WB2, Session 24: Closure

Session 24: "Closure"
And so the companions were heading south toward the Sun Palace, pushing hard in a race against time as the Black Mist now filled the cavern entirely, constantly draining the life energy of whoever was still alive.

GURPS on roll20 Sheet: NPC stat block

As usual when I'm presented with a new toy that involves lots of weird code and tweaking around, I spent some more time last night improving the GURPS character sheet I submitted on roll20 (available as GURPS Style #2 in the sheet listing). While there should just be some fixes and various updates to make the sheet more generic today, here's a sneak peek into what's coming next for this sheet.

GURPS roll20 Character Sheet: All done!

Posted about my draft custom roll20 character sheet for GURPS yesterday and what do you know, I actually finished it, polished and all that!
I'm very, very satisfied with the result and while I still have a couple ideas for things to add, it's almost perfect for what I wanted a character sheet to do on roll20 and the look'n feel of it is decent enough.

GURPS, D&D Next & Roll20 come into a bar.

I've been delving massively into the latest update from roll20 and after making my own variant of a Character Sheet for my campaign (D&D Next is somewhat easy to handle), I decided to give GURPS a go....

GURPS: Dire Stirges

Following a comment about the Dire Stirge creature that I've been using in my current D&D Next Campaign, here is an attempt at converting it to GURPS.

GM Musing, How would I: Zombocalypse

Zombies, the walking dead, infected...Done and done. And yet, I still can't get enough of that stuff, despite the genre being flooded from all side for the past decade of so. How would I do this in an actual RPG campaign?

WB2, Session....Damnit, wake the fuck up!

Ok, so that happened during our last Saturday session...

Blocking and Parrying in GURPS, my way.

+Peter V. Dell'Orto, on his very good GURPS blog Dungeon Fantastic, has been posting a couple of his own rules about Parrying and Blocking, especially regarding doing so against very powerful attacks.

Posting all this in the comment section was a bit clunky so I figured I'd just do my own post as a reply/comment since I've been commenting and testing on this.

WB2, Session 23: The Legacy of the Drakkins

Session 23: "The Legacy of the Drakkins"

And so the Simphiwe had migrated north, running from the ever growing black cloud. Reaching the cliffs marking the limits of the cavern after four days, Zephriz, daughter of Nozizwe, ordered a camp to be made. They had outpaced the cloud for now, but were out of places to run to.

Having fun with GMing styles

I'm pretty comfy in my own GMing style and while I appreciate others do things differently (and don't mind even though I don't really understand it), I was having my morning coffee reading a couple threads over the WoTC forums when versions of the same scene began popping into my mind, handled using different GMing styles.
This is a parody of course and the names are totally made up since I'm really not up to date with the established nomenclature for these.

Don't go and rip my head off :)

Why I love 100% text based sessions

Below is the last 15-25 mins or so of the last session of the Sunday D&D Next campaign in which I've been playing for the past 6 months or so.

This is a simple cut'n paste from our logs on roll20, without any edit but removal of players' names and addition of some coloring to ease the reading. I could have taken many other (both our Saturday's and Sunday's sessions are very heavy IC and RP stuff usually, most of the OOC is in combat), but this was a scene I really enjoyed, had a perfect pacing, and being able to re-read through it now is good fun :)

GURPS over Roll20 experiments: Final stretch, setting up the game.

After much delay, I'm almost done setting up my GURPS over roll20 and getting ready to run my first scenario. The plot and whatnot for the one-shot are not a problem and irrelevant to roll20 in itself, so I won't go into that, and instead focus only on the mechanics I've decided to go with.

The goal I had was to streamline play as much as possible, especially for new players and for combat situation. Non combat is not a problem and I know how to handle all that already.

Warning...wall of text and horrible Blogger formatting :)

GURPS over Roll20 experiments: Testing the water

Finally had my first proper GURPS session last night over on roll20. A low fantasy attempt to replicate the old D&D modules of the early '80s. It was all voice, first on hangout then Skype - something I'm really not used to - and lasted for about 4 hour and a bit.

