No Last Jedi at GaryCon 2019

I got to run my "The Last Jedi" replacement Star Wars Saga adventure called NO LAST JEDI at GaryCon last week. I've finally recovered from the Con Crud, so can now do a recap of how it went.

First of all, in case anyone wants to run a game of SW Saga themselves using the new movie's characters, I've uploaded pdfs of the character sheets I made for the game under the Campaign Resources of the Vorpal Chainsword. Second, I uploaded a bunch more pictures from the game people were nice enough to send me under the Gallery section of the site.

The story starts out with essentially the same opening crawl as The Last Jedi. Only in this case Rey has been training with the enigmatic Luke Skywalker for about 3 weeks, but has learned little of his motivations. The game opens with Chewy returning from the Resistance fleet in the Millenium Falcoln with Fin, Poe, and BB-8 in tow (Poe came in on his X-wing). They were sent by order of Princess Leia to plead with Luke to return to the fight with the resistance. The players attempted to convince Luke of the nobility of the cause, but he kept insisting it was too dangerous for everyone if he left. At that point, BB-8 played a holographic message from Princess Leia for him.

"Luke, I beg you to return from exile and rejoin our fight for the resistance. We have lost much since you left, the New Republic all having been wiped out by Starkiller Base before we were able to destroy it. But we have hope yet, as we have learned the secret location of the leader of the First Order, this Lord Snoke. We believe that if we can capture or kill Snoke the First Order will fall and Ben may even return to us. But I know that Snoke is strong in the Dark Side of the Force, and only with your help could we ever hope to prevail, but press on we must. The last remaining ships of the Resistance fleet are amassing for the final assault on his secret headquarters even as I record this message. This BB unit has the coordinates where to meet us. Help us Luke Skywalker, you're our only hope."

(Note: If the Players convinced Luke before playing the hologram then he will fight with them in the upcoming scene and one player can control him. But in this game they did not, and Luke still refused.)

BB-8 revealed that the location is in the Horuset system. At this Luke paled and says "We must stop her!" Just at that moment the sound of a Tie Fighter roared overhead!

(Note: I had a bluetooth speaker setup behind the DM screen and had a Star Wars soundboard loaded up on my phone so I could play sound effects from the movies. The sound of Tie fighters screeching by and blasters and lightsabers crashing together REALLY helps amp up the fun of any Star Wars game)

The Imperials had tracked the heroes to the old Jedi planet (the official name is Ach-To, fyi). The Imperials were now searching the planet for Luke. Now Luke has no choice but to go, so they've got to get back to the Millennium Falcon and Poe's X-Wing, and of course Phasma and a squad of Stormtroopers stand in their way.

(Note: The old Star Wars minis from the Wizards of the Coast line are perfect for the RPG, as they're pre-painted and super durable. I love them. You can still get them from ebay and some miniature websites like coolstuffinc.com.)

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They fought their way past Phasma and her stormtroopers. Luke ran off to handle some AT-STs on the other side of the battlefield (if they'd convinced Luke earlier then instead he'd have stayed and helped and BB-8 could've controlled him). One unexpected hilarious moment of the game was that BB-8's player decided to roll around between bushes and ask if there were Porg nest under there. When he found some, he'd shock the Porgs to cause a burst of Porgs out of the bushes, startling nearby Stormtroopers, including Phasma! He even rolled so well on this that a hunting Nexu burst out of the plants intent on eating the Porgs and the Stormtroopers along with them. So the heroes were able to slip by Phasma (who was fighting off the Nexu) and blast their way clear to the Falcon.

Next we had a Starfighter chase scene, where the Falcon and Poe's X-wing were harrassed by Tie Fighters as they tried to break through the blockade surrounding the old Jedi planet. (I used the X-Wing miniatures for this, as they just look awesome.)  Finn and Rey acted as gunners in the Falcoln while Chewy flew, and Poe and BB-8 fought off Ties in the X-Wing. Luke just meditated mysteriously in the X-Wing.

