Wandering Adventure Party

This past weekend, my gaming group had a bunch of people who were out, so I ran a one-on-one Cyberpunk Red mission for one of my players who’s been playing a lot of Cyberpunk 2077.My own Cyberpunk knowledge comes from reading Snow Crash and Neuromancer, and from years reading through the short fiction in and game mastering Shadowrun across two different editions (20th Anniversary 4th and 5th Editions in my case).With my previous cyberpunk game being Shadowrun which often revolves around grabbing every d6 in your house and rolling them once for your roll, then for your opposition, it may come as no surprise that among the realizations I had is that Cyberpunk Red runs really fast. Like the d20 system most tabletop gamers are familiar with, Cyberpunk Red revolves around a single formula for rolling checks both in and out of combat. You roll a d10, add the relevant skill and relevant stat, and boom you have your result. This gets compared to a difficulty value for the thing you’re doing, and now we know whether you succeed.There are still a few opposed rolls for things like being perceived while attempting to sneak, or being chased while attempting to escape on a cool neon covered, alcohol fueled motorcycle of the future, but by and large, d10 plus stat plus skill versus difficulty gets you where you’re going.But where the static difficulties really show their speed is in combat. Cyberpunk Red doesn’t individualize difficulty to hit a target through role abilities or gear, instead the difficulty to hit is based on the range between the attacker and defender and what weapon the attacker is using. So your player who knows their distance can then have their individual range chart and know their likelihood to hit from a given range and tell you if they’ve hit and move on to the damage. Which speeds up combat so much. With our game, I’d put two definite combat scenes in and expected them to eat some time. They chewed up some of the clock, but not nearly as much as I’d planned for.Lastly, there’s an app, either in your respective app store or online at cyberpunkred.com, which can help make character creation even faster for players, or give assistance and look up tables and a combination initiative tracker and pseudo-Virtual Table Top for game masters. The player tools are free until you go into specific supplements, the GM-specific stuff is a one-time fee of $4.99. The ability to pop up a map and information about districts and roll up a bunch of NPCs with a click, complete with randomized names and personalities. It was well worth the purchase when I ran a game that went heavy into improvisation.The GameInspired by the current reread I’m doing of Snow Crash, I decided that the basic mission would be a delivery. Just get this box from Point A to Point B. Then I took some stuff from the Beat Chart section of the core book and thought about which beats could add interesting stuff to the mix.So our Edgerunner ends up taking a job to carry a package from the Danger Gal Offices in Little Europe to Totentanz in the hot zone in the Old City Center. No questions asked, but paying enough to cover the next several months rent. Deal.Trouble is, some jerks had caught wind of the courier coming, so a couple set up right outside and decide to take some shots at our Edgerunner. She dispatches them while using the engine blocks of cars as cover. (GM Note: Cover can be ridiculously powerful, make plans about where it is, and where it isn’t). This was our first taste of combat and we were surprised how quickly things went.The Boostgangers dealt with, our Edgerunner heads on foot across Little Europe toward the Hot Zone. While she’s doing this, she notices that a ricochet popped her safe box a little open. She secures it to protect the cargo, but not before realizing she’s carrying a whole bunch of heavy pistols.Our gang issues aren’t over yet, though, as bikers in the same colors show up following our Edgerunner. She ditches them down a pedestrian path. But they double back to try and catch her. But here came my favorite roll of the game as she rolls a perfect 10 on her Stealth while the pursuers roll a 1 on their perception. So, as the gangers make their way up the pedestrian path, our Edgerunner just steps right through their group and they run off in the opposite direction she’s going.And so she arrives at Totentanz, the famous club. Just as a Cyberpsycho has decided that this is where they make their stand. She ducks around to a back entry and makes her way through the evacuating crowds and up to a catwalk. From a high vantage point, she starts trying to make head shots on the Cyberpsycho to distract them from the people fleeing. The minus-8 modifier for aimed shots turns out to be just a little too much for her to overcome, so she soon switches to just popping out from behind some thin steel signs to fire at her foe and then duck quickly back.This is also where we learned, through the Cyberpsycho, that auto fire at anything beyond a few meters’ range is a bad idea. Our Edgerunner’s cover mostly lasted so long because she was being targeted by an SMG and being missed altogether. That changed when the grenade launcher came out. That dealt close to half of the Edgerunner’s