2018 Antagonist Relations Recap

Image: Twenty Sided Dice set to 20 19

Antagonist Relations, Inc is back from holiday break, which was not particularly a break since I’ve run 6 game sessions and prepped a 10 part Cypher Game campaign since my last post in addition to all the normal family hoopla around the holidays.

Blog Business

It was a good year for blog writing last year— I posted 102 items in 2018, more than twice the next highest year (2015 with 47) and almost five times what I posted most years since I started this blog in 2012. The volume is especially notably because I only had a single post before March 2018. It was a questionable year for blog reading though… at least from what I can tell. Posts will get 10-20 views in the week I post them and that’s about it. Almost all of the referral links in the blog stats are for scammy clickbacks, for sketchy pharmaceutical hawking blogs or other obviously fraudulent and more importantly non-RPG blogs or sites. The few comments that I did get on posts in 2018 were all spam as well. Despite attempting to promote the blog with a twitter account (@antag_relations) and making sure to post fairly regularly on it to keep it from entirely being a wasteland in between blog post tweets I don’t seem to have grown the blog audience from the three people I know read it which has been disheartening.

Ultimately though, I’ve decided to keep posting here and to accept that maintaining the blog is something I’m mostly doing for myself and not for an audience, after all Lonely Fun has a long and storied tradition as part of the RPG hobby and so this blog will be my outlet for that. That said, if you’re a reader of the blog and not someone I know personally, if you send me an email at “Antagonist.relations(at)gmail.com” to let me know you’re out there, I’ll happily send you one of these snazzy stickers or a pack of the AD&D Second Edition Collector Cards if you’re interested.

Image: Shit Stickers where the I is a 1 on a d20, unopened pack of 1992 Series TSR D&D Collector Cards

So, what are my goals for the Antagonist Relations blog for 2019?

• Keep posting Weird Magic Items and Music to Game to Posts.
• Post more module and system reviews.
• Post at least 100 updates again.

Back in 2018 when I made the conscious effort to revitalize the blog, I planned on putting up lots of tables, but by the summer I had discovered that churning out a table every week or two was difficult, so I’m going to let those drop away and not spend time trying to come up with another table of names just to say I got another table made. On the other hand, I’ve really enjoyed writing the Weird Magic Item and Music to Game to Posts so those will continue.

You’ll also continue to see cross-posts from the Antagonist Relations Podcast, we recorded our first episodes of 2019 on January 4th and I hope to have them edited and ready to post soon. I swear that eventually I’ll do another Lonely Fun podcast just for Ben and there is a chance that there might be another potential podcast to come as well, though that one is really tentative.

Dinosaurs, Zombies and Necromancers, Oh My! – Tomb Thoughts #3

Since my last missive, we’ve played three more sessions, bringing our total sessions to five. Some general thoughts first about playing a 5th Edition game again (as opposed to running it), followed by a break for spoilers and then session notes at the end.

Firstly, I’d like to say that switching from hand-writing notes to using my tablet and a Bluetooth keyboard has been fantastic. Eliminating the need to go through my notes and decipher them as I type them up has eliminated a major pain point. I remain a steadfast proponent of a shared player document, with a player or players taking notes as a great way to create an easy to reference record of the game. We play every two weeks on Wednesdays but skipped a date as it fell on Halloween and our intrepid DM’s birthday, but having the notes let me quickly recap the previous session when we returned to the game.

With our sixth session tonight, this is the longest I’ve gotten to play a single 5th edition character. I don’t know that 5th edition is my favorite edition to play, but I’ve still enjoyed it. Frankly, the best decision I made about my character was taking this Archaeologist Ideal: Death Wish: Nothing is more exhilarating than a narrow escape from the jaws of death. (Chaotic), which has served as a prompt for me that my character should be active and helping to push the plot forward when otherwise I might hesitate. Instead of giving in to the urge to protect my precious PC at all cost, the ideal reminds me that he should be taking risks, even, or perhaps especially, potentially deadly risks, which means Ordulin Bellweather is jumping onto the backs of Zombie Tyrannosaurus Rexs and rushing forward into trapped areas to test solutions instead of hanging back and watching everything from 120ft away to plink away at foes with Eldritch Bolt.

