[Labyrinth Lord] Tomb of the Serpent Kings Session 1 (also MapTool)

[Labyrinth Lord] Tomb of the Serpent Kings Session 1 (also MapTool)

A while ago I started playing with some people on an online server. That was about the time when I decided that I should maybe be playing more often than just GMing. Unfortunately life intervenes a lot, and lately there haven’t been that many games in the main campaign to keep me busy. I am also co-DMing a Shadowrun game lately, so there’s that, but I am missing the OSR fantasy fare. So I decided to run a game on the server, specifically with MapTool, which I have been hovering around for a while, but never actually used. In fact I never used a proper VTT to play, so this would be a first.

I decided to use Tomb of the Serpent Kings for it because it’s nicely done and available for free, and I already had it played before, and Labyrinth Lord as a game system because that has been my basic system for a while (yeah, I never updated to OSE even though I use some of the material for it).

Game Report

The group consisted of 2 elves (Damion and Eltariel) and a MU (Frondo) with his torchbearer/muscle (Big Boris). They originally were rustled up by the local bailiff to apprehend the bandit Wild Man Roberts and his two not-so-merry-men, who were seen digging somewhere at a hillside a short way off.
The bandits were easily located inside a hole they opened in the hillside. This turned out to be a hallway going into the dark, with the bandits lying dead just a short way in. Having determined they were done in by a simple poison trap in the ceiling they decided to investigate a bit further (and do some not-graverobbing) when they encountered sarcophagi with clay statues of snake-men inside. Inside the statues were small amounts of treasure and snake skeletons (turning it to actual graverobbing). Also poison gas.
A large door at the end of the hallway was trapped by a mechanism, which they devised to disable with various methods, giving them access to a larger room with three wooden coffins. Soon enough those turned out to have skeletons of snake-like beings inside that started attacking the newly minted graverobbers. Unfortunately a series of good attacks cost the life of two of the party (both elves), and the unlife of two snakes, while Frondo and his torchbearer took off almost immediately.
Out of sight of the skeleton the two decided to rearm the trap outside and trigger it after baiting the last skeleton into it’s area. The giant stone hammer coming out of the ceiling took care of the last opponent.
Frondo returned to give his companions a proper burial (and loot their bodies), then turned back to civilization to collect the bounty on the bandits.

Notes regarding MapTool

• MapTool worked great until it didn’t. At the end we had some issues when two of us got disconnected while the others still could see things move around. I think I should have restarted the server in that case, but as it was in the very end of the 2-hour time slot we just played out the rest without it.
• MapTool now has a function (marked as experimental) that allows to create a server and connect to it directly from other clients. No more futzing around with port forwarding in this case. Unfortunately maybe not as stable as it could be (see above). Still, the lack of such a function was one of the reasons I did not use the software before, as it would have been too much work to get it running with my network setup. Now that problem is gone, it literally has become a matter of creating a server, having players connect (they are prompted for a PIN), and their computers downloading the media files from my computer.
• Speaking of media files, MapTool allows to use media files from the players computers to use in the game. Those are also added to the campaign file automatically. In fact it even allows to run a remote server where the campaign file is stored, I just haven’t been able to try that one yet. But other than that? Want to have a new token? Drop a picture in the related TokenTool, make a suitable token, then just add it in a folder and use it as you will. Nice.
• I do find the use of MapTool surprisingly convenient. There are a few things that one can’t do in the tool (e.g. animated maps would be nice, but can’t be done in the current architecture), and some stuff that can be done but needs to be configured properly (no one has bothered to create a script framework for OSR games yet it seems), but I have a lot of options to show the players exactly what I want them to see. Still there are a few things that I still have to figure out.
• The dynamic lighting in the dungeon is of course the star of the show. One can add a vision blocking layer and have PCs walk through the dungeon and have them see whatever it is that they have a) lit and b) what they can see. This can make for some interesting tactical gaming where some monster or character can see some things, but cannot see others. I noticed that it also takes a lot of mental strain from me as a DM as I don’t need to track either light or walking order in this case.
• The other thing that helps a lot is the way one can organize a scenario here. Players can generally see 3 layers on the screen: tokens, objects, and background, and they can interact only with the first one. Another hidden layer is present, but is only available to DMs. This is useful, as it allows you to drop information (e.g. attached to a numbered token) at the appropriate places, and just call it up by going over it on the token layer. As it’s hidden it is not actually visible for players, and you can have your whole adventure in there, slowly following along as the PCs explore. Incredibly useful.
• That said, there was an annoying issue with players moving tokens over specific (invisible to them) GM tokens with information, and me not being able to access them then. I think this might have a button that allows DMs to get a hold of tokens under others. but if it has I haven’t found it yet.
• Not every part of the lighting system is perfect though. I still can’t make head nor tails out of elevations and depressions. I don’t quite know what to think about them. They don’t update in ways that I would expect from either. I would for example depressions with a light source inside expect to be lit inside, but they aren’t. The lighting system also takes a little to register someone has updated settings. More than once we got stuck in a place with a newly lit lantern not lighting anything because we didn’t move.
• Doors are one of the things I will have to get into more. It is possible to create movable doors, but how is still a bit of a mystery to me.

