Gearing Up for the Online SummerCon

The TTRPG in Korea community is hosting their online SummerCon at the end of the month (Aug 29-31). I'm signed up to run a Classic D&D game during the con. Hopefully, I'll have time to play in a few other games as well. It's right before the start of the new semester (Sept 1), but I'm more or less ready for my classes. 

I posted about my idea for the con game a few weeks ago. And in the mean time, I've redrawn the maps, revised and switched around some of the encounters, and added a few puzzles/challenges for some of the extraneous monsters. I also updated the pre-gen characters that I posted about a few weeks ago. 

This weekend, I created a Roll20 game for the adventure. I also digitized the maps using Dungeon Scrawl (a crash course in that app, which I'd only noodled around on before). I've got the basics of that down now, and the maps in the R20 game look pretty good. Not professional level, but good enough. 

I spent a lot of time today creating custom character sheets for the pre-gen PCs. Roll20 has a BECMI (RC) sheet, and a BX sheet, but neither exactly fits my house ruled version of D&D. I'm not running full TS&R rules. I've still got Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling as classes for this game. But otherwise, I'm using my house rules. I've got all 14 pre-gen sheets done -- two for each class. I still need to make token images for them, and get the tokens set up. 

I've got the character sheets set up with macros to roll for attacks, saving throws, and things like Thief skills or Turn Undead. That way the players can just go to the sheet and press a button to roll, and all the math is done for them. It will save a lot of time dealing with new to old school players. Considering the types of games on offer (5E/Pathfinder games of course, some neoOSR games like Bastionland and BlackHack derivatives, Free League games, various story/indie games), I'm likely to get some newbies. 

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In other news, I've been playing at the cafe I think would be good for our face-to-face Busan Tabletop Con, and it is a pretty good place to play. Scott and Justin have both visited, and they approve as well. Scott is pretty busy right now with the SummerCon, but after that's settled, I think we'll get to work organizing our local event. 

I plan to run this same adventure, and maybe either a Flying Swordsmen 2E adventure or a Chainmail-based tabletop skirmish/dungeon crawl game. AKA, reviving my idea from last year.  Probably more Chainmail than Gauntlet, but similar. I'd need to get off my ass to prepare for either of these two additional games, but that's a good thing. It will keep me engaged with the ideas. 

Mistborn of the Thorn Isles (Appendix N Jam 2025)

 I'm not on itch.io...or rather, I wasn't on itch before last week. So I wasn't aware of the Appendix N Jam adventure writing contest until Justin (of Vaults of Ur fame) told me about it. With his encouragement, and with only a week left to submit something, I applied, got a title, and made a 4-page (A5 size) adventure. 

 You can see my submission here. If you use itch.io, you can log in and vote for it. And check out the other submissions, too. I've only had time to look at a small fraction, but there's a ton of creativity and cool ideas on display. 

 If you're unaware (as I was), the idea is that the guys running the contest pick a title that sounds like it could be a story or novel in Gary Gygax's Appendix N. Something written by Lovecraft, Leiber, Anderson, Howard, Tolkien, Moorcock, Burroughs, or one of those other luminaries of early genre fiction. Then you design an adventure for an old school style RPG with similar flavor. 

There's a cash prize for the two best entries, but I'm not likely to win and don't care much if I don't. It was just a fun way to spend a weekend. I had a few ideas in my head for adventure ideas in the old adventure fantasy style, but when I got my title, Mistborn of the Thorn Isles, none of my preconceived notions fit. But it seemed like the sort of title a Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser, Conan the Cimmerian, Solomon Kane, or maybe Corum story would have. 

So I came up with an idea for a cursed island, Celtic themed (with definitely a dash of Christopher Lee in The Wicker Man), and with some elements that might be found in Appendix N style stories (a cursed people, pirates chasing damsels in distress, and a treasure map leading to the isle). It's for 3rd to 6th level PCs, and written for BX/BECMI, but should be easy enough to convert to AD&D, OD&D, or your retro-clone or modern OSR game of choice.

Of course, I had to leave some stuff out. With a mock up cover page taking up 1/4 of my page space, that left three pages for background, a map, a time counter, random encounters, placed encounters, and a new monster write up. I had ideas for making a small dungeon, or notes to expand on the adventure, but there was no space for that. Maybe, after the contest is over, I'll expand it a bit. But I think it's good enough as it is. 

Anyway, if you were unaware, check out the Appendix N Jam. I'll be looking over more submissions over the next couple of days. I doubt I'll have time to read them all before the audience judging portion is over. But I'll be downloading a lot of them to look over when I have more time. 
 

