If you are signed up for GROGMEET and are not a Patreon*, you’ll be able to sign up to the available RPG sessions, next Monday 10/10 at 21:30. You’ll be sent an email with the links embedded.
Doors open at 10.15 for board games hosted by our friends at bonhomiegames.uk
RPG sessions are running from 12.00 – 4.30 and you can pick one from the final list below:
ACTUNG! CTHULHU
Operation Twitcher: 1938, American Explorer Richard Byrd is quizzed by the Nazis about the South Pole, he informs the British and American governments of the Nazis interest but no action is taken at this time.
1942, reports are received of strange phenomena in the far South Atlantic. Richard Byrd now an Admiral in the US Navy is called in by the admiralty to brief a select team of marines and scientists on dealing with with the Antarctic conditions.
GM: Katherine Simmons-Smith
BOOT HILL 3rd edition
Matthew 12:43: Wild West Role-Playing Game, one of TSR Inc’s forgotten gems. Boot Hill is a game of grand adventure in the American Frontier; a world of cowpokes, gamblers, sheriffs and gunslingers. I’m going to run an original adventure based in the official setting Promise City.Matthew 12:43
GM: Ian ‘Doc’ Griffith
RUNEQUEST
Assault on Lunar Outpost XIII: A team of Humakti Ducks have formed a death squad to claim a strategic stockade in the hills of Dragon Pass. With Orlanthi companions, they seek to negotiate the eviction of the current denizens, a band of trolls lead by the feared Uzko, Ugrham who has been raiding tribes in the region. Force maybe necessary.
Can the outpost be secured before the Lunar army returns to reclaim it as its own?
Using the ‘classic’ RuneQuest second edition rules.
GM: Chris ‘Dirk the Dice’ Hart
D&D 5e
Trouble Shooters: Rumour has turned to action in the city streets now, as your guild finds itself under attack. There can only be one Thieves Guild in the city, so the time has come to put an end to this insult. As the Grandmasters ‘troubleshooters’ you have been tasked by him personally, with finding these upstarts and putting them down, permenantly. Lets hope your combined talents are up to it.
GM: Tim Brittain
GANGBUSTERS
The Lexington Hotel: 1933 G-Men celebrate the nabbing of notorious Public Enemy Number One Al Capone for tax evasion. Meanwhile in Lakefront City frustrated Federal Agents strike upon using cons to rob Al Tolino’s crooked books from under the City Kingpin’s nose while he hosts his daughters wedding at the swanky mob-owned Lexington Hotel.
‘So you want to join the Alliance eh? A Rebel’s life is not an easy one. Ill-equipped, outnumbered, hunted, and with no refuge. Rebels must constantly battle the forces of the Empire. But the Rebels hold little chance for victory. The Empire’s reach is nearly boundless, its power overwhelming.
Even so, all across the galaxy, courageous people like you enlist in the Rebellion, determined to halt the spread of Imperial tyranny. You must join the Rebel Alliance. But how? Where? When?”
This is a modified version of the ‘Rebel Breakout’ adventure from the 1987 edition of the Star Wars RPG core rulebook, but using the 1996 ‘revised and expanded’ 2nd edition rules . The adventure is designed for 4-6 players and I’ll provide PC templates to get us quickly into the action. So draw your blaster, ignite your lightsaber, and jump into the cockpit of your battered X-Wing. There’s Imps to be battled.
Stolen Moments: Duke Avan Astran of Old Hrolmar needs adventurers to help him uncover an ancient Melnibonian tomb. An adventure set in Vilmir with a noble man whose obsessive interest in the Bright Empire may get him more than he bargained for? Your chance to adventure in Michael Moorcock’s young kingdoms. Be a nomad from the weeping wastes, an agent of chaos and invoke Arioch himself to intervene in your adventure, or even a crippled begged from Nadsokor. Demons, mad sorcerers and even madder gods await you.
GM: Judge Blythy
Dirk
* Patreons have the chance to sign up a week earlier, as their support has helped to cover the costs of the event and the production of the ‘zine that every attendee will get to take away.
This is quick reminder that we’ll be taking the numbers for the ‘zine we’re launching at GROGMEET (12th November). If you want a hard copy then you’ll need to register at the Patreon site with a $3.50 plus level backing before the end of September.
PDFs will be available to all backers, but I think you’ll really enjoy having the real thing.
Here is a hint of what you can expect:
This week I have received a FANTASTIC cover, exclusively designed by a very, very special artist from back in the day. There’s further artwork on the way from great professional artists who have contributed to the ‘zine.
