The Thing From Another World in Mothership

I don't think anyone has done this exactly, but I think it's time to do a series on adopting various famous monsters to the Mothership rules. Let's start with one of the greatest of all time: the Thing!

Love this Alt Poster!

The Thing's key traits:

An alien creature that is in fact a cell colony with the ability to absorb and replicated/replace the cells of any other creature, taking on their appearance, abilities and even their identity. 

The Thing's original appearance is difficult to discern, and it may have no consistent appearance (even the description of what it might have looked like, with three eyes, could just be the current form it was mimicking).

The Thing is intelligent, and presumably retains knowledge from prior assimilated victims. This includes the ability to craft and pilot something as sophisticated as a starship.

When absorbing a creature, it takes the Thing about 45 minutes to completely convert a human sized target into its own. 

The Thing exhibits a weakness to fire, though this could be better described as "it burns like anything else." But due to its malleable, ever-changing nature and ability to remember and mimic any life form it has previously absorbed, the Thing can sustain and recover from most damage with only modest initial impact. Fire and energy damage that can destroy it at the cellular level is most effective at destroying the Thing.

The Stats for a piece of the Thing depend heavily on what it is mimicking and/or what sort of amalgamation it forms in the moment. Several stat blocks will be provided to reflect different sized/focused forms of the Thing as a result. 

Special Qualities: The Thing has these traits in all forms:

Infectious. All Things have an infectious trait, and skin exposure to the Thing leads to assimilation when exposed. PCs who take any damage or come into any skin contact with some portion of the creature, even at the cellular level, must make a BODY[-] check or they are infected and have 45 minutes to assimilation into a Humanoid Thing.

Malleable and Resilient. The Thing takes damage from kinetic weaponry, but it rapidly heals, repairs and restores function. It regains 1 Wound and equivalent health every minute, and as a special feature may heal even sooner (per combat turn). It is unable to use this feature if it takes fire or energy damage for one minute, and is "dead" if it loses all wounds from such damage, with only a slight chance a portion of its mass survives.

Head Crab Thing: C: 25%, 1D10 DMG, I: 50%, AP 1D5-1, W1(10) - may have 1D5 additional appendage features (EX: 1-crab legs, 2-extendable tongue with a grasping feature, 3-eye stalks, 4-spits acid, 5-whip tail with poison barb)

Humanoid Thing: C 50%, 2D10 DMG, I: 60%, AP 1D5-1, W2(20) - may have 1D5 additional surprise features (EX: 1-claw arm, 2-head splits for attacking maw that does 4D10 DMG, 3-infecting tendrils, 4-chest maw (4D10 DMG), 5-exotic eyesight); Special: indistinguishable from the humanoid it mimics until exposed.

Monstrous Form Large Thing: C 75%, 4D10 DMG, I: 90%, AP 5+1D5, W3(30) - will have !D5 additional features (EX: 1-multiple limbs (1D4) for extra attacks, 2-infectious tentacles, 3-vomiting infectious attack, 4-wings (if local atmosphere and gravity support it), 5-spines (50% chance they shoot))

Exposing The Thing: In the film, it is revealed that the Thing's individual cells are engrained with a survival instinct, so jamming a hot wire into blood samples reveals what is real and what is imitation blood. Creative PCs may find other interesting ways to reveal imitations in their midst. For example, The Thing often has an exterior form that mimics the appearance of the human it just assimilated, but may have an internal morphology that hides appendages intended for attack or other special purposes. An x-ray may reveal these internal differences.

It is Settled (for now): Mothership and Tales of the Valiant

 So I have at last wrapped the D&D 5.5 campaign (we have loose plot threads, so who knows, maybe it will be revisited eventually) and Wednesday night formally begins with a Mothership ongoing campaign. I am plotting for around 5-10 sessions, but maybe we'll get more out of it; who knows! Mothership is a very fun game, but it is easier to do one shots and short campaigns with it than it is to do protracted campaigns....similar to Call of Cthulhu, the group can only sustain so much horror before it transitions from spooky fun to "wow how aren't we dead yet."*

I have had an infrequent Friday group as well, which my son was occasionally running Pathfinder for (and I ran Shadowdark for them before that). The group expanded to six players with last week's return to form, and I began running Tales of the Valiant at long last! It was a good session 0.5, with some char gen followed by a bit of gaming. I am introducing the variant concepts to them as we go (such as lineages and heritages, luck, doom, dread and so forth) bit by bit, in a completely new world setting I devised jut for TotV. I had initially planned to use preprinted modules but after reading through everything I had I decided most of them sucked for purposes of my GM style and what I wanted out of the game, and so I devised my own low level intro campaign module instead. I meticulously followed the encounter design rules outlined in the Gamemaster's Guide and have so far found them more satisfying than 5e/5.5E's traditionally more vibe-based guidelines.

Anyway, this mix seems to work for now! I have plans soon to try out Cairn 2E, Fabula Ultima, Outgunned, The Electric State** and possibly a return to Savage World's Pathfinder edition. We shall see.....but the important thing is, lots of options that require no further engagement with D&D 5.5.  

*Or, alternatively, "We have all lost multiple PCs, does anyone have a living PC who remembers why we landed on this haunted space station in the first place?"

**RPG and the original book only, we will not speak of the Netflix movie. 

Superman - A true revival of the Comic Film

 I saw Superman (2025) twice this weekend, and will likely see it a third time soon, and who knows, maybe a fourth. It's easily the best superhero/comic movie they have done in the last several years, and the interesting choices made by James Gunn to lean heavily into the comic book reality of the movie has, I feel, paid off in spades. This feels like an actual comic book movie, they could have easily called it "Action Comics Issue #1024" and that would have been perfectly okay. It's an optimistic, uplifting film filled with crass villainy that gets soundly defeated, and it does not shy away from providing allegorical content that one can readily read in to. It's the opposite of most Marvel films, in other words.

Gunn's prior comic book outings are starting to reflect a sort of form and style that is consistent, which I suppose is good, as it means you know what you are getting with him, but it does mean you might watch this movie with a recognition of his particular style in the craft. For example, it is now clear to me that every movie Gunn makes has to have that moment in it where someone, usually with a small but incredibly dangerous object, proceeds with what can only be described as a madcap moment of violence that plays out in the background as a sort of montage or collage, often entirely in one take. We've seen it repeatedly in Guardians of the Gaaxy (standing out with Yondu's arrow sequence in the second GotG film), Harly Quinn's hallucinatory rampage in The Suicide Squad, and now Mr. Terrific and his T-Balls vs. Lex Luthor's army of raptors and mad scientists in Hawaiian shirts.

If you've heard about the movie being "woke" then be assured it is, but that is not to the detriment of the film. The "wokeness" of this film is just optimism, human decency, and a desire to see the old, better America stand out...the one that used to care about being decent and good, instead of cruel and spiteful. Salon's review describes this better than I ever could. 

I will say, if you feel (like I have) that the golden age of Superman films was with Christopher Reeves in Superman from 1978 and Superman II, then I think you are likely going to find this film to be a worthy successor. The worst thing I can say about it is that it starts rather jarringly in what feels like the middle of the third act of a normal film, but this only ultimately lends further to the unique take of the film, and I enjoyed it even more on a second watch. A+++! My favorite film so far this year, maybe even this decade.

Reinvigorated! Or maybe Reanimated?

 Well I am feeling less burnout this week! But also sometimes more burnout. I did a deep dive into various systems and found that I was definitely starting to sense a pattern in my interests. Here's what I realize now; noting that this isn't a unchanging constant; just what my tastes seem to be running to in the moment:

Verisimilitude Over Abstraction: I prefer somewhat more simulationist systems, which favor verisimilitude over "rule of cool" as a natural recourse. I liken this to the difference between a movie where our hero drops 10-15 feet and seems to take injury or has trouble getting up from such a fall, vs. other movies (Marvel films come to mind) where same hero seems able to drop 30-50 feet and is unphased, even without having super soldier serum to explain his massive invulnerability.

This means systems like BRP, GURPS, Mothership, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Cyberpunk Red and Dragonbane are standing out to me because they provide meaningful engagement levels with some sort of baseline "reality" but some other systems....even ones I like....aren't feeling too good to me at the moment because I am not presently "vibing" with the idea that the abstractions on the character sheet and in the system are really just numbers and have more to do with "did this look cool?" than anything else. That rules our D&D 5.5, Cypher System, Fantasy AGE, Tales of the Valiant, and no doubt others.

Pragmatic Character Info: I'm preferring systems which communicate clearly what you rcharacter is about, without a lot of rule-flipping and holistic interpretation. Pathfinder 2E is not a good example of this; it is laden with weird feats, obscure conditionals, and a balanced mechanical process which means skill sets are very "meh" in figuring out how your character looks different from another similar character. Contrast with BRP, which narrows the character generation to a set of common baselines defined by genre expectations for powers (if used), but in general you can look at a character sheet and understand what it means to run that PC without having to crack the book open constantly. 

The System Respects Theater of the Mind: lots of games these days lean in to the popular desire for maps and minis, and I get it; those can be fun (I suppose). But I have run RPGs for most of my life without such gimmicks, and the sorts of stories I want to convey through gaming these days (and most days) work better when the players aren't focused on the ancient wargame element that remains embedded in conventional takes such as D&D. Admittedly GURPS, as an example, supports elaborate hex-based movement and suggests this can be useful; I have played in GURPS games where the GM used this to effect, and I get it. But I have also run (and played) in countless GURPS games where it was all theater of the mind, and the experience was always more creative and superior. So systems which either implicitly or explicitly support TotM play are preferred.

