Babble about things and then eventually LegendKeeper

 There are a number of things I collect randomly. I have purchased an insane number of TTRPG pdfs off of sites like DriveThruRPG. I love stationery so places like The Papery are a massive problem. I have an enormous number of PC games on my Steam account but only play a few of them for longer than an hour or two.

And then, in a weird mesh of online stationery, I love trying programmes and websites having to do with writing. I have Scrivener; I was a big fan of Liquid Story Binder (but they're no longer updating it 😕); Microsoft OneNote remains a big favourite; Obsidian is golden for idea crafting and linking; and so on...

This means that I have an overabundance of programmes and places where my homebrew world resides. And I know that this kind of window-shopping for programmes is basically procrastination from actually working on writing, but I have also just been trying to find the one that works the easiest and the best.

World Anvil is a strong contender for working the best, but I can't call it the easiest website to learn. It is incredibly robust and the things you can do there are simply phenomenal. But you need to have an understanding of the programme you're working with. You need to think about things in a particular way, otherwise you won't have a clue what you're doing.

And then came Anto from Icarus Games and he started sharing about his campaign which he writes up in LegendKeeper - a worldbuilding site that does all the things I need it to do (and more) without overwhelming me with everything it can do.

I tried it out for the 14-day trial period and I was still a bit skeptical but growing more convinced that this both covers working the easiest and covering all the bases I need covered. So, when my brother asked what I'd like for a Christmas present, I asked that he'd help me get a year subscription. The site keeps your projects if you no longer subscribe and enables you to export it. So the work wouldn't just hang there inaccessible if you don't pay... but, after a week of working on this programme, I have to say I think this is going be one of those sites (like Inkarnate and Roll20) that is going to become a permanent thing.

So let's (finally) talk about LegendKeeper...

As mentioned above, it is a worldbuilding website. What that means is that it allows you to write and compile a series of articles (with or without the help of templates), and link them to each other and whatever maps you have loaded up. There are some standard templates available to help prompt you, should you need that (user-created templates are also available on their Discord). All of this enables you to set up a wiki as detailed or sparse as you'd like it to be. You can also select certain pages, tabs, or paragraphs to be hidden and kept secret from those who you share the project with.

Which leads me to the first 'nit pick' of LegendKeeper in its current state.

LegendKeeper is currently in Open Beta. Which means that there are a multitude of features available, but it is still a work in progress. If I understand it correctly, there are two ways to share the project. One is by a link which means they won't need an account and can see all the things you didn't hide in the project. This would generally be great for just sharing with your players so they have a wiki-like view of things. The second is by actually given them access to a role. This enables them to collaborate and not just view. Currently there are only two roles: admin (sees everything including secrets), and member (sees only what you've made available, can edit if you allow it).

There's currently no fiddling with what each collaborator can do. You have an all-or-nothing approach which doesn't work as well if you have multiple groups running the game - as they'd need varying access to information. If I read it correctly, it is the developer's intention to diversify roles a bit and add them almost like Discord does. So this isn't a deal-breaker or anything. It's probably the one problem I have with it amongst a lot of good.

I'm not halfway through doing what I need to do to upload all my scattered notes onto LegendKeeper, but I'm happy so far with what I have there. And I'm happy with how simple it is and impressed by how complex you can make it. The pricing for everything you're getting is also reasonable. 

So all in all I'd say I'm very happy with LegendKeeper. Let's give it a year and see what I make of it when I need to resubscribe. 

Homebrew update

I took a couple of months this year to break from my homebrew, but I'm happy to report I'm back in the saddle and have been having a great time with both my South African and North American groups.

So what has been happening. Well the [redacted] that I've been working for years has finally been [redacted]!! That's amazing, right?

😉

Version 1 - back in 2021

No, but to be more serious, a lot of good things are finally falling into place. For my North American group, they've finally moved out of the starter settlement and are learning an overabundance of things. I was a little worried that they would go in a different direction than I had hoped, but after teeter-tottering between three locations, they settled on the "right" one. This is the ultimate challenge of having an overarching "story" in something of a sandbox. I want the players to go where they want to go with their characters but need to make sure there's something for them in the direction they decided on.

I'm also (super) excited to see what they do with the area they've gone to. Some great story beats can be found there including a cameo of my mother's very first D&D character... but it can also be completely missed. That's the thing about player agency: it's up to them to find the threads you hope they'll find. I know there's also the whole 'give them a choice and then just make that choice the right one' as a strategy but I haven't really the experience and insight on how to do that with my game. So yeah. So far it's going very good. We're meeting next week for session 10 which is a bit of a milestone in my mind, though I don't exactly know why that's the case.

