Musings on Gaming #2 - Time

In this post I would like to talk about the role of time in world-building.

It is common for the typical medieval-fantasy RPG world to have a long history - a "lore" - and while I do not do any world-building of my own, I agree with that practice; in our own world, thousands of years of written history existed before the medieval period, and tens of thousands more are known through archaeology, and millions more known through other scientific fields.

When looking at fantasy worlds, I tend to view their histories through the lens of our own prehistory and history, and this for me is when the suspension of disbelief becomes difficult.

Many of the fantasy settings I have game in have histories that are both too long and too short: typically, the period of prehistory is too short, with species coming into existence and then reaching a medieval-level civilisations in the blink of an eye, and then remaining at that level for much longer than our own medieval period lasted.

One way of rationalising this is to look at the official lore or "fluff" as something which the peoples of the fantasy worlds viewed as their own history, and not necessarily as the truth. Just as in our own world people gave accounts of the origins of themselves and lists of kings which we today see as bearing some core of truth but over all inaccurate, so too can we see the fluff. Similarly, the peoples in these worlds also imagined their ancestors as having the same level of technology as they possessed, much as how our own medieval artists depicted supposedly ancient kings in contemporary armour and weapons.

Interpreting the official lore of the worlds this way makes it easier for me to accept them as real, and I try to bring this across to my players by mapping the historical periods in the game world to our own, such that when they explored ancient ruins or tombs they would come across artifacts and burial practices that mirrored those of our world: a period when material culture could be identified but there was no metal working, a period with copper alloy or bronze working, and finally an age with iron and steel artifacts. 

Setting the history of the game world against our own also allows me to determine the level of technology that is appropriate to the period. Our own "Middle Ages" spans a thousand years, and it will be wrong to imagine that the level of technology, or the prevailing system of government and law remained static during the entire span of time. So if a player asked me if a certain thing - say eyeglasses - existed in the game world, I can find out when they were invented in our own world, and decide if they would exist in the game world. On a more general scale, technologies that improved agricultural yields or trade would have enormous impact on the populations and material prosperity of the peoples and places our PCs existed among, so if the world had large cities with cosmopolitan populations and exotic goods, I would have to make sure that the technologies that allowed for such a world existed.

Going further back in time, I often think about the existence of several humanoid or "demi-human" races/species in fantasy worlds and how that might work in a "real" world.

Probably every culture in our world has their own creation myth and how they came into being. Whether these myths were viewed as literal truths by the people who told them, or whether they were understood to be an expression of the place they saw themselves in the scheme of things, I think we can safely say that they are all factually wrong.

Our own species is now believed to be an admixture of archaic humans and other hominid species. This, and the fact that there were several hominid species leads me to wonder if the various fantasy races could in fact be viewed in the same light: not as peoples created separately by their own gods and distinct from the other races, but as different branches on the evolutionary tree. Certainly it would be interesting to imagine a scenario where all the hominid species in our own world all existed in the same period and developed civilisation. None of this is likely to have an impact in gameplay, but it is again something which makes the game world more real to me.

Of course time is only one of the dimensions which give a sense of realism and depth to our game worlds - the other dimension is space, which we will discuss in the next post in the series.

Blood Bowl 2021 League Round #2

Game 2 saw my skavens face off against David's Imperial Nobility team.

My thrower suffered a stat loss in my first game and I made the decision to drop him from the team, but at the same time I did not have enough gold to employ another thrower. Without a thrower, my skavens had to play a running game, and they failed to score during my possession.

In the second half, they took advantage of David's inexperience and ran into the opposition team's half and took possession of the ball and score.

David was able to capitalise on the skaven's losses in the last part of the game and drive close to my touchline line, but an ambitious Rush saw his player fall and break his neck, which allowed my players to scoop up the ball and throw it into the other half of the pitch for safety.

I scraped a 1-0 win, and made enough money to recruit a new thrower, but one of my gutter-runners died during the match, which means I end the game with the same Current Team Value as I started the game with.

At the end of the second game, the league table looks like this:

Kazak Killers : 6

Badland Brawlers: 3

Skavenholme Scallywags: 3

Middenheim Marauders: 0

Blood Bowl 2021 League Round #1

We played the first games of our Blood Bowl league on Thursday.

My Skavens faced the dwarves in their first game. Winning the coin flip, my skavens managed to 'cas' a dwarf slayer in the first turn, and score on the second turn. From then on it was a game of attrition as the dwarves methodically took my players down one by one, with one player escaping death due to the presence of an apothecary.

