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5/21/2023 11:01 am  #21


Re: Back to Barbarians of Lemuria - some different settings/campaigns

Last night we played the adventure "The Sands of Arashin-Ral" (came from the Modephius 2d20 forum).  A pretty decent adventure set in southern Shem and Stygia.  A pretty good end scene too.

When I was converting it to BoL, I wasn't sure if it was going to play smoothly, but it really did (for our style of play anyways).  My wife really liked it.  It was a 3-hour session, and when we finished - we couldn't believe that we had been playing for 3 hours.  It was pretty engaging!

I recently purchased the Giant Book of Battle Maps by Loke Battle Maps, all three volumes and was able to use them for the different scenes.   They are a very nice addition to the assorted battle map collection that I have made over the years.  We don't use mini's (we moved and downsized our home 4 years ago and I ended up giving my miniature collection to a client's son) but use .91 x .91 inch flat counters.  I have a good collection of those, because they were needed to play The Fantasy Trip game.  They are also easy to store.

We are now going to rest our Hyborian Age heroes for a bit and head over to Jalizar, The City of Thieves for our ongoing Beasts & Barbarians BoL adventure.  The next adventure actually takes place outside of Jalizar, on a ship in the Dread Sea.  My DM/PC has travelled away from Jalizar and is going to be teamed up with my wife's temporary PC - a female Pirate Captain.  She will play that character for one or two sessions.

The adventure that we are going to play next week is called "Eyes of the Night", from the Beasts of the Dominions book.

 

5/27/2023 10:32 am  #22


Re: Back to Barbarians of Lemuria - some different settings/campaigns

Last night we played the Beasts & Barbarians adventure "Eyes of the Night".  It comes from the Beasts of the Dominions book.  Of course, using BoL rules 

A friend of ours ran it for us a few (5 or so?) years back.  He ran it with the Savage Worlds rules.  My wife and I wanted to check out the system and he plays that system pretty frequently.   I really liked the setting, but I didn't care for the system much.  Neither did my wife.  (In fact, she refuses to play Savage Worlds again.)

After I ran it last night, I asked her if she remembered the adventure and she said that she didn't really.  I reminded her that it was the one that our friend ran for us using the Savage Worlds rules.  She said, yeah she remembered that... it was totally a different game.   She felt that our BoL characters were just more "heroic", like they should be.

A good Sword and Sorcery adventure!  Boats, pirates, a hidden island, a jungle, and a lost city with a strange exotic foe!  The end of our adventure was pretty good - her character (a one/two time use PC for the time being) dueled the female Pirate Captain and won, she now has a ship of her own again (she lost hers at the start of the adventure!) and a crew to sail the Dread Sea and Endless Ocean again!

Next week it will be "Death's Cargo" also from the Beasts of the Dominions book.  Another pirate/ocean travelling adventure.  I've converted it already and just need to pick out my battle maps and cut out my counters.
 

Last edited by Sigulf (5/27/2023 10:32 am)

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5/27/2023 12:40 pm  #23


Re: Back to Barbarians of Lemuria - some different settings/campaigns

More power to your wife's sword arm!

Real life has meant that for a second week we don't have a game on Sunday.
Boo!

However, as I said to Alison, we'll only enjoy next week's game all the more. (Hopefully.) I'm cooking up another BoL Hyborian game for Alison featuring Aja of the Isles, while Alison is writing another Everywhen 1920s spy game for me, featuring Reggie Fairfax - struggling modern artist and irregular British spy.

Whoever finishes first gets to run next week.


My real name is Steve Hall
 

5/27/2023 4:10 pm  #24


Re: Back to Barbarians of Lemuria - some different settings/campaigns

Gruntfuttock wrote:

 
Whoever finishes first gets to run next week.

And the race is on!  
Does your wife like GM/DMing?  

I've asked my wife if she would like to give it a try and she replied emphatically - NO.  She says that she has no imagination and doesn't want to even try to do it.  
 

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5/28/2023 3:34 am  #25


Re: Back to Barbarians of Lemuria - some different settings/campaigns

Alison really loves writing and running games – but she did find it scary and daunting at first (as we all did first time out the gate, I’m sure.)
 
She particularly was worried at first about running games for me, as I’ve been a GM for over 40 years. She ran a Call of Cthulhu adventure, many years ago, found the experience stressful, and didn’t run a game again for over 20 years! However, the BoL and Everywhen rules hit her sweet spot for complexity/crunch, so when she tried again, she found the experience much less scary.
 
And as I said to her, it’s your game so you can simplify or drop any rules you don’t like.
 
When she started again, she ran games for me and a dear friend (now sadly deceased) and this was good, as he could be a bit of a handful as a player, so she rapidly had to learn to improvise!
 
