Not much in terms of live gaming this week, though I played another session of DW with an epic battle (details ahead). GotEXP is seeing a PbP revival with some games, I got some new, freelance work, and only five days remain until the new, season premiere of Doctor Who! Coincidentally, it's the date of my mother's birthday, and my cat, Trinity, turns a year old. Pretty exciting stuff, at least the Doctor Who news. :P
Anyway, here's This Geek's Week.
APs, Hangouts, and Live Gaming
Dungeon World
I mentioned last week that I started playing in a live, Hangouts campaign on Sundays, but I didn't go into too much detail. I started writing an AP, but it's not finished yet, so I'll summarize what has happened so far. We have four PCs in a world that's divided by a great ocean, with one side of the world permanently in winter, while the other side is forever in summer.
The PCs are: Elohïr, the Elven Fighter; Yaygo, the Elven Winter Mage; Valerius, the Human Priest of Zawa; and my character, Lux, the Human Paladin of Zawa. Elohïr and Yaygo are both exiles from their homeland and met Valerius prior to meeting Lux on a ship. Valerius was on a quest to visit all nine Shrines of Zawa, and the eighth happened to be located at the top of the mountain where the elves were from. They all set sail for the desert, where the last shrine is located, and found me on a ship. I was a crazed Paladin who lost his sanity after abandoning his ideals and old god but found them anew when Valerius showed him the path of Zawa, Queen of the Inferno and Goddess of Fire and Passion. We landed in the port city of Zawfo and fought scorpion humanoids who attacked after Yaygo's, wintery magic caused a disturbance that rose them. We discovered they had come from the last shrine of Zawa and had infested it. They had a map to the shrine which we took to begin out quest.
That's all backstory.
In our first session, we came upon an outpost with two, fake guards that turned out to be bandits named Jedino and Ronven. We found out they were with a group looking to amass riches from desert workers harvesting gold from the sand clouds. After the bandits tried to pull over on us, we took care of them the only way an evil elf, a Winter Mage, and two followers of Zawa would, and went on a perilous journey to seek out the harvesters to protect them. Turns out they didn't want our help, so we hid in a nearby cave to make camp so that we could ambush the bandits if they tried to attack the harvesters, but we found ourselves surrounded by hatching, giant scorpion eggs we thought were rocks.
In our second session, this past Sunday, we had an epic battle against the giant scorpion babies and its mother. Elohïr pulled some incredible, acrobatic maneuvers and sword attacks. Yaygo summoned his ice golem to help while ignoring danger and attacking the scorpions directly with a survival knife. Valerius kept chanting divine words and invocating rituals to bless, heal, and protect us. Lux tried to command the giant scorpion to stand down with a voice that transcends language and got his arm cut off. Later, Valerius invoked a ritual and sacrificed Lux's arm, so that Zawa gave him a new one with leathery, scorpion like skin, and tattoos of her mark running up the veins and ending in crooked fingers.
We then explored the cave, which turned out to be in a dormant volcano, and found a pit of black liquid called Blackbond that hardens weapons and armor for a single use. We applied it to our gear, took some with us, and went back to finish making camp, after Elohïr and Yaygo discovered a fake wall of stone. Some of us leveled.
We awoke and broke through the wall to find a tunnel, where a young boy saw us and ran away. We followed and met a woman who claimed to be a follower of Zawa. Lux presented himself, Valerius, and the elves, and she only let us come with her due to Valerius being a Priest. Deeper inside, we found a den of women (alleged followers of Zawa), and one woman on the verge of death. Valerius helped save her, but we soon discovered that the markings of Zawa tattooed on them were crude imitations and that they were the bandits we were seeking to ambush.
Now they've drawn their weapons on us, and we'll see how this plays out next Sunday. This is a rushed summary, and I really hope to post all the details in a proper, double feature AP this week.
