Chariot of the Gods for Alien RPG: Wot I Think After Running It

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated Tabletop Gaming Chap

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TL/DR - Love, love, love the system and the adventure, loath the rulebook or module layouts. Had an absolute blast running it and my players enjoyed it too. Made us hungry to play Destroyer of Worlds next.

This post probably contains spoilers. If you’re thinking about GMing this, then please read on, but if you’re a player - you have been warned.

Oh, and this post also contains affiliate links in case you want to pick up the game.

This is Captain Miller, last surviving crew member of the USCSS Montero. Signing off.

Thus ended last Sunday’s 6 hour long adventure; Chariot of the Gods for Alien RPG by Free league.

I want to use this post to share my thoughts about it, and the system in general. I liked it, lots. But it’s not quite as straightforward as that.

A bit of preamble about the 1e Ruleset First

CotG is the starter set adventure, so it seems only fair to assume that most people might be experiencing the core rules for the first time too. Now, built off the Year Zero Engine, I love the core rules of Alien RPG. Let me open there, but I do not like the rulebook.

Possibly a good place to start is with the fact that Free league are releasing a new edition* of Alien RPG in September 2025, and they say that they’re doing it to address many of the community issues with the current rulebook.

It’s a smart move because as lovely a ‘thing’ (full of lore and art) that the 1e core rulebook is, and as fundamentally great that the rule system is - the rulebook itself doesn’t appear to have been written with enough effective consideration towards functionality.

*Totally compatible with minimal tweaks required to play it with existing adventures.

How not to Design a rulebook

Let me give you an example - so, on your character sheet, there’s something called “Air”. As GM, you’ll want to know the game mechanics for how Air runs down, and what happens when it runs out. So you’re gonna go to the index and search for “Air” - because if it’s a named stat on the official character sheet, it should be in the index, right?

It’s not there.

You pause, think a moment, and maybe you realise to look under “Consumables” instead, because Air on your sheet is listed under a section titled Consumables. That takes you to page 34. Page 34 mentions that consumables decrease, and for those rules, you’re told to go to page 35.

As for what happens when you run out of air? Page 34 vaguely tells you to “see Chapter 4”.

What, the entire chapter? Or am I now expected to scan through a bunch of pages until I stumble across the answer?

To be fair, the chapter 4 thing is an error with my printed version of the rulebook, it’s actually in chapter 5, but even new revisions don’t tell you that it’s specifically page 110. I scanned through all of chapter 4, and then most of chapter 5 before I found that.

Yes, even reading alone, that was as enjoyable as it sounds.

But all that aside, I’d just had to read hundreds of words presented in long form prose, I’d had to mentally separate the actual rules from the sea of guff about how too much carbon dioxide is dangerous, and not having air is bad for you. That’s exhausting.

As someone familiar with breathing, I don’t need a paragraph telling me that not having air is bad, especially when I’m at the game table. I just want to know how your game handles it mechanically.

How to Design a rulebook

Designers - I love you, you made one of my favourite games, but the rules for air should be searchable by index, on one page, and be concise like this:

• Whenever it makes narrative sense (such as after physical exertion), have players roll a number of d6 equal to their current air supply. For every [1] rolled, reduce their air by 1.

• Once a player’s air hits 0, they must make a Stamina check every round to stay conscious. Starting from the second round, reduce their dice pool by 1 each time.

• If they ever fail a Stamina check, they drop to 0 health and must make a death roll each round until they’re either supplied with air, or they until die from asphyxiation.

Much better. Concise, no waffle, no page flipping. If future editions took this kind of structure to heart, it’d be a huge win.

The Year Zero Engine

I’ve spoken before about the central mechanic before, so I don’t need to repeat that here - but I’m a big fan of the overall elegance of the system. Simple character sheets and flat stats go a long way towards keeping the flow of gameplay going, and Free league have done a really good job with the Year Zero Game Engine here.

I’m also a massive fan of the way Alien RPG avoids GM Conflict of Interest, by having you roll for the monsters actions. After about an hour of building tension, my players were set upon by an Abomination in the hallway. It was a perfect introduction to the terror of the world when the dice gods decided that the Abomination would lunge forward, grip Paige’s character; Davies’ skull and crush it like a swollen pimple.

Life is cheap in Alien, but when you’ve got a healthy backlog of fleshed out NPCs with character sheets, it takes the sting out of character death.

I asked one of my players, Alan, for his perspective after the session:

The system for Alien is fantastic, it has all the details and stats you need but is done in a very concise and simple way that I found very enjoyable, and a massive improvement on the more complex RPG systems out there. At no point was I getting bogged down by stats, or left checking around every inch of my character sheet when the GM asked for a specific roll, and because of this I found I could spend more time getting into the module itself and the role playing parts, giving me a proper chance to get lost in the games world.

For me personally, I struggle with how much crunch games like 5e give you, and whenever we have to pause to check things in manuals it can really cause a funk in the rhythm, there was none of that with this and honestly that’s a massive bonus for me, also you get to roll tons of dice all at once, which is so much fun!!!

Can’t say it fairer than that. Thanks Alan.

My Experience With Chariot of the Gods

Split over three distinct acts, CotG is a one shot, or “cinematic” adventure that took my group about 6-7 hours to finish.

I’m gonna be straight up with you - the key thing that I love about this is module is that after act 1, most of the GM’s hard work is over.

Those first couple of hours you’re setting the scene and ratcheting up the tension. It’s very description heavy, and you’re introducing lots of new events and NPCs.

But then act 2 hits, and the game sort of just starts running itself. You see, all the actors have secret evolving motivations written on cards that you hand out as the game progresses. These motivations often set them at odds against each other, creating situations where the players must compromise, or outright start sabotaging each other.

A good way to think about it is that a GM’s primary role is to toss spanners into the works for players to fix. Indeed, in act 1 you’ll be doing this a good amount. By act 2 however, the players are tossing their own spanners into the works, and at each other, and as GM this frees you up to take much more of a reactive, and backseat roll. It gives you space to breath and scheme, and it means that when you do need to toss a spanner of your own, it can be much more carefully thought out for maximum appropriate impact.

This isn’t an accident - this is the consequence of fantastic adventure writing.

But enough about my thought’s here, here’s what Alan had to say:

I found CotG had enough familiarity to what I’ve seen in the movies to make me feel like we were in that world, but with enough originality to it to not make you feel like you’re just playing a run through of what you’ve watched. I also think the game gives enough info that if you were new to the franchise you still wouldn’t feel lost.

My personal favourite part of the game was the objectives you are given with each act that change as the game goes on, often causing conflict between crew members, or in our case a crew member being a secret android that tried to blow us all up! I really couldn’t recommend this enough, really fun, simple to learn and play with plenty of twists to keep you on your toes.

Prep Work

The CotG book is really interestingly laid out. The front of the book essentially provides an overview of the adventure, the seed, and an impression of things to come. The back of the book contains an appendix of the stats for the monsters in the adventure. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

It’s the middle of the book that’s really clever. You see most adventure modules sort of smush area descriptions in together with plot events that happen when you set off certain triggers. Not CtoG.

Here, the book goes over room descriptions one by one, and once that’s done, it goes over the key events (“spanners”) which it leaves up the GM to place as they see fit on a per act basis.

I find this really helpful, because it means that I can get a focused understanding of the key events in the module, all in a concise section of the book, without having to search through two dozen room descriptions to find them.

I have a gripe though

Unfortunately it can’t all be rivers of milk and honey. Similar to the issue of verbosity in the rulebook, CtoG is also needