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Post by Zenopus on Feb 6, 2020 15:33:31 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Feb 6, 2020 15:36:00 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Feb 6, 2020 15:42:37 GMT -6
muddy has posted over here that he is running three Blueholme sessions: I'll be running three sessions at Garycon this March:
A Tale of Two Temples (2x)
Deep under a long abandoned temple of Law, a temple of Chaos thrives and with it a sanctuary for outlaws and exiles. This knaves' haven now harbors the most famous thief in the known world, and the King has chosen you to bring him to justice. Negotiate, fight, or bribe your way past outlaws and do what you must to
survive encounters with monstrous hybrids born of chaos as you strive
to bring the most famous thief in the known world to justice. A low level 70's style dungeon crawl, run by a DM who started playing in 1975, characters provided. Everyone welcome, even if you played last year. It's D&D as it was played in the 70's. It is rules light and plays fast, even while you are slowly mapping the dungeon. Last year things were well under way within 15 minutes of our start time. So bring your iron spikes, holy water, and ten-foot pole. Choose a caller and a mapper, I'll provide the pre-gens. Everyone is welcome at my table including. We'll be using Blueholme rules, no experience necessary.
Of Rotting Earth and Weeping Stone A temple dedicated to resurrecting ancient forces of chaos thrives under a long abandoned temple of law, desecrating all there that is sacred. Farmlands now reek of rotted flesh, stones weep blood, and unnatural fiends roam the night. You must learn of what powers this chaos....
A follow up to A Tale of Two Temples, though everyone is welcome.
The event listings for there are here.
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Post by Zenopus on Feb 6, 2020 15:48:05 GMT -6
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muddy
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 159 
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Post by muddy on Feb 9, 2020 11:19:27 GMT -6
Thanks Zenopus, I hope to get into one of your games this year!
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Post by paleologos on Feb 9, 2020 15:33:26 GMT -6
I'll be running part II of the Gen Con X tournament (I'm calling it "The Skull of Vruna" after the MacGuffin involved):
2 sessions - one on Thursday at 10am (4 hours) another on Saturday at 10am (4 hours).
I'm eager to get into Zach's "Skull Stack Crater" - it isn't every day that one gets to participate in a new Holmes dungeon!
Hoping for a spot at the table at one of the Blueholme games, as well.
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Post by Zenopus on Feb 19, 2020 8:19:27 GMT -6
 Tom Wham art on Gary Con XII drink cupsI posted this on the blog last week but forgot to link it over here: There are five designs for the drink cups this year, each featuring a different Tom Wham artwork. In my blog post I go through the sources for each. Two green Beer Cups (the one shown above, obviously featuring the Awful Green Things From Outer Space); two blue Soda Cups and one white GM-only Cup, which offers the Beer or Soda discount. Per Luke Gygax on FB: |
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Post by chicagowiz on Mar 6, 2020 15:50:07 GMT -6
Hey Zenopus, thanks for posting my game! I'm also running my OD&D/Chainmail game at Little Wars. Both are full, as of 3/6, but stop by if you like - there's usually noshows. The model has turned out fantastic!  The basic idea is that we're playing OD&D with both mass combat figures/troop units and individual characters, taking place at the setting start of T1 - Village of Hommlet, but with a twist - what if the ToE was a lot more active and ready for war than what T1 implied? The combat mechanic is derived from The Compleat Chainmail compiled by @greyelf and delta 's AH mechanic. (In short, I took away the x # of figures needed to attack AF, HH, and replaced it with just a single value to roll against.) Three playtests have been tons of fun, so I'm hoping for more of the same at GaryCon! I've also got two Chaos Wars games scheduled, as well as my usual Saturday night AD&D. |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2020 16:35:01 GMT -6
The basic idea is that we're playing OD&D with both mass combat figures/troop units and individual characters, taking place at the setting start of T1 - Village of Hommlet, but with a twist - what if the ToE was a lot more active and ready for war than what T1 implied? Tried and true, once again the forces of Good have underestimated the resilience and unhallowed determination of the fiends serving the Temple of Elemental Evil, hah!  |
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Post by Zenopus on Mar 14, 2020 15:26:01 GMT -6
The physical Gary Con XII has been canceled due to the coronavirus aka COVID-19, but they are expanding the virtual options. The announcement is here. Badges for Virtual Gary Con are free. Go here to get one. There are currently 11 pages of virtual games going on over weekend. I've never even played on-line, let alone GM'd, so I'm hesitant to jump in for running my scheduled games as part of this, but I am considering my options and am going to play in at least one game of Traveller run by badger2305. |
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Post by Finarvyn on Mar 15, 2020 4:15:10 GMT -6
Got me a virtual badge. Dunno if I will try to play anything or not, but I thought it would be cool to "buy" one.  |
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Post by chicagowiz on Mar 15, 2020 8:30:12 GMT -6
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Post by Finarvyn on Mar 15, 2020 12:33:44 GMT -6
I've never tried a virtual RPG and don't even know if my computer supports whatever software is needed. It's an interesting concept, however, and I'm hoping that your game goes off without a hitch!  |
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muddy
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 159
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Post by muddy on Mar 15, 2020 12:50:48 GMT -6
I've never even played on-line, let alone GM'd, so I'm hesitant to jump in for running my scheduled games as part of this, but I am considering my options... I'm in the same position, and I don't have the best bandwidth. We'll see.
EDIT: Is there a step by step "how to" for running games somewhere?
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Post by creativehum on Mar 15, 2020 14:05:04 GMT -6
I did some searching around for this the past few days, as my Monday Night Group is playing from our homes for the next few weeks.
The first question is: Do you need a battlemap and tools, or simply want to be able to see each other with video, or even simply hear each other? (My group is starting off without battlemap tools. We usually just describe battles and keep the imagination in our heads!)
If you need or really want to have a battlemap available check out Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds. Both have battlemat tools, have a library of form-fillable character sheets that are stored online, dice roller, and so on.
These websites support audio communication, but they are not as robust as the applications I mention below.
If you only need audio or video there are several options. Most of them are used for business but are prefect for telecommuting RPG sessions: Google Hangouts and Skype, for example. Both are free.
Another option, which I chose, is Discord. It is a chat based application, but can also do audio and video. Ther are also addons (called "bots") that can serve as online dice rollers.
Finally, some people mix and match: They use Roll20 for the battlemat but the audio or video from Discord or Google Hangouts.
That's the broad introduction as I have come to understand it. If anyone has further questions I'll do my best to answer.
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Post by creativehum on Mar 15, 2020 14:07:02 GMT -6
[Nevermind... found the answer to my question.]
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Post by Zenopus on Mar 15, 2020 14:33:46 GMT -6
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Post by chicagowiz on Mar 15, 2020 14:42:52 GMT -6
I've never tried a virtual RPG and don't even know if my computer supports whatever software is needed. It's an interesting concept, however, and I'm hoping that your game goes off without a hitch! Most computers that can support a browser can handle online games. I'm running my game with minimal requirements, as long as someone can use a fairly modern browser like Chrome or Firefox, they can play with the tools I'm using! Discord for audio/text chat AWApp for a shared whiteboard. I'm not doing video conferencing this time, just to keep the bar low. |
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Post by creativehum on Mar 15, 2020 15:11:19 GMT -6
AWApp for a shared whiteboard. Holy Cow AWWApp looks cool. How do you go about sharing it with the players? If I dig further into the AWWApp will I find easy explanations? |
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Post by chicagowiz on Mar 15, 2020 15:34:10 GMT -6
AWApp for a shared whiteboard. Holy Cow AWWApp looks cool. How do you go about sharing it with the players? If I dig further into the AWWApp will I find easy explanations? Click the green "INVITE" button on the top of the board. It will show you a link you can share with your players. |
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Post by creativehum on Mar 15, 2020 15:43:52 GMT -6
Right. The "Add People" button. Should have spotted that!
This is so... simple? For displaying a dungeon or encounter site as we explore it. And free, right? The functions you use are free?
EDITED: Never mind. Yeah, it looks like what we would need it for is utterly free.
