On November 6th 2022, I participated in a megagame called Den of Wolves. A megagame is a live roleplaying game where in this case 43 players got together to play a game where a ragtag fleet had to escape the onslaught of the Wolf fleet. Den of Wolves is definitively inspired by Battlestar Galactica, where one outdated warship is tasked with defending the remnants of mankind, in the form of a ragtag fleet,  and finding the path to Earth.  The Fleet in Battlestar Galactica. (Image by NBCUniversal, fair use)

The following are intended for use in a playtest campaign set in Netherlight, an Into the Odd expansion I’m working on. Netherlight takes the adventurers to the stars in magical spaceships, exploring alien worlds and crossing into the shadowy dimension of the Nether. In these odd places, the characters may find new gear and artifacts. 

The following is for my Netherlight project. It's meant to give a vibe of some populated worlds you could find in the setting. Feel free to join my discord , where I post more regular updates on the project.  The Galaxy The Galaxy is vast. There are as many worlds as you can imagine. Some are settled, while many more are unexplored.  The Galaxy is old. Humans have built their cities for millennia. Each world has legends and myths. The Galaxy is thriving. Explorers and traders set out every day. Diverse spacecraft ply its expanse.  Image generated by Midjourney AI.

The following is a guest post written by Vincenzo Zeni. He is a regular player at my Tempest campaign, and he wrote an excellent post regarding travel. You can reach him on my discord server or by contacting him directly on discord with the username Alzred#1541. Enjoy!  Mountains by Aurélien. Used with permission.  

So travel is a big part of adventures. Braving majestic mountains, navigating insidious swamps and traversing foreboding forests. Lord of the Rings, the books as well as the movies, would not be the same without their iconic locations. Minas Tirith’s grandeur is incredible in contrast to the Shire. Interspersed between these grand locations, there are also the lesser locations, such as Bree, the Watchtower, the calcified Trolls, the Argonaths, I could go on forever. Yet, it has often been my experience that journeys in RPGs fall short of this. Often in spite of procedures. I don’t have any solutions… yet. In this post, I will describe some thoughts I’ve had about travel in roleplaying games.   Picture by Frank Winkler , used with permission. Where is the fun? For the most part, I’ve experienced travel roleplay in roughly two forms. One is basically a quick summary of “what happened” as the party went from A to B, with varying degrees of descriptions of the landscape. The other is the h

In this post, I’m going to discuss the most prevalent game mechanic that nobody seems to talk about.  The most important game mechanic in roleplaying games is not about dice rolling and target numbers. It’s about how we share information - the conversation where we describe and act on the world we present. I haven’t landed on a name for it, but I’d like to refer to Chris Engle’s concept of “verbal analysis” - more on that later.  Image by  Pexels , used with permission.

I’ve been running and playing in various 2400 and Into the Odd games lately. These are two games that exist in the rules light part of the roleplaying games spectrum. Both games are quite ruthless in their approach to combat. 2400 doesn’t have combat rules per se, but offers a catch-hall saving throw rule. Into the Odd famously has auto-hit with some damage reduction based on armor. I've got some thoughts about both games. Illustration by Richard Duijnstee , used with permission.