Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Eastmark 3: Told By An Idiot, Trust Me

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As I get older, it becomes increasingly apparent that the world was not made for people with knees. No, it was made for some kind of naked lemur with spring-loaded legs and a plenary of cartilage. My knees hurt when it rains, or is about to rain, or rained recently in the recent or distant past, or if it hasn't rained at all. My back hurts when I think about sneezing. When I get up from a seated position I make the kind of pitiable moan that would have a porn director call "Cut! Jesus, are you okay? We're trying to titilate here, you sound miserable, this is not sexy at all."

And so it might seem odd that I really like including the inexorable march of time in my TTRPGs, given the ravages it has decided to burden me with. Maybe you think it's like a car crash victim introducing recklessly sluicing trucks as a constant dungeon feature, or Leonardo DiCaprio including a woman getting older in his D&D campaign.

Pictured: A young woman about to become undateable to a celebrated Hollywood star.

But this post isn't about the savage predations of time (or the predations of Leonard DiCaprio for that matter). It's about structuring the passage of time as a campaign element, both generally and in my Eastmark open-table campaign.

What Can Time Do For You?

I play in a regular streamed game of King Arthur Pendragon run by my friend/whipping-boy Eric Vulgaris. Our campaign began in the year 485 A.D. and is, at the time of this post, just past one hundred episodes in the year 531 A.D. I'm playing Aescewine de Winterbourne-Gunnet, daughter of my first character Gareth de Winterbourne-Gunnet; the landscape of the County of Salisbury is a tangle of relations and rivalries through the decades. And that texture is only possible because of the game's strict adherence to a schedule, to the progression of year after year in a meaningful way.

Pendragon is a game deeply concerned with legacy, and legacy is exactly the thing I want to play with in my Eastmark campaign.

Time ended up being an answer to several questions I had yet to answer, actually. Among them:

  • How do I ensure dedicated players don't dramatically outstrip more casual ones?
  • How do I model PC contributions towards the world?'
  • How do I shore up the natural content limitations of strict 2-3 hour sessions?
  • How do I allow players to express their characters as something more than tomb-grubbing murderrobbers?
In the end, I did the following.

Cap Adventures Per Year
There is a hard cap of 3 adventures per in-game year; these were lightly fluffed as cohering to seasons (spring, summer, autumn). Lightly because inevitably there would be groups in which not everyone had played the same amount. This seemed a reasonable amount of leash to collar dedicated players with.

Downtime Endeavors
After each adventure session, each player was allowed to choose a "Downtime Endeavor". At the end of the year, there was a special opportunity to take two Downtime Endeavors during the nominal winter season (in which adventuring was simply not practicable). Further, there were some Downtime Endeavors only available in the winter. These Downtime Endeavors run the gamut from practical to fluffy, and allowed me to introduce things like Renown (tracking how famous a PC is) and Heirs (the PC you'll play if your current one bites the big one).

The Heirs in particular are how I hope to build a sense of legacy. If a PC dies, their stuff is gone. Renown--political clout they could heave around on behalf of themselves or factions--is gone. Unless the PC has an Heir in which case some of that equipment and clout gets passed along.

"RIP and all, gimme his sword that thing slaps"

Renown and its expenditure, paired with tracking year-by-year, also help me both forecast the changes happening in the region and give players a lever to impact them. The King of Kaltheas wants to make the Eastingway safer? The PCs can help clear out old forts along its course, and contribute Renown towards renovating them. The following year they'll have some shiny new havens from which to start adventuring.

It's also where I hope to handle PC ambitions if they want to build their own strongholds-- this is, after all, an OSR-esque game system. Domain management is not outside its remit though I will admit I'll have to consider how a player-run stronghold impacts the West Marches model of play.

