Our Game

How did things go?

Before heading to Archive 404, Jaedana wanted to go visit the temple of the deity she worships: Zon-Sheylin. The temple was painted in a rainbow color on the outside and experimental jazz was playing inside. A Pahtra accolyte, dressed as an anime character (with fake human ears on a head band) welcomed her in and invited her to do sacred coloring and then sacred paintball to center herself.

Our Game

How did things go?

The Trio was contacted once again to do a job for the city. This time they had to go to Theology Channel for the parade of all the religions. Nitpick was given the task of setting up speakers, Vorza had to setup security bollards, and Jadeana had to do some of the organizing of the event. Vorza was suspicious and set up one of his bombs hidden in a jackfruit at a certain location. A little after the parade started, some mechanizers started shooting into the crowd and at the party. The group was unable to successfully disperse the crowd so they panicked and fled, trampling Jadaena during their escape. Eventually they were able to kill the attackers and, a short while later, anacite protectors arrived - having been sent to the wrong location. Investigations of the mechanizer comms paired with this information from the anacite protectors made the party much more suspicious.

Our Game

How did things go?

The party started off by trying to hack into the charging station from the lobby. There weren’t really any ports there for them to interface with. They then wanted to go up the elevator, but the warning about the effects of the Aballon Sun up there deterred them. Satisfied that they had taken all the precations possible, they entered the main area. There they were greeted by Shalalamula (a seksevariak) artist who enjoys using mind-altering substances to enhance his worship of Triune. Nitpick, the hacker witchwarper of the group attempted to cobble together an interface between his comm unit and the professor’s plinth, but it was unsuccessful. He went outside and bought a dongle to convert the different interfaces. Nitpick’s hacking skills failed him and Jadaena was able to help gain access. From there the party was able to learn about Tierny’s suspicions and the fact that someone else had attempted to gain access to his backups. After that, Nitpick opened the chamber and they discovered Tierny’s body and note. After distributing the contents of the commercial null chamber, they did some more investigating. Nitpick tried to hack into the cameras in the room and once again needed Jadaena’s help. They were able to see Tierny enter, but after that the image was glitched.

Our Game

How did things go?

The party started off by going to the vending area and buying some food and medical items. They also found a credstick used for unlimited food from the university’s cafeteria. They then went to the clinic and got some free mods.

Afterwards it was time to head to Club Magenta. The group realized they couldn’t get into the VIP area to see Vazylyza, whom they had a had a lead on as someone who’s spoken to Professor Tierny about First Ones relics. There Jaedana went to the small stakes tables to try and win enough money to play at the high stakes table to perhaps get a chance to impress Vazylyza. Jaedana did a great job and attracted the attention of Lucky Compilation of Numbers, who related that he lost his job after gambling away some First Ones relics in a game with Vazylyza. Eventually, Nitpick hacked the casino systems to make it seem like Jaedana had enough money for a bet at the large stakes table. There he won big and was admitted into the VIP area.

For the last 6 or so months I’ve been saying all over the internet (this blog, enworld, Blue Sky) that the Cosmere TTRPG’s use of the 3 action economy had piqued my curiosity in Paizo’s 2e *finder systems. This last Friday, I FINALLY got to run the Starfinder adventure that I’ve been dying to run for my Cosmere group for the past few months - Murder in Metal City. (Buy it directly from Paizo if you are part of Paizo Plus and want the points OR want to bundle it with the PDF or Buy it directly from FoundryVTT’s marketplace). I have to say that I was not disappointed.

In addition to watching the video below, scroll beyond the video to see some of the questions/answers I’ve gotten on reddit and YouTube as well as some recommended extra videos to watch.

Topics in the video:

• My background as a GM
• The players we had at the table
• Scheduling
• My thoughts on the story aspects of Stonewalkers
• A small section about how “on rails” I ran the campaign
• My thoughts on the game mechanics of the Cosmere TTRPG
• What my players thought about the lore drops and artwork
• How well Metalworks did with the FoundryVTT port

The story section obviously has spoilers that players might not want to hear. If you pay attention to the video (rather than have it on in the background) there will be some spoilers as I have various combat encounters as run in FoundryVTT while I’m talking over those visuals.

As you know, I’ve been running a Cosmere TTRPG playthrough of Stonewalkers, the published Stormlight Archives adventure. I plan on writing a blog post (and maybe making a video) retrospective once we finish the game, but, partially prompted by my players, I wanted to write about some of the ways my players have surprised me over the last 2 sessions.

My favorite thing, both as a game master and as a consumer of actual plays, is when the players throw off the GM with their creativity. I don’t mean in the way that people talk about on Reddit (sometimes positively and sometimes negatively) in which the players go completely off the rails or in a direction that negates the prep work of the GM. My players are on board to tell the story we’re telling together, they just have some really unique ways of solving the problems they are confronted with. (Some amazing examples of the type of player creativity that bolsters the story can be found in the first 6 episodes of Mage Hand High Five’s The Badlands) A couple players have had to drop out, but everyone who remains has chosen a radiant path. As they have tried to make use of their powers we’ve definitely had our share of “yes and” and “no, but” moments. The last two battles have had some of my favorite examples.

2025 was the year I leveled up my TTRPG skills (no pun intended). It started off with my participation in New Game Master Month in February. Kobold Press was a sponsor and had a coupon for the core books so I moved off the free rules and onto the main, published rules. I consumed lots of TTRPG content on YouTube, reddit, and enworld - lots of it focused on being a better GM or a more creative GM. This may have come out already if I published the other end of year blog posts before this one, but TTRPGs ended up eating up a lot of free time and reducing the time I spent on reading, video games, and programming as the year progressed.

It’s been an unusually productive few weeks for me when it comes to blog posts and there have been some updates and social media responses, so I wanted to talk about some of those here. (this isn’t to say that I will always create a post encompassing social media replies, I think they are just especially relevant)

On the 17th I wrote a blog post comparing Game Master / Dungeon Master books across TTRPGs. There were 2 replies worth pointing out. First of all, there was a post by Shades Corvid which confirmed my assertion that Pathfinder did have the Player Core and GM Core as one book in the past, but player demand wanted them as 2 books since the combined book was so huge. Kobold Press also wanted to point out that they consider the GMG to be an optional book. We could probably quibble over the tiniest details on that point, but they aren’t entirely wrong. I would argue that Wizards of the Cost could probably say the same about their DMG. It’s really only Paizo with the history of Golarian in the GM Core that would seem to be slightly less optional for anyone who wanted to play in Golarian.

A while ago I wrote about the need to spend money for each publishing type of a TTRPG “book”. My opinion at the time was that the PDFs should come for free with the physical books and I was annoyed, but somewhat understanding of the need to charge extra for a VTT version of the book. My thoughts have evolved somewhat, so I wanted to write an updated post on the different ways a book could be published and what I thought about it.