App Stuff
The Devil’s Toys
I’ve spent a lot of time working on my new VTT, The Devil’s Toys. I’ll talk about this more in the future but this is my 3rd vibe-coded VTT and I feel like I’ve learned a lot from the first two and was ready to make something more robust and exensible. The last two were system-specific, this new one is a more traditional full blown VTT supporting more than one system, more features, etc.
The reason for making it is that I don’t like any of the existing VTTs. They’re generally too complicated, with too many features I don’t want, and missing too many features I do. What’s great here is I can make exactly what I want, and skip things I don’t need.
It’s still pretty incomplete, but near the end of the month I ran my first session in it, which involved a sprint to get it ready to use. I made a very bad decision to add a major feature an hour before the game, which ended up breaking my existing data. Luckily I’d done an import setup that made recreating my table only take about 10 minutes and I think the VTT mostly worked well in it’s first real game. The VTT is on GitHub but not very usable for other people yet, when it’s a bit further along I’ll share more.
What I Ran
Desert Moon of Karth (Monolith)
Karth is just an incredible Mothership module, but after running more Mothership this summer I realized:
- I don’t love the system, I may go into this more later, but for now let’s leave it there.
- It isn’t great for space advanture, it’s a system for horror, not adventure.
And I think Karth is primarily space adventure, not space horror. I think a good GM could really dial thothe horror elements up and run it as tense, horror module, but I don’t think the printed text does that out of the box.
This blog post inspired me to run it in Monolith, and it’s a great fit. Three of my players are bringing Mothership characters to Karth, we just re-rolled them as stats are very different between the games.
Session 1 went pretty well. In terms of the module we didn’t get to far, I’ve tweaked the module to have the MEF be a little more predatory. It’s easy to get down to Karth, but very expensive to leave. The party is now on the surface, and needs to make enough money to get out. I don’t think this hugely changes the situation on the ground but it gives the campaign a good exit point that the printed module doesn’t really have, but it’s still an optional exit.
During character creation we came up with another bit of background that I love, it will change our campaign pretty dramatically but I’m very happy with the change. One of the players is playing an old-timey prospector, someone who has been down on the planet for a long time. He’s been stockpiling Coral Dust (think Dune Spice) because he doesn’t want to pay the exorbident export fees. But someone has stolen his stash. This gives the players two more objectives, find the stash and figure out a way to smuggle it off-moon. I’m really happy it just sort of came up naturally. I give a lot of credit for that to the very strong setting which makes all of this flow very well.
Next session is in a few weeks and I’m looking forward to it.
What I Played
Legions Imperialis
I was pretty busy this month so only got one game in outside of the Karth session I ran. I screwed up timing on this but we were still able to make it work, but I completely forgot to take photos. It was Solar Aux on both sides but my friend brought a Warlord. And I continue to be impressed by Warlords. I tried some pot shots on turn one and after only taking down one void I realized it needed to be ignored. In LI titans and knights are the only units that get hit modifiers from line of sight being blocked. This means that with medium sized buildings a titan will usually be -2 to hit which is brutal.
I think the big swing in this game was I had 16 sentinals on my left flank, and all were killed or retreating at the end of turn 1. This totally collapsed that flank for me, my opponnet had most of their points there and that wiped out most of my anti-infantry firepower on that side. Sentinals are an interesting unit in Legions Imperialis because they have a ton of firepower for the points but are very easy to kill, making them a pretty swingy unit, especially in the mirror. I’m starting to think that if you have the activations/slots that smaller units of them might make sense to make them a little easier to hide behind buildings.
We ended up calling it turn 3 when it was clear I couldn’t catch up on points or the table. Another thing I’d missed when playing against titans previously, Apocalypse launchers have Heavy Barrage and can collapse standard buildings pretty reliably, this is incredibly good when you can hit pretty much any building on the table.