health, destroyed her cover, AND she lost her hand (critical injuries are NOT fun).Eventually, my prerolled clock for Max-Tac to show up passes and they enter in to end the fight and our Edgerunner made her delivery. A good chunk of her payment goes toward a new chrome hand. Guess she’ll need to take some more jobs in the future to pay that pesky rent.ImpressionsThis game was a whole lot of fun to run, and the app tools made managing combat a breeze for both me and the player. Honestly, the math and comparisons wouldn’t have been too difficult without it, but it definitely reduced my effort. And I love things that lower the effort of running mechanics so that I can focus on running everything else.The game ran really fast, with us ending in about half the time I’d planned for. If you have a smaller group, know that the half hour per beat suggested by the book is probably more than you’ll use, in case you’re worried about how many beats to have planned in your game.But simply, the system is fun. The setting is fun, especially if you have players in your group, like I do, who are still playing 2077. I’d put Cyberpunk Red on my list of systems I’d like to run in 2026 a few weeks ago and now that I have, it’s definitely staying there. The one thing I might sit down with the book and make for myself is a sort of “Mission Generator” like Shadowrun 5 has in the back of the core book. Write down some of the suggested hooks, then some of the cliffhanger beats as complications, and tie them to a d10 so that I can prep the idea for the mission a bit easier. (And making more work for myself is definitely a sign I liked the system!)

When last we left Eveline Hawking, she had docked the Vigilant with the Rookery and was donning an EVA suit to head outside and activate the Rookery’s docking clamps.Inspecting the ClampsEveline opens the external airlock of the Vigilant and secures her tether. She moves slowly around the locks of the two ships and inspects the clamps. One clamp on the Rookery appears to have suffered a direct hit in the storm and has some charring that prevented the automatic firing when thr Vigilant’s clamps attached. Eveline uses her tools to scrape the scoring away until the springs can snap the clamp into place. It takes so much time, she finds herself spiralling about what she’ll find inside the Rookery.With the clamps Secure she returns to the Vigilant to begin the retraction of the clamps to bring the airlocks into contact.Securing the ShipsThe locks slide together smoothly, and Eveline pressurizes her side and removes her helmet. She checks the controls on Rookery’s lock and sees that the airlock is depressurized. She replaces her helmet and opens the pressure valves on the Vigilant to supply pressure to the Rookery as she opens the external vents on the lock to equalize pressure to open the doors.The Two locks are equalized, but there is an ongoing hiss from a leak somewhere in the airlocks. The clock just started ticking a little faster on the rescue attempt. Eveline opens up both external locks and rushes into the Rookery.Inside the RookeryEveline gets the locks open and wind moves through the tunnel as air from the Vigilant begins to replenish what was lost from the Rookery.Eveline enters the Rookery, thinking about where she can find LT. With danger and power out, she’s likely to be in engineering. As a precaution, Eveline keeps her eva suit and a rebreather on in case of fumes or sudden depressurization as she approaches Engineering. As she rushes into the compartment, she sees LT standing at an engineering station catching her breath.“LT what’s going on?” Eveline removes her helmet.“The storms, there’s some sort of device controlling them. Found it in an Ascendency ruin. Weird it hadn’t been found this close to Luminus. Must have set it off, then the storms knocked out the e-drive and I had to use batteries while I got here on the drift.”“Wait, a control device? Where? Nevermind, thats for later. On battery did you get any diagnostics done?”“No, I focused them all on the beacon and environmental.”Next TimeThe next installment of Voyages of the Vigilant will focus on an escape from the Rookery and the storm that disabled it. If you’ve liked what you’ve read so far, I’m considering whether in these edited recaps whether I should include more info about the rolls that led to this twist or that in the story. Do you have any interest in seeing things like what move was rolled at a given point and whether the result was a weak hit or a strong hit or a miss?I thought about this because there’s a section that felt tense to me playing, because I had a clock going that was filling up with all the weak hits I had going, but it doesn’t translate as well into the story how I chose to “get what I want but it took longer than I wanted” and fill segments.I’ve mostly blogged recaps from D&D and Pathfinder games where I was the GM before, where the conflict is a lot more literal and visible, so just working out what would make this campaign journal a better read.Find the GameIronsworn Starforged was created by Tomkin Press and can be found in hardcover and digital formats on the Tomkin Press website [non-affiliate link] or in PDF format from DriveThruRPG [affiliate link].

