The Blarg! | brackofalltrades

Search

TPK Diary

TPK Diary

Jul 22, 2015
1 min

TPK Diary

Reminiscences of games gone wrong. ...To Be Continued Annotations for the curious and/or RPG-challenged: The game system used here is D&D 5e (5th Edition). TPK: Stands for Total Party Kill. When all the player's characters are wiped out. I Storked it: I rolled a terrible roll at a vital time. From the host of Happy Jacks RPG Podcast, Stork, and the accompanying song "I Storked It". The plot of this adventure comes from the published Hackmaster game supplement, "Wrath of the V

6 views0 comments

Dungeons and Dragons Levels Up

Mar 6, 2015
2 min

Dungeons and Dragons Levels Up

Can It Recapture the Thrill of 1st Edition? His name was Dino DeBasher, and he began life as a Dwarf Fighter/Thief on one of those official orange character sheets from TSR sometime in the early 1980s. Over the years he spiralled out of control, becoming a munchkin of the worst order--he slew Tiamat, found the Invulnerable Coat of Arnd, wielded a sentient +3 sword named Nemesis who could heal all Hit Points three times a day, and much, much more. Ah, First Edition. (To the

4 views0 comments

The Horror...The Horror

Feb 20, 2015
3 min

The Horror...The Horror

Or, Why I Can't Write Supernatural Games In the summer of 1980 I spent the night at the house of a friend. His dad took us all out to the movies. I love movies. It is perhaps unfortunate that the movie we saw turned out to be one of the scariest horror movies ever: The Shining, starring Jack Nicholson and directed by Stanley Kubrick. I was 13. It was the first horror movie I ever saw, and very nearly the last. It scared the ever-loving crap out of me, so badly that I sle

2 views0 comments

Accent Ague

Feb 13, 2015
3 min

Accent Ague

Like many pasty white geeks, I learned my "English Accent" from countless repetitions of Monty Python sketches and movie bits. I also learned my Scottish, Irish, and Australian accents from the Pythons. Since then I have become a man of a thousand accents--all of them terrible. In the confines of my gaming group, I break into accents with little or no provocation, and if I'm not careful, they can bleed into one another, changing from Russian to German to Australian without

6 views0 comments

The Overdue Review: The Deed of Paksenarrion

Jan 30, 2015
3 min

The Overdue Review: The Deed of Paksenarrion

The Blockbuster Fantasy Hit of 1989! The Deed of Paksenarrion, by Elizabeth Moon. Published by Baen Books. During my adolescence, I read and re-read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trilogy multiple times until I could recite dialogue, knew the history and geography of Middle-Earth like it was my own neighborhood, and even learned to write dwarfish and elfish runes. One thing I never did? I never wondered about the citizens and subjects of the kingdoms that the heroes were defe

7 views0 comments

The Best GM I Never Had

Jan 23, 2015
2 min

The Best GM I Never Had

I don't remember the first time I played Dungeons & Dragons. Isn't that funny? A game that became an integral part of my life and self, and I can't remember my first time. I'm sure it was in junior high, and I'm sure that my friends introduced me to it. I'm sure we played this: ...because I asked for this game as a gift and received it soon after. But I don't remember that first game at all. I do remember that my Dungeon Masters ran adventures typical of 12- and 13-year-

3 views0 comments

N00b!

Jan 16, 2015
4 min

N00b!

GM: You walk through the door into a room. It's maybe 10' by 20'. Bookshelves line two of the walls, with many strange volumes upon them that you don't recognize. Weird statuettes or figurines adorn the table in the center, around which sit four men. N00b: What do the men look like? GM: They all wear glasses and T-shirts bearing nerd-related sayings or images. They are in their late 30s or 40s; it's hard to tell because they're kind of doughy. On the table in front of them is

10 views0 comments

Twilight: Fourteen Years Ago

Jan 9, 2015
2 min

Twilight: Fourteen Years Ago

No, this post has nothing to do with the teen supernatural romance of a similar name. In the heady days of the cold war, during the Reagan-Bush 1 era, I thought a lot about what the world would be like after nuclear war. The Soviets and the US were on the brink of open conflict, it seemed, and I would lie awake some nights wondering if the missiles had already been launched, and if so how would I survive? With no way to answer the question I played games along that theme: G

4 views0 comments

Rumor Monger

Dec 5, 2014
1 min

Rumor Monger

Once upon a time, I ran a fantasy rpg campaign (GURPS, of course!) set in the capital city of a great empire called Daedalos. This is the journal and newsletter of that campaign, which ran off and on for about ten years. As I recall, the main influence on this campaign was Harry Turtledove's Videssos Cycle, an excellent fantasy series featuring a Roman Legion transplanted in a fantasy world. I borrowed (read: stole) names and plot ideas directly from the books. Then I stol

4 views0 comments

RPG Recycling

Nov 21, 2014
2 min

RPG Recycling

I want to share with you my favorite map of all time. It's a map of the Fuqua School of Business (no, really, that's its name, pronounced FOO-kwa) at Duke University, that I obtained as a student in the late 80s. I worked in the IT department at Fuqua, backing up hard drives on to large tape cassettes and had to visit every office in the place. Check out the notes on it. Things like "Gas Impermeable Force Screen" and "Huntsman Lift Tube" and "Used As the Knowles Institute".

2 views0 comments

Conversations With Myself, Annotated: Campaign Creation

Nov 7, 2014
4 min

Conversations With Myself, Annotated: Campaign Creation

I’ve started coming up with game ideas for my role-playing group. The following conversation is adapted from the notes I write as I think through the possibilities. Annotations are in italics. Jon, Brian, Doug—warning, spoilers ahead! Everyone else--geek alert! Jeb: I want a new campaign for my group. What would be cool to run? Ordinarily, I would involve my players in this discussion, so that it would be something they would find cool to play—but I can’t fit everyone in

2 views0 comments

That All Important First Post

Oct 24, 2014
1 min

That All Important First Post

I never thought I'd start a blarg. Now that I have, you deserve to know who you're dealing with. This is me in cartoon form. Why "The Blarg"? Because I'm not sure what's going to land on this page, and "blog" denotes some measure of confidence and planning. It's an onomatopoeia of ideas hitting the internet, and that's what I expect--I'll serve up ideas in my own way; you decide what to do with them! #writing #cartoon #karate #art #magic #gaming

5 views0 comments