#besm adventures

[legionofmyth]

Big Eyes Small Mouth by Dyskami Publishing Company

Dive into the world of Big Eyes Small Mouth (BESM 4E) by Dyskami Publishing! 🌟 Experience the ultimate anime-themed RPG with endless creative possibilities. Perfect for anime and RPG fans alike! #BESM #AnimeRPG #TabletopGaming #RPG #DyskamiPublishing

Big Eyes Small Mouth by Dyskami Publishing Company What is it? BESM 4E Big Eyes Small Mouth (BESM) 4th Edition is an anime-themed tabletop role-playing game designed to capture the diverse and dynamic styles of Japanese animation. Set in a flexible universe that can accommodate various genres—from high school romance to epic fantasy and mecha battles—BESM allows players to create and explore…

[syekick-powers]

honestly. being real. ive looked into a lot of various indie ttrpgs that haven't spoken to me, and i end up just coming back to D&D over and over. and i think i finally fully understand why that is.

D&D is very heavy on rules for what can happen in combat, but fairly light on rules for when it comes to story structure and roleplay. as a result, roleplay scenes feel a bit more natural and flowing, with the only mechanical aspect being the occasional skill check for like, intimidation / deception / persuasion / etc. but then, unlike the roleplay, the things that can be achieved in combat are pretty strictly regulated. this is fun for how i like to roleplay, as someone who used to do a lot of freeform RP--the problem with freeform RP style combat sometimes is that if you're RPing combat with someone who gets really wound up about making their characters always win, it can be really fucking hard to counteract the shit they have their characters pull out of their back pocket. having a VERY clearly defined and strict set of rules for specifically combat makes it so that when combat DOES happen, people can't just Say Shit about what they have their characters do--they have a limited character framework to work in and a limited set of tools that they can work with, and enjoyable combats come from using those tools in that framework creatively, effectively, and excitingly. this makes combat feel like it has genuine stakes, and when done right can be very intense and exciting. and then when you do actual like, character interaction and story building? there's just not a lot of strictly defined rules for what can and can't be done in those realms, both for a player and the DM. there aren't any constraints on the structure of the narrative that the DM presents, which means it's fairly easy to rip out the pre-packaged D&D lore, re-fluff a few things that heavily reference that lore, and just homebrew your own story structure and lore and world and characters and pantheons and the like.

my problem with a lot of indie TTRPGs is that a lot of them are married to either a very specific story structure that the system mandates that you follow, or a very specific pre-made world that the system is mechanically built to form around, and that level of pre-determination doesn't interest me either as a player OR as a GM. like these are fundamental rules in these systems that would gut it if you tore them out and replaced them with something else, which means that if you tried to go against those premade structures/settings, you would basically have to homebrew the entire goddamn thing from scratch anyway. D&D's relative rules-heaviness of combat and rules-lightness of roleplay makes it easier for D&D to provide me the kinds of stories that i actually want to participate in, even if people insist it's not as "flexible" as many people think it is. like. yes. don't run a regency romance game in D&D, obviously. but if ur running a high fantasy type of game focused on adventuring, D&D can be adapted pretty well to a homebrew setting and world with minimal effort.

and tbh, i really think that's why it has the cultural dominance that it does, and why i personally keep engaging with it as a ttrpg even as people yell from all sides to play something else. "just do freeform RP!" ive done freeform RP. it's good for character building and dialogue and intrigue and sex but it fucking sucks when characters have to fight. i fucking hate it when im trying to RP fighting in freeform RP and whatever person im fighting against just keeps fucking kicking my ass no matter what i have my character do because my RP partner is so invested in forcing me to lose or give up that they just pull whatever the hell they can think of out of their back pocket to beat my character into submission. at least with an incredibly well-defined set of rules for how combat works, your opponents are also working in a limited framework with limited tools, so even if they do fucking kick your ass, it doesn't feel completely stupid and arbitrary, and since opponents' attacks are governed by dice rolls almost as much as players' attacks are, the amount of arbitrariness in the combat is not wholly stacked against you unless you're fighting against something that's WAY out of your party's league--and even then, those creatures and people are still going to be bound by their dice rolls as much as you are, they might just have better bonuses and/or fewer penalties to make things a bit more favorable for them. that horrifying fucking monster you're fighting may have an insane bonus to attack, but it could still roll a critical fail when it tries to attack you, just as much as you might roll a critical fail to attack it in turn. everyone operates under the same rules and will have similar limitations placed on them by those rules, and participants have much less leeway to make their characters' combat prowess be whatever the hell they want whenever anything even mildly threatening happens.