Notes regarding Labyrinth Lord

• we were playing by the book, but that might have been a mistake. The game might need to become a bit less deadly, so next time we should use the splintering shield rules, a death and dismemberment chart, and some rule about helmets I should first figure out (stock LL doesn’t seem to have a bonus for helmets
• one house rule I already used for XP is XP for exploration: every new room discovered/mapped gives 50xp
• I do wonder if I should have used Labyrinth Lord or maybe have gone even more minimal with White Box Fantasy.

Notes regarding Tomb of the Serpent Kings

• I already played this one with another online group at the beginning of the pandemic. Unfortunately that didn’t last long, and we never managed to get to some of the more interesting parts of the dungeon.

Note: I did post a previous version of this article on the campaignwiki.org newsnet forum.

The Oldest TTRPG Forum on the Net

Did you know there is an online forum for tabletop role-playing games that has been around since the early 80s, and which still is active and operating?

Admittedly in a much diminished state than at it’s heyday.

I don’t know if you ever heard the term Usenet before, and even if you did, if you don’t just connect it with data piracy. Because that’s what it is mostly used for nowadays.

What it started out as were discussion forums.

Back in the late 70s, after ARPANET had been created and email had been invented, a few programmers came up with an idea for an electronic bulletin board that could be read asynchronously. This was the time when computers still were only in big institutions like universities, big companies, and the military, and the whole idea was to create “a poor man’s ARPANET”. Connections between computers were rare and expensive , but possible. So these “news” started as a way to propagate articles and messages along servers that were not constantly connected to the internet. Some of the servers involved would only connect once a day to the network to transfer messages in and out (often at night because charges were lower then). A message might travel for multiple days before it reached all nodes in the network, and some of the earliest were messages about a nascent hobby popular among the people using this network: fantasy role-playing.

From what I can see the first two messages on the brand new group net.games.frp were sent out on the 12th of January 1982.

To give you an idea just how early this was: it was before the abbreviation RPG became common, people were still talking about Fantasy RolePlaying instead, so even today the group-names use the abbreviation FRP.

It’s quite a fascinating system that over time has become ever more complex and popular, before the ascent of html, hyperlinks, and the world wide web pushed it into the seedy corners of the ‘net.

Instead of having websites, Usenet is organized in newsgroups, and those groups are organized in hierarchies. There are the so called Big Eight that have a certain standard for group creation and posting (e.g. rec. for recreational topics, and comp. for topics concerning computers), and there are others, organized in one way or another (famously alt. which had lower standards for the creation of new groups).

Messages are sent to one or more groups (crossposted), distributed around the network, and people respond to these posts. Interesting discussions and arguments ensue, people get angry, flame wars ensue, other people learn something new, weird in-jokes develop, stuff happens.