I’m enjoying playing a warlock, though the spell slots increasing in level rather than in quantity is slightly frustrating in one regard, which is that not every spell scales with level. It’s annoying to have to decide on using a second level spell slot on Shield, which gets no bump from a higher slot or taking an extra hit from a foe to save that slot for Branding Smite which does benefit from that increased spell slot level.

We played a session in a local brewery...

**Spoilers for Tomb of Annihilation Follow**

Crocodile Tears - Tomb Thoughts #2

Classic Axebeak illustration...

As previously mentioned, I'm getting the chance to play in a 5th Edition D&D campaign for the first time in a while. Thomas is being kind enough to run Tomb of Annihilation and I'm chronicling my thoughts here in "Tomb Thoughts".

We had our second session and I continued to strive towards being the over-achieving player that as a DM I want to see out in the world. Continuing from my player notes from last time, I also added an inventory spreadsheet for the group as I compiled my notes from our second session. Taking notes as a player reminds me that I really do need to set up my tablet and bluetooth keyboard and practice at typing on that as the most painful thing about taking notes has been transcribing them from a notebook to the google document.

Spoilers ahoy in the rest of my thoughts on the session, so if you don't want to take a chance of any Tomb of Annihilation spoilers, do not read past the break...

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You have been warned, spoilers follow...

Into Chult -Tomb Thoughts #1

Note: I have not read the book, so if my spelling of NPC names and/or locations is off, it is because I am taking my best guess at spelling them.

For the first time since the D&D Next Playtest back in 2012 or 2013 I've got the opportunity to play in a D&D 5th Edition campaign. Now, I've played a few 5e one shots, probably 2-3 a year on average, but I haven't had the chance to play the same PC for concurrent session in a 5th Edition D&D game since it was released in 2014. Since my darling wife wanted to play D&D with Dinosaurs (aka Tomb of Annihilation) but my DM'ing plate is full, we have tricked DM extraordinaire Thomas into running the module for us and three others. (PS. Thomas has an excellent new DM's Guild Supplement out, Mercy & Justice).

Since I've been spoiled with an excellent player in my online 2nd Edition games who takes detailed and copious notes, I decided that I should attempt to take notes for the group for our Tomb of Annihilation game. And since I'm taking the notes anyway, I figure I'll also include them here on the blog as well as giving my impressions as a player moving through the module and put it all together into these posts that I'm going to refer to as "Tomb Thoughts".

Photo of my character sheet for Ordulin Bellweather, sheet is Dyson Logos' Fifth Edition Character Sheets.

Now, since I rarely get to play 5e, I showed excellent restraint and only stated out a dozen or so potential PCs and only wrote up brief backgrounds for half of those. But since I can't recall seeing a Warlock PC in any of my 5e campaigns, I settled on Ordulin (Darvin) Bellweather, a Half-Elf Archaeologist Hexblade Warlock. I went whole hog on a terrible pop-culture archaeologist rip-off too, having Ordulin adopt the name of a Realms location that seemed the most like Indiana in my five minutes of quick wiki-searching and deciding to use a whip for a melee weapon despite the low damage.

Initial Thoughts after Session 1

I'll include my character and session write-ups below, in case you want to skip those. The first session went pretty well, we started in Port Nyanzaru and Thomas gave each of our characters a few hooks. We could have probably wandered around the city doing some exploration, but I probably pushed a little hard for our party to take the very first mission we heard about. In hindsight, as I wrote up the session notes, I could see how my DM experience led me to urge the party to take action and be decisive instead of dawdling, so I need to remember to try and keep some of that in check as we move forward. We managed to make it through the evening without fighting anything, instead diving into the factional intrigues of the Merchant Princes. We traveled from Port Nyanzaru up to Fort Beluarian and back, and so far the locations seem interesting and fairly memorable, though we have not seen much. The biggest thing that stood out, was that Thomas took the time to print out the Guide pitches for us, which made deciding on a guide much easier and quicker than it would have been otherwise. It was fantastic to have the guide portrait and their sales pitches to help us decide on the guide for us. We only played for about three and a half hours, but it seemed like we were able to accomplish quite a bit, visiting two major locations, having conversations with a half-dozen NPCs, getting into some potentially dangerous shenanigans and even plotting out our travels for quite a while.