Movie Review: Fantasic Four: First Steps

Yesterday, the new Fantastic Four opened in Korea, a day before in the U.S. So of course we went to see it! This was the movie I was looking forward to the most this year, and to get down to it, it did not disappoint. 

Parents wondering about cursing in the movie: A couple instances of "shit" but otherwise nothing too bad. 

First off, I like this cast. All of the four leads felt right for the characters they were playing. And while I've not read FF comics extensively, I've read a few here and there. And seem them in cartoons, crossover events, etc. They got the characters right. Well, mostly. I did like how in the early 00s FF movies, Johnny and Ben were always bickering...but it was overdone then. There could have been a little more of that in this movie without ruining the feeling, in my opinion. And a few times Reed didn't really seem that smart. I think they were trying to show just how tough of a problem Galactus is, but there were a few scenes that made Reed look impotent. Other than those two things, the characters felt right to me. 

I also really like how all four members have a chance to shine. They each get their moments of character development, vulnerability, and a chance to shine in solving the problem of Galactus. And Galactus really is a problem to be solved, not a villain to be defeated. But I won't say more on that to avoid spoilers. 

The special effects were well done. The music was great. The weird retro-futurist 60s of Earth 828 was cool to just look at and admire. And Pedro Pascal again gets to act alongside an armored, floating CGI baby carriage. 

Sorry if this is a little bit spoilery, but it's got nothing to do with the plot. There was absolutely nothing to tie into any other existing MCU properties, but the mid-credit scene does hint at what's to come. The post-credit scene was just fun.

Best MCU movie to date? No. But it was better than a lot of the stuff that's come out the past couple of years. With this film, Thunderbolts*, and Daredevil Born Again, I'm confident that Marvel is righting where they went wrong. 

But...Superman was better. It hurts to say that, as a Marvel kid, but DC wins this round! Don't let that dissuade you, though. Fantastic Four First Steps was not a fantastic bore. I want fantastic more! 

Some Updates to an old Dungeon

The Seoul-based TTRPG in Korea group is gearing up for their Online Summer Con. The days haven't been decided yet, but it will be a weekend in August. I'm hoping it will be either the 2nd or 4th weekends, because on the 3rd I'll be up in Seoul for an academic conference and won't have a lot of time to get online and play games. 

Of course, the 2nd week is the final week of English Camp, so I can't play in any Friday games, but Saturday afternoon/evening, or Sunday will work for me. 

The 4th week is best for me. Nothing much else going on that weekend. 

Assuming I have time to run something, I've been working on updating an old one-shot adventure I made during my time in Yamanashi. I ran it for them so they could experience a mid-level game, with more powerful characters and enough magic items. They ran through the adventure, but I don't remember exactly how it turned out. I have a few notes from those sessions (I think we spent two evenings on it), but they're incomplete. 

So I'm updating it for the Summer Con. And if it goes well, I'll also probably run it for the Busan Tabletop Gaming Con (that's not the official name yet, just the one I prefer) that Justin, Scott and I are organizing. 

The adventure as I wrote it back then (20ish years ago) had too many monster encounters and not enough interesting puzzles/situations. I redrew the maps, simplifying them a little but also making them less linear at the same time. I took out or changed some monster encounters, rearranging a few things. I added more exploration/navigation/spelunking challenges. I've upped the treasure a bit, but since this is a one-shot, that's probably not so important aside from magic items. After the Cons, I'll probably format this and sell it through Hidden Treasure Books, though, so the treasure content may matter to players in the future. 

The basic premise is that there is a tower built by a wizard. A dragon destroyed the wizard long ago, and has laired in the caves beneath the tower ever since. A new wizard has shown up and taken over the tower, but stirred up the dragon. Both the wizard and dragon are problems for the local lord, so he's asking adventurers to deal with one or both problems for him. 

So players may decide just to deal with the dragon. Or just with the wizard. Or get ambitious (in a 3-4 hour time slot) and take on both. And of course I'm prepared with ideas for if they try to team up with one side to take out the other.  And the inevitable double crosses that may happen. 

I found a file with some pre-made BECMI characters that I used for another project. That means Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling are classes, so it doesn't completely follow my TS&R rules, but I'll use them anyway for simplicity. They were 1st level, so I updated them to be anywhere from 5th (the Elves) to 8th level (the Thieves). I had pre-made magic item packets from the time I ran this adventure in Yamanashi, so I added those magic items (with a few changes here and there) to the characters. And updated them with TS&R abilities (mostly for Fighter types, since I have rules for Sweep and the like). 