All that can be read via archives, the biggest of which is Google Groups, which both is a boon and downfall of the service: Google purchased the old newsgroup archives of DejaNews back in the 90s, and integrated it in it’s Google Groups service. In a picture-perfect example of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish the users of Groups had a web interface that allowed them access to their old newsgroups, access to new groups that only existed on Google, but also allowed spammers to flood the connected newsgroups with loads of unmoderated spam. Spam that recently was quoted by them as a reason to cut the connection with Usenet, bringing this phase of the network to an end.

But Usenet still is running, and most likely will be running as long as there are people willing to run servers for it. But the biggest Usenet servers nowadays are piracy servers that keep the text-part of the Usenet as more of an afterthought. At one point someone came up with a way to use the text-only format of Usenet in a way to distribute data that was binary, i.e. not purely text. And this took over most of the system.

But I am not really interested in that and never was. What I am interested in are the fantasy roleplaying parts of that network.

rec.games.frp.*

I said that the forum has been running since the late 70s, but that’s not quite correct. The original structure of Usenet grew organically from the beginning. People were creating new groups when it suited them and it seemed logical. Which soon caused some hierarchies (specifically the net. hierarchy) to swell with groups that could barely be maintained. In a great upheaval in 1987 all the groups were renamed and restructured.

Some old hands are still angry about it and will bitch about it for days. That also is Usenet.

One can argue that the fantasy roleplaying group has existed since before that time. One also could argue that it only exists since 1987. Which still is older than the World Wide Web.

Usenet is divided into hierarchies, and the frp-hierarchy is part of the rec. (recreation-hierarchy) and .games. sub-hierarchy.

There are currently 11 .frp. groups in that hierarchy:

rec.games.frp.dnd	of course… it’s the hierarchy for Dungeons and Dragons. Always one of the biggest topics of the whole FRP forums this one got it’s own group.
rec.games.frp.misc	for basically all other kinds of discussions about roleplaying games
rec.games.frp.cyber	for cyberpunk systems (e.g. Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun).
rec.games.frp.super-heroes	for superhero games
rec.games.frp.live-action	anything LARP goes here.
rec.games.frp.announce	announcements and news about products go here
rec.games.frp.industry	for all kinds of discussions about the rpg industry
rec.games.frp.storyteller	yes, this was created when the World of Darkness was big enough to demand it’s own forum
rec.games.frp.gurps	For GURPS, this part was created because while never the most popular game, it’s fans flooded the main group with so many messages about builds that it was decided to give them their own place.
rec.games.frp.advocacy	all kinds of discussions about roleplaying games as such and how they work. This is where the Forge came from back in the day
rec.games.frp.market	I guess this is for selling stuff. I have literally never seen a message in there.

Most of these lay fallow right now, with me and a few others being the only ones posting there every once in a while. I do have to admit part of it is because I don’t want to lose the that part of ttrpg history to a random deletion request for non-use.

Other TTRPG groups

The main hierarchies are not the only ones. Most normal Usenet servers carry at least the Big Eight, but most also carry others. The big other hierarchy is alt. (…definitely not named for Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists, all evidence to the contrary…), which makes it easier to create groups. This means there are a few other groups here that might be of interest, if they ever would get someone to post in them. Their structure though is not as organized as the ones in the Big 8.

alt.games.frp.adnd-util	about utilities for playing ADnD. I would say, a general groups for RPG utilities.
alt.games.adnd	for ADnD. I am not sure why this exists, maybe because the main one was too stodgy, or it was created because someone thought ADnD was sufficiently different than DnD to warrant it’s own group
alt.games.earthdawn	for Earthdawn. Remember Earthdawn?
alt.games.x-files.rpg	For the X-Files RPG. Remember that?
alt.games.whitewolf	I guess a group for White Wolf games, which is also already covered in rec.games.frp.storyteller
alt.games.tolkien.rpg	a group about playing in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth

There are also local and language dependent groups around. Many languages and regions have their own hierarchies for exchanges between locals and/or in other languages.

