Traverse Fantasy

The story continues—sort of! More-or-less new characters across the board, but we’re moving on with the thing because I had already prepped this shit and didn’t want to do another fucking thing. Unfortunate as it was to recount events up until then to provide some semblance of context, it also felt like a good exercise that solidified my approach to this campaign: fuck time records. Redo sessions. Retcon whoever was there up until the one about to start. Individual characters may follow their own arcs, but the basic unit of the campaign is the crew and whoever’s in the crew can change as needed. I think that’ll keep me from going insane more than imposing bullshit like “You have to go home at the end of an adventure” or “You need to schedule for everyone last time to come back” or “Someone needs to substitue for so-and-so to play their character.” Anyway. Characters! My stuff is put away so I don’t have their names on me, but a rose smells sweet even if you don’t know what it’s called....

Had such a fun session of my home campaign! Got to use my new travel rules and (due to the all-you-can-roll nature of them) honestly I had to convince my friends to end each leg of the trip to actually play where they were wanting to go... But we love it when journeys aren't about the destination, right? The rulebook for  Cinco!  now has all the latest updates I've been using to play if you're curious :) I'm tired and a little buzzed so I'm gonna summarize this session with bullet points. Roster These were the characters in play: Enkidu: Amnesiac dwarf following strange dreams to the land of Flo’Rida; 9 (+3) experience. Makandal: Orc maroon and voudonist ratted out while carrying out a raid; 9 (+3) experience. Nolan: Orc stand-user raised by elves, arrested on accusations of spying; 7 (+3) experience. Queen-sama: Elf prostitute, arrested after being caught by a client’s wife; 11 (+3) experience. Queen-sama leveled up! I need to remind her player. Summary Pr...

I tried out Kelsey Dionne's Shadowdark this morning with Alex as the game master and joined by Moth as another player! We were going through Alex's megadungeon that he had made for OD&D , one in which I had played before but died just a couple rooms in. Got farther this time! :P This is a session report as well as a review of Shadowdark . It's a mixed bag but more good than bad. It hangs onto conventions from classic D&D that I think it is (or should be) better than. Session Report Moth and I both rolled up halflings. Apparently Alex's dungeon has historically only ever seen little player-characters. To compensate for our small stature, we were accompanied by two human retainers: Karl Marx and Felix Guattari. We entered through a sewer, walking along a quay on the left. Some blue guys in the dark were mad at us for entering the dungeon, so we fucked off into the door immediately on the left where we came upon a dozen-ish white-collar skeletons. I told them t...

My friend Alex from To Distant Lands has been working on a really fun campaign setting. In his words, it's Carcosa but with the nasty shit replaced with Final Fantasy aesthetics. I only have secondhand knowledge of Final Fantasy , but that means a mix of fantasy, sci-fi, and retro elements blended together into a fruity smoothie. This isn't Dungeons & Dragons . It's Crystals & Chocobos ! We played using Legends , a "lo-fi hi-fantasy" micro-game in the 24XX series. Summary My character was Trixie the Auto Tech, a car mechanic with an old red convertible (I don't know much about cars) and a giant wrench. I thought of her as being like fantasy Cuban. My friend Halloween from Underground Adventures played Malice the Gun Witch, which is delightfully self-descriptive. We were exiled from our ex-country for being public nuisances, and thrown into the strange prison land of Carcosium. One day, we happened to be driving across the plains when we heard a st...