Lestrades_Game

I periodically turn my rpg session notes into something more publishable. Below are links to a short adventure I wrote and a campaign locale. First up, a Lovecraftian romp through a statue on the edge of a volcanic island; https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B39t62uIctG3aWJad3BmVlk5a2c/view?usp=sharing Its a bit linear, but its supposed to be a short adventure. I've tried to channel as much Lovecraftian weirdness as I can into it. Second up, a city in the dark of the Underborea; https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B39t62uIctG3SEFHbk5JZi1UelU&authuser=0 This is more of a campaign setting. The wider Underborea has sections of mega dungeon and hex crawl. This is meant to act as a plot trigger and base camp for the players. Both are written for the rpg Astonish Swords and Sorcerers of Hyperborea, by Northwind Games, which has become my fantasy ruleset and setting of choice.

I traded off my copy of OCS Reluctant Enemies, something I thought I’d never do.  I’d solo’d it through twice and played the short scenario face to face and sort of felt done with it. It’s a great way into OCS but I think the French strategy can drag the game in a certain direction. If they go defensive they can force the game into a battle of attrition in the Northern Mountains in the late game. The game then descends down to the roll of the dice. Ever searching for playable but deep Napoleonic Operations I got Seven days of 1809 for it. But lucky me, (and my dog) the chap I traded with threw in an extra game for free! Tide of Fortune – a 1992 complex operational war game on the Netherlands in 1944 by John Schettler.   setup for just the western map. I was interested in what happened along the coast before Market Garden. The Germans have the numbers but they are badly out of position (grey counters). If Antwerp falls too quickly they could be out...

I've been a little quiet here for much of early 2015 though I have posted a few things of interest on other sites; A review of the VPG boardgame Star Borders Humanity posted at boargamegeek, since thats the place I felt this style of review would be most useful; https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1324180/star-borders-humanity An opinion piece on why boardgames are closing in on mainstream entertainment status; http://fortressat.com/blogs-by-members/5252-why-board-games-are-now-becoming-popular And an obituary piece on the video game Planetside 2, a great game that perhaps fell short of its potential;  http://fortressat.com/blogs-by-members/5140-planetside-2-obituary

Computer wargames, as in computer milsims, generally aren't that great. They tend to either be overly simple or completely opaque with most of the best games being those that are really designed for video gamers such as Ultimate General Gettysbury or Wargame Red Dragon, rather than the games for the milsim crowd. A few years ago I bought a CD copy of Panther Games Airborne Assault: Conquest of the Aegean off Ebay for £5. I’ve always felt Matrix Games were overpriced (The old publisher for this series) and wanted to try the system before I threw real money at it. Here is the situation just after dawn of day 3. Last night the Safi and the Central Airfields got overwhelmed. Troops guarding the Victoria Line, the Western harbour and around Nignet had to be hastily redeployed for a counterattack, which as the sun rises appear to have been successful. Unfortunately I have to hold out for 6 more days and I have no idea if more German para regiments are in bound. This game is pre...

This is going to be a links post rather than a detailed explanation. The reason being is that there are a lot of good explanations already out there. There are a lot of programs on the internet you can create rpg maps with, I'm just going to talk the ones I've used. Lets start with the easiest Pyromancers http://pyromancers.com/dungeon-painter-online/ This is a flashed based website embedded tool that allows you to draw grid based dungeon maps. Its wiziwig, just click on the style of tile you want, select rectange, eclipse, custom polygon etc and draw some shapes. Its a very quick and easy way of producing room/dungeon layouts. The end result isn't very graphically distinct and creating unconventional shapes can be a bit of a pain but it works. You can export your creations as image files. I used Pyromancers quite a bit at first, as it was a very easy way to create excessively large dungeon maps. http://www.hexographer.com/ Hexographer comes with a free ware...

Other than AFS magazine, Chris over at the Hill Cantons blog is a big proponent of point to point rpg maps. http://hillcantons.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/pointcrawl-series-index.html Another point to point map I created was for a climbing session. There is a 'flare' at the top of a column in the great cave that switches on and off irregularly. The players are sent to fix it. At the top if an ancient structure / device that is essentially a light house. A lot of the adventure involves climbing the column and choosing different paths up it. Makes more sense to use point to point for such a map. Hexes give granularity but sometimes it's too much. Some modern games like Dungeonworld recommend point to point maps / flowchart campaign structures. This got me wondering a bit. There are a lot of forum threads along the lines of; How do I actually run an rpg session? Part of the cause of these threads is in my view the move of rpgs away from something simulated and structured ...

Working on a new session/mini campaign for Hyperborea. I am creating a hand drawn style map for it. This cartographers guild post is a great help http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=10655.  Here is the progress so far. The Season of the Wolf. The concept is to bring together a number of ideas that have been kicking around in my mind. I intend to create a point to point style map and have the world simulated to a limited degree. Normally in rpgs stuff happens when NPCs show up, otherwise it does not. I plan on putting a time track into the game and having the werewolfs that the players are hunting move around and do things through time. Depending on how much time the players loiter things might happen ahead of them. A lot of the inspiration for this has come out of AFS magazine. http://hallsoftizunthane.blogspot.co.uk/ Issue 3 (i think) talks about using point to point maps over hexes, Issue 6 includes a new huntsman class and a great...