TTRPG in Korea Online SummerCon has Begun

 The TTRPG in Korea SummerCon has begun already. I'm obviously not playing in any games right now (Friday night) but I've got a weekend chock full of gaming coming up. 

 Tomorrow morning is Justin's Monster of the Week/Jinkies (PbtA mashup) game.  I'm playing Jimmy Switzer, an outcast and college drop-out. A little bit punk/metalhead, a little bit incel, and a little bit weirdo.

Tomorrow afternoon is a game of Mothership where I'll be playing a space marine named Mifune. He's probably gonna die. We'll see if it's in a blaze of glory, or cowering in fear. 

 On Sunday afternoon, I run my TS&R game, Into the Dragon's Den. 

And Sunday evening, I'm playing in a Dungeon Crawl Classics game. I've never played DCC, so I'm really looking forward to this game. But it's 8pm to midnight, so we'll see if I'm able to stay awake after all the gaming before it. Not sure who/what my character(s) will be in this game. 

I'm off to bed a bit early tonight. Gotta get rested up for the all-weekend gaming.  

Gaming in Seoul: Perils and Princesses

I was up in Seoul most of this weekend (Sunday evening as I type this) for an academic conference. But I was free Friday evening, so stopped by Dice and Comics Cafe (formerly known as Dice Latte, which a lot of people still refer to it by). 

There was some sort of Western RPG in progress when I got there, but the owner told me that most pick up games start around 7pm. So I ordered some food and listened in on the Western game while I ate. I didn't interrupt to ask what game system it was, but it was definitely not Boot Hill. It had a mundane setting (no magic, undead, or steampunk from what I could tell), or at least the encounters I overhead didn't include anything like that. 

When other people started arriving, I joined them. There were two games brewing, a Call of Cthulhu game set in space, and a Perils and Princesses pirate adventure. I joined the Perils and Princesses game. Ian, who plays in Richard's online Call of Cthulhu games, was also in this game but all the other players were people I had just met. 

Perils and Princesses is an NSR type game, similar to Black Hack, Into the Odd, Mothership, PbtA games, etc. You play a princess with certain magical gifts, and need to survive adventures by wits, resolve, and sometimes swinging swords. 

Morgan was our GM. 

My princess was a knight/healer named Valerian.  

Ian played an alchemist/water mage princess named Talia.

Margot played a wild card/con man princess with a pet parrot named Whistle (the parrot was named Polly).

Oliver played a scholar/thief princess named Clara.

Riley played a barbarian/beastmaster princess named Fern. 

The adventure we went on was basically The Blues Brothers. The orphanage we were raised in (yes, we're princesses, but also orphans. Stop over-thinking) was in danger of being bought and torn down by an evil merchant. Luckily, we heard of these pirate ghosts with treasure in a sea cave south of town, and an old matron in town gave us a map if we promised to recover her family heirloom cursed dagger.

Well, after romping through town for a bit, we set sail for the caves, and avoided, fought and befriended various monsters. We recovered the dagger and other treasure to save the orphanage just in time. We literally played until the shop was closing, so had to wrap up the game in a hurry. 

It was fun, and like a lot of NSR games, it was easy to pick a character and just start playing. I'm not sure it would have a lot of long-term campaign value, though, as there only appear to be four levels to the characters (we were playing at level 2). 

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In other news, I've almost completed my revisions to Flying Swordsmen 2E. I need to read through the monster section very carefully one more time. I've also been pondering ideas for a short campaign to play test the game with my local group. People in one of the RPOL games I play in have been asking when it will be available, so I should get to work polishing up and testing the rules.

In other other news, next weekend is the TTRPG in Korea Online SummerCon. I'm in two games on Saturday as a player. Justin is running Monster of the Week in the morning, and in the afternoon I'm in a Mothership game. On Sunday afternoon, I will run a TS&R(ish)* game, then in the evening play in a Dungeon Crawl Classics game. And then classes start on Monday...

 *I'm using my TS&R rules to run the game, but I found an old set of BECMI pre-gen PCs that I wanted to reuse, so Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling are classes for this game, and all the Clerics, Fighters, Magic-Users, and Thieves are Human. No Druids, Rangers, or any of that AD&D add-on either.  

The Appendix N Jam Results are In

 While the contest judges are still working their way through the entries for the 2025 Appendix N Jam adventure module contest, the community judging has completed. 

My entry, Mistborn of the Thorn Isles, rated 177/227. Pretty low. But overall, it looks like there were mostly good entries. My weighted score was 3.176 out of 5, but the raw score was 3.709 from 11 reviewers. 

Looking at the criteria, I ranked best in playability (#140), and while the lowest ranked criteria was how well my game would fit in Appendix N (#189), that was also the highest individual score (3.425 weighted, 4.000 raw score). So it looks like most people got the assignment. 

[I couldn't find what criteria was used to weight scores on the site, but I'm sure it's there somewhere.]

 Some people had trouble downloading the module during the review, but I contacted Itch and they say the file wasn't indexed properly but should be now. So feel free to hop over and download it!  If you're running a salt-box/wavecrawl game, or just want a spooky sorta Celtic themed island to drop in your campaign, it should be a good fit. 

Movie Review: K-Pop Demon Hunters

I spent the past three weeks teaching the English camp I usually teach over summer and winter breaks. Yes, board games were played (Dungeon!, King of Tokyo, Werewolf Dead or Alive, Bang!). And this past week, my class watched K-Pop Demon Hunters for entertainment. 

 I head about the movie several weeks back when it came out on Netflix. Lots of people here in Korea were gushing about it. I'm not a fan of K-Pop, though, so I didn't rush to watch it. But my students wanted to see it (some of them for the Xth time), so we did. 

Parents wondering about Curse Words: None that I remember. There's some cartoon violence, but it's fairly kid friendly and wholesome. 

The movie follows a trio of K-pop singers who also happen to be the Chosen Ones to defeat demons and protect the magical weave of the world, the Honmoon. But Rumi, their leader, has a secret. And Gwi-Ma, the demon lord, has sent a group of demons to form a K-Pop boy band, Saja Boys, to compete with Huntr/x, the protagonists' girl group. 

The animation is for the most part really nicely done 3D animation mostly in a heightened reality style, but in anime fashion occasionally shots or scenes switch to more cartoony "chibi" or "kawaii" style. Yeah, it's Korean, but my language for discussing this stuff comes from Japan. Sue me. 

The story is fine for kids, but honestly, it's pretty cliche and predictable. But it does have compelling character arcs that pay off in the end (though you can see them coming if you've seen other Chosen One stories before), so it's competently scripted and the voice acting is good. And the music...well, if you like K-Pop, you'll like this film's soundtrack. It's not my style. 

I did appreciate the nods to Korean history, culture, myths, and legends. And as someone running an Asian fantasy D&D campaign, there's always something useful to snag from something like this. And some of the ideas in the film have given me ides for my campaign. 

In the end, yeah, it's not a bad movie. Just not my normal cup of tea. If you have kids and want to watch something together, there are worse choices could make. And even if you don't have kids, if you like Asian fantasy, K-Pop, Korean culture in general, and/or Chosen One/Magical Girl media, why not give it a watch? If you aren't into any of that stuff, you probably aren't missing much by skipping it. 

Final verdict: Not bad, but not something I'd likely watch again. 

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.