In which I examine a surprise mashup of Gavin Norman and Greg Gorgonmilk’s The Weird That Befell Drigbolton, and Kiel Chenier’s Blood in the Chocolate. Here Be Spoilers Cozying up. My weekly Thursday game is currently play testing Hypertellurians, and recently they crash landed their stolen transdimensional ship—which they hot-wired via a Power Word: Launch spell—in Dolmenwood. Specifically on top of the tiny, hand-drawn cart of a star metal prospector.
Inspiring Games is the company behind Legends Untold, a cooperative adventure game with the speed of a card game, minimal setup, zero downtime, yet the depth of an RPG. Kevin and Hugh are the masterminds behind it, and were kind enough to talk to me about it and their upcoming game, Lord of the Horde, at the recent UK Games Expo. In a hotel bar. Late at night. Hugh and I go way to back to LARPing and other gaming activities back in our university days (I did say way back.
“Thrad”, by Enmanuel “Lema” Martinez. Now, Thrad wasn’t the type of person that would spring to mind when you heard the term “wizard.” In fact, he never used that word himself. He wasn’t a man of many words, at any rate. Born into a reclusive, wild tribe, in the depths of the jungle, he was a giant even for his kind. From a young age, he honed his muscles and soon became the strongest of them all.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Lamentations of the Flame Princess publisher extraordinaire, James Raggi, at this year’s UK Games Expo. We chatted about Free RPG Day, historical settings, and what’s next for an outfit that has put out the highest production value gaming books for the last few years. All illustrations are copyright Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and used with permission. All photos were swiped from various social media, by photographers of mysterious identity, but I thank them for the contribution.
Today, June 16th, is international Free RPG Day, conceived to bring people into their friendly local game shops with the promise of free stuff, and the goal of creating new or recurring customers for both the stores and the publishers. Quick-start rules and taster adventures are very popular for this. One introduces potential new players to a system, whereas the other caters both to existing players of the game, while at the same time introducing the world to new ones.
Last weekend I attended the UK Games Expo in Birmingham, in part to help my friends at Inspiring Games demo their games Legends Untold and Lord of the Horde, and, of course, in part for my very own delectation. Since it pretty much coincided with the launch of my RPG Hypertellurians, I decided to print up some flyers about it and this blog, and hand those out too: Travel to and from Birmingham was fraught with airplane delays and even one cancellation, but the trip as a whole was immensely enjoyable.
The time has come, and my “swords and sandals” meets “raypunk” RPG is live. Read about its inception, or jump right in. It comes in 3 parts: the core rules is the big daddy and contains the rules and more powers than you can shake a stick at; the GM’s 101 is a short piece on how to make the most out of running Hypertellurians, and finally the changelog details, well, changes to the document.
This version has been superceded by a revised and expanded edition! Hypertellurians is an easy to pick up roleplaying game that is fast and simple to play, while providing plenty of depth for engaging character development and story. The players portray the Hypertellurians: adventuring the length and breadth of the Ultracosm, in retro science fantasy style. Take control of one of six archetypes, and choose or create a unique concept by layering on fun, inventive, and story-driving powers.
June 1st update: the game is now live! Like many games masters, judges, referees, or whatever you like to call them, I have many more adventures and adventure ideas than I’ll—sadly—ever be able to run. I’ve collected amazing one-shots, fabulous books, exciting PDFs, intriguing blog posts and much more, all spanning a variety of settings, themes, and tones. I had this idea percolating inside my head of a campaign that would span many worlds, where the characters would travel through dimensions and planes of existence.
Let me start off by saying, yes, I am working on a brandnew version of my character sheet app, with plans to support Pathfinder 2E, and possibly more. The other week I reached out to users of my Online Character Sheet for Pathfinder, to find out a bit more about how they use the app, and what they think is most important. While I haven’t personally played Pathfinder in some time now, the announcement for a 2nd edition has me excited.