This post originally appeared on the previous incarnation of this blog on September 22, 2024. Earlier in the week, I wrote about my first session of a new campaign. Last night, the group met online to do session 2 of that campaign.Our CastAhsha: High Elf Sorcerer, a runaway from Sharn, still learning to control her magic, seeking adventure.Duke: Harengon Fighter, member of a criminal trio who smuggle arcane goods, currently separated from the other two members of the trio while they lay lowFillip: Warforged Rogue, forging his own path after the Last War by working as a private eye. Has a passion for justice after a friend was wrongfully executed.Jed: Orc Fighter, his farm was destroyed by raiders, has come out to Aundair to seek a new place to call home. No nonsense.26 Rhaan, 998YK (Cont’d)They began on the road in the Forgotten Prince’s realm, having previously walked past the detritus of the forgotten pets who’d become blink dogs. They’d even befriended a blink dog (we’ll call him Blinky like I started doing in the game). Blinky had been leading them toward the castle down the road.As we begin, the party approaches a gate in a wall with forest on either side of the wall and forest between the wall and the castle. The gate is guarded by more of the shadow fey they’d encountered in the streets of Passage. (I used the Elf, Shadow Fey stat block from Tome of Beasts for these) The party speaks with the fey guards who tell them that they are not allowed to permit anyone to pass who is not on the list of invited guests put out by the Forgotten Prince himself. Ahsha tries a persuasion check asking how they can be sure that the party isn’t on the list. The dice declare this persuasion is not to be. The guards tell the party that they are sure they are not on the list because there is no list today.I’d expected a little more encounter here, since I’d built it explicitly knowing that Ahsha had the friends spell. Later on in the session I learned that her player had thought that the Advantage on saves vs. the Charmed condition meant that they were immune to the condition.The party, deciding that there is no sense dawdling with these guards because they need to get Rhaani out of the Prince’s Realm before the full moon wanes, heads into the woods to see if they can find a way around or over or through the wall. They notice some webbing around the trees based on a good Survival check by Jed, but then the dice decide they’ve had enough with being kind and the entire party rolls under 5 on Perception checks to notice the Ettercap hanging out above them.The Ettercap takes advantage of being unseen to launch webs at Jed and trap him. We then roll initiative with Ahsha and Jed acting before the Ettercap, and Duke acting after. (Fillip’s player was late to the game, so we put Fillip last in initiate to give time)Ahsha uses an arcane burst against the Ettercap, but rolls minimum damage, merely singing the creature. Jed pulls upon his internal strength to burst the bonds around him then surges into action to pin the Ettercap to the ground with his pitchfork. The Ettercap gets up and tries to bite Jed, missing, but rakes him with its claws. Blinky misses and Duke uses his long sword to sap the Ettercap and give it disadvantage on its next attack.The fight continues into the second round with the party using heroic inspiration and hero points to deal with required saves to finish off the Ettercap. Duke deals the finishing blow with his rapier and the party begins to search the area around them for the Ettercap’s nest, discovering 7 gems (tourmaline and sapphires, worth 10gp each).Better than the gems, the party discovers that the Ettercap had also breached the wall surrounding the Prince’s castle, the better to get at all the tasty fey within. They walk through the remnants of many spider dinners to get through the woods back to the road on this side of the gate.They reach the front door of the castle which is guarded by three guards (Darklings, from Volo’s Guide to Monsters). They begin with negotiation again, telling the guards that “Hey, we’re caterers, we’re contracted with the kitchen staff so let us in.” At first the guards aren’t buying it, but Ahsha remembers at this point that elves only get Advantage toward Charmed not Immunity and casts Friends on the guards. They weren’t even elves, and didn’t have the advantage, and utterly fail the save. They helpfully usher the party into the castle.Inside the castle, the party enters a great entrance hall with rooms off it along both sides and straight ahead. The castle is mostly dark and most surfaces are covered in dust like they’ve been left neglected for some time. The door closes behind them and disappears, they’ll need to find another way out of the castle. They hear crying from