They escaped the blockade and made their way to the Resistance fleet. Here Leia and Luke embraced and Luke explained the plot. Long story short is that Luke actually found Snoke over 5 years ago while he was mopping up Empire remnants and old Sith artifacts with his crew of freshly-trained Padawans (including Ben Solo). They had found some holocrons mapping out some of Palpatine's other projects and were shutting them down before they became a problem for the New Republic. Unfortunately one of those projects was the Tomb of Darth Plagueis, Palpatine's old master. Palpatine couldn't kill Plagueis because Plagueis could jump bodies, and had done so many times before to remain immortal. Plagueis would jump into his Sith Apprentice after he was fully trained but before the Apprentice got wise to him, thus allowing Plagueis to live forever. But Palpatine figured it out, and froze Plagueis in a Force Trap deep within a Sith Tomb on Korriban. This Tomb required Palpatine to occasionally visit and maintain the suspension so Plagueis wouldn't wake up. With Palpatine's death though, it was only a matter of time before Plagueis woke up. Luke learned of Plagueis and took his best Padawans to go shut Plagueis down for good. However Plagueis killed most of his Padawans before Luke could pull some Force magic and block Plagueis's ability to switch bodies within the Force. Ben and Luke then pulled the temple down on Plagueis and barely escaped with their lives. What Luke didn't know was that Plagueis had survived and already put his mark on Ben as his next apprentice, who was grieving from the loss of his friends and vulnerable to the Dark SIde. Eventually Ben turned evil and destroyed the New Jedi Temple, due to whisperings in the Force from Plaegus (also known as "Snoke"), and joined Snoke and helped build the First Order from an Empire remnant fleet.

(That's a lot of exposition! I know, I'm sorry. Now here I really wanted to run through a "Flashback" scene and I had the Sith Tomb map and a handful of 5th level Padawans and Luke ready to go. It would've been cool to let everyone be a Jedi and have a big battle between Plageuis (with some Sith robo-zombies) and the Players as Jedi. But the con game was already running long and time was short (only had 4 hours for the game!) so I just explained all that and moved forward.)

Luke finally explained that if he were to die, Snoke would regain his ability to switch bodies through the Force and would likely immediately take over Kyle Ren/Ben's body, which Kylo certainly wasn't aware of. So Luke had to stay in hiding to study the Jedi texts and figure out how to permanently sever Snoke's connection to the Force before he could take over Kylo Ren's body for good. But he's come out now because of where the Fleet discovered the hidden base, the Horuset system, which is where Korriban (and Plagueis's tomb) are! Luke knows Snoke's tomb is on the planet below them.

At that moment three giant Star Destroyers appeared out of Hyperspace next to the Resistance fleet! Leia commands the ships to jump to hyperspace but there's some kind of Hyperspace Jammer coming from the largest Star Destroyer, blocking their escape. Ackbar turns to the party and says "Its a Trap!" ;)

(So now we've got a Starship-scale battle to fight. I used the Fantasy Flight Armada minis for this as they look awesome. But for the actual battle we focused on the Falcon and Poe, and the other ships we rolled dice for, high/low war-style. It was a simpled D6's for Ties/A-Wings, D8's for X-wings/B-wings/Tie Interceptors. For each grouping we just rolled whoever rolled lower lost a ship (and one die) from the little 3-ship sprues. That way we could know how the general battle was going outside of the close-up battles of the PCs.)

The heroes knew Snoke was on the surface, and wanted to get Luke down there to kill him once and for all. They also knew they should probably stop the Hyperspace Jammer on the main Star Destroyer. AND the X-wings were getting killed out there so they wanted Poe to help in the overall Starship battle. So they decided to DO ALL THREE!

Poe flew out on his X-wing with BB-8, and fought his way to the main Star Destroyer. He then JETTISONED BB-8 into one of the hanger bays of the Star Destroyer! Just, out in space and through the blue shield thing right into a hanger. By himself! Then Poe just flew back into the main battle. So BB-8s goal was to disable the Hyperspace Jammer alone. Hilarious.

Luke, Rey, Chewy and Fin took the Falcon through the starship battle and down to the planet, evading and blasting Tie fighters along the way. Once there, they entered the Sith Tomb. (Chewy used quite a few Force Points on the piloting checks going down, and I just let them find the tomb rather than fight their way up to it).

