Category: role-playing (Page 1 of 4)

Return to DCC RPG

April 23, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I’m playing a solo Dolmenwood game right now, my kids and I are playing some adventures using Hero Kids, and I might be joining an open table for Shadowdark in the very near future, but I’ve also been cooking up another solo adventure/campaign using the Emirates of Ylaruam gazetteer from TSR, and I was thinking of using Cairn for my system, and yet now, I’m getting the itch to return to my first OSR love: Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.

I’ve played several games using DCC, and I’ve loved each and every one, but I find that players don’t always love it as much as I do. Maybe I’m not a very good Judge, maybe the players have wanted a more typical 5e experience, I don’t know. But I’ve moved away from DCC RPG partly because there are so many new games I’m interested in (Dolmenwood!!), and partly because I’ve found it hard to get a regular game going.

But if I love it so much, and I’m planning a solo campaign, why not use DCC for my solo campaign? It’s an obvious choice!

One thing I’m interested in is using DCC for a homebrew. Although Goodman Games makes excellent adventure modules, I’m more and more curious to see how DCC works when using the core rules but adventuring in my own world (“my own” is a stretch… I am using the Ylaruam stuff from TSR… but I’m not using any pre-made modules; I’m making a sandbox and letting my PCs go wherever, no set story).

One of the things I love most about DCC RPG’s core rulebook is the way it encourages the judge and players to develop their own world: make your own patrons and deities and monsters and magic items and everything else in between. If dice rolls lead to wild results, play out those results and see what happens. A spell goes awry and transports the party to another dimension? Cool! Go explore that dimension. A PC dies and his friends want him back? Cool! Travel to the underworld and rescue him. The warrior wants to learn a new fighting style? Cool! Seek out the legendary sword master of the far-off mountains and convince him to train you.

The Goodman Games modules are fun, but one of the things that drew me to DCC RPG is the way it inspired my own adventuring and world-building ideas. I like the modules for one-shots, or even as locations/encounters within a hex crawl, and I might use a few as I solo-play, but I’m really in the mood for creating my own map of adventures, my own locations, my own quests. I’ve never really used DCC for that kind of play yet, and I want to try.

I’m inspired on some level by Bob the Worldbuilder’s excellent Skrym resource. By using the Ylaruam gazetteer and the Skrym random tables (as well as the tables in the DCC core book), I feel confident I can make a robust solo campaign.

In some ways, I wonder if Goodman Games’s success with its modules has hampered or undersold DCC’s ability to work as a homebrew game. The game itself has so many interesting quirks and tables that create stories simply by the effects of a spell roll or treasure table roll or patron roll. The modules are wonderfully weird and well-designed, offering the perfect DCC “flavor,” but as a system, I think the DCC core book gets overshadowed by this robust line of adventures. I’m genuinely curious to see how well the system holds up in a sandbox campaign that is not based on any DCC RPG modules or settings.

Lone Wolf Christmas

December 30, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I’ve written before about my love for the Long Wolf RPG adventure books, but it was only recently that I found out the books have been reprinted with snazzy new covers in larger paperback format.

So what did I do with my Christmas giftcards? I bought the first two in the series, of course!

When I opened the envelope the other day, my children were all very interested in these books (especially after I explained how much I loved them as a kid), but to my surprise, it was my middle child who asked if I would read the books to him so he could play. He’s not the one I would peg as being “into” fantasy the way my oldest is; I could only guess that he was intrigued by the monsters and potential for fighting. Whatever the reason, he asked several times before I had even thrown the packaging away, so after taking care of the padded envelope, he and I settled onto the couch, pencil and book in hand.

Thus began our nearly ninety-minute gaming excursion in which I got to witness the Lone Wolf books through the eyes of a child.

I had read them most recently on my own, as an adult, and while they were a nostalgic trip for me, I was approaching them with thirty-plus years of life experience and fantasy fandom and all the other things that make a grown-up a bit inoculated to the sheer joy of playing an rpg adventure book like this. I loved them for the memories they conjured, and I liked them for the old-school, somewhat simplistic fun they provided to adult-me.

