Josh’s Tumblr Blog

Mostly gaming related stuff https://linktr.ee/bigjdunham

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Tolkien Celebration 2019 – Adding to the collection As stated yesterday, I'm going to be playing and teaching Tolkien-themed board games at McMenamin Kennedy School's annual Tolkien Birthday Celebration…

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Tolkien Celebration 2019

So McMenamin’s hosts an annual celebration for Tolkien’s birthday. The event is happening this year on Saturday January 12th at the Kennedy School. This year I will be part of a cool little team that will be teaching and playing Tolkien-themed board games from 11am-3pm that day. I’m very excited! Below is the list of games that I will be bringing to the event.

Games that I will bring that we can…

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Project Recreo - First Playtest

Project Recreo – First Playtest

Featured Image is Droid Market by Cristi Balanescu

Playtesting or Will this Hold Up to Actual People Playing

Last night I had my first playtest for Project Recreo. First off thank you so much to my friends who were willing to take a risk and try something new that’s coming out of my head!

This playtest had me as the GM, and 3 players. I gave a brief synopsis of the world and the heritages (based…

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Project Recreo - GM Actions & Wound Levels

Project Recreo – GM Actions & Wound Levels

Featured Image is The Invitation by Leighton Tsai

GM Actions (or how NPCs do things)

While in the shower this morning it came to me finally, thanks to input from other voices, that the GM should not be doing any card drawing in this game for actions. Maybe the GM can draw cards for other reasons, but for most of the things players will be doing or reacting to, the GM should not draw cards….

So…

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Project Recreo - Magic, Take 2 #NaGaDeMon

Project Recreo – Magic, Take 2 #NaGaDeMon

Featured Image is Spellbook by James Schofield

So I fell down in another wiki hole recently and realized that the mythos behind Alpha Omega was actually rooted in occult history of the 19th & 20th Centuries, and then adapted to a futuristic setting. It had me thinking maybe I should use a tarot deck rather than a standard playing deck for action resolutions. Not sure though…

I fell down the wiki…

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Project Recreo - Pregen Characters, Part 2 #NaGaDeMon

Project Recreo – Pregen Characters, Part 2 #NaGaDeMon

Evoluu Shaman

Abilities & Aspects

Mental 2 (Acuity 3, Willpower 3)

Physical 1 (Agility 2, Stamina 2)

Spiritual 3 (Nature 5)

Skills

Cunning (Basic)

Detection (Basic)

Espionage (Basic)

Natura (Advanced)

Ranged Weapons (Basic)

Survival (Advanced)

Vehicles (Basic)

Powers

J – Commune with Nature (when casting next Animal Spell, increase your Natura Skill by one level)

Q – Muscles of Steel (gain one…

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Project Recreo - Pre-gen characters for play testing, part 1 #NaGaDeMon

Project Recreo – Pre-gen characters for play testing, part 1 #NaGaDeMon

Featured image is Laying Low by Maik Beiersdorf

I finally have a name for this project (rather than just #NaGaDeMon), at least to use through early playtesting. I’m going to call it Project Recreo, which means resurrect in Latin. Thank you Sue, for your input!

This article though is going to outline some of the pre-generated characters I’m going to use in the early playtesting sessions. Here’s…

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Magic or scientific mysticism?!?! #NaGaDeMon

Magic or scientific mysticism?!?! #NaGaDeMon

Featured image is Grand Armillary by Emilio Grasso

I want magic to be very different in this game. As the game is set in a science fiction setting I believe it needs to execute differently than the spell list, spells per day, etc. form of magic as exemplified in the world’s most popular RPG. The title of this article gives some semblance of how maybe magic could be defined in the future. But how…

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Setting the mood - art inspirations #NaGaDeMon

Setting the mood – art inspirations #NaGaDeMon

Here is some artwork that I feel sets the right tone in atmosphere.

Final Check by Ismael Inceoglu Ketevan Dji (mutated) by Sikarbi Possession – Tinkering by Riana Moller Across The Divide by JM-Henry Heavenly Warrior by lonefirewarrior Through the Breach by daRoz Portfolio Slug by Fealasy

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Heritage traits #NaGaDeMon

In determining how I wanted to handle heritages; i.e. different options for base Abilities, Aspects, and Skills, I determined I need another way to give uniqueness to each heritage tradition. So in comes Heritage traits. Here we can add some additional factors that can’t be summed up in other places. And here is my initial list of ideas:

Humans

One free piece of equipment

Humans can gain…

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Layout - Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? #NaGaDeMon

Layout – Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? #NaGaDeMon

Okay so I was just starting to think about layout once I get to the point of compiling all these disparate thoughts into one tome. And I was like hey what’s the best way to start off the book? I’ve seen it done many different ways. My instinct, because this is the type of gamer I am, is to have the world building text up front. I really love reading the cultural and historical framework for a…

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#NaGaDeMon - What’s in a name?

#NaGaDeMon – What’s in a name?

I’ve been mulling over what the name of this project should be. I’ve been playing off the Alpha Omega name. I like that it is using a theologically derived name that honestly can play really well in a supernatural post-apocalyptic setting. Also I was thinking having a name that could also be useful if the system is adaptable to other settings. I also decided that I should use names from either…

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#NaGaDeMon - Powers aka special card effects

#NaGaDeMon – Powers aka special card effects

Back in my Character Basicsblog entry I talked a little about Powers (what I initially called talents). Powers are special effects that will trigger based upon specific cards being present when the final draw of a test is determined. This means that Powers will not trigger until successes are being counted, and the specified royal cards had not already been discarded. A PC will have 3 Power slots…

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#NaGaDeMon - Action Economy

#NaGaDeMon – Action Economy

“I roll to hit”

“Again?”

“Again. I rolled a 14.”

“You failed to hit. Again.”

In thinking about combat I wondered if there was a way to incorporate more diversity of actions, than what combat seems to boil down to in the end, “I roll to attack…” so I thought what if I could incorporate using some sort of mechanism that would encourage players to try different things throughout combat, and I came…

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#NaGaDeMon - Skill List (Take Two)

#NaGaDeMon – Skill List (Take Two)

After looking at my first attempt at a Skill list, and then after reading through some other games’ skill lists, I decided it was a good idea to scrap that first attempt. And try something new. This one is going to be inspired by the original Alpha Omega RPG skill list, which I think really is a good start for this game. So here’s how it looks to start with:

Academia(history, sociology, theology,…

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#NaGaDeMon Combat, or how do hit someone

#NaGaDeMon Combat, or how do hit someone

“Why’d you him?”

“Because I was tired of talking.”

For combat I’m in a dilemma. I’m debating options on how to handle combat. So here I’ll lay out the options and you can debate which will be best.

Both options have these in common:

Armor (that can resist that type of attack) absorbs/blocks wounds equal to its Armor level, i.e. Armor 1 will absorb 1 wound, which means that wound does not hit the…

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#NaGaDeMon - Skill List

#NaGaDeMon – Skill List

This is the beginning of a master list of skills. I want them to be broad enough to cover a good solid chunk of knowledgeable data, but not so broad that they could be misconstrued to be used for anything. You know, the Goldilocks zone. “Not too hot, not too cold, just right.” I feel this section is gonna be tweaked a lot through play testing. So here goes with draft one:

Combat Skills

Hand-to-Ha…

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