Session Reports


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Chronicles of a 2 year long Lamentations game of demonic lore, fae magic and gothic horror. Click the image to view the Halls of the Dead.

The campaign continued but work made me fall behind on session reports. Maybe someday I'll write a summary. It ended with Odin manifesting and tearing half of England out of the ground before flipping it over and smashing it into the earth. It was fun.
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One-Shots & Other Stuff

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Running Vermis; or "oracular meta-fiction as roleplaying setting"

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How's that for an enticing pretentious theory/tip post? Vermis & Vermis 2 are sensational, aesthetically rich and inspiring game books. They are, if you're unfamiliar, "game guides for games that don't exist"- written as picture and lore-heavy strategy guides for old pixelated dungeon-crawlers like Stonekeep and Eye of the Beholder. They take a lot of inspiration visually and tonally from Dark Souls and the bleak, gothic action rpg genre popular since the 2010s. If you're curious, I have reviews of both Vermis 1: Lost Dungeons and Forbidden Woods and Vermis 2: Mist & Mirrors which should give a pretty clear picture. How, though, are you supposed to actually use these as gamebooks? There are a few challenges: They are systemless, using only vague stats with no explanation  They are vague, hinting at the world and its denizens rather than instructing you They are disorganized, functioning as a puzzle for the reader to piece together while flipping t...
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3 Vermis Session Reports In Brief, with notes on running in different systems

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Finding the right system: Systemless adventures are nothing new, many statless bestiaries and one-page dungeons exist. They are generally assumed to use some dialect of the OSR Rosetta Stone or simple NuSR game. There are definitely things to take into account, however: you will want a low-powered or dangerous system, with a magic and skill system that is either generic or highly flavored toward Vermis's tone. Having run it several times, here are some suggestions: Session 1: Lamentations of the Flame Princess, heavily houseruled Location: Pauper's Catacombs                         Party: 4 level 6 characters I ran the Pauper's Catacombs as a "side-shot" in my campaign (when too many players are absent for a "real" session), using our regular characters with the rule that characters won't die, but suffer consequences as a result of these semi-canon adventures (i.e. missing limbs instead of death)....
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XENO Minimalist Sci-Fi Horror RPG Review (w/ bonus Xeno mission objectives!)

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XENO is a minimalist, pamphlet-sized RPG by Caligaes, where players are the alien threat, serving “MOTHER” and eviscerating the anthropomorphic humans and aliens most games would place you in the boots of. It’s inspired by sci-fi horror classics such as Alien, John Carpenter’s The Thing , Carrion and the X-COM video games. Its mechanics entirely use d4 die pools with few stats, quick resolution, and nearly no math. XENO currently consists of a core pamphlet, a “Victimary” add-on of Z-KOM soldier enemies, and the 36-page HENS & CHICKS module, written in zine format. I was kindly provided a review copy of these materials, and the game will have a BackerKit campaign soon with a physical release and more content. One side- full combat rules on the left. The core XENO pamphlet is a single tri-fold that looks great in black and white or color. It covers, in minimal but evocative text, concept, character class & stats, objectives, combat & defense, and nemeses, referred to as ...
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Vermis: Lost Dungeons and Forbidden Woods RPG artbook review (w/ bonus Goblin Knight stats!)

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Your console boots up. You switch the input to TV03. Color bars flash, static fizzles. The CRT scanlines reveal the words Vermis: Lost Dungeons and Forbidden Woods . MIDI synth music issues forth, soft and sinister --what we would call Dungeon Synth today, but what was mysterious and unnamed in childhood-- fades in, filling the dark room lit only by the glow of the screen and the power button of your console. A jarring flash occurs, with the words Which flesh is your flesh? appearing, briefly, before you are given the prompt Press Start to Enter the Darkness . Vermis (volume 1, with more to come?) is a guide to a game that never existed. It’s a lo-fi dark fantasy action RPG, with Dark Souls being an easy point of comparison, but of the era of Eye of the Beholder grid-based movement and sprite-based Doom engine graphics but with an off-putting layer of grime. In those days, a guide book would sometimes contain a world unto itself, with the world lore, character options, and select ...
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Mork Borg Session: Rotblack Sludge

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The Accursed Den (but upside down) Rotblack Sludge is the introductory adventure included in the Mork Borg core book. It's well-suited to a one-shot, as are the ones created by Mork Borg's DNGNGN . I ran it for 3 players, using 2 characters each in case of a high body count. This report will include spoilers, obviously.  The players: Kelly Quinn Dylan Our heroes:   Quaker Mary the Dark Traveler. Occult Herbmaster, cowardly and prone to substance abuse. (Kelly) Doctor Dizzy the escaped cultist. Esoteric Hermit, alcoholic and extremely loud with a phlegm problem. (Kelly) Dun Kirk the Zweihander-wielding Gutterborn Scum. Wasteful, ruthless, and stutters when he lies (constantly). (Quinn) Roman the repugnant. Esoteric Hermit, vindictive and lazy. (Quinn) Chastity Goodfellow the Rotten Nihilist. Occult Herbmaster, former slave of a witch, shrewd and giggly. Has 4 monkey companions named Caligula, Nero, Ivan, and Mary, Queen of Scots. (Dylan) *Scream of a dying man* (the actual soun...
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The faded luster of Mork Borg: Reflections on game aesthetics and tone (w/ bonus Goblin Golem!)