FG handled the dwarves boldly, scoring two touchdowns, and by the time I was receiving again I was fielding seven players against his eleven.

My Thrower lost a point of Strength, and I decided to drop him from the team. One of the Blitzers managed to gain a total of 6 SPPs due to the MVP roll, and I gave him Mighty Blow - hopefully that advantage will result in a positive feedback mechanism that will see him gain more SPPs.

At the end of the first round of games, the league table is:

Badland Brawlers: 3

Kazak Killers: 3

Middenheim Marauders: 0

Skavenholme Scallywags: 0

Chronicles of the Adventurers Guild #13

On the 12th day of Ostar, Guild members Madian, Kimly, Tamira, Folly, and Leowe (see PC profiles here), with the bearer Karl in employment, explored the subterranean tombs. Entering via barrow #20, they came upon a long hall, wherein they found the remains of several tomb robbers. Thus forewarned, the party entered the chamber, whereupon the pillars animated and took the forms of men, and attacked them, but were overcomed.

Passing north still, they came into a square chamber and surprised two cultists within. The party sought to capture the cultists, but they refused to be taken, and a skirmish ensued. The cultists were soon joined by skeletal warriors, which entered the chamber from the corridor to the north, and also by several more cultists entering from a corridor to the east.

The party was able to hold off the skeletal warriors and repel the cultists, who retreated under the cover of a magical darkness. The party defeated the skeletal warriors, and using the remnants of the stone creatures in the the hall they had passed, blocked up the door to the east.

Proceeding further north, they came upon a passage leading to the east that had collapsed; here they found signs that the collapsed passage was being cleared.

Passing further north, they found that the passage turned to the east, and continued for several hundred feet, and terminated in a natural cavern, within which was an underground pond. At the near side of the pond was a boat. At the far end of the cavern was a small landing, beyond which a tunnel could be discerned. In the middle of the pond was a rocky outcrop.

The boat being small and unable to take the weight of all six persons, the party resolved to cross the pond in turn. In the first passing, they discerned the form of a woman with long hair seated upon the rocky outcrop. As the boat neared the outcrop, a force began to pull it towards the outcrop. The party was able to overcome this with vigourous rowing, and upon reaching the far shore they found long strands of hair on the hull. Then, steering as far from the outcrop as practicable, the party made further crossings, and the whole party was able to reach the far bank unharmed.

Entering the tunnel there, the party emerged within barrow #49, which they found to be already plundered.

No grave goods were recovered.

Signed,

Jeras, Guild Chronicler

Prepping and Running the Game

I was really excited that we managed to get five players for this session, as I had planned for this to be the big fight scene where the PCs and the dragon cultists launch a co-ordinated attack on the death cultists; unfortunately, plans never survive contact with PCs...

We began the session by playing out the negotiation between the dragon cultists - posing as plain tomb-robbers - and the PCs.

The dragon cultists were represented by their leader (a dragon-kin), the dragon-kin barbarian whom the PCs have met in an earlier session, and three of their human mercenaries. The dragon-kin proposed a co-ordinated attack on the death cultists' lair, with the PCs attacking from the west, and they attacking from the east. I made the very generous terms of leaving exploration rights to all the surface barrows to the PCs afterwards, plus all of the underground complex except for the quadrant north and east of the cultists' lair, as well as half of whatever loot they will take from the cultists, and sharing of whatever documents they recover.

The PCs were naturally suspicious of the terms, but I had decided beforehand that they would not be able to read the dragon-kin's faces. Still, this did not prevent them from asking for even better terms!

I had the barbarian speak to the leader in their own language, which ruffled the PCs' feathers, but they agreed to give the PCs three-quarters of the cultists' loot, which caused furrowed brows in the human mercenaries.

The players were very keen to learn the dragon-kin's interest in the northeast quadrant of the complex, and wanted to know what item exactly it was that they hoped to find there, but I gave the Sauron-ic reply that it is a "trifle that he fancies", which of course convinced no one. 

While they did not fully trust the dragon-kin, the PCs agreed to the temporary alliance, with no real intent to keeping to the terms.

The attack was planned for the 13th of the month, as the merchant bringing supplies from Tamalir was expected to arrive on the 12th, and the dragon cultists wanted to be well-prepared.