WB2, Session 22, The Long Walk

Session 22: "The Long Walk"
Sunday 25th, April, 1001 AC
(destiny token 1)

WB2, Session 21, The Battle of the Sun Palace

Session 21: "The Battle of the Sun Palace"
Wednesday 23st, April 1001AC
(destiny token 1)

WB2, Session 20: Southland Tales

Session 20: "Southland Tales"
Wednesday 21st, April 1001AC
(destiny token 1)

WB2, Session 19: Conversation with Dead People

Session 19: "Conversation with Dead People"
Tuesday 20th, April 1001AC
(destiny token 1)

WB2, Session 18: The Shade of Tranur-Kun

Session 18: "The Shade of Tranur-Kun"
Tuesday 20th, April 1001 AC
(destiny token 1)

WB2, Session 16-17: Hic Sunt Dracones

Session 16-17: "Hic Sunt Dracones"
Sunday 18th, April 1001 AC
(destiny token 1)

WB2, Session 15: Climbing the Food Chain

Session 15: "Climbing the Food Chain"
Saturday 17th, April 1001 AC
(destiny token 1)

Monster of the week: Voracious Shriller

This week's creature is another home-brew for my current campaign: the Voracious Shriller, both in young swarming form, or the quite dangerous adult form.
In many ways, it's behavior is akin to the Velociraptor from Jurassic Park, with a twist to it. It's above intelligence (for an animal) and innate Psionic abilities make it quite dangerous for any party wandering the countryside.

WB2, Session 14: Fist on Furies!

Session 14: "Fists on Furies!"
Tuesday 13th, April 1001 AC
(destiny token: 1)

Item of the Week: Deployable Pavise

I've always been a huge fan of the Genoese Crossbowman style, using a huge Siege Crossbow, while taking cover behind a Pavise. Since I've toyed around a PC concept based on that style, lately, a Fighter specialized in Archery, I wanted to polish my Deployable Pavise idea and make it somewhat official for my Campaigns.

WB2, Session 13: Like Women Scorned

Session 13: "...Like Women Scorned"
Friday 2nd, April 1001 AC
(destiny token: 1)

Out of the Box: The Warlord

Most of the Warlord talk happening around D&D Next lately has been derived from the Warlord concepts as seen in D&D 4E, basically making him some kind of Motivational Speaker. While I like the idea, and it probably works very well in play, it's a bit too close to a Bardic archetype to my taste, many of the abilities feeling very magical in nature.

Wanting to get away from that, I tried going back on what a fighter is, at it's core, and what he becomes when he's not the ultimate weapon-master but instead a leader of men.
The following is the first draft of, I feel, a more of more historical Warlord concept, as a leader of mercenary bands and the like.

Monster of the Week: Drahies

Take a Harpy, combine it with the corrupting effects of an elder Black Dragon for long enough, and you'll get the Drahies, horribly mutated Harpies, under the loose influence of the dragon, with only one goal: inflicting pain onto anything alive...
Add onto that some almost unique, once in a generation, mutation and you get my first attempt at making a "Stuff of Legend" creature, the crazy Tainted Drahie, probably totally unbalanced, but a pretty sure bet for a TPK...

Restoring sanity to Channel Divinity: Restore Health

Following in-game feedback (and the ability lack of sense), here's the new take on it. This way, PCs won't have to bash each others on the head to reach 1/2 HP so it can be used.

Monster of the week: Dire Stirge

Today, I'll go through a monster I used a couple sessions ago and which has been a personal favorite for many years now, the Stirge. Once again, to avoid conflicting with the official D&D Next stuff (and their rather lame version of the Stirge), I'll make this the Dire Stirge, a beefed up, wilder, version of the Stirge.

