Gaming This Last Week: More DCC (it's getting good), D&D 5E Keeps on Going, OSE returns and Lots of New Books (Path of the Planebreaker, Ruins of Symbaroum, Anime 5E)

 Well, the last week has proven exciting, as I resume GMing duties on Saturdays for a while. The recent gaming events have boiled down to the following:

1. Weekly Dungeon Crawl Classics on Monday nights. As we play further and deeper into this particular game I feel that, as mentioned last post, DCC is a game best enjoyed around a live table with fleshy humans; VTT just doesn't do this system as much justice (though in fairness I think approaching the VTT carefully with some clear rules on conduct in the funnel crawl would help). Either way, DCC is fun....maybe I will think about running it, or one of its cousins (Mutant Crawl Classics) sometime. I just can't get over "race as class" in 2022, but MCC handles it well enough with its post-apocalyptic theme (for me), so....yeah, probably that eventually.

2. D&D 5E Wednesdays continue, and it's been a blast. I've developed a very pleasant relationship with 5E, and my strategy of reducing non-critical foes and encounters to minimum permitted HP has helped a great deal with keeping the combat, when it happens, from overwhelming the evening. My setting for the campaign continues to be fun for me, with a large focus on an archaic world straight out of the fifth century AD steeped in traditional folklore, magic and superstition, and eschewing much of the more fantastical/farcical elements of the genre to keep it simple and mysterious.

3. We had a final night with Call of Cthulhu on Astral Tabletop Friday. The Keeper is taking vacation for two weeks, and when he returns Astral will be gone. RIP Astral, you were a decent VTT environment. 

4. Saturday I returned to the GM seat, and while we had bandied about returning to Starfinder I convinced everyone I could no longer pretend I even cared about that system anymore, and we should just resume Old-School Essentials again, which we did, with a follow-up campaign to the first one. Since some high-tech sci fi elements were inevitable in this sequel, I am cribbing content from a combination of Gamma World, Mutant Future, Star Crawl and Mutant Crawl Classics for now to "fill in the gaps" as it were. So far, working great! As the group reaches 3rd level (give or take) they are starting to see how the system, despite feeling anemic compared to modern iterations of D&D, is actually quite robust as a story engine type game. We're using the Advanced Edition rules in OSE, which is where my comfort zone lies; although I did start with the Otus red cover Basic D&D set back in the day, my second purchase was the AD&D three book set and my second game was in AD&D. For this reason the "class as race" thing never made sense to me and feels too limiting. I ordered a second set of the rulebooks for my wife as well from Exalted Funeral, I think for the games she runs for kids at school it might be a great choice.

Several new tomes arrived within the last week: The Ruins of Symbaroum is a really interesting adaptation of that system to D&D 5E, though maybe most useful for use as-is; I am not sure its all that easy to extract content from for other games. 

I also got my copy of the Path of the Planebreaker from Monte Cook Games today. Just started reading it, but already looks like an amazingly interesting approach to cross-planar travel with tons of useful content. It feels like a spiritual successor to one of my favorite 3rd edition books, Beyond Countless Doorways. 

Finally, ordered (and snagged the PDF) of Anime 5E, from the company which apparently now controls the Big Eyes, Small Mouth property once held by Tri-Stat. This book is really dang interesting, and I must write more on it soon, as it provides an apparently very nice approach to turning D&D 5E into a point-buy system of design, and all the rules to allow for it. More on this one very soon.

Symbaroum Monster Codex and Adventure Pack 3 Live

Just got notice from Modiphius, the most prolific publisher in gaming, that Symbaroum has two new books: the Monster Codex and the Adventure Pack 3.

If you're not familar with Symbaroum, it's a Swedish translation of a grim, low-magic dark fantasy world that has a really interesting design and look to it. The setting of Symbaroum is one of an untamed Davokar wilderness where the men of Korinthia are the intruders, and many strange things await discovery; and much worse waits in the vast forests and mountains to push back, hard. At minimum the game is worth its weight in the fantastic art alone, but the system itself looks quite playable, and it remains on my "must collect and read" list, perhaps one day to graduate to some actual play sessions.

