More than a year ago, I played a scarecrow character in a D&D one-shot. The scarecrow’s hobby was writing poems, so I wrote some in preparation for the session. Here they are.
Motion controls for Ballistic Zen
A close friend of mine just released a game! You should probably check it out if you like games.
Ballistic Zen is a first person open world platformer with a unique movement system based on old-school air-strafing, updated for the modern age. Simple to pick up but difficult to master, Ballistic Zen celebrates the joy and meditation of movement in games.
Of course, I decided to play it with the Wii Balance Board.
N’s Combat Tracker Help
This is the help page for my combat tracker.
Factorio tube map
A DIY dance pad for PC
Pad image: Crypt of the NecroDancer. I’ve been using the pictured dance pad since February, and it’s working really well! Here’s how to make one yourself.
Epistolary
Illustration by Kira Smith. I released a game! Over a month ago, actually.
Epistolary is a co-operative letter-writing RPG about solving mysteries. I wanted to create an experience akin to the feeling of reading a good epistolary novel or playing a great game of Eldritch Horror. That sense of grand mystery and adventure conveyed through small moments, discoveries and anecdotes.
Ashville High
Last year, I ran a D&D campaign set in and around a modern-day US high school. This post is just a dump of all my thoughts and some of the resources I made for the campaign. It’s intended to be browsed casually, not read from beginning to end.
Perhaps someone out there will find it interesting and/or useful. I hope so!
Basketball
A note from the future:
Last year, I ran a D&D campaign set in and around a modern-day US high school. I’m about to dump a load of assets and thoughts from that campaign onto this blog, but for now, enjoy these rules from the iconic fourth-session basketball encounter.
Review: Untitled Goose Game
Image: Untitled Goose Game This post was written for and first published in the October 2019 edition of Nouse.
The release of House House’s Untitled Goose Game last month took certain parts of the internet by storm. The reviews are in, and people seem to be enjoying it. However, here at the UK’s leading goose-related university, we are above such wishy-washy, subjective questions as “is it fun?” or “is it worth the money?” We will be evaluating the game on the purely objective grounds of Goose Realism.
Photographs and reality
Image: Final Fantasy XV If you were to steal my smartphone and open my photo library, you’d see something fairly unusual: hundreds and hundreds of screenshots from videogames. My trip to Lestallum next to my trip to the Lake District. “Selfies” of my Final Fantasy XIV character alongside photos of the North York Moors. My in-game photos are all mixed together with my regular photos, as if there were no real distinction between the two. But is there?
The Truthseeker
A note from the future:
This is a warlock subclass that I came up with for someone else’s D&D 5e game. It should be taken as a rough draft, as it has seen next to no playtesting, and was created to work for just one character in one campaign.
I really like the idea of a subclass based around bartering with knowledge. I wanted to evoke that sense of risk that you see in tales of devil-summoning. You know, the whole “be careful what you say;” “don’t tell it your true name” sort of thing. Perhaps I’ll revisit this subclass if I ever play a warlock again.
On Dark Souls
FromSoftware’s Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition For the last year and a half, I’ve been a little bit obsessed with Dark Souls. I’ve spent a lot of time playing it, thinking about it, discussing it with others, and just trying to work out exactly what I wanted to write here, because I knew I had to write something.
I always expected to love it. Thinking about it now, I’m not quite sure why: it’s very difficult to describe in a way that makes it sound appealing. But something about the way people talked about it, the passion with which my friends and other fans described it to me, convinced me that this was the game design masterpiece I was waiting for, and it was with eager anticipation that I first started the game in February last year.
I didn’t like it.
Meaningless Game Awards 2017
If you want to hear me and my friends discussing games for two and a half hours, for some reason.
You can find an MP3 version here.
Pulse bomb tip
Here’s a quick tip for Tracer players. I was wondering how the pros always manage to stick pulse bombs the instant they blink in.
Well, if you were wondering the same thing, wonder no more.
Hope this helps!
Nap time
I thought you might enjoy this video in which Ana puts everyone to sleep.
Previously…
I like to record D&D sessions that I run. For me, it’s way better than taking notes, giving me less to think about during the session. Of course, this means that I have to listen back to a 3+ hour recording afterwards, but it’s good for a number of reasons – self-improvement, inspiration, and remembering small things you’d otherwise have forgotten, to name but a few.
But there’s more that you can do once you have these recordings. One thing I like to do is to make recap videos, and play them at the start of each session:
I think it’s a really nice way to get everyone back up to speed and into the right mindset. It also means that you can jump right into gameplay very quickly after the start of a session.
If you have any other ideas for getting the most out of your recordings, let me know!
Keep readingGive your players control
My players are great.
Armour of Chemosh
Earlier this year, I ran my first D&D campaign. With little experience of D&D or other tabletop RPGs (I’d played a couple of sessions of 3.5e, and a few one-shots in other systems), I decided to jump into 5th edition at the deep end with a campaign and world of my own. I’ll save my general experiences for another post, though, because today I want to talk about the first magic item I created: a cursed suit of armour.