The GROGMEET Games Masters have made special contributions about the games that they are running at the event.
There’s an excerpt from the memoir we wrote before we did the podcast, that covers the very first game we played and our struggles to find other players.
@dailydwarf explores the delights of the White Dwarf small ads page
SAFE WORD – a FATE accelerated scenario set in the world of Jerry Cornelius, with a personal mix-tape for every single copy of the ‘zine, which one will you get?
A special short story from a best-selling author
A special ‘Collected @dailydwarf’ supplement featuring the collected works from the podcast so far.
much, much, more!
We will be printing a copy for every Patreon above $3.50 from the 1st October, every attendee of GROGMEET, +20 copies for friends, supporters, contributors and personal use.
On Saturday evening, I hosted the first Patreon, Online Grog-Club in the den under-the-stairs. Supporters at the $5+ level, who were interested in playing, were drawn from the beret to participate in a Runequest one-shot.
When Rick Meint’s compiled the OSR Bundle for the Classic Runequest Kickstarter campaign last year, he included a never before published adventure, written by Greg Stafford.
The Sea Cave is an unfinished, brutal, zoo-type cave crawl. There’s some innovations built into the design of the complex: the way into the caves is affected by the Gloranthan tides, the players can choose to sail into the flooded caves or walk in during the low tide; also, the denizens of the cave have distinctive relationships with each other.
Despite its limitations, I liked some of the unusual encounters described in the supplement and thought that it would be a perfect, one-shot introduction to the mixed group of players invited to the session. Some of the players were old hands, who knew Runequest and Glorantha very well, others were returning after a long hiatus, while for some it was their first exposure to the delights of the system and place.
It was cracking fun, with tense, spectacular moments, plenty of atmosphere and laughs, lots of laughs.
Here are some of the highlights:
1) Ducks!
Now, regular listeners to the podcast will know my opinion of ducks, but I was struck by the idea of creating a Humakt duck death squad just for the fun of it. Maybe I’ve been reading too much T&T.
Meet the team:
Brandi Coot – a wily bird who tried to be one step ahead of the opposition with great tactical acuity, using his giant turtleshell shield as to protect the team and using it as a makeshift life raft.
Purple-Eye – the broody one that skulks in the shadows with his two swords trying to convince Mal Hard to break his geas and use ambush tactics.
Moor-Hin – He’s adept with his griffin bone javelin and very tenacious. Very tenacious.
Mal Hard – the burly, healer who is tough enough to wield a bastard sword one-handed. He proved a crack-shot with the self bow too.
Rudi Blue-bill – The shortest and most eager to please, with the sharpest eye and skills with a throwing knife. His knife ‘BAK’ will return to the hand of the thrower on a whistle. Ducks can’t whistle.
2) Clackneed
The only human in the team was a survivor of our Borderlands campaign. He had been wandering around the grantlands and Horngate with Daine’s sword. He is on the cusp of being a Rune Lord, so is heading to the Sea Caves to help him realise his ambitions.
He has raised the army to help Bryn Cor, the head of the fishermen, to rid the coast of a mysterious creature terrorising the fleet during the twilight catch.
He’s named Clackneed because he needs clacks. He became a mercenary to raise himself from poverty as an outcast.
By the end of the adventure he was Clack ‘kneed’ as every blow seemed to strike his legs. He was grateful of the support of his duck army!
3) The Sea Serpent The opening scene always carries the risk of being a damp-squib or a TPK. This one was almost both. It was extremely damp as it began on board a boat.
A couple of the ducks chose to push the boat along through the water, to get them to Corflu before nightfall.
The ship was attacked by a sea serpent, knocking some of the crew off their feet. Clackneed lost a limb (not for the last time). They all resisted the demoralising rattle to its tail.
The excitement came when Moor-Hin impaled the creature with his javelin. As the stricken creature plunged into the depths of the ocean, the plucky bird went in pursuit of his precious griffin-bone javelin. Deeper and deeper. He gripped on to his weapon and eventually managed to pull it out, before returning, coughing and spluttering to the surface.
4) The players are the thing …
Eddy consulting the rulebook – still disputing the fumble rules after 30 years of playing together.
It’s always great to meet new players and this group bounded in duckdum very quickly as they rallied around the hapless wannabe Rune Lord.
Ruddi – “Clackneed?”
Clackneed – “What? I’m busy.”
Ruddi – “WHISTLE!”
5) “There’s a Wyrm? How are you spelling it?”
It was ambitious to run this as a 3 hour one-shot and it proved too much.