New Year, New Games (and Old too...) - State of the Blog III Part Two

Well... I did not expect my first post for the 2017 New Year State of the Blog to devolve into a 4,000 word screed... Apologies to all who suffered through that...

Game Master bag buttons with my new Over the Garden Wall buttons!

A photo posted by Zack Schwartz (@thatwordyguy) on Jan 1, 2017 at 11:12am PST

So... I ran 11 different games in 2016, got to play in 4, but what are my plans for 2017?

New Year, New Games (and Old too...) - State of the Blog III Part One

Hello there gorgeous...

With the turn of the new year, it seems appropriate that I do another State of the Blog post, though this one will probably be even longer and more rambling than previous installments... So, hold onto your dicebags, 'cause here we go!

Lessons from al-Qadim Church: 2nd Edition D&D in the time of 5th

Thomas runs a 2nd Edition D&D game set in al-Qadim over Roll20 most Sundays, that we've taken to refering to as 'Church', originally as a bit of a joke about our scheduling, since for most of the players it's a 9am-1pm time slot. But thinking about it, it is a time of fellowship and reflection, with parables I can apply to my (gaming) life.

I've been playing Thema, a lawful evil moralist priest of Ragarra, dedicated to bringing the 'old' Gods of Ragarra, Shajar et al back to prominence and eventually casting out the Enlightened religion in the Ruined Kingdoms area where the campaign is set. So far we've cleared goblins out a monastery, cleared over a hundred gnolls out of a canyon of caverns, killed a vampire by releasing it out of a bottle into the tropical high noon sun and escaped from a trio of giants who wanted to keep us captive to pose for their topiary sculpting, among other things. We've played most Sunday mornings since September 2015, with over 20 sessions and put in nearly 100 days in game and every week it's well worth getting up early on Sunday, even if I was up late the night before, to sign on and play.

But up above I joked about parables, so what have I learned from playing 2nd Edition D&D when we're now three and half more editions on? And what do I want to steal from 2e for my own games?

Shattered World - Ruby Visions - partial Manlorette recap

As I confessed in my last State of the Blog post, I wasn't certain how to proceed with my Shattered World D&D game, we'd nearly reached the climax of the campaign, but with the scheduling issues it began to feel less and less climactic.

To recap briefly, the players a while back had decided to go to the "Sacred" library, and having found and "borrowed" their own elven solid silver flying stealth ship, finally had arrived. They had also learned, in the interim, that a great artifact, The Heart of the World, an enormous ruby that could be used to reshape reality, was kept at the library. Once there, they discovered a magical force field encasing the central Sacred tower, generated by four smaller towers, the Pearl tower, controlled by Blunanda, the Silver tower, controlled by Brontë, a servant of the dwarven wizard Silverhands, the Oak Tower, controlled by Dunsain Joon, a lieutenant of the Elven Princess of Charm and finally the Moon Tower, controlled by followers of Moonbiter. The PCs had run errands for both Dunsain Joon and Brontë, securing the assistance of those two towers in opening the force field long enough for them to secure the Heart of the World. They'd also cleared out the Pearl Tower, vanquishing the marid, sea hags, sharks and Water Monolith (taken from the very excellent Elemental Magic of Zakhara) left by Blunanda and closing off the oceanic portal that had been filling it with water.

So, just one tower left, right? But unfortunately, part of the reason the Oak Tower had been left for last was the player whose PC has the strongest (and only, actually) connection to Moonbiter, has been unable to make it due to a hectic work travel schedule. We were also missing the player of the Cleric of Thor, who seemed to have (at least to me) the strongest vision for what the party might do with the Heart of the World, even if that vision was partly just 'listen to what Thor says' (runner up plan being the swashbuckling rogue's plan to 'steal the Heart of the World').