Tears of a Machine
Earlier today, I posted the AP for Tales of the Arx Jericho, Season 1, Episode 12. In all honesty, I probably won't get Episode 13 up this week, but I'll try to get it up before the end of August or within the first week of September.
I also started jotting down some great ideas for Season 2, which I'll most likely run after the new year.
Primetime Adventures
In the meantime, Robert is still set on running Primetime Adventures for a few months with the Tears group. We've settled on BetaForce for our show, so now we just need to get together to create characters, figure out our setting, and hopefully start playing regularly again soon.
ViewScream
I scheduled a game to play last Friday with Robert, Mike, and my friend, Dean, who hasn't tried it yet. Unfortunately, we had to reschedule to this week, so hopefully it'll go down on Friday as planned. We're going to play The Culler Out of Space scenario, and we'll all have different roles, so that should be fun! I'm playing Bridge, Robert's playing Engineering, Mike's Weapons, and Dean is Medical. If we end up playing, I'll be sure to post another AP with spoilers.
Torchbearer
Unfortunately, there wasn't a game on Sunday again. I thought we'd have to wait two more weeks to play, but it turns out I'm not going out of town this Sunday, so hopefully our game will continue with the sixth session of Ruins of Aldornia. Man, I really need to catch up on APs for that. I simply have too many to write!
GotEXP and PbP Revival
A lot of PbP games on GotEXP have been dormant throughout August, but I'm happy to report there's finally some new activity!
The Caverns of Baal-Harrir (Dungeon World / Number Appearing)
I mentioned this game in the premiere of This Geek's Week. It's a Dungeon World game that's in its fourth session, or chapter, since this is play-by-post.
The PCs are: Chief Nok, the Orc Fighter and Chief (compendium class); Hauk, the Orc Cleric of Bish'gu Urg Der (God of the Red Pain); Klopp, the Hobgoblin Barbarian; Brudda, the Ogre Mage; and Skitch, the Ratkin Mastermind. There's also Grik, the Orc Thief in the party, but that player has been MIA, so I don't know if Grik will continue as a PC or a Hireling.
After Nok defeated the corrupt Orc chief in session 3 and took over to rule his tribe, there was an attack from a dragon that shook the caves. Chief Nok and his new, Inner Circle are currently venturing to the home of the hostile kobolds, who are allegedly paying fealty to this dragon using the Orcs' gold that the old, corrupt chief gave away to them (and which Nok and the other PCs retrieved).
We've been traveling through sewers filled with poisonous gas, and we've met an undead husk-thing named Trolthep, the Immortal. Skitch stole his dagger, and he's promising Nok a favor in return for getting the dagger back, but Nok doesn't care. The Chief says his famous words, "Nok charge!" and continues leading the others foward.
226 - Story of the Year 3443 (Adventures on Dungeon Planet)
I summarized the game in the first report of This Geek's Week, which I linked above. I went ahead and re-read all of session/chapter 2 and reworked the adventure front. I edited the dangers and grim portents to make more sense and used the monster creation guide in the book to stat Jaxx and his crew, a gang of Grenba Orkos* cyborgs.
The hardest part was reworking the cybernetic implants I borrowed from Jeff Becker's Alterkine Player's Handbook, a D20 Future supplement, and turning them into monster moves. The amount of implants in the book was overwhelming, so I rolled dice to determine which ones Jaxx and his crew got. I may have overdid it, as each foe has about 10-11 implants, though some are grouped together and not all of them provide mechanical bonuses. Plus, Jaxx and his crew are implant addicts and over 50% cyborg, so it makes sense.
I'd post the monster stats, but I don't want to spoil anything for the players, in case they're reading. There are more surprises that I want to share, but that'll ruin things, so I'll wait until they come up in-game before posting them on the blog.
One spoiler I will share is that there's a new PC joining the game, an Earthling, who's about to appear in-game, so that should fun!
*Grenba Orkos, or Emerald Orcs, are a race of space orcs living on Earth-3.
