Down the Glen Tramp Little Men

I keep returning to this video because, despite being a silly Brad Neely comedy cartoon, it really groks the Fair Folk in a way others do not.  Enjoy!  (And as the name suggests, this is not even a little safe for work.  But what are you doing checking Blogger at work?)

Deadlands Replays Table of Contents

Since I did for Changeling earlier this week, I figured I might as well make a table of contents for the Deadlands replays as well.

Deadlands, Session 1 [also, here are additional notes on session 1]

Deadlands, Session 2 [session unwritten]

Deadlands, Session 3

Deadlands, Session 4

Deadlands, Session 5

Deadlands, Session 6

Deadlands, Session 7

Deadlands, Session 8

Deadlands, Session 9

Deadlands, Session 10

Deadlands, Session 11

Deadlands, Session 12

Deadlands, Session 13

Deadlands, Session 14

Deadlands, Session 15

Deadlands, Session 16

Deadlands, Session 17

Deadlands, Session 18

Deadlands, Session 19

Deadlands, Session 20

Deadlands, Session 21

Deadlands, Session 22

Deadlands, Session 23

Deadlands, Session 24

Deadlands, Session 25

Deadlands, Session 26

Deadlands, Session 27

Deadlands, Session 28

Deadlands, Session 29

Deadlands, Session 30

Deadlands, Session 31

Deadlands, Session 32

Deadlands, Session 33

Deadlands, Session 34

Deadlands, Session 35

Deadlands, Session 36

Deadlands, Session 37

Deadlands, Session 38

Deadlands, Session 39

Deadlands, Session 40

The Changeling Sessions

The old Deadlands group is still active, but we've been playing Changeling: the Lost these days.  Nicole of A Really Well-Made Buttonhole took over writing duties, and has been dutifully posting sessions.  As such, interested parties should go there.

For ease of reference, I'll post a table of contents here, as well.

Changeling, Session 1

Changeling, Session 2

Changeling, Session 3

Changeling, Session 4

Changeling, Session 5

Changeling, Session 6

Changeling, Session 7

Changeling, Session 8

Changeling, Session 9

Changeling, Session 10

Changeling, Session 11

Changeling, Session 12

Changeling, Session 13

Changeling, Session 14

Changeling, Session 15

Changeling, Session 16

Changeling, Session 17

Changeling, Session 18

Changeling, Session 18.5

Changeling, Session 19

Changeling, Session 20

The Carcosa Sessions

My D&D 4e group is just about finished in Carcosa, so I might as well post the encounters.  All told, there are fourteen encounters, most of which are with different groups of monsters (four encounters include Space Aliens, and two encounters include Green Men; the others are unique).  Some of these are homebrewed, some of them are reskinned 4e monsters, and some are from the 4e version of Gamma World.  You can direct any questions to the comments section of this post.

Check out the Encounters here.

One Must Silly Walk Into Mordor

In case you missed the Hangout on Google+, here's the dissertation on role-playing games and the role of the contingent, mundane, and silly in role-playing.

The Power of Prayer (is crowdsourced)

I don't have all the kinks worked out on this one, but I had this idea the other day.

I am a huge fan of the Super Nintendo cult classic EarthBound.  (For the uninitiated, it's a classic video game RPG but set in the modern day.  And it's quirky as hell.)  The game is pretty heavily spoiled, but if you want to play it with no prior knowledge, know that spoilers are ahead.

Paula is unique among the player characters, being the only one with the ability to Pray.  This weird little idiosyncratic ability allows her to cause random status effects, and is generally a dangerous tactic — some of the effects restore HP to the party, while others put everyone to sleep, ally and enemy alike.  One even revives everyone in the battle, reviving fallen party members and enemies.

However, in the final battle against Giygas, Paula has to use the Pray command to draw on the strength of everyone they have met in their journey.  The combined psychic weight of the people of Earth banishes the eldritch alien.

A Game Master would have to severely limit its use, but a cleric could easily have a Pray power as described above.  When the PCs are aware they are entering a tough battle, they can prepare using the Pray power.  Once used, the GM could post on any social media he or she uses, attempting to garner support.  ("Hey, my PCs are descending into the Demonweb Pits tonight.  Show your support for them, would you please?")  Each "Like," "Comment," "+1," "Share," or whatever show of support your local social media site uses counts for something.

That's about as far as I've gotten with it.

My thought was that each "+1" or whatever gives a floating point in a pool (we'll unimaginatively call it "the Prayer Pool").  Points in the pool can be used to increase die roll results for one roll, temporarily increase HP or defenses, or possibly diminish enemy dice roll results.  Once the pool is depleted, that's it, so make sure it counts.

The Pray power would have to be heavily curtailed — maybe it's usable only once per level, or adventure, or even once per year.  If you play the sort of game where this sort of thing wouldn't seem heavy-handed, perhaps it's only usable by GM fiat.

Mysteries of the Gods (1977)

Another day of blogging links to other things, as gaming continues to be a trifle slow for a moment before exploding again.

Today, we have Mysteries of the Gods, a 1977 documentary based upon the works of Erich von Däniken and hosted by William Shatner.  I include it here because ancient astronauts are a major part of the backstories of Blackmoor, Call of Cthulhu, and Carcosa, as well as a fair number of modern occult campaigns.

Probably worth watching if you have about ninety minutes to waste.  (Or ninety minutes in which you can do something and have Mysteries of the Gods playing in the background.)