I expected the players to wait for the attack, but they surprised me by choosing to launch another expedition on the 12th, hoping to find out where exactly the death cultists' lair was. As they already had some idea of where the lair was, they quickly came upon the cultists' sentries, which triggered a fight. With five PCs and quite a few of them at level 4, their experience in dungeon-fighting and powers allowed them to quickly dominate the fight, forcing the cultists to retreat.

Their decision to blockade the door to the east essentially sealed the cultists' access to the northeast, a sector of the complex which is of interest to them. This really pushes them up against a wall, as even if they can easily unblock the door, the room is the main access to their lair and connects that to the sector they want to explore.

I now have a couple of tough decisions to make as the GM and the death cult leader: did the PCs' actions tip the cultists off to a possible impending attack? Will the cultists launch a surprise attack on the dragon cultists pre-emptively, with the aim of taking over their lair?

I have a few days to think this through...

Musings on Gaming #1 - Reality

This is hopefully the first of a series of posts where I pen down my thoughts about RPG and GMing.

I've been playing RPGs for something like 35 years now, being a GM almost exclusively during this whole time, but it is only really in the past ten years or so that I started thinking about GMing as a craft. I started GMing in school as a teenager with Dragon Warriors, and back then with no frame of reference, we just played the way we thought the game ought to be played. There was no session zero (beyond "we already have enough fighters but we need a healer"), no discussion of character motivation (beyond gaining XPs and leveling up), but the strange thing was, as we played on and the characters explored and interacted with more of the world around them, we started developing motivations for them, and my players started to ask for their characters to do this or that: they started to develop goals.

The reason for that, even though we did not consciously know at that time, was because we all believed that the game world was "real" in some way. That is to say, we believed that the game world operated within certain rules and moved due to certain forces, just like the real world does, and that our characters, much like our young selves, could interact with this world in a meaningful way if we understood how it worked. This was also the time when we were learning History and Geography (in particular Human Geography) in school, and the subjects reinforced the ideas that the physical world and people did not behave randomly, but were the way they were for specific reasons.

In that respect the rules that we were using - Dragon Warriors - played a big role. The world of Dragon Warriors, called Legend, is an unashamed Earth-analogue, and lovingly described in Book 6 of the book series. There was even a table showing the evolution of the languages on the world, which had a bearing on how easy it was for the speaker of one language to learn another. This was the kind of detail that the teenage mind craved and thrived on, and even though I didn't know it then, the game had a formative effect on how I look at RPG worlds even today. In a future post I hope to discuss why I think such details are important to a medieval fantasy setting.

To me, an RPG is about immersing yourself in the role of a character in a make-believe world, which you imbue with a personality, traits, and motivations. For a player to do so, the GM must provide a game world that is "real" and operate by known cause-and-effects. That is to say, we expect that the PCs need to breathe, and that the game world has an atmosphere that the PCs can breathe in; that gravity exists, and if you fall from height you will take damage; that people respond pretty much like people in our world, and if you are rude to someone he is likely to respond negatively to you; and that laws exist and breaking them will bring consequences. That is not to say that the game world has to be an exact replica of our world, or that only the mundane exist, but however the game world is different from ours, those differences must have consequences, and should be taken into consideration in the way the world works in such a way that they do not result in plot holes.

It is such a belief that makes me exclude powers like resurrection and long-distance teleport (or at least make them extremely rare), because I am not able to decide how a world where such powers exist will operate. Of course, your average low-level magic user can still become an effective burglar with spells like Mage Hand and Misty Step, but the effect of these spells have non-magical equivalents such as stealth and sleight-of-hand and lockpicking, so they are easier for our minds to accept that the world would not be significantly different from ours just because those spells existed. The further a power or an ability is from our real-world possibilities, the harder it is for our muggle minds to imagine how the world must change to account for them. This is also an argument for limiting the frequency and power of magic in a game world, or making magic dangerous to the caster, but that is probably the topic of another post.

Another effect of this belief is that I have an aversion to "narrative" RPGs where the players get to decide what happens as a result of their actions. This does not mean that I do not believe in player agency, but that I believe that player agency means they can decide their characters' actions, but not the result of those actions. In the real world we get to choose what we say or do, but we cannot control the outcome of our words or actions - so it should be in our game world.

That said, I have played in games where the players get to choose what happens (or rather 'happened') in the form of flashbacks, but that took place in the context of games where such flashbacks are an explicit and important part of gameplay; as enjoyable as those games were, I feel that the mechanic will not be sustainable in a long-term campaign.

