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 ...

Mehr als nur ein Fleischwolf Im Augenblick wird gerade viel im deutschsprachigen Raum über Dungeon Crawl Classics gesprochen. Das liegt natürlich daran, dass eine deutschsprachige Ausgabe vom System Matters Verlag kommen wird. Wenn man nun schaut und hier und da im Netz liest, dann werden die durchaus sehr positiven Kommentare zu Spielerlebnissen vom sogenannten Trichter beherrscht. Die Idee dabei ist, dass man die Charaktere am Anfang auswürfelt, jeder Spieler mit einer wilden Mischung aus Bauern, Handwerkern und Sonstigen in ein Abenteuer stürmt und nur die überlebenden Charaktere es verdient haben, echte Abenteurer zu sein. Man kann das mögen, man muss das nicht mögen, aber in jedem Fall ist das Ganze nur ein winziger Teil eines kompletten Rollenspiels. Um da vielleicht ein etwas differenziertes Bild zu bieten, das nicht nach außen wirkt, wie "Geil. Fleischwolf! Schon drei meiner Charaktere tot. Noch nie so viel Spaß gehabt." möchte ich hier mal mein ursprünglich eng...

Statusbericht Nach einiger Zeit mal wieder ein kurzer Bericht über meine aktuellen Runden. Ich plane in Zukunft, über jede längerfristige Runde noch etwas mehr in einem einzelnen Beitrag zu schreiben. Aktuell spiele ich in als Spieler in einer regelmäßigen Runde und leite in 5 Runden. Dabei heißt regelmäßig die Runden spielen fast alle 2-wöchentlich. Ich komme also auf 3 Sitzungen in der Woche. Als Spieler: Starfinder (Against the Aion Throne) Wider den Äonenthron ist die wunderbare Kurzkampagne von Paizo, bei der sich die Spielgruppe mit den Azlanti herumärgern darf. Das erste Drittel haben wir geschafft und es macht eine Menge Spaß, und Kev hat die Sache gut im Griff. Das ist auch die einzige meiner Runden, die gestreamt wird und im Netz finden ist . Als Spielleiter: Torg Eternity (Fires of Ra) Diese Runde läuft am längsten (1,5 Jahre) und wir sind gerade mitten in der "Fires of Ra" Kampagne im Nil Imperium.  Inzwischen sind alle Charaktere weit in d...

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...