They faced a dramatic encounter with a mermaid water spirit who was initially threatening the characters with her Wyrm, before revealing that the Wyrm is her enemy and she wants it destroyed.
There’s going to be an extra session to deal with the Wyrm.
Brandi Coot declared, “A worm? Who’s afraid of a puny earthworm?”
Cue my Harryhausan sound effects echoing through the cave and the collective headsets.
to be continued …
6) We’ve joined a select group.
There must only be a handful of people in the world who have been in these caves. The brave pioneers are proudly listed at the front.
The next Patreon, Online Grog-Club is due in February 2017. See the Patreon page, where details will be posted nearer the time.
I don’t want to appear like I obsess about these things, but it has already reached more hits than the previous couple of episodes about That Other Game (TM) put together* It demonstrates that there is a great deal of latent affection for Tunnels and Trolls from the UK GROGNARD community.
There have been many supporting comments via social media to0, from people who have shared our retrospective appreciation for the influence that T&T had on their formative years of role-playing. If you listen very closely, you can hear the sound of middle-aged men’s aching bones creaking as they reach for the loft ladder to reclaim their battered gold box from the attic.
For those who do not have an edition sealed in aspic, they’ve wanted to know how they can get their hands on a copy of the game to discover its under appreciated charms. The latest edition of the rules is available via drive thru , the Delux Edition, which was produced following a successful kickstarter by the oldest surviving RPG publisher Flying Buffalo. Unfortunately, hard copies are hard to come by in the UK, although I understand there maybe copies about to be distributed to FLGS.
DOORSTOPPER
It’s a striking production for those of us who are familiar with the 5th edition gold box, for this is a thick, perfect bound, book with mock-marbalised pages and fully illustrated with familiar images plus new artwork, notably Steve Crompton’s maps. The same team that put the game together over forty years ago are still working on the game: Ken St Andre, Liz Danforth, Jim ‘Bear’ Peters and the publisher Rick Loomis. There is a sense of continuity as they are still actively playing the game. There’s also extensive input from fans from the T&T community too.
As I fluffed about in the potted history section, the real joy from this version of the rules, comes from the sidebars, or call out boxes, featuring sage wisdom about the game and a running commentary about how this version compares to other editions.
An example of the wonderful, sage advice in the side-bars
They acknowledge that the combat system is simple, perhaps simplistic, so there are some elaborations included here that I like, such as SPITE damage that makes it possible to score a point of damage if a 6 is rolled. The rules for berserker combat are good too, allowing a character to give up their ‘adds’ in exchange for exploding dice re-rolls. There are times back in the day when I’d like to have thrown myself at a crowd of orcs wailing and screaming.
There’s sort of bestiary included in this edition too, with descriptions of ‘ill kin’ such as Hrogrs (ogre), and the racial characteristics of some of the main monster races. There’s an entertaining debate about the moral relativism prevalent in the 21st Century and the difficulties creating opposition in the world of equal opportunities for monsters.
TROLLWORLD
The book also provides elaborations and embellishments that have been developed by players and lovers of the game, including some notable characters and the Trollworld setting, which is described with examples of how the people and places have evolved during the gameplay. There’s an infectious enthusiasm built into the way that its written that really encourages players to discover and invent for the game themselves:
Any scenario, any piece of fiction or nonfiction can be mined for inspiration, from Sherlock Holmes to Kipling’s Mowgli, from classical Greece to the African veldt. Anything can be adapted with a little work and imagination on your part. Don’t stop at the tunnels! There are countless worlds beyond the dungeon.
GROG POD II
In the next part of the GROG POD episode I interview Big Jack Brass (Jon Hancock) about his experiences of playing T&T, where he makes the point that the editions co-exsist with each other. Part of the charm of this edition and earlier versions is that it happily lets you decide whether are not to apply a new innovation or not. There’s a WIZ attribute as an alternative to spending STR when casting spells, but if you don’t want to use it, that’s ok, carry on as you were. Character Sheets are provided, but if you’re happy to keep using index cards that’s ok too.
Also in the next part we’ll be looking at solos for T&T and there’s one provided here. Abyss provides an opportunity to put a dead character through the wringer to see if it can live on and return to play. It might persuade Blythy that resurrection in some circumstances can work, however he’s going to be less impressed that the spell names remain daft.
If anything, DING-A-LING looks even more daft in a fancy cursive font.
Don’t let them put you off, otherwise you’ll be missing loads of RPG fun. –Dirk
Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls is nominated for a DRAGON AWARD – help your fellow delvers by voting for it – find the details here:http://deluxetunnelsandtrolls.com
* I’m going off page views of the web site here, I haven’t worked out how to measure the feed yet.
