Alte Geschichten aus dem Spiel in Rollen

What is old school ? Imagine, you would like to play a fantasy game where the characters are the heroes, but not that kind of heroes who win in hand-to-hand combat against hordes of ogres and trolls. But the kind of heroes that use their cleverness and cunning. Heroes that might have a home and a job, in a fantasy world that has a bit of magic but also has more mundane traits. Imagine that rpg has very simple rules. Just roll 2d6 and check the result for any task. The character sheet is not more than a few lines of simple text.   Not four sheets of paper, but something that you could take with you on a credit card size piece of paper. Imagine, that you would not start adventuring as a young adolescent, but as someone who has live a life for 30 or 40 years and is on that epic quest of his life now. Sword of Cepheus That game for me is Sword of Cepheus. It is built on the established Cepheus Light rules engine that itself emulates a more streamlined version of the ...

This is a short report on my Dragon Heresy session from HeinzCon 2019. Since, I guess, most people never have heard of HeinzCon let me just say it is smaller local con in the North of Germany which is hosted by Clockwork Publishing (Space 1889 and Dark Conspiracy) [1] . Dragon Heresy is a setting for 5e that is based on a fictional version of the Norse mythology. So it is based in a Viking-like world. Douglas Cole did a great job with the Introductory Book which is a self-contained  hardcover that allows to play characters from level 1 to 5. Self-contained means you only need that book and no other 5e material (no players handbook). I wrote the session for the con using only that book, so it works. [2] I had 5 pregenerated characters: a human berserker, a human fighter, a human skald, a drwaven cleric and a half-elf wizard. Each was level one, so we could immediately start to play. In order to show the features of the game, I had them start a teenagers around 17 or 18...

Pen and Paper RPG with FLOSS In the following I'm going to describe how to set up an RPG environment to play games online with your friends without the use of proprietary tools. I have tried the things I describe below in some Traveler and Dragon Heresy sessions and everything worked fine. There were some hassles with microphones and so on, but nothing unusual. So, the stuff worked for me. The tools used For communications we used Nextcloud Talk and as a Virtual Tabletop (VTT) we used Maptool. We did not use in the calendar functionality of Nextcloud or the ability to make a Doodle like poll, but the use of Nextcloud as filesharing service was helpful in other campaigns. Maptool and Nextcloud Prerequisites I have a self hosted instance of Nextcloud on my home server with valid SSL over Let’s Encrypt. This runs on a low powered Intel-box the size of a hard disc from some nameless vendor. I am not 100% sure whether you really would need an IPv4 for address to host ...

Over the last year I have participated in the #RPGaMonth thingy where you are supposed to read some rpg book from your shelf or digital library that sat there some time, but you never managed to read or even play it. Unfortunately, I did not find the motivation to transfer each review into a blog post, but I will do so, before Google+ shuts down and my reviews are lost. Most of the stuff I have written about the games is not that important, anyways, but I imagine to could be nice to revisit my thoughts and approaches at some point in the future. What I read in 2018 for RPGaMonth My picks have been: • January: StarSiege* • February: Justifiers* • March: Dungeon #21, D&D 4e • April: Torg Eternity & Cylent Scream • May: Savage Worlds & Das Schwarze All • June: Midgard – Der Kodex • July: Victorious • August: Pathfinder 2 • September: Gurps 4e, but did write anything about it, since I stopped reading • October: Numenera 2 • November: Cepheus Light • December: Dung...

Cepheus Light - a short review My #RPGaMonth for November is again something old and something new, namely Classical Traveller and Cepheus Light, which is a rule reduced version of Mongoose’s OGL Traveller 1. I have read both [1] and am going to compare it to. Traveller is a game which exist in many different variant, but Cepheus Light still uses the old 2d6 skill rolls. That is to succeed you need to get 8+ on two d6, but your skill level is subtracted from number, you have to roll. Pilot-2 will get the value to 6+. As always there a situational modifiers and so forth. Attribute modifiers like in Moongoose’s version have no effect on skill rolls. The game uses six attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education and Social Standing, so there is not charisma attribute for a sparkling personality or general attractiveness. There aren’t any advantages or disadvantages or perks or something similar. A character is complete by her/his attributes, skill levels and...

My #RPGaMonth for October is Numenera 2 - Destiny, the latest incarnation of Monte Cook’s Numenera game. What is Numenera 2? Numenera 2 means that there are two core books. The first Numenera - Discovery is more or less the same thing that was already the first Numenera. One may look at reviews for that, the differences are small. The greatest being that you now have Player Intrusions as well. A player intrusion is the reverse of a GM intrusion. Instead of getting an experience point for a complication, you pay with an experience point for a greater positive effect which is described in detail in your character's type. What is Numenera - Destiny? So, Numenera - Discovery is about the players discovering the so-called Ninth World. The Destiny book is different. The focus of the campaign is on playing in a community setting. The players help to start a community, make it prosper and steer or influence it. The games here will likely be more bound to a specific location w...