the room directly ahead, along with another voice that sounds like an attempt to reassure the person who’s crying.The party heads straight ahead. In a room they find a fireplace with contents of the Prince’s library burning to provide light and warmth to this room.Sitting around a table in the room are two human women and a gnome woman. The gnome is clutching her hands in her face and rocking. One human is doing measurements and pinning a dress that the other human is wearing. The bride to be is crying until she recognizes the Baker who came with the party and speaks with him.The party has a discussion with the woman about how her former fiancé back in Passage likely made a deal with the prince to stick her here and they’re here to rescue her. They discuss the finer points of deals with the fey and decide that since she didn’t make a deal that they can probably get her out of here without bringing the penalties of a fey deal down upon her and them. Just maybe anger an archfey a teeny bit. But they’re still planning the rescue.The gnome is hesitant at first to leave, saying she deserves to be here. She says that she was requested to kill someone back home by The Trust and carried out the instructions like she was told, like any Zil would. But she seems to be having a crisis of faith involving her worship of the Sovereign Arawei. As she speaks about the encounter, the fairy story field makes the bloodstains on her hands and clothes appear. Some therapy ensues, and the Party tells her they don’t need to take her home, but will help her get a new start wherever. This gets her to come along.The group enlarged by three new rescues begins to look around the castle. Fillip discovers a room filled with lost and forgotten official records, including both the deal with the Prince that got Rhanni here, saying that she was traded for a small fortune and a dragonmark, and some correspondance proving that Fillip’s friend was set up by some important people back home. He pockets the correspondance for now, figuring out how best to wield it.We end the session with the group gathered for their escape from the Castle of Forgotten Things. Using the session levelling rules, they level up to 3 and pick their new subclasses.Note: DriveThruRPG links are affiliate links

This post originally appeared on the previous incarnation of this blog on September 18, 2024.I recently started a new campaign with my group. It’s one I’ve wanted to do for ages, since I actually sat down and read the Eberron setting. Eberron is a setting which looks to answer the question “What would technology look like if it were made of magic?” There are trains and long distance communications and airships and magical robot soldiers and wandslinging wizard soldiers. The setting introduced the Artificer class to D&D, a class based around creating magic items using ‘Arcane Science’.While the new version of the Artificer, and in general new material for Eberron itself, hasn’t yet been released, my group was excited about their new D&D 2024 Player’s Handbooks and asked if we could use the 2024 options for their characters. With my own Tea Dragon cover sitting on my desk when that email came, I decided to try the new rules out.We’re beginning in 998YK, the default starting point for Eberron Campaigns. We are only 4 years out from the Mourning that destroyed the nation of Cyre before mysteriously stopping at its borders. We are 2 years out from the Treaty of Thronehold that ended the 100-year Last War and established the current status quo of the “Five Nations” of Khorvaire.Not all are happy with the way things ended with the Last War. Many blame the ir’Wynarn family, the Royal Family of the Five Nations, for their sibling squabbles that dragged the continent into war. Some look to the enrichment of the Dragonmarked Houses and ask “why do they get that monopoly?” Some asking the questions even have the money and the connections to start planning to do something about it.These are the political conditions surrounding the start to our campaign.Our unlikely heroes are:The Duke of Dirt Town, a harengon fighter and part of a trio who smuggle arcane goodsFillip Kento, a warforged rogue, would-be inquisitive (or detective) haunted by the wrongfully convicted friend he failed to saveAhshalla Elgolor, an elven cleric of the Silver Flame, adventure seeker who avoids direct conflict however she canJed, an orc fighter whose farm was pillaged by orc raiders and just wants to find a new place to put down rootsSo yeah, we don’t have casters mostly. That was something that was on my mind to see how it played out, given that I decided to start off at Level 1.26 Rhaan 998YKOur adventure begins with the adventurers leaving the lightning rail at the station in Passage, a large transport hub and