This Week: Rebels, Tendrils, Divinity, and Dungeons!

Welcome to This Week, a new weekly series where I discuss all the gaming (both video and tabletop) content I've played, made, prepped, run and seen that's cool this week.

Let's jump in with what I've done This Week...

What I've Played

I've begun playing Rebel Galaxy on the urging of a friend at work, and I have to say: I couldn't be happier with this purchase. It's a space-faring game about mercenary work, merchant trading, pirating, and awesome real-time space battles. It's not too expensive on Steam, if you have the cash to spare - and I encourage you to if you do!

(From thisisXBOX)

Best of all, it's got an amazing sound track that really puts me in the mood to run or play in a Firefly roleplaying game... Maybe more on that later?

What I've Made

In preparation for the final session of Ameshirel: A World Undone (my 2-year Dungeons & Dragons 5th campaign that I talk a bit more about below) I wanted to get some minis together to represent the big bag dude - that being Dominion, the creator of our universe which is an amorphous, transcendent Overgod. Otherwise known as the "Black Morass". Part of its shtick is to send out thought tendrils with which to dominate and destroy...

Sad thing is, I couldn't find medium-sized tendril/tentacle minis that really captured the concept of star-stuff made into the darkness between stars. Funny, huh? No one makes minis that look like nebula tendrils. So I did. A box of green stuff, some basing sand, black paint, dry brushed coats of dark red and purple, then blue ink, then bright purple, then varnish mixed with pink. I'd say they worked out pretty well, right?

(From my terrible camera - sorry.)

What I've Run

Speaking of which, on Friday-night and Saturday-day I ran said final session of Ameshirel: A World Undone. The PCs climbed to the peak of the Temple of the Four (based on Dyson's amazing map), journeyed through its world bending halls to uncover the final secrets of existence, and in the end faced off with Dominion. The PCs became Gods themselves, and through their actions drastically changed the cosmos forever. Now they're its guardians...

(From Amelia Serif, at our table. Apparently I'm casting magic, in this photo. I also tend to GM standing, for some reason.)

And they loved it! We had an amazing and emotional final session, followed by a great debriefing where the players asked me questions that never got resolved, and I asked them how they'd reshape the world around them with their new powers. This is all leading up to a new game I'm intending to run called Ameshirel: A World Reforged set centuries later, and explores how the world has changed for better and worse. I'll be writing more about that soon, so keep an eye out.

Now I'll leave that topic with some artwork made by one of my players - Flick - of her character Noam Chopsky, a Gnome Barbarian, riding her Allosaurus mount "Chomper". She ascended to godhood taking the mantle of the Dragon-God of Victory Clarion, Ever Burning, but instead taking the godly name "The Raging Flame".

(From Felicity, an awesome artist who always seems to LOVE the colour red!)

What I've Seen

I've also had occasion (perhaps too late for Ameshirel: A World Undone, but not too late for Curse of Strahd) one of my players as a parting gift for the campaign bought me the Dungeon Master's Guide! I've never had much use for the book, or books like it, but it's nice to have to complete the set. The sentiment behind it is also definitely appreciated...

(From Wizards.)

Lastly, I discovered, this week the blog Trilemma through my browsing on Google+, brought to my attention by +John Harper. The blog is run by +Michael Prescott and is filled with some amazing content. Most recently, a series of videos on isometric mapping, but previously (and frankly, my favourite) are a stream of 1- and 2-page dungeons! They're posted for free, but if you want to (and you most certainly should) you can support him on Patreon. It's well worth it!

The dungeons are almost perfect right out of the box for a lot of games, and specifically (and coincidentally) for Ameshirel: A World Reforged (so I advise my players not to look closely at any of them). Otherwise, the way they're laid out, it's very easy to print them out and take scissors to them, rearrange from a selection of them, and then fill in the gaps yourself. I've begun doing this with a few that don't quite fit my vision of the campaign, and it's been a blast already.

That's all for This Week this week. I'll talk to you next week, and tell you of all my adventures again! In the mean time, fill your own week with as much awesome as possible.