"Universes Beyond" Seriously?

 So the big announcement from WotC was that they're rolling out "universes beyond" content for 5.5e. 

I think most of my blog readers know this. They also probably know I'm not WotC's target demographic. But here's my thoughts on this anyway. 

First off, is anyone surprised? Since the days of 2E, when TSR was cranking out the setting products, they realized that people love these. People want books of lore that they can dive into and study, and use as the base for their campaign. And every major edition has seen re-releases, with updated stat blocks/content, for many of these settings. 

So we're getting a new 5.5e Dark Sun, and Dragonlance, and there's probably already Forgotten Realms since that's their main setting anymore. But they're also doing World of Warcraft (like someone did back in the d20/SRD/OGL days) and Star Wars (like they did back in the d20/SRD/OGL days AND the 4E days) and probably some Final Fantasy or Diablo (again, they did that back in the day) or Marvel Supers tie in content. Just like with Magic: the Gathering. 

I'm aware of the MtG tie in sets, with Marvel, Final Fantasy, etc. I haven't bought Magic cards in around 20 years now. Maybe a bit longer. So I don't really care what they're doing with the game. It's always been more about milking the random pack dollar than about the game itself, but I got out and haven't looked back. And now, with D&D (official D&D anyway), I'm also out. 

So I really don't care if WotC is going back to try again with the old campaign settings and with brand tie-ins. They're trying to make a buck, and from what I hear the "Universes Beyond" thing is making them a ton of money through MtG. So it makes sense from a business standpoint to try it with D&D. 

From a player/fan perspective, I think this is a bad idea. They tried to make D&D the be-all-end-all of RPGs, not just the 800lb gorilla of them. We had all these official, licensed, and unofficial nerd media tie-ins 25 years ago. And a lot of them sucked. 

A lot of those old tie-ins (Wheel of Time, Star Wars, Warcraft, Diablo, various superhero properties, various non-supers comics, all sorts of video games, and just about every fantasy/sci-fi book or movie franchise) needed to either twist the rules of the game to fit the media property, or else needed to twist the media property's "canon" to fit the game mechanics. 

Sure, a few instances, things worked out pretty well. The Diablo stuff fits right in with D&D, because those games were heavily inspired by D&D to begin with. The d20 Star Wars games were pretty poor representations of the media, to be honest. The WEG d6 is of course my favorite, but I've heard good things about FFG's current game. I don't know many who look back fondly on d20 Star Wars (there are some, but not many). And does anyone seriously think 5E D&D will be a better fit? 

Anyway, I'm gonna keep doing my thing. WotC will keep doing theirs. And they'll probably make a ton of money making sub-standard game products with big franchise tie-ins. I'll make a pittance making substandard game products without the big franchise tie-ins (but with enough references to them, wink-wink). And I'll be happy. 

Because why do I need WotC to do any more of my imagining for me? 

Hitch a Ride to Arcturus

 This weekend, I wrote up a more detailed description of my (very silly, not likely possible, but plausible enough) faster than light travel system for Bughunts & Bedlam. In addition, I came up with some technobabble to explain FTL communication as well, cribbing a bit from Star Frontiers. 

Star Frontiers has FTL at a speed of 1 light year per day, so I went with that for military or "elite" ships, and one light year per week for freighters, colony ships, or other pleb options. The one light year per week rate was suggestive of Alien, where they had a 10 month trip from Zeta Reticuli (40ish light years from Earth) to get home. 

And of course, FTL can warp your brain unless you're in hypersleep. There are now rules for space madness and how to treat it. 

 I had already made a blurb about the setting, where humans have 23 active colonies and 5 failed attempts, and had explored out about 100 light years from Earth. A bit of Google/Wikipedia work gave me a bunch of potential systems with exoplanets that could be colonized. Plus, I remembered that I had a couple of alien species in Cryptids & Conspiracy that have nearby home worlds. 

So I made a big chart of about 30 systems and the distance in light years (rounded up if a decimal of 0.1 or more due to the way the FTL drive works in 1 light year-ish jumps). This took some time. After a lot of slow Googling and math, and a webpage that said it had distances that most turned out to be inaccurate, I gave in and turned to AI. I asked it to generate distances from one target system to all of the other systems. I found discrepancies with that webpage. Then I found discrepancies within the AI output. 

Eventually, I asked AI to make me a spreadsheet with all of the systems. Then I found a game on Steam called SpaceEngine that shows distances from system to system. I went in and did a bit of random checks, and found the final AI numbers to be close enough of a match. So assuming the SpaceEngine people know what they're doing, and that the AI did the math more or less correctly, I've got my travel/communication chart. 

A subspace message (one way only) takes 1 hour per light year. 

A military or high end ship crosses 1 light year per day (no relativity effects for reasons, but you're probably in cryosleep anyway). 