uk.games.roleplay	group for roleplaying in the UK
de.rec.spiele.rpg.misc	general group for discussions of RPGs in German
z-netz.freizeit.rollenspiele.dsa	originally this was an Echo in a mailbox network, by now z-netz. is a small alternative German Usenet hierarchy. This particular one about Das Schwarze Auge/The Dark Eye
pl.rec.gry.rpg	Polish-language group
es.rec.juegos.rol	Spanish-language group
se.spel.rollspel	Swedish-language group
dk.fritid.rollespil	Danish-language group
fr.rec.jeux.jdf	French-language group
it.hobby.giochi.gdr	Italian-language group
hr.rec.igre.rpg	Hungarian-language group
aus.games.roleplay	Australian group

There are more, some of which I might not even find that easy because they are not on the servers I frequent (not all servers carry all groups) or are so specialized they might not be of interest to anyone but locals (e.g. saar.rec.rollenspiele exists, but I doubt many people in Saarland (the smallest of Germany’s federal states) still know Usenet exists)

Ok, ok, but how do you actually ACCESS this Usenet thingy?

That’s a bit more difficult, but not much. It used to be ISPs were all running their own news servers, this was actually the REASON you might want internet access as a private person, but that isn’t the case anymore. Google Groups is also going away, so that’s not a real option.

An easy way to check out what is being talked about on the FRP-hierarchy is campaignwiki.org/news. This server makes it possible to read and post on his own small server via a web-interface. The server is only running roleplaying-related groups, including the global FRP-hierarchy, and a few local ones that do not get carried in many other places.

Another way to access it via web browser is via web gateways. There are a few around, e.g. NovaBBS. There are a few of those around, but they might not carry all the groups (NovaBBS e.g. only rec.games.frp.dnd and .misc, because those are the ones with most activity).

The proper way to use it is of course by getting an account on a news server and adding it to your feed reader of choice. True hardcore users use terminal-based readers like tin or Gnus, but many Email programs like Mozilla Thunderbird allow you to subscribe to newsgroups.

But where do you get a news server?

Well, there are multiple free options (these are all technically text-only, although a few have some basic binary groups that allow pictures):

campaignwiki.org/news	(Switzerland) very small server, focused on ttrpg groups, also has simple web-portal
Eternal September	(Germany) popular free access server with wide range of groups
I2PN2	simple text server
NovaBBS	text server, as mentioned above also has web-portal
Solani	(Germany) server
dotsrc	(Denmark) focused on Danish users
Agency News	(New Zealand) server
Chmurka	(Poland) basic server focused on Polish users
CSIPH	basic server
Open News Network	(Germany) focused on German users
Gegeweb	(France) focused on French users
Hispagatos	(Spain) focused on Spanish users
Pasdenom	(France) focused on French users
NNTP4	(Germany) basic server

Most of these have instructions on how to connect on their websites.

Note: This is a redo of an article I wrote 13 years ago. Originally I thought I could just let that one stand like that, but just briefly reading through it I noticed things had changed dramatically in some areas. So I rewrote the whole thing from scratch.

[Tools] Free Character Portraits Redux

A few years ago *cough*eleven*cough* I made a small post about free character portraits available on the net. As was pointed out to me all of the links on that post are dead by now. And to be fair, 11 years ago it was harder to find stuff than nowadays. Now there are online generators and friggin’ AI art generation applications that were just not there 11 years ago. Back then it felt like there was a sudden dearth of resources after the d20 boom went bust and all those publishers went out of business.

But anyway, I decided to work over that post again and repost it with corrected links:

Wizards of the Coast PC Portraits Archives

A few hundred pictures from the old Dragon magazine. Some good, some bad, very mixed batch. This goes to the wayback machine archive of it because after a long period of hiding them away on their website Wizards finally got rid of the old edition stuff a few years ago.

108 Portraits from Nevermet Press (also on drivethru)

Pretty good ones. I definitely like those. The page says 60 portraits, but it was a kickstarter that went up to 108 in the end, all of them released as Creative Commons

Public Domain portraits

Might be too small for a lot of uses, but definitely free because sourced from old paintings

An addition to the former, with 30 portraits from Diego Velazquez

Well, same as before, but a more unified look

[Tools] Token Tool

There is something to be said about an application that just does exactly what you expect from it. Token Tool is the second of applications from RPTools, who are mostly known for their free virtual tabletop tool Map tool. There used to be a few more tools around they made, but Map Tool and Token Tool are the ones that are left over.