--.--

Current version - still a work-in-progress

My South African players have had 53 sessions and I've just dropped a lore bomb on them. They're focused and ready to go find out information. My attempts at intrigue was a little iffy, but then again, it was my first attempt at it so I'm happy that at this redirection. The thing I've also learned about intrigue is that it is more likely to split the party. Which I don't mind, but you almost want solo sessions then versus sitting for three hours and spotlighting each player as they do things the other's characters know nothing about.

The break did me some good in solidifying my ideas and being able to present something coherent with all the threads I had been having them pick up on for three years. I'm happy to have used Obsidian to put those thoughts together. It has been super useful.

--.--

I'm hoping to move my GM "world book" over to a single place. I had initially tried World Anvil but my brain didn't want to work with the setup. I tried it twice actually and feel like I failed horribly both times. A number of people I know recommend it and I would too, if that's how your mind processes information. I found it a bit overwhelming.

The site I'm keen on trying next is LegendKeeper. I don't think it's necessarily better than any of the other sites and programmes I've tried, but I'm hoping that it will just "gel" with me better. The membership fee isn't too bad. I'm going to try it out for a year and see how it works. Might blog about it in here.

I'm breaking my rule today...

... usually I confine this blog to being a geeky only blog but I feel passionate enough about this particular cause to go against my usual inclination.

This picture was taken March of 2019... and as content as I may seem in it, I was waiting to be admitted into a mental health facility.

I was having a really rough time. My circumstances had not changed in years but I had become tired of them. Soul tired. It got to the point where I chose to forego taking sleeping meds because I was too tempted to overdose. 

After some discussions with my mother, I contacted my psychiatrist and explained the problem. Clearly the medication I was on for my bipolar depression and situational depression wasn't being effective, but I had also just lost the will to combat the overwhelming exhaustion and despair that I was submerged in. He agreed that some time away would probably be the best and so we started the process of getting me admitted.

This brought a problem with work and social obligations. In both situations, my peers were completely unaware that it was a problem. I had one work colleague that knew I had some challenges, but didn't know I was in distress. I had colleagues who looked down on mental health issues as weakness, as not being strong enough, and of course the gossips who would just eat this up. Social obligations were basically my Friday D&D... which I felt at the time was my one ray of light in the week. I felt that I didn't want to just disappear with them thinking I was disinterested or something.

So I told my friends the truth, because my real-life deception score is pretty poor. And they leapt into action. The following week while I waited for a bed was spent taking me to the beach, giving me ice cream, taking me out for coffee, feeding me all kinds of fattening things, and just giving me something I didn't have up to that point (or that I didn't know I had): Social support.

It took a week and a half for a bed to be available at the mental health place... and that time was enough for me to get back on my feet. Yes, I was still in distress. No, it would take a long time for me to recover completely (years, in fact). But the immediate "I want to die right now" storm had passed. So when the bed was finally available, I declined going. 

I will be honest and say part of me wouldn't want to go there because I was raised in a world where mental health was tremendously stigmatised. But I am grateful that I (1) had the opportunity to go if I needed to and (2) was okay enough to decline the opportunity.

So why did I decide to share all this? Because today, 10 October, is World Mental Health Day and the best way to help sometimes is raising awareness, by being a bit more open than we usually are.

Streaming Thoughts and Plans

 It's been a while since I've done a stream on Twitch. I am planning to get back to it but I needed to take a break for a bit. That sounds dire, but honestly it wasn't for any negative reasons - all good ones, actually. Life just got very busy and there were things I've been waiting most my life to do which I got to do. So yay. 

But seeing as this isn't a life blog, I shan't go into too many details of the above. Suffice it to say that I am on a break and will return to trying to stream on a weekly basis when I feel like it. Which at this point is probably November, but no promises.

It does bring the question: What will I be streaming? I have ideas...

One of the games I'll definitely be playing on stream will be Satisfactory. It finally got it's 1.0 release after many years of being a delightful Early Access game and I haven't had the chance to dig into it yet. So I'm going to excitedly play that.

For those who don't know, Satisfactory is a first-person factory-building and exploration game where you're set on a planet to gather resources and build factories for items that the people off planet are looking for. 

It's the only factory game I've really gotten into and I enjoy it quite a bit. I will be trying to build less spaghetti-like factory lines this time around but there are no guarantees. I'm far too used to just running and jumping and sliding around, over, and under my mess of conveyor belts. If I haven't gotten organised in the 285 hours I've already spent on it, there's is virtually no chance that I'll magically bring order to chaos this time around.

Another game I will be eager to get back to is Aska. Another major update is scheduled for 14 October and, from what I've played in the game in general, I'm excited to see what the developers come up with.