So, two PCs down, the climax imminent, but forestalled as the players wanted the Moonbiter affiliated monk with them. What to do? Fortunately I thought of an Adventure Time episode I'd seen recently and to the gimmick Thomas had stolen from Curse of Strahd to run my Manlorette D&D game and then I jotted down a few notes and hoped it wouldn't all come off as too much of a Dirty DM Trick.

Dortherdoreft: Initial Thoughts and Lessons

Spoiler: the Derro babies in cages totally stole the show...

So, Thomas and I ran our two session, same dungeon, themed New Year's D&D, Dortherdoreft. First he ran a party of all Dwarves through and then 48 hours later I ran a party of all Drow through. We wanted to both have some iconic player character class choices, like Dwarven Cleric and Drow Priestess of Lolth, and also to feature some icon Underdark features. We also decided to try and provide both some challenges for the PCs but also some places where their iconic abilities could shine. Here are my thoughts about how it went and lessons learned, both as player of a Dwarf Battlemaster Fighter and as a GM. We're hoping to tweak and write up the adventure for everyone to take a look at, but for now, here's some initial thoughts. You can find Thomas' thoughts on Dortherdoreft on his blog.

100th Post! - 2 Possible Extra Life PCs...

It's my 100th post on the blog, so here are 2 PCs that I might inflict on DMs in Extra Life, if they'll let me... Though it'll be easier to do if people donate... wink wink...and then I can blame popular demand...

Prince Dartor

Prince Dartor (need to update the sheet to reflect his Princeliness). Bask in his majestic nobility, marvel at his potential to do 36 points of damage per round with only Blowgun darts... Or to disarm a foe from 100ft with only a blowgun dart.

Laddie

Based on the Really Good Dog class from Goblin Punch. Laddie is a Really Good Dog with a couple levels of fighter.

I'll post more of these as I start to get donations.

Fiddly Bits - Old and New

An early illustration of a Medieval Elephant Drop?

Fiddly bits have been on my mind lately.Between running my Shattered World 5e-ish D&D game (as discussed here), running World of Dungeons 1979 with Planarch Codex for my non-D&D games and playing in Thomas' Church of Al-Qadim Sun-AD&D 2e game, I've been noticing more and more about the fiddly bits that make play more difficult, are easy to sweep aside when needed, easy to create and add in or just weird little things that make the game more enjoyable or at least more interesting. Then on this last Saturday I ran a last-minute-ish Birthday D&D game for a friend that brought a lot of the fiddliness into focus for me.

Extra Life - Thoughts on Not Running D&D 5e - Exquisite Corpse Megadungeon Pt. 1

James and the Ginger Giant have decided to organize an Extra Life event, where players game in support of a worthy cause. They're going to try and get enough DMs to run 24 hours of games and do some live streaming and other media. I'll share more information on how to support them as I get it and it looks like I'm probably going to be a player (hopefully for as much of the event as I can). I was invited to GM but decided to pass as they're going to try to run a single epic storyline set in Ben's homebrew D&D campaign the Known World. Since I'm not in any of the 5th edition groups playing in the setting I don't feel comfortable running the setting and since my own D&D 5th edition game is largely not a 5th edition game (more on that below) and Ben's is also not quite "by the book" I'm not up on what house rules his groups are using. Plus, I don't get to be a player as much anymore outside of AD&D Church and the odd Wonder Plunder Dungeon World game.

So, expect more information when I know more on how to support our adventuring for charity. I'd love to allow people to donate certain amounts to make me play wacky/against type characters like a Horserer , a series of Jameses (obvi Fighters with the Champion archetype who don't use weapons but instead just throw themselves on enemies attempting to grapple them (For those playing the Antagonist Relations Drinking Game at home take a shot for "Zack does a bad LSP impression"), or something else, but since it's in an established campaign, I'm not sure how wacky/goofy I'll be allowed to be, so folk might just have to be content with forcing me to suffer the indignity of playing a Bard or a Fighter with the Eldritch Knight martial archetype. All in all, I'm hoping I can play 12+ hours of D&D and I'm really looking forward to being a part of it.

But the offer to DM did get me thinking about how my "5th edition D&D" Shattered World game is nearly not and also what I would propose if I were organizing a 24 hour D&D event.