[mana-junkie]

Cangames 2024: Hard Luck & Trouble (A BESM Event)

The Princess and her entourage are on route to a mountain resort for a much needed vacation, but when things start to go wrong… they go really, really, really wrong. This year for Cangames 2024 I decided to run the 1st edition of Big Eyes, Small Mouth. The adventure I will be running is called “Hard Luck and Trouble”, which is partially inspired by Final Fantasy XV which I have been playing on…

[aeroteaka]

Because no one has asked. Here's a complete list of games I've got settings and plans to run. At this point it's just a complete bucket list of things I'd love to run and hopefully some day will. Stars help me I know there will just be more over time. If anyone is ever curious I can typically answer questions about them to.

1. DnD 5e: Brawl of The Gods

2. Lasers and Liches 5e: Demon King Live

3. Genefunk 2090 5e: What is a Soul

4. Wendy's RPG/DnD 5e: Dungeons, Dragons, Drive in, and Dives

5. Star Wars 5e/3.5: Catch me if you can

6. Legend of the Five Rings: Isekai Online

7. StarsWithoutNumbers: StarLight Brigade

8. NewEdo: Long Night with Neon Lights

9. Cyberpunk Red: Rock And Roll And Logistics

10. Astir Amour: Pugna Magna Machina

11. Avatar: Kora Edition

12. Avatar: Kihoshi Edition

13. One Ring 2nd: Balrog Hunting

14. Vampire 5th: The party after

15. Lo-Fi Bards: Tale of Two Schools

16. SCP: New Facility

17. BESM 3rd: Mechandrots

18. Wrath and Glory: High with cards

19. Through the Breach: Asylum

20. Demon The Descent: Paradiso

21. Jinkies: Broken Down in Paradise

22. EverQuest: Supernaturals in Maurader Town

23. Suburb and Snazzles: Not stuck at home

24. City of Mists: Stories from a Steam Powered Giraffe

25. Exalted: The DragonBloodeds Wish

26. Tales From the Loop: Time and Time again.

27. Fellowship: Bizarre Adventure without JoJo

28. Invisible Sun: Here for a short time not a fun time.

29. Champions: Heroes of Kyoto (My Hero Academia)

30. Lancer: Mecha Bug Brawl

31. Hunters 5th: How is this not the apocalypse?!

32. Blue Rose: Court of The Roses

33. Thirsty Sword Lesbians: Battle for the Brothel

34. Bunkers And Badasses: Lords and Ladies of Badass Duchy!!! Eat it Suckkaa!!!

35. Pathfinder 2e: The Demon Lord can Do That?

36. Exalted: Schools Days

37. Changeling: It doesn't have to be a Dream

38. Dresden Files: This shit is still local

39. Ryuutama: Winter Harvest

40. Mouse Guard: Nights in the Hedges

41. Ars Magica: Eternal City Forgotten to Time, spanning the ages, across the stars. Only those of the highest orders may hope to hold a candle to the might of this world -The title goes on several more paragraphs-

42. Dragon Age: Deep Pockets for the Lord's of Fortune

43. Etherscope: Punch some Nazi's

44. Dungeon the Dragoning: Outlaw Star

45. Fate of the Norns: Hard Nights in Valhalla

46. Mage The Awakening: -The GM Regrets this Already-

47. Bubble Gum Crisis: Neo Tokyo's Finest

48. 13th Age: Melian Dream Mansion

49. Pokemon 5e Homebrew: Scottish Circuit

50. Iron Kingdom Unleashed: Welcome to the Bayou

[emj-tolj]

               An Adventure Hunter’s Media Guide #6

Of course anything in the realms of fantasy cartoons is on my Adventure Hunter’s media list. But I am picky. Record of the Lodoss War is perfect to feed my Adventure Hunter’s cravings. It is anime but its not your typical whiny sailor moon bullshit. Being anime its is several parts and each part is rather short, which for me is a downer. But it makes up for it in story and action. It may not be for everyone, specially if you are a costume-history nazi. But it IS fantasy after all. Despite the BESM factor I really do love Lodoss War and it really does curb my Adventure Hunting appetite 

[askmalal]

Favorite role playing games of the Primarchs.

Lion: Pendragon

Second: Empire of The Petal Throne

Fulgrim: Any Hentai module for BESM

Perturabo: The one you hate? That one? Perturabo loves it.

Jaghatai: Legend of the Five Rings

Leman: Pugmire

Rogal: The most complex example you can imagine... preferably one that requires a program or app to calculate character sheets.

Konrad: Vampire: the Masquerade (of course; classic, he’s flayed Storytellers alive for running requiem)

Sanguinius: In Nomine

Ferrus Manus: Space: 1889

Eleventh: Whatever -I- like, Eleven likes...

Angron: My Little Pony: Adventures in Equestria

Guilliman: Cthulhu Invictus

Mortarion: Hey, what’s that thing Fulgrim likes, with the tentacles?

Magnus: Ars Magica

Horus: Claims credit for whatever game it is you love the most. Munchkin and Min Maxxer in all. GMNPCs far more important to the story than you.