I haven't babbled about Aska yet, but will in time when I've formed enough to say something about it. In short, it is a third-person settlement builder with strong Viking themes. There are some micromanaging things that need to be smoothed out. I can't jump every time a villager doesn't have a tool. But other than that, the bit that I've played it has been really good.

There is and always will be my D&D prep of creating maps on stream. Those will come in on sporadic bursts but I always have something I need to desperately work on, especially since running D&D games also was something that took a break. And I'm very glad for that break. But I've also become quite lazy because of it so catching up to the pace I need to prep things at to continue my DMing spree is going to be a challenge.

Another thing I want to do is a creative challenge. I don't exactly what I am going to do for this but I am leaning towards running a solo Starforged game. That's going to be super challenging because the setup prep is relatively easy to do. The actual playing, on the other hand, gets tricky.

Tales of the Valiant: Players' Guide - Thoughts

 So it's been a couple of months since Tales of the Valiant (ToV) came out for everyone to see. For those who don't know what it is, Tales of the Valiant is a 5e compatible TTRPG by Kobold Press. So far they've released the Player's Guide and the Monster Manual, but the Game Master's Guide is still on the way.

Now before I start rambling, let me say that I'm a little scatterbrained today. So I don't know whether this is going to come out sensibly.

You've been warned...

So what is ToV?

Tales of the Valiant is in some ways Kobold Press' response to WotC's OGL scandal. It is a system that appears built on D&D 5th Edition's foundation with a few variations in it. Though not the most accurate of comparisons, the best way I can think to describe it is when Paizo created Pathfinder as an answer to the frustrations players had with D&D at the time.

What does ToV's Players' Guide consist of?

ToV approached its introduction as though you've never played D&D. And so everything you can imagine in how to run a game and character creation and rules are in there. For those who know D&D, and 5e specifically, you'll see that the book holds everything you need to create a ToV character with a few minor rules differences or clarifications. Nothing that completely rocks the boat, yet enough changes to make ToV feel like it's own game. 

I'll try to go into the differences in a bit more detail later or maybe in a later post... I dunno yet.

Compatibility with 5th Edition D&D.

What appealed to me of ToV was that, from the beginning, they stated that you'll be able to run 5e and ToV characters together and, from what I have read, they've kept to that. How would that work? Essentially for the GM, it will be important to tell your players that they can choose either a 5e character or a ToV character. They can't mix the two rulesets for their classes and whatnot. But you will be able to have a party that consists of characters from either set. The rules of ToV doesn't vary so much that there would be sticking points and they've even released a Conversion Document to assist.

It's all about the flavour...

Having read the Player's Guide, I think one will be both curious and a bit perplexed. As this is the initial release of Tales of the Valiant, I suspect the creators went for quality over quantity. As such, ToV doesn't have the same class versatility with respect to player options, but what it does have is flavour and that it has in spades.

Each class feels unique and, where D&D can sometimes feel like a melange of sameness, I think the way they approached the different classes is really intriguing. When creating a ToV character, you're not going to feel like this is a D&D clone. Sure the stats are similar, but when it comes to what each class does, how Talents work and even the heritages, there's a lot that makes you realise that, though they can eat at the same pasture, they're not the same kind of beast.

I would have liked to see more player options, but I also recognise that this is something they can build from. And that makes me curious to see what other things Kobold Press are going to come up with.

What I got stuck on...

The sharper tools in the shed would probably have found the magic concept in ToV easy to grasp. I've admittedly had difficulty. It's not impossible to understand, instead of separating the types of spells by class, it's done by 'source', such as Divine, Arcane, Primordial, to name but a few. In the class description, you'll learn which ones your character will utilize. It's when they overlap that I get confused. I think, for me at least, I'll need to create a couple of ToV characters before I'll adequately understand it. But I figured I'd be honest and mention that there was one hiccup in my reading.

(Dis)honourable mentions

Just a few things that I thought would be worth mentioning: 

• Some magic items are listed in the book and they have suggested prices.
• Crafting of Mundane items are tackled but not magical ones. This is supposedly going to be addressed in the GM's Guide.
• Eldrich Blast is a Warlock ability in ToV and not a spell and thus can't be twinned if you have a sorcerer multiclass.
• ... Oh! They have multiclassing...
• The Luck mechanic is awesome. I've already started incorporating it in my games.
• Kobold Press says NO to generative AI

Final Thoughts

I've been very supportive of a lot of Kobold Press things and Tales of the Valiant is one product I feel I can get behind. I don't know if I'm going to buy their setting guide (I have my own setting to play in, afterall), but any books that build on the classes, ancestries, and heritages that has been established in this initial book will definitely be purchased and consumed.

I'm going to read through the Monster Manual now and (maybe) post about it too at some point. If not, I'll definitely have a post on the Game Master's Guide after I've read it. Can't wait for that to be released!

