Extra – Dirk and Blythy grogMEET Frankenstein (with Ian Cooper and Paul Fricker)

Dave Paterson hosts Frankenstein’s RPG with Dirk, Blythy, Paul and Ian

Welcome to another extra all about this year’s GROGMEET. This time it includes a live recording made at Fan Boy Three.

Frankenstein’s RPG podcast has been pulling together the best bits of role-playing games this year to produce an epic monster of a game. We got together to decide which would be the best supplement to support the game.

You can catch up with the Frankenstein’s RPG over at anchor.

Also in this extra podcast, I give a personal reflection on the games I played and recommend some podcasts that you may enjoy.

I played Paranoia with Iain Wilson, you can catch some of his actual plays and discussion on his podcast Roll to Save.

Pookie makes quizzes and reviews RPGs.

Newt Newport is a publisher D1o1 games and organises Go Play Manchester.

Tale of the Manticore

What am I Rolling (Vurt actual play)

Breakfast in the Ruins (Wizardry and Wild Romance)

Fictoplasm (Corum)

Weird Studies

Gaming & BS

The Gauntlet Podcast

Fear of the Black Dragon

Smart Party (Jason Cordova interview)

Orlanth Rex’s Gaming Vexes

Titterpigs

You can find out more recommendations by following the newsletter on Patreon.

Episode 45 – Review of 2020 (with Dave Morris)

In this episode we review the games that we have played in 2020 – there were so many! During the discussion we cover our experiences of playing Lyonesse, Savage Worlds, Mutant Year Zero and many more. You can see the report on all the games we played by following this link.

Dave Morris joins us in the Room of Role-Playing Rambling and discusses White Dwarf and other projects he’s been involved with over his long career in gaming. You can join his Patreon to support JewelSpider and follow his blog.

There’s a new twitter account for you to follow @theRPGLibrarian follow it and direct mail me if you’d like to know more about the monthly Book Club, starting in Feb.

Follow all of the GROGNARD files projects on Patreon.

Episode 10 (Part 2) More RuneQuest RPG (with Rick Meints)

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INTRO Blimey Charlie! This is the twentieth podcast!

1:53 GAMESMASTER’S SCREEN Rick Meints, President of Chaosium, joins us once again. This time we roll on a special ‘plunder’ table to search his fabled collection as he recounts past adventures from back in the day.

42:08 OPEN BOX Borderlands is Chaosium’s classic campaign from 1982 – we’ve played it twice, once in ’83 and again in ’13 – find out why this is very much our ‘foundational document’.

1.25 POSTBAG We’ve revamped the Patreon campaign – join now and get access to the ‘zine PDF  – also, you can join the Valhalla agents at Convergence

Episode 6 (Part 4) AD&D RPG UnEarthed Arcana

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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.

 

 

 

Episode 6 (Part 3) AD&D RPG Monster Manual

Monster Manual

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The saga continues …

Intro: 0:18 There’s been another review on iTunes. Dirk reveals his love of monsters.

Open Box: 4:37 Dirk and Blythy get all nostalgic about 5e that they started playing 3 months ago.

White Dwarf: 24:42 @dailydwarf has scrutinised every single monster produced in the FIEND FACTORY to pick some of his favourites.

Games Masters Screen: 43:11 In the absence of much discussion about monsters Dirk and Blythy face each other off with a wandering monster table.

Last bit: 1:24 Thanks to Patreons – we’ve been hard at work writing for your ‘zine.

A year on the Grog

I’m sat in the den, packing away the tinsel for another year, because Dirk Towers is saying farewell to the festive period. I’m back at work, serving The Master in return for food tokens, so I’ve begun to console myself in looking forward to 2016.

The first 6 months of the new year look like a veritable feast of gaming with an unprecedented 20 sessions planned between now and June. We haven’t done this much RPG since those heady days of the early 80s.

If we pull it off … if we pull it off … if …

HIGHLIGHTS

The next episode of The Grognard Files podcast will be about Games Conventions in general and Dragonmeet 2015 in particular.While I was there, I got a (signed) copy of Nights Black Agents and I’ve been reading it ever since. The hardback is packed to the brim with resources and enough inventive ideas for you to shake a stake at, but I’ve had a difficultly getting my head around it. I suspect that there’s less to the Gumshoe system than meets the eye. It’s an example of what my English lecturer, Chris Baldick, used to refer to as ‘periphrasis’, in other words, a lots of words to say something very simple.

That said, when I’ve watched actual play demos, it actually seems workable, and I’m looking forward to being the director of a Bourne-meets-Buffy type extravaganza because I think it will suit my style of Games Mastering perfectly.

There’s a great demo-game available for download that will get them into the pace of the action in media res with an exciting car chase emulating the high-powered super-spy genre with great panache.

Night’s Black Agents is an improvised story game that uses the idea of ‘spending’ resources to improve the chance of success for your actions. Numenera uses a similar principle and for most of today, in between nursing a sick child, I’ve been preparing my character, because we’re going to start playing next month with Judge Blythy as the Games Master (or whatever irrelevant variant on the GM title Monte Cooke Games have devised).

It’s ages since I’ve enjoyed creating a character as much as I did making the choices for the Numenera. It’s relatively simple and allows a great deal of flexibility for the player to use their imagination to develop someone that they want to play, rather than being at the mercy of dice rolls.

Zadie Zenokey IV (or Zen 4) is a nano (a kind of Numenera magic user) with the descriptor of ‘Mechanical’ which gives her a great insight into the ways of the Numenera magic. Her focus is flesh and steel, the source of her magic is through ports in her spine and cables under her skin to a cpu on the right-side of her brain and her cybernetic left-arm. Her back story concerns her ancestors who were all but wiped out by a virus, the survivors and subsequent generations developed mechanics to cope with their mutations. Zen 4 has developed a secret order who are seeking the remaining Zenokey so they can reunite.

“DO SOME OLD”

It’s not all about the new stuff. Some of the highlights of the coming months include the continuing campaigns of Fungi from Yuggoth (CoC) and the Aramis campaign (Traveller), keeping it old school.

In February, I’ll be opening the Grognard File labelled STORMBRINGER, Fantasy Role-playing in the world of Elric. Over the past few weeks I’ve been rediscovering Moorcock and hitting e-Bay, filling the gaps in my collection of supplements. I’ve been overcome with an impulsive desire to consume souls, however it seems unlikely that I’ll be sated, therefore I’ve decided that I’ll run a game instead. We have one scheduled for the end of the month.

In the coming months, the Runequest classic bonanza will be released from Moon Design’s epic Kick Starter campaign, marking the celebrations of 50 years of Glorantha. In the podcast we have talked about our group reviving some of the classic Choasium games, so I’m going to continue this endeavour by resurrecting another OSR classic for my group.

On top of all this Armchair Adventuring, we’ve been invited to a marathon session of D&D 5th edition, which is very exciting.

So, as I plug myself into the collective unconscious of work, facing minor disappointments with stoic indifference, I can console myself that there is an escape pod available. As long as the Fun Prevention Officer gives me the key.