A little background to start:
Like many, I found Pendragon through RuneQuest which I began running with 2nd edition back in the 1980s. When I saw first edition Pendragon, I was sold immediately – but not most of the people I played with. Only one person from my group back then really seemed to get into it so it got shelved. I picked up some things over the years (particularly the big hardcover of the GPC) but that was it. However, with the plague and the lockdown that one guy who was in
Tonight's blog is about writing adventures, as compared to reviewing existing ones.
Tonight, I'll take my cue from the late Ursula K LeGuin for inspiration.
I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.
- Ursula K LeGuin
A tabletop adventure has got to capture the imagination. But it's also got to draw in the players. It's their time and energy, and the GM has got to give them something to challenge the
So, this being the last Saturday of the month of October 2023, I felt it was time to go back to Meeros and environs for another adventure. Last time, it was Sariniya's Curse; this time, it's Xamoxis' Cleansing.
Behold, a map.
For
For some of us, this is the first time we've seen where Meeros sits, as well as the lands and seas surrounding the city.
What's this adventure about?
First of all, Xamoxis' Cleansing is some sort of MacGuffin. A desideratum. A Maltese Fa
Parts Per Million is a small publisher with a speciality.
Solo roleplaying.
From their DTRPG page:-
Parts Per Million is a specialist creator of Solo Roleplaying tools. I believe that moving between your chosen Oracle and your favorite game should be seamless, the entire experience should feel like one game.
The solo supplements you will find here are intended to be an entry point into solo play. Every soloist builds their own set of preferred tools. These supplements will ge
And so it's time for another review of a Mythras adventure. This one is the first adventure to be attached to a Mythic title. In this case, it's Mythic Constantinople, a title I aim to review at some point in the future.
For right now, let's take a look at this adventure by Mark Shirley.
By the way, just in case, if you're planning on running this adventure, best to have a copy of Mythras and Mythic Constantinople handy.
The opening paragraph of the blurb lays the story on the sho
Tonight, and for the next couple of months, this blog will be looking into the adventures created for Mythras and satellite games. This includes the Meeros adventures, the Luther Arkwright adventures, and the adventures for Mythic Constantinople and Lyonesse.
We're going to start with Sariniya's Curse, the introductory adventure designed to allow the readers to test out the combat system in a dungeon crawl.
Behold, the Mark of Sariniya.
Actually, the glyph comes out with a bi
This month, I will be looking at Mythras Factions, The Design Mechanism's most recent title for Mythras.
This will be a short review, as it is a short book. I'm also declaring personal interest, since I both proofed it and supplied material for the book, hence the multiple credits on the inside cover.
Mythras Factions
Only this week, I received my complimentary author's copy of this book. It's a slim volume, like a magazine with glossy, colourful pages.
The illustrations by A
The main characters for 1604 are:
Rana Allmother, Busybody and Terrible Cook, Charmer of Men and Vingans
Forshator Quilwright, Scribe and Legalist
Glenning Stoneheart, Cowardly Bard
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1604
Babies
The Tenth entered the city of Furthest late last year. The Dark Season was temperate compared to Sartar, and the darkness less impenetrable due to the glow of the Red Moon. You hear tales of a Lunar defeat in the Holy Country, but war seems farther away now. Now
I'm taking a step back from blogging on most of my social media.
It'll be my birthday on June 30th, and in the runup to my birthday I'm planning on doing nothing but reading, maybe ocarina playing, anything but hunching over a laptop, sweating the reluctant words out onto the screen.
There will be a sea change to the scheduling of this blog. From July 2023, it now goes out once a month, on the last Saturday of each month. In the case of the next blog, that will be July 29, 2023 at arou
This post is going to wrap up what we have covered over the past few months. There are a number of TDM titles I have yet to dig through and review ... I do hope nobody minds if I give Mythic Polynesia a wide berth - and I'll be moving on with the next blog post.
I also have news about the blog going forward.
Modern Mythras
We began with an introduction to the concept. It began here.