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Post by asaki on Mar 16, 2020 5:55:43 GMT -6
If you need or really want to have a battlemap available check out Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds. Both have battlemat tools, have a library of form-fillable character sheets that are stored online, dice roller, and so on. We were using Roll20 for a while (with Skype for voice chat), I kind of liked it. I'm not huge on online role-playing, but it had some cool features, like line-of-sight/real-time shadows for players wandering through dungeons.
...and if the DM doesn't lock them out, there are tools for the players to vandalize the board with markers, etc. 
After a while, we switched to Fantasy Grounds, but I didn't like it quite as much. A lot of the rules and things are built-into the program, but this is a double-edged sword: if the rules aren't available for the product yet (which happened to us when a new update broke Pathfinder support), you're out of luck. If you want to house-rule, it's going to be a lot more difficult. You're forced to use the built-in dice roller, whereas with Roll20 you could roll real dice (if the DM allows). And it didn't have some of Roll20's neat features, like the shadows I mentioned.
But we didn't really complain about it, because the DM paid a lot of money for it...
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Post by thegreyelf on Mar 17, 2020 5:45:40 GMT -6
You know, not to interrupt the discussion of virtual gaming tools, but just a seed to plant in everyone's minds for NEXT YEAR. Has anyone considered trying to do an ODD74 meetup at Gary Con some year? It'd be kind of cool to actually meet all you fine fellows face-to-face some year.
Just a thought. I'd be willing to bet if we spoke to Luke we could get a room set aside for it somewhere in the Geneva.
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Post by Starbeard on Mar 17, 2020 11:15:22 GMT -6
Got myself a badge with every intention of playing something, but we'll see. Life in our household is actually busier now because of the closures, thanks to some significantly less than altruistic expectations from work regarding transitioning into working from home, plus there's the rugrat.
Someday I'll make the pilgrimage in person, and I've been telling myself this year that it will be next year. I think an ODD74 lounge area is a fantastic idea, and would hang out there. The larger academic conferences I attend always have evening receptions or daytime rooms booked for the different research & publishing associations, and it seems a no-brainer that GaryCon would have something similar set up for the key old school forums. They are basically the fraternities that gave GaryCon life, after all.
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Post by thegreyelf on Mar 17, 2020 11:36:45 GMT -6
Yeah, I mean, I don't know that they would set up an ongoing lounge area just for us, but getting us a room for a scheduled meetup should certainly be do-able.
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Post by Starbeard on Mar 17, 2020 11:54:34 GMT -6
Certainly. An open room would be too much, unless maybe it was just "The Forum Green Room" for everybody. "Take a nametag, write your handle and forum on it, come say hello."
But a single scheduled room booking could work, or even a "sponsored" schedule where a room is booked for a little while each day for open OD&D gaming and chat.
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Post by verhaden on Mar 17, 2020 16:47:09 GMT -6
Maybe deserving a second thread, but ODD74 Con would be interesting itself. I'd much rather drive to Indiana, Michigan, or Pennsylvania than Wisconsin.
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Post by Vile Traveller on Mar 17, 2020 22:07:13 GMT -6
ODD74 Virtual Con would be interesting. |
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Post by Starbeard on Mar 17, 2020 23:31:14 GMT -6
Hm. Pie in the sky here: say 3-7 days, with a schedule of slots for DMs and players to sign up for. A Discord channel could be used to organize, chat and host an audio room for the games. Like a city fringe festival but with a centralized hub.
For starters it would just be a single linear schedule so that no session is double booked, but if it were to gain traction or if it were crunched into just 1-3 days, then concurrent games would work.
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Post by aldarron on Mar 19, 2020 7:21:23 GMT -6
First, thanks for the heads up on the virtual Gary Con! and, Maybe deserving a second thread, but ODD74 Con would be interesting itself. I'd much rather drive to Indiana, Michigan, or Pennsylvania than Wisconsin. is an intriguing idea. The situation with conventions is typically that there aren't many options specifically for OD&D and kin. A centralish location is a good idea too. Like maybe West Virginia - several ski resorts there are hungry for summer bookings (like Winterplace) or there's always Seven Springs in SW PA, but that would be a bit harder to book. Just puttin' it out there.... |
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