  As my #RPG aMonth for May, I going to review Savage Worlds and a German-only setting book called "Das Schwarze All" (The black cosmos) Savage Worlds Savage Worlds is one of those RPGs the claim to be generic, i.e. it should work on all scales and for all kinds of settings. Certainly, you can play characters that act as heroes and shape the world around them.  I have read the Deluxe Edition of the Savage Worlds which is just the core rules without setting specific details, but with notes on game mastering a beastiary and five one sheet adventures. The whole document has 161 pages, but contains many pictures and let's be frank ads for setting books. The crunch starts on page 16, where traits (attributes), skills, edges/hindrances (advantages & disadvantages) are introduced. Instead of using plain numbers Savage Worlds uses dice to measure the abilities in traits and skills (from d4 to d12) similar to Cortex+. But instead of a pool like in Cortex+ you jus...

Disclaimer All rights regarding Amazing Adventures RPG belong to Troll Lord Games . This page is just a fan product.   Followers of Baba Yaga   A secret society for Amazing Adventures The Followers of Baba Yaga are a secret society originally from the Russian kingdom that has spread all over the world mainly through Russian immigration. Since the October Revolution, the political influence in Russia has strongly diminished as its head figure Grigori Rasputin was at least officially murdered because of his unruly influence on the Czar and his wife in December 1916. Grigori Rasputin (via Wikimedia Commons), Picture in Public Domain Goal and Intent The Followers see themselves in the tradition of the famous sorceress Baba Yaga who is called a witch by most people outside the Followers. They try to get into possession of strong arcane artefacts to get more powerful as a society but also to bring Baba Yaga herself back from the dead. The Followers oppose the idea ...

#RPGaMonth - March Part 1:  Dungeon #21 So, this is my late review for March. Actually, it is only a part of it. This is one of the RPG books I own for the longest time. If I recall correctly, I bought this one in 1991. It is number 21 from January/February 1990. It says on the inside that the Dungeon had 31000 copies printed at that time. At that time I couldn't read English very well and wasn't really able to make much use of it, but the back cover fascinated me nevertheless.  So, I bought it used for 5 Deutsche Mark (~ 2$ at the time). In it you'll find a Gaelic themes adventure called the Cauldron of Plenty (AD&D lvl 2-4), a higher level (15-18) D&D adventure called the Bane of the Elfswood, a general Fantasy adventure for AD&D (lvl 8-10) by the name of Incident at Strathern Point and a greek themed adventure for AD&D Lvl 6-8 which has the title The Chest of the Aloeids. I only skimmed those, but they look fine to me. What I read and ran wa...

Disclaimer All rights regarding  Perry Rhodan  and any parts belonging to the series of novels under that name belong to Verlag Pabel-Moewig in Rastatt. This page is a fan product as described  here  by the series' editor in chief. All rights regarding  Cortex Prime  are licensed to Magic Vacuum Design Studio. The Cortex Prime Heroic System is in a beta/testing state right now and details can be found on the Kickstarter page  here . I would like to thank Magic Vacuum Design Studio for the permission to write about this and to publish the following character files.   Perry Rhodan in Cortex Prime Heroic - Part 2 Last week I ran my Cortex Prime Heroic scenario in the  Perry Rhodan  setting at a local con (HeinzCon) again. So, I decided to share the remaining three character files I prepared for that session. Sample character files IRMINA KOTSCHISTOWA Affiliations:         ...

My Review of Justifiers - Das Abenteuerspiel for #RPGaMonth This month, February, I am reading an older game from 2010 called Justifiers - Das Abenteuerspiel. Some may remember that there was a Science Fiction game called Justifiers released at the end of the eighties. Part 1 Markus Heitz whose name is very prominent on the cover is a successful German fantasy novelist who was an avid player of said game. When the opportunity presented itself he bought the rights to the setting and wrote two great novels in the Justifiers universe. Moreover, he was the editor of a series of about 10 book from other authors in the same cosm. So in 2010 a new German edition of the Justifiers game was released by Ulisses Spiele (which may be more known for the new Torg - Eternity nowadays) and that is what I am reading right now. It is a 300 something page hardcover in DinA5 format, i.e. about half US letter format. It starts with a 20 pages short story by Heitz which puts you right into the ...