So we had this three way encounter going on. Poe would blast a Tie or two. The ground heroes engaged Snoke and Kylo Ren and some Imperial Guards, and BB-8 had to bumble his way through the Star Destroyer. That was probably the most fun part of each turn, watching BB-8s player figure out how to trick a Stormtrooper into falling down a chute or electroshock him into tripping and falling. Eventually BB-8's player found a maintenance tunnel and was able to make his way to the Hyperspace Jammer (bypassing a TON of Stormtroopers I had ready to go) and disable it. He then shot himself out the garbage shute and into space. Poe had placed a tracker on him so just picked him up floating out in space mid-battle! It was pretty awesome.

Meanwhile I gave Poe's player Luke to play (the original plan was to allow BB-8's player to play Luke in the final scene, since anyone who had to be BB-8 for the whole game deserved a break, but BB-8 had his own infiltration adventure going on). Luke faced off against Snoke and Kylo with force powers while Rey, Fin, and Chewy took down the imperial guards and robots with their blasters. The Sith Tomb was full of traps and they were careful to move to safe spots during each round. Kylo started throwing Chewy around and so Rey ran up to Kylo to face him one-on-one. This would also allow Luke and Snoke (who were busy throwing pillars and stone coffins at eachother) to face off in lightsaber combat. Unfortunately we ran out of time at the Con and had to leave it on that cliffhanger...

What a game! I have to say, it was so much fun, and the players at GaryCon were some of the best folks to help re-write The Last Jedi into a Star Wars story worthy of the Saga!

GaryCon IX - Starship Troopers

Its been a week since Garycon and I'm just starting to feel like a human again. When the Con Crud hits, it hits hard. But its good to remember that its always worth it!

This year at GaryCon the Vorpal Chainsword represented, except I ran something a little different than I usually do at Cons. Instead of running a modern or AD&D role playing game about He-Man or Back to the Future, I hosted and refereed a couple of the out-of-print Starship Troopers miniature battles under the banner of the Dead Games Society as a change of pace.

Escape from Fireball Island! at GameholeCon

Okay, I know I haven't updated in a month, but we were shipping Ravingspire around the world and things were re-donkulously busy! Still, that's no excuse. You want to have a blog? Then update the blog. Them's the facts jack. So now I'm back! And last weekend was glorious Gamehole Con! I completely re-wrote and ran Escape from Fireball Island for the Con for two different groups of players, and it was an absolute blast both times.

The adventure is a 1930's pulp AD&D game I wrote loosely based on the Fireball Island boardgame from 1983.

Amelia Earhart is flying a group of famous figures from Miami to London, but as she crosses the Bermuda Triangle, she is forced to crash land on a mysterious volcanic island. Much dino-battling, lizardman-negotiating, trap-dodging, atlantean puzzle-solving, and jewel-gathering ensues!

Ravingspire - Wave 1 is Shipping!

Ravingspire Wave 1 is shipping!

Some of you may be aware that Vorpal Chainsword Games launched a Kickstarter last April to fund Ravingspire - Assault on the Tower of Madness, to be released to backers in October 2016 (November 2016 for retail). The backer support we received from folks for the game was overwhelming, and we demolished our initial funding goal and deluxe set stretch goals in very short order. It was a wild ride and humbling experience to say the least.

The Tome of Ravingspire!

Well now the hallowed month of October has come, and I'm pleased to say that we've worked extremely hard over the last six months to make sure we're shipping not only the deluxe game set on time, but also the otherworldly card pack expansion set stretch goals the backers earned! Already the Wave 1 backers are contacting me letting me know how pleased they are with the game. I couldn't be happier.

Ravingspire with painted minis and 16" Lazy Susan Tower upgrade!

I want to say thank you to everyone who helped us bring this game to life. I hope that all of you who end up exploring the Tower go as absolutely and utterly mad about it as I have (in the most pleasant way possible, of course).

Game on!

Nexus and Eternia 2016

Hey hey! Time for some convention gaming pics!

This post is a little late since Nexus Game Fair 2016 happened almost three weeks ago, but I have a very good reason for the delay, and that's because of [INSERT EXCUSES HERE].