As always, I have stolen shamelessly and without regret from The One Ring 2e.
  • Gather Rumors - PC may ask for new information about an established adventure location, or receive hints towards an undiscovered adventure location.
  • Meet With Faction- A PC completing a task for a Faction must choose this. If they do not have a task from a Faction, they instead receive one.
  • Update Maps - This PC may re-roll one die (theirs or someone else's) in the next Journey they take.
  • Strengthen Fellowship - Gain 1 Bond with another PC who takes this option; additionally PCs may teach each other 1 Song they know.
  • Study Magical Items - Unlock/reveal all magical properties of any acquired items.
  • Learn/Write a Song - Choose a type of song and give it a name; Lay (used in Councils), Song of Victory (used in Combat), Walking-Song (used in Journeys).
  • Carouse - Lose 1d20% of whatever treasure you earned in your previous adventure. During the next winter, gain +1 Renown for each time you chose this Downtime Endeavor.
  • Heal Scars - Lose 1/2 your accrued System Shock. If this is chosen during winter, lose 1 Trauma instead.
  • Designate An Heir (Winter Only) - Cannot be chosen if you have one already. Name a character who will take up your current one's torch if they fall; they can be a relative, a friend, a confidante, a lover, an apprentice etc. Establish their Attributes/Background in the usual way. If your current character dies, you may play this Heir-- they inherit the dead character's equipment along with 10% of their Renown and silver (rounded to nearest whole integer).
  • Raise an Heir (Winter Only) - Cannot be chosen more than 5 times in the course of your character's career. Spend 500 silver and 5xp to give your Heir a roll on the Growth of Learning tables for their Background.
  • Contribute Renown (Winter Only) - You may spend Renown towards a project (community or personal). If there are monetary requirements for the project you may contribute those as well.
Those should give you an idea of how I'm structuring the passage of time via player-oriented undertakings. Will it work? I don't know! Why would I know? I'm not a guru, I'm not Mister Mystic over here with a crystal ball. How dare you, how dare you expect so much of me. I write on this goddamn blog to please you and you're coming after me like this? You punk, you disreputable dog.

Anyway, next post I'm probably going to have some thoughts on the sessions I've run along with organizing information from those sessions.

Thursday, August 25, 2022

Eastmark 2: Courtier? I Barely Know 'Er!

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Social encounters can be tricky, and not just because I used to unironically wear fedoras all the way through high school and even thereafter had a pair of mutton chops that were impressive in the same way as a seven-lane pileup.

No, social encounters are tricky because they often are flattened along a single vector in a way combat oriented encounters aren't.

It's not unusual for an RPG system to have a personal-scale set of combat mechanics which are distinct from a warband or army-scale set of combat mechanics. The scale was recognized as dramatically changing the context of the fight, such that it needed to be reframed with a more appropriate resolution structure. Scale matters! If you owe the bank $10,000 you have a problem, if you owe the bank $10 million they have a problem.

I don't often see social encounters suitably scaled up. There are exceptions-- Miseries & Misfortunes has a clever reframing of social encounters which accounts for scale. For example, an intimate seductive approach to convincing someone works very well when it's just you two in the room with one another, and very poorly if you're publishing it in the newspaper.

"To the Editor of the London Times: you up?"

For "The Promise of the Eastmark", I wanted to try and capture a scale of social encounter that isn't uncommon in a lot of fantasy fiction-- the audience with the king. Gandalf before the Steward of Gondor asking to light the beacons, Malini entreating Aditya to take up the revolutionary cause, Tyrion Lannister on trial before the Iron Throne. Basically anything that could tick the following:

  • There is a hierarchy, figure of authority, or significant power dynamic at play. The Steward of Gondor rules, well, Gondor. Aditya has legitimate claim to the Imperial throne, etc. I'd use this system for parlaying on a battlefield with an opposing general, or speaking with some eldritch entity's squid-faced envoy.
  • There is a definite, explicit, or material request to be made. Tyrion wants a verdict of innocence, Malini wants Aditya to lead the rebellion, my mother wanted me to stop eating so many crayons. The more vague the PC desires, the less apt this subsystem is; they must want something, and their audience must be with the person or court which can give it to them.
  • The request's benefits/drawbacks extend beyond the mere actors present. Tyrion's verdict has public and notorious consequence, Gondor really needs Rohan's aid in the days to come. In some way, the people present are not just themselves-- they may be emblems, representatives, or beholden to some constituency. Alternatively, the request is made on behalf of a nation, a group, an army, a school. It's not just two people jawbonin'.
Having a subsystem for this kind of thing will allow me to add a vectors not present in the West Marches formula, namely the social dungeons and the advancement of safe havens thereby. By finding new cities and cajoling their local authorities, players have the opportunity to open up new and more convenient havens at which to start adventure sessions.

"Hell yeah, grubby strangers, rob my dad's tomb lmao."

