Good Monday Gamer,
Man, I am running out of time for games to count for 2023! I've got a small list of new games I hadn't gotten to - like Homeworld, Blackbirds, Embers of the Empire. I would have liked to return to Legacy: LATR. It looks like I have enough time for one more run of something before the baby New Year arrives.
I'm prepping a six-session run of Stars Without Number. We'll be playing in the Kuiper Belt, where an alien artefact (Space Dungeon!) has been discovered and is being explored/exploited. Players are debtors —Earthers, colonists, it doesn't matter. They owe folks money enough that coming out to the edge of the solar system to explore some non-human structure is the option they are working on. We're staying in the Sol system. There is no FTL, but there are sub-light technologies that make inter-system travel doable. SWN has a supplement, Engines of Babylon, that helps with this.
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I'm playing around with combat mechanics for my Wizard CRPG. I stumbled into something inspired by Chess and Shinobigami and held together by PBTA 2D6 mechanics; I talk about it in Rolling Pixels #6. I'm deep-diving the Dying Earth series, trying to get a feel for the scope of the spells and artifacts in there. I'll need to add magic to the combat soon to figure out if a Vancian-like magic system is fun to play. We know that in the oldest of D&D, magic users could load up and cast spell slots once per day. But what was it in The Dying Earth series? Was it defined? The management of a limited set of spells for an encounter, a dungeon run, or a day? Fascinates me!
I figure if I can't beat the holidays for game time, I'll join up then! I'm dusting off my gig bag for some Christmas rock band performances; I'm sure I still have some power chords in me. At band practice last week, the music director said something that resonated. She said the best way to get better was to join a band and play with other supportive people as quickly and as often as you could. They'll meet you where you are, and you'll learn so much. You know what else is like that?!
Catch ya next week, Player!