The first episode had a painful birth, but I eventually managed to squeeze out the Runequest file on 7th August last year.
INSPIRED
My internet presence began as a lauded Anonymous Work Blogger who lost out on a prestigious Guardian Award (judged by Bruce Sterling, no less) to a prostitute in 2003. Since then I have had various projects that come and go, some more successful than others. When began to seriously to get back in to the hobby in 2010, I held the desire to translate it into something…
Originally we had conceived an e-book of our memoirs of playing games back in the day. I don’t really have a voice for radio, I’m a hesitant, low talkin’ slow talker, but I love listening to podcasts and have been listening to them for a long time, so I really wanted to make one of my own.
My podcast inspiration came from RPG Gamer Dad who was a fellow gamer from back in the day who was trying to rediscover the hobby that he left behind. His podcast is currently on an extended hiatus, but the candle that burns twice as bright, burns half of long, and I urge you to go back and listen to his back catalogue. He has a sense of wonderment and excitement about the hobby that I can never hope to reach. Thanks to RPG Gamer Dad, I was introduced to the rigorous approach of Mr Jim Moon’s Hypnogoria, a podcaster who takes care to research his subjects and present them from the position of subjective authority. Finally, the most important influence on theGROGNARDfiles is the late, lamented Word Podcast, hosted by Mark Ellen and Dave Hepworth who are veterans of the UK Rock magazine scene, who adopted the tone of two old duffers in conversation, sharing anecdotes and opinions on how the world of music was changing.
Of all the crazy projects that I’ve initiated, the podcast has been the most rewarding as it has put me in touch with so many great people, a whole network of gamers that I never really knew existed. The greatest element is getting feedback and the stories of people going up into the attic to recover the games they used to play back in the day.
CURATING THE MIASMA
Our Patreon campaign has reached another goal which unlocks something for backers only: a fortnightly digest of media consumed by The Armchair Adventurers. This was an idea directly stolen from Ken and Robin Talk Quickly About Stuff as it is a feature that they offer, however it’s going to be more like the “Something for the Weekend” e-zine that Word magazine circulated weekly, pointing out interesting corners to explore in a world where you are constantly bombarded with ‘push notices’ and links.
The Armchair Museum is a newsletter that handpicks 5 – 6 interesting, entertaining and unusual things that catch our attention, with pithy comment from us. Pith, we have a lot of pith.
Books, films, music, magazines, TV series, adverts, apps, stationery, and anything else in an eclectic mix tape made just for you.
The first one will be released in September and in a ‘try before you buy’ it will appear here. The rest will be for Patreon backers only.
BEYOND THE FIRST YEAR
I’ve been asked a number of times “What’s your plan to keep going in the long term?” The number of old games is finite, so the format we’ve adopted has the potential run out of steam. Don’t worry, we have enough fuel in the tank to keep us going at least for the next 12 months. We’ve got interviews, campaign specials, DVD commentaries and lots more games to come. The podcast will keep coming while it’s still fun and not a chore.
Thanks for backing, commenting, reviewing and plain old listening over the past 12 months… here’s looking forward to another 12! Dirk
This episode includes odds n’ sods, Old Scroates and Points of View about AD&D.
Introduction 00.15
Dirk muses over the ridiculous, complicated numbering strategy adopted by the podcast and introduces Ric and Tim, the stars of this part of the episode.
Old Scroates (Part 1) 04.15
It’s not a proper theGROGNARDfiles episode without a cheeky mention of Runequest. Tim tells the story of playing with John Quaife, contributor to White Dwarf, back in the day.
Potted History (Part 1) 15.17
The original story of D&D.
Old Scroates (Part 2) D&D Tales 25.04
Tim and Ric share their experiences of playing D&D with reports of games they have played.
Potted History (Part 2) 36.29
What happened to D&D during our deep freeze.
Old Scroates (Part 3) 40.31
Tim and Ric address some of the issues that have been raised in our AD&D episode.
Post Bag 01.02
Blythy joins Dirk as we rifle through the bag of holding to pick out some interesting points of view. Please be aware that your head may rattle when the Demon Overlord appears.
Outro 01.28
Updates on the latest news from the Patreon projects. Please note that contrary to what is said in this bit, GROGMEET is not taking place 10 years ago.
Thank you to all of our supporters and listeners. If you get chance, please pop a review on iTunes. Thanks Dirk.
Here at Dirk Towers, we’re currently beavering away over the first annual ‘zine that’s due to be launched at 