Preparations to run The Black Hack online

I have already played few games online using Skype, Roll20, Google Hangouts and Google docs. Now I am preparing to run game like a pro!

I am running The Black Hack (my review), and decided to use it because it is lightweight and new. I have an online group for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, so I wanted to run something a little different yet OSR in compability and feel.

I also wanted to start the game with Where Is Margesh Blackblood? by +Tim Shorts, because it has so much in it from combat to great roleplaying opportunities. I've used it several times, and always love to run it.

A MAP

I am already familiar with the adventure I am about to run, so I don't have to make preparations for it anymore. This time I make an area map for it, though.

A quick drawing of the adventure's area ready for scanning.

After I scanned the hand-drawn map, I added some color with GIMP and text with paint.net.

Here is the map ready for action!

ONLINE TOOLS

Skype is what we use for communications. I am here at my house alone, three of the players are under same roof and the last player is at his place. We use Skype, because everyone has an easy access to it. We use video conversation, and text chat for some meta that is easier to write than explain.

Roll20 is used for dice rolling and for the map.

Here is the map, fog of warred, in Roll20 ready to be revealed for the players.

Trello is an online organizer notes program I use to keep track of the adventure. This is the first time I am using it, but even during pre-game preparations it feels extremely handy! It's easy to add and manage notes. I've got "lists" for house-rules (for quick referance), characters, adventure log and extra information there. Adding new lists and info is so quick and easy I think it won't slow the game down a bit!

My Trello notes look like this. More to come during the play!

Google Drive for hosting all kinds of images, like for NPCs to quickly share and locate.

PHYSICAL TOOLS

There already are quite a few windows open on my system, and even though I use two monitors, I don't want to use pdf viewers for rules and adventure. Also some oldschool notepad and pens are always needed.

I had to print The Black Hack pdf (waiting for the physical reward to arrive). I am lucky to own a printed copy of Where Is Margesh Blackblood? Index card on the top is a simple referance for Ascending to Descending AC. It comes handy every now and then.

HOW DO YOU RUN ONLINE GAMES?

What tools do you use? What is your preferred chatting platform? Do you use voice, video or text only?

Game report to follow...

Review: The Flayed King

Tim Shorts published this short adventure small in physical format for Swords & Wizardry appreciation day 2015. The hand crafted DIY print run was 50 copies and I was lucky and happy to receive one! The pdf is available for free at RPGNow.


Like the previous GM Games' S&W appreciation day product, The Mini Manor, The Flayed King is very dark adventure.


The whole packet from the map to the content is straight forward. You experience the content of the room whether it tries to kill you or is a light puzzle. This is not a problem, as the booklet is tiny. This is easy to throw in the middle of a campaign and leave it behind. Great for "hey I wanna run and check this out" gaming.


The rooms are interesting, magic items good, no christmas calendar random monsters, and The Flayed King is horrible, weird and brilliant! Well thought... thing.


Only thing I was missing from the beginning was the catch. First sentence(s) should give some idea(s) why and how adventurers start this dungeon. You can pick easy catch from The Flayed King himself and few other if you try, but I always appreciate when authors include their own ideas in their products. This tiniest flaw doesn't make the product any worse, though.


If you like horror and a little gore, this is great! If you don't like graphical content, this might not be for you. Gore is in good taste, though and Tim does great stuff so you might concider.

And the illustration by Jim Magnusson is very good!


Still reading? Now go to appreciate some good Swords & Wizardry content by always awesome Tim Shorts!

[Review] Where Is Margesh Blackblood?

Also available as tiny booklet.

Margesh and his bandits have been terrorising the countryside. There's a price for his head. But where is Margesh?

In 10 (total 12 pages plus covers) pages of adventure text and maps there's lots of fun. The maps are good and locations vary from each other for an interesting location based hide and seek.

There is replay value even for GMs because in the beginning of the adventure Margesh's location is randomly determined from the four hideouts.

I had fun running this, and my player had fun playing this.

I can highly recommend this for one nights fun or a filler.