But playing with my eight-year-old son was something different entirely. Each choice was a considered one, sometimes accompanied by checking the excellent and evocative map of Map of the Lastlands provided in the front, sometimes talking aloud the risks and potential rewards of the various options. My son really weighed each choice, often making his decision because something would be “nice to do” or “helpful” or “because I don’t want to hurt anybody” or simply because venturing forth into a dark tunnel under a hill would be cool.

When we faced off against monsters, and he had to point his finger at the number grid in the back, waiting for me to read the result from the Combat Results Table, there was real tension and anticipation in his face. When he scored victories, he would pump his fist and cry, “Yes!” with such beautiful innocence, that I couldn’t help being overwhelmed at seeing the pureness of his joy.

After he made each choice and waited for me to the turn the page and read the next entry, I could see him tense up, wondering if he’d made the right decision, worried that he hadn’t. And when his choice resulted in something good, the relief on his face was infectious.

I was seeing what it must have been like for me as a kid: the same anticipation, the same dread, the same relief, the same joy. I could no longer experience that innocent pleasure myself, but I could watch it on the face of my child and get a time-traveled glimpse of my own first foray into the world of Lone Wolf. I was the adult, the grown-up, the one whose emotions were a bit too calloused to fist pump after a victory against a burrow-crawler, but I could bear witness to my child’s excitement, to the gleam of wonder in his eyes, and that gleam was surely once my own, when I was eight years old and reading the Lone Wolf books, and the Endless Quest books, and the Choose Your Own Adventure books off in a corner somewhere, lost in my own world of quests and magic.

I’m glad I could give my son the experience of the Lone Wolf books, but I’m also grateful for his gift to me: the gleam in his eyes and the wonder in his smile.

Dolmenwood Solo Gaming

December 24, 2024 / / 0 Comments

The best TTRPG Kickstarter from 2023 was Gavin Norman’s Dolmenwood. The whole Dolmenwood universe has been my favorite fantasy adventure gaming stuff since way back with the Wormskin zines. It’s the perfect distillation of my favorite fantastical elements–magical forests, goblins and fairies, a quasi-Medieval world that feels like an old Arthurian romance– and it’s inspired by some of my favorite fantasy art, from Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell to Tolkien’s “Smith of Wooten Major” to Ridley Scott’s Legend.

Dolmenwood is the gaming world designed to perfectly match my sensibilities. It’s a bit too dangerous, perhaps, to want to actually live in, but it comes awfully close. It’s an Elfland I’d love to occasionally visit, after falling asleep by a fairy mound and finding myself walking through a sun-dappled, autumnal forest.

Norman and a host of other indie game designers are doing some of the most interesting world-building in all of fantasy art and literature. In the case of Dolmenwood, Norman mixes in a lot of traditional fairy tale and folk lore elements, but the combination of whimsy and horror, of earthiness and strangeness, though drawing upon familiar iconography, ends up feeling singular and original. Maybe this is because original D&D was inspired more heavily by Sword and Sorcery fantasy and not fairy-tale fantasy, but I also think it comes down to the fact that Norman is so well-versed in the fairy tale and folk lore he draws upon, while at the same time adding original elements that feel as if they belong to those old tales.

The mysterious Drune, for instance, are (as far as I know) original to Dolmenwood (though they definitely have a druids-in-the-glade vibe, inspired perhaps by the clash between pagan and Christian believers in early medieval Europe), and the breggle, though drawing upon medieval traditions about goats and their connection to Satan, are nevertheless a novel concept, taking these medieval traditions and turning them into something new. The same could be said of the cat-fairies, the Grimalkins. Or the wood-grues. Or the mosslings.

Needless to say, I love Dolmenwood. Everything about the world, the game, and the way it makes me feel–that slightly topsy-turvy feeling of excitement and anticipation a kid feels on Christmas Eve–are why I don’t want to wait until I can set up a gaming group to play. I want to play it now. Solo-style.

I’m still making my way through the Player’s Handbook, but I’ve listened to enough 3d6 Down the Line podcast to understand the basics of game-play (and I’m pretty familiar with OSE rules too). My plan is to create a trio of PCs and have them travel to the mound in Winter’s Daughter. After that adventure, I’ll see where it goes.