No Authorial Overtones: I won't single anyone out, but if the system has a heavy authorial overtone which tries to tell you how to play, either explicitly or implicitly, that can be a real turnoff. The author does not trust you to play the game the right way for you, the end-user, and that is just not cool. I can be in 100% agreement with the game writer's viewpoint and this will still piss me off because it is an attempt by the author to control the narrative on the end user experience.* 

There are quite a few RPGs on the market today that like to talk about how their source of inspiration was, shall we say, a racist person in his time, and then denigrate his works, even as they then proceed to write an entire system around said works, implying there was still merit to the man's creations, enough for them to exploit for money. Hypocrisy! It makes it very hard to take such works seriously. Either you acknowledge that you are, indeed, inspired by the creative works of said author which means you feel his imaginative developments have merit and inspiration beyond the unpleasant bits you did not like (okay, yeah, I'm talking about Lovecraft here) and will expand upon his vision despite your dislike of his century-old racist attitude, or you maybe should decide that its ethically better for you to go write a different game and leave well enough alone. I'm looking at you, Age of Cthulhu and Arkham Horror. 

Sometimes it feels like these games were written by authors fearful that their audience would get mad at them for not appearing cognizant of these perceived injustices or social issues. The best head-scratching example I can provide is in Liminal Horror, which has a paragraph about how its not cool to play cops, authority figures or people with wealth or means. This, of course, is actual nonsense; part of the point of RPGs is the ability to explore roles beyond most people's grasps....and horror as a medium is excellent at skewering all sorts of professionals and the wealthy with equal aplomb; its not merely the purview of the poor and downtrodden to be murdered by eldritch cults. But if you were writing this game a few years ago when there was a strong push on social media to "strike back at the man" or you are a younger author (spiritually or physically) enmeshed in antiauthoritarian counter cultural values, then this might feel like a sensible paragraph to put in, no matter how utterly stupid and counterfactual to the actual genre of horror it is. 

Important: despite this minor rant, I really like Liminal Horror as a mini-system; it occupies a unique concept space and I look forward to the Kickstarter backed future edition coming out soon. Also, I find that entire rant ironic given that the best module produced for Liminal Horror so far, the Bureau, is entirely about a fictional authority organization inspired by the Bureau of Control from the eponymous video game. So one of the system's first modules directly contradicts this angry little countercultural paragraph that demonstrates a woeful lack of imagination and genre understanding right off the bat. 

Okay, rant off! Tonight I plan to close out the D&D 5.5 game, and am proposing we tackle Dragonbane or Mothership next (because that's what I packed for).

*Note that I am not talking about games which have advice on "know your audience," sections, or talk about the use of the X card. Those are just practical advice (don't run a game for 9 year olds with Kult, m'kay? or if you are running for a diverse crowd of Gen Z players, an X card may be quite revealing if you are not good at reading a crowd as a GM). Admittedly, if a game tells me to "remove the spiders if a player is offended" my internal advice is: don't run a game with spiders for someone who is scared of imaginary spiders, you know? Maybe find different players?

True Burnout

 In recent weeks I think I hit an almost unassailable wall. I have bailed on a Saturday game night (admittedly, family stuff dragging me away from it as well), but also because I was running out of steam as GM. I have bailed from as much else as possible. I am still running Wednesday night, but even there I am finding the old spark for D&D is gone. I am not even sure its purely a "5.5 is kinda meh" problem although that doesn't help. I need to get this campaign to an end so I can look hard at what to do next, and see what happens. 

I've been fighting with periodic burnout for years, but this time around feels different.....a first for me to make active efforts to dodge out of GMing, something I have historically always enjoyed, but with this recent shift escaping from that responsibility is now now proving so enticing. I have bought some new RPGs of late, stuff I should be very excited about (Daggerheart, Cypher System Neon Noir, Batman Chronicles RPG and more) but I just can't find the motivation or interest to engage with any of it. I am finding most of my free time is subsuming into reading, both regular books and catching up on my comic and graphic novel collections. I'm just.....dang, I hate to say it....worn out on RPGs and gaming at the moment. It's weird. But maybe not so unexpected; I've run an average of two games a week now for most of this century, what did I expect?

Being a player doesn't even help! It's fun for a bit, but never really been the side of gaming I enjoy all that much. It does keep me involved in the friend circle, I suppose, but my sense of dedication as a player is paper thin; I find reading, playing a video game or watching a movie to be immensely more satisfying. 

I'm hoping this is just a phase, and some time off will rest me up for a more productive GM future. But I also worry its a side effect of age, and maybe a general component of just slowing down a bit, with my interests and desires shifting focus. Deep down I am one of those introverts, and know that without effort it is very, very easy for me to sink into an isolation quagmire and that is not ultimately terribly healthy. I must ponder.....I am sure I am not the only one who has experienced this.

EDIT: I may not be giving D&D 5.5 enough credit for how much it impacts my desire to game. I just read Alexandrian's hot-take on Calibating Expectations with 5E and it really resonates with me as a clear enunciation of all the core conceits of this edition that just make it so much less fun for me.

As the Werewolf Changes

 During last night's game I was surprised to notice that Jackalweres no longer have a problem with silver in the 2025 Monster Manual. So in checking out the other lycanthropes I discovered that hey, it turns out in D&D 5.5 you can harm werewolves with anything, normally, now. They get a few extra HP and a slight AC boost but lose all the mythological flavor of the thing they used to be.

This got me to thinking about how they looked in other systems, so I thought I'd plunge down that rabbit hole a bit to see:

AD&D 1E/2E: Can only be harmed by silver or +1 weapons. So at this stage in the game, low level PCs who have trouble finding magic weapons really need to carry a silvered weapon with them just in case.... In rereading their entries I assume they transform as an action but maybe it was as part of their movement. I seem to recall running AD&D where they could move, transform and attack all in the same combat round, which makes sense in the longer 1E turn cycles.

D&D 3.5: Gain damage reduction 10/silver but only in hybrid and wolf form, interestingly! Shapeshift is an action. Looking at the old format for D&D 3.5 stat blocks on monsters reminded me of how convoluted and information dense they were; how interesting to see that the 2025 MM swung so far to the opposite direction that the current stat blocks feel anemic and drained of all color and flavor.

Pathfinder 1E: Have resistance 10 to all attacks except silvered weapons! Change shape is a move equivalent action, and they induce lycanthropy on a failed saving roll following a bite.

Pathfinder 2E: They have shapeshift as an action, and are vulnerable 5 to silvered weapons. Lycanthropy is induced on a failed save.

D&D 4E: they have regeneration 5, but silver stops their regeneration. They shapshift as a minor action, and they do extra damage against bloodied opponents. Instead of imparting lycnathropy as a disease they induce moon frenzy, which behaves a bit like the confusion spell (but does not end with the inflicted turning into a lycanthrope, interestingly). Diseases and curses in 4E were notoriously weak and ineffectual.

D&D 5E (2014): resistant to nonmagical or silvered weapons, but shapeshift as a standard action. Still have some flavor text that leans into making werewolves interesting in a traditional way. If bitten, on a failed save you just have lycanthropy now.

D&D 2024 (5.5): They gain 13 hit points and get a better AC, but lose any special resistance to ordinary damage, and silver is not even mentioned. They can shapeshift as a bonus action. Lycanthropy if bitten, but you have to reach zero hit points for it to take effect.

Tales of the Valiant: Werewolves are resistant to non-magical damage (silver is not mentioned here either). They induce lycanthropy as a curse after biting someone who fails a save.  

How about some of the other games out there? Let's see:

Swords & Wizardry Complete: mirrors AD&D 1E; so they can probably shapeshift as part of their turn, and are immune to nonmagical, non silvered attacks. Lycanthropy is automatic in an opponent reduced to 50% of their hit points by the werewolf.

Dragonbane: Werewolves hate silver as it deals full damage (along with fire) and messes with their senses. They take half damage from non-magical weapons. taking even 1 point of damage from the werewolf induces both paralysis (potency 9) and lycanthropy, and can only be cured with powerful magic or wolvesbane. And on its monster attacks a 6 induces a berserker frenzy in which your party probably dies!

Basic Roleplaying/Call of Cthulhu: They have regeneration, are immune to most damage (silvered weapons will do full damage and kill them on a serious wound, though), and taking any damage from a bite induces lycanthropy, which can maybe be avoided on a luck role if the bite also severs the limb that was bitten. Nice! The BRP statblock addresses magic and fire doing full damage as well.

Cypher System: they are level 4 creatures, which normally would mean 12 health but they have 24 health. They can cause lycanthropy if you are sufficiently injured to be reduced on the damage track. They take a long time (1D6 rounds) to shapeshift if caught in the act.

Dungeon Fantasy RPG (GURPS): These things are terrifying with damage resistance 15 against all attacks except silver (which does double damage and ignores the DR), and they regenerate 1 HP per second (GURPS combat rounds are 1 second long, so for D&D purposes that's 6 HPs of regeneration for a D&D round). Interestingly Dungeon Fantasy punts on the lycanthropy as a bite-induced curse with some flavor text about how the local temples try to keep that under control, and the rest of the statblock ignores it. GURPS Werewolves from the 3rd edition sourcebook of course does a lot more that I won't belabor here.

Fantasy AGE: They show up in the Bestiary sourcebook, and can induce the lycanthropy curse on a stunt, with the difficulty being based on how many stunt points are applied. The inflicted makes checks each night until the full moon; if they don't kick it before the full moon they go full lycanthrope. There's a section on lycanthrope vulnerabilities, but silver is mentioned as only one possibility, with the GM encouraged to customize for the campaign.

Mythras: Mythras punts on this one terribly and you need to go dig in the wolf section to get a sense of it. Ostensibly they are emulating older, more archaic notions of shapeshifters rather than more modern takes on lycanthropy, I guess? 

Mork Borg: It's actually a character class, the Cursed Skinwalker (in Feretory). You die, and your body is possessed by an animalistic presence, returning you to life as a cursed skinwalker. a bloody, skinless wolf is only one of your options. Tangentially werewolfish, but it wouldn't be Mork Borg if it was conventional now, would it? 