In My Game

Margesh was a female. I don't know why, but from the beginning before I started to read this I got that idea from the title. Really Margesh is a guy in this adventure. But isn't female brigandine more... appealing?

For the rest of the campaign (I used Labyrinth Lord), Margesh was NPC ally of the character who decided to save her life.
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This adventure is designed for Swords & Wizardry rules but is easily all-OSR-compatible.

GM Games is one of my favorite publishers. Available at DriveThru, pay-what-you-want.

[Review] The Mini Manor by GM Games

Swords & Sorcery (Appreciation Day) compatible tiny dungeon crawl adventure with weird and gore.

"You're naked.

Cut up.

Shackled to a dead guy.

On the other side of the room is a guy cutting the face off a corpse.

Your foot bumps a severed arm.

Go!"

Sounds fun, doesn't it? This gruesome little adventure is designed for one third level character. A nice map with eight room descriptions and a random encounter table should be good for one shorter evening. The adventure might go quite well (I mean not dying) or it can be pretty tough. Some encounters are tougher than others but if there's space for roleplaying and not only rolling dice I think a clever player can get out - alive.

This reminds me a little of Saw movies and Planescape: Torment computer game beginning. I think this could be very neat start for a solo campaign in weird fantasy world, maybe Carcosa even. Or some other pretty dark place.

What I like is that there's this situation presented, go explore and try to survive it. No explanations why, or what next. Usually I'd like to read some thoughts from the author about the background of the adventure and possible future premises after the adventure (my choice should I use those, but its fun to read other's thoughts) but The Mini Manor is so damn inspiring for me in its little form that I didn't long for additional explanations or inspiration. Some of the encounters in this adventure seemed a little random, but I accept it as part of the "weird".

In 21 pages there's a neat little dungeon survival adventure, encounter table, new race, new spell and a spread of new magic items. The new race is pretty cool! Would be neat one-player campaign start to begin exploring weird and horrible world after this dungeon, as a Faceless race.

You should check this out because:

• GM Games and +Tim Shorts do good stuff
• It is free
• Quick, small, new cool race

Avoid, if:

• You don't like horror and gore or get offended by this kind of material

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The Mini Manor by GM Games' +Tim Shorts is a small booklet format adventure available for free at RPGNow.

[Review] Norman's Gone Missing

This is a micro adventure by +Tim Shorts . See the webpage Gothridge Manor to download it. There's also other micro adventures available you might be interested in.

This is not only a review but also a game report! So there be spoilers, be alerted!

The adventure is one page with a nicely colored map and easy descriptions. The adventure is easy to prepare and easy to run. It is actually more like an encounter than an adventure. The great thing is you can actually put it in the middle of your campaign very easily to make those travels from destination A to B more interesting.

The adventure is simple. Norman's gone missing, and you should find him. He's easy to find. Just follow the trail. The most fun surprise is a zombie what has a cool trick when you blast him with spells. Funny part when I ran this was that my player's character is an Elf who is used to blast Magic Missiles on anything. When the zombie's head grew my player asked me:
"Is this normal? Is this supposed to happen?" Unfortunately zombie needed too many magic blasts to make its head explode, so that funny effect didn't happen.

If I ran this the next time I would modify the magic hits so the zombie's head would explode more easily. What's the fun writing a zombie-balloon-head if it doesn't happen that easily!

And the final part of this micro adventure actually gave me a really big plot inspiration for my whole Longland campaign. Maybe that's a purpose? To start something with the ending? Worked for me. Actually it didn't start anything as the campaign had already started but it did give me a lot inspiration how the big bad would be now. So thank you for that, Norman!

A fun encounter. Not that rewarding. Easy to run. Easy to put almost anywhere in your campaign where there's a road. Funny zombie but the fun didn't happen in my game...

Nothing spectacular but I did like this! Really handy when you need to take a break in the game but don't want to take a break in gaming. Also small encounters make characters' every day travelling and life a lot better.

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Special thanks to +Erik Tenkar because from his blog I originally found this micro adventure.
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2014/06/find-norman-and-find-new-patreon.html