I’m so pleased that she runs games now, as I’ve usually been the ‘forever GM’ for my groups over the years and until Alison started running I rarely got a chance to be a player.
 
I can’t believe that your wife has “no imagination”, as I think that you need imagination to play. It might be something that she should at least try once or twice.
 
As you mainly run games adapted from written adventures, perhaps you could buy something for her to run, or find something free for download  from the internet – as long as you don’t read it you’d be good to go. Perhaps you could help by going through chargen with loads of different characters (PCs and NPCs – and nothing to do with the scenario) so she gets that under her belt. And some cheat sheets printed in large font (easier to read if stressed) might help when actually running the game. Then it’s just a case of ripping off the plot from the written adventure and she’d be good to go.
 
I don’t know if you are ‘fantasy only’ gamers, but Alison only runs adventures set from 1900 to 2023. She loves playing sword & sorcery but for some reason she doesn’t want to run it. Perhaps your wife would be more comfortable running a pulp or science fiction game – a genre that you don’t run?
 
Pulp is good for novice GMs, particularly Hollywood pulp a la Indiana Jones. There are quite a few free scenarios available on the web and the look and feel of the genre is well understood by most people. The new BoL Mythic edition of Dicey Tales is slightly delayed by problems Jeff is having with arranging the POD, but it should be available soon on DriveThru. If you have the Legendary Edition of BoL, the earlier LE version of Dicey Tales is available for a reasonable price on DriveThru. (No.1 covers chargen and has two scenarios, No.2 has a bestiary and a scenario.)
 
Or how about something set in the current day in the place where you live? You both know what everything looks like and how things work - and she can arrange for an annoying relative to be eaten by aliens!
 
At the end of the day, only she can say if she wants to run or not. And some people never have the skills to make GMs. However, I think everyone should try it at least twice, to see if they can get past the fear and see if they can GM.
 
And tell her from me – She's a gamer - she does have imagination!


My real name is Steve Hall
 

5/28/2023 5:57 am  #26


Re: Back to Barbarians of Lemuria - some different settings/campaigns

Thank you for the great response.  

I showed it to my wife and she got a kick out of it.  Said that she would think about it.
 

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6/04/2023 2:26 pm  #27


Re: Back to Barbarians of Lemuria - some different settings/campaigns

We played "Death's Cargo" last night (a Beasts & Barbarians adventure converted to BoL).  Really good adventure - got to use the Ship Battle rules from BoL - well, the chase rules part of it, as my wife's character was able to captain her ship and outrun the enemy's ship.

Had some land navigation to do and then the final battle with some mindless servants and the demon creature that was controlling them was an epic battle.  My DM/PC used up all 5 of his HPs and was down to only 2 LB and my wife's PC used 4 out of her 5 HPs and was down to only 6 LB.

They survived - got a good cache (8 crates of the illegal Khav drug) and saved 10 crewmen from becoming mindless servants of the creature.

This ends our two part story arc for these characters.  Her Captain and my DM/PC have their ship and are now looking for someone to buy the drugs from them.  But that is a tale for another time...

We are going back to our Hyborian Age game "The Hammer of Æs".  i'm converting the d20 Mongoose adventure "Ghosts of the Deep" from S&P #27.

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6/05/2023 5:23 am  #28


Re: Back to Barbarians of Lemuria - some different settings/campaigns

Glad to see you're still having fun.

Yesterday we finished the latest run of the Hyborian games I run for my wife Alison.

Captain Aja finally got back to her home port in Zembabwe after sailing halfway around the known world to Khiatn on a trading expedition - having to deal with: Zembabwean gangsters, terror birds, zombies, cultists, giant spiders, Vendhyan thieves and kidnappers, mad Kambujan royalty and allied Deep Ones, Khitan civil servants, a scheming Khitan admiral and spymaster, the God Emperor of Khitan and his court, assassins, and finally a Turanian noble seeking revenge against her boyfriend.

All this and the need to turn a profit!

Planning an Everywhen monster hunting one-shot set in Victorian London as a palate cleanser, before settling on the next short campaign. 


My real name is Steve Hall
 

6/05/2023 8:17 am  #29


Re: Back to Barbarians of Lemuria - some different settings/campaigns

Gruntfuttock wrote:

Captain Aja finally got back to her home port in Zembabwe after sailing halfway around the known world to Khitai on a trading expedition 

Very nice, Khitai is one part of the Hyborian Age world that we have not ventured to.   We are going to spend some time in/around the Western Ocean, then our story arc will take us north to Zingara and neighboring lands.  Eventually (after another 3 adventures that I have planned) we will end up in Aquilonia where I will start to convert Mongoose d20's "Trial of Blood" campaign to BoL.    This should be a pretty epic undertaking (similar to the Red Hand of Doom conversion that I did a few years back).