I have a bunch of resources for solo gaming, though I don’t think I’ll need much for this Dolmenwood adventure. Using the module and the three core books should get me pretty far, and then a simple oracle (that can answer “yes/no” questions), and a couple of reaction and random encounter tables (that can answer “what kind?” questions) are all I need.

I have Knave 2e and Cairn and other game systems like World Without Number and Shadowdark that all have excellent random tables, so if I need to, I can use those tables for extra detail and randomness. But since I’m using the module Winter’s Daughter, I won’t necessarily need a lot of tools for building the dungeon or encounters.

And, of course, I have my notebook with the dot grid and some pens, pencils, and dice. Eventually I’ll have the Dolmenwood minis from the Kickstarter, but for now, I’ll settle for theater of the mind.

Playing solo from an adventure module might be a bit tricky because I need to read some portions of the module to understand how to proceed, but I don’t want to read too much and miss being surprised by what I find in each room. It means I have to pretend not to have certain knowledge at times so my characters can act freely, which is where I’ll rely on my oracle. Even if I, the player, know going into a certain room is bad news, I’ll let the oracle decide these things for my PCs so I don’t fudge them.

What I’m most excited about, especially as the icy winter descends upon my own town and fog is predicted in the forecast for Christmas, is the chance to embark on a journey into Dolmenwood, even if it’s a solo journey. Hopefully, after a few dice rolls and pencil scratches on my characters sheets, I’ll have three imaginary traveling companions, ready to trek into the mists and bramble of the tangled wood in search of an ancient tomb.

Goal Update: November 2024

November 25, 2024 / / 0 Comments

It’s been five months since I posted my ridiculously long list of goals, and I figured it was time to do an update. Mostly for my own reflection. Maybe this is the teacher side of me, but reflecting on my work helps me see where to go next. It’s a taking-stock process. Let’s me know what steps to take next.

I set a huge number of goals in the hopes of “failing to success,” figuring that if I kept working at a bunch of different things, I’d make more progress than if I limited myself to only a few. Does this make any sense? Who knows, but it makes sense in my own head. I tend to do better and feel better when I have lots of creative projects going on that I can toggle between and work on bit by bit. Sometimes a particular thing takes over and I obsess over it, but other times I flit back and forth like a butterfly.

So, how is my flitting these days?

Hm.

That’s the short answer. Here is the longer answer:

Finish writing Norse City Limits (urban fantasy novel): I am not finished but this is the goal I’ve probably made the most progress on. As of right now, I’m roughly 40k into the story (maybe 45k… not sure because I handwrote a bunch of it and am now typing it up). I’m a bit stalled, however, so I’ve decided to go back to the last moment in the story when I was still really excited and start redrafting from there. That means that my most recent three chapters will be entirely new material as I scrap the old and start again. I’m not too upset by this because it means I’m getting excited about the story again and seeing where it heads next. I’m still hopeful I can finish this before 2024 kicks it.

Finish writing Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess (second book in Merlin series): Haven’t done anything with this one yet. I’m focused on finishing NCL. I have a bad habit of losing steam in the middle of a novel and jumping to other things, and I don’t want that to happen with NCL, so I’m holding off on another big project until that one is finished. NCL is where my energy and imagination are at the moment too. Not that I won’t get to Ysbaddaden in 2024, but it’s probable that 2025 will be the year of Merlin’s Last Magic.

Finish a short story set in my sword and sorcery world: Not yet.

Finish a short story about a mother who learns a terrible secret about her son: Not yet.

Finish a short story set in my Children of Valesh universe: Not yet.

Publish my short story collection: Embarrassingly not yet. I have the cover art, I have the stories, I have them mostly copy edited, and now it’s just a matter of finishing layout and proofing. Getting those ISBNs assigned and uploading to markets.

Why have I stalled on this project? I think because when I have time for creative things, I tend to put my energies into writing and creating and not into the publishing. Publishing feels too much like “work,” and when I have free time, I don’t want to work, I want to play. This is good for my writing but bad (obviously) for my publishing. I should make a more concerted effort to get my writing out to readers, but in order to do so, I must steal time from my writing sessions, and I’m loathe to do that.