Lorgar: Has read “The Truth About Dungeons and Dragons” and therefore avoids role playing games. Even as a Daemon Prince.

Vulkan: No Thank You, Evil!

Corvus: Prefers Werewolf: The Apocalypse LARP (MeT), and exclusively plays a Corax...

Alpharius: Ninjas and Superspies

Omegon: More one of those random people who looks for open games at the local shop, joins claiming no knowledge of the game, and then does something specifically to annoy you.

As for the Dark Gods? All of us prefer Call of Cthulhu. It’s a great time for a good laugh... I particularly enjoy the campaign they wrote about me.

[tenander]

2, 5, 14, 17!!!

2. What’s your favorite ttrpg system?  Which other ones have you tried? 

ATM it’s definitely FFG’s Narrative Dice system. Not because of the dice (*gasp*) but because of everything else. It’s an intricately balanced system with a lot of really clever tricks that has a to me very satisfying amount of crunch without ever becoming obnoxious.

I’ve played, oof, a lot of systems. I don’t think I remember them all, but  the major ones aaaare Call of Cthulhu & Hexer von Salem, Storyteller System (primarily Vampire the Masquerade), D&D (from AD&D to 5th), Pathfinder, Kult, Fading Suns, Deadlands, Earthdawn, Das Schwarze Auge, Battlelords, BESM, Westend Star Wars, Legend of the 5 Rings, Cyberpunk 2020, Shadowrun, FFG Star Wars and of course my own game All Things Cast. There were a few years where my partner and I would check out all kinds of different systems but never get proper groups going, and there were other systems that we played maybe one or two games in that didn’t leave enough of an impression on me.

I also LARP’d an itty bit with different systems.

5. Tell me about your most recent OC! 

If we’re talking most recent character I’m playing in a game, that would be Voi Oruka in FFG Star Wars. Voi is a Nautolan and the only son of the leader of Glee Anselm’s leading criminal empire Riptide. Raised as a good and proper Young Boss, he accidentally A Forcepower and once he realises it is that, he takes it as a sign that he’s supposed to do more with his life than become a mafia boss. So he runs away to learn about the Force and about his purpose. Also, the life of a crime boss sucks and he doesn’t wanna. Voi is headstrong and likes stabbing and punching, and his view on life and ethics is just a tad screwy due to his upbringing but he’s a good egg at heart who just wants to do something meaningful with his gift.

If we’re talking most recent character who may one day be in a game (once I finished writing it), that’s Yukiro. Yukiro is first general of a clan that once existed to fight a terrifying demon horde, won, and then didn’t know what to do with themselves, so they instead devoted their lives to a rivalry with a once allied clan. But now the demon lord is coming back, and they gotta find more allies to fight him once more, so Yukiro goes out into the world to scout himself some badasses. Yukiro is a soft boy who’s really into theatre and music, and is kind and gentle to most people, but for the sake of his clan (and the world) he puts on the air of a typical strong, reserved samurai most of the time.

14. Tell me about a piece of impressive game mastering you’ve witnessed! 

Look, most game mastering is really impressive! As a GM myself, I know very well how much work goes into it, how difficult it is to keep up with your players, how many goddamn spoons it takes to be both prepared and flexible, to think of adventures and NPCs and places and voices and plot points and the PCs’ strengths and weaknesses and desires and the players’ strengths and weaknesses and desires, to learn the system and adjust the system and game the system and improvise rules you forgot and provide the mood and the atmosphere and the materials and *BREATHES* game mastering is impressive by virtue of being game mastering, and I appreciate the absolute fuck out of all the people willing to sit in that chair again and again and give their all so that their friends can just... enjoy themselves. (Asshole GMs excluded of course.)

17. What’s something you think you could improve about the way you play tabletop RPGs? 

I need to stop trying to control everything. I’m not sure if it’s a habit that comes from somewhere inside me, a sign of trust issues or if it’s a side-effect of many years of playing with very passive players which put me into a constant instigator position that I now can’t let go of, but it’s not making for a better game or table for me to always have to have the reigns. I also would like to not laugh at my own jokes quite so much. It’s obnoxious and I never plan to, but as soon as I sit down... Things to work on.

[cyberkevvideo]

BESM Returns!

To be honest, I didn’t think I’d ever return to Tumblr, but this is still the best place to put this article.