Nanowrimo, AI, and digging yourself into a hole you can't crawl out of...

 It's been a while since I posted. I've been busy, but I'm still alive and doing well. So if you were wondering, wonder no more! 

It's no secret that I used to be a big fan of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which was, initially at least, a movement to get a person writing creatively for no other gain than to create. The idea was simple: Start the beginning of the month of November with a 'blank page' and write until the end of the month with a target of 50 000 words. It was crazy, zany but, importantly, it was 100% achievable.

I've been doing nanowrimo for over a decade and was successful a couple of times. Followers of this blog would know that I'd pitch the nanowrimo idea once a year (during the years I participated) by writing a post about it and its benefits while trying to make the daily word count of 1667 and I mostly succeeded doing just that.

Nanowrimo has done a lot of good. It has made strangers friends and sometimes even marriage partners. It has helped people write up their thesis, it has launched authors into the sphere of having content that they might one day publish (even though this was never the ultimate goal of the movement). In my own life, nanowrimo was how I got into D&D, how I met people who've made deep impacts on me, and helped teach me that I could if I put my mind and heart to it.

So it wasn't willy-nilly that I decided to delete my nanowrimo account a couple of days ago. It was with a heaviness I haven't felt in a long time.

What spurred it?

Nanowrimo recently release a statement (which they've now heavily edited) stating their stance on AI. I managed to find a copy of the 'first post' before they edited it and edited it again. I'm posting it as a picture, but for those who can't access images, it basically states that those who are unsupportive of using AI in writing are classist and ableist.

This broad-strokes acceptance of the use of AI in an activity that was meant to encourage human creativity in writing, and the statement that opposition to their acceptance was classist, ableist, and privileged, really rubbed me the wrong way. Let me be clear, the issue isn't using things like Grammarly to fix what has been written, but rather generative AI that generates the writing without enough creative input to call it the work of the data entrier. 

The other matter that ground my gears was the emphasis on publication. The original idea that Chris Baty came up with wasn't "let's get 21 people to publish or otherwise be considered failures". Creative expression, like any other hobby, can bring growth by doing without hitting professional or published spheres.

A tangent...

In writing this blog post, I got interrupted by a five-year-old who wanted my attention (not mine, I'm still allergic). We took out some Rory's Story cubes and crafted a story together using the pictures on the cubes as prompts. While it did throw me off of my thought of how I wanted to conclude the post, it did remind me of the magic of creativity and the joy that can come with it - even when it's only a single moment that will not be made permanent by publication or whatnot.

Nanowrimo has effectively killed that joy for me in my support for them. They've told me my disagreement makes me inferior and icky. And the knowledge that they're following the money of an AI-related sponsor over the original vision that made nanowrimo the highlight of my year is frustrating and heart-breaking.

Conclusion

I won't stop writing because of NaNoWriMo's actions, but it will no longer be the reason I do decide to write. And nothing they say now will bring me back to them. Because even in their final edited post which takes away the hurtful remarks, this wasn't done out of actual remorse or realisation that they were wrong. It has been to save face.

And what a unwashed, grubby face that is.

 

D&D 2024 - Will I or won't I?

Is anyone else conflicted about acquiring D&D 2024 books?

Let me explain my reservations.

I'm quite happy with fifth edition D&D. I'm open to learning other systems but not necessarily a new edition. 5e by no means is the perfect system, but it does everything I absolutely need it to. It engages without overwhelming the player. It's rules-medium (neither heavy nor lite). And yes, the crafting is useless and the CR-rating is laughably broken, but those are things I can overlook for the most part.

With that said, I had always thought that I would acquire the "new edition" of D&D's Dungeon Master's Guide. This deliberation came to mind when they initially talked about the next iteration - before the debate of 6e, 5.5e, One D&D, etc. It was just a thought of "Oh, it would be nice to get more help on the DM-ing side".

And then we had the OGL fiasco last year January and I found myself reconsidering.

I've not moved away from 5e, but I have found myself moving away from WotC in that I don't want to give them any more money than I already have. I've always looked for my homebrew for third-party content as well as the actual core stuff, because my players know their monsters too well and bringing diversity to a 10-year-old edition is always welcome. I welcome the introduction of Tales of the Valiant from Kobold press that promises compatibility to 5e while being its own game. I've already pre-ordered their GM Guide that's to come out in November-ish(?) and I'm incorporating a number of their monsters into my game.

Okay, that was a bit of a tangent. 

