This might be of interest to some here:
Getting some good roleplay in tonight with the GMs in our New Guard project, a Semi-Organized Play project using the Mutants & Masterminds 3E system. This year, we’re going cosmic as the player characters’ (a good 18 of them who survived last season’s finale) souls are teleported across the cosmos into the center of a war between the Grue Unity and the Stellar Khanate and infused into robotic bodies built to match their own. To prep for the wildly different setting and plotline, the GMs are playing a short campaign as some of the NPCs in the cosmic setting to set the stage for where the PCs come in.
Just ran across this on Twitter, and it’s pretty tempting for something to do with the kids while they’re home.
CORRECTION: Just a pre-order. It’s out in November, by which time we will be free or I will have eaten my children for sustenance.
Also, turns out the reason it came up on Twitter was because my pal Keith Baker (Mr. Eberron) wrote one of the games!
Here’s a thing for all of us in quarantine
The Bundle of Holding website that sells discount TTRPG pdfs has a Solo gaming bundle on there right now. Several different systems, including a bunch of solo (miniatures?) war gaming campaign systems from a company called Nordic Weasel that sound really cool in a variety of settings- WWII, dark fantasy (ala Black Company), post-apoc, space (like Traveller). Take a squad through various missions, level them up, explore, etc. Sounds like a tabletop Xcom, really. Could be fun. Hmm. Makes me think I should grab that copy of Galaxy Defenders my friend has been offering me.
There’s also a bunch of other solo games, including @BiggerBoat’s game Ironsworn, because apparently you can play it with no players? But isn’t that already free? Huh.
There’s some cool stuff in that bundle @Don_Quixote. I’m going to give some of the skirmish stuff a try at some point.
Yeah, they asked if they could include it since it’s had a small bit of buzz lately for supporting solo play. I don’t get a cut of the bundle revenue, so it’s just a convenient bonus for buyers who might otherwise be unaware of it.
Nice! Yeah, the minis stuff is what I’m interested in, for whatever reason. I just started into …Borderlands, we’ll see where it goes. Maybe I’ll put up some sort of AAR when I’m into it.
My group isn’t used to online play, so I ran a one-shot for them over the weekend that only required a d6 since I knew everyone had one (this group is mostly all new to RPGs in the last year). We ran using Sorcerers and Sellswords which has a 2 page rulebook! I found it while searching for fantasy hacks of Lasers and Feelings, which is one of my favorite one-shot games if I’m playing with people who know Star Trek.
In a 2 hour window, we made characters, did rules explanation, and the players rescued the kidnapped mayor from the militaristic Millipede-men by using their war with the Fish People as a distraction. They also bamboozled the evil Sorcerer Jim out of his stolen crystal, returning it to the Fish People and bringing peace to the Millipede-men.
I was really impressed! The game moved quickly, was very easy to run, and the stakes for each die roll were big (think: winning or losing a whole battle on a single skill check) which got us through a lot of material quickly.
We’ll be going back to D&D in a week or two, but I bought our current DM a bit more time to figure out Roll20 before we dive in.
It’s been incredibly nice to have a role-playing group during this quarantine. A guaranteed social check-in with friends online is really something I’ve been needing. And an excuse to blow off steam with a stupid amount of whimsy felt fantastic.
If you’re looking for a micro-RPG like in that book @Nightgaunt posted, I’d heartily recommend Sorcerers and Sellswords. (Or Lasers and Feelings if you haven’t done that one.)
If you/your DM have questions, feel free to reach out. I’ve run a half-dozen D&D sessions in the last couple of weeks for various groups. I know @ArmandoPenblade uses Roll20 as well, though I think he’s using it for Fate Core rather than D&D.
Thanks for the offer! I feel pretty comfortable in Roll20 but it will be our DMs first time in it.
I’m very lucky that my wife and daughter are interested in RPGs and have both played in a few sessions, each of a different campaign, before all games outside the house ground to a halt.
So, since we can’t go to the DM anymore, I brought the DM to the house. I only have a whole 4 or so sessions of Dungeons and Dragons behind me, but I started DMing the D&D 5E Starter Kit aventure The Lost Mine of Phandelver tonight.
My daughter has had a tiefling paladin on a quest for redemption rolled for a while. My wife rolled a half elf bard who is as likely to burst into song as talk to you and uses disguises on the road. Why the disguises? What does she fear? Her backstory is still pretty mysterious. Fun.
So our duo set out from Neverwinter this evening.
They met a NPC on the road I added for flavour and to cast Aid (more hit points) on them in prevision of what I knew was coming…
Thankfully, they survived their first ambush a few hours later.
And now, they are in the hunt for more. I think they will find them…
It’s kind of nerve wracking having to know what to prepare for a session. But I’m looking forward to the next one.
That’s awesome! Glad you had a great time.
Outstanding! This enforced stay-home time is perfect for campaign building.
Hell yes man, that’s awesome!!! I love the notebook word art / Wonderwall gag, hah.
This is great!
We ran Session 0 of our third season of our scifi-comedy RPG campaign, StS! tonight. StS! is the big multi-table, multi-GM “Semi Organized Play” campaign I run in a scifi-comedy setting of my own imagination here in Raleigh. With a team of 5 GMs, we craft an interlocking story told across multiple tables at each session, lasting 3 months total. Session 0 is the opportunity for our players to create new or update old characters, refamiliarize themselves with the heavily tweaked Fate Core rules we’re using, and play a short adventure to get back into the spirit of things.