BESM, aka Big Eyes, Small Mouth, is an anime RPG originally created by fellow Canadian Mark MacKinnon, who was also the publisher, editor, and owner of Guardians of Order, has announced that he's back and now working with White Wolf on a new edition of the game after 10 years. Guardians of Order went bankrupt a decade ago when the US/CDA exchange rate was even more garbage than it is now. Unfortunately, to stay relevant and competitive, Canadian companies had to pay their freelance writers in American funds. You can see how that would kill your budget really fast. Didn't help that this was the start of when people were pirating anime and RPG books. White Wolf bought the game license, but wouldn't buy the different anime licenses. This meant that they didn't get the Sailor Moon, Hellsing, Trigun, other any of the other anime books. They also weren't too worried about the Neon Genesis license that Guardians had, so we never got that book, sadly. I still own every book, and love the system. Wasn't that big a fan of the d20 system conversion, but I did like 2nd and 3rd, with 2nd being my favourite of all of them. 1st Ed was fine, but it was fairly unbalanced with what it had to offer. No release date as of yet, but I've already been in contact with the author. It was good to chat again after a decade. I like D&D, both its current edition and all the previous editions I’ve played, and love other the systems that I’ve played throughout my life (Rifts, Shadowrun, etc), but BESM was my jam. Everyone has a system that they like and enjoy, and BESM was easily mine. I loved the adventures, the versatility that let you literally make any character you wanted, fulfill any crossover fantasies you had, etc. I absolutely can't wait. I’m so hyped for this. It’s my childhood reincarnating itself. I’m just hoping the current edition holds up.

[rpggeeknation]

Anime in RPG

Inspired and borrowing from this reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/3v20ph/anime_manga_that_would_make_a_great_rpg_and_the/

My Hero Academia:

AMP, Masks, Savage Worlds: Supers, BESM, OVA, Fate, Mutants and Masterminds

Cowboy Bebop:

Technoir, Edge of the Empire, Traveller, Savage Worlds

Hunter x Hunter:

Fudge, Anima: Beyond Fantasy, Final Fantasy RPG

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure:

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Fate, Savage Worlds, Mutants and Masterminds.

Soul Eater:

Better Angels

Berserk:

Stormbringer, Sword of the Iron Throne, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, D&D 5e, Zweihander, AD&D

Psycho-Pass:

Technoir, GURPS, Eclipse Phase, Cyberpunk 2020

GATE:

GURPS, Palladium

One Piece:

Hero System, Fate, Mutants and Masterminds, D&D 5e, Wushu

Fairy Tail:

Hero System, Fate, Mutants and Masterminds, D&D 5e

Black Lagoon:

Apocalypse World, Savage Worlds, Fate

Fullmetal Alchemist:

GURPS, Fate, Anima Beyond Fantasy, Sorcerer

Slayers:

D&D 3.0

Gundam:

Mekaton

Trigun:

Deadlands, GURPS

Bleach:

Scion

Naruto:

Mutants and Masterminds, Exalted, BESM, D20

Those were just the concepts liked the most as well as Anime I am familiar with. There were concepts I liked but just wasn’t familiar with the Anime, as well as Anime I am familiar with but didn’t quite like the concept.

I’d love to hear some good ideas for running Dragon Ball, Tokyo Ghoul, various Magical Girl Anime (Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, etc.), Blue Exorcist, Ghost in the Shell, Darker than Black, Vatican Kiseki Chousakan, Black Clover, Tiger and Bunny, Drifters, Assassination Classroom, Attack on Titan and Inuyasha. As well as more ideas for Bleach. 

If anyone has any ideas for any anime in RPG either to add to the ones on the list or to add ideas from my idea wishlist send me a message.

Also, send me a message if you wanna run one of these and are looking for players. I will play in any of those games, bt would be especially hyped to play anything set in My Hero Academia, One Piece, Fairy Tail, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, Blue Exorcist, Black Clover, Assassination Classroom, Attack on Titan, or Inuyasha.

Also my discord is  ButterPanda888#8681

[brettpostscript]

Joe's Apartment 9595

1 part raunchy Insect adventure, 1 part obscure Aqua Teen Hunger Force reference. Add a helping of BESM and sprinkle in some "miniatures" I bought for $1 and the perfection was complete.

[pretendtobeanelf-blog]

Originally uploaded to Facebook 03 June 2018

Remember when I was talking about BESM all the way back in March? Well, they licenced a few of them actual animes to put out combined fan guides/RPGs. It's a veritable hit parade of "cool" late 90s-early 00s anime, you've got your Lain, Dominion Tank Police, a whole bunch of Tenchi books. And then there's Trigun, which I actually saw out in the wild once and decided to have a browse. It's REAL bad you guys. Most of the book is given over to a very dry episode and universe guide. Then you get to the rules, and not only is it based on the BESM d20 conversion (Which is a super busted ruleset anyway) but they give you stats for all the canon movers and shakers. Like Vash here. I'm pretty sure he was functionally level 30+. You do get this problem with licenced settings, where they lay out the assumption that the canon characters are going to be the best around and your PCs are going to be absolute scrubs. This results in one of two outcomes, either they really are super far out of reach which means that you're adventuring in a universe where you can't actually meaningfully interact with the marquee characters, or the designers didn't understand their own rules and it turns out to be relatively easy to build characters who can completely destroy the canon best fighters. Rare is the game that tries to strike a balance, or says "yeah, your dudes can totally stand shoulder to shoulder with the guys from the show, no biggie."

