Roleplaying, my dear hobby.

Tracon 2019 went by and I was running Star Wars games in the event again. While I was running Rebel era adventures the last time, this time I was running Jedi characters in Clone wars. 

Cemetery, Graveyard, Necropolis, City of the Dead. Pretty much every fantasy city, town and village has such, and they have a great promise of adventure: Necromancers looking for bodies, haunts with unfinished business, buried treasures and even a whole unholy domain, especially at night time – as Necropolis and it's Dark Reliquary in Ptolus.

It's not a secret I'm a big fan of Tim who's creating sounds for us roleplayers at Tabletopaudio(link is external). I've been supporter of him at Patreon(link is external) for quite a while. You probably know TTA already, but if you don't, I highly recommend you to check it out, and if you like and can spare a bit, support him.

For a long time, I thought of excercising doesn't concern me and that I don't need to care too much about what I eat – until I went to see the doctor for a routine check and he showed me how wrong I was.

This article goes through various Tactical map and map tile options that can be used with Roleplaying games.

In September I was running Games on Demand at Tracon (Tampere / Finland). I prepared materials to run Rebellion era Star Wars with a simple PbTA system, and it was a perfect hit! During 2 days I run 6 games with 3-6 players, shortest game being 50 minutes and the longest extending to 1h20min as no-one was in hurry.

Briefly: As a very picky GM I've fought past my prejudices and found a rules system that wasn't just great, it blew my mind. While the system initially seemed like a big turn-off, putting it in the right context made it crystal clear: Why aren’t all roleplaying games made like this? Well, D&D and many other games have their own place, but IMHO this is how pure roleplaying games should be done. Fiction and story first, and it's actions of player characters that really matter. I’ve never found rolling dice for a horde of enemies and counting steps for them really that exciting, and with PbtA games that won't be necessary anymore. Depending on the game, there's a more or less solid rules system that fades pretty much to the background. Even if you like tactical combat like D&D, you should really read how combat goes in (at least in some) PbtA games.

There's a few words I'd like to share with you about using 3d-terrain and/or maps/tiles - what to use and why, and share my experiences about some maps and tiles I've used. And while I love modelling and creating cool terrain setups in my games, I've been moving towards using map tiles in my games instead of 3d props, and there's several reasons for that, which I'm going to tell you more about below. I've also added a few review-ish about tiles/terrains on this post.

The story continues from last session; heroes are in almost hopeless situation! 

After all the recent setbacks, we really need a victory - bring me one! With these words from Admiral Ackbar echoing on their minds, the heroes left for planet Duram, where diplomatic negotiations have halted, apparently becausr of fear of fate of Calessia.

Situation continues where the heroes are watching the bridge where they are supposed to give the ransom for Zira, the barmaid. Kylis's player was late, Tereis and Würful moved to the other side of the river (poorer part of the town) while Doris waited on their own side of the bridge for the midnight. Würful spent some time in tavern but made both his smart and vigor check to be at the scene in time and in a good condition. Godzul's and Sonam's players weren't present. Some of the group wondered if not-so-bright -looking Gor could really have devised Zira's kidnapping.

The campaign continues after a half-year party! Falchor's player has left the game and a new player has entered the game. Godzul's player wasn't present and Falchor was looking for Godzul (who apparently was arrested for Drunken hooliganism, just like Doris - together they had somehow become owners of an tavern!). The group met near the marketplace where an execution was about to take place. The heroes weren't very happy as the situation looked like an execution of generally innocent people from Savannah - apparently current Autarch (who didn't appear very sane) had something against people of Savannah.