We moved on to embrace modern Mythras' characters, and the cultures they came from.
We th
This is the penultimate Modern Mythras post, and I intend to wrap up the subject with one last look at Gamesmastering before I summarise everything in the next post - then take a one week hiatus.
In a recent post, I posed four sources of drama and conflict: Person versus Person, Person versus Self, Person Versus Nature, and Person Versus Society. This blog just expands on those four sources of drama, and presents ideas which are intended to draw the players in to the conflict.
Make It
Just a short note on the last two Modern Mythras posts. I'm scheduling them to go out on Sunday 18 June and Sunday 25 June.
And then I'm taking a short break.
Drama is the key to Games Mastering in any Mythras setting. In most fantasies, the goals are pretty simple: there's some healing herb to cure the King who's fallen to some poison, or it's a McGuffin with the magical power to stop some weird storm, or the characters have to drop by some bloody wizard's Black and Evil Tower In The East and kill a guy.
And that's it. It's a Thing, or a Task. Do that, and you get your Experience Rolls.
Modern Mythras is a bit different. There are any numbe
Adventure is adventure, so - according to custom - every adventure should be the same, right? There’s a dungeon, and an evil wizard’s tower, and an army rising up from the East, and only this bunch of idiots stands in their way, and …
So how come adventures like these utterly fail to whip my cream?
Because they’re not really adventures.
They’re computer programs.
Your characters are the code; the mooks, monsters and the final BBEG are just input; and treasures are just output
This blog will be wrapping up the whole Modern Mythras thing with a look at Games Mastery.
The GM's Role
You, as the Games Master, have an enviable task ahead of you. Your job is to come up with a world for the characters to inhabit, enemies to oppose, and a story to keep the players engaged. You are also, as the responsible host for the game, tasked with keeping the players occupied and working together to maximise the shared sense of enjoyment and engagement around the table.
To
The end of this series of Modern Mythras is upon us. I can feel it.
It's just today, May 27th, and the four Saturdays in June. I'm taking a one week hiatus on July 1, the day after my birthday. Incidentally, I'll be taking a one week break from all of my blogs from that day, including The Spiral Room on Wordpress.
Just asking for some feedback from you tonight. What would you like to see included in, among other things, the Mythras Encounter Generator? More cops - uniformed, Detective,
Presenting the next couple of modern characters - the police!
This week, uniformed generic beat cops, and veteran Sergeants.
Beat Cop - https://mythras.skoll.xyz/enemy_template/11327/
Sergeant - https://mythras.skoll.xyz/enemy_template/11357/
The main characters for 1603 are:
Aralla Brightspear, the Proud Huntress, Apostate Sun-Domer, Initiate of Mal (Daughter of Yelmalio and Sedenya)
Rana Allmother, Busybody and Terrible Cook, Charmer of Men and Vingans
Helma Quick-Handed, Herbalist, Healer, Doesn't Get Jokes
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1603: Entering Furthest
A Death in the Camp
The Maboder begin 1603 in temporary camps outside the walls of Furthest, as parties within the city negotiate over where to settle the Tr
Tonight's post is another modern NPC encounter, this time from guest contributor Hannu Kokko himself, designer and developer of the Mythras Encounter Generator!
Say hello to the Typical Modern Period Goon, your basic thug that you can drop in on your characters in any modern game: Luther Arkwright, After The Vampire Wars, Destined and even Worlds United.
Thanks, hkokko!
https://mythras.skoll.xyz/enemy_template/11341/
I maintain a fiction blog called The Spiral Room on Wordpress. Two of my blog's modern setting stories are Den & Lauren and The Chaotician. Here are the main protagonists of these stories, statted up for Modern Mythras.
Den & Lauren
A long-running story of a weird, doomed, but passionate romance between Dennis Thompson, a former student, and Lauren Tanaka, a slightly more mature woman who is married to a Japanese businessman, Isao Tanaka.
Theirs is a passionate, open relat
