My guest for this episode of Last Week in Gaming is Judd Karlman host of the Daydreaming about Dragons podcast. He is a gamer I admire for his style of GMing and asking players questions. He has the uncanny ability for generating gameable premises. He is the author of the Dictionary of Mu, a favorite sword and sorcery setting of mine. He's the host of the Daydreaming About Dragons podcast and my current Friday morning GM for Trophy Gold.
We talk about some of the games he’s currently running like Trophy Gold, Worlds of Dungeons, and Dungeons & Dragons 5E. I’m playing in the Trophy Gold game on Friday mornings and it’s unnerving! The manner the mundane and the strange come together in a Judd session is fantastic. I met Judd, IIRC, 100 years ago in New York at a Burning Wheel convention. I missed his session where folks played adventures who just slew a dragon and have to manage the aftermath of the Dragon’s treasure, other treasure seekers and 99 other dragon-killing problems! I did get to play a bastard noble character in a more gritty-intrigue setting in a later session. We’ve been friends ever since.
In true RPG nerd conversation, we end up all over the place from our Twitch.tv/ActualPlay games like Hutt Cartel | Cartel RPG to designing game artifacts using Canva. You can catch up with Judd on his blog: githyankidiaspora.com or podcast: https://anchor.fm/daydreaming-about-dragons.
Straight Outta Kalisz Saturdays
We are 17+ sessions strong. Being down our scout player we did some base upkeeping chores, and trading with the village to the east. Lots of leads were discovered via radio scanning and during watches. I am still fascinated by how inspiring the 52 deck of encounters can be.
Barbarians of Lemuria
Tues have been cursed for us lately, but we’re back on track…I think! Corvinius the sky-pilot navigates their newly stolen sky-ship toward the Tower of the Moon, ruins where pirates, outcasts, and the like have a haven. Only there’s smoke and wrecks of other sky-ships about the tower. We spend the session exploring the ruins, saving trapped survivors, and discovering necrophages! We leave Corvinous, Crassus the merc, and the black-speech sorcerer Nur-Yunna on a cliffhanger - an encounter with a Necropede!
Ruins of Symbaroum
Just got this beautiful set in this week and am devouring the contents. Symbaroum is a great setting and game on its own. Ruins of Symbaroum is a 5E conversion and it’s done well, new classes, races, and new systems! I will be running this soon! The pull for me is this great, ancient, dark forest with an older, darker secret. There are elves that protect it from trespassers…treasure hunters. Many of the folks in the area are refugees, exiles, and outcasts. You can play goblins, ogres, or a changeling even! OG Symbaroum has a nice Neo OSR feel to its rules and now there is a 5E version, bravo Free League!!
Last Week in Gaming with Judd Karlman