Quick Reaction: The Lighthouse at the Edge of the Universe

 

2d6 = 9 

• Well written and easy to learn rules. I used playing cards which made this experience feel more unique than a traditional ttrpg with dice. 
  
  
• As someone who is TERRIBLE at papercrafts—assembly of the Lighthouse was not bad! That is a cute prompt.  Seriously play this game at night, it is 100% worth it.
  
  
• Relaxing — an oft missed trait of solo games, some of which require nearly as much work as prepping a 5e session.  This was the tone it was going for and it succeeded.  
  
  
• I enjoy slightly more structure in soloRPGs — which is why I usually bounce off of writing prompt games.  If you are into journaling soloRPGs then I would highly recommend checking this out!  For what it is worth, I prefered this so much more than Thousand Year Old Vampire (2d6=5).

• Replayability isn't king, but I don't think this is a game I would play weekly, or likely even monthly.

• I would absolutely buy and check out more from the author! — https://lostwaysclub.itch.io/

Cutscenes

 I’ve spoken about stealing from Mörk Borg and Mouseguard — now it is Starforged. In Starforged:

Cutscenes can reveal a lot about your game.  They can show how a faction or town views the players.  For example, as a party leaves a town after completing good deeds, perhaps a toast is held in their honor at the tavern—where potentially a less than honorable individual sits in silence, taking the information in.  Or the tavern patrons could all state how lucky they were the PC’s came—and they hope only to return the favor (setting up for a possible deus ex machina down the road).

Cutscenes also highlight tone. While gameplay should be reinforcing the tone of your game, having cutscenes are like that edge highlight in a miniature—bringing additional attention to a specific point. A grim world where things do not improve, even with the party’s help, can be reinforced by a cutscene of the rescued town falling back into ruin the moment the party rides off to their next goal.

Finally, cutscenes can be used to set up future mysteries. My main advice for cutscenes is they should be non-interactable by the party nor should they be immediately relevant. They can be—and this can work—but by having cutscenes pay off a session or two later builds apprehension in players.  Compare it to the “in the coming weeks” segment for TV shows on a weekly schedule.

The common critique against cutscenes is “then the players have meta knowledge!”

So what?

Starforged is almost always played solo.  Meaning, I have the meta knowledge whether I discuss the cutscene out loud or not.  That doesn’t reduce my enjoyment.  Rather, it focuses my attention on the world around my character and how the world is reacting to my actions or just progressing along. Metaknowledge can also be mitigated.  Don’t have your villain exposit their *entire plan—*instead do a cutscene where a lieutenant informs them that the heroes have taken X action and the villain responds: “hmm that will set me back, but no matter, we must advance to phase two sooner than I thought.”  Now that is obviously devoid of flavor, but the barebones concept stands.

Try opening or closing your session with a cutscene and let me know if you/your players like it!

New Campaign!

 I am starting a new campaign! 

Running the game for new people is such a wonderful feeling. While my "main group" is always where my heart lies - we've developed a general standard operating procedure. Playing and running for new people helps jump start my creativity and improve as a DM and player. I would highly recommend running adventurer's league or some other game at a store to not only continue to encourage new players - but to shake up your standard operating procedures. While running a game at a store carries a certain stereotype of players, the best way I’ve found to combat that is to be picky about the store. A FLGS should absolutely be welcoming to you and others. The more welcoming and friendly a store, the more likely it is to have a community of wonderful players who will be kind to each other.

I'm going to work on blogging my experience prepping and running the game. This will include a session summary, things that went well, things I can improve on, the inspiration I drew from, and a short sentence or two about how I plan to prep the upcoming week. I found Matt Colville’s campaign diaries incredibly helpful so I hope to capture some of that energy here.

As I have moved away from 5e, I was very excited to hear that a group was interested in playing Worlds Without Numbers. The biggest draw to return to 5e is always the player population is astronomical. However, 5e's drawbacks are pretty big dealbreakers for me: very low chance it will be human-centric (my overwhelming preference), it assumes high magic (I'd rather magic be a less dominating factor in world building), and it puts too much emphasis on character builds (characters gain abilities based on choices made away from the table v. earned through gameplay) — amongst other reasons.

I chose Worlds Without Numbers becase:

1. It has minimalistic class creation, while still giving players the feeling of 5e “options.”

2. I think its 2d6 skill checks are super interesting to resolve

3. The spells are evocative, yet clearly designed to not dominate all aspects of the game

4. Shock damage keeps combat progressing (I want to write a blog post questioning the value of “to hit” rolls)

5. I’ve never run it or Stars Without Numbers before and I wanted to expand my game knowledge

I’ll have a blog topic soon outlaying my setting primer and map - as well as what I plan to cover in session 0. I also hope to have a new review coming in the next week or so!