[legionofmyth]

The Dyskami Publishing Fundraiser portions of the FNCS | Absolute Power RPG | #TTRPG Discussions

A 93 minute video created from the original 6 hour livestream. 📢 Our attempt to promote and signal boost The Dyskami Publishing Fundraiser one more time. See the video description for all of the details. #TTRPG #TTRPGFamily #TTRPGCommunity #RPG

Including some donations given outside of the stream, and a couple of donations directly to the Indiegogo campaign, we raised over $500 dollars. 🙏 THANK YOU! 🙏 Dyskami Publishing Game Bundle Fundraiser: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dyskami-publishing-game-bundle-fundraiser/x/27293218#/ Join this channel to get access to Members Only…

[fairyboydammit]

Modules: Compare and Contrast

So I'm gonna talk about RPG modules.

First a little background, I've been playing tabletop RPGs off and on for two decades. Most of my experience is in D&D and other sword & sorcery type games but I've also played a smattering of other stuff, including Star Trek, GURPS, Star Wars (D20, not the West End version sadly) BESM, Shadowrun, White Wolf and Warhammer 40k. I've run about half the games I've played in and have traveled the whole spectrum from “Only lazy uncreative chumps use premade modules“ to “They don't have the monster stats in the module book? They seriously expect me to run this with a monster manual open too?“ So I've had an evolving relationship with modules and premade adventures, these days I've come to embrace them as a wonderful tool for facilitating fun game nights, though I do still love writing my own stuff now and then.

The impetus to write this came from having run two very different modules with wildly different results and with my perspective and experience I'm going to try to talk about why I think my experiences were so different, and what the differences in the modules had to do with it.

So, the two adventures I've been running are Hoard of the Dragon Queen, a module for 5th edition D&D that came out recently, and the Witchfire Trilogy, a campaign written for the D&D 3.5 version of the Iron Kingdoms roleplaying game which I adapted to use the more recent Iron Kingdoms tabletop rules. Some early disclaimers; Witchfire I'm running in person, Hoard I ran over Roll20 and Discord, the parties for each game were composed of different groups of people, the only person these two games have in common is me running them, and I know the players and how I interacted with them have had an impact on how the game goes so I'm going to try to account for those factors in how I judge these modules, but my experiences will color my perceptions for good or ill, objectivity is unattainable.

Let's start with the beginnings, both adventures start the party at 1st level, parties fresh out of character creation and open with some action. In Witchfire, the party starts the game as hired caravan guards going through a swamp, they get ambushed by Goblins and must defend the caravan. This is a cakewalk of a combat encounter, the goblins are weak and don't pose a real threat to the party, their objective is to steal from the wagons more than kill the players. I've played through this module before and this is never a tough fight, it serves mostly as a tutorial to introduce combat to the party and set up travel to the city most of the adventure takes place in. When I ran it this time the party wiped out the goblins in about 3 turns and did a good job introducing them to the rules, what they were capable of and how the system worked. The first encounter in Hoard of the Dragon Queen is a village being attacked by a Dragon. With an army. The encounter is actually a series of encounters, the adventurers are approaching the village of Greenest, under attack by the dragon and an army of cultists and kobolds. The first encounter in the series of encounters this entails is very similar to the Witchfire one in some respects, eight kobolds attacking a family, the book states the kobolds will not even attack the party if they don't intervene. So much like Witchfire you have a low-power encounter without much real threat to the party. A key difference I notice is that in Witchfire, once the goblins are beaten, that's the end of the fighting, the caravan cleans up, repairs and heads on to town, the party doesn't have another fight for over a day (barring particularly violent and rambunctious players) in Hoard, this encounter is followed by a series of encounters aiding the villagers of Greenest, the book intends for the party to do about seven of these before getting a Long Rest (in 5th edition, Long Rests restore all hit points and expended spell slots, Short rests can replenish some health but at first level you can only benefit from one Short Rest before taking a Long one) given that most of these encounters involve combat of some kind, potentially lethal combat in some cases, this can be daunting or outright hazardous to a first level party as they have limited means to heal themselves at this point.

After the goblin ambush in Witchfire the party heads to Corvis and meets The Main Questgiver who sets them down the path of the adventure proper with some investigation missions, leaving aside combat for at least an entire game session while the party explores the city and gathers information. Hoard has the party hole up in the town's keep until morning and face a tacitly unfair combat encounter that will likely leave a party member dead. I don't want to get too wrapped up in minutiae or bogged down in encounters, but felt these two beginnings warranted being contrasted. Witchfire opens with a quick and easy fight to introduce the mechanics, and introduces the setting in a moment of peace, when the party has had time to collect themselves from the fight. Hoard bombards the party from the word go, spiking the tension for what could easily be the entire duration of your play session and chasing it almost immediately with another fight.

