Cypherize

I'm really digging the new Cypher edition. I can't wait to get my hands on all the books and other goodies, but the PDF of the player guide is certainly enough to get my mind racing about the possibilities. I'm not saying that I would or should do this, but after reading that PDF, I feel as though I could convert my last two campaign settings -- Shattered Realm and the venerable Druid Cycle -- from Fifth Edition D&D to Cypher. All campaigns and settings linked by a common ruleset? And all characters, locations, and other elements recorded in a single spreadsheet? It's a tantalizing prospect...

32 Wolf Man

We're getting close to the end of this phase of the boys' Shattered Realm campaign, in which their high-level characters are undertaking a mission to help save the Druid Cycle world from a multiverse-level threat. In the penultimate combat of this storyline, the heroes needed to crash an evil queen's military rally, rescue some hostages before they could be executed, and obtain the magic item neeed for them to help their compatriots in the Druid Cycle world. Matthew's elf rogue manage to shoot the queen with his bow in the first round of combat, but the real challenge was saving the hostages, who were out in the open in the middle of the town square with enemy soldiers closing in on them from all directions. 

Enter...32 Wolf Man!

Nathaniel has long been toying with combat tactics focused on conjuring large numbers of creatures. He's been referring to this idea as "32 Wolf Man," because, using a ninth-level spell, he could conjure a ridiculous 32 wolves at once. And that's exactly what he did in this situation. Wildshaped into an earth elemental, Nathaniel's druid burrowed under the town square, popped up from below ground, and conjured this army of wolves around the helpless hostages. Now forced to hack their way through these two fill rings of celestial beasts, the enemy soldiers were delayed long enough for the heroes to figure out an exit strategy in which they retrieved the magic item from the queen's body and got away with as many of the hostages as they could.

Cypher Musings

With a new edition of the Cypher System on the way this summer, I thought it would be interesting to reflect on how it's worked out in Front Porch campaigns over the past year. The first thing to note, however, is the small sample size. To date, we've done one in-person Cypher campaign (Vanguard Saga, with three players) and two email-based campaigns (another Vanguard Saga storyline and the revamped Torchlight, each with one player); compare those numbers to decades of D&D -- Druid Cycle, Shattered Realm, and so much more. That said, I think I have enough experience with Cypher to make some general observations about the rules and how we're using them. 

The most important point is that I'm very satisfied with Cypher as the default game system for the Front Porch multiverse. It's fast and easy, very flexible across genres, and well suited for narrative games. Long-running campaigns like the Druid Cycle setting will always be D&D, but at this moment I can't really imagine starting a new campaign that didn't use Cypher. My upcoming Vesper project, for example, is going to be our test run for the new Cypher edition.

So what else have I learned about Cypher from a year's worth of gaming? Below are some observations about how the experience at our table differs from the rules as written. 

• Back when I was just getting started with Cypher, Matt suggested a minor house rule to help ensure that ranged attacks at close range were not unequivocally superior to melee attacks. This house rule has worked out very well.
• In our family Vanguard campaign, Nathaniel created an android speedster whose many ways to ease Speed defense rolls has made him virtually untouchable by conventional attacks. Not everyone is out there trying to break the system, of course, but Nathaniel showed that even with a system designed by the best of the best in the gaming industry, it's quite possible to build unbalanced characters. 
• To help address the aforementioned problem, I created a house rule that enables certain low-level characters (such as troops who are part of a unit) to "gang up" on a single target more effectively. Nathaniel's android still runs circles around everyone, but at least now he has to be wary of large groups of foes taking aim at him all at once.
• No one remembers cyphers. I know it's supposed to be a big deal in the Cypher System, and it's right there in the name of the game, but cyphers still feel like a clunky add-on and not a core part of the game mechanics. 
• I love coming up with nasty GM Intrusions when players roll a 1 on their d20 checks, but all other GM Intrusions feel forced. When should something be an Intrusion rather than just a regular challenge for the PCs to overcome? Maybe I should think about Intrusions as "optional" encounters that players can either take on for the XP, or pay XP to avoid? Well, I guess, but that leads me to the final point...
• Players only use XP for advancement. In Cypher, players can spend XP for rerolls, for Player Intrusions, to avoid GM Intrusions, etc., but in practice, I've found that players don't use XP for any of these things. Only once -- and quite memorably -- did a player spend XP on a Player Intrusion, and that was when an NPC's life was at stake. Similarly, I think we've only had one or two instances when a player spent XP on a reroll. I guess it's nice to have these options in your pocket, but our experience is that players hoard XP for advancement. That realization, of course, has changed how I hand out XP; when players don't use it for all these other purposes, I have to slow down the XP rate or the characters will advance too quickly.