An Exquisite Corpse

More than 11 Ways - Recent Reading and Re-reading

So I see that the 11 Ways to be a Better Roleplayer from Look, Robot is going around again. Not that I have any problem with this, it's an excellent post and I actually recommended it back in December of 2014 when I first came across it (and paired it with a companion piece from Gnome Stew on how to help your players if you're a GM) but I've been wondering if anyone sharing the link has been delving deeper into the RPG Advice on Look, Robot because there's plenty of other great stuff there.

So here's five more posts I'll recommend that I went back and re-read or read for the first time after seeing 11 Ways to be a Better Roleplayer make the rounds again.

For Players

• Your dice don’t hate you – they love you. (Maybe a bit too much.) TL:DR if you don't read anything else, read this one.
• Six questions that will help you make a better character
• My Mother’s second-best sword: Small things, big echoes
• Stanislavski vs Brecht in tabletop roleplaying

And one for the GMs

• How I learned to stop worrying and hate the plot: Improv is kinder than planning
• Even if you're a player, you might want to read this one, as it has one of my favorite paragraphs I've read on an RPG blog lately.

And across town, the other half of the group are in the invented-on-the-spot schoolgirl pitfighting bar called The Slap And Tackle, and the ex-schoolgirl Barbarian is getting ready to beat up a tamed owlbear in single combat, and we’re formulating the four stages involved in an owlbear duel (Hooting, Circling, Face-Slapping, Arm-Ripping) and the fighter is blind drunk and betting his share of the pirate ship on the owlbear after he fluffed a Gambling check and it’s happening, you know, the whole scene is buzzing and we can smell the owlbear blood and hear the booming hoots and feel the sawdust under our feet.

Killer GM Syndrome

Every now and then when I'm running (or even playing) a game I catch the edge of something that sets me back a little, Killer GM Syndrome... and I've noticed it a lot looking at the popular culture around tabletop gaming and so I want to write out my thoughts on it to try and see if I can't figure out a few ways to try and counteract it in games. (for those of you playing the Antagonist Relations blogpost drinking game, take a drink for "Zack uses writing to try and figure something out")  TL;DR then just read this one article.

In the Lair of the Ginger Giant: Antagonist Relations Podcast Episode 13

Because I've been a terrible blogger, here's another Antagonist Relations Podcast. We bring on our good friend Bob who's recently been making the leap from player to Game Master.

In the Lair of the Ginger Giant: Antagonist Relations Podcast Episode 13 - Sternly Worded Letters

PS. you can leave your complaints here.

In the Lair of the Ginger Giant: Antagonist Relations Podcast Episode 12

The Ginger Giant and I ascend into the creepy and echoing vastness that is his upstairs living room (apologies for the sound quality) and discuss the two 13th Age Games I'm running, the two games I'm playing and the four 5th Edition D&D games he's running.

Antagonist Relations Podcast 12: Upstairs Fuckery

In the Lair of the Ginger Giant: Antagonist Relations Podcast Episode 11

I returned again to the Lair of the Ginger Giant a few weeks ago and we discussed RPGs as is our wont.

We discussed dealing with drunken players, 13th Age, Numenera, Monster Hearts, World Wide Wrestling, 5th Edition D&D and more.

Antagonist Relations Podcast - Episode 11 - Good Times, Bad Times (March 4, 2015)

Crushing on 13th Age

I’m a little in love with 13th Age. Thomas has been running an online 13th Age for John and I and it is all kinds of enjoyable, enjoyable enough that I am more than happy to get up at 6:30am on a Sunday morning to play regardless of whether or not I was up until 1:30am drinking and playing boardgames the night before or that I had 8 hours of Numenera to run later that afternoon. (You can find more on my initial thoughts here).

Go read Thomas’ last post on running 13th Age, he covers a more story/montage based technique that he took from a 13th Age module that I quite enjoyed. This post will be here waiting for you when you get back.