home to House Orien, who run the trains, caravans, and virtually all land-based trade throughout Khorvaire. The pale blue dot Rhaan, one of Eberron’s 12 moons, hangs full in the sky.Immediately as they leave the station, they hear cries for help. A man in torn and dirty white cook clothes is running from two elves cloaked in shadow.The adventurers step in to help the man, interpreting themselves between him and the elves and fighting them off. The combat really showed off the new Weapon Mastery table of the 2024 rulebook as the two fighters kept inflicting conditions on the elves. Vex and Sap were great aids to the fighters. They really added some momentum to the fight, that could shift and sway as different characters applied their mastery effects. Reminded me that I should take a look at monsters I use, consider whether they’d have a mastery trait and apply the proper one in the future. Loads of fun to hear the players cheer for the advantage from a vexed enemy make a difference.As the fight ends, they are surprised by the fact that none of the other people in the street seem to have reacted to the fight or the man calling for help. The surprise is compounded when they look again and the corpses of the elves are nowhere to be seen.The PCs introduce themselves to the man they’ve rescued who introduces himself as Simon Baker. He glances back at the road he ran down into town and begins screaming when it is nowhere to be seen. He explains that he was chasing after his neighbor Rhaani, who ran away after she said that her fiancé claimed to have forgotten her on the night of their rehearsal dinner. He tried to console her but she ran down a road out of town and he was chased and accosted by fey when he tried to follow.A couple knowledge checks later, the party makes the connection that the month is Rhaan and the full moon is Rhaan and Rhaan is the moon tied to Thelannis, the plane of the fey. As our Orc Fighter put it, “Great, it’s fairy bullshit o’clock.”The PCs continue talking to Simon about Rhaani and her rich fiancé, Jessek Weaver, who seems to have suddenly in the last day or so had an increase to his fortune and is wearing the rings of the Aurum. The party starts talking about whether he sold off his memory or even sold off Rhaani to the fey. Since they figure that there are probably fairy rules afoot, they decide to hurry up and save Rhaani first in case the full moon is a key to getting where she is.They also drag Simon along, because he’s admitted some unrequited love for her by blushing when asked. By fairy rules, that might make him a key too. Can’t waste any possible key when fairies are involved.They try to experiment for a while with the road out of town, seeing whether they can summon the fairy road. Eventually Jed just grabs Simon and continues walking down the road saying “We’ll get there however I have to figure the way.” Slowly, and without any clear indication when, the party finds themselves walking a road through Thelannis instead of out of Passage.The road is cluttered with boxes offering puppies free to good homes. Some canine creatures are off in the distance but seem curious about the party. Food and scratches are offered to one of the more curious individuals, along with a fantastic Handle Animal check by Jed. The dog is offered a sniff of a ribbon that fell from Rhaani during her run and then it blinks down the path to lead them. The party follows the blink dog toward a castle in the distance.Impression of D&D 2024 and the SessionI had a lot of fun with this session and with the new rules. Like I said while talking about the fight, there was a lot going on that the fighters’ hits were meaning something to the pace of the fight more than just making hit points go down. They could sap an enemy going after a weaker ally to give protection, they could vex an opponent they were one-on-one with to secure themselves advantage.This was the first self-written session I’d done in a while and the pacing seemed to work. Shout out to Sly Flourish and Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master for the prep method I’m using to figure out just what I need prepped and set aside to roll with what the players decide to do at the table.These people are my usual group so mostly I got to throw a clue to them, then sit back and watch them work out the next three clues I would have given and run off to EXACTLY the scene I thought would come up. That’s the nice thing about a familiar group who you gave an idea of the themes you wanted, they’re pretty well bought in to the same things you think you’ll need to prep and your prep mostly hits the table.I’m looking forward to the next sessions, and also to figuring out some adaptations of Eberron stuff I can use to make the game better for the players.