WB2, Session 12: Brave New World

Session 12: "Brave New World"
Thursday 1st, April 1001 AC
(destiny token: 1)

GURPS over Roll20 experiments: Tricks to set things up

Busy schedule prevented from really getting into more of the whole GURPS experiment thing but there are a couple things I tested, mainly to keep the pace flowing and prepare a campaign proper.

PC Character Sheet stuff will come once I can really sit down and go through it but for now, here are some tips and tricks to set up a campaign in roll20. This applies to all systems but are even more relevant in GURPS, because of it's mechanics which can slow down play a lot if you're not prepared properly.

WB1, Session 11: When the Earth Growls

Session 11: "When The Earth Growls"
Tuesday 30th, March 1001 AC
(destiny token: 1)

And so, in the ruins of the buried structure, the companions were investigating what looked like an old office...

Next Academy: PCs against really bad odds.

How to fight (and win) against really Big who are really Bad? That's the question posed to anyone who wants to answer by +Douglas Cole, no matter the system. 
Since I'm into D&D Next, I figured I might throw a couple pointers in there based on my personal experience. Being both a player and a GM currently, in this post I'll see it from the PC point of view first, while I'll address the GM point of view later on.

GURPS over Roll20 experiments: NPC Sheets & Macros

After trying to solve the Hex Grid and Tokens problems last time, I'm continuing the experiments of trying to make GURPS fit in Roll20 in some nice and practical manner.

GURPS is a nightmare of modifiers, conditional status, variable skills and whatnot. Unlike D&D Next, it quickly became clear that it was nigh impossible to move everything you could find on a Character Sheet into the Roll20 Attribute and Macro system, but for now, that's how I'd handle it...

Warning, this post is a "Frikkin Huge Wall of Text"(™). I tried to keep things clean and readable, but still, it's long...You've been warned.

Monster of the week: The Basidiomid Worker & Basidiomid Soldier

This monster of the week is a tentative work on another species of Myconid, the Basidiomids. I use another name mainly not to conflict with WotC later on and have some leeway in here.
The Basidiomid is a fungus man, but they have a slightly different caste system, are less organized overall and don't live as long.
I only put the Basidiomid Worker and Basidiomid Soldier here, but will probably come back to it later on for more background, social structure and of course, the Royal family members.

WB1, Session 10: Ruins of the Dragon-bone Temple

Session 10: "Ruins of the Dragon-bone Temple"
Tuesday 30th, March 1001 AC
(destiny token: 1)

And so the black ooze creature went inert and slowly slid back down to the bottom of the pit. The buried structure was once again plunged in total silence, save for the heavy breathing of the companions.

GURPS over Roll20 experiments: Tokens

While I really like and actively use D&D Next in two weekly campaigns, there has always been one system that I keep dreaming about: GURPS.
Never actually played it, never actually ran a session, even as a player, but I just love the concepts and ideas in GURPS, have most of the books in 4th edition and have been following some very interesting GURPS blogs for some time now.


Recently, +Peter V. Dell'Orto from Dungeon Fantastic has been poking around GURPS over Roll20 and commented about the experience on his blog, current verdict being: it's not so simple!

Since it's something I might run someday, I wanted to see how I would handle it, and first, I wanted to figure out the proper use of tokens over an Hex grid.

Monster of the Week: Old Black Ooze Thing (The Obot)

In our last session (Session 9, What lies below), the group fought some kind of ooze in the pentagonal room. This was a custom monster, much like most of the monsters I use. 

I'll give the stat block for it here and it's name: The Obot (Old Black Ooze Thing)...

Handling actual play: Action frames

Since I started the "When the Earth Growl" campaign with D&D Next on roll20, there are many things I had to remember from a GM perspective (since I hadn't GMed for something like 20 years). One of these was how to handle actual plays during session, how actions from the PCs were declared, happened and the like.

WB1, Session 9: What Lies Below...

Session 9: "What lies below...
Friday 26th, March 1001 AC
(destiny token: 1)

And so the companions had survived a massive cave-in but were now stuck within the buried stone structure, tons of debris of rock and earth between them and the surface...