Now that that's out of the way, I want to talk a little about the games I ran at Nexus. I once again ran Shadows Over Eternia: He-Man vs. the Cthulhu Mythos at Nexus, and it was again a ton of fun. I always worry about getting a problem player at my table for convention games, but thus far every time I run Shadows the players have been great and its gone smooth as silk. I don't know if that's because the subject matter (He-Man/Cthulhu cartoon-horror mashup) attracts the more fun-loving and considerate players at a Con, or because the presence of so many miniatures and terrain makes people less apt to act like jerks at the table, or just because my self-involved narcissistic DMing style means I don't actually remember anyone being a problem as I was just so wrapped up in patting myself on the back due to how well I feel I pulled off the Mordak and Mer-Man impressions. In any case, I'm going to go ahead and confirm it as being a really fun time.

He-Man vs. Cthulhu at Nexus Game Fair 2016!

Its May of 2016 already, and you know what that means... Nexus Game Fair in lovely downtown Milwaukee this Memorial Day weekend!

This year I'll once again be running Shadows Over Eternia: He-Man vs. the Cthulhu Mythos (5e D&D). Only I'll actually be running two sessions of it, at 10am-4pm on Friday and 10am-4pm on Saturday (with breaks for lunch, of course).

He-Man and his friends must team up with Skeletor and his minions to fend off the forces of the Great Old Ones from taking over Eternia! You can check out the 5e character pre-gens on the Vorpal Chainsword Campaign Resources page.

I've run this He-Man game for two years now and its been a lot of fun, but I think this'll probably be the last time I run it at a Con. I've got other mash-up games I want to polish up and run at Nexus next year, and mentally closing shop on He-Man will force me to get back to work on the other ones. And after all, even He-Man can only take so much Sanity damage!

So if you are intrigued by the idea of He-Man battling snake-worshiping Servants of Yig and mind-shattering cultists of Hastur then I recommend you take this one last opportunity to sign up for:

Shadows Over Eternia - He-Man vs. the Cthulhu Mythos at Nexus Game Fair 2016!

A pic of He-Man riding a T-rex from the game at Nexus 2015. Yeah, things got pretty epic.

PS: I'll also be running a few sessions of Tower of Gygax at Nexus as well. I'm super happy they're bringing it back, and if you're a lover of all things deadly and AD&D, make sure you also check out Tower of Gygax!

WE DID IT! - Ravingspire Funded

The Kickstarter for Ravingspire finished yesterday and did great, closing at $74,858! Plus, we got so close to the final $75 stretch goal (Crashed Steampunk Airship Expansion), we decided to include it to our backers anyway! You can't officially donate your own money as a creator to a Kickstarter, but you do have the flexibility to round up!

Now we'll be able to bring our own brand of insanity to the market, and include four card expansions: The Vorpal Chainsword Expansion, The Old West Expansion, The Vengeance of the Goblin Queen Expansion, and the Steampunk Airship Expansion! Hooray!

Circles within circles for Ravingspire

Upon a suggestion from Enivek over on the Ravingspire Kickstarter comments page, I picked up a 16" diameter lazy Susan off of Amazon to see if it made handling the encounter cards of the game a little easier. Sure enough, more rotation is always cooler!

Used it while I was playing some solo games testing out the newest Final Boss cards that have been unlocked in the stretch goals, and it worked like a charm. Although we can't fit a lazy Susan into the game box or anything, it still is a pretty cool idea for people who end up loving the game.

Game on!

Ravingspire Heroes - painting minis

Things are going gangbusters with the Ravingspire Kickstarter! So much so that I decided to take a quick break from editing rulebook paragraphs and Adobe layouts and paint a few Reaper Bones minis as Ravingspire characters for giggles. In the game the characters are represented by tokens, (its a deck-building game, primarily), but my love of minis doesn't allow me not to. Plus there are still so many Reaper Bones minis to paint still, you gotta find your excuses where you can!

First up we have Aurora the All-Knowing! Chronomaster skilled in the arts of confounding her opponents by manipulating the future! And like any Runelord, she can generate free Charm by equipping Relics.