In the instances where I played in "collaborative" games where the players get to decide what happens as a result of their die-rolls, the gameplay was typically stilted as the players pause to think about how to narrate an interesting and reasonable outcome to their actions.

Is my way of gaming the only correct way then? Certainly not; the fact that many games where flashbacks and "collaboration" are main features are very successful proves that many people enjoy that way of gaming. But for me, a campaign with longevity needs to be one that is grounded in a kind of reality that parallels that of our world.

Chronicles of the Adventurers Guild #12

On the 9th day of Ostar, guild members Francis, Kelso, Moonshadow, and Partha (see PC profiles here), with the bearer Karl in employment, returned to the underground chambers, with the purpose of recovering the grave goods from within the chamber of salted corpses.

They overcame the undead in the first chamber, and recovered the grave goods within.

Exploring the next chamber in the corridor, they found a silver statuette upon a plinth in the far end, and the bodies of three tomb-robbers upon the floor, which was covered with a thin layer of fine silt. The party surmised that the tomb-robbers had perished from some trap within the chamber, and with the means of a rope with a loop made in the end, successfully dislodged the statuette from its position, whereupon a stone door descended over the doorway, and the chamber began to be flooded by water that came from a hidden port in the wall. After a period of time has passed, there came sound from behind the door, and when it stopped the door opened, and they party found the room drained but still wet.

Exploring the next room in the corridor, they came upon a strange portal in the far wall, which appeared as a vertical surface of a dark pool of water. The party was able to gather water from the portal, but were unable to determine if it led to some other locale.

Therefore leaving the portal, they came to the next room, and found within several plinths, upon which were embalming tools. In the corner of the room was a pile of salt, which too the form of a giant man and attacked them when they entered the room. The party resolved to transport the water from the portal to the chamber, which eventually caused the salt to dissolve, and were able to recover the implements within.

Passing then to the corridor to the north, they came upon another chamber of salted undead, which they overcame, and claim the grave goods within.

Passing further north, they broke into three more chambers, which appeared similar to the one before, but the remains within which did not rise to attack them.

Finally, turning west and then south, they came upon a chamber with decorated doors. Within the chamber was a single sarcophagus, the occupant of which rose to attack them when they opened it.  Unable to overcome the undead, the party retired to the guild.

Grave good recovered were assessed to be 525 Gros (!) in value, of which 175 Gros was disbursed to the members, according to the terms of the contract.

On the 10th day of Ostar, guild members Kimly, Tamira, and Erik, with tbearer Karl in employment, explored the chambers underground. Returning to the chamber with the decorated door, they vanquished the undead within, and recovered much grave goods.

Turning then north they passed along a long corridor that eventually turned east, and entered a flooded chamber with a doorway on the south wall. When they entered the chamber with the purpose of passing through the south door, they were attacked by animated skeletons which had hid within the water, which they were able to vanquish.

Passing then through the southern door, they came upon a large flooded chamber with faded frescoes upon the walls, which suggested that the chamber was used for some religious rites which involved the immersion of the worshippers into the water. Here the water took the shape of a giant and attacked them, but it was defeated.

The party then retraced their steps, with the purpose of exploring to the east, but passing a junction guild member Erik discerned a hidden portal upon a wall. Entering the portal, they found themselves in a long corridor leading to the west. The party passed into the corridor with caution, and were able to defend themselves against skeletal warriors that issued forth from hidden niches along the walls. 

Overcoming these undead, the party came into a large chamber, the walls of which were painted with figures of men and ships. At the far end of the room sat an undead warrior upon a throne of stone. As they were already wounded and weary at this point, the party left the room, and returned to the guild.

Grave goods recovered were valued at 5 Gros, of which 18 Gros was disbursed to the party according to the terms of the contract.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session was the last one before our Chinese New Year break, which means there are a projected 6 more sessions to the end of the campaign.

The two days of exploration took place during the same session, with the first day garnering the PCs the largest haul in the history of the campaign. This happened partly because I made a mistake in my planning, putting four identical rooms stocked with the salt mummies. It seemed like a good idea when I was planning the dungeon, but when I realised that the repetition was going to be boring and tedious, I removed the undead and granted them grave goods of lower value instead. It took them some time still to break into and sift through the grave goods and pick out the valuable bits though.

The room with the water trap was initially supposed to be sealed, but I realised that as it stood it would not have been an interesting encounter for the players. I needed to 'telegraph' the existence of a trap, and I figured a good way of doing this was to show the remains of others who had fallen prey to it. This worked, and gave the players a way to bypass the trap and still claim the treasure within.