A blue collar working ship crosses 1 light year per week. The chart just has rounded up light year numbers, so it works for all three purposes. 

I'm not proud that I turned to AI for help. I'm usually against it. But it did save me MANY hours of boring labor. And I am NOT using it for text (rules or flavor), or art. 

 Now that the FTL rules are done, I'll add a few options for GMs that want warp drive, hyperdrive, orbital jump gates, or terrestrial stargates in their games.  

 ________

Oh, and an update on the cover art. The artist sent me the first sketch of the two characters that will be front and center on the cover. It looks really good. No notes. I'd given her pretty specific art direction and reference pictures of what I wanted. Now, we wait to see how she fills in the background!  

 

Combat Math in Missions & Mayhem

Yeah, another math post about the mechanics of Missions & Mayhem. These (here, here, here, and here) get a lot of reads, but rarely much comment. I assume either that means people don't want to comment on something they're just reading about but haven't played, or else everything I'm posting seems alright to them so they have not much to say. Either way, there seem to be no egregious math that would elicit corrections so that's encouraging. 

I was reading Eric's thoughts on a single saving throw (Swords & Wizardry style). It got me thinking about the math behind my saving throw system, and the combat mechanics more broadly. 

Following d20 Modern, M&M has Fortitude (modified by Constitution), Reflex (modified by Dexterity), and Will (modified by Wisdom) saving throws. Originally, I gave each class lowering target numbers for each save, the way classic and advanced D&D do it. If you multiclassed among the various Heroic Classes, you took the best value. But then when I started adding Advanced Classes in the campaign modules, I had wonky math going on. 

So, I've changed it to be more like the original. Now, each class provides bonuses to the die roll, along with ability modifiers. If you multiclass, you just add the new modifiers to your save values. 

Unlike the original D&D saves with different target numbers depending on the type of save and your class/level, or the d20 system that I'm riffing on which had varying target DCs for different types of saving throw, there is one constant and unchanging save target number: 16. 

This gives someone with no bonus (average ability score and no class modifier) a 25% chance to succeed on any saving throw. 

Combat, for comparison, uses ascending AC with the base AC as 11. So rolling a flat d20 with no bonus to hit, and the target has no armor or Dexterity adjustments, and no situational modifiers, you have a 50% chance to hit. 

These numbers seem like a good base to work from for me. 

It also means that area of effect attacks (spray autofire, grenades, etc.) need to hit AC 11 to affect the appropriate area. There's a "grenade bounce" check to see where the effect actually lands on a miss, which still might affect some of the intended targets. And then the targets get saving throws to avoid or mitigate the effects. 

Again, the math works well, giving I think, fair odds for combats in the game.  

 

TTRPG in Korea's Online SummerCon 2026

 SummerCon 2026 is approaching. It will be on August 28th to 30th, KST (GMT +9). 

We have a lot more games than gamers, apparently. Maybe lots of folks are on vacations at the end of the summer. Whatever the reason, we have a lot of games with open spots. So we (I'm part of the organizing committee) have decided to open up the Con to people outside Korea. 

 If anyone reading is interested, check out our registration page on Warhorn. You'll need to register with Warhorn, and the Con is on Discord (plus various VTTs at each GM's preference) so you'll also need to join the TTRPG in Korea Discord server at least until the end of the conference. 

SummerCon Registration 

https://warhorn.net/events/korea-summercon-2026

TTRPG in Korea

https://discord.gg/5P7pM7Vpn 

I'm running a Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Ruby game, and I've got the Exploration Focused Play workshop as well, both on Saturday. The only person yet to sign up for the workshop is also on the organizing committee, so I may cancel that and just chat with him about the topic one-on-one sometime. But there's still a week to sign up, so maybe it will get a little more interest. 

There is a wide variety of games, old school, new school, traditional, narrative, cozy, etc.  

Movie Review - Spider-Man Brand New Day

 I saw the new Spider-Man film a few hours ago, and I really liked it. Here's a bit of spoiler-free review. 

First off, for the moms worried about cursing in the movie, there's quite a bit, most (all?) of it coming from Frank Castle/Punisher. So be warned. Not like Kevin Smith film, Blues Brothers, or The Big Lebowski levels of cursing, but a lot compared to any previous Spider-Man film.

The movie is very busy. There's a lot of characters, a lot going on, and yet it doesn't feel rushed. It's a character-driven story just as much as it is plot-driven. And the main characters all get moments to grow and develop during the film. Some more than others, of course, but there are lots of character moments. Also, lots of what I assume are more subtle tie-ins to future MCU films/shows than in some of the previous projects. But no spoilers. 

Destin Daniel Cretton has a great eye for capturing motion and getting dynamic fight scenes. There's a reason Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is high up on my MCU list of great films. And while there's a lot going on in this film, it feels like a cohesive story. 