Basically I don't feel like I should encourage WotC/Hasbro's shenanigans with my money. The prices for hard-cover books have almost doubled and the content has not made up for the price. I'm not happy with the idea of AI DMs, AI Art, AI story creation. (The topic of artificial intelligence is a vast one and I'm not going to get into it besides saying that if it hits on story-telling, art, writing, and music - things that we incorporate into our culture - I'm very iffy about it. That cuts the livelihoods of creatives and doesn't give us anything other than recycled plagiarism to some extent.) WotC has had more than one AI whoopsie that was noticed by their customers.

Okay, that turned into another tangent.

Maybe all the tangents are the whole point and problem in supporting them by hauling out (a lot of) money for the new DMG. Every time I think about how nice it would be and how pretty the new books look, I wonder how they're attempting to screw us over next. And that's not the kind of thinking that inspires me to take the plunge.

40th Mischief and 50th session

Last week I celebrated my 40th bday. It went as gracefully (if not more gracefully) than my 30th and for that I am grateful. Birthdays are always tricky affairs, but my day went really well with the exception of one slight thing. So I can't complain.

My birthday week involved travelling about 10 hours in total by car by me onesy as I headed from Gqeberha to Mossel Bay and back. 

Once I got to Mossel Bay, I spent approximately three-and-a-half hours by a very talented tattoo artist who put a picture on my shoulder that we had been collaborating on for about a couple of months. This is a significant move for me. I don't put any tattoos on my skin if there isn't some kind of detailed significance to the act. My first was in mourning. This one was in celebration of something that has helped keep me sane and stable - namely TTRPGs.

The tattoo is that of a (cutesy) dragon in flight, grasping a 20-sided die in its front paws - presumably to add it to its hoard. I've named the dragon Mischief and I don't have a picture of it in a fully healed state, so I will share the pic we took on the day of inking.

Once Mischief is fully healed, I might make it the profile pic to this blog.

To celebrate my closer proximity to hagdom, I spent most of this past weekend playing D&D. I had two TNO (my homebrew) sessions - one with the SA+ crew on Friday and the other with the North Americans on Sunday morning. I had a D&D game I play in on Saturday where I got to draw from the Deck of Many Things, got one of the best cards (it gives you wishes), and almost immediately used a wish on the DM at an unexpected time... So that was fun. 

The Friday game was particularly significant as it was our 50th session playing TNO. I've babbled about my homebrew at length on this blog so I won't go too much into it now, but it is still remarkable that a game I thought was going to die six sessions in has lasted as long as it has and isn't even remotely close to a conclusion. New places, new challenges, new people, and new character progression levels means that there's always something that can happen to keep things from being stale. Or at least I hope so. 😛

Me, tabletop roleplaying, and D&D - A(n almost) ten-year journey

This year marks a couple of memorable milestones for me. I was an '84 baby, so that means 40 is knock, knock, knocking on my door. It's been ten years since my gran passed away, someone who was very much the angel on my shoulder. And it's also been ten years since I got pulled into the tabletop roleplaying scene - specifically with the drug that is Dungeons & Dragons.

Back in 2014, we were still stumbling through the new basic rules of D&D 5e (or D&D Next as it was known at the time). My first game was a oneshot in which was an almost TPK - prevented only because I turned around after my peeps dropped and ran screaming into the woods. While their gold-covered skeletons shambled through the corrupted temple in the end, I found myself very much hooked to the game and the encounter still remains one of the fond memories I keep in my memory bag of holding.

Pugmire

Through the ten years, I played in many adventures and campaigns. Official ones like Hoard of the
Dragon Queen and Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and homebrewed creations that opened up the possibility for me to create my own story when I finally took to DMing myself. My first forays into being a DM (or GM when not running D&D) was cautious affairs full of planning and anxiety. 

In that time, I introduced my group to Pugmire - a D&D-esque game full of elevated and enlightened dogs and cats trying to find sense in a medieval-type world. I also stumbled over Fantasy AGE - which is also a really fun system - and brought that to the gaming table. There were a couple of failed attempts at Masks: A New Generation but that was mostly because I couldn't figure out how it worked... I still love the game but I haven't figured it out....

Then the pandemic hit and my gaming increased massively as online and work-from-home made connection in a disconnected world more possible and the introvert in me thrived despite the raging anxiety that the whole situation brought. I actually started playing too much, had too many connections and had to tone down my gaming to keep a balanced lifestyle (and an okayish sleep cycle).

The ten years were marked with some very low moments, but what I can say without a shadow of a doubt is that TTRPGs can be amazing for mental health provided you find the right group of people. I started with a 'right group' and accumulated more peeps as the years went on, which means that the impact it has had on my emotional wellbeing has been enormous. 

Me telling the peeps what's what at Game Over Cyberfest 

We have little over a month until my birthday. I have special things planned on the day and will probably celebrate the weekend by playing an enormous amount of D&D. It seems fitting...