The magical portal of water actually leads to a pool in one of the barrows overground, but the players were wisely wary and did not attempt to pass through it, although they did tie a rope around the waist of one of the dead tomb-robbers and throw him inside. What I did not expect the players to do with the portal was for them to use it as a limitless reservoir, which they used to flood the subsequent chamber and neutralise the salt golem which had a high Challenge Rating (and hence more treasure). This clever weaponisation of a feature of the dungeon was partly responsible for the huge haul they made.

Their abnormally large haul meant that we now have more characters at level 4, which will be important for the next phase of the campaign.

The expedition on the second day was more typical. I revealed the existence of a hidden door to a section of the dungeon here by having one of the dwarven PCs notice that there was a part of the map that was blank, which did not make sense. Hopefully this will prompt the players to start looking at 'blank' sections of the map and searching for secret doors more carefully.

I ended the session by having Gamdar, the orc tavern-hand who is secretly in league with the dragon cultists approach the non-human, non-dwarven, and non-Kellos-worshipping members of the guild to arrange a meeting with the head of the dragon cultists.

The dragon cultists, posing as merely common tomb-robbers, offered the PCs an alliance: they knew the location of the death cultists' lair within the dungeon, and proposed a combined attack on them to eliminate them, and thereafter they and the guild members could partition the dungeon between themselves to avoid conflict.

I then gave the players the two weeks until our next session to discuss among themselves which PCs if any would take up the offer. This means that the next session may see a large and challenging battle, and the levelling up during this session would put the PCs in a better position to fight that battle.

The reason why I want the battle to be challenging is because I want the PCs to level up quicker over the next few sessions, ideally with most if not all PCs reaching level 7 as they enter the finale session so they can have their second class feature.

With the approach of the end of the campaign I face the question of what to do with the PCs who survive the final battle. Five Torches Deep is rather limited in PC progression, especially in the list of available spells, which I feel is an important part of any fantasy RPG game. Perhaps I will let all the PCs convert to their equivalent class in 5E, retaining the number of XPs that they end the campaign on.

Knock! - and am I an OSR DM?

Spoiler: I am not.

A few months ago I came upon the kickstarter for Knock!, an OSR "zine", and liked the look of it enough to back for a physical copy. It wasn't cheap, but I thought a physical copy would be better for appreciating the art and finding the articles I wanted.

I received my copy a couple weeks ago, and I was glad I made that choice.

Now I am not someone who appreciates a thing simply for its beauty; even when I get something beautiful, it is for what it represents, and what it advertises about myself (i.e. vanity).

But this thing.

This zine here is a joy to behold and to hold. The artwork within are so evocative and varied, and the layout so whimsical, one could spend hours poring over the pages.

Actual photo of me reading Knock! #1, 2021 - colourised

The text are of course good and useful too, but they are apart from the physical quality of the book: the texture of the paper, the heft, the boldness of the colours, the contrast, the use of non-parallel layout... Suffice to say that I will be backing issue 2 of the zine later this year.

The text did, however, cause me to ask myself: am I an Old School Revival DM?

That question in turn begs the questions: what is an OSR style game? What other styles of games exist besides the OSR style? Is this a binary thing, a spectrum with two ends, or a multi-dimensional measurement thing?

There are articles aplenty already written on what defines an OSR game, and having read several of these and the zine, I came to the conclusion that I am not an OSR DM.

Well, not entirely anyway.

There are aspects of the OSR style that I like and employ in my campaigns, such as a grittiness instead of high fantasy (something often said of 5E) and emphasis on player-based solutions instead of character-based solutions (again, 5E).

At the same time, there are aspects of the OSR style that I do not enjoy, such as the "gonzo" style dungeon, where the whimsical and unexplained exist seemingly just to impress, but make no sense.

Of course neither of these preferences/peeves are absolute; depending of the campaign I am playing, I may occasionally embrace the gonzo (as I did when I ran a short White Plume Mountain mini-campaign), or I may handwave away the logistical problems like money and encumbrance (as I did when running my Space Opera campaigns).

I do, however, have a preference when it comes to running my staple fantasy campaign in Terrinoth, and I hope to pen down these thoughts in the future, both as reference for myself, and any new GM who might find them useful.

In the meantime, do consider getting a copy of Knock! #1 from here.

Chronicles of the Adventurers Guild #11

On the 8th Day of Ostar, guild members Kimly, Tamira, and Leowe, with the bearer Karl in employment, descended into the underground complex via Barrow #16.