I need to finish up a few more encounter area descriptions (the wizard's lair). And for the Seoul Summer Con, scan the maps and prepare them for a VTT. I'm looking forward to running some old school D&D for hopefully some new blood.  

Movie Review: Superman (2025)

 This afternoon, the whole family went to see the new James Gunn Superman. 

Wondering if there are curse words in it? Quite a few characters say shit, but I don't remember any F-bombs in it. 

So how is the movie? It was excellent. It was fun, exciting, had me almost tearing up in a few places, and finally, we have a Lex Luthor whose genius evil plan is actually fairly intricate and complex. No spoilers, but of course you know it's all going to unravel in the end. But it's a worthy plan for a movie villain. 

The acting was good. My wife has been a fan of Christopher Reeve's Superman since she was a girl, and she really liked Corenswet as Clark/Superman, and Brosnahan as Lois Lane. I really loved Hoult's take on Lex Luthor, and a lot of the supporting cast were fun as well. 

I haven't read Superman comics extensively, but I liked that the film used characters from the All Star Superman run in the Daily Planet. I don't know how important they are in normal Superman comics (haven't read any in a long time) but it was fun to see that group in the film. Plus, they found room for Otis and Miss Tessmacher from the Donner films (who may also be in the comics?).  

Another thing I liked was that the plot didn't go as I was expecting it to from the trailers. That's all I'll say on it, but while there were a few things I predicted, lots of other things surprised me. 

The special effects were mostly good, but there was a scene where a choice was made to make a certain...element, let's say...look like it was made of Minecraft blocks. Not sure where that choice came from, and it looked odd. Was it intentional? Was it just rushed? No idea. But overall the super powers, the fantastic locations, the creatures, etc. looked good.  

Most of all, and no apologies to the Snyder-verse fans, we finally have a Superman who embodies HOPE again. For that, I'm really happy. 

Go see this movie. Seriously. It's good. 

A Tale of Two Play Tests

Yesterday, I was involved in two play tests. 

The first was my own game, Flying Swordsmen 2E. It was a focused affair, and I think I received some valuable feedback.

The second was for Jeremy's new Supers game that he's been working on. It was my third time testing out his system and while there is progress on that system, the session was a bit...meh.

So first off, for my Flying Swordsmen play test, I had four players: Flynn and Steven (my boys, age 17 and almost 11), Denis, and Charles. They've all played in my Star Wars campaign, so they're familiar with the basics at least of the Open d6 System. 

My goal for the session was to have the players each make a PC using a template, then have them each make a PC using custom design. I thought it would be a quick session. Turns out, it took most of the time to get the template PCs completed mechanically (we didn't create NPC Sifu, organizations, or important NPC relationships since I don't have my starting campaign setting ideas worked out yet). And instead of then turning to custom PCs (which we wouldn't have had time to finish anyway), we ran a practice combat, two-on-two. 

Denis had gone through the character templates the night before. He even called to tell me that he found around seven of them really interesting. That was a good sign. He hadn't read through the player rules packet, though. He ended up using the Beggar template.

Charles had at least skimmed the player rules, and had a few questions about them when we started. I don't think he had looked through the templates yet. He went with a Drunken Boxer template.

My boys were given a basic overview, and I explained the templates to them before we left to meet up with Denis and Charles. Flynn chose the Demonist Shaman template, and Steven went with the Street Fighter template. 

Denis took a bit of time to understand the difference between the suggested skills on the template and the skill dice that could be distributed. Charles had lots of questions about taking specializations of skills. There are a couple of skills that I might need to rename. I went with "Stance" as the name of what Star Wars calls Dodge, and this was confusing for them. I'll probably edit it to Dodge so it's easier to notice...but I like the flavor of the name Stance. 

Denis suggested that instead of walls of text, I could make a visual diagram of character creation, and that's a good idea. I'll get to work on that soon. Color coding a character sheet and putting notes in a sidebar with number references on the sheet should be fairly easy to do. 

My boys didn't have many problems. They've each made multiple Star Wars PCs, so they picked their templates, selected their skills, and were ready to go. 

In the combat, we found that for novice martial artists, it's fairly easy to get knocked out or wounded. Denis' Beggar went down first, then Flynn's Shaman was wounded. Charles' Drunken Boxer took a minor wound, then Steven's Street Fighter knocked him out, ending the combat. I want to run more combats like this, and put them up against some NPCs and monsters as well, at different power levels to see how things go. They had fun with this fight. Everyone had good things to say about FS2E afterwards. 