If there’s one goal on this list I really want to achieve before the year is out, it’s this one, so I MUST block time into my schedule and get this book out to market. I haven’t felt much urgency until now, but the pressure is starting to mount. Hopefully, I have a short story collection to announce in the coming weeks.

Finish a novella in my City of Ashes series: Not yet. Still focused on NCL and don’t want to switch to any other bigger projects.

Blog everyday (this one again!! LOL!): I am not blogging everyday… but I am trying to blog more and seeing some improvement on this measure.

Send out Substack newsletter every two weeks: Ugh. This is the one that hurts. I just haven’t been able to get into a rhythm. Since I’m really trying to finish NCL, I don’t devote much time to other writing pursuits. It should be obvious, then, that the Substack will suffer. But I hate that it’s being neglected. I don’t want to neglect it, but non-fiction takes longer (at least the kind I do on Substack), partly because it takes me longer to generate ideas and evaluate whether they’d be good enough for a newsletter essay.

I can write shorter thoughts and musings, and those tend to go on the blog, but for my Substack readers, I feel like if I’m sending something to their inboxes, it needs to be more substantial. That desire for a more in-depth and lengthy piece of writing puts the pressure on, and I shut down when there’s too much pressure. My ideas dry up. My fears and critical voice rear their heads.

The answer, such as it is, is to devote more time during my writing sessions to working on the Substack: generating ideas, drafting, researching, etc. This is a process that requires a good chunk of time. If I don’t schedule that time, it ain’t happening.

But to block time for the Substack means to lessen time for my fiction. This is the Sophie’s Choice I’m loathe to make.

Anyway, the Substack goal is a conundrum. Not sure how this is going to go other than maybe reassessing my goals and making a few hard choices.

Play more role-playing games with my kids, my husband, family, and friends: Have played more with the kids, but not where I’d like to be. We’ve played two sessions of Hero Kids RPG, but I’m itching to play more. The kids like it, but it’s hard for me to muster the energy some evenings, so we end up not finding time to play.

I need to block time for playing into my schedule (this is a recurring theme, isn’t it?). I want to try playing solo as well, and I’m currently reading the Emirates of Ylaruam gazetteer from the old Basic D&D TSR stuff. I’m planning to use the rules for Cairn and run a little solo campaign to explore the setting and get my role-playing fix.

I’m not sure I’ll get to play more with family and friends. No one seems particularly interested; I’m by far the most enthusiastic of the group. So perhaps solo gaming is the way to go.

Create some RPG modules for Norse City Limits and Merlin’s Last Magic: Not yet.

Make a “Saturday Morning” zine series and publish an issue every month: Not yet.

Make other zines: Not yet.

(Zine-making still excites me, but like with my other pursuits, I feel like all my focus should be on finishing NCL and writing fiction. If I had all the time in the world, I would do more with these side projects, but when my time is limited, I feel like I have to make the choice to write fiction. Can I find more time in my day? Can I schedule more time for these pursuits? I suppose I can, but what will be sacrificed to get this time? My walking? My reading? Time spent with my kids?

Maybe I try to fold my zine-making into time spent with my kids… we can all make zines together. This is worth a try…

Of course, I’m doing this to myself by having so many flipping goals! I realize that there’s simply not enough time in the day to do all these things to their fullest. But the seed of desire is still there, so for the moment, I’m going to continue looking for ways to do all my goals.)

Read more books with my kids (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Half-Magic, James and the Giant Peach, the Hobbit, the Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy, Magician’s Nephew, Last Battle, more Little House books, How to Train Your Dragon series, Harry Potter): Yes, a little. We are reading The Hobbit, and we’ll be starting Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone soon.

Start naalbinding again (finish the hat I started for my son and make another one for my other son): Not yet, but I’m going to try committing to doing this in the evenings. Christmas is coming up and winter too, so now is the time to get it done.