What changes will the new edition bring? I'm eager to find out. Here's to another year of Cypher gaming!

Blind Shot

We had quite the epic moment in our Shattered Realm campaign today. The champions of the realm were responding to an urgent call for help from some of their closest NPC friends, and they arrived to find a beloved community besieged by army of ogres led by a hideous, hunchbacked hag. When the ogres breached the town gates, the heroes rushed to hold back these monstrous foes, but the hag herself perched upon the walls and bedeviled them with spells. Nathaniel's ranger spent most of the battle stunned (although his loyal animal companion proved to be quite an effective tank in a pinch), and Matthew's rogue was blinded more often than not. During one turn in which the rogue was blind, he nevertheless managed to fire a crossbow bolt that not only hit the hag high atop the wall, but scored a crit. It wasn't the hit that defeated this foe, but it was an absolutely absolutely legendary shot that we'll always remember!

Gratitude

These days, I'm especially grateful for the opportunity to spend time with my family. We had a quiet weekend at home, and free time enough to play all three active campaigns: the revived Shattered Realm campaign with Matthew and Nathaniel, the Zoom-based Druid Cycle game with the boys and their cousins in Michigan, and finally the Vanguard Saga campaign with the boys and Amy. Any weekend we can get together around the ol' RPG table is a blessing.

Campaign Crossover

The boys wanted to get back to their old Shattered Realm characters, so I cooked up a bit of a campaign crossover with the upcoming Druid Cycle storyline. It's been fun to revisit so many fun Shattered Realm NPCs and locations!

Torchlight 3.5

As I've probably shared in the past, the Torchlight campaign setting -- originally known by the more evocative title Woden's Gallows -- was my submission to Wizards for their big contest to create a new D&D setting. (Ultimately, the winner was Eberron. How could anyone top magic robots?!) I'll call that one Torchlight 1.0. 

A few years later, I ended up using Torchlight as the setting for a couple of early 4e campaigns, one in-person and one chat-based. This world was not a great fit for 4e, however, because of the new dragonborn and tiefling PC races introduced in the PHB for that edition. Incorporating those races and their cultures into the world resulted in Torchlight 2.0, which I felt was a pretty boring place. It had lost much of its unique Anglo-Saxon flavor. I didn't use Torchlight at all in the early days of 5e, since by that time my kids were  already playing in the Shattered Realm setting. 

In 2020, when we were all spending a lot of time by ourselves for some reason, I decided to resurrect Torchlight. I did a lot of world-building, but it was not system-specific. I scrapped all the D&D 4e nonsense and got back to the setting's roots in Anglo-Saxon poems like The Battle of Maldon, The Wanderer, and, of course, Beowulf. Now I had a great setting again -- Torchlight 3.0 -- but with no real plans to use it in a campaign, primarily because it still just didn't feel right as a D&D setting.

Enter the Cypher System. That was really the (Torch)light bulb moment in which I realized that Cypher was a far better system for this world. It quickly became the default fantasy setting in my growing Front Porch Multiverse spreadsheet that brings together all the (non-Druid Cycle and non-Shattered Realm) campaigns of my gamemastering career. Recently, I felt inspired to flesh out the world even more, adding a whole new continent and hundreds of new characters and locations. It's not a revamp of what preceded it, but there are some pretty big geographical and historical changes, so I'm calling it Torchlight 3.5. I can't wait for an opportunity to bring it to life with players!

Phase 2 Complete!

With 555 named characters, my Front Porch Multiverse spreadsheet is a paltry 41.3% the length of my behemoth Druid Cycle character spreadsheet. Even if I added in all the Shattered Realm characters to the multiverse sheet, the Druid Cycle spreadsheet would still have nearly twice as many names as all other campaigns combined. Wow! 

Anyway, I now have Cypher System levels for all multiverse characters and, for most of them, stat blocks from the Cypher System Bestiary and other sources. All systems are go for the first campaign to use this ruleset!

