Friday Night Daydreams

Friday Night Daydreams

Woke up and jotted down some gaming notes. Found monsters I like for the upcoming Shadowfell Exodus or as the Thursday Night Gamers are calling it, Shadowfell Oregon Trail. The process reminds me of looking at the Monster Manuals when I was 14, reverently reading each entry, daydreaming about how I’d use them in a game. I can still remember borrowing Rob’s copies of Monster Manuals 1 and 2 and his Fiend Folio; I remember that his Monster Manual 1 had no cover. Odd, I can see that coverless book so vividly.

Shadowfell Oregon Trail

I am digging Cawood Publishing‘s Monsters of the Underworld and will likely make use of Monsters of the City: Sins & Virtues when they eventually reach Gloomwrought. I am still very much a sucker for monster manuals and these are fun bits of world building and monster design.

Cawood Publishing books mentioned above, as they sit on my desk.

There’s an idea that needs marinating inspired by Blades in the Dark‘s Entanglement’s tables, starting out as 1d6 but adding d6’s, up to 3d6, as the Shadows grow long. The idea crystalized for me when I realized what I wanted the 18 result to be. Also, notes for things moving, sometimes randomly and other times at the whim of Fell Powers, out there in the Shadowfell on the map creating chaos. While I’m at it, I should probably think about my Context, Cool Shit and Consequences.

Map of the upcoming exodus to Gloomwrought
Spears Subject Divider
From: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1916.1789

Mothership is a published adventure, so I am perusing and digesting that over again during this week off. Slowly moving to get a game going with my dad. I showed him the following and he said the first two spoke to him most. We’ll make a character this week, I hope.

I need to write something about GMing published adventures rather than running from personal notes. It really feels like a different muscle all-together. When it works it feels like running with support and having room to move and improvise within a well wrought structure. When it doesn’t work, for me, it feels like homework in junior high school.

Spears Subject Divider
From: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1916.1789

I went to bed fairly early and woke up in the middle of the night. Now it is more Saturday morning than Friday evening but I’ve got ideas for the dragon-slaying D&D-houserules-turned-game project that has been on my mind since Jay mentioned that he had not ever encountered a dragon as a player at the gaming table. Those notes are dangerously close to being playtestable.

My artish hobby that began with getting the Affinity Art Suite for a birthday gift a few years ago means that sometimes I start making images for games or book-covers for books long before those games/books/vague ideas are ready for it. Speaking of which…

Dragonslayers twitter pic: DRAGONSLAYERS: There is a beast that embodies all that is wondrous and fell in humanity. It rules over your people, using its power to feed an unquenchable greed. Slay it.

Jay‘s going to hunt some dragon before 2022 is done.

How is your gaming going? What are you working on? What are you daydreaming about?

These designs and more in my Threadless shop – t-shirts of all kinds, mugs, stickers and even shower curtains…

Blog of Judd Karlman from Daydreaming about Dragons

Daydreaming about Mothership: The Wonder/Horror Balance

Daydreaming about Mothership: The Wonder/Horror Balance

Trying to figure out a time to meet with some friends online and do some science fiction role-playing. We’re looking at Mothership and it made me think about that delicate balance between horror and wonder.

Mothership Character Sheet
https://www.mothershiprpg.com/

That character sheet! I want to roll Xenoesoterricism to figure out what an alien techno-priest was thinking about the universe 10 thousand years ago and I want that understanding to mark my character in unexpected ways. I want my character to turn strange through their travels, if they manage to survive.

Sci-Fi Subject Divider

Sure, there are big corporations in space and corporations are only there to make money for their shareholders. I get it, corporations are sociopaths, but I also want other successful ways for humans to organize – communes, co-operatives, labor unions, libraries, tribes (that are NOT shitty combinations of some white guy’s imagining of American Indigenous Tribes and Bedouin and Samurai thrown into a blender) and other things we haven’t seen yet or modes of social power that we have forgotten. Is it a coincidence that the closest we see to a labor union in science fiction turns its members into space-fish?

Space Guild from Lynch’s Dune
“WE WERE NEVER HERE.”

What wonders would navigators witness from their math-wombs while bending space? I’m getting distracted by Dune, always a danger when talking science fiction. Where were we? Wonder and horror…

Yes, to firefights on space station corridors and aliens so very alien that they hurt our brains but also moments of beauty and wonder. Show us moments where the alien temple is framed against the nebula or where scientists share their data about a lost civilization. How about some moments of connection across oceans of space and otherworldly evolution.

Scientists I have met get that gleam in their eye when they start talking about their realm of study and what they have found and hope to find. Sure, we’ve got to pay the mortgage on this ship but if we find new glyphs on this asteroid we might be able to piece together an alien language.

Sci-Fi Subject Divider

I want my horror balanced with wonder and my pessimism balanced with hope.

The sci-fi gamer friends are e-mailing back & forth – figuring it out together. Hoping to do some round-robin science fiction GMing. Maybe this will be our first adventure?

What we Give to Alien Gods, our first adventure?
https://lonearchivist.itch.io/alien-gods

Right about now some science fiction nerds might drop a, “You can’t take the sky from me,” bullshit but as Jim prophesied a decade ago during one of our many campus walks during a lunch break:

“Firefly ended before Joss Whedon could REALLY fuck it up even worse.”

Jim DelRosso

Looking forward to getting together with friends and hitting that Discovery vibe – PEW! PEW! PEW!, science, friendship, found family, cool-ass ships, cosmic catastrophes, starships slowly becoming sentient and alien civilization’s archives.

As Captain Michael Burnham said:

Captain Michael Burnham: “Lets fly.”

https://githyankidiaspora.com/mothership-horror-sci-fi/

These designs and more in my Science Fiction Collection…