ரமணன்

Sometimes you read a module and think, “this should probably have just been a novel.” Only Patrick was brave enough to drop any pretence and just write the novel. It’s interesting to read knowing its roots. I can spot what would have been dungeon factions, NPCs, random table of weird talking doors …

COMBAT

Watched the first few episodes again a few months ago. Some of it is a cringe for sure, it feels like a product of its time, but it’s often so great.

Also Christina Hendricks guest star spots on the show are amazing and she’s smoking hot.

I'm collecting thoughts on Metroidvanias in Tabletop and curious on your thoughts.

How can you replicate that experience? Is it just a Megadungeon? Can it work?

Posted about it here: papercult.club/thread/663/m...

Likely to be a long form blog article at some point.

This comic looks fantastic. Low fantasy nonsense that’s what I am talking about.

I'm too old to have any emotional investment in Pokémon, I was 16 when the original games came out, it's not really something I have any real connection with. But (!!) I love that there are two different versions of this book with different Pokémon. That's some top tier shit.

Save vs. Total Party Kill - 4th Edition D&D My friends and I played in a 4th Edition campaign that ran for 3 years, give or take. Once it came to a close I continued playing 4th Edition D&D at the Encounters public-play events organized by Wiza...

I played it for several years. It's good in that it got me back into D&D, but that's really the best thing I can say about it. Wrote about it on my blog: save.vs.totalpartykill.ca/review/4th-e...

I'm obsessed with a dead game from 1996 YouTube video by Questing Beast

How have I never heard of this card game where Brom did a ton of the art! :o

That high life.

The Apostate Dragon Shall not Prevail - Trench Crusade (Plenary Indulgence Translation and Lore) YouTube video by scannerbarkly

This was written by an actual ex-trappist monk. You can find the translation here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF0C...

The OSR gets a brief shoutout in Sam’s recent video about designing a wargame. I’ve been enjoying listening to his videos about game design. Great stuff.

The last page of the book is this art piece, with hand drawn art and calligraphy, all in Latin. Looks to be the church calling out the armies of hell. 🤘🏾

Trench Crusde has what looks to be a great Mordheim inspired campaign system, and some pretty meaty scenarios, another fun hallmark or Mordheim. And then we come to the end: some words the man himself @tuomaspirinen.bsky.social, and some pretty epic Paul Bonner art! So good!

The Great Sultanate of the Invincible Iron Wall of the Two Horns that pierce the Sky is one of the cooler factions, what I had thought about grabbing before being a basic bitch and picking Heretic Legion minis.

What! I need to go back and look at the quotes. Who did the writing?

I’ve been re-reading the rules since it’s nice to read them in hardcopy and it’s been a while, currently at the Sultanate war-band, so will make it to the back page … soon.

There are 6 factions, but numerous sub-factions. This fellow is from the Stosstruppen of the Free State of Prussia. New Antioch gets the most sub-factions with five.

Warband creation rules and unit lists make up the later half of the book, and feels quite similar to Mordheim in style and presentation. Here, New Antioch can take a single Trench Cleric, who costs the warban 60 ducats to recruit. They have access to a unique risky action, God is With Us.

Something I didn’t discuss in my review is how units activate. Alternating activation, they mayb perform each named action (move, shoot, dash, etc) once. So you could move, shoot, and dash to cover. Dash is a risky action, so you must roll to attempt it, your turn ends if you fail. Quite dynamic.

I’ve read all of these rules digitally already. The PDF version of the rulebook is free, and has a different layout that suits the digital format.

www.trenchcrusade.com/rules/

I am a fan of the approach Trench Crusade takes with its rules. The entirety of the game is summed up over three pages, dubbed the core rules. This is followed by a more detailed explanation, that aims to cover all those edge cases you may encounter. Even the comprehensive rules are fairly short.

Oh that's a great idea. That turned out great. :o

Hex Kit. It’s the greatest of all time. By Cecil Howe, who did the tiles. cone.itch.io/hex-kit

Thanks I tried my best. Also some oil wash to to some heavy lifting. 😂

Thanks! I really like them. Want to buy and/or kitbash more units.

We are a little over a hundred pages into the rulebook and we haven’t seen any rules—very much in the vein of Games Workshop’s rulebooks. We do get a Graham McNeill short story, though.

The Trench Crusade minis are amazing. The demons are Kingdom Death levels of creepy.

I actually was speaking to her about how she ended up approaching it. Such a weird one!

Session 6 HexKit map.

In session 6 of Mythic Bastionland the players had to go questing for items to fix The Wheel of the seasons. They also encountered The Colossus along the way.

This issue is particularly good, check it out!

I know, I know, I keep talking about the Bloggies.

But I built an archive of all the past Bloggies Awards. If that's your kind of thing, take a look!

You can also grab yearly OPML files of all nominees for your RSS reader.

bloggies.org