Procedure
1. Establish Request & Resistance
2. Perform Introduction
3. Make Arguments
4. Determine Outcome

1. Establish Request & Resistance
One of the prerequisites to using this subsystem is the idea that there is a material, tangible Thing to be granted. It could be an object, permission to use something, go somewhere, it could be material aid in terms of men or money or food or magic. What's important is that the PCs outline what they want in the best of all worlds and articulate that clearly. This is not a negotiation in the sense that it involves a lot of back-and-forth-- this is more formal, more drenched in ritual and hierarchy and protocol and social standing.

Once the PCs do that, the GM must decide what the "Resistance" to the request and therefore how many successes the PCs will need to accrue in order to get it. Below are the benchmarks I've use.
  • Reasonable (Resistance 3): The grantor stands to lose nothing from the request, there is no real risk to granting it, or there is conspicuous and equivalent value being exchanged.
  • Bold (Resistance 6): The grantor does not stand to gain much, gains less than the requester, or must make some small sacrifice/take some moderate risk.
  • Outrageous (Resistance 9): The request involves significant danger or sacrifice on the grantor's part; they have nothing to gain and much to lose.
If the request is too small, or the grantor doesn't have the power to grant the request, don't bother with this subsystem.

2. Perform Introduction
As I keep saying, this is meant to frame a very formal event-- this is not a casual social encounter. One of the PCs must be nominated to introduce the group and what their request. You don't have to make this diegetic but you also don't not have to make this diegetic. Follow your bliss. There are only so many ways to make this kind of formal address, so have the PC select one of the following options to roll.

The outcome of this roll--the success of the introduction--will determine how many attempts the PCs have to overcome the Resistance. A poor introduction may beget no leeway for the party.
  • Awe (Charisma/Lead): The PC invokes majesty, inspiration, heroism. The emphasis is on how impressive they are, their titles and deeds, their holdings, their friends in high places, their bravado and chutzpah. You cannot obscure, hide, or misled as to your identity or intentions.
  • Courtesy (Intelligence/Connect): The PC leans heavily on the rituals and protocols of the situation; formal etiquette and proper observances. The emphasis is on doing things by the letter, by absolute social expectation. While you can't lie directly, you can omit and maybe elide. Unfortunately being super duper formal will make you sound insincere to a hostile audience.
  • Riddle (Wisdom/Perform): The PC invokes an aura of mystery, enigma, or uncertainty. The emphasis is on spinning a good story, an intriguing veneer, as to your identity and intentions. This kind of introduction can be baldfaced lying! But its disingenuous nature means you must treat a Partial (see Outcome) as though it were a Disaster.
On a result of 2-5, the PCs only have as many attempts as the Resistance of the request. 6-7, they have Resistance+1, 8-9 they have Resistance+2, 10+ they have Resistance+3.

3. Make Arguments
This is the most freeform part of the scene. Players take turns describing how their character contributes towards the request-- what are they doing that would influence the grantor? From this, the GM will decide an appropriate Ability Score / Skill pairing to test. There's a lot you can do in this step, like framing someone's test as a flashback to earlier actions. A strict rhetorical argument might call for Intelligence/Convince, while singing an appropriate song for the occasion could be Charisma/Perform.
  • Everyone in the party must contribute once before anyone can contribute twice.
  • No Ability Score / Skill pairing may be used twice in a row. Note, however, that you could use the same Ability Score with a different Skill, or vice versa.
On a 2-5, no successes are accrued. On 6-9 one success, 10-11 two success, 12+ three successes.

4. Outcomes
There are essentially only three ways this scene can end.
  • Full - Players scored successes equal or higher than the Resistance - The grantor gives the PCs what they requested, largely in the manner they requested it. Give yourself some wiggle room if you need to either temper expectations or reward particularly clever play.
  • Partial - Players scored at least half Resistance in successes - The grantor imposes conditions on the request, or counter-offers with a mitigated version of the request. Alternatively, the grantor gracefully declines the request, allowing the PCs to attempt again when some circumstance has changed or time has passed.
  • Disaster - Players did not even manage half Resistance - The grantor tells them to pound sand, suck eggs, eat dirt, make like a tree, or fuck off. No counter-offer, no grace, full prejudice.
Something important to note is that you should resist a back-and-forth negotiation in the case of a Partial. Remember that no one in this scene is just themselves-- they are authorities, proxies, envoys, or emblems of something larger. At the end of the day, PCs need to either take the counter-offer or leave it. It would be entirely inappropriate to try to wheedle and weasel the King after they've made up their mind.