Later, after dinner, Flynn and I logged on to Jeremy's Discord to play test his Supers game. This was the third time, and I decided just before we joined the game (well, about 30 minutes before) to make a new character with different powers just to try out a few things. Most of the powers I chose weren't really relevant to the adventure he had us play through, but that's alright. He had no idea I was going to switch from a magic sword-wielding Thor/Warlord/Black Knight type to a technomancer. 

Flynn played Nova, the plasma-wielding hero from the previous session. Dustie played Maya, the gravity-manipulator she had played in the previous session. Jeff and Scott couldn't make it.

Jeremy has been struggling with a few elements of the design. In particular, he wants Stunts -- special or unusual uses of a power -- to be a big part of the game. But he's been struggling with how to model them. I still find the resolution a little unsatisfying, and I think Jeremy is starting to see where I'm coming from. He also has a very slow and painful advancement mechanic, but I can't seem to convince him that it needs to change. He did add in a new way to gain points towards advancement, but is keeping the glacial pace. 

Mechanics aside, the session was dull. In the first game, we had a mystery to solve (although it was mostly just RP, and didn't involve much mechanics), then a bunch of monster fights. Session Two was a bit of exploration (again mostly RP, a bit of mechanics for that), and a bunch of monster fights. Session three was ONLY a series of monster fights. 

The good thing about that was, as we mopped up all of the monsters except for the "Level 4 Psychic Entity" that was only there to monologue, Jeremy seemed to start to realize that 2d10 plus an ability score that is probably going to range from 30 to 60 (and could be more) isn't the best mechanic. Unless we roll snake-eyes, we're not going to fail much. Or the difficulties are going to be so crazy that a character like Jeff made, who has a lot of powers in the 10 to 20 range, is going to find it impossible.  

The bad thing was, we were just going through the motions. Jeremy started us out with the NPC bosses telling us to guard the area monsters would appear. Then he seemed to be fishing for us to do something else, but when we tried doing other things, we were discouraged from that. Then, when we had a break in the monster fighting, we tried doing something unexpected, and Jeremy had us quickly returned to what we had been told to do by his "Dr. Alchemical" NPC. And a few more monster fights took place. 

So yeah, a railroad adventure. 

Now, since it's a play test, I don't mind the railroad so much. What bothers me is that Jeremy was still trying to give us an illusion of freedom, then yanking it away. I'd have been happier if he'd just straight up ran us through the series of monster fights without pretending we had a choice in the matter. 

That's less a problem with the rule set, and more with Jeremy's skills as a GM. I know there are plenty of monsters in supers comics, but when I think Supers RPG, I want to face villains. Street-level bank or tech lab robbers. Teams of colorful weirdos like the Sinster Six or Flash's Rogue's Gallery. Organizations like the Brotherhood of Mutants, Lexcorp, Hydra, or the Injustice League. 

Sure, throw in a few monsters here and there. But where are the ticking time bombs in school buses? The choice to save your girlfriend or the group of civilians from certain death? The pair of nuclear missiles aimed at opposite ends of the country and only time to stop one of them? The crazy non-linear fun-house gladiatorial combat for an extra-dimensional TV personality? The choice between going out to stop crime or attending Grandma's dinner party? Having to make ends meet at a day job while constantly getting pulled away by villains causing chaos? 

OK, had to vent. Three sessions of nothing but fighting Lovecraftian monsters (if you know Jeremy's OSR monster/art books, you know what I mean) gets old.  

Gearing Up for a Play Test

 I've got the Flying Swordsmen 2E rules in what I think are playable condition. So, after today's Star Wars d6 game, I asked the guys if they'd be willing to try out these rules next time. They said OK, although Flynn, my older son, still wants to play more Star Wars while he's here for the summer. I can manage both of those things. 

 This evening, I copy/pasted the player facing rules into a new document, and edited it a little. I saved it as a PDF, but now I'm thinking, even though it's just a play test document, maybe I should add some art to it. Not all of my players have a lot of experience watching wuxia movies. Art could help. 

This will be mostly art taken from movies, because this document shouldn't be seen by anyone but my players. When I am closer to ready to publish, I'll have to make the decision to stick with public domain art like in 1E (probably recycle a lot of the art I did use there), or maybe try to run a Kickstarter or IndieGoGo campaign to fund some original art. I suck at self-promotion, so I'll probably save myself the stress and just use the PD art again. But we'll see. 

For now, I'm excited to share these rules with the group, see what sorts of PCs they come up with, and then form some adventures and test the rules in play.