Okay, it was at this point that I ran out of energy (I was looking at The Fantasy Trip's take, which is to lump werewolves and vampires together as cursed/diseased species when mental fatigue just overwhelmed me). I have to say, if you want a werewolf to be scary, then there are two games that do this exceedingly well: Call of Cthulhu/BRP and Dragonbane (with honorable mention to GURPS/Dungeon Fantasy). The least scary edition of the the werewolf can be found in the current D&D Monster Manual for 2025, which is a real shame; it really lacks any of the color and vibrancy of the mythology it derives from. Curiously, they have done a better job with some other monsters in the book (medusa got a slight improvement imo, for example) so it is a shame to see them drop the ball here just because, apparently, someone might not want to be bothered with finding a silvered weapon? Weird. Very weird. Aside from D&D 2024, the next worst take on werewolves is (imo) Mythras, which puts the least amount of effort into the concept, delegating lycanthropy to a paragraph in the wolf statblock section.

This is making me want to consider Dragonbane for gaming in the very near future now, though. 

Genuinely Tough Fight - So yeah it is possible to take out D&D 2024 PCs

 Brief post, but my D&D 5.5 campaign last week had an actual tough fight. The encounter balance was on the high end for a group of 6 players with a competent NPC ally, against 4 vampire spawn (CR 5) and 12 CR 1 satarre from the Monster Vault for Tales of the Valiant. Half of the party dropped before victory was snatched from defeat. I admit, I used some competent monster tactics, including the vampires putting out the light sources in the chamber on round two, plunging the room in to darkness. Somehow, amazingly, only two of the six party members had any darkvision so that created a harrowing round or two until they secured some light.

The real killer wasn't the vampires, although like many monsters in the 2025 MM they do have a slight boost in that their main attack leads to an automatic secondary benefits (grapple) rather than prompting a saving throw. They do then get a bite attack if a grapple is landed, which alas does require a saving throw....so only one bite was made successfully in the session. My experience with D&D has been that, on average, PCs make their saves unless something weird is going on. 

But the surprise moment in the encounter was the satarre, vicious void-driven gecko/lizardfolk things from the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault (and other books prior). They are only CR 1, but they get two attacks, which land with base damage plus necrotic/void damage. The result was that I had a furious level of success with them....they could overwhelm D&D 2024 PC defenses with so many attacks, and in the space of two rounds three PCs dropped. 

Afterwards, we agreed it was reflective of the fact that while the 2025 MM has monsters that often benefit from simplified effects in their attacks (with a secondary benefit landing automatically, for example), the Tales of the Valiant monsters seem geared to hit a bit harder.

I am not 100% sure if this entirely true (many of the changes I have caught so far in TotV are along the lines of Kobold Press design standards simply being broadly applied to their own variant system), but it does make me want to play Tales of the Valiant in a pure form at the game table even more than usual. I need to convince the group of this. With many more new tomes coming out that contain player-facing archertypes and material this may be an easier sell now. Labyrinth, The Old Margreve, a Player's Guide 2 in Kickstarter and a forthcoming Book of Swords adapted to Tales of the Valiant are all full of useful player stuff, something the core Player's Guide was a bit short on with only two subclasses/archetypes per main class. When you have an old, experienced and jaded group like my own, they need more weird stuff, not less. 

Anyway, if this happens I will report more on it.

Handheld Gaming Update: ROG Ally X vs. the Switch 2

 Well much has gone on in this weird space of "video game devices you can hold in your hand." In prior posts I talked about my experience with the Asus ROG Ally, the Steam Deck, and the Lenovo Legion Go. Since then, I have ditched the Asus ROG Ally and Legion Go, selling both to cohorts who found good homes for them. For the Steam Deck I have my original, but last year I upgraded to the Steam Deck OLED model, which was a nice improvement in terms of screen quality and battery size. 

And then....I picked up the Asus ROG Ally X, about a month or so back, when I saw it on a bit of a sale, and just last week wandered into a Target and found a Switch 2 on the shelf. So no sooner had I pared my handheld collection down than I reboosted it back up. This does mean that I have been exploring the advantages of the Asus ROG Ally X more or less in tandem with the Switch 2, and have some thoughts for those interested. 

Right off the bat, I'll just state this: if you want the best overall handheld device with the most flexibility, I think the Ally X is the best choice. It has superior screen quality and processing power to the Switch 2; it has better battery life; it does rest on a Windows 11 platform but I understand you can load up Steam OS for Linux if you see fit. While a Xbox themed ROG Ally X is on the horizon, that doesn't appear to do much that this one doesn't other than provide a streamlined Windows experience. I have been running plenty of "play anywhere" Xbox titles on the Ally X already with excellent results, so not sure how much better the branded edition will be.

The Switch 2 does have some cool features going for it, though. They are very specifically as follows: you can play most of the original Switch games on it, so backwards compatibility in like 95% of cases so far; it is a smaller "footprint" and weighs less than every other handheld except the original Switch and Switch Lite; it runs all those Nintendo games you like (well for me that's the Xenoblade games, Metroid, and I dabble in the Zelda titles but never get far in them). It's got gorgeous visuals compared to the original Switch, and a surprising number of older games run better on it, which is good because not many Switch 2 games are out yet, certainly not enough to merit a purchase on their own. If you get a Switch 2, grab Fast Fusion, it is easily the cheapest and best tech demo for the system yet (at only $15 USD it is much cheaper thank both Cyberpunk 2077 and Mario Kart World, both of which are also good tech demos for the machine).

Both systems have some downsides. The Ally X is still a Windows environment, and that can be annoying. It's a much smoother experience now than when the original Ally came out, however. They also fixed the MicroSD card problem, so that's a positive (don't even try using a MicroSD card in the original Ally unless you want to heat-kill it). The Ally X is a bigger device, so its a bit chonkier (not as chonky as all those Legion models, though).

Meanwhile the Switch 2's downside is that if you compare games on it to equivalent games on the Ally X, you will immediately realize that the best Switch 2 can do right now is at best mid-tier for what the Ally X can do. I was running Gears 5 and Starfield on the Ally X and it was a smooth experience for Gears 5 and pretty good for Starfield, but if you load up Cyberpunk on the Ally X and compare it to the Switch 2, you will notice that the Switch 2 version is doing some tricks to make it work, while the Ally X is just a better overall experience, with more options to tweak the graphics to suit to taste (Switch 2 have quality and performance mode, that's it).

EDIT: should mention price. While the Ally X goes for around $800 base model or $900 for a model with more storage, the Switch 2 of course is $450, which many news outlets have been complaining about. As price goes, its actually pretty reasonable. It's not 2017 anymore, unfortunately; a $300 original Switch is simply not going to hold a candle to the Switch 2. I feel like I got my money's worth, in other words.

For owning both systems I am content to have them, and they both have their use cases. For travel I kind of prefer the Ally X overall, but the Switch 2 continues to allow you the ability to play games without having to check in on the internet (unless you've set it up that way), and has a smaller print when it comes to packing and portability. It also is built for multiplayer experiences, and can handle that easily. The Ally X makes up for that by letting you access any of your PC gaming libraries on the go. Both seem to have decent battery life, as far as handhelds go; but you want to tweak Ally X to improve overall performance. I haven't tried running them both down yet, but I have gotten more time of the Ally X overall on an unplugged playthrough.  

Cypher System Rising

 As the weeks have gone by I've begun to settle on a system with consistency: Cypher System. I mean sure, I've run this plenty in the past, but I've honestly not run it in a good while and I think maybe now it would be the ideal solution to my doldrums. 

Cypher System does have some warts, though. It's a player-roll facing system, meaning the GM never really needs to roll dice except maybe for some random cypher charts or something. 99% of the time the players roll to attack, roll to defend, roll to take action, etc. So this does mean that the core conceits of the system depend on player honesty and understanding of this mechanic. A player who unfaithfully does not report a roll of a 1 which incurs a GM intrusion, for example, is defeating a key story-telling element of the game. 

The second issue with Cypher is really user-dependent: the system's dice pool methodology has some "numbers that mean other numbers, and ways of making tasks reduce in difficulty that also mean converting to numbers" sort of approach that can seem simple enough to some, and can be oddly baffling to others. I know that when I first got Cypher System I sat on it for like a year or two because the core conceit of the system seemed so counter-intuitive to me, and felt like it would be a real hassle to teach people. I eventually pushed past that (long, long ago) and quickly grokked and loved the mechanics for what they are, but this has always proven to be a problem for at least two of my regular players. One of them has actually expressed keen interest in playing it though, despite my recalling she was very frustrated with the system in the past.....so maybe she (like me) suddenly grokked it. 

The third and final issue I have always had with Cypher (and other players of the system as well) is that XP gain is pretty quick, and the rules as written make it that way. Your characters advance over 6 tiers of play, the system's version of leveling and in each tier you have four advances which cost 4 XP. In addition, there are a range of temporary and circumstantial benefits that can be gained by spending XP. In the past, and this tends to reflect the first edition of Cypher, it was easy to see PCs gain power creep by advancing fairly quickly in tiers (especially if they horde XP for long term advancement, as that only takes 16 XP to hit a tier cap). This led to a problem where the PCs were improving overall power level faster than the GM could readily account for it (a polite way of saying that you could plot out threats that in a matter of sessions become trivial and inconsequential for the players to overcome). 

My first few campaigns of Cypher System (all in the first edition) ran into this issue, as I would tend to hand out enough XP through GM intrusions along with 1-2 XP at the end of the session, and the players hoarded XP so they tended to tier up every 4 sessions or so. After 20 sessions the PCs were approaching tier 5 and the storyline (and my newbie GM experience at the time) meant my plot was pacing for a group about half that power level, and they were already hitting what felt to me like godlike levels of performance with boosted Edges, talent pools and effort levels. In Cypher System, higher stat values often simply mean that difficult tasks at tier 1 by tier 4-6 often become "descriptive sentences in which the GM explains how cool you are" as you step past a task...unless of course the GM wants to drop an intrusion on you.  