Feedback on Game Over Gaming Cyberfestival March 2024 - D&D!

My experience of my trip to Game Over Gaming is always memorable. This time was no different!

Two years ago, I went for the first time and, despite nursing a migraine borne out of the depths of hell, the weekend had gone really well. This year the migraine wasn't physical, but I had a persistent pain in the butt due to car issues towards, throughout, and from Glentana. At least we got there safe and the issues were resolved soon after returning home. No long-lasting damage or anything. 

As for the actual convention, it was a little bigger than last time with definite potential for growth. I didn't take a lot of pictures (because I'm a dummy), but it consisted of a hall where the pc- and console-gaming happened, then an external room with stalls for comic-art, peripherals and other stuffs, and finally an outside tent for board gaming and hanging around.

There was a side room which is actually a kitchen / tuck shop that we used for our D&D games. Some people might frown at this setting, but I actually loved it. There are three places that are classic D&D spaces: The basement, the dining room, and the kitchen table. So being able to capture one of those spaces for the game was great.

I had a group of five players that I did a modified Out of the Abyss - Velkynvelve with. Four of them were newbies with one veteran... they all survived and managed to set everything on fire. In hindsight, having one of them be a dragonborn wasn't necessarily a good idea, but all-in-all I loved everything about the session. 

Especially the part that I didn't know the convention hall was watching... I knew it was being streamed on a twitch channel, but I didn't know the next room could see everything. Ignorance = bliss!!!

My anxiety did mean that I had to hide my hands because they were trembling, but at the same time, I tend to talk with my hands, thus it was a constant battle. But that's a normal thing for me. I'm still nervous even when I've done something a million times before.

But yes, it was fun. I slept very little, didn't eat enough, worried a lot about the car and things, but ultimately had a blast.

TTRPG Babble: New homebrew start-up and future possible joys

 This coming Saturday, I will be introducing more players to my homebrew world. I'm very excited at the prospect of doing so. 

When I crafted the idea of this homebrew, I wanted to create a world that experienced players could traverse without fear of their existing knowledge. So, instead of having them act dumb whenever they see a creature they've encountered a million times before and know the weaknesses of, I made their characters experienced warriors who've seen all of it before and knew how to respond - no distancing required. 

The second aspect I wanted to incorporate in the homebrew was the idea of character backstory being relevant in some way to the game. There are a number of players who want to have a solid backstory without knowing what the game is fully about. They craft all these amazing things that their character has supposedly already achieved and then, when they play, are forced into a far more insignificant role because a character at their level simply couldn't achieve slaying a dragon on by their onesy regardless of what their backstory says. With my homebrew's approach, they could very well have done all the amazing things the backstory states. In fact, it is encouraged to be as elaborate and grandiose as possible.

I don't know if my incorporating of these two aspects into my game is all that unique, but I'm very happy with it. And I do think that one day I'd like to assemble this campaign into a book form. Not because it's absolutely amazing, but because I believe it gives the starting points where anyone can build something amazing from it.

But I digress. 

So I have a new campaign coming up and I'm absolutely delighted by the initiative this group has taken in crafting round characters. They've even given me ammunition to make their characters' lives miserable! My discord server's channels are filled with conversations and questions posed at each other about characters and story. They've even gone as far as writing snippets of fiction to better define and introduce their characters and the world to each other. It's been fantastic.

Naturally, it does mean that I'm nervous about the game, but I've realised that my excitement manifests as anxiety, so the more anxious I am, then in truth, the more excited I am. 

I'm very excited.

In keeping with my commitment to not overextend myself, this campaign is only going to play out once a month. There are some challenges connected with that - people forget and you spend more time in a session talking about what happened in the previous ones - but at the same time, there is also an understanding among the group that everyone is busy and we should make do with what we can.

But, speaking of excitement. I have been surprised by an offer to play Ironsworn Starforged co-op with a friend. It came out of the blue and I'm genuinely thrilled. To make it more interesting, the plan is to stream it on her channel. It makes more sense to do it on hers seeing as we'll be playing at times where the peeps who usually watch my stream are sleeping like normal people. Also, her videos stay up longer. So that's also a win. 

This will hopefully start up in April. I'll probably babble about it more here once I have more specifics.

TTRPG Babble: How do we cultivate more game masters?

 This is going to be a pointless ramble, because I don't actually have an answer to the question. If anything, I'm rather ardently looking for it. The TLDR (too long didn't read) version of this is simply the following:

• The problem: There aren't enough people willing to step into the shoes of Game Masters to run games.
• Which creates the problem: There's no way to facilitate growth of people playing TTRPGs.
• Conclusion: Stagnation/Shriveling and general disappointment.

