The Adventure

The team traveled to the Trombie region. While there, Scrabble tried to cultivate contacts in Trombei (meta: as a downtime activity). Scrabble cultivated a contact with someone in the streetsweeper’s guild in Trombei.

The team then went and stayed in Ponte Norde just north of Trombei. They were hired by the city guards to stop a weird cart that was going round and round through the square. The adventurers noticed dead animals and Scrabble said it reminded them of when they dealt with goblins before (meta: session 01).

The Adventure

Armed with knowledge of where the trinkets came from, the adventurers went to the cave to explore and investigate. As they looked around, they saw that one direction seemed to lead to spiders. Since Ghada was afraid of spiders, they went south.

There they found an underground lake and Scrabble used his unseen servant magic to bring a boat from the middle of the lake to the shore where the adventurers were waiting.

Continuing my recent spate of posts documenting my evolving thoughts on TTRPGs as I learn more about the hobby, I wanted to share my thoughts on people playing older releases of TTRPGs. As I’ve mentioned this week (and previously) I started off with D&D 5e 2014. For the beginning of my time in fandom all I ever heard was that a lot of the greybeards thought that D&D 3.5e was the last good edition and either kept playing that or moved on to Pathfinder 1e (which was based on it and has been nicknamed D&D 3.75). Tainted by thinking about this in the same way as software, I thought this was like people who were still using Windows 95 or MS Office 2003 because they refused to learn the latest interface and hated dealing with change.

The classic TTRPGs like Pathfinder and D&D (along with 5e fork Tales of the Valiant) have at least 3 main sourcebooks. (See my previous post about expanding those options) Many newer systems like Daggerheart or Cosmere have only one book that contains both player and game master sections. On the one hand, it’s nice to just have to buy one book and have everything all together - there’s often a lot of overlap in what content is for the player and what is for the GM. That said, in a previous iteration, Pathfinder had all the information in one book and people complained that the book was too massive.

I love using FoundryVTT to play TTRPGs online and I have played many game systems. Which one has the best support in FoundryVTT? Click through to watch the video and find out.

I created the video found at the end of this blog post to explore the topics of cultural appropriation, Orientalism, and a lack of Japanese creators involved in the creation of the Obojima D&D 5e campaign setting. It was inspired by a post on Bluesky which contained a link to a series of articles on the topic which I read about 2-3 months ago.

As someone who is relatively new to TTRPGs (~3 years at this point, give or take), I first started with D&D 5e 2014. Before I could buy too many adventures or campaigns, D&D 5e 2024 came out. So, in my mind, a TTRPG should have 3 core books containing all the species (formerly races), classes, subclasses, monsters, and so on needed to play. Then, in 2024 I heard about the 5e fork Tales of the Valiant. If you’ve spent any time on my blog recently, you know that we’ve gone all-in on Tales of the Valiant, and haven’t really played D&D since. But I thought it was weird that Kobold Press started doing kickstarters for Monster Vault 2 and Player’s Guide 2 and were adding new species/ancestries in The Labyrinth Worldbook. “Well,” I told myself, “D&D has been around for 50 years. It’s had time to establish itself. Maybe KP needs to just put these books out now?”

Silver and Lead by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After 2 books (and a bunch of short stories) about our main characters’ lives in the “fey Matrix” we get what is essentially a book-length epilogue. Most of plot deals in fall-out from things that happened during the time period of those books (4 months, I think). In that sense, the book turned out both both interesting and disappointing. What was interesting was indeed seeing the fallout - both mental/psychological and also what some characters did which drives the plot forward. What was disappointing is that we don’t get to see much character growth or advancement of the main plot - whatever it is Amandine’s line is supposed to do to “save fairy” or whatever the Roane foresaw that made Titania and/or Eira kill them all. Also disappointing ( and especially to my wife) was the appearance ONCE AGAIN of a certain villainous character; they just keep coming back and it’s getting a bit ridiculous.

Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I said it in an update and I’ll say it again: the most speculative fiction part of this book is that they’ve been through multiple rounds of COVID and people are still wearing masks and using apps to be considerate to others.

I’ve been reading Neal Stephenson since the last 90s when first read The Diamond Age and then Snow Crash. Stephenson (who might still be, but was at least at one point member of a group called something like the Long Time Society) blends his most enduring elements in this book: a long view of history, skewering of the excesses of American culture, science fiction that is often just a little bit further in the future, and characters that are clearly the modern descendants of golden age science fiction characters. To tackle the last point first, one of the notable qualities of those SFF protagonists in the 1930s and 40s is their competence and their use of logic to reason their way through issues. It makes those old books a bit stiff to read in modern times, but Stephenson adapts the idea well to our modern sensibilities.

I grew up in the days of Nintendo vs Sega. But that’s not the only rivalry I’ve been around. There was also Emacs vs Vi/Vim. And Windows vs Linux vs Mac. Basically, anywhere there’s a choice, a huge swath of humanity takes the stance that whatever they’ve chosen is the only good choice and every other choice is bad or dumb. But not everyone! Time and age have taught me that whenever there’s a bifurcated choice like that, it’s often because each is catering to a different need or way of thinking that appeals to enough people to sustain an alternative. With that in mind, as I’ve moved beyond my original TTRPG (D&D) and explored other options, I’ve seen that each publisher seems to have certain strengths. In the spirit of putting something positive out there in the world, here is what I think each publisher does best: