing spree

At the death throws of a Dragon Heist Campaign

I've lost count of how many times I've run the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. I think this would be my fifth time with only one of them having resulted in an early bailout. So three of the five were completed, one was a bail and now I'm literally waiting for the last session of the last Dragon Heist campaign (at least that I'm going to run in a while). Story-wise it's been utterly fantastic, but I am eager to get it done. I don't want to rush the finish, but I'm also ready for it to be finished.

Homebrew Babble

So I've had 35 sessions of the homebrew with the South Africans. It's going great. I got a little tired of churning out content, but it seems like, after a bit of a rest, I'm back at spending at least an hour a day working on / agonizing over the campaign. It's silly of me, but I still have a fight with my anxiety over the game. I know it's silly though, just performance anxiety and the desperate need for approval that I viciously stomp on every time it rears its head. :-P Nothing to see there.

But yes, I've been at it for two years and it's still going well. I'm ridiculously happy about it.

The multi-national group has had four sessions and they've already made very different choices than previous groups - which makes it both delightful and daunting to run for them. While these deviations aren't game-breaking, they do keep me on my toes as I learn what to cater for. The only negative I can give is that, when I prep for them, I constantly want to update my maps and make them better. This is a time-consuming process that doesn't actually yield as many rewards as I would want and I need to actually settle down a bit about it. I don't regret fixing the maps I have fixed, but I need to accept what I have already created as being good enough.

RPG Babble: Colostle

It's no secret that I'm a sucker for a good story. In the TTRPG realm, this seems to also translate into a compelling setting.

But the problem, I find, is that there are so many games to play, but so many problems in playing them. Getting people together, getting a date and a time sorted, getting prepped and ready to run. All of these things can become stumbling blocks when it comes to actually playing the game. It gets worse when it is a new game because then there's also the fact that everyone has to learn the game and might not be in the frame of mind to do so.

Which is where solo-gaming has become my escape. Like with computer games where I tend to gravitate to the single-player ones, TTRPGs/card/board games that can be run by my onesy gets attention. Then the only obstacle I have is me. Which, if I were honest, is still an obstacle, but less so than two or three other people with their individual hindrances.

So let me get back to my first statements: I'm a sucker for a good story and a compelling setting. I've only recently started dipping my toes into solo-RPGs, but I've found one that is simple, easy to play and pretty compelling.

The world of Colostle is a fantasy/medieval world set within a massive castle - each room filled with mountains, forests, even bodies of water like lakes, rivers and oceans. The Roomlands are filled with adventures, things to explore, places to navigate through and cities to visit. You play an adventurer in these lands who documents their adventures in a journal.

How does it work? 

You choose a class which determines your capabilities at exploration and combat. You're given a calling - an inciting incident or goal that you're striving towards - and you can decide on the personality of your character. 

Each day, or period of time, you draw a number of cards from a shuffled deck. This is the exploration phase and each card is something you encounter in that period. This can be a simple as finding something to hunt or gargoyles grabbing you and taking you to a different location. The cards also might show opportunities to combat creatures or Rooks (the only "creatures" who hold magic in the Roomlands that have the look of castle towers with arms and legs). Combat against Rooks are always avoidable, but then you lose out on what treasure or goodies the Rook might contain.

Having concluded the Exploration and Combat phase, you then take up your notebook and document the events of that cycle. This can be done by hand or electronically, in a notebook or pdf. How you do that is entirely up to you.

What I like about Colostle is that is inspires creativity. There's a lot of flexibility in the game by design. Things are open to interpretation and even if you were to pull the same or similar cards, it doesn't mean that the results are going to be the same. It's not a difficult game to learn and you can fall into it almost immediately with little setup required.

Card game babble: Arkham Horror LCG

 For the past couple of months, I've been part of a trio of friends who play Arkham Horror LCG (the living card game) on the weekends. As I fell into the lore and the story and the mechanics, I felt myself being consumed by this game - enough so that I've decided to make the financial commitment to get the game for myself.

What's it about?

Each player takes on the role of an investigator who is thrown into various scenarios that need to be uncovered and resolved. For those familiar with the Cthulu mythos (be it the books, other games, etc.), you'll know you're in for a tangled web of crazy cultists, monsters and a sleeping ancient one (or ones... who knows?). 

What do you get?

The first box, gives you the rules to play the game, the tokens, the cards (of course) and a booklet with the first three-part story, or three scenarios, to get your feet wet. You're given five investigators - each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses - and decks that you can either build yourself or trust the initial assembly as given in the book by the creators. 

As someone who has never played a deck-builder game before my venture with my friends, this is an awesome help.

How does it work?

I'm not going to go into the exact round order and phase order because I will confuse myself and, in turn, confuse you and make this game inaccessible. But I am going to ramble about some things in the game.

The scenarios each have an agenda deck and an act deck. The agenda deck shows you the bad thing that is happening and what needs to happen in the game to make it worse. The act deck shows you what you need to do to try and keep the bad thing from happening - usually this objective is something like gathering a certain amount of clues or discovering a particular area.