To be honest, it felt like the way monthly ongoing comic books (used to? I haven't kept up) structure stories. The first act of the movie has Spider-Man/Peter Parker juggling personal and work-related problems, and he's up against Scorpion and the Punisher (sorta). Then the middle act involves Spidey dealing with the Department of Damage Control, the Hulk, continuing personal problems, and Sadie Sink's character. The third act brings the Punisher back in and resolves most of the conflicts, personal and villain-related. It's got plenty of open threads for future stories, though. It felt like the way a 3-part comic arc is scripted. 

So kudos to Marvel/Sony for getting out another character-focused superhero movie. After this film, Thunderbolts*, and Daredevil Born Again, I've got high expectations for Avengers: Doomsday later this year.  

 

Total Party Capture

Today was the third linked adventure for play testing Bughunts & Bedlam, following on the previous two planetary mine investigations. Today's session was all aboard Longinus Station, in orbit around planet RX-55. 

During the first investigation (krytes from the movie Critters invaded a mine), one of the station technicians was an oddball.  What the PCs didn't know is that a Puppeteer, a mind-control bug based on Heinlein's Puppet Masters but also Ceti eels from Wrath of Khan, the brain parasite aliens in TNG's Conspiracy episode, and any other creatures that latch on to your brainstem and then control you, had taken control of the technician. And there was a crate full of them waiting to infest the rest of the crew. 

Session two (battling Alien Bounty Hunters and Coeurls), when they returned to the station, a few more people were odd. 

This session, they set out to find out who was mind controlled, or a secret synthetic, or maybe a doppelganger type shapeshifter. It actually didn't take long, as early in the session Jada's Hero Sarah went off with one of the infected crew members, who took her to the cargo storage area to try to infect her. She avoided that, but the infected scientist got away. Charles and Steven's Heroes Magnum and Conner (respectively) were looking for clues and not finding much, when suddenly there was an alarm. Someone had sabotaged part of the engineering section. They went to help patch it up, but failed their rolls. The first infected tech showed up to "fix" the situation. 

Our heroes met up with each other and took one of the security officers (compromised!) to confront the station medic, who they knew had acted oddly. There was a fight, but both infected crew were subdued. Sarah  performed surgery to remove the medic's puppeteer, but failed to remove the security officer's. Another alarm went off in the loading dock during the surgeries, but they ignored it. Finally, a decompression event happened in the maintenance bay. 

They put on oxygen masks and went to see what they could do. All of the remaining infected crew (five of them) were waiting. Unfortunately for our crew, Steven was tired (and maybe a bit bored of mostly talk talk talk) and fell asleep at the table. So Connor was out of this final battle. And it went sideways quickly. One tangler grenade wrapped up the infected admin guy with a rifle. Another wrapped up more. The remaining infected crew fired stunners, but didn't take out the Heroes. One last tangler grenade missed, and the bounce roll showed that it came right back at the Heroes. They both failed their saves. 

So, all the Heroes were captured, and they and the remaining uninfected crew became hosts for puppeteers. 

They should have destroyed the case the puppeteers came in when they had the chance! 

_______

Luckily for the players, we're running play test games, so despite the horrible end, the PCs will be back next session for more. And they leveled up, with Sarah taking the Xenologist advanced class, and Magnum taking the Trooper advanced class. I'll get Steven to level up his PC later, and Denis and Justin can level up their Heroes next session. 

Serendipity (III)

 At the beginning of the year, my wife started learning Korean calligraphy. Then, a few months back, she found an art teacher to teach her watercolor painting to decorate the calligraphy designs. My wife came home from her art class the other day and said she mentioned to the teacher that I was writing an RPG book. The art teacher offered to do some art for the book. 

So we messaged a bit, and then went to talk to her a couple of days ago. 

She's now working on a design for cover art for Missions & Mayhem. It will be a full color acrylic painting, if we do commission her for it. Her work that I've seen is very good, and we shared some concept art, other modern-ish RPG cover art, etc. along with some reference art for the characters that will grace the cover. 

She said she can also do black and white line art fairly easily, so I'll probably commission some more interior art pieces from her later. 

Another artist in Seoul, Jeff Witty, has been doing a lot of art for Dungeon Crawl Classics lately. We've also talked, and he likes my concept for art to highlight the character classes, but he's pretty busy with commissions already. Hopefully, I'll be able to snag a few pictures from him as well.

There's no monsters in the core book, but I'll of course be commissioning some monster art from my buddy Jeremy Hart for the campaign module books. I want to support him as much as possible, too.

I'm pretty excited to see what the art teacher does with the concept I gave her. And once I've got the cover art, it will be a lot easier to start promoting the books. Other than revising some "how to play" and "how to run the game" sections, the main Missions & Mayhem core rules book is done. I'm pretty happy with how it plays, and I don't expect to make more than tweaks to the game from here on out.