Used a Reaper Bones sorceress with staff to represent Aurora. Not great lighting for a pic of a mini looking down, but I think she turned out pretty well.

Then we have Garsim Cinderheart! Master Weaponsmith and cleaver of orc-kind! Garsome's mastery of weaponcraft allows him to generate one free Fight or Skill each turn, and all weapon and armor cards cost less Charm for him to obtain (which is good, because he starts with no Charm at all!).

Good old two-weapon barbarian from Reaper. Great mini, though its hard to get those darn weapons to stay straight (yes, I did the hot water trick to straighten out that axe. It only lasted a couple days).

Here comes Quinn Apblanc, Monster Slayer! This handsome fellow is fantastic at hunting down Adversaries and Foes in the game, however his deck starts out full of single power cards so thinning out the weak cards from the strong over the course of the game is a must!

For him I used the Reaper Bones Pathfinder Alchemist mini. Leather armor, lots of potions, dagger, what's not to love? Says vampire slayer to me!

These other two characters I've previously posted pics of on this blog, but for completeness sake...

Marcus the Runelord, Wizard of the White Tower. Marcus's mastery of battle magic is unmatched, and when powered through Relics he is a force with which to be reckoned!

For him the Reaper Bones Wizard with Staff does nicely. Sweet battle pose, cool staff, all good wizardy stuff on this mini.

Finally, the flagship character of the game, The Crimson Reaver! Born into a tribe of magic-hunting mutants, the Crimson Reaver gets to draw an extra card from her battle deck every round, making her a very formidable Hero!

Here I used the Reaper Bones Pathfinder Barbarian mini. Such a great action pose, I couldn't help but want to paint this mini!

So there you have it, some minis that would work well for Ravingspire. And that's only five of the nine Hero characters. I still have four more to paint if I want to build a complete set.

Game on!

Ravingspire Kickstarter Launches!

Its finally here! Ravingspire: Assault on the Tower of Madness Kickstarter has launched!

Its a deck-building boardgame with a rotating gameboard and a card-saving battle mat that emulates equipping weapons and magic items as you adventure in the haunted tower. We've been working very hard on it and I'm excited the rest of the world will finally get to see it! Check out the old-school D&D commercial we made for it below:

2e AD&D Funfest - Revengeance of the Chronostone: Escape from Fireball Island!

I run an annual RPG game for my old high school and college buddies at a mini convention I put on, called ScanCon. The game is usually some kind of one-shot mashup rpg I've come up with that I'm thinking about running at a convention or two the following year. Often they involve nostalgic 80's themes, like He-Man, Tron, or Johnny Mnemonic. I run these games using 3.5e or 5e D&D rulesets, because they're so pick-up game-friendly.

Not this time, though. This year I decided to not only have the players re-create the first D&D character they ever played, I also wanted to run the game in the first D&D edition we ever experienced: the dreaded 2nd edition AD&D!

Secret Dimensions

I'll admit it, I've been lax on game-blogging. Not only that, I've been turning down game invites and haven't been painting as much as I'd like. But I have a good reason! I've been secretly working every evening on the greatest boardgame ever to grace the halls of humanity. Its something I've worked on in complete secrecy, because if established game designers learned of the majesty of our deck-building boardgame mechanism they would steal it from us in a heartbeat. That's right, I said us! I have secret partners in this project. Artists, photographers, marketing agents. Partners based around the world working to create the finest Sword and Sorcery game ever to grace tabletops of the world, ever since the majesty that was Dark Tower.

Unfortunately, I can tell you nothing about it. But we're close to actual publication, so I'm using it as an excuse for seeming like such a half-gamer lately. I do have a little teaser page for it that shows a little bit of the card artwork though. You can check it out here if you're interested:

Ravingspire

Assault on the Tower of Madness!