Of course, things can change and we might move off from the Hyborian Age campaign and spend some time with other campaigns (Jalizar, Erisa, or even The Legacy of the Crystal Shard in Faerun).

The Victorian Age monster hunting story sounds cool - Sherlock Holmes tracks down the Werewolf of London is what I thought when I read that. 

Happy gaming!
 

Last edited by Sigulf (6/05/2023 8:17 am)

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6/05/2023 10:20 pm  #30


Re: Back to Barbarians of Lemuria - some different settings/campaigns

This (long post) is what I posted on MeWe about using the Tricube Tales setting info for inspiration for games – the Victorian monster hunters idea came from this – as detailed in the post. (I think Tricube’s Sharp Knives and Dark Streets micro-setting might be worth you looking at.)
 
At the beginning of the year, I found something interesting on Andy Slack's gaming blog ‘Halfway Station’. (Actually, his blog is often interesting.) He was using a micro-setting from the rpg Tricube Tales to run a city-based fantasy campaign in a D&D type world, but using Savage Worlds rather than Tricube Tales or any version of D&D. As he explained, “This campaign is based on Sharp Knives and Dark Streets [the micro-setting] and uses the city map and setting rules from that.”
 
If you are ever stuck for an idea for a fantasy, science fiction or horror game, you might find looking at one of their micro-settings a real help.
 
Never heard of Tricube Tales? It’s described on DriveThru as “The one-page RPG that doubles up as a micro-setting.” It’s ridiculously rules light.
 
It’s further described as: “Tricube Tales is a generic rules-lite tabletop roleplaying system designed to be fast and portable, making it ideal for pick-up games. It requires little preparation or bookkeeping, and the main PDF can be comfortably read on a smartphone screen.”
 
You can find the Tricube Tales micro-settings on DriveThru and you can either pay around 50 cents for a setting if you want to support the author, or you can download it for free if you prefer. Unless you are going to run Tricube Tales you don’t need the core rules if you are just using it for inspiration for a BoL or EW game.
 
I thought it might be worth looking at what was on offer, to possibly use as inspiration for EW or BoL games when my own creativity tank is running low. So, I got the main rules to see how it worked and looked at some of the – very diverse – micro-settings.
 
Therefore, I get promotional emails from Tricube Tales. And today I got details of their latest offering, ‘Hunters of Victorian London’.
 
As I might be looking for a palate cleanser after my Hyborian game finishes, and as Victorian London is a favourite of mine (and we’ve not visited it in a few years now) I had a look. It might make a good EW one-shot, I think. With just a few dice rolls on the one page setting page I ended up with:
 
1 A vampire buying up property in London
2 A mummy on the rampage
3 Location: a workhouse
4 Location: British Museum
5 Sherlock Holmes
6 Dorian Grey
 
A few more rolls on the details of the hunt gave me:
1 Reanimated corpse
2 Location: bridge or rooftop
3 Dealing with a police investigation
4 And lastly, a twist: a knife
 
All very generic and obvious, I’m sure you’ll agree, but channelling Hammer Horror films, Penny Dreadful, The Mummy, and Gaslight Call of Cthulhu I very rapidly got the bare bones of a game. In a few minutes I came up:
 
Monster hunting organisation: Is there one? Is it official? Do they recruit in the manner of Delta Green?
 
The vampire is a day walker – he visits the British Museum (BM).
 
The BM has just received a new mummy.
 
The mummy seems ‘wrong or out of place’: Wrong sarcophagus? Wrong wrappings? Odd body?
 
The PCs work for the BM: working on the mummy?
 
Vampire wants to resurrect mummy: Is the mummy a vampire?
 
The vampire was an Egyptologist working in Egypt: He/She fell in with a cult, voluntarily became a vamp for power in the cult.
 
Vampire has a crew – mostly Cairene – in London (everyone speaks ancient Egyptian), and several safe houses – both poor and modest/respectable.
 
Vampire’s plan is to locate and steal mummy: resurrect and ‘restore’ in London and then return it to Egypt and the cult! Will befriend/seduce PC working on mummy?
 
The knife is a magic item – and can control or destroy mummy – or both? Who has the knife??
 
Big Development! – Resurrection goes wrong and mummy escapes! (Monster Hunters recruit PCs?) Both the Vampire and the Monster Hunters will try to recover/destroy mummy while being hindered by police investigation.
 
Other developments: Sherlock – might not use, or the police bring him in to help? Dorian Gray – umm…helps the Vampire for kicks? Or is he a snitch for the Monster Hunter organisation? (They let him alone in return for information on London’s supernatural underworld.)
 
A few minutes pondering about the die rolls using the lists on the Tricube Tales setting page got me the above – enough to develop into an Everywhen game with a little more work.
 
Stuck for a game and deadline approaching? Check out a Tricube Tales micro-setting!


My real name is Steve Hall
 

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