Kia ora koutou! My name’s Liam and I’m here to take over the blog for a day. I recently got to have my first experience running Hypertellurians in an epic 7 hour game on New Year’s Eve. I mentioned it to Frank and he invited me here to tell you all about it. So here we are. But this story doesn’t start on New Year’s Eve, but rather several months beforehand.
The first pieces of commissioned artwork for Hypertellurians—back in its infancy—were the twelve interpretations of the game’s six archetypes: Alien, Beast, Construct, Revenant, Royal, and Ultranaut. Karen Reding was drafted in, and over the course of a few months painted the portraits, basing them on our gaming friends. Sometimes they represented actual playtest characters that these fine folk played, other times the concepts were made up. It had long been the plan to take pictures of the folk, with their portraits from the books, but somehow the task had always slipped through the cracks.
Welcome to the first part in a new series, where we look at the design of an RPG we have been working on for the last few months. The game is called Woaden, after the woad plant, used to make blue dye and paint, back in the olden days. It’s the spiritual successor to Hypertellurians, and while it retains some of the elements of that game, it’s going into a different direction.
I was very excited when the excellent Mud & Blood podcast asked me to run a one-shot Actual Play for them of Hypertellurians. Because it was to be released on Christmas, they asked if I could make it seasonally themed. After running a whole bunch of Christmas themed adventures over the years, it starts to get tricky to come up with new spins on elves as demons or Krampus as the the big bad.
At conventions we like to run very short demos—30 to 45 minutes—of Hypertellurians on our stand to give passersby a taste of the system, and the types of games you might play with it. Here is the reference sheet we used for our Dragonmeet demos. It’s a mashup from the recently released Heart of the Atom Isa adventure, combining several of that scenario’s scenes, items, and people into one chase scene.
Our first time exhibiting at Dragonmeet 2019 in London was a blast. In comparison to UK Games Expo it’s a smaller, but also more focused experience, since everything happens in one day. But what a day it was. My awesome convention crew were explaining, describing, running, setting up or down, selling, and generally looking after me all day, and I couldn’t have done it without them. In the end we sold out of Hypertellurians, something we’re both proud and deeply ashamed of.
Mottokrosh Machinations has two upcoming books, both to be launched at Dragonmeet, where we will be with a stall and a small crew, including artist Anna Molla, editor David Fuller, and GM Kara Payne. Jump directly to a section below, or read on. New sourcebook: Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher New short adventure: Heart of the Atom Isa Dragonmeet 2019 Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher This is our big new book, clocking in at 72 pages, many strange words, and loads of illustrations.
Just in time for Halloween, I present a spruced up version of my entry to the 200 word RPG challenge. Here is a rhyming game especially suited to parties. Grab a pen and some paper, get into character as a witch stuck in a well, and get ready to hurtle through the Ultracosm, and to create spells to escape your predicament. Works best with 3 to 4 players. Illustration by Karen Reding.
The other week I cobbled together a quick one-shot scenario to demo Hypertellurians to a few friends in a gaming pub. Parts of it were nabbed from another, longer adventure I’m working on, and have been playtesting a bit, and the other part is very Takeshi’s Castle. You might have seen it floating around on Twitter or Instagram already, but here it is again in full, as well as in a PDF edition.
A one-shot adventure on—and around—a desert planet, for use with Hypertellurians, or any modern or old-school fantasy game. Featuring Argencia, the Silver Sorceress, moon goblins with daedalic wings and questionable bombs, habitable tremendostaceans, and a space market like no other. The adventure is in three parts, and it’ll be up to the Games Machinator to move the players from one part to the next. The text indicates options on how to naturally and frictionlessly accomplish this.