And that's that! Next post I'm going to tackle how I'm structuring Downtime, between-session activity, and the passage of time in my West March.

Thursday, August 18, 2022

Eastmark 1: Play A La Mode

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One of the first things I think about when preparing for a campaign is what, fundamentally, I want to be arbitrating. If I'm to take the seat as a mediator of rules and outliner of context, what rules and what context? Sometimes this is very literally what rules I want to mediate-- I refer to the previous post and my decision to run "The Promise of the Eastmark" using Worlds Without Number. This is a purely mechanical joy. There is a texture, a mouthfeel, that I want on my tongue and so I am sticking a hefty book by Kevin Crawford in my mouth.

"Oo 'ay not 'ike it 'ut thif if 'eak woleplaying"

The consideration is also one of Mode of Play. This is a phrase that I picked up while reading some indie RPG designers' blogs and contextually means "please sweet Christ buy my game you don't need another D&D sourcebook please I need to feed my child". Its other usage is to describe the ecosystem of gameplay that players engage in-- not just combat, for example, but the reasons one gets into combat and how combat contributes/influences later game activities. The Combat Mode of Play is some game element or activity seen through the lens of how it slots into/accretes with other elements/activity.

What do you want to do in a campaign, and how do the things you want to do in a campaign relate to one another?

One of the appeals for me in the West Marches style was that it carried very intuitive and very distilled modes of play. Players roved out from a place of safety to a place of danger, and faced challenges on the hope of material profit. These modes are mechanically supported by a game like D&D (which Robbins' campaign used).

My own West March is largely adopting these (one of the reasons I ended up picking Worlds Without Number over The One Ring), but I decided I wanted to change how the "journey through danger" mode of play was systemically supported. I also decided I wanted to add a "formal audience before an authority figure" mode of play.

Journey to the Center of the Rulebook

In the traditional D&D-esque expression, overland travel is frequently a function of a) resource management and b) distraction.

Rules are given for how far a group of PCs can travel in a given time period, which underpins what resources they might need to expend (rations, water). Along the way--influenced by things like terrain, ambient danger, knowledge of the area--the group may encounter procedurally generated "random encounters". And in the classic mode these can be very varied-- from a gang of hostiles looking for your milk money, to more gonzo encounters involving lost wizards or uncovered tombs.

This is a feature, not a bug! In the D&D-esque expression, there's a lot of fun to be had in being wholly diverted from your planned course by a random encounter. Maybe you realize you can hunt down the camp of the hobgoblins who tried to ambush you, instead of delve into the Cave of Moist Wonders. Maybe your encounter with Plopdick the Whizzarb has left one of your party members transformed into a cabbage and you need to find a way to break the curse, or at least a good recipe for cabbage soup.
Plopdick is a real piece of work.

But in the context of my West March, I don't think it's desirable. I really want to emphasize adventure locations as the source of Interesting Things; they contain the lost histories of the various peoples of the Eastmark, the treasures of past legitimacy, the tools of absent tyrants. At the same time, I don't want to lose a mode of play which thematically imparts a sense of cost and difficulty to roving into the wilderness. It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing how many fanfics about you and your gardener will get written.

Thankfully, I'd already been looking at The One Ring and did my best to absolutely fuck up that system's elegant mechanics for overland travel. Foundational to them are World Without Number's "System Strain". Most usually, a PC accrues the unfortunately abbreviated SS by receiving healing (magical or mundane), and maxing it out means you can't receive anymore.

For this subsystem, the only major change I made to the core rules was in how System Strain is lost-- no longer do you lose 1 SS per good night's rest. Instead, you have to spend a season in a safe haven not adventuring (this, conveniently, helps me cap/pace players who might otherwise dominate the schedule).

If you read the mechanics below and go 'oh wow, Colin, as handsome as you are this is pretty baldfaced in stealing from The One Ring' then go fuck yourself, you're absolutely correct, I burn with unmitigated shame in the long dark of the night.

The System
Procedure
1. Set Course
2. Assign Roles
3. Marching Roll
4. Event Roll(s)
5. Finish the Journey

1. Set Course
The PCs should physically draw their course, via hexes, on the map. There are two reasons for this. The first is that some trips are simply too much for one sitting-- if they're tracing their way across the continent, maybe they've bitten off more than they can chew. The second is that you can seed some of your Events (see #4) geographically; if the party passes through certain geography, there may be unique challenges there.