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  Long ago, I reviewed Mork Borg quite favorably. I was young, then, and naive. After playing MB a fair few times, I found it to be quite unlike what I'd hoped. I didn't think I'd ever write this post, because I prefer to move forward and focus primarily on positive reviews, but I've been feeling pretty cold towards MB for a while now, and since I love Borgs Pirate and Cy_, it seemed important. Given that information, it can't be the system itself that I don't like- Cy_ & Pirate are fantastic. It's not the aesthetic, necessarily, at least not in whole- though the vivid high-contrast chaos is a more natural fit for Cy_Borg, it's also a part of Mork Borg's identity and why I loved it in the first place.  It's the tone. Frankly, Mork Borg isn't up to the task of more than wacky, low-stakes one-shots, at least in my experience. It's inherently goofy, partly on purpose and partly by virtue of its utter insistence on grimdarkness. "But...
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Vermis 2: Mist & Mirrors Review (w/ bonus Scooby Doo Hallway portals!)

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The dim light of a single bulb illuminates the messy stacks of dusty boxes in your attic. Treasures await. You hone in on what you seek. The lid of the foot locker creaks open on its damaged hinges. A rag of stray webbing clings to the interior, and the spider lays dead atop the messy stack of comics and roleplaying modules. Peeking out is the video game guide you seek, Vermis II: Mist & Mirrors . The rediscovery of Vermis ignited your curiosity, and you thought of the sequel you bought but never remember playing. You can't find the game disc in the foot locker. Good enough for now, you think, I can dig through the guide and pick up a copy later. You sit down on a cardboard box, flipping the cover open.   The knells of the bell echo along the endless corridors. The mist engulfs everything. Those glassy eyes that chase you wherever you go are none but your own. You eagerly devour the age-faded pages, losing track of time in the quiet attic, finding yourself in the world of th...
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The LotFP d6 Skill System

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My chief design philosophy, and the way I play at the table can be summed up as "Memorable, Minimal, Metal." I don't like to juggle a lot of rules. The main elements of OSR games are combat and skill rolls. Combat rolls are pretty straightforward, so we're going to take a look the d6 skill system works, problems that may arise from it and how to solve those problems. As someone who grew up with 2nd edition AD&D I was used to skills being incredibly granular and using a lot of different methods of resolution. It seemed natural to me, having first encountered that approach, that complexity and verisimilitude were the best rules philosophy. Moving on to 3e, it was better (blasphemy!), but there was still a skill for everything and they tended to discourage creativity through their strict codification of what was possible with or without a given skill. By comparison, the d6 skill system is much more general, open-ended and quick at the table. Description and gam...
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Even simpler d6 saves- Swords & Wizardry style Single Saving Throw

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So I decided I wanted to make all saves in my game use d6 instead of d20; then somebody pointed out Swords and Wizardry has a simple system that gives each class a single save. It's something I had considered including, but didn't want to destroy the sacred cow of the 5 save system in the same post I destroyed the d20 roll. But it's a great idea! Give each class their save- they all progress at the same rate (1/level) anyway under S&W, which of course fits well with my math. Every 3 levels, they gain a point. Some of the classes get bonuses to certain categories of saves (Magic-Users versus Magic and Magical Devices, Thieves versus Devices, for example). Easy. All I had to do was make sure it was faithful to LotFP's starting values, which I did by finding the average of the 5 saves at level 1 for each class, then adjusting that to my d6 ranges. Also, Swords & Wizardry uses race in addition to class, so Dwarfs, Elves and Halflings don't have a save ...
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Dark Lord Blood, Servant of Satan

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Inspired by this compilation of old Satanic Panic videos from the Found Footage Festival, featuring a fly brother by the name of Dark Lord Blood.   Once upon a time, there was a kind, sensitive child named Christian. He came from a poor family who worked a farm that never seemed to be able to produce more than just enough to survive another winter. Knowing that there was no future they could give their son, his parents found a sympathetic butcher with no children of his own who agreed to take Christian as an apprentice alongside his other young ward, Blake.   Alas, his master favored Blake, following tradition and respecting his longer term of service. Christian was heartbroken and could take no more. He fled from his village, desperate for a way to prove himself, or perhaps to plot revenge on Blake, who had bullied him in secret and taken the only chance Christian had to raise his station in life and provide for his parents. It was not long before the young ...
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