Gonna switch gears to structure. Witchfire has a positively immense amount of preamble, the book dedicates 32 pages to the background of the city, its environs, the events preceding the adventure, where the notable NPCs are concerned with it and what information needs to be imparted to the PCs, and what has happened that they will have no idea about yet. Hoard has barely a page of content before the first encounter and most of it is just general background on the setting, where the adventure will be taking them and an overview of the adventures events. I don't want to seem overly unfair to Hoard, as being set in the Forgotten Realms means all the lore is already out there in one form or another, so they don't need to include the entire history of the Time of Troubles or the Spellplague at the beginning of this adventure, but what background they do provide is very barebones, giving very one-dimensional accounts of the NPCs and their motivations, which leads to some severe confusion later on.

NPCs can be tricky to write in any situation, simply because it's impossible to hand a GM a script of everything someone might possibly say to account for what a party might be, say or do. Hoard has fairly minimalist scripts, giving most NPCs essentially just a blurb about what they need the party to do, sadly some of its best NPC characterization is wasted on an extended travelling section that my players at least just wanted to be over. Witchfire does a similar thing but goes an extra mile in giving extended NPC dialogues a rough outline. In situations where NPCs will have extended conversations with PCs, the books gives them introductory dialog and a few scripted lines, then lays out some ground rules, stating what the NPCs motivation is, what they know, what they will tell the players, and what they will ask the players. I cannot tell you how useful this extra information was, even when surprised by a situation the book didn't anticipate, the context provided by the additional background gave me enough to infer a consistent and in-character reaction. This forethought also helped turn what would have been exposition dumps into question and answer sessions that were engaging for the players. Hoard had some serious problems with not clearly describing NPC motives and intentions, to the point where I had the party walk in on a character who the book gave absolutely no indication how they would react, beyond implying he'd be kind of a dick about it.

Both of these campaigns have relatively little downtime, throwing developments and encounters without giving the party a lot of time to mess about and do other things, but the way they do this is set up drastically differently. Hoard has periods of intense activity at the beginning and end, with a sort of 'downtime' period in the middle, consisting mostly of travel. This approach is made necessary by the narrative but makes for bad pacing. By the time the party gets to the travel section they mostly just want to move on to the next dungeon/adventure beat because that's what the module has accustomed them to. To further exacerbate things, the travel section isn't even really downtime because of the random encounters and intrigue that persist throughout it, so it ends up being run like a poorly structured dungeon where the party is stuck on a wagon going through it. Witchfire has very little downtime but a much more regular pace, players generally have a period of buildup followed by a period of decompression surrounding each of the dungeons or action beats, which themselves gradually ramp up in scope and intensity before climaxing (usually near the end of each of the three 'books' the campaign is composed of) each one feels like an organic endpoint too, giving the party some good falling action and resolution before leading them into another adventure in the next book.

Let's talk nitty-gritty stuff now, dungeon and encounter layouts. Both of these campaigns have some impressive dungeons and some really fun encounters, Both also take steps to prepare the DM for the specifics of the dungeon environments, though Hoard takes a slightly more cumbersome path. The dungeons in Hoard will often have environmental conditions (light, effects of weather, patrols etc.) listed at the beginning of each dungeon but then not mentioned in the pertinent areas, which can be confusing if you haven't committed the entire section to memory or have lost details in the intervening time in the dungeon. Also, a thing that only happens once or twice  but is still really frustrating that Hoard does: Information critical to the party in order to progress/accomplish a stated goal that they have literally no way of obtaining, that is bad structure. Witchfire by and large does a really good job putting all pertinent information in the room descriptions, as well as giving almost every dungeon room a clearly marked “Read this out loud“ flavor text callout (another thing Hoard neglects on a few occasions)