At minimum, I've determined that it is not worth wasting one more second on the Pathfinder 2 playtest for now, as even Paizo on their own site is admitting they need to do some serious work. Any such effort I expend should be placed on cool games like Symbaroum, or Lone Wolf RPG, or even the more generic but intriguing Fantasy AGE.

Cool new stuff: 13th Age Bestiary 2, Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea 2E, Symbaroum: The Witch Hammer and Conan RPG

A number of new games have started filling my "to be read" shelf. If you didn't know about the following, here's a head's up:

Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea 2nd Edition

My print copy arrived last week, and after unpacking the monster I have to say it's a really impressive package. The original boxed set was very nice and retro, but this beast will hold it's own at the table, clocking in at an impressive 608 pages with a full color map insert. Everything you liked about the 1st edition --plus a lot more-- can be found within, but this time in a weighty tome that almost dwarfs Zweihander in size. Almost. I'm keeping the two together on the shelf right now, they make Hero System 6th look like a slim economy system when placed next to each other.

Symbaroum-Karvosti: The Witch Hammer

Symbaroum is a fascinating Swedish fantasy RPG in the vein of "simple rules, dark classic fantasy" with some impressive art and design. The second major campaign book is now out, and honestly, this is one of the few "packaged world setting" books I will likely run exactly as presented....one day, when I get around to it. Like the other tomes, this one is a mix of campaign setting content and modules, written in a sort of open-world style that I really enjoy.

If you're on the fence about Symbaroum, I'd liken it to a cross between Zweihander, Beyond the Wall, and Grim Dawn, but with better art design and a slick, modern system.

13th Age Bestiary 2

13th Age remains my favorite D&D alternative. When I am not running a D&D 5E campaign it is probably because I am running a 13th Age campaign. The new Bestiary 2 only enourages such campaigning because it is chock full of amazing monster adaptations and evocative ideas for your own games. Like the first Bestiary, but even cooler.

Conan: Adventures in an Age Undeamed Of RPG

I hardly feel like this one needs pimping, but now that I have a physical copy in hand and have had some time to explore it, I feel compelled to offer my support for a very well designed and researched RPG. Conan was my primary gateway in to fantasy fiction and gaming, right behind Tolkien, and evidence of Howard's (and Carter, de Camp, Nyberg, Wagner, etc.) influence in my own gaming and fiction preferences is obvious. I also (fair disclosure) wrote some books for the Mongoose edition....so seeing Modiphius make such a fine book is really fantastic, and I can't wait to give this iteration a spin.

I had a chance in 2005 to write for Mongoose. I did Tales of the Black Kingdoms, and the second and third books in the Messantia Adventures set. Some of my Black Kingdoms content somehow showed up in their Return to the Road of Kings release, too. Writing for Mongoose was an interesting experience.....but the  pay was not bad, honestly. Tales was commissioned based on a book idea I pitched (I was quite happy to dive in to it). Messantia Adventures was a request....the author dropped from the project (or moved to another) after writing book one, and so I was asked to write the system material (book 2) and adventure (book 3). It was....tough, I'll put it that way...as I hated what he had done in book 1 (it had little that I felt was distinctly genre-appropriate, and was not written to be engaging), and disliked what was required of book 2. Writing social combat rules that were instructed to be in volume 2 when I felt they were not appropriate for Conan as a genre was hard, but I had a lot of fun working up the adventure in book 3. The final boxed set had a great set of cards, some not bad art, but as I recall some map errors that only lamp-shaded the problems Mongoose had with product quality, errata and typos. Tales had issues too, albeit less so than Messantia....odd typos, some changes to the adventure I didn't really follow, but overall wasn't that bad. Plus it had one of the best covers in the line, I felt.