2023 Goal Achieved

Looking back on the year that was, I could rattle off any number of gaming-related accomplishments. (Yes, granted, it's all recreational, but I view anything I learn or do as an opportunity to accomplish something.) I painted tons of 3D-printed terrain, delved into retrogaming, and ran a Doctor Who campaign that was pretty dang cool, but I think I'm most proud of reinvigorating the Druid Cycle world. Matthew and Nathaniel had played most of their D&D in my Shattered Realm setting, but in 2023, they leveled up to the big leagues. We started one campaign just for them, and then a separate one where their two older cousins join us via Zoom, and in both cases it's been absolutely fantastic. It's like 1998 all over again!

Back to Basics

My boys spent the early years of their D&D careers adventuring in the cozy little Shattered Realm campaign setting. The clock is ticking on their time with us at home, however -- Matthew is already sixteen! -- so I was feeling a bit of urgency to get them into the Druid Cycle world. They're now involved in two campaigns, one with their two older cousins and one just with the three of us. Although the campaigns are set in different countries, both are plugged in to a broader narrative about an impending succession crisis in Troya Nova. It's been a lot of fun to get back to basics in this game world, as I had been focusing on world building for the past several (many?) years; it was awesome to add new characters, locations, and cultures to this world, but I felt that I was shortchanging the "core" that has made the setting so special. It's been amazing to reconnect with the roots of this campaign world and share it with a new generation of players!

Milestones

I ran my first campaign -- Earth Commanders, a superhero game using the Champions rules -- back in the summer of 1988. Although I don't have the specific start date, it was sometime after school ended, so maybe right about this time of year. Today's as good a day as any to celebrate thirty-five years of gamemastering Front Porch campaigns. I'm grateful to all the players who've joined me on this journey and shared their boundless imaginations to bring these games to life. Here's to 35 more years (at least!) of roleplaying fun!

There are a couple more milestones in 2023 that are also well worth mentioning. It's a big year for the Druid Cycle setting. Although, technically, I created this world in 1991 for the Fate of the Grand Duchy campaign (marking the first appearance of Tim W's Lwcus, one of the most important Front Porch characters of all time!), that storyline took place in the early history of the Druid Cycle world. The first campaign set in the "current" time period started in 1993 -- thirty years ago! -- with the rise of Jason's paladin Sir Roberts and Scott's cleric Stalker. If we skip ahead five more years, to 1998, we come to another milestone: the introduction of Tim W's wizard Cathbad and Kevin's cleric Senchan, who both helped shape the course of world events. A big shout-out to Scott and Jason on the thirtieth anniversary of their iconic characters, and likewise to Tim and Kevin on the twenty-fifth anniversary of theirs!

It's fitting, then, that 2023 is the year I brought my kids into the Druid Cycle setting. Why did I wait so long? Well, when the boys started playing D&D six years ago, I used my Shattered Realm setting for something a bit smaller and less complex than the Druid Cycle world, and they grew to love their characters so much that we just kept going in that world. Now I feel the time is right to get them into the big leagues, so to speak. Their first introduction to my largest campaign setting came a couple of months ago when we started an online campaign with their older cousins in Chicago. However, I have something special up my sleeve just for Matthew and Nathaniel: a second game in this world that will be a true sequel to the original 1993 Druid Cycle campaign. As the late lamented Sir Roberts might say, "Bring it on!"

What's Next?

The boys are inching closer to the end of our Tales of the Ternion superhero campaign. Well, not the end, but the climax of the current story arc. This campaign has really exceeded my wildest expectations, and it's been an absolute joy to weave together all those old modern-setting Front Porch campaigns from the '90s into something like a single narrative that fits neatly within this multiverse. I have a follow-up campaign planned out that will take place during the same timeframe and involve some of the same characters, but that game requires our 3D terrain, and, well, we all know that I haven't made too much progress in painting it!

So, what's next? Matthew asked me yesterday what's on tap for after we finish this phase of Tales. For the first time in a long time, I don't have the next thing lined up. I anticipate we'll wrap this storyline around Christmastime, so I'll get a bit of a breather as the boys and I devote our time toward some of their awesome gaming-related gifts. But what is the next campaign? I have to admit that I'm not terribly motivated to cook up another long-term adventure in either the fantasy or sci-fi settings of the Shattered Realm universe and would much rather get the boys into the Druid Cycle, but they know little about that setting and don't seem especially eager to dive in at this point. I get it -- the Shattered Realm stuff is what they know and love. 