I also tried out Legion Companion for the first time and it was a mixed expereince. It’s a lot of clicking to set up your list, and I’m not interested in the in-game tracking at all, why would I want to track all my orders twice?
What I Hobbied
1 / 5
War of the Beard Event Prep
This month was preparing for the event that starts today, September 4th. I needed to supply 2 and a half Warmaster armies and three skirmish-sized forces in 28mm. This was a lot of work, I put too much of it off, and I didn’t finish. I think this came down to a lack of steady progress over the summer, several times I went a couple weeks without working on this project at all, and it really needed me to be steadily progressing. I took the last week off work and that helped but in the end I had too much left and not enough time.
That said, I did a lot of hobby. More in the event recap but just in terms of player characters I had to make 22 models. In the end the force that suffered the most was the High Elf Warmaster list
What I Read
The Springfield School of Worldbuilding
I’m going to start highlighting some good blog posts, this one is on naming places in fantasy settings, and I think it’s really good, easy to use advice. Distilled down, the post is saying Springfield, Darkcleft, Holdtop, are all going to be easier to remember than Norhart, Yornoth, or whatever other made up fantasy name you use.
Le Guinian Neutral
Another great post we go over what neutrality looks like from the Earthsea novels, which I’ve never read but really need to get around to at some point. And I really like this take, I think best seen in this quote:
“Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that’s the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed.”
Because of the next item I’m thinking a lot about D&D alignments right now, so I like this perspective.
Planescape A Player’s Guide to the Planes
I got a print on demand copy of Planescape and I’ve decided to prep a campaign set in Planescape. It’s a really good setting. The PoD leaves something to be desired (dozens of pages of chopped up maps are useless), but the setting holds up. I’m still nailing down which system I’ll use, but Legends in the Mist is the current leader. The content here still holds up and the art, man, the art. DiTerlizzi is one of the best to ever do it.
Gotrek and Felix Short Stories
I listened to Curse of the Everliving and Slayer of the Storm God, Everliving was fine but very forgettable. I enjoyed Slayer of the Storm God a lot more, in no small part because it involves aquatic followers of chaos, something the Warhammer universe could use more of.
What I Bought
Planescape PoD Books
Specifically: Planescape Campaign Setting, In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil,The Factol’s Manifesto, Uncaged: Faces of Sigil. I’ve been trying to figure a target for a medium-length RPG campaign and I think Planescape will be it. It’s just the coolest setting and I think has a ton to show players. There is a huge amount of content for it but I think these will be a good starting point.
Legends in the Mist
To go along with the above, I picked up the newest Mist game from Son of Oak. I actually like a lot of AD&D and want to run it some time. But I think it’s a poor fit for Sigil and Planescape, I want a Planescape game to be heavily social, and I think a heavily social campaign should have social mechanics. I’m not set on LitM but I think it would be a great fit so I’m going to read it and see what level of hacking I’d need to do to support the weird and wonderful enhabitants of the planes.
13th Age
While deciding on a campaign I picked up 13th Age and Eyes of the Stone Thief, I’ve not really read them yet but skimming has me extremely impressed, both the game and campaign seem really well done. Next time I want to do heroric fantasy with a combat focus these are at the top of the list.
What I Played on My Computer
STAR WARS Zero Company
This is a Star Wars take X-Com and I was cautiously optimistic about it, and well, that’s bloomed into liking it quite a bit now that it’s out. I think it makes two big departures and 9 hours in I’m not sure how I feel about them. First, you have named squad members with backstory and missions. Permadeath is the default so this does raise the stakes. It also does not have a randomly generated mission structure, you’re playing structured missions and the approach, if there is one is third person and how you start the battle is always the same. My biggest concern now is mission design, they’re typically waves of enemies over a pretty big area and can just feel a little flat.
Coming Up Next Month
This weekend is my big Warhammer dwarf event. Really excited and a bit nervious for that. I’ll be writing a wrap-up post or two for it going over what we did.