Obviously, COVID-19 has changed a lot. Rather than 3-4 tables running side by side in a game store on crowded Friday and Sunday evenings, our SOPs are moving online for the foreseeable future, and StS! Season 3 (we always run in the Sunday slot April-June) is the first to make the full move to online (our two Jan-March SOPs switched their finales to online-only with very little warning). We’re using Jit.si for webconferencing and using our local RPG org’s Discord server (and its myriad bots) for die rolls and text chat mid-game. Some GMs are using Roll20 for very complicated games, but for the most part, we just share a Google Doc or Sheet that contains notes and Fate Point totals for players to track and maybe sketch out a simple map by hand when needed.
I’m pretty damn proud to say that we pulled off the switch about as well as anyone could hope to. We hosted 20 players today (well, 19; someone no-showed at the last minute), with a great mix of old and new. Each virtual table (two run by two GMs teamworking, one with me on my lonesome) covered chargen, rules, setting elements, and “last season in StS!” style plot updates, followed by a short simple adventure at each table. At mine, the brave Space Patrollers of Expeditionary Team Delta braved their annual licensure exam, while at other tables, they fended off against evil toy stores and competed in wildly over-the-top artistic contests.
Another local tradition is after any SOP night, all the players and GMs drive over to a nearby divey sports bar, Bada Wings, for drinks and fried noms, and to talk about the games and catch up with friends. Obviously, that’s right out, as well. Instead, we hosted our first ever virtual Happy Hour on a giant Jit.si call after the games wrapped up; had about 15 people on consistently. It definitely wasn’t perfect – lots of little technical snags and whatnot – but it was a great, great night and a big success for our program. Looking forward to the rest of the season!
Thanks everyone. It’s a relief knowing we can make it work and have s lot of fun doing it.
Wow @ArmandoPenblade . That’s on a different level of GM’ing and storytelling. Sounds like an awesome night too.
Glad it went well. Wanting to tell a compelling story while having to deal with the technical details of running online and the snags must make for a stressful mix.
I’d like to bring in one of my colleagues who used to play D&D a lot into this campaign or the next. But that would have to be online. I’m not ready for that yet though.
So, I see there are a lot of Roll20 people here - I´ve searched everywhere, and cant find an answer to this - it seems you should be able to drag and drop loot to players? But how, and from where? All I want is to give a player a healing potion, instead of having them to manually type it in.
Thanks!
(Edit - this is in an adventure module, Mines of Phandalur - They already ran the first part and I am not importing their character sheers into roll20 for online play)
Hey @Razgon, did you ever figure out how to give the loot? I’ve never played on Roll20, but I’m interested in trying online play with one of my sons and a colleague. Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds are reasonably intimidating to manage for a new DM though (though the premade modules for Lost Mine should help).
You are ahead of us. We had our second session tonight, and only lasted a couple of hours as my daughter was tired.
And so, we left our adventurers for the night with chained wolves behind them, a crumbly rubble passage to the West and a goblin standing on a rickety bridge 20’ feet up who hasn’t spotted them yet.
Running the game without directing the players into a given solution is hard to do. I have, for instance, hinted a couple of times that they could subdue goblins or be creative, but they are having none of it. So my guess is they will slaughter the whole cave without speaking to anything in the morning. :D
And that’s fine, I’m trying to stay out of their story for now.
Tabletop wise, I’ve been having a lot of fun cutting up the map at 1" grid scale I printed so I can reveal pieces based on line of sight. Though I need to make sure I encourage them to ask more questions rather than just focus on the details on the 2D map.
All in all, I find the whole thing a blast. I’ve started researching lore and making up potential rewards that tie in to the paladin and bard’s back stories or quest to give them at some point. It’s fun to step outside the bonds of the book.
Anyway, good luck with your game. Hope the heroes make it. :)
Hey @Wendelius , nice writeup!
I figured it out, thanks! The problem was, that it wasnt called Healing Potion, but Potion of healing in Dungeons & Dragons, so amount of searching would avail me :-D
Sounds like you guys had a blast! That is awesome! We played a few hours last night, and it was pretty fun. There were some pauses, as either someone disconnected, which happened quite a bit, or as I was scrambling to remember how to do stuff in Roll20. Its not bad, though, and after watching a few videos, and going through the tutorial in ROll20, I was able to use it rather smoothly.
I use it mostly as a gamemap show and tell, and to move their tokens about. On top of that, rolls are very easy to make!
Want to attack? Click the weapon, spell or whatever you want to attack with, on your character sheet, and the game rolls dice for you automatically.
Want to roll a proficiency roll? Click the stat or proficiency, and its rolled automatically.
Those rolls all have their bonuses added as well, and explained if you mouse over them. Pretty nifty.
As for the maps themselves- I bought a 9 dollar pro subscription, which gave us Dynamic lightning. This means, that each player can only see whatever their character would be able to see, of the map.
All in all, I can recommend roll20 - it seems pretty good! The disconnects aside, but they were having issues that night, I later read, so hopefully not that bad normally.
Fantasy grounds is tough as nails though to get into, but is probably awesome as well.
Anyways - great to hear about your experiences! Especially in these trying days :-)
EDIT: To illustrate - This is what I see:
And this is what a player (wolfblood) can see :
Below, I clicked the players Greatsword, and the game automatically rolled dice for it. If I wanted damage, I just click the name in the chat area of the weapon. If I wanted a wisdom check, I click wisdom
oh - here is me mousing over the greatsword attack roll and see the roll and its additions
Its a nifty system!
Note that it only has that level of automation because you were playing D&D and there’s a lot of material pre-setup for that particular game (as it is a) the most popular RPG, period, and b) they have a partnership with Wizards of the Coast), though some of it you have to purchase. The level of support for more obscure games tends to be significantly more minimal, though there’s still often at least a character sheet, perhaps with a few programmed macros and such. And of course, many games don’t have the amount of rules and math to wrangle that even 5E D&D does.