Artwork, New Commission, Map Contest
I haven't been doing a great job keeping up with #dailycreative this month, though it seems others haven't been keeping up much as well. Some are on vacation, some went to GenCon, others are busy I'm sure. I've been sketching a lot of reference drawings in my sketchbook, and I just didn't bother to scan them yet. Otherwise, I have some illustrated, comic book panels I'm working on for Tears of a Machine, Tales of the Arx Jericho, which you can see at the bottom of the latest AP.
The Prophet DW playbook will be up on DriveThruRPG soon, according to Damian, and he even gave me a sneak peak. It looks really great, and the cover art I drew for it really goes well with it. :) I can't wait to playtest The Prophet!
On that note, Damian's hired me again to create cover art for another DW playbook, The Artist. It's an interesting concept, which Damian is still reworking, and I have a great illustration in mind for it which will have a completely different style than The Prophet.
This is unrelated to games, but I also got some freelance, animation work for the Red Cross, so I'll be returning to After Effects and messing around with motion graphics and compositing pretty soon.
Finally, +Gremlin Legions in the Library of Gaming Maps G+ community announced that my map won the Mythical Map Competition! It was a really fun project, and I want to thank everyone again who voted for it and +Gremlin Legions for hosting the competition.
Here it is, in case you can't access the link. It's titled, Adventures on Dungeon Planet: Crash on Earth-3 and the Mystical Gate to the Moon.
I actually based the illustration on the first Adventures on Dungeon Planet, PbP game I ran on GotEXP called 226 - Story of the Year 3436. The PCs crash-landed on Earth-3, ran into three tribes of six-armed apes, fought assassin vines, fought a giant basilisk, entered the Crystal Caverns, made camp in the six-armed ape Wizard's chamber, continued through and ran into an ethereal, carnivorous moleman, found the mystical gate to the moon, were transported to the moon with an azure desert, fought huge, white and purple wurms, found a pyramid that was a spaceship, got ambushed by Felidae and Felinae Moreau (Egyptian-like, futuristic cat warriors), saw a mystical coutal in the sky which disappeared inside the pyramid, and ended up at the bottom, inverse of the pyramid, below an inner pyramid housing the Cats of Saturn, and died in a TPK in a giant, pit of a prison, while the Cats of Saturn escaped.
That's a summary in a nutshell. Crazy, right?
Now, in 226 - Story of the Year 3443, the Cats of Saturn have taken over the lower half of the main continent of Earth-3.
I didn't actually intend for the PCs to end up on the moon with all that silliness, but that's what happened. Yay for Adventures on Dungeon Planet!
Kickstarter Rewards
Last week, I mentioned how I got a shirt in the mail from the Kickstarter, Fall of Electricity: the Grunge Era. This week, I got a message from Ross Cowman, one of the band members who helped organize the Kickstarter, and a link to the album, the Grunge Era.
I really enjoyed listening to it. There are no lyrics, so it works great as ambient, background noise, but I actually payed attention the first time I listened. I can really tell each song has a story behind it even without reading the song title. Some of them sound really similar, but there are enough differences to tell them apart. If you're not a fan of grunge, you probably won't enjoy it, but I really liked what I heard. It's grunge, but a lot of the songs sound futuristic or spacey and somewhat like video game music. It's mostly upbeat with a lot of electric guitar sounds, and I found it especially invigorating to listen to while illustrating. Sitting outside on my deck with the speakers on full, sometimes it would get too loud, but that wasn't a huge issue.
I'm glad I supported Ross with this project. He writes cool games and plays good music, what more can I say?
Now I've started playing the first song on the album, Infinite Sadness, as I bid you farewell until next week. Ironically, the song doesn't really sound sad at all.
Tapatalk on my phone is going off, telling me I should get to some PbP posts, so I'll do that and update you with more gaming stories, good news, art projects, and more next time.
If you've read this far, I thank you and commend you. Take care and keep gaming!
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