Practice my cartooning/comics drawing (for the zines): I did practice drawing cartoon owls (to turn into an Isabel-story zine…?), but that’s all. I have some drawing books for as sources, but despite identifying them around the house, I haven’t gathered them to use. As a family, we sometimes spend Saturday morning drawing, so maybe I can make that a more regular and deliberate thing.

Write essays, poems, and fiction that will serve as models for my students next school year: I’ve started a long-form essay about decluttering to share with my students, but it’s in very rough draft form. I wrote a couple of models earlier this school year, but not nearly as many as I had planned. This goal sounds good in my head, but when it comes time to actually do it, I find that I resist. Just as my students resist assignments because they are assignments, I resist writing that feels like an obligation. I know I need to work on the mental attitude here and see these as fun and practice and a chance to try something new. But I’m still battling a lot of critical voice in my fiction and for-fun writing, so doing writing that’s more obligatory is an even harder hurdle to jump.

So much of writing is a mental challenge. Yes, craft matters, and learning how to do different techniques is important, but the real challenge (at least for me) is battling the ennui and the critical voice and the lack of confidence. I’m forever fighting the fear that I’ll make a mistake or write something bad.

My goal of writing more model texts for my students is no different. I’m afraid I’ll fail, so I resist doing it in the first place. After all, what if I’m trying to model a certain technique and I do a bad job of it? I’ll embarrass myself in front of my students. What if I set a goal to write a certain kind of essay and it turns out all wrong? The students will see I’m a fraud.

And on and on the negative thoughts spiral.

I know that I need to treat every creative act as an experiment, but this requires a mental shift that I’m still working on making. To see everything as an experiment means to have a certain kind of fearlessness and courage that isn’t always readily available. To be okay with failure.

This is perhaps the overarching goal for everything: to break through mental fear and go into every enterprise with an attitude of experimentation. All my 2024 goals are really the same goal, then. To experiment freely. To cease hesitating and go for it.

Bonus achievement: I wrote a short story about walking and bird-watching that came out of nowhere. It wasn’t planned, but I got excited about it and rode the wave until it was done. So despite not making progress on planned short stories, I spontaneously wrote one anyway. This is a good example of “failing to success.” I ended up writing something even though I failed to write something else. Having lots of irons in the fire, so to speak, meant that I was ready for when a new, unexpected iron needed shaping.

Draw or Make Something Every Day (in September)

September 2, 2024 / / 0 Comments

This was an idea my husband proposed today, so we’re getting a one-day-late start to the challenge, but he suggested that everyone in our household (aka me, him, and the kids) should try to make or draw something every day this month.

(If we miss a day, we can do multiple things in a day to catch up.)

I decided that I might draw some stuff for a zine I’m working on (title: “Saturday Morning”), but I might also “make” something for my various role-playing game campaigns (a solo one, a husband-and-me one, a family one, and a kids one). These somethings can include making a PC, an NPC, a map, a location, a dungeon room, a whole dungeon (!), or a treasure/magic item. I’m stealing this a bit from Dungeon23, that fabulous challenge from last year that got me started making my very first megadungeon (which, sadly, I never finished… so maybe I can work on that for my “makings” this month!).

Anyway, I like a loose definition of “making.” We have a similarly loose definition in our Creativity Club at my school. Spurred by their time in my Creative Writing class last year, the students who started the club are welcoming anyone who does any kind of creative endeavor to join, and we aren’t judgy about the kinds of things that count as “making.” We decided that even kids who want to make jam are welcome in the club! (But they should definitely share their jam with us once it’s made. :D)

My “making” for today’s family challenge was to come up with some NPCs and their backstories/personalities for the Hero Kids game I’m playing with my children. They are currently investigating the Basement O’ Rats and trying to find Roger, a local village boy. I’ve got an idea that Roger was taken by the King of Rats at the behest of a dark force that is also taking others away from Brecken Vale for mysterious reasons. This will be the central mystery of the campaign.

Does this counting as “making something”? I think it does. I took an idea, put it to paper, and developed it. I also stat-blocked Roger in case he comes with the Kids on any further adventures.

I’d say that counts for the day.

Now I just have to make something to count for yesterday…

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