Meanwhile, I've been buying and painting Doctor Who Exterminate! miniatures as that wargame line nears the end of its lifespan. I'm looking forward to playing out some cool "what if?" battles, like Cybermen vs. Ice Warriors, or a Time War conflict of Gallifreyans vs. Daleks. But hey, since I've got all these great minis, why not use them for a roleplaying campaign too? Dare I try my hand at a Doctor Who storyline? It feels almost like sacrilege for me to approach that setting, but I would dearly love to get the boys interested in the Whoniverse. So, I'll put on my thinking cap (a fez, of course) and see what ideas start to grow...

So...many...buildings...

We've made a lot of 28mm-scale buildings with our 3D printer. A lot. The intent is to use all this 3D terrain for modern-setting campaigns in the Front Porch multiverse. For example, our Tales of the Ternion superhero campaign currently uses flat maps, but it's just crying out for a more dynamic environment to host all the larger-than-life action of characters who can scale walls, leap over buildings, hurl vehicles down the street, etc. I'm also knee-deep in narrative for a spinoff campaign that involves a zombie outbreak in a sleepy little town. With scores of zombie minis from Zombicide, the vast array of 3D buildings we've printed, and custom hero minis from Hero Forge, it's going to have absolutely blockbuster visuals! 

There's only one problem: I have to paint all this stuff!

Looking at the gargantuan pile of gray plastic in the corner of our game room actually fills me with anxiety. First-world problems, I know, but I'm kind of freaking out about how long it's going to take to paint these buildings. I'm also looking for any excuse to put it off, so various other paint projects keep moving to the head of the line. Just yesterday, in fact, I received the latest free mini that comes with my Warhammer+ subscription; it's a chaos sorcerer (with a bevy of cute-yet-evil little familiars!) for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, but I'll repurpose it for our Shattered Realm D&D campaign. After that? Well, do I have any other unpainted models besides the buildings...?

Hot Off the Presses!

The image isn't great, but Matthew has made a successful test run of our first custom-designed Hero Forge mini that we've printed on our own 3D printer. 

We took what we learned from the Hero Forge sample mini and created a more streamlined figure that requires fewer supports and has fewer skinny appendages that would easily break. I can quickly shave off the stringy filament residue and have this mini ready for painting in no time, in stark contrast to the hour it took me to carve the previous mini out of her plastic scaffolding and then re-assemble her broken parts. 

This generic helmeted trooper will work great for our futuristic Shattered Realm campaigns as well as our current Tales of the Ternion superhero game!

Should've Played the Lottery Today

During today's futuristic Shattered Realm adventure, I saw something I hadn't seen in over thirty years of gaming: Eight consecutive rolls of a 20 on a d20! Between attack rolls and saving throws, Matthew (four) and Nathaniel (two) combined for six straight 20s. We then paused the game to see if we could keep the streak going. Matthew rolled a 20 and then another one, and only then did the streak end. Matthew calculated that the odds of that streak were 1 in 25,650,000,000!

One Giant Headache

The boys and I switched back to D&D after completing Blackstone Fortress, looking to move our Shattered Realm campaign forward prior to taking another hiatus when we begin Cursed City later this month.

When last we left our intrepid Shattered Realm heroes, they had just liberated that eponymous realm from the grip of hostile invaders from the Empire of Letavia. The heroes then worked with the disparate communities of the realm to forge a new, unified country -- hey, it's no longer a shattered realm! -- and Nathaniel's sagacious druid Vabaran was elected as one of the fledgling nation's leaders.

We picked up the storyline a year later (in game time) with the arrival of a Letavian ambassador requesting that the heroes come to their capital city and meet face-to-face with their new queen, the eight-year-old daughter of the king whom the heroes had defeated and captured the previous year. Although suspicious, the heroes journeyed to distant Letavia and negotiated a non-aggression treaty with young Queen Aveta, but they remained steadfast in their refusal to return her imprisoned father because of their concerns about the empire's warlike culture and bloody history. Among other things, they had learned that much of Letavia's wealth came from a civilization of giants whom the Letavians had annhilated centuries earlier. 

Despite lingering doubts about the long-term prospects for peace with imperialistic Letavia, Nathaniel was pleased that he had led these efforts to broker a pact between the two nations. Of course, since I'm the DM and I love a good plot twist, it can't be that easy. 