I suppose one more thing is important to cover before narrative structure and I suppose it can be best described as 'progression'. Progression and levelling systems are kind of the hallmark of the RPG genre, to the point where video games say they have 'RPG elements' because after you do a certain amount of stuff a number goes up, and levelling up is important to engagement and helps pace a campaign. I can't really compare these two games in terms of levelling up just because the adventures are different lengths, they use different systemic scales to determine levels and relative power, it just doesn't work that well, but there's another important progression system I can call upon: Loot. Loot is also a hallmark of RPGs and especially in games like D&D your equipment can be as much an indicator of your power as your level. Often times upgrading equipment eventually becomes the only way to improve key aspects of your character's capabilities, so its importance is hard to overstate. Even 20th level veteran characters can be total pushovers without the cartload of epic loot they've accumulated in that time. In Hoard of the Dragon Queen the party will find precisely zero magic items until the penultimate dungeon. Which they will be level 7 upon completing. Even basic equipment is startlingly rare throughout this campaign, with most of the enemies who use equipment having low-quality gear that party won't need. Even the treasure they do find (primarily currency; coins, gems etc.) isn't of much use as they're only in a town long enough to go shopping once near the beginning of the adventure. Now I've run low-magic/low-treasure games before, they can pose unique and interesting challenges and be a lot of fun if you're prepared for them. Whoever wrote this campaign however was not, as well before the party will see it's first +1 magic sword (in the final dungeon btw) they'll encounter monsters resistant to nonmagical attacks, making what should be relatively standard fights to build tension on the way to a real showdown into bone-crunching slogs where spellcasters exhaust their entire arsenal and fighters slash away for hours at enemies they can barely damage. This is, in my opinion, simply an unforgivable oversight in terms of game design. Given the numerous typos and editing mistakes in this campaign it would not surprise me at all if they had just left out some sections where the players were supposed to find some decent equipment, as it was I threw in a few caches to get my party up to having a fighting chance. I'm all for challenging players and giving them a fight that really tests them but there's an art to crafting a real challenge and throwing something at the party that you haven't given them the tools to deal with is not part of it. If I hadn't added my own loot to the game most of the party would be facing the final boss with the exact same gear they started with, and while that can work in some games, D&D is not one of them. Witchfire was a bit of an odd case because of how magic items work in IKRPG and the fact that it was written for an earlier edition of D&D made that a bit off for my campaign but as written, the party found a magic item (albeit a dagger) in the first dungeon, and had the potential to find more substantial equipment upgrades at a fairly regular pace throughout the game, and even had a reward for a side quest be „One free masterwork item of your choice“ at the local weapon shop, so even people with obscure weapon preferences could be assured they wouldn't be left out.

Okay now it's time for Narrative structure, buckle in. One of the big problems I had with Hoard was getting the characters invested, they never stayed in any place long enough to care about it, never spent enough time with an NPC to care about them, never encountered an antagonist enough times to build a rivalry with them, and while some of this I can chalk up to the travelling nature of the campaign, some it I can't. In the extended caravanning section the party has chances to meet up and talk with some NPCs but they're almost immediately shunted off somewhere else at the next stop, the party never returns to Greenest or speaks to anyone from it again. My party's most protracted NPC relationship was with a named Lizardfolk NPC about 2/3 into the campaign and didn't last past that particular dungeon. Even the organizations they were ostensibly working for only spoke to them once the entire adventure. This is not good writing, this is not good engagement, if I was reading a novel about these events I would constantly be asking myself “Why do these adventurers even care?” and I'm sure some of my players asked themselves that at least once over the course of this game, which is not a good sign. Witchfire on the other hand, I will first say has the rather significant benefit of actually being a series of novels, though honestly the roles of the adventurers are written in such a way that I can't even grasp what must happen in the novels, unless they just include a set of characters who make up the adventuring party. I'll actually probably go more in-depth in another piece about the writing in Witchfire but for now I'll stick to my comparisons. By having the campaign take place almost entirely in one city, the party has time, and inclination to get acquainted and invested in it, they're going to be interacting with this place for a while, they're going to go to places and visit people multiple times, the person they spoke to in chapter 1 will still be there in chapter 10 and that makes it easier for them to care. The primary quest giver, Father Dumas, is a staple of the campaign and rather than being relegated to a simple exclamation point telling the party where to go to next, he becomes a person, with a complex relationship to the story, the antagonist, the other NPCs, the city itself and yes, the characters. Even minor NPCs are given life and depth and engender empathy from the players. When terrible events befall the city my players were wracked with concern, vowing revenge on those who did this and putting thought and heart into how they were going to help.

Writing a novel is hard work, so is coming up with interesting and compelling scenarios for games, writing a tabletop campaign is a delicate alchemy of these endeavors and can be tougher than both. I wanted to write this primarily to show how a well-written and structured adventure could be truly amazing for everyone involved, and how laziness, poor structuring choices and a lack of attention to detail can make what should be a ton of fun with your friends feel mediocre, or even like a slog. I've learned a lot from these experiences, and I hope some of it I've been able to impart to others. To anyone out there thinking of writing a campaign or just running something fun with their friends, I hope this has been a helpful look into some of the harder to see aspects of gaming. Happy role-playing everyone!

[mana-junkie]

Pretty Uniforms Specked With Blood

Pretty Uniforms Specked With Blood

A Big Eyes Small Mouth (BESM 1st Edition) Adventure

*GM Note: I had accidentally left the notes to this adventure at the table. So this is all going from memory. Sorry if I left out details of who did what in combat since some of the players did some really cool stuff.

Cast of Characters: Hank “The Tank” Tanaka – Mark Maggie Arielle – Remil Maise May – John Luci Warhammer – Scott

Prologue:…

[thewonko]

Running games is fun

It's International Tabletop Day! I got roped into running stuff at my FLGS, and no one questioned me bringing a BESM one-shot. In this case, It was @froborr's Interdimensional Action Squad and the Onsen of Doom (the second Interdimensional Action Squad one-shot), and let me tell you, things went amazingly well.