Under the Revised rules there's more wiggle room baked in to how one goes about handing out and allowing XP to be spent, so I think this will pose less of an issue. The new rules emphasize options such as requiring players to spend XP awarded in-game to be spent in game, and XP between sessions (so end of game, for goals met, story arcs progressed, etc.) to be retained for tier advancement. The GM can award XP at a slower pace as well by focusing only on XP gained through character arc advancement, and between-game awards amending that total for specific "group/plot" goals. They give the GM a lot of leeway, in other words.

In addition, as the group levels up I have since wrapped my own head around the idea that higher level threats and concerns in Cypher System are (and should be) more about discovery, cosmic revelation, and existential threats of unusual nature, and the things which were of dire nature at tier 1 are now just footnotes along the way. 

Either way, I am looking forward to this planned excursion, and I have been pretty exclusively focused on what I can do with Cypher next. I am still mulling over the idea of Numenera vs. one of the Cypher genre settings (or maybe Magnus Archive which is rather cool), but its definitely going to be this. 

Hot Take: D&D 5.5 is kind of boring now (but it could just be me)

 Well, the title says it all: I played more D&D 5.5 ongoing last night, and while fun was had, I realize I've been avoiding combats, sometimes like, a lot. We have them; the game kicked off with an encounter between the group and a red hag, some millitaurs (both from Tome of Beasts), and a stone giant from the new Monster Manual. The fight was brief and while its "sort of fun" the combat wasn't terribly exciting for a group of level 6 PCs, nor was there much in terms of dynamic interaction......D&D 5.5 is basically a process of generating numbers (attack rolls and damage) to make other numbers (hit points) go down. Words are interspersed to imply something different is going on, but ultimately it is a very basic process. 

I would argue this isn't entirely a D&D 5.5 issue, and not even really an issue; I may just have played this game for too long now, and its no longer as exciting. But there are some fingers that can be pointed: D&D 5.5, for example, has some big numbers being thrown around, and there's not a lot of nuance; the notion that someone might miss an attack isn't terribly common; its far more likely that the staying power of a monster isn't in resisting damage or avoiding it, but instead in being a bag of hit points. All of the older mechanics that let a monster bypass, ignore, or deflect damage are mostly gone these days. I was musing on the fact that the red hag, with her magic resistance, was still easily dropped by magic missiles in the final round (she was whittled down to a few HP left) because, unlike the original incarnation of magic resistance from long ago there's no possibility it would affect magic missiles. 

The characters all have their cool attacks and abilities, but these are by and large the same abilities, used over and over again, because the game system has since at least 4th edition been trying to flatten out and remove all the bubbles or bloat in character options; the bygone era of 3rd edition where a PC could have too many choices to pick from in terms of actions and strategies are a thing of the past, for the large part. It all plays more or less the same.

So for me, this means I spend an inordinate amount of gameplay time focusing on the story, exploration, role play moments and mystery because that stuff is fun and doesn't get old. But for my players, some of them do look forward to those combat moments. It is hard for me to admit to them that....yeah....those combat moments are just not doing it for me. And for some of my players they aren't that excited anymore, either. 

Last time we played Cypher System a couple of my players commented that it was really exciting to play a game where the combat/conflict was genuinely exciting and unpredictable, with a sense of tension. It is very, very hard to get that feeling in D&D 5E. This is, of course, why a lot of my recent posts are all about figuring out what game system I want to play next.

Heck, I feel like I would love to be playing this exact campaign I am in, right now, but with the Cypher System and Godforsaken fantasy book. That would be cool! And fun! And surprising. Maybe that will be what we do next. 

On AI Slop Part 2 - When the AI Consumes Bigger Projects

 I just received my hardcover copy of Delta Green: God's Hunt, a four part campaign series that is, as all things tend to be with Arc Dream and Delta Green, really cool. The reason it comes up is because, in a rather interesting observation from my son, we were looking at the cover, and I was speculating on the insects on the cover swarming the astronaut when my son said, "That really looks AI generated." 

I was a bit defensive at first, suggesting that there appear to be obvious tells its not AI generated by the use of certain painting techniques, such as on the bugs, to evoke imagery through a stylized brushstroke, and that I wouldn't think AI could easily replicate that, but I sort of realized that yeah, at this point it probably could. Moreover, my son pointed out some other inconsistencies, such as the difficulty in telling where a thumb is on the hand. My take is, the thumb is hidden....but in consideration, that's not really an easy "pose" for a human hand. But still....it seems so unlikely to me this would be AI art, right?

Well, when I read the contents of the book I find that there are credits to Dennis Detwiller as the art director and illustrator, which is interesting. There's no other artist in the book? My old school self is just impressed at Dennis Detwiller's art talent even as modern me is growing suspicious. My son, however, finds it odd that no piece is evidently signed, as real artists tend to leave signatures. I don't muddy the water by pointing out that AI can probably imitate badly scribbled artist's signatures easily enough. 

When in doubt on these things I google a bit, and do hit a patreon notice about Dennis taking steps into using AI art. I'm not a patreon supporter so can go no further on this, but it does lead to me now leaning toward the notion that my son, in fact, is right. 

All of this is a bit of a shame. I really want to enjoy my Delta Green works, but at the expense of real artists? I am more than a little uncomfortable at supporting projects out there which are not giving real artists a fair shake. To contrast, there are an enormous wealth of real artists supporting the gorgeously illustrated Daggerheart RPG (more about that soon.) You know all those weirdly bemused reviews I and many others had about the oddly off-putting art in the new D&D books? Yeah well all the really cool, evocative and inspiring fantasy art is sitting in Daggerheart, which resoundingly slaps the D&D art  around when it comes to showing it how its done. But if you do some searching, people have at times questioned if the art in the game is AI generated, and while this has been refuted, it is an example of how the use of AI more broadly is impacting the ability of people to tell when a real person is behind the art. 

Anyway.....more examples of how AI generated art is creeping in to places you could not or would not expect it, and the unfortunate results. Look, I get that some AI art is now reaching the point where it is quite impressive. But every time I see a piece of AI art like that, it means somewhere an actual artist was not given a chance to show their work and get paid for it. I know art is probably one of the most expensive components of writing an RPG product (especially for small press publishers), but this is one corner of a larger erosion of human value and input into the picture; I'd rather just not buy a product that doesn't support live creators (be they artists or authors) than contribute to a product that removes live creators from the mix. Unfortunately this means I need to be more meticulous in my consideration of Arc Dream purchases in the future.  And if I am on Drivethrurpg going forward, if your art credits on your listing don't look like the ones on Daggerheart RPG which says "hand crafted" (see here), then I am going to assume that declining to identify your Creation Method (as Delta Green Products do, for example) is tacitly endorsing AI use in your art, and that's a no-go for me. 

AFTERTHOUGHT: I was looking through older Delta Green books and it seems Dennis Detwiller is pretty consistently the only identified illustrator, even when its from books that predate the rise of AI generated content. This certainly makes sense, as Delta Green has a pretty distinct style to it and having one illustrator will keep that style. Maybe Dennis doesn't want to identify himself as utilizing AI in the art to avoid conflating his use of the tool with his own style, but this is only exemplifying my point: AI is muddying the waters here, badly, when it comes to identifying human generated works vs. AI generated works. So I suppose if, regardless of tools in use (treating AI as a tool) the artwork would remain consistently the vision and intent of Dennis Detwiller then there is perhaps no conflict here. But how much longer before we start seeing competition that uses AI with prompts like, "Make it like Dennis Detwiller does?" I can see a lot of art like that on Drivethrurpg already.....even with the "block AI art" button turned on. 

No matter where you look at it, this road doesn't end well for human artists and authors. 

Random Musings - AI Slop on Drivethrurpg (and elsewhere)

 I was browsing Drivethrurpg.com and noticed a lot of what looked like AI generated content (cover images on the home page). Sure enough, these were listed in their descriptions as containing AI generated content. I double checked my account settings and the icon said I had it set to turn off showing AI generated content. Hmmmm. I clicked it on and off again and now it seems to be working.

It is weird, because there is indeed a lot of AI generated content. The one image I checked out was a solo scifi book (solo journaling book? Not sure). The woman had too few fingers (but had a cybernetic hand so who knows) and her negative percent fat stomach had more muscles than I think actual human bodies do. Still, it seems like there's a lot of this art out there. 

As someone who grew up in a family of artists I can empathize with the irritation and existential threat that AI art creates for real artists doing real work. From a purely aesthetic perspective I find the AI art to feel derivative and soulless. But from the writer's perspective, after decades of battling with people who liked to pirate work and complain about cost (as there's a majority out there who are good consumers of content but have no creative bone in their bodies) I eventually let it go with the caveat that hey, these people who pirate were never going to pay anyway. 

While I gave up on the fight of protecting written works, I feel a bit differently about AI art, though. I am not a great artist myself by any means, but if I put some effort into it I can do something halfway okay. If you are a good artist, one would like to get some fair compensation for your work, right? But AI art removes the creative soul from the process, generates a product that is purely derivative of other works, and ends up being, to use the popular term, slop. 

A lot of people like slop, though. And some of these AI products I saw on Drivethrurpg.com are probably not coming with content that was heavily written by a human, and may also be computer generated. How much of a market is there for this? None of the AI stuff I saw appears to be showing up on the top 100 list on the site, so that's probably an indicator that people prefer content with actual agency behind it. If this is true, then does this content, which will only appeal to people who are not bothered by AI slop, really harm anyone anymore than the pirates who would never pay for a PDF will not also harm anything?