During a brief coda to the aforementioned adventure, the heroes visited a cloud giant to whom Matthew's rogue Sisen owed a debt for inadvertently damaging her cloudtop palace (it's a long story, and, yes, magic beans were involved). While paying off the debt, the heroes happened to mention that Letavia was now in a weakened state and ruled by a child. This cloud giant, old enough to remember the harm inflicted upon her people by Letavia ages ago, immediately vowed to rally her fellow giants and embark upon a war of revenge against Letavia.

What now? Will the heroes help their former (and possibly future) enemies, even if it means risking the wrath of the giants and putting their own young nation at risk?

Druid Cycle Matrix

For years -- see this blog post from almost exactly seven years ago! -- I've wanted to create a spreadsheet to track all of my Druid Cycle campaign information, such as the names of people, places, etc. The sheer scope of the project put me off, despite having created similar spreadsheets for my Shattered Realm and Torchlight settings. The truth is that Druid Cycle is bigger than everything else put together, with threads that go as far back as 1991. That's thirty years ago, people!

I've been chipping away at a Druid Cycle spreadsheet for a while, and now I'm pleased to report that I've completed a first draft. As of this writing, there are 742 named characters, 67 groups, and 342 unique locations. What's next? Lots of review, for one thing. The stat blocks are a major issue for this review. Every non-immortal NPC in the character list, no matter how minor, is tied to a stat block from the Monster Manual or another D&D reference book from the current edition of the game. If he's got a name, he's got a stat block. However, I'm not entirely confident that the characters are "ranked" properly. The flat math of Fifth Edition really compresses the power curve between the least- and most-powerful characters (especially compared to the previous-edition-that-shall-not-be-named), but I still need to be able to show meaningful distinctions between the abilities of characters. I'll also need to deal with the game's most prominent characters, for whom generic stat blocks just don't work. I'll probably create full-fledged character sheets for the likes of Cyfrinach and Iskander, but that's a project for another day.

Heroes of Saltmarsh

In June of 2019, after wrapping up our long-running Shattered Realm campaign, our Skype D&D group (Matt, his daughter, my boys, and myself) created new characters and began to play through the Ghosts of Saltmarsh D&D book. Over a year-and-a-half later, we're about to embark upon the seventh and final adventure in that volume. To commemorate this epic campaign, Matt commissioned an artist to create illustrations of the four PCs.

Without further ado, I give you...the heroes of Saltmarsh!

How cool is that?!? From left to right, we have the triton hexblade Vlaryn, the dwarf barbarian Moe, the lizardfolk monk/rogue Seven, and the fallen aasimar sorcerer Ciara. A truly great party, now memorialized in artwork!

Full Circle

Matt and I have been exchanging emails about superhero RPGs, and it got me thinking about my first true RPG love, Champions. Long before the Druid Cycle world, long before the siren song of AD&D lured me into TSR's clutches, I was a dyed-in-the-wool Champions fanatic. In fact, the original Front Porch campaign -- one of only two that was actually conducted on my parents' front porch -- was Earth Commanders, which employed the delightfully fiddly Champions system to tell a tale of cosmic superheroes based (where else?) in Montreal.

Earth Commanders got me hooked on gamemastering, but my favorite Champions memory is unrelated to Front Porch stuff. Decades before taking part in the D&D Fifth Edition playtest, I was a twelve-year-old kid who somehow managed to get access to playtest materials for Champions and related HERO System products. I used to dial up a BBS (remember those?) based in Texas, and, as my parents fretted their long-distance bill with every bit that trickled through my 1200 baud modem, I downloaded drafts of HERO System books and read them with a kind of awed reverence. One day, I mustered the courage to email a fan letter to prolific game designer Aaron Allston -- a fixture on that BBS -- and he sent me a very nice note in response. (Sadly, Allston passed away a number of years ago.)

I think it's high time to share Champions with my own kids, so I've ordered a copy of the most recent edition of the game. With our Alien RPG campaign starting up again soon and our ongoing Shattered Realm stories to continue, I have no idea when we would actually play this game, but it certainly will be fun to share all my old stories with the boys.

Headshot

It was a tough slog, but the champions of the futuristic Shattered Realm defeated their monstrous foes and saved the solar system! Here's a shot of Nathaniel's hero Demorus, who used his jet pack to fly up above the uber-beholder and finish it off with a final devastating blow!