Frostgrave 2: The Frostening

I recently picked up a new miniature skirmish game, Frostgrave, last week and thought it looked interesting upon first glance. Well, thanks to Darth Cibeous over at 20ontheDie, I got an opportunity to give the game a quick playtest last Saturday. Didn't take any pictures or anything as it was just a quick playthrough to see if we liked it, but I can say that it was a lot of fun. Even though Darth Cibeous's Necromancer pretty much ground my Wizard and Apprentice into fine dust, we learned a lot about how the game plays and had a great time. One of the best parts of the game is actually the post-battle wrap-up, as that's when you get to roll on the treasure tables and determine if you found any cool magic items or spellbooks in the treasure chests you collected. I think Frostgrave is going to breathe new life into my desire to paint all these Reaper Bones Kickstarter minis (that I keep on collecting for no reason).

Though I'll have to learn to actually base minis in something other than "standard temperate forest theme," I suppose.

But the real question is, would YOU be interested in Frostgrave? Well, there are a number of videos out of people playing it, so the best way to determine that is to give one of them a watch and see if it holds your interest. One of my favorite Youtube channels for miniature gaming is Guerrilla Miniature Games, and the host (Ash) always has excellent terrain and painted minis to ooh and ahh over while they play and explain the rules.

Check out their first playthrough of Frostgrave (and they have a lot more episodes if that catches your interest):

Game on!

Frostgrave

So I've been thinking about miniature skirmish wargaming a lot, and realized that there's no real reason to get into The Hobbit (or LotR) Strategy Battle Game. Because for that game you're supposed to only use Games Workshop miniatures, and my hearts just not in getting another person addicted to that drug along with me. Plus the game really doesn't play all that smoothly for beginners. Finally everyone's already got a bunch of the Reaper Bones minis (Kickstarters), and they're unlikely to want to start getting into overpriced minis from GW (even if they look rad as hell).

Then I realized while I really do want to start playing a miniature skirmish game like Hobbit or Mordheim (again, GW), I want to play one where people can paint, convert, and use their own Reaper Bones minis from the various Kickstarters we've all been into the last few years. So I went in search of something fantasy, skirmishy, but not GW nor miniature-specific.

Then I found the answer at my Friendly Local Game Store:

FROSTGRAVE

There and Back Again!

You know how sometimes you lose track of time? Like, when you're carefully crafting an email to someone at work and you forget to join your scheduled conference call until 5 minutes into it (and you feel like a total jerk)?

Or, in another example, when you pick up Fallout 4 and you lose track of the entire month of November?

"Hey everybody, did the news get around
About a guy named Butcher Pete..."

Yeah, so, you get the idea.

But now I'm back, and the twice-a-week updates are also back, baby!

Back to the Future RPG - Teaser pics for GameholeCon2015

After three straight weeks of painting, here's the album of most of the miniatures and time-period sets for my upcoming 5e convention game Back to the Future RPG: Outatime that I'll be running at GameholeCon2015 in a few weeks.

This isn't quite all time periods/minis to prevent plot spoilers for the players, but it is a few of the possible time-periods they could end up. My goal is to not railroad this convention game entirely, so I made extra time-periods to have ready in case the players get a little off-track. Also I have some NPCs they can meet (Deckard, Time Cop, etc.) that could become PCs if a character dies.

You can check them out below, or  check 'em out in imgur if you prefer.

Back to the Future RPG: OUTATIME!

Like Time Travel? Like Sci-Fi films from the 1980's? Like Time-Travel Sci-Fi films from the 1980's? Well then have I got the D&D adventure for you!

Back to the Future RPG: OUTATIME is a one-shot 5e D&D adventure that will be run at Gamehole Con 2015 on Friday, November 6th, 2015 from 10am-4pm (don't worry, its not really a solid 6 hour game. We'll take plenty of breaks for lunch and stuff). It features all our favorite Time-Travelers from the 1980's (and a few from the 1990's) banding together to save the time-stream from being destroyed for all eternity by the moronic Tannen family and their nefarious time-jumping allies.

Marty McFly will have to team up with the likes of Bill S. Preston (Esquire), a mysterious man known as "The Doctor," an overworked S-Mart Employee, and even a strange Robot from the Future in order to save Doc Brown and put things right that once went wrong! The game is rife with not only endless references to 1980's film and TV tropes, but is also D&D true-to-form with full-on tactical 5e D&D combat. The Terminator can't do it all himself, so Marty better stop cracking jokes and jump on that hoverboard to help out his new friends when the bullets start flying! 