Anyway, Token Tool is a tool that allows you to make tokens for VTTs or maybe to print, from basically any image file you put in there.

It’s what I used lately to make those tokens from lots of public domain sources. It takes the image, gives you an option of various frames you can use (and you can add your own) and lets you zoom in and out until it fits. It’s incredibly simple.

It also does PDFs, by just using the PDFs as series of image files. It is dreadfully useful for such a simple piece of software.

The Fediverse and the TTRPG-sphere

This morning I received the message that WordPress.com blogs now can activate themselves to be available via ActivityPub. Which means they can be followed and commented directly from fediverse applications like Mastodon, FireFish, Pleroma, or any of the other dozens or hundreds applications activated on it.

That’s actually quite cool, I have been on there for a year or so now, ever since that mess at twitter started, and I have enjoyed my time there a lot. Unlike twitter the fragmentation of the whole experience into many smaller communities that can mostly freely interact with each other makes for a very relaxed experience. When I started people claimed that it was not important which server to start on, because you could just follow people from any other server, but let me tell you, having for a local community makes for a stark difference.

It’s not like I disliked toot.community, where I started, but I felt like I was missing a lot of tabletop-roleplaying discussion. And I was right, moving to dice.camp put me right into a community that was talking about the things I was interested in and wanted to talk about. And yes, technically there should be no difference, but there is a local feed and a federated feed on Mastodon, and having access to all those other ttrpg people right there on the local feed did in fact make a difference.

But that’s something I really like about the experience, interacting with people who are interested in the same things as you, who are also interacting with people on other servers that have the same interests, making for interesting clusters of thematically close interest groups.

There are a few other great things about it, which I noticed when I quickly tried out tumblr last week. I was so used to Content Warnings on the fedi for example that I inadvertently stumbled into an area of tumblr with hardcore gore and porn. I got so used to these things blurred out and tagged appropriately that I forgot other sites don’t have that.

Now to be fair, the fediverse is not ideal. There are issues. Instead of a faceless megacorporation now a faceless person with an unknown agenda has your account on their server. And you are dependent on them.

You also can mute and block people, but that does not keep them from responding to comments to your posts, but now you are left out of the discussion.

The whole structure seems much more geared for that smaller kind of network it was before the great twitter migrations happened.

As people have put it: the great thing about the fediverse is that everybody can start their own server, the bad thing about the fediverse is that EVERYBODY can start their own server.

Anyway, there are different services that are available on the fediverse. They all can interact with each other, sometimes to varying degrees.

My main account is on dice.camp, a roleplaying game focused Mastodon instance, but I also have an active Pixelfed account where I share photos I made. Both also can be followed by rss feed, which is neat.

Sometimes I post stuff to KBin or Lemmy, but all of them can be interacted with from my other accounts.

Here’s a short overview of a few apps, all of them have different servers with different target audiences (if interested, check more under fediverse.party):

• Mastodon: microblogging service, the biggest service right now due to the mess at twitter, although has a different vibe
• Pixelfed: image sharing service a bit like Instagram.
• FireFish: microblogging/image sharing
• Pleroma/Akkoma: more lightweight microblogging (often more for shitposting)
• KBin and Lemmy: link share applications, similar to reddit.com
• Bookwyrm: book review app, similar to Goodreads
• WriteFreely and Plume (and, well, WordPress): blog platforms
• Friendi.ca: more Facebook-like interface for the fediverse
• PeerTube: video sharing platform
• CastoPod: podcasting platform

And here are a few ttrpg related servers:

• dice.camp: Mastodon instance focused on ttrpgs
• pnpde.social and rollenspiel.social: German language Mastodon instance
• ludosphere.fr: French language Mastodon instance
• chirp.enworld.org: Mastodon, ttrpg-focused
• tabletop.social: tabletop games focused
• diyrpg.org: lemmy instance focused on making things for ttrpgs
• ttrpg.network: lemmy instance focused on ttrpg discussions
• wandering.shop: sf&f focused, for writers and fans
• warhammer.social: wargamer-focused
• miniature.photography: miniature painting Pixelfed server

There are more. I had a whole list down when I started a year ago, but if you want to check it out, this should help.