Each investigator gets three actions on their turn which they can use to investigate, draw a card, fight, evade, get a resource, etc. There's a really handy card with each investigator pack that lists the phases of play as well as all the actions an investigator can do. I think this is a wonderful addition.

Each investigator has statistics for Willpower, Intelligence, Strength, and Agility and will, through the game make tests based off of these four stats. You can add to the skill check by playing cards or having other investigators who are with you in that particular location give you a card to enhance the skill. 

Then you draw from the chaos baggie! The chaos bag contains chaos tokens which are either numerical modifiers or pictures which means something unique in each scenario. This is a very interesting mechanic for me as the 'auto fail' token seems to be magnetically attracted to my fingers whenever I try to pull a token out of the bag *harrumph*.

The bad of the game

Arkham Horror: The revised core edition has a lot going for it. But the truth is, it is only a taster. To truly appreciate the depth of this game, you're going to have to play a campaign, which is more money that needs to be spent. 

The mini-campaign provided only consists of three scenarios, that's about... four hours of gameplay. Granted you can play multiple times with different investigators, there's flexibility in things not ending the same way every time, but it's still only just a taste. A full campaign has between six to eight scenarios packed into it. That's a lot of hours of gameplay with each scenario having multiple endings and so the branching out of the game is huge... but expensive. Well, at least in South Africa it's expensive. 

I guess it brings the whole debate of what you're paying for. The quality is excellent, the game is well written and thought out. There's a lot of replayability and you're definitely going to want to infect someone else with this addiction so there's that. But it's still an investment.

What to get?

If you're also interested in getting this game, be careful. You'll see that there are a multitude of options out there and you have to do a little homework.

Arkham Horror The Card Game was originally released in a blue box (below).

Don't buy this one.

Then came the revised core edition.

Buy this one.

Note 'campaign expansion'.

You'll note that the cover is the full picture, not cut off by blue. It's the better one to buy. So get the revised core edition.

As I said, in it, you'll find the five investigators cards, the chaos tokens and other tokens, and the mini-campaign. Now, if you want to buy more campaigns be aware that they were initially sold in little bite-sized packets, but now you can get each campaign in one box. BUT, if you want more investigators and investigator cards, you may need to consider also buying the Investigator box for that campaign.

Yeah, that's part of the bad stuff, right there.

In summary...

... do I regret my choice? No. Do I think it's a bit of a money scheme? Yes.

But I also know that I thoroughly enjoy this game and am going to play the stuffing out of it. Especially because you can play this game solo. And that really wins it for me.

Ironsworn: The "riveting" tale of loss, horrible dice rolls and ultimately death.

Made with Inkarnate.

Welcome to the Ironlands: a place of beauty, rugged terrain, fierce beasts and, not always though in my case often, death.

This is the default setting for Ironsworn by Shawn Tomkin. As you might recall, I babbled about Ironsworn in a previous post, going into some of the mechanics but I didn't really feel as if I captured the awesomeness of the game in that post. I don't think I can really do it justice in any post and I don't think I'll do that in this one. Especially because this post will tell you how terrible my dice are and how much they hate me. So not necessarily the uplifting, magical explanation that would really sell the game to you.

Anyhoo, let's begin.

The story begins with Katrin Cera, an Ironsworn living in the Flooded Lands with her father Hersham who is a seer and the village mystic/nut. For years he has been going on about the Iron Pillars (mysterious objects that litter the Ironlands and are worshiped for their power) and how something was wrong. Katrin ignored it until she received a dream of the pillars cracking and falling. Fed up that her father's ramblings were piercing through her dreams, she decides to take Hersham to the nearest Iron Pillar to prove that they're still standing and whole. 

When they get there, they find that the area has been closed off and that you can only gain entry via recommendation of the elder at Stonehill - the nearby village providing for the priests. To get that recommendation, Katrin offers her services as Iron Sworn to help the town with their current ailment - raiders. Recent raids have made a dent in the village's supply and she sets off with some folks to do a counter raid and get the goods back. 

She has a miserable time of it, returning with the goods, both wounded and stressed, only to discover that the initial raid was a feint. That the baddies had come back to attack the village a second time, this time emptying its stores and kidnapping villagers - including the elder and Hersham. She follows the trail of the baddies, attempts to sneak up and take out the lookouts, but fails to do so, alerting everyone. Not that it mattered, in her wounded state, she is no match for a couple of lookouts and is easily slain.

That was five hours of solo gameplay. Very annoying gameplay, I should add. I had spent so long building the world, building the character and when I actually got to play her things just went sideways. Why?

The bloody DICE!!

Never have I rolled consistently high on the wrong dice and low on the right dice. But that's the nature of the beast, I suppose. So I decided to try again.

Instead of creating a different world, I decided to use the same world but a different person in a different location.

In steps Kataka Sayer, a veteran fighter-turned-Ironsworn who is working on one of the Barrier Islands with a priest to investigate troubling events within her town. New dice were hauled out and the evil ones that caused the death of Katrin were returned to the stash. Surely it would go better this time, right? 