Check out the 5e Player Character Sheets for OUTATIME

On the Vorpal Chainsword site proper are the playable characters for the game, statted out in all their 5th edition glory. "Is this everyone that will appear or be playable in the game?" (You ask?) Absolutely not! These are just the ones I'm willing to reveal stats of beforehand, so as not to give out too many spoilers. Check them out and see which character you want to play if you decide to take on this temporal challenge at Gamehole Con 2015! 

Party on, Dudes!

He-Man vs. Cthulhu 5e Playtest Video in the GameHole

Just finished running Shadows Over Eternia: He-Man vs. the Cthulhu Mythos 5th edition game at Nexus Game Fair. As always it was great fun, a couple of highlights being He-Man taming a T-Rex against all odds and turning it into his new "Battle-Rex," and Trapjaw escaping alone back to Eternia (after Skeletor and Evil-Lyn had been killed by Cthulhu) and leaving He-Man, Man-At-Arms, and Teela in R'yleh to rot! If you are one of those players reading this, thanks for a great game at Nexus!

But a couple weeks ago I wanted to playtest the 5th edition update to this game (it previously was 3.5e), so I wouldn't be all thumbs as far as the 5e updates go at the actual convention game at Nexus. As luck would have it, I got permission to playtest the updated game at the actual Gamehole in Madison, WI!

Since I was going to be playing in such a shrine to gaming, I figured I'd ask the players coming to the playtest to feel free to use their smartphones and cameras to record little bits of the game whenever they went to take a picture or if they felt like it. Also, the official Vorpal Chainsword photographer, ShadowGolem, brought along a camera and tripod and set it up above the table, so we could get a time-lapse picture set of the whole game! Everyone sent me all their pictures and video snippets they happened to take and I put together a simple little 9-minute video showcasing the 6-hour game.

If you like 80's cartoons, D&D, Miniatures, and Cthulhu, then you might get a kick out of it.

Vorpal Gaming: Critical Fumbles!

My players tend to roll a lot of 1's. I know everyone says that, but seriously, a couple of these guys would trip and cut their own heads off if it were an option (and it has been). So when players roll a '1' in my game I've tried livening up the event through various means.

First I tried making rolling a '1' always result in dropping your weapon and falling prone. This got old and boring fast, as sometimes there just wasn't a good reason a character would drop their weapon and then fall over. Throwing a dart at an orc? *Slip! Plop!* The first time that's funny. The fifth time its just dumb. Plus it quickly felt like it was being forced upon the players, rather than a ridiculous event. Every time they rolled a 1 they fell down and suffered the -4 to AC, etc. It just became a mean penalty rather than a hilariously spontaneous event.

Chronicles of the Vorpal Chainsword begins!

When it comes to D&D, I haven't run anything other than an over-the-top one-shot games in a long time. Its just so easy to keep on prepping terrain and painting minis and never stop, as the ideas keep rolling in even as the original stuff you wanted to make for the game gets finished. So often I'll just keep building and prepping for a one-shot until something actually forces the stars to align and I finally admit its ready to run at a convention or wherever.

However, a couple of my local gamers talked me into actually starting the 5th edition campaign I've been thinking about, and against my instincts of saying: "I want to play 5th, but first let me build the village and orc keep, should only take a couple more weeks..."

Instead I said: "Sure! Come over at noon. Here's the title of the Adventure we'll be playing..."

Chronicles of the Vorpal Chainsword, Episode 1:

Carnage of the Blade Demons!

...the thing is, I don't actually have an adventure written yet (nor have I completely worked out what the 'Blade Demons' are going to be). But I believe that the first step of writing an adventure is coming up with an epic title, so I randomly put three words I thought were cool and mashed them together, which I think sounds pretty solid. Step one completed.

So now I've got three hours, the new DMG and its random dungeon-building tables, and all the terrain and minis I've built/painted over the last ten years. We'll see how it goes. In my next post I'll let you know what I rolled up using the DMG, how I interpreted those results into the adventure, and how it ended up working out.

But for now ...I'd better get rolling!

Game On!