The longer babble:

As far as I know, there aren't any conclusive answers as to what the ratio is of GMs versus Players in the hobby. Even with D&D, it's hard to say. It is played internationally by thousands of people, sure, and for that to happen there has to be GMs running the games. But there also isn't any information on how many people are waiting to play that lack the opportunity because there isn't any facilitation of the game.

Now there are some old grognards that would say "It doesn't matter if you're new. Just GM for your friends. Read the book. It's not that difficult..." but those who learnt to GM this way are few and, in my opinion, the minority of game masters out there.

I've been playing the game for nearly ten years and started running my own games somewhere around three or four years after I started playing. The group I was in (and still play with) naturally encourages and cultivates the desire to run games for others. There is no one game master. Everyone has the chance to run. Everyone has a pet project that they would like to run and we take turns as life and busy schedules allow. It is an unpressured environment that naturally sparks curiosity and a sense of 'what if I tried?'

In the past two weeks, I've become aware of how... I don't want to say desperate... but how much people are itching to play. In the posts I see on Reddit, Discord, Facebook, etc. often involve people asking to play and other people also adding their voices to the post, wishing for the same thing: to be part of a game. 

This has bothered me quite a bit. 

I used to describe myself as someone with ultimately two passions: 1. to learn, and 2. to share what I've learnt. Because of these inherent desires, these needs required basically to function, I have to sit on my hands to keep myself from tossing my hat in the ring. To help DM multiple groups. To introduce people to this hobby that I love so much. But I can't... because I don't have the capacity to do so. I've only just started not getting burnt out from doing too much and so my ability to actually jump in and be helpful has been hobbled.

But even if I had the capacity, would that really help the problem? Because one more DM is not going to change the tide, is it? You almost need the same thing I had - where you not only learnt to play but learnt to run the game.

I guess it's the girl with the starfish story though, right? You can't save them all but you can make the world of difference to the ones you throw in the sea.

As I said above, I don't really have answers. It's just bothering me enough to write about it. I don't quite know what can be done. At the same time, I know I want to be part of the solution... without going into burnout.

Ironsworn Starforged: Yet another tale of loss, horrible dice rolls and death!

 

My tale begins in August 2023, when I received the printed copies of Ironsworn Starforged from my brother. We went to Plettenberg Bay for a couple of days and I started immediately to play the game.

Those who know Ironsworn games would know by playing I kinda mean prepping. But as Shawn Tomkin says "Prep is play". It took me a couple of hours to write out the 'Truths' of the galaxy I was going to have my character run around in and came up with a fairly interesting idea. The people had fled their former galaxy because of an AI war that broke out. But later in the truths it came out that AI were still something that some people had. So I imagined that the Ironsworn I was going to play would have strong feeling about AI and the cultivation of AI in the galaxy they were in now. She would probably do her level best to destroy any AI she could find.

There were a couple of other things I thought would be rather interesting to try out. I've always played close-combat, bashy-bashy characters, but in this world which takes inspirations from Battlestar Galactica and Firefly, there is a more gunslinger type feel. so I decided to make her a gunslinger and also an explorer - someone curious about this galaxy that they were still trying to figure out three-hundred years after arrival.

Because this game allows for improvements of assets (but not of stats), I sorta noted down some other things that she'd be interested in doing or things that could happen to her. Of course, the quest to destroy AI would be on the top of the list. She had lost her family, maybe finding a relative would be a nice thing to have her stumble over. 

I began my 'actual play' in December when work had calmed down to a crawl and life had decided to stop kicking me in the teeth. It was very slow going.

My character's first mission was to retrieve a data drive from a bandit camp. This drive would contain information on the transportation of an AI by ship to somewhere to be determined. I wanted to be cautious and play it safe, to not kill off my character in the first thing she tries to do. So I didn't make the firefights that ensued too difficult. She did get hit and such, but she didn't die and she got the drive and took it to the person who had initially wanted it. Their relationship was complicated. This helper wanted to sell the information on the drive, but kept her word and allowed my character to access the info first, not knowing that the latter's intention was to destroy the AI.

From the drive, they learnt that the AI was on it's way to Rhiannon and so the race from Argosy to Rhiannon began.

My character had a choice. She could either fly through the known routes to Welkin via Elysium and then cut to the unknown Rhiannon or go straight into the unknown. Being a bit of a hard ass and, seeing that I had gained confidence over the matter, the decision was made to go straight for Rhiannon. It would be a formidable journey that could lead to multiple discoveries.

It would also be a journey she'd never finish.

Along the way, she would encounter a pirate ship. This would be my first attempt at fighting in ship-to-ship combat. I again decided to play it safe and choose an 'easy' opponent. 

I Entered the Fray and the trouble immediately started.

*rolls the dice* 

Miss.