Earlier this month, I reviewed the games I played this year. One of the games I talked about was Magical Kitties Save the Day published by Atlas Games.Basic InformationAuthors: Matthew J. Hanson, Justin Alexander (of The Alexandrian), Michelle NephewPublisher: Atlas GamesA first edition of Magical Kitties was released in 2016. I have the Second Edition Boxed Set that was released in 2020.Box ContentsIntroductory Solo Adventure Comic (Magical Kitties and the Big Adventure, available separately for free on DriveThruRPG)Softcover Core RulebookSoftcover River City Setting Book, with fold out map and adventureDice (six blue d6s)Kitty Treat tokensPad of character sheetsGame MechanicsEach player in Magical Kitties Save the Day plays a Kitty with magical powers. Yeah, yeah, it’s in the name.Your Kitty has three main stats: Cute, Cunning, and Fierce.Cute plays the role Charisma might in another game.Cunning is both Intelligence and also a sort of sneaky thing.Fierce is your main combat stat, as well as a general athletics and physical task stat.Once you pick a stat, you roll a number of d6s equal to the stat. You also add one die if your Kitty’s mundane talent fits the task and two dice if their magical power is applicable.Once you roll your pool of dice, you look for dice which meet or beat a target number, which defaults to 4. Even one makes the roll a success. Based on how many dice clear the difficulty, there are tiers to success and failure:0 – Failure, and a complication1 – Success, but with a complication2 – Success3 – Success with a bonus4 or more – Success with a bigger bonusYou can also use Kitty Treats from your character sheet to reroll dice.I actually really enjoyed the mechanics, the three stats were simple enough for my seven-year-old to understand, but gave enough tactical depth to keep the attention of one of the players from my normal group.Impression on ReadingI love the box set form factor. Everything my daughter and I needed is in the box. Character sheets? Box. Tokens I can hand her so she knows she has kitty treats? Box. Dice? Box and also the giant chain mail bag on the desk.The Core Rulebook and the River City book are both chock full of art that gets you in the right headspace. The comic book is laid out in a fun choose your own adventure format.The Core book is split between how to make and play your Kitty and also how to GM the system, including giving you some ideas for antagonists. My favorite antagonist is the hyper-intelligent raccoons. Because hyper-intelligent mad scientist raccoons building the most unhinged things to steal all the shinies.The River City hometown includes a lot of locations as well as an adventure that takes place in the library. There’s also a fold out map with all the places from the book labeled.The books are great.How’d It PlayI’ve run The Big Adventure choose your own comic a couple time for both my daughter and I.The big test of Magical Kitties came when my usual game night got canceled and my daughter decided to join me and one of the other players in the group for a special game night.We ran the adventure from the River City book, the Kitties’ humans were missing. And it was dinner time. In no way was that an acceptable thing to happen. So they go around looking and end up at the library. Where the front door is locked.Cue two players, one genre savvy and one seven doing the old “how we getting past this door” routine. The fat tuxedo cat tried squeezing through the book return and got stuck. So Super Kitty decides to jump up and shove with all she’s got to get them inside. There were a couple more scenes like this where random things got tried and the dice gave me hints on complications or bonuses and it was actually pretty easy to GM.One thing I will say is that the Adventure from River City isn’t the easiest to run on the fly from the book, or at least it wasn’t for me that night. An advanced read through to know how things connect is probably advisable.The VerdictGamers with kids at home they want to introduce to gaming, but don’t necessarily want to jump into something Combat heavy like D&D will probably enjoy this one. Unless I as GM forced a combat, pretty much any opposition could be faced without a fight, and it felt like the Cunning and Cute stats almost incentivized a look for non-combat solutions (since the players went Cunning and Cute instead of fierce). Enemies actually get statted with Difficulties for each stat, like 4e D&D did with defenses, so like a Cute Difficulty of 5 on something stoic might pair with a Cunning Difficulty with 3 to represent logic working better than adorableness.Honestly, for an off-night, I think the adult player had just as much fun as the kid with it though. Those changing difficulties and the game loop of solving problems for your human and your town really seemed to resonate with both players.I will definitely think about bringing this one back for at least a one shot for my full table. It will also absolutely be back on the table for the seven year old. Between Amazing Tales, No Thank You Evil, and Magical Kitties, I feel like the Kitties are winning out as current kid-friendly favorite game.Bundle of HoldingThrough December 30, 2025, Bundle of Holding is running a Magical Kitties Bundle which includes digital versions of the entire current Magical Kitties line, core book and various Hometowns, for $14.95. If you’re looking for a fun game to play with your kid, this is a great Bundle, it includes a bunch of different genres to throw your Kitties into, aliens, fantasy, superheroes, noir.

Just finished #DnD night. Ended a chapter of the campaign when my players fell under the influence of an imprisoned rage demon and assassinated an Archbishop triggering a prophecy that shattered one of the shards of the demon's prison.So, uh, nice knowing you Thaliost.#TTRPG #Eberron #SessionStories