Peter Drake HAS MOVED @peterdrake@qoto.org

Live in Portland, OR? Want some FREE training in disaster preparedness to improve your (and your neighbors') chance when the Big One (or next year's wildfire, ice storm, etc.) hits? Want to avoid the most common deathbed regret of never having discharged a fire extinguisher?

Portland is training Neighborhood Emergency Team members (equivalent to CERT in other cities). Sign up here:

https://www.portland.gov/pbem/neighborhood-emergency-teams/volunteer

#portland #pdx #net #cert #disaster #preparedness

Weirdly, unless I missed something, the @mongoosepub #Traveller core book doesn't give any advice on GMing or creating adventures. Apparently you just create a universe and let the Travellers loose in it. #ttrpg

In my quest to find a #ttrpg to run next year, I bought the Dungeon Fantasy (GURPS) and Mongoose Traveller 2E Bundles of Holding -- both very good deals.

Some initial reactions:

DUNGEON FANTASY

The initial adventure, I Smell a Rat, seems pretty good. While no plan survives contact with the players, it tries to enumerate various things that might happen. It's set in one location that will be easy to translate to any standard fantasy world built before or after running it.

The rules, though ... maybe crunchier than I wanted. The general rule is "roll <= the appropriate skill on 3d6", but there are a STAGGERING number of modifiers in the 114-page "exploits" book. There are also some very weird corner cases, like:

"If a supernatural attack permits a resistance roll and the subject is living or has IQ 6+, there's a cap on the attacker's effective skill: 16 or the defender's actual resistance score, whichever is greater."

Normally rolling low is good and modifiers are applied to the target number (rather than the dice), but for reaction rolls both of these things are reversed. Why?!

Maybe with time one internalizes the 33-page combat section, but I'd be reluctant to spring this on an audience that didn't have experience with RPGs.

MONGOOSE TRAVELLER

I went with the deluxe version of this bundle, which is huge: 15 books!

The campaign that comes with this bundle (part of the Starter Set), The Fall of Tinath, is set in a new subsector half a galaxy away from charted space. I can see that they did this so that new players wouldn't feel intimidated by the lore, but on the other hand it means that the vast majority of setting books published by Mongoose and its predecessors are irrelevant. That complaint aside, it seems (on a light skimming) to not simply hand all the work to the GM as often as other Traveller adventures.

It all still feels a bit dry in a straight-to-VHS-80s-movie way.

#ttrpg #gurps #traveller #BundleOfHolding

Croissant, literally "cross ant", is a bread traditionally baked by the Knights Formicidae.

Take it away, @futurebird

@worldofgeese @RogerBW I'm close, too. A big concern is that #gurps characters take a long time to make AND combat is deadly. Won't it be a bad experience for a player when a character they spent two hours making unexpectedly dies?

@RogerBW Ooh, and there's also a nice Mongoose Traveller general bundle and one for Dungeon Fantasy!

I like physical books, and spend way too much time on screens, but I should probably buy more of these things electronically. I can shell out again for the dead trees if/when I actually get a game to the table.

Overheard: "Boy, it's a little Mt. Doom out there, isn't it?"