Download: PD Token Collection (170+ tokens for fantasy games)

The last few weeks I started getting interested in using VTTs for my next few games. I seem to have slept through the rise of those for the last few years, mostly because my kids were not at an age where playing online regularly was feasible.

So when I was looking for tokens I found a lot of options, many of them free. What i didn’t find though was stuff that had that OSR kind of charm of reusing old public domain sources, which I think might fit beautifully with, e.g. Dyson’s style of maps.

So I went and spent a few hours with Wikimedia Commons and TokenTool, making a small collection of tokens sourced from public domain illustrations.

I also found a few new artists that I should look more into, so even if I never get around actually using many of them I have at least that. I think I need to expand this thing though. It still is missing a lot of the monsters and NPCs I think I might need for my game.

Download: Stuffed Crocodile PD Token Collection (GDrive, 7zip, 18mb)

Note: the map above is the Desert ClanHold from Dyson’s Maps

[Tools] Science Fiction Soundscapes

I just found the youtube channel of Ender4life, who put together some videos with background noises from various Star Trek and Star Wars series/movies. I think this stuff might be really good as a background for any science fiction RPG, or maybe if you yourself want to just relax and pretend to be somewhere in the future.
Some of them are a bit very Star Trekish (ever noticed how these beeps they have don’t show up too often in other places?), but a lot can be used to create a nice Science Fictiony feel.

[Tools] Syrinscape

I liked Syrinscape when I last was looking for a soundscape program. It wasn’t the nicest looking of programs, and it had some bugs when running it over Wine, but it was functional, and most importantly, it allowed for the easy creation of my own soundscapes. So I did. I even had a few unfinished soundscapes ready that I was thinking about posting at one point. I was even in contact with it’s creator and he told me that the new version of the program would be even better. So I decided to wait with posting these extra soundscapes.
Then came the update.
Well, the creator advertised it as a vast improvement, as making it easier and better, and providing even better ways of creating soundscapes for games.
I noticed a few comments lately about the program and how great it is. So I guess it is actually a good program. I wouldn’t know though.

I didn’t have time to check on it though, even though I was aware that the new version was out. Then someone commented on my entry for the Tavern soundset today, wondering how to actually import this thing.
So I checked out the new version.

Some notes regarding this:
Note 1: it now costs money.

Not for the core version. That one has two soundsets and is free; but the soundsets which previously were available for free now cost money. Okay, I can live with that. He wants to make money with a software he put some effort into. And $3.99 per soundset is not so bad. I can’t say anything against that. After all I prefer making my own soundsets anyway.But…
Note 2: it’s not possible to create custom soundsets anymore.

After installing the core version it turns out that the files for the soundsets included seem to be hidden in a file I can’t open, making it pretty impossible to create new soundsets. According to that comment on my entry there isn’t any way to load new soundsets in either. The FAQ on the website now states “Once we get the the next version out, and the Tablet versions are stable we will move onto making the Syrinscape SoundSet Creator, which will be a fully fledged sound creator, arranger and conductor. Very powerful, and very easy to use.” But I might not hang around actually waiting for that, because…
Note 3: This new version of the program doesn’t  work on Linux

I only get an empty window when starting it. This isn’t a new problem. The reason I used Syrinscape in the first place was because I managed to get it running. All other similar programs ended up like this as well.

So, considering that I mostly was fond of the program because it worked on my system and allowed for easy creation of new soundscapes… well. Not happy here.
Does anyone know a program like this that might work on Linux?

Card Sleeves and other scourges of the common gamer

I bought myself Arkham Horror last week and right away noticed that there will have to be some special measures. Both my cats decided that the trial first game I set up was the most interesting thing since pigeons started nesting in front of our windows (there are few things that fascinate both of them equally as much as tasty flying rats and, obviously, eldritch horrors in cardboard).