Proceeding to the chamber where the guild members had previously been driven out of by creatures of stone (see here), the members were able to overcome the stone creatures and recover the grave goods within the chamber, and bearer Karl discovered a secret door that led northwards, into the flooded chamber which the the members had earlier also explored (see here).

The wraith once more appeared, and according to member Tamira conversed with her in her mind, calling her a worshipper of the god Yasoda, and correctly discerning the mace which she wielded as the one recovered from the tomb of Druentes (see here), whom he named his companion and whom he claimed to have betrayed many years ago, in conspiracy with the cultists of Nordros. The wraith implored the party to find and vanquish the followers of Nordros, and so lay the undead to rest.

Invigorated by the encounter, the party then proceeded north to the chamber behind the large stone doors, and confronted the fearsome undead within. While they battled the undead, a hidden door in the corridor behind them opened and a skeletal warrior came forth, so that the party were fighting to their fore and their rear. With the power of the mace, Tamira was able to vanquish the undead, and recover the grave goods stored within large urns inside the chamber.

The party then explored westwards, into parts previously unexplored by the guild, and came upon a long corridor with several doors upon one side. Entering the first chamber, they found within many wall niches, each with a desiccated corpse with an urn by its feet. When the party sought to recover the grave goods, several of the corpses rose and attacked them. So dry was the air within the chamber, that soon the guild members were overcome with thirst and had to retreat from the room. Their weariness being so great, the party returned to the guild.

Grave good recovered were assessed to be 140 Gros in value, of which 48 Gros was disbursed to the members according to the terms of the contract.

Signed,

Jeras, Guild Chronicler

Prepping and Running the Game

There were only three PCs this session, but with Tamira now at level 4, the spells she now had and the magical mace she now wielded made the party so powerful, they were able to defeat two encounters which they had to run from previously.

The encounter with the wraith is something which I had been looking forward to, as it provided plot exposition that now gave the party some purpose other than looting. In particular, PCs who are worshippers of Kellos now have more reason to seek out and defeat the cultists.

It was interesting to see how, emboldened by the wraith's story, the players decided to seek out the undead behind the large stone doors, which they had indicated as "big scary undead" on their map after fleeing from it in an earlier session. In this fight I was taken by surprise at how powerful the cleric spells were against an undead opponent, and what I anticipated to be a rather tough fight was over in three rounds or so, but not before Kimly took a lot of damage from the skeletal warrior.

The last portion of the complex they explored is a separate section from the parts they have explored so far; the culture here practised salt-mummification, and the undead here had desiccating powers, which was surprisingly effective against the party. The players seem to have assumed that the desiccating property was a function of the room and not the undead, and I did not correct them.

Outside of the dungeon, I decided that the death cultists' contact within the guild, the tavern-maid Mertha, had also fled the place, fearing that her identity would soon be discovered. I had one of the NPCs speculate that her departure had something to do with Tosot's abscondment, which the players did not question.

The next session is scheduled for next week, after which we will take a break for Chinese New Year, and after that there will be just six sessions before we end the campaign and play Season 2 of the Sorcery! campaign.

The pace of the campaign had been slower than I anticipated, and now I am planning to give it a little push by having the dragon cultists approach the PCs with a proposition for an alliance. This will lead the PCs, should the accept the proposition, into more direct conflict with the cultists, leading them closer to the final showdown that will conclude the campaign. I plan to make this proposition at the end of the next session, which will hopefully allow the players to discuss it via messaging in the following weeks.

What happens after the finale? I had not thought about that until this moment, but I imagine it is possible for the players to keep their characters, and perhaps convert them into 5E characters for a subsequent campaign. While I appreciate the supplies and encumbrance rules in Five Torches Deep, the game is limited in other ways, and especially so in the spell lists. Some of the mechanics can of course be ported over from 5TD, such as the death roll.

Blood Bowl Pre-season Game

The Skavenholme Scallywags play the Middenheim Marauders

FG, Adrian, David and I got together last week to play a game of Blood Bowl Season 2 - well, it was two games, each played to a half, so that makes one game...

We gave the rules a try, agreed on the league rules, and then generated a league fixture using a website that does those things. We are fortunate enough that my tabletop can accommodate two pitches at the same time, and that we have two pitches and enough dice to go around. With luck, we should be able to start the season in two weeks.

My skavens will be playing the dwarves in the first game. Hopefully I come out of it with enough players for game 2...