The answer of course is: yes it will, as does the ancient problem of piracy and the devaluation of the work and effort a creator puts into their work, be it writing or art. But without a good solution, which the internet overlords are disinterested in providing unless it suits them to do so in some way, nothing will happen here. AI slop will, over time, devalue human work as it becomes more normalized. PDF piracy at least diminished somewhat, but people still engage with it and continue to perceive a PDF as somehow having no value to it despite containing the core energy and creative output necessary for the PDF to be worth downloading in the first place.

There's not much to be done other than to abstain from supporting AI slop generators. Likewise, to not pirate PDFs if you want to reflect a respect for the creators of actual human content. But these things require taste and consideration, and the large crowd out there that has grown conditioned to consume content regardless of quality are a tidal wave of cultural destruction.

Okay, rant off! 

Narrowing the Game Nights Down

 I've been gaming a lot in recent months....too much by a long stretch, as the fun of hanging with friends and supporting my son's desire to run games overwhelms the pragmatism of how much time I really have for fun vs. work and life. Well, I made an important step recently to free up some of that necessary time and have bowed out of my Saturday group for at least the next few months, which will help. I am keeping my Wednesday game going as that one is firmly rooted in the hump day, the least productive day of the week when it comes to "getting stuff done" after work is over anyway, so its good enough for me to continue gaming on that night! Been my main game night for decades now, anyway.

Running just one game a week has me thinking more seriously about what I actually do want to run, though. And despite my prior recent posts musing about all sorts of systems from now and then, I think I've been able to narrow down some thoughts on this significantly: 

First, Pathfinder 2E is a better design and experience than D&D 5.5 in every way. But, it is what my son is running on Friday nights now when he GMs, and for those nights I can attend that is probably enough for me. Plus, a nontrivial chunk of my desire for a break is "fantasy gaming burnout" so I'm trying to reduce the amount of D&D or Pathfinder I run so I can recharge the batteries. 

Second, for game systems which deliberately prompt creative energy I have to hand it to Cypher System. This is a resoundingly smart, creative engine which encourages interesting and fun games. So Cypher is definitely "in."

Third, some of my more traditional choices stand out as obvious preferences that I enjoy running short form campaigns in, therefore providing what I need in the form of a break from long-form campaigning and D&D specifically: Traveller and Call of Cthulhu come to mind right away. Less "traditional" but equally viable are the indie alts for these systems, which are Mothership and Liminal Horror respectively. So all four of these games are viable choices to focus on.

Now to just decide what to run, and when! I think my Wednesday group would be a good sport about any of these systems, but I probably need to at least get the D&D game to a happy pause point (or conclusion) first. 

The 90's RPG Nostalgia Bug

 I've been thinking lately about how getting older impacts your perception of current value in change vs. the experience held from long ago. Or, put another way, the contrast between where gaming is now vs. where it was (for me, at least) in that golden era I hold in memory that is the late 80's and early 90's. 

I think a lot of people who get bitten by the nostalgia bug tend to think of their gaming experiences in their teens, but despite being a very active member of the fanzine gaming community in the eighties during my middle and high school years, I don't actually have a lot of "fond" memories of that time to fill with nostalgia....despite being so active in gaming, I didn't get to actively game very much at all until I was in college. I spent most of those formative years on a remote ranch in the middle of nowhere, so gaming was something I did on rare occasion during trips, or vicariously through the fanzines and play-by-mail resources. My sister and I managed some one-on-one gaming, but my first real, consistent game group didn't manifest until I was driving 63 miles one-way to my first year in community college. 

That first group was great! We were all around the same age, having the same new freshman college experience, and the group was very forgiving of my desire to mainly run DragonQuest (the SPI edition mixed with the somewhat sanitized TSR edition) and Runequest 3. They eventually convinced me to pick up AD&D 2nd edition and the rest is history. My college years were laden with consistent weekly games throughout the next six or so years, with campaigns designed to last one whole semester each. It was fun stuff.

So for me, my fondest memories of gaming are during college. I started thinking about how it would be fun to look back upon that time, and contrast how things were then with where things are today. How many of the RPGs I loved back then are still around now, and how many would it make more sense for me to find some old copies of on Ebay to "relive" that moment in time? How many back then are actually not worth revisiting? And....how many are still around today in a recognizable manner?

So first off, what were the games I ran iin college? I have a fairly modest list:

AD&D 2nd Edition - this was the go-to system. I ran AD&D in its new incarnation pretty much weekly from late 1989 all the way until D&D 3rd edition arrived on the scene. 

Runequest 3rd - I actually ran a fair amount of this early on using just the Standard Boxed Set and later ran the Deluxe book with more enthusiasm by 1992ish. My Realms of Chirak campaign initially started as a Runequest campaign in its very first form (there was also a Gamma World connection).

DC Heroes (MEGS Edition) - I ran a lot of this in the 80's and by 1992-93 I ran a very fun campaign using the 3rd edition of the DC Heroes MEGS rules.

MegaTraveller - This was the edition of Traveller I truly cut my teeth on. I had run a miscellany of Traveller Classic in the 80's, but the vast majority of my Traveller campaigning was during college with MegaTraveller. I even actually used the Imperium setting for most campaigns back then, too. I was one of those gamers who eventually washed out with The New Era, but I did give it my best shot.

GURPS 2nd and 3rd - I used GURPS for most of my campaigning that didn't fit neatly anywhere else. I used GURPS for most of my Cthulhu Mythos games as well, interestiingly; I preferred it a bit over Call of Cthulhu (which was I believe up to 3rd and then 4th edition in the 90's).

Call of Cthulhu - I only ran a bit of it (I used it as a resource for GURPS Cthulhu mostly) but it counts; it was pretty pivotal in terms of my horror gaming preferences.

Metamorphosis Alpha - not the original but rather the Amazing Engine powered game! I ran a lengthy and very fun campaign using this singularly unusual edition.

Dark Conspiracy - I loved the first edition of this game, it was amazing; I have heard it is now owned by Mongoose Publishing, and I am keen to see what lies in its future. Dark Conspiracy was a fantastic weird, dystopian horror setting and I ran a lot of it.

Kult 1E and 2E - the other horror game I ran a lot of; when I wasn't running GURPS Horror or Dark Conspiracy was Kult, which was as close to "Clive Barker the RPG" as one could get, even now. Back then Kult was a fantastic, creepy reality-warping deep dive into weird non-Cthulhu horror and I loved it.

Mutant Chronicles - I loved this RPG and collected all of it. I managed to run a couple campaigns, but it never quite took off the way I'd like it to.

Cyberpunk 2020 - this was the second most played system in my college years behind AD&D. Cyberpunk was highly formative for the time, so much so that it resides in memory as a fantastic reflection of where we imagined a future we'd live to see might go....and how so very different (and yet similar) that future actually is now that 2020 is in the rearview mirror.

There were likely other RPGs I dabbled in, but those were the big ones for the most part.

So where do these RPGs stack up by contrast today? Unsurprisingly (as this hobby does not grow as much as it seems) just about every one of these games is either still around in a new edition or has had a recent revival within the last 10-15 years. But are the new editions comparable in experience, particularly in terms of the nostalgia factor? This is my own personal take:

AD&D 2nd Edition - well, we all know where this went. It got more complicated (3E), then jumped the shark (4E), then revived itself spiritually (5E), and lately may have both jumped the shark and stagnated at the same time. But interestingly, I no longer feel an overwhelming desire to play the original 2E edition.....I would rather, like many other older gamers, look to what is new in the OSR community where the spirit (rather than the design) of the game thrives. My current poison of preference is Shadowdark or just sticking with D&D 5.5 or Tales of the Valiant. So Nostalgia does not win here (yet).

Runequest 3rd - The thing I liked about Avalon Hill's edition of Runequest was that Glorantha was optional. I could use the rules to make my own setting (as I did), or to run adventures in a mytho-historical earth. The current way to do this is with the admittedly excellent Basic Roleplaying RPG, but unless you have the reprint monographs that were based on Runequest 3, you won't have all the resources that originally were packaged in the Runequest 3 Deluxe Set. Runequest Glorantha in its modern incarnation is, while a fine system, entirely focused on Glorantha and is not welcoming to Runequesters who were fans of the mytho-historic earth settings. Chaosium is thankfully rectifying a bit of this with the new Vikings RPG using BRP, but even then....not the same as what the original Runequest 3 accomplished. So for my purposes? Playing this game in its original incarnation is a strong preference.

DC Heroes - interestingly this game had a successful Kickstarter reprint that may release later this year. I will be curious to see where that goes. I loved playing this back in the day, but my enthusiasm to revisit it is conditionally dependent on the players I have; the group I ran for in 1992-93 was very much in sync with the spirit of a comic book superhero RPG; these days it is harder to find such a group.

MegaTraveller - my memory of this edition is that it was great for the day, but it only got more convluted before it got less. Thankfully the great thing about Traveller is that its current edition with Mongoose Publishing is arguably the best edition to date, and this is one case where the contemporary version of the game can scratch that nostalgia itch quite easily.

GURPS - This is a rough one. I do believe that the current edition of GURPS (4E) is its most comprehensive and well organized, but something changed in the translation from 3rd edition to 4th edition that made the game a harder sell and less "friendly" for lack of a better word. GURPS 4E has an entire line of resources today in the form of "How to GM" books that suggest something was lost in translation from 3E to 4E. Unfortunately I suspect that it had a lot to do with the fact that 3rd edition was more concerned with parsing out content by setting book, and providing a flexible but less complete core experience, which accidentally meant is was more digestible and modular....while 4E became more comprehensive, but like Hero System, it also became more overwhelming and less welcoming to the new gamer, or the crowd that used to be able to do pick up and go games of GURPS. I mean....remember when GURPS provided a quick random character generator and it didn't pose any problems for quick play? Yeah....unfortunately the shift in design focus to 4E removed that convenience, replacing it with awkwardly formatted templates and a never-ending focus on mechanical rigor. So maybe finding an old copy of GURPS 3E might not be such a bad idea here.