2. Assign Roles
There are four roles in a group. The Guide makes Marching Rolls and little else; their successes will speed the group towards their destination with less System Strain accrued. The other roles are Scout, Look-out, and Hunter; setting aside the obvious fictional implications, their mechanical function is to tackle Events. Which role they tare will determine which Saving Throw they'll be tossing.

Only one person can be Guide, and that's the only role they can occupy. All the other roles must be filled, but players may double-up on them, especially if you've got someone in the party like Plopdick who has nothing to contribute but woe.

3. Marching Roll
The Guide rolls a Wisdom/Lead check to see how many hexes of travel before the party encounters an Event. On 2-5 it's two hexes, 6-7 three hexes, 8-9 four hexes, 10-11 five hexes, and 12+ six hexes.

Note that this means that the party will encounter an Event, it's simply a matter of how far along they are when they do! For "Promise of the Eastmark", I set ~15 miles per hex at 30 miles per day (on foot, normal terrain). That means that with the very worst guide possible (Plopdick) you're getting Events every day. With the map I'm using, most points of interest are 5-10 days of travel.

4. Event Roll(s)
Determine which role the Event is targeting and therefore which Saving Throw they're using.
  • 1-2 Scout, Physical Saving Throw with a bonus from the higher of Exert or Survive
  • 3-4 Look-out, Mental Saving Throw with a bonus from the higher of Notice or Survive
  • 5-6 Hunters, Evasion Saving Throw with a bonus from the higher of Sneak or Survive
You'll note that having Survive makes you better suited at any of the roles, which feels right for those interested in being dedicated woodsmen. If there are multiple people in the targeted role, you may choose who the Event targets.

The generic Events are below, but as I said there's a great opportunity to toss in unique ones if you want. Roll 1d12. Where noted, the entire party accrues the listed System Strain
  • 1, Despair, 2 System Strain. If the PC fails their Saving Throw, everyone also gets a "Misfortune" (metacurrency I'm adding which gives the GM re-rolls)
  • 2-3 Poor Choices, 2 System Strain. If the PC fails their Saving Throw, they get a Misfortune.
  • 4-7 Exhaustion, 2 System Strain. If the PC fails their Saving Throw, they get +1 System Strain and add a day to the journey.
  • 8-9 Shortcut, 1 System Strain. If the PC succeeds their Saving Throw, subtract a day from the journey.
  • 10 Chance Meeting, 1 System Strain. If the PC succeeds their Saving Throw, no one accrues System Strain for this Event.
  • 11 Terrible Misfortune, 3 System Strain. If the PC fails their Saving Throw, they are "Frail" (condition in Worlds Without Number that makes hitting 0hp even more fraught than usual) until they get some proper rest and relaxation.
  • 12 Joyful Sight, 0 System Strain. If the PC succeeds their Saving Throw, everyone gets 1 Fortune (metacurrency I'm adding which gives the PCs re-rolls).
These Events should be handled lightly, more like a montage than a proper scene. When I've run it, I've asked the players to help narrate the fictional context of the mechanical outcomes; "Why did you become Frail?" "I shouldn't have eaten that rabbit jerky I found in my boot".

5. Finish the Journey
Once you've arrived at your destination hex, everyone in the party gets a chance to roll Constitution/Survive (DC 10, but this drops to 8 if they've brought a mule). On a success, they lose 2 System Strain they've accrued over the trip.

If they have a horse of some kind (war horse, draft horse), this automatically succeeds. If they specifically have a riding horse, they instead lose 4 System Strain instead. I intend for this to give players a reason to purchase these animals, bond with them emotionally, and weep hot tears of rage when they forget how much owlbears like the taste of horseflesh.

This is a pretty long post, so I'm going to use a new one to talk about the subsystem for formal audiences with figures of authority!

Next Post

Monday, August 15, 2022

The West Marches But In The East This Time

Something being a "classic" can be tricky. A lot of the time we want it to be a shorthand for "venerably good"; The Godfather or Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure are both old movies that are fantastic in exactly the same way. Sometimes you get an insincere invocation, like "Classic Ragu". As though that ketchup-y nonsense has ever held the same respectable gravitas as Alex Winter in a midriff revealing t-shirt.