Well... not really. The pair of investigators couldn't find the baddies, were attacked by all kinds of assassins and only barely survived. But at least, they discovered that this whole plot was due to the machinations of a priestess dum dum dummmmmmm who has withdrawn to the Flooded Lands while her evil plans are carried out.

So now the pair are on an perilous quest to go to the Flooded Lands, to capture the wench, and to return her to the settlement.

Frustrating, but fun. I just hope my new character survives long enough that she finally finds out that the apocalypse, that the previous dead character dreamt about, is a possible reality. I really liked that idea and I'm loathe to discard it just because of something as inconvenient as character death. ;)

I tend to mostly play over the weekends. I find that the exhaustion of a workday isn't really conducive to playing a solo TTRPG. 

So I guess I'll find out what happens next in a couple of days from now. Maybe I'll give an update here... Maybe.

 

D&D Homebrew Babble: What's happening with the Saffas?

So let's start with:

 Update: I'm alive!

Not much happening on the life front. I'm still trying to save up for a big trip next year. Still waiting for answers on said trip. Still getting ever nervous as the days fly by and the deadline for buying my tickets nears (still months away but that's not going to stop me from panicking).

To escape the continuous waves of panic that the above inflicts upon me, I dive deep into the depths of procrastination (via computer gaming) or escape (via D&D). It's been about 9 months since I rambled about my homebrew, so I figured I could do that today.

First thing: There are now multiple groups romping through my world.

Okay this isn't a new thing. We had the South African group (which is still going strong after 31 sessions!), then we had the British group (square peg, round hole lasting only like 10 sessions, if that? I can't remember), and now I have a multi-national group that I've just finished session zero with. The latter will be gathering only once a month, but I'm hopeful it's going to go well and will be memorable enough that the gap in between games will not be too distracting. I also think I have also selected the group well enough that there won't be any issues and we're introducing a few new things that I'm excited about - not new to the story, but new to the gaming dynamic. One is basically a mechanism to allow ongoing feedback for everybody and the other is a mechanism to bring roleplay forward on matters that won't necessarily be tackled in game.

So that's rather cool.

Second thing: I'm a horrible DM. 

Well, debatable. But I took about eight months before levelling up the South Africans to level eight. This was due to a mixture of reasons: We hadn't gathered more frequently, they were taking their time through my world (can't complain about that), and so were not really hitting any big milestones.

With that said, I'm happy with the progress they're making. There's a self-motivated engine that's running the show and it's not coming from me as powerfully as from them. They want their characters to achieve things and they want to know what's going to happen next. Which is nice. It makes me happy.

Third thing: I'm still stressed and anxious.

I struggle a lot with perfectionism and performance anxiety. (well, actually all kinds of anxiety, but this one is relevant for this situation :P)

I don't know if I'll ever shake the trepidation that dogs me when it comes to running a self-made game especially, but so far I've been having good days and bad days. Bad days involved medication and a power nap which makes me feel awesome... so I guess they're not terrible days. Good days involves me sitting in disbelief thinking "how on earth did we end up here?"

So even though I'm stressed and anxious about stuff, I'm pretty grateful too. I'm happy with what's going on with this group and happy to have them.

D&D: You win some, you lose some (random progress babble)

So my one Dragon Heist game ended. Well, to be more accurate, I ended it. It was another situation where it was a square peg in a round hole. I won't go into the details of it but I felt it should be noted in this here blog thinger. I'm not super happy about it, but I think it's for the best.

This means I have one Dragon Heist game left - of which they're probably like three-four sessions from the conclusion. I'm happy to report that, after a five-month break, we're reconvening to finish off the game. I'm very happy about it.

I've also started an Ironsworn game with two friends. We've created the world in our last gathering and now need to make our characters. The energy of the collaboration has me excited. We still have a lot to learn about the actual game mechanics and whatnot, but we've already created a world that's unique to any I've played in and it's driven by them, not me. Which makes me very happy.

Finally, I'm going to risk my homebrew with a group of fresh faces. I'm nervous about it but excited. The group has been assembled, the primer has been given, jokes have been made and characters are in the process of being created. So far, so good. I've specifically chosen people who I feel will work well together and hopefully spend time diving into character backstory - which is one thing that, while not absolutely essential, kinda sorta is important for my homebrew. That will drive character motivation when things are still uncertain and they don't know what they're doing.

In my South African group, we're getting a new player into my homebrew. Poor bastard doesn't know what he's letting himself in for. I chatted with him and then on the same day cooked up a seven-page primer for him. Mwahaha. He doesn't get to know what the others know yet until they start playing, but he'll have a better idea of the dynamics of his immediate surroundings. At least, that's the idea.

Hm, that reminds me. I still have some more information to babble at him about.

So yes, I lost some and won some these past two weeks. But overall the winnings outweigh the losings.

Oh! One more thing to babble about briefly. In the past couple of weeks I've joined a roleplay-heavy play-by-post. It's rather challenging, but fun!

So that's another win.