Call of Cthulhu - like Traveller, this one only got better with time. You can even find 1st and 2nd edition in print again if you want thanks to a Kickstarter, and the 7th edition can be as nice or cruel to players s you desire. Call of Cthulhu's contemporary experience is if anything even better than it was back in the day, or maybe my ability to run campaigns with it is simply easier now thanks to experience? Either way, the newest edition of the game scratches that nostalgia itch just fine.

So how about the rest? Well, with Mutant Future you had a revival but it scrapped the original game engine and wedded it to the 2D20 engine from Modiphius, which was a mistake in my opinion. Then Kult worked out a Powered by the Apocalypse hybrid approach, and while it works....it's also somehow no longer quite the same feel as the original game (imo). Then there's Metamorphosis Alpha, which got a reboot on the original from Ward and Goodman Games, which is definitely cool but unfortunately my unique niche case for running the Amazing Engine edition is, I feel, unreplicatable....I will forever remember that campaign fondly for the unique and unrepeatable moment it rests within. 

Cyberpunk 2020 is also unique. I gotta be honest....the new Cyberpunk Red looks great and my son loves it. But when I crack it open I wish I was opening Cyberpunk 2020, and it just doesn't hold up to that edition in time, unfortunately. Worse yet, If I do look at CP2020 I can't imagine going back to it; the 90s really are gone, along with that vision of a future 2020. The new 2020's are both much less exciting and in many ways slowly getting worse than the megacorporate dystopia that was softened by cool cyberware; and the video game exemplifies a fantasy now, not a future projection. Cyberpunk Red and 2077 are both visions of an alternate reality; the next wave of future punk fiction will be a sober look at where the real 2020's today are taking us, which is unfortunately into a bleaker future than anyone really wants to game in (since we're living in it, instead). 

The shining light is Dark Conspiracy, which barely survived the GDW crash in the late nineties, to be tepidly kept on life support in some poorly realized updated editions. So maybe now with Mongoose in control we will finally see the game get properly revived with the dedication it deserves. We shall see!

 

Observations on Running Three D&D-Types At Once (D&D 2024 vs. Shadowdark vs. Pathfinder)

 Running Shadowdark back to back with Pathfinder and D&D 5.5 has been an interesting experience. I have observed the following in running what is essentially 3 "D&D likes" at the same time:

1. D&D 5.5 has some nice (small, but nice) improvements on monster design...subtle, but makes a difference in actual play. Monk still feels very broken; you have to want, as DM, to design the encounter to actively kill the monk to have a chance of doing so. In running the game I am still hauling older books with me to fill out missing content in the newer edition, which is annoying. Overall though its still D&D 5E, just now in a slightly more abbreviated edition. I concede that it's fun....but maybe a tad long in the tooth. I now think D&D benefits from a bigger reset with new editions. This was not a big enough reset.

2. Pathfinder is proving the most enjoyable in terms of pacing vs. rules complexity; it falters only when player familiarity wanes (so a player with their act together progresses quickly; then a player who does not know what they are doing stops the game on their turn...stuff like that). I have adjusted to the system well enough, and feel like this is proving to be my "comfort zone" for a D&D-style game right now. I appreciate that it is easy to build a challenge for PCs in PF2ER that feels meaningful. My biggest gripe with the system these days is adjusting to all the modified content, stuff that is still there, but was "scrubbed" of old OGL references.....think kholo vs. gnoll, for example. Search the Monster Core for the Brain Collector! He's hidden away in there. Stuff like that.

3. Shadowdark feels simple....almost too simple....but as a result it's rules get in the way the least; the pacing of the game feels much smoother and faster than its more robust cousins as a result. Shadowdark also cleverly removes most "get out of jail" spells and effects from the players....truesight and feystep type stuff which can turn in to convenient "bypass encounter" mechanisms are simply absent from the game. The GM can include this stuff if desired through treasure and boons....but entirely at the GM's discretion.

This is, all in all, too much D&D-like for me to run all at once, even if I am enjoying all three games. I am now, in consideration of how much I am enjoying the rules pacing in Shadowdark, once again looking to another rules-minimal system: Cypher System, for a future non D&D-like game. 

Doing Too Much Gaming - Bad Time Management Theater

 I don't know why, but it seems easier for me now to get too many games going, even when I can arguably state I have less free time....or, in some cases, a need to value free time in which I am not doing anything in particular if I want; you know, things like reading, watching a show, going for a hike, cleaning the house, stuff like that. "Downtime" one might say.

So lately I've been wrestling with the fact that I have a periodic Tuesday night game online a friend GMs, the Wednesday night live game I have been running since the dawn of time (more or less), and the Saturday night game I have run on and off again for ages....and lately have been managing weekly due to my renewed interest in Pathfinder 2nd edition. Then there's Friday night: for a few weeks I experimented with playing in a local Pathfinder group which washed out due to GM health issues. The remaining players talked me in to running on that night, and I elected to run Shadowdark. It was fun! But then the common problem with RPGs rears its ugly head: weekly sessions. Repeatability. Time consuming dedication to a routine. I shoulda offered a one-shot! My bad.

On Wednesday I complicated things even worse by winding down Mythras and resuming D&D, now shark-jumped right to D&D 5.5. It's actually been perfectly fine; despite some elements being weird, I rather like most of the oddball little changes I've encountered so far, and some of the more subtle changes in monster design do make the newer monsters stand out as a bit tougher. It's hard to kill the monk, but you can do it with a bit of tactical consideration, so I no longer think the new monk is "that" powerful...just sometimes, in encounters not designed to overwhelm the monk.

But the point is that A: after stupid hand-wringing about design differences in the new edition it is all clearly just more nonsense sprouted by the Internet Machine, and the new edition is functioning just fine (even if I have to edit my orcs and drow in from the earlier iteration of 5E for now); and B: yeah, I didn't just double up on the D&D experience, I tripled-up on it, running D&D, then Shadowdark, then Pathfinder each week. So now I am at risk of burning out on too much D&D-like gaming again, and also not getting enough of the other non RPG fun stuff done I would like to do (which is mainly keeping up on my reading but hey, that takes a lot of time, too). 

There used to be a time when I could run two games a week (really, back in the day I only ran a weekly game on Wednesday and a bi-weekly game on Saturday) and it was just fine. What the heck happened??? I need to figure out a way to get this all under control. At bare minimum, I need more time to prep for the games I do run; Tuesday night should be my time to prep for Wednesday and Friday night my time to prep for Saturday (unless I am taking the missus out for the evening...although the missus was showing up to play Shadowdark so I guess that counts...?) Honestly, I know it all kind of went off the rails post covid, as that is when the addition of online gaming, the need to fill time with "things to do" made VTTs viable, leading to a tendency to overfill time with gaming. Newer games do admittedly need less prep time, too; back in 2010 when I was running Pathfinder 1E I really did need about as much time to prep as the game itself could take; and as many GMs may recall from those editions, it took some time to learn good shortcuts, tricks and techniques to reduce the GM workload; not so with the new D&D, new Pathfinder, and Shadowdark...these games reduce GM prep dramatically. 

Ah well....first world problems, I guess ...and honestly just the sort of problem to worry about when I'm avoiding a glance at my 401(k) retirement fund these days ;-)

 

Shadowdark Session One - Things I Learned from Actual Play

 I ran Shadowdark on Friday and can now safely make a few comments on its from an actual play experience. Here are my observations:

The rules are minimalist in design

I was surprised time and again at how brief and mechanically simple the rules were. There's a lot of buried "implied mechanical intent" hidden away in the rules, and while Shadowdark has a veneer of D&D and OSR all over it, this means despite looking and feeling like you are playing an old school version of D&D, you definitely can't make any assumptions about this edition of the rules from older editions (or even 5E); if you do, you will get tripped up. You can house rule.....but I suggest playing it straight for a few sessions before making any assumptions. Even the one house rule I brought in to play I am unsure was a wise idea.

There are some interesting approaches that are counter-intuitive to 5E and OSR design

That last observation leads to this one. Here are five examples of design in Shadowdark that is counter-intuitive to what your brain might tell you the rules should do:

--You don't start with max hit points (you roll), and you only add CON (maybe?) the first time, not every level

--Classes don't have auto-progression on to hit at all; it's gonna happen (sometimes) with talent rolls

--You don't add stats to damage (STR and DEX), just to hit rolls; damage might be added to your roll, but only as a class feature

--Monsters have no hit dice; I didn't notice this until I was in the thick of it

Leveling up is not what you might think

When you level up, your XP counter resets to zero. So if you are level 1, gain 12 XP for the session, and level up then you are now level 2 with 0 XP, and you now need 20 XP to get to level 2; this is not immediately clear from reading the book, because your learned experience from prior editions is telling you otherwise; and the incredibly brief rules-minimalist instructions do indeed tell you how it works in the book, but it took everyone at the table a minute or two to figure this out (but not the young players who did not have older editions burned into their memories)

XP through loot and prestige awards is deeply engrained and informs play

The XP mechanic is a deliberate throwback to AD&D, where treasure begets XP, but it does away with XP for combat and encounter engagement (traps, puzzles, etc.) more or less entirely. I am sure not everyone plays it this way, but I am for the sake of seeing how it leads to the flow of advancement. It means that the GM needs to keep this in mind; a stingy GM is not only withholding loot, he's withholding advancement. Luckily, advancement includes things like ephemera such as titles, deeds, land grants and promotions; anything in which the station or social ability of the characters might improve is considered an award in this system; in thinking about it, a group could fight an ogre and kill it, discover no loot, but then tell the tale and have a bard carry on their deeds on song thus spreading their reputation far and wide as monster slayers....and the song would be what gets them XP, which is an interesting approach. 