So, what do I love about 13th Age? Using backgrounds as the skill mechanic, One Unique Thing, the Icons, the setting (more on that later in a later post), the approach to classes where each is distinct in flavor and in mechanics. The introductory adventure, Blood and Lightning, which is one of my favorite adventures I’ve read, played or run. Previously I had complained about my Rogue not having enough choice of powers, but hitting 3rd level really fixed that issue (and were I to make another rogue or advise someone making another rogue, I’d recommend that they not double up on powers/class features that did similar things, as I ended up with the Tumble feature and Tumbling strike).

But until this last week I didn’t have my own copy of the hardbook, just a copy of the pdf (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/118994/13th-Age-Core-Book?term=13th+age) and previous experience has taught me that it’s often better to have a hard copy of at least the core rule book at the table when I run the game, even if I’ve got the PDF that I can pull up on one of them newfangled tablet thingies. But I really wanted to run Blood and Lightning, so I ran it using D&D 5E, porting in the 13th Age Background/Skill system and Icons, with their attendant mechanics. I also used the GM Intrusion for Inspiration mechanic discussed in this post.

To my amazement, it all worked pretty well, I had 4 players who created 3rd level characters and we played through the entire adventure (with character creation) in about 6 hours. Integrating the 13th Age background/skills mechanic into 5E went a little smoother than last time, partly because many of the players had been exposed to it before and because it was my 3rd D&D 5E game running/playing with that mechanic. The Icons worked into the game easily as well, I continue to be impressed at how well they impart a sense of setting and tone even when only briefly introduced, but I suppose that they are, well, Iconic. All in all an excellent time was had by all.  And now I really want to run 13th Age itself (and have the core book in hardcover to do so), especially since I want to run Eyes of the Stone Thief for my Sunday group after I finish my Numenera run, because it looks so incredibly cool (warning for my players, you shouldn’t look too much because spoilers). But I’m going to be good and hold off on pulling the trigger on the pre-order until I get my group to decide if a 13th Age MegaDungeon hunt is what they’d like to do next.

The Murder Hobo's Dilemma… "Are we in the Dungeon yet?" - Dungeon World

(Full disclosure, I'm sure this is more an issue for me, with my wanting more realism in characters and plot than realism in rules.

I've know played in three sessions of Dungeon World and I've been enjoying them but last night I realized that there was something that kept me (yes, I managed to let the group decide I was their leader, must to my chagrin) from leading the group full force ahead into adventure. The premise of the game is a modern day Twin Cities metro, but with magic and dungeons, where Adventuring Companies (emphasis on the company) send adventurers into dungeons but otherwise it's straight forward fantasy version of the present. The GM was explicit that the normal humanoid fantasy races, goblin, orc, kobold, weren't inherently evil, and that is leading to some quandaries. I had gone in expecting a fairly lighthearted game, and tenor of play-wise, it's been fairly lighthearted but the plot has been drifting much grittier.

In the first two session, the party, with the conceit that we were the local "neighborhood watch" went into a dungeon near a graveyard and fought a mixture of goblins and an elf (or two, I don't rightly recall if there was more than one) who were in what the GM described as a teenage party pad (wrecked furniture, oil barrel fire, empty keg) and while the elf was a member of a previous adventuring party to disappear into the dungeon, the goblins were definitely high school kids, ya know, wearing letter jackets and such. Now, there was a lower level of that dungeon with a definitely evil undead creature of some kind, so I think we partly rationalized things as "oh yeah, the evil undead thing was controlling them, so we're not total murder hobos for slaughtering those unarmed teenagers".

6am Sunday Morning - Time to game! (13th Age thoughts)

I've now played 13th Age twice through the FUTURISTIC MAGIC OF THE INTERWEBS. Though long discussed between John, Thomas and I, we never managed to get an simultaneous online game going (though we did play my troubled VtDA game and may still play a hopefully less troubled Vampire game that Thomas has been threatening to run for half a year now.) but now we have and it's been a blast. Due to wacky time zone differences we play at what is my 6 or 7am in the morning (Thomas is 10 hours ahead of me and John is 5 additional hours ahead of Thomas...) but it's been well worth the early rise, mostly because Thomas and John are two of my favorite people to game with. So here are my thoughts gathered so far based on two early morning sessions of 13th Age played with Roll20 online.