Pictured: Michael and Vito Corleone

It often comes down to taste-- Bill & Ted is a classic movie for some people, but among people I'm never going to invite to my house because they're garbage Bill & Ted isn't a good movie.

Among TTRPGs, there are similarly contentious classics-- is Tomb of Horrors actually good? Or is it the adventure module equivalent to slapping your friend's balls as a prank?

I suppose it comes down to context, which is a way to say something true without saying something helpful.

In any case, I had the urge to actually give a TTRPG classic a try in order to see whether I'd end up enjoying it (like Bill & Ted) or not (like the person I slapped in the balls because they didn't like Bill & Ted). The classic in this case was a West Marches.

For the unfamiliar, or those with tragically broken fingers that can't click the above link, a West Marches is a style of running games written about by Ben Robbins (author of Microscope and Kingdom) which placed a premium on player agency within a carefully curated sandbox. His (explicit) ambitions were pretty simple:

  1. No regular schedule; the GM would outline their availability, players would schedule sessions
  2. No regular party; players were free to and (by virtue of an irregular schedule) often had to mix it up between themselves.
  3. No regular plot; adventure was something to be Found Out There, not prompted by a bunch of dwarves ruining your afternoon tea.

As is often the case, some people have mistaken the West Marches for its particulars-- losing the dark magical forest for the animated bloodthirsty trees. Robbins decided to support his three ambitions by crafting a fictional situation in which players were on a frontier, in a city which would never offer adventure but which geographically gave them access to plenty of adventure locations. Robbins also off-loaded things like mapping and chronicling on the players; they shared (or didn't share) information among themselves, identified new dungeons and regions for exploration etc.

All of those certainly work towards his three ambitions, they're the expression of his West Marches idea, but I'm not sure they're the idea itself.

In any case, my current schedule is such that a West Marches--and all that it implies for things like session prep--is very attractive.

Attractive like Michael Corleone

In the coming weeks I'm going to try and write about how I've been setting this up and running it, where I break from the "standard" West Marches template, and how it's working for me. Because I'm a handsome contrarian, I've called this campaign "The Promise of the Eastmark"*.

The first step was deciding what RPG system I'd use to run it.

The System

My initial idea to run a West Marches was actually after having read The One Ring 2e. Its system for overland journeys was more than a little intriguing, hitting as it does a medium ground between the granular ration-tracking of OD&D and a handwaving montage. Similarly, it systemizes a kind of social encounter that I've rarely seen systemized explicitly: the council before the king. It's a staple in a lot of fantasy literature. The moment the plucky band of heroes stands before some figure of authority in a formal context with a request, plea, or bargain.

Ultimately, despite the joy these subsystems sparked in me, I decided against using TOR 2e for two reasons:

  1. Barrier of entry is higher. Systemically (it uses mechanical resolutions that are not widely proliferated and might therefore not be as intuitive) and literally (it is not free and costs money).
  2. Barrier of integration is higher. My love for the subsystems is overwhelmed by the fact that it is a game not inherently designed for things which aren't Lord of the Rings. And further, it's got plenty of mechanical assumptions about the kind of campaign being played (limited group, conventionally generated plot).

My decision on system eventually had me land on Worlds Without Number. Its barrier of entry was lower because it is free and (much as it makes my mouth taste like ash to say) it resembles D&D. Anyone who has played any edition of D&D will be easier to on-board. And given D&D's cultural penetration, that is a lot more people than have played The One Ring.

The barrier of integration was also lower. Beyond the ability to draw on basically any D&D material published from AD&D or earlier, it's also a Sin Nomine product. Kevin Crawford is notorious for pumping out stuff specifically aimed at sandboxes-- he makes toolboxes filled to bursting with nubbins and gubbins that work for preparing, stocking, and running this mode of play.

In the next post I'm going to talk about how I'm structuring the players' mode of play, and probably a bit about homebrew/adaptations.

*Because east is the opposite of west, get it? Just a little joke, a little gag, a gaff, a little ribald japery for ya, some casual linguistic chicanery as you've come to expect from this blog.

P.S. For any reader afraid that I've forgotten about or abandoned chronicling my BattleTech RPG campaign, I haven't. Circumstances are just such that I've literally not been able to have a session for it in a month and a half.

Journeys in the Eastmark

Eastmark 8: Based and Worldpilled

It's been awhile since I wrote an update on this blog. Eastmark is still humming along! It's going great, which is a source of treme...