In Places Deep: An Announcement
I've been meaning to say this for a bit now, but today being Transgender Day of Visibility provides me a convenient excuse and gives me a ...| inplacesdeep.blogspot.com
I've been meaning to say this for a bit now, but today being Transgender Day of Visibility provides me a convenient excuse and gives me a ...| inplacesdeep.blogspot.com
Here's some random stuff from the long running Nightwick campaigns that doesn't really fit in the book and doesn't really have a coherent enough theme to be sorted into another kind of post.| In Places Deep
Reynardines are foxes cursed to go about the world in the manner of men, or perhaps men that are cursed to go about the world in the manner of foxes. They are knaves and rascals, arch in their cunning, and some have used this to achieve even the semblance of nobility among the peoples of the World, despite their disadvantages. Most, however, make a living the way most who smile easily and stab even easier do - as con-men and bandits. They are of a kin with the Old Gods, who protect them from ...| In Places Deep
I like mechs and the various anime and video games that contain them. I haven't talked a lot about them on this blog, but in pretty much every other venue where I post about stuff they are a running theme of mine. The main reason I have not talked about them on here that much is that I have yet to find a ttrpg for mechs that I like. The ones I've seen are either too fiddly in a particularly 90s way - build points and all that - or are some of the more modern rpg designs I can't stand - pbta, ...| In Places Deep
Jessica, from Accounting*| In Places Deep
No, not from the previous party, but (hopefully) from a brand new one! At the suggestion of one of the Weeknights in Nightwick crew I have decided to run Cuccagna on Start Playing! Here's the pitch:| In Places Deep
A little after I posted my stocking procedure, Idle Cartulary at Playful Void posted hers. I find hers very interesting because it helps with initial ideas about what the rooms are going to be, which I sometimes struggle with. I was also pretty sure that they could be used in tandem and so I've decided to do some very simple (and probably fairly dumb) math to see how that would work out.| In Places Deep
Earlier today I had an idea I might post more on or even run in the future: to honor the legacy of Jennell Jaquays, why not run a campaign using material she wrote as the spine? Jaquays, like probably every creator, had certain tropes she returned to regularly and that means that a wide breadth of material she made is fairly thematically coherent..* I personally have physical copies of The Savage Frontier, Griffin Mountain, The Book of Treasure Maps I, and the d20 version of Caverns of Thrac...| In Places Deep
As most of you probably are aware, Jennell Jaquays passed away Wednesday. She was an absolute titan of both tabletop and computer gaming, and the OSR in particular is basically an exercise in iterating on things she pioneered. My intellectual debt to her is immeasurable.| In Places Deep
Recent events in my life have made me think about things I'd be mad about in Hell if I didn't do them before I die. Some of them include games I want to run. There are also games I'd be ok with playing, but my favorite roll is definitely Referee and even playing in them would largely just make me want to run them. So here are the ones I want to make sure I run before I die:| In Places Deep
Dum-tee dum-tum-tum.| In Places Deep
I am the latest guest on Ben L's podcast, Into the Megadungeon, where I talk about Nightwick Abbey. I always wanted to be a Hallowe'en episode!| In Places Deep
We say haunted, but what we mean is the house has gone insane.| In Places Deep
There was a solar eclipse in North America today. It was a partial eclipse - the ring of fire type - which I mention both for posterity and because the effect is related to the thoughts I had while viewing it. I happen to live in one of the best cities for viewing it, and the building in which I live has a beautiful courtyard that made perfect viewing for it. My wife and I joined several neighbors in watching it in that very courtyard. While the others stared at the Sun for most of the durati...| In Places Deep
My typical readership will probably be surprised to learn I'm still running Cuccagna. Given my failure to blog about the escapades of the various characters and my propensity for both gamer and actual ADHD behavior, one would be forgiven for thinking this game had been shelved. But it's not true! | In Places Deep
I don't think this has anything to do with mermaids| In Places Deep
I'm currently playing in a Liminal Horror game run by Evlyn set in a high school in a spooky Pacific Northwest using her excellent Liminal High School. I liked it enough that it has put me into my terrible "monkey see, monkey do" mode so I've been thinking a lot about Liminal Horror. Normally I'd use Call of Cthulhu for this sort of thing, but 7th edition and Delta Green have complicated my "which version do I choose?" arithmetic and added to that thinking about Sandy Petersen is a bit mo...| In Places Deep
Hey, if you wanna see something I worked on that isn't Nightwick Abbey, check out Where Once Was the Sea aka Fish Hole. I wrote a room for it! It's a pretty neat (if dense) little dungeon location for Simple DeeEnDee but is easily runnable with stuff like OSE or whatever your old school rules of choice are.| In Places Deep
Miles and miles of manicured garden| In Places Deep
Yep, I'm still running Cuccagna, and I have been quite neglectful in posting session reports. I want to resume my posts of the sessions, but I don't have good notes on a lot of the ones I've missed. As such I will try to do some highlights from the ones I've missed. So instead I must offer a list of highlights from previous sessions and hope that's enough for anyone who for whatever reason wants to keep up with the adventures on that strange isle.| In Places Deep
It really is!| In Places Deep
Classic? More like ass-ic... I'm sorry everyone| In Places Deep
I realize with the writing of this post that I am putting myself, and perhaps the world, at great personal risk, but wedding my desire for Vancian magic and my desire for magicians to be manipulating the threads of reality against the will of God. Hopefully this schema will quiet the Voices.| In Places Deep
Some time ago I was in a conversation with Cole about Nightwick in the very pretentious way I sometimes do and the topic veered into the definition of "Dark Fantasy." It's a genre which I think there is no question that the World of Nightwick occupies, even if it's not always serious. It's also a genre which, 13 years after I first started running Nightwick still has a lot of cultural cachet. If anything it's gotten bigger in this post-Dark Souls/post-Elden Ring world, and I think for someo...| In Places Deep
A bit ago I saw a discussion on twitter where Idle Cartulary and Marcia B were discussing the design differences between the original thief class - which anyone familiar with OSR discourse knows creates limits on other characters that didn't previously exist - and the paladin which largely creates new abilities only that class has. Marcie later posted her own thoughts on the original version of the thief, but I thought I'd weigh in not with thoughts on the thief but my third(!) attempt at a ...| In Places Deep