First some background, this adventure was written as a one-shot for a convention, so pre-gens were provided, and the plot and enemies change depending on which characters are chosen. In this game we had Doctor Whooves (The Doctor, but as a pony), Gary Oak (and his Umbreon), Utena Tenjou, Kanata Shinonome (and her mech, from AKB0048, which everyone needs to see, because it's great), and Toph Bei Fong (Yes, from Avatar)

Now, highlights:

-Gary tries to catch Doctor Whooves at first, but stopped when it was pointed out he technically didn't have any pokeballs)

-The party stumbles upon Ash Ketchum and his pokemon. Ash, being less than a stellar intelligence at the best of times, tries to do a regular 1v1 pokemon fight (pikachu vs. umbreon), then gets a sword in his face, courtesy Utena. He sends out the rest of his pokemon, and Charizard, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle start facing off against the rest of the party.

-Toph throws a rock at charizard, who is, of course, fire-type and weak to rock. One earth-bent pebble and charizard goes down hard.

-A large steampunk mech is stomping everywhere. Doctor Whooves gets crushed, but regenerates, so he's fine.

-Toph starts metalbending the the mech, and eventually pulls of one of its legs, which doesn't actually help all that much, except that it allows Umbreon to climb up to the cockpit and knock the pilot unconcious with Psychic.

-Later, Utena's in a Duel. Here I suprised the table by playing the Duel Arena music from the show for the duration, mostly because it amused me.

-Gary, having gotten pokeballs at the local pokemon center, tried to capture a Penguin with a Popgun (one of the arena guards). It didn't work and he got shot. A lot.

-Doctor Whooves falls off the Arena platform and dies from fall damage, but he regenerates, so he's fine.

-A Fire Nation blimp shows up, Kanata teleports everyone up to it with her mech (because the Power of Music can do that (And yes, I played an song from appropriate song from AKB0048 when this happened, because what good is a gimmick if you don't play it to the hilt?)). Kanata ('s mech) starts shooting at it while the rest of the party starts ruining it from the inside. Between Toph's metalbending and Umbreon knocking another pilot out, the blimp starts to go down. Everyone gets to the top, and to Kanata's mech. Except Doctor Whooves, who dies in a fiery blimp crash. But he regenerates, so he's fine.

-In the end, Sandalphon (one of the angels from Evangelion) is summoned from the local volcano. Doctor Whooves trips over his scarf and doesn't die, but regenerates anyway, so he's fine.

-Sandalphon is defeated! Yay! Ash shows up again and, thinking it's a legendary pokemon, catches it. The world is doomed.

All in all, I had great fun, the players had great fun, and I really need to find a time to run the third one of these that I have sitting around, and should probably pick up the fourth one at some point too.

[littlestarprincess]

Actually, more rambling about my kny adventures under the cut~

Originally my KNY insert was basically the ronin from SoH but I’m working on a BESM template for them (tabletop rpg stuff that isn’t super important at this time), and since I was thinking about demons so much and had like, a list of abilities in front of me, I ended up with a demon!SI too . . . *sweats*

Borrowing really heavily from Mermaid Saga for her backstory, she was raised in a village of women who learned they could use cannibalism as a way to retain their youth somehow (is it demon related? It should be but I haven’t thought that far yet); Min was also raised under a different name, which she discarded when Muzan found and rescued her, and he doesn’t actually know her real name because he “doesn’t care” / also is respecting her boundaries. Basically, she was kept shackled her whole life*; Muzan happened to pass through the village and decided he liked her well enough -- they hit it off because she understood him easily and he was like “well, that makes me feel special so I’m keeping her”, turned her into a (powerful) demon and then sicced her on the village that had raised her, then took her home as a “personal assistant”/governess for his daughter probably (I still need to read through the manga, so I don’t know how many details there are for this); his wife set about basically adopting her, which gives her Big Guilty Feels when she starts falling for Muzan too (even though as long as she doesn’t actually do anything it’s not like she’s doing anything wrong, either).

Eventually she grows strong and skilled enough to develop a Blood Arts, and it’s basically a really powerful barrier that she can set up. Normally she sets it up by crying really loudly a la Sailor Moon, so people who fight her sometimes mistake it for shockwaves, but it is definitely not shockwaves, just a force field. She’s also still very good at reading people and getting in their heads, though since she has a hard time keeping them out she prefers to avoid them, and when she has to be around people other than Muzan and his family, she sticks really close to him so he can drown out everyone else.

*Side note, Muzan really seems to sympathize a lot with people who were bedridden or otherwise powerless, but I have a lot of feelings about Muzan so don’t mind me