This Week: Stardew, Do or Dice & Too Many Campaigns!

Welcome to This Week, a 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 gotten back into Stardew Valley. I'm not really sure why I stopped playing, to be honest, but I never finished it. I decided to start again, from scratch, and using the new starting farms (I went with the forest setting). I'm focusing on fishing, and I'm instantly transported back to how relaxing that game is. More so than Minecraft, I feel myself just in a state of Zen when I play it!

(Image from GOG.)

What I've Made

My Ameshirel: A World Reforged snippets continue to go smoothly, and I'm getting some great questions and feedback on them. I'm really excited to keep sharing information about the world with everyone, and I will continue to release out more snippets. One thing, however, is many people I've spoken to are unaware of the other snippets I've released... So I thought I would just post them all again as links here, and will continue to do this as more are added for ease of reference and finding them.

1. On the Nature of Dwarves,
2. On the Nature of Orcs,
3. On the Nature of Elves.

I'll probably be posting about Humans next, and discussing a little bit more about the concept of a Scofflaw, which is central to the setting (at least, that which faces the players).

(Image from William McAusland, used with permission.)

Speaking of which, Do or Dice, the system I am writing to go along with Ameshirel: A World Reforged, is coming along nicely! Recently spurred on by a discussion from Vincent Baker about concentric game design, I've been thinking about the rules in a different and more interesting way, and I think it might be getting close to sharing time. I'm not sure how yet that will work - whether I will do a closed ALPHA, or if I'll just post it here and see what comes back in... Needless to say, I'll keep everyone in the loop about it!

What I've Run

...lots, to be honest. Firstly, I started a campaign of Curse of Strahd which I mentioned last week. We had our first session, with a modified werewolf starting hook, leading into Death House (which hasn't happened yet, so players of mine don't click that link). I'll be posting a full write-up of this first session later this coming week, but needless to say it was pretty spoopy. Perhaps 2 spoopy.

(Image from The Githyanki Diaspora)

Then, on Saturday I ran the first public playtest of Blackpowder & Bloodlines! It's the first time I've had LARP rules I've written be shown to the public and played - and, to be honest, torn apart. It was great to see in action, and everyone enjoyed themselves. We gained a hell of a lot of data, and the game is going to be much better for it. We just need to figure out exactly how much (or how little) of this game will be a battle game!

Lastly, earlier today, I ran the first session of a silly little RPG I wrote called Slugball, Sorcery & Secrets. I've spoken of it before, but it's a game about wizards in high school who are forced to do extra curricular sports - slugball - on weekends. Oh, and they solve crimes in a very Scooby Doo meets Buffy meets Harry Potter way. As I said, the premise is weird... And frankly, the gameplay was weird too. The test answered a lot of questions, but gave rise to a hell of a lot more. But it was a lot of fun! Everyone enjoyed it, and had a great amount of feedback to give. I'll be working on version 2 of it soon, and once I test that (and if it performs better) I'll be releasing it!

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.