Friday, April 26, 2019

Castle Nowhere & Other Game Invites

So, if you read this blog you might have gotten a vague notion of how my games go. But perhaps you wanted to experience the content first hand, in the new campaign that will start up soon™
Like, probably within the 2-weeks to a month range. Not that there's a deadline for showing up to check things out, but as a quick rundown of how I run games
  • West Marches Style- Games happen when players come together to schedule one and I am available, no set times, no set groups, no obligations to uphold, just play if you can and don't if you can't.  Playing catch, not joining a baseball team. You can just show up to like, read old campaign notes and session logs and then leave I ain't even care
  • That said I am in rocky mountain timezone and get up and stay up late so that does put some limitations on when games that I run can be. Games tend to be in the 3-6+ hour range, though arriving or leaving late/early is no problemo 
  • Text-only, on Roll20, with a supporting discord channel that's mostly for scheduling, planning, and OOC banter. The discord channel is what the link to the right goes to, and from there you can find pinned roll20 join links and so on
  • I could probably do a voice channel, but voice would always have ta be the secondary thing to text on account of needing to be accessible for the deaf, mute, and room-mate afflicted.
  • As some interest was expressed in PbP by some players, there may be a play-by-post channel for those unable to participate in any live text sessions even accounting for.
More details on this campaign specifically
  • Game will be in BFRPG, but I like things from the GLOG and Into The Odd and The Nightmares Underneath and pretty much have the 1e AD&D books open in front of me every session so, y'know, it's not quite 'BFRPG' and more a general haze of osr and blogosphere sentiment in which content from anywhere can be dropped in without much issue
  • Game is set in the Moonlands, in a hamlet around a time-looped megadungeon, the estate of the titular Castle Nowhere. It will be very dungeon-heavy initially because that's where all the prep has gone to, but hexcrawling is naturally on the menu for a change of pace for those wanting a break from the Castle Nowhere estate, and the Castle Nowhere estate IS full of nobles so you can naturally expect quite a bit of politicking to naturally come about if you engage with that. The Moonlands are a bit alien compared to standard fantasy due to the lack of seasons and day/night cycles but no homework is required, and I have no objections to continuing the campaign past the initial main focus of Castle Nowhere to exploration of the rest of the setting should this campaign prove to be the one that stretches on into infinity instead of reaching a natural conclusion (or a sad, whimpering petering out)
  • Tonally, thematically, etc, this has elements of the Gardens of Ynn and Castle Gargantua(many thanks to the indubitably tasteful and noble-spirited individual who tipped me patreon monies so that I could purchase some fun products to spice things up)mashed into a procedurally generated megadungeon with themes adjacent to 'Gormenghast' and 'Enter The Gungeon' and 'Undertale' but filtered through my brain and as such probably pointless to even mention. But then there are my own setpieces that will recur in each procedurally generated iteration of Castle Nowhere, and side-levels which are not procedurally generated, to provide direction and structure to add some anchoring structures to the sea of unpredictability. 
So yeh. There are at least 2ish newcomers and 4ish old guard currently, which is certainly a functional party-and-a-half, but definitely smaller than what's required for the west-marches rotating roster I seek, so a couple of occasional guest stars, semi-regulars, or rabidly obsessed lunatics could really kick things up a notch on account of how people have different schedules.

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