The "Cast a spell until you fail" mechanic is a fascinating limiter

So in Shadowdark you have spell slots, and you can keep casting spells as long as you keep making your caster checks. Once you fail, you lose access to that spell (and fail to cast it) until your next morning's preparation. It's a clever bit of book-keeping reduction and also allows casters to be useful until their luck runs out. I kind of wish I had conceived of this method back in the AD&D days, when I disliked Vancian magic so much I wrote an entire spell point mechanic to allow for more fluid spell casters in play. 

The game really wants you to go into dungeons with torches

I actually tripped myself up at the start of the game, focusing on perhaps more plot than Shadowdark demands or needs. Next session will lead quickly to a dungeon teeming with issues (and treasure), but yeah, to contrast with my Saturday Pathfinder game (yes, I ran two games this weekend) where everyone spent half the session in a complex mystery following leads, interviewing suspects and eventually getting into a brawl when the right (wrong?) suspects were caught up to, that game would have in Shadowdark terms been considered a bit of a wash, especially given how Shadowdark's entire focus appears to be on "things happen, preferably in dark and dangerous places." There's a reason it has the torch timer mechanic....although I did feel like its loose effort to identify what ancestries (or monsters) could see in the dark was a step too far in the simplification of things for me. Some third party supplements have added drow in as playable ancestries, for example, but then fail to address whether these drow would in any universe not have dark vision? The Shadowdark book suggests some things are better suited to moving about in total darkness, but seems to hand waive it off to the GM to determine what those things are. It's perhaps a slightly better approach this way than, to contrast, 13th Age's assumption that light doesn't matter at all unless you want it to, but still - I find it interesting that some of these "we do D&D differently" RPG approaches seem to double-down on light levels being a bone of contention that must be simplified or stripped out in some manner. Shadowdark's approach of saying "light totally matters, and nothing can see without it" is a fun approach to simplification, though. 

A lot of Shadowdark is spiritually reminding me of how Tunnels & Trolls plays; mechanically its closer to D&D, but the net result of its design choices (talents in classes, for example) and focus on dungeon delves (minus the treasure = XP mechanic, which is deeply antithetical to T&T's approach) really remind me of my old days with T&T.

Okay, more observations soon as we continue with Shadowdark! 

A Case Study in AI Art in RPGs and Why it Poses Problems - Gammadark

 I write this from the perspective of a author and small publisher who produced works that required art. Back when I was filled with a lot more energy and oomph than I am now (and more free time, too) I had some pretty large projects that needed a decent look to them. I juggled this through a series of techniques, all of which are legitimate approaches when your base project funds are close to $0, and your expected return could also very well be $0:

1. It's who you know! Lean on family and friends for free art (or yourself if you are so lucky as to have enough talent to draw something that isn't gut-churning to an unknown audience)

2. Royalty Free art! There's a lot of it out there, from free old pieces that exist in the creative commons to art packages that require a small one-time payment and a credit in your work. I bought a bunch of these back in the day, and the main problem (at the time) was that a lot of other small publishers did the same, so there was a period where you could see a lot of royalty free art getting churned through various products. That problem seems to have diminished with time, however.

3. Minimize the need for art! This is not ideal, as people like seeing art to break up the text, and being able to demonstrate some of what you are writing about in a meaningful fashion is very handy, but on occasion "no art" is better than "really, really bad art." I have a range of sample books from back in the day where I can point to them and say, "Yeah, we never played this game because the art was a total non-seller to my group." An art free version would, in those cases, have been preferred.

There is also item 4, the nuclear option:

4. Buy some art from a real artist! This is the point at which you have decided your vanity project is worth some investment, even if you have no guarantee that it will ever lift off or return a profit. You may, at best, have the glorious satisfaction of pointing to an art piece and being happy that your book has such a cool cover or something similar Case in point: my Realms of Chirak book for D&D 4th edition (yeah, someday maybe I'll post a 5E update....some day....) by Simon Tranter was well worth it, even if I didn't end up making a return on the book good enough to warrant the investment. I would totally do it again, just because Simon is a great illustrator, and managed to capture exactly what I wanted for the cover. 

Since the days of 2010-2012 when I did most of the self-publishing the market has changed in interesting ways. For example:

--the rise and fall of royalty free art packages; I think a modest number saturated the market for a while, and people eventually moved away from them;

--The rise of Deviant Art and other art spaces where new and aspiring artists could be contacted by aspiring self publishers for reasonably priced artwork; usually presumably followed by a "fall" as the arists become more popular and command higher prices;

--The rise of Kickstarter, where all prospective gaming projects seem to dwell these days, chiefly because if you go to Kickstarter and don't take that opportunity to factor in the actual cost of real art into your project then you are doing it wrong;

--The rise of higher demand for quality art in products. Let's face it, the market is now saturated with high quality content in terms of appearance; getting away with lower quality or lower cost art is much harder these days, and usually requires special branding (read: marketing yourself as OSR) or at minimum learning how to repackage poor/low quality art as being a deliberate cool style option, actually (see: everything related to Mork Borg, ever) by expanding your graphic design/layout skills;

--And, of course, AI generated art is now a thing. A very contentious and rocky thing that will readily lead to metaphorical fisticuffs for many people.

This is what has happened with a book I just picked up called Gammadark, an RPG expansion for the Shadowdark RPG. It uses a lot of AI generated art (using Midjourney) and the creator has expressed sentiment to the effect that he has no budget for art, and is hoping to build up a budget for the future. My thoughts on this are that he probably needs to be more cognizant of the market and how the prospective customer base will react to a product that is essentially 90% AI generated art. But....he's already produced the book, and while I find no issue with the game itself (it's a perfectly fine add-on to Shadowdark for a Gamma World-esque game experience), in studying the book I realize that there are several other reasons to criticize use of AI art in a project like this besides the "think of the artists" component (which is a perfectly valid criticism in and of itself). So, here are my observations:

AI Art is Still Derivative: the immediate item I noticed is that many illustrations in the Gammadark book look oddly familiar, but not in a "I have seen that illustration" sort of way, but rather, "I have seen other illustrations that Midjourney likely used to borrow ideas from," sort of way. The power armor and robots all look suspiciously like Warhammer 40K space marine armor, for example. The many mutants in the book often feel like they reflect some other source without specifically being that source. So as I look through this book, I find its art, by being typically derivative as most AI art is, lacks a specific identity that I can pinpoint. It doesn't even do Gamma World art well, because to be fair I suspect there's not enough Gamma World derived art out there for Midjourney to absorb and build a style from (and also, most Gamma World art historically can be traced back to a small handful of real artists, many of who had their art re-used from edition to edition).

AI Art is Hard to Replicate and Has A Stigma: Here's the conundrum: you have a vision for what power armor in the world of your game looks like. You input lots of descriptions into Midjourney until something pops out that is close enough to your vision to count. Now you have a single illustration that works. Later, you get better at your trade and maybe have some money to buy real art from an artist. Problem! Your vision of the power armor or mutant or whatever has a single image from an AI source to go on. The new artist likely doesn't want to replicate that look, because its solidified from an AI piece that might be borrowing or extrapolating from other real pieces of art; it fails from an AI replication perspective, at least for now, because AI art generators aren't good at consistency (though this problem may eventually disappear). You may even have a hard time finding an artists who will accept a commission from you because they know you used AI art before them. So now you have to find an artists who doesn't care, and be ready for their vision to deviate from what you have created using Midjourney. 

AI Art Often Informs the Text Rather than Being Informed: Another problem is where you keep trying to get a certain look, then just give up and go with whatever is closest in vision. Maybe Midjourney and other AI art products are getting better and more precise, but I bet that a nontrivial number of pieces in Gammadark were actually written to reflect the illustration rather than the other way around. I bet a lot of art in the book is there with text because the art was close enough, and other items go without an illustration because nothing could be found that worked. In a way this is an old problem; using royalty free art packs will lead to the same issue, but usually you then leave your text alone and simply let the illustration fill space. In AI art, you may suffer the temptation of generating some AI inspired text to go with it. This, I can say as an author, is a big no-no. You will crash and burn if you allow AI generated text too much room in your product (which I interpret as any room; can you tell I am a writer and not an illustrator? =) )

All of these issues are hassles that I think you can solve by simply not relying on AI generated images, or maybe doing a small percentage of AI images. Some other books I bought for Shadowdark recently clearly have a couple pieces of AI art in them, but 90% of the text is human-generated art, with the one or two AI pieces standing out as a result; they feel less like the publisher was saving cash on them, and more like the specific pieces were chosen precisely because they did meet a core illustrative goal not otherwise achieved by the low-cost artists the rest of the product used. 

Gammadark, alas, uses so much AI art, and at times its text reads suspiciously like it has some AI generated elements, that I think this is a bad sign for the publisher to start off this way. I am not done with my read-through, however, and will discuss in more depth in a Part II.....

Tablet News - It's Been A Hot Second: Boox Palma 2, Lenovo Tab M11 and Kobo Libre Color 7

 I used to post my experiences with various tablets, and as some may remember I am among the vocal and distinct minority of those who tend to favor Nook as an online ebook resource over Amazon. Well, much has happened in the last few years, and here's how it shook out:

First, Nook continues to be a viable option for ereading, but their Nook Glowlight 4 and 4 Plus are the only readers really worth using. The Lenovo Tablet exists, and the latest iteration may be fine, but I opted instead for the Lenovo M11 Tablet for my ereading due to its larger form factor and the fact that it rather nicely captures a decent graphic novel (read: color) reading experience at a budget price. So I have a Nook Glowlight 4 Plus but it's mainly for reading before bed, and the Lenovo M11 Tablet is pretty much my go to reader when it comes to the large ebook graphic novel collection I've accrued on the Nook.

Amazon shot itself in the foot recently when they removed the ability to download separate copies of your library of books for storage elsewhere than an Amazon device. This impacted dedicated ebook readers, but normies and casual ebook fans won't likely notice or care about this change. The reason is simply because if you view ebooks as content to consume, or you only buy a few and see Amazon as just fine to trust on managing your library of licenses, or you are a Prime subscriber and don't own most of the content you read anyway, then this change impacts you in no way whatsoever. But if you have a lot of purchased ebooks and don't like the notion that you are merely licensing ebooks as opposed to buying them (and only recently have online vendors been forced to acknowledge this distinction more clearly) then being able to offload them somewhere was pretty important.

If you just want out of Amazon but don't have a Kindle, one place you can support authors without as much draconian Amazon antics is at bookshop.org which aims to provide a venue for physical and ebook sales for indie publishers and authors. So far its slow growing, and its not a one-stop-shop for all your reading needs unless you are extremely particular in what you read, but I have found a few good books over there so far. I do not think bookshop has a dedicated device, but their app works fine on all my android devices so far. It's still nascent in design, and could use some more features, but they are getting there.

For those who are trying to escape Kindle and Fire hardware, there are a lot of interesting choices out there. I gave away my Kindle Fires and regular Kindles, all except for the two I love most: The Kindle Notebook (lovely device) and the Kindle Oasis, which has the best form factor for reading ebooks on eink that I have found to date (until I got in to Kobo and Boox, that is). I continue to maintain my Kindle ebook collection, but I am no longer purchasing books on Amazon unless there is simply no other way to get it; so far I have had no problems finding what I want to read on Nook, of course, and my new other favorite store: Kobo!

Kobo produces a 7 inch color e-reader called the Kobo Libra Color, which is very close in comfort and form factor to the Kindle Oasis, which I love. It's a color ereader, and now that I've experienced e-ink in color its hard to imagine sticking with black and white (but see my comment on the Boox Palma 2 below). Kobo's only problem is it is, like Amazon, locked to their store so I can't load Nook or Bookshop onto it. That said: for a dedicated reader, I find it excellent. Similarly to Nook you can offload books using Calibre, although I haven't tried yet, and also similar to Nook the DRM issues are variable and publisher-specific, so not all books are DRMed. Kobo does seem to want to be a mini Amazon, however, pushing a monthly subscription services that unlocks books, but similar to Amazon's Prime service, the majority of those free reads are not really worth reading, sorry to say. Kobo does manage to keep some excellent competitive pricing and I did join their basic membership for the product discounts, it works similarly to Barnes & Noble's but applies to all ebooks. 

Simultaneously with getting the Kobo I picked up the Boox Palma 2, which is an ereader in the shape of a phone. My first thought was....no way this will be as good to read on as a dedicated ereader, and it will just compete with the unenvious task of using reading apps on my phone, right? Despite this, a lot of reviewers spoke positively of the device and so I decided to check it out. Now I see why they like it....it turns out the size of the Palma 2 (very slightly smaller than my Samsung S24 Ultra phone) is far and away the most comfortable weight and grip for reading on the go, and its small size makes it as easy to carry around as a phone. It's black and white e-ink is crisp and sharp, and its a regular android device so you can load any apps you want on it (but with the caveat that its screen refresh means don't bother with loading anything that requires a decent frame rate, like videos). So I can have the Kobo, Nook, Bookshop and Kindle app all loaded on the device. It even has sound, so I also have the Audible and Chirp apps loaded for audio books. Of the devices I have, I've been using Boox Palma 2 more than any other simply because it is so ridiculously convenient. 

Boox Palma 2 is not ideal for reading comics and graphic novels, and I wouldn't recommend it. If your eyesight is bad, it may not be a good choice because while you can (as with all readers) increase font size, with such a small screen it may become an unpleasant read if you need a really big font. I do not have that problem, thankfully, though I may keep it on a very small font and then just drag out reading glasses, myself. 

All told, my pleasant surprise at how handy and well designed the Boox Palma 2 is has motivated me to seek out one of their larger models, specifically their own notebook color version. I'll talk about that when it arrives. My hope is that it will act as a decent alternative to the Kindle Notebook, which is eminently practical in its effectiveness at being a stylus-based note taker (I use it for gaming regularly, and found it easy to design entire maps on it). 

I did look at one option which I ruled out: reMarkable makes some really nice notebook style tablets, but they are not tied to the android ecosystem and do not let you load apps. I believe you can directly load books onto them from a source such as Calibre, but that's not how I have my collections set up, and so reMarkable sounds like a more expensive and less convenient option for a certain kind of person, so I decided not to check it out.

So this is where I am at in 2025: I have a mess of gadgets (I didn't even mention the Samsung galaxy S9 Ultra, which is really a notebook style PC masquerading as a tablet) and enough variety that I can feel comfortable scooting away from the Amazon ecosystem with no impact to my reading experience....and indeed, I am finding that by embracing Kobo and especially Boox, my overall ebook enjoyment has only improved. I will also give a shout out to the Lenovo Tab M11 as the best full color standard tablet for reading (especially comics and graphic novels), that is also by far the most affordable for its class. Ebooks may become the default for reading going forward as the publishing industry across the board is rocked by the tariff wars, so I can at least know that my embrace of this medium may allow for me to continue to pick up and read the books I want without inflated prices. 

Mythras Core vs. Mythras Imperative

 Last week our Mythras session ended with more confusion on certain rules, and a need to brainstorm solutions. Some clarity came from the Mythras reddit, but overall the group (and myself especially) were frustrated at interpreting some of the book's rules. 

While researching in anticipation of the Wednesday night game, I discovered an important fact: Mythras Imperative, the latest edition, had all our answers fairly clearly spelled out. In fact, I dare say it had all the clarifications and errata we needed, right there. Does Blind Opponent work that way? Can you use an improvement point on a skill more than once at the end of the session? When you heal up, are you still considered to have a serious wound if you go above 0 HP? etc. etc. 

Sometimes its not a case that the Mythras Imperative book is clarifying something, too. Rather, its more concise approach makes the information needed a bit easier to locate. It is, by virtue of its more focused design, easier to navigate. I hope there is a plan to eventually re-write and refocus Mythras Core, which I have found could benefit a lot from a cleaner, more precise presentation on many rules. 

A great example of how this could be done is to look at Open Quest, and compare, say, how Open Quest defines spirit combat. While OQ is designed to be a more streamlined and easier version of the same game system, it does so in many cases less by simplification and more by simply structuring the rules in a clear and unambiguous fashion. As a result, spirit combat in OQ is fairly simple to understand, while spirit combat in Mythras, though far more elaborate in presentation, is not necessarily any more complicated....it just feels that way as the core mechanical conceits are embedded in a lot of expository discussion text. That text is absolutely fine, but partitioning the mechanical process in a way that clearly states it rather than obscuring it within the more interesting (but less mechanically useful) discussion text would be a better approach for clarity's sake, and for making the rules useful as a reference. 

So for the Wednesday night game we shall be relying on Mythras Imperative to answer all rules questions except those explicitly not covered in the book. I am still going to show off Open  Quest and suggest that maybe it would be a better fit for the group, though. I personally find that the granularity of the Mythras specials system is hampering in play, and slows down narrative coherence. Unlike other systems where this is a similar issue (Pathfinder skill feats, cough), where I can mitigate or ignore such system elements, it is really hard to ignore the Mythras specials system as its core to the game's combat mechanics. Advice from other Mythras players and GMs I know has been that most people eventually just gravitate to the obvious ones: bypass armor, max damage, called shots, impale and leave it at that. Though, with that said, I am sure that if you play long enough this all gets to be old hat eventually. We'll see.  

Pathfinder 2E Remastered Returns to the Live Table

 After some interrogation last week my players indicated for Saturday night game a return to Pathfinder 2E was their preferred option, so here we are! I was finding it a bit tough to get motivated at first but that changed when we decided to pull PCs from an older Roll20 game, and in doing so I realized I had all the work done for a lengthy series of scenarios in a long campaign. I love when I discover stuff I had forgotten I wrote up! Saving literally everything I have ever written proves handy.

As it turns out, Pathfinder was a pretty smooth and fun play experience. We are all pretty familiar with the system, as I started running PF2E campaigns when it first came out, and all of the players in my current Saturday group were in the level 1-20 campaign I ran from 2019-2021, and are veterans of some other shorter campaigns. I think that I set PF2E aside when the Remasters started coming out for the most part, with a couple false starts on Roll20 before I just gave up for the time being (for some interesting reasons having to do with player personality issues). 

Now, coming back to the game table for PF2E Remastered, I realize that this really is the most entertaining way to play this edition. It's ridiculously easy to run the game as GM; PF2E has clearly been designed with ease of use in mind for the guy behind the screen. The complex minigame on the player's side of the table is an interesting journey for all involved, but once you've gotten familiar with the quirks of the system then it becomes easier and easier to appreciate, I would say. 

I still have some quibbles with it, but at this point I will tolerate my irritation at the skill system (which I wish was more robust and flexible like the older PF1E skill system) as it is far easier to accept this than it is the many weird and off-putting design decisions in the new edition of D&D 2024/5. So for me, at least, this is a lovely way to get back to the D&D-like gaming I enjoy without it being D&D exactly. Which is funny, because that is exactly what PF1E did for me and my group many years ago. 

Also, a side note: running Mythras for several sessions really hammers home how much easier PF2E is in terms of combat mechanics. The fascinating aspect of Mythras combat is just how dirty and deep it can get, but it does so by requiring a lot of book-keeping on every creature, and the constant popping of specials rapidly wore out my group (I have suggested to them that we should do Open Quest instead). So Wednesday this week I am going to run one more session of Mythras, and then suggest to the gang that we try Shadowdark next, or convert our Mythras PCs straight over to Open Quest. That will let us have all of the murderous intent with far, far less tedious book-keeping to keep track of how many specific limbs have been impaled or hewn from bodies.