So I decided to invest money into card sleeves, something I never did before. Most of my gaming is roleplaying, and even when I was playing Magic the Gathering (back in 3rd edition times) I never really was into it so much as to sleeve my cards.

Now, Łódż has this tiny problem with games as such: there just aren’t any places to actually buy games that are not mainstream. I am not kidding, there was one shop that opened a few months back on Narutowicza, which was more of a Warhammer place from how it looked, and as for the last few months the the complete area around it is more of a wasteland than anything else, the last thing I heard was that it closed again. No, the local authorities don’t give a shit about small local businesses. They also don’t give a shit about normal people having to go to work, transit traffic that has to go through the city, or large companies that want to settle in this city. The traffic authorities have had plans since the 1970s, and right now they think it’s the right time to execute exactly those plans. Which were intended for a communist country where the cars, if there were any, were glorified shoeboxes…

Aaaaaanyway… there is another shop in one of the shopping centres (Galeria Łódzka), which doesn’t even have a proper shop space but is rather a kiosk in front of the Tesco’s there. And there is always the possibility of going to rebel.pl, which is where I got the English version of Arkham Horror to begin with.

Now, I wasn’t going to order a delivery from Gdańsk again, mostly because it’s a pain in the ass to be at the right time at the right place to receive the package (I only ordered it because I had two weeks of holidays and knew exactly where I would be for two or three days). So I went to the small kiosk in Galeria.

I asked the guy there for card sleeves for Arkham Horror (at least I think I did, sometimes I am not sure what I actually say), and he promptly presented me with the right size of Mayfair Games sleeves. They are cheaper than the FFG ones, but I read on BBG that there might be problems with them. Well, I thought, if they don’t fit they won’t be so much of a loss and I have a few other games that I could sleeve as well.

Turns out most of them fit. Two of the three packages of larger sleeves I bought, and two of the smaller ones fit perfectly. Which made it weird that the other package… didn’t. Oh, I managed to force the cards in, after a while, but they didn’t quite fit, were awkward to hold, had air pockets, and sometimes just ripped apart.  I  find this specific incongruity a bit strange. They seem to have produced a batch of a hundred sleeves just half a millimetre or so too small.

But Arkham Horror is sleeved. Now I can start playing it. Most likely with the doors closed though. Cats…

Related articles

• The Horror of Storing Arkham (initiativetabletop.com)
• Stupid Dice Tricks: An Ad Hoc Game System (fromkickassistan.blogspot.com)

[Tools] Old School Tool

Now that is something nice I came across today when looking through the categories at Sourceforge (I was looking for a task managing tool that could sync with Google Tasks, I ended up in the Games section…): a Java based  GM screen tool for AD&D or OSRIC (although it can be adapted for 2e and 3e). Java-based means it will run pretty much on every system that has Java on it, and GM Screen tool means it is supposed to replace the usual paper one with some additional functionality.

Even better it is actually quite customizable, with all the tables in the program being changeable and extensible as far as I have seen. So if I wanted, for example, to use the whole thing for my campaign and I had specific armour for my campaign that was not in the OSRIC book, I could add it easily via the main window to have it accessible in the GM screen window during actual play.

That GM screen window is actually what this is about: the window can be used as a convenient GM screen that allows to look up stuff and calculate things on the fly. The combat and save tables can be found in there, as can the magic item tables, and the latter ones can generate treasures on the fly. Neat. I might think about using this during my next game.

What the whole program is not is a replacement for actual rules, or for a real campaign planner. This program is only there to help during the game. Considering that I already have been using my notebook as a DM screen I think this program might make the whole thing a bit easier.

Related articles

• [The Crazy GM] Updated OSRIC Available (thecrazygm.com)
• Counterbalance (barkingalien.blogspot.com)
• What I’ve Learned About Running an OSRIC / AD&D 1e Campaign (tenkarstavern.com)
• New Revised OSRIC SRD – and it’s Free (of course) (tenkarstavern.com)