This meant that the opponent had the upper hand and I would be reacting to them rather than fighting from a position of strength. My character would not dodge immediately, exchanging fire with the other ship.

Clash.

*rolls the dice*

Miss.

The miss meant that my character's ship had taken damage, but that was okay. One of the assets I had selected in the beginning of the game was a reinforced hull. So that meant that these rolls wouldn't be too difficult to do well in.

Withstand Damage.

*rolls the dice*

Miss.

...

By this point I was getting annoyed with my dice. But I'm not superstitious. I wasn't about to haul out another set of dice to try and break the curse that was befalling these ones. Besides, it was loadshedding and I was already playing by battery-powered lamplight. Trying to find it in the dark would not have been so easy.

This time I would try to dodge though.

React under Fire.

*rolls the dice*

Miss.

The ship bobs and weaves and still gets singed by the pirate. Damage is dealt and again I take heart in the fact that I have that reinforced hull.

Withstand Damage.

*rolls the dice*

Miss.

I almost head-desked at this point. My character's ship integrity was now zero, it was battered to bits and anything harder than a sneeze would make it fall apart completely. She'd be desperate now. Desperate to score a hit on this pirate and destroy it outright.

Clash.

*rolls the dice*

Strong Hit.

It was a feeling of elation that is matched only by having spent four hours in the dark and having the power finally come on. A strong hit meant that I didn't just mark one damage to the track of this pirate, but two. And because it was an 'easy' opponent, that would mean that I could finish off this combat with one last hit - even a weak hit would do.

Take Decisive Action.

*rolls dice*

Miss with Match.

I considered how to save my character. She had failed utterly and her ship was about to be blown to bits. She could probably escape, get captured, try to escape that... I just didn't know if I wanted her to be a captive to a pirate. So I decided that the dice would decide for me. If I got a strong hit, she'd be fine and captive. If I got a weak hit... she'd die but would have one last act. And if I missed, then she'd just be dead. A fart in the wind.

Face Death

*rolls dice*

Weak Hit.

So she died. But maybe what she had done, the cylinder she had shot into the void would find a curious scavenger who'd take up her cause. Or who'd write a book about her. Or something.

As for me, I'm already thinking of how to start prepping for the next character. I still kind of want to use the same Truths. Maybe I'll change the locations and have the character be from a different sector - different planets, routes, dreams, and plans. We'll see.

As inglorious as this death was, it had kept me occupied for several months and I had fun with that.

Might consider new dice though...

Writing babble: It all starts with a little... and then it gets out of hand.

I didn't do any resolutions this year or anything. Maybe one: work on avoiding burnout by not committing myself to running a lot of D&D games. 

But in the absence of resolutions, I did commit to a writing project. Very small, very simple: Every week, I get given a prompt from a writing book and then I write about it. So far the longest I've spent on a prompt is forty-five minutes. So it's really not a big thing and it's challenging and fun.

If I manage to avoid the burn, I was thinking that I might do nanowrimo this year. And so comes the problem I always have: what to write about.

This question was quickly answered by a friend. I got excited, and inspired, and started making notes. I could already imagine the endless planning notes I would make in the months leading up to November. I would have a blast doing it. I was excited.

And then it all went to pot.

Why? Well... because the story didn't want to wait until November. It wanted to be written as soon as possible. And so instead of my usual fun and games with notes and highlighters and post-its, I now have Scrivener open and a thousand words in less than an hour.

Damnit. 😆

Babble: D&D and a reflection on the year without (too much) burnout

 In October, I wrote a blog post about my tracking of hours I spend preparing for DM-ing D&D. I'd like to share the final tally in this post and babble a bit about 2023.

In many ways, 2023 was a shit show. So many things went wrong in life at and away from the D&D table. But there has been some highlights too: The successful conclusion of my longest-running Dragon Heist campaign, 43 sessions in my South African TNO campaign, and the fact that I may have skirted burnout but didn't actually hit it.

I think what helped was that I was more cognisant of the time I'm actually spending preparing, playing and running games. I logged as much as I thought was sensible, so not everything, but mostly everything. It showed me when I naturally slumped and shouldn't be hard on myself for not doing more. It showed me the times I have energy and made me excited to capitalise on it.

So while the year was awful, my experiment in being mindful about how much time I'm dedicating to this game I like was a success.

Of 142 hours spent prepping/working on D&D-related things, I spent a total of 123 hours prepping my homebrew in 2023. Adding my time DM-ing to that 142 and I spent 228 hours prepping and running D&D games. This is not all the time I've spent on the game - I've played in other people's games too (and yes, I logged that as well) - but this is the time where I was basically being creative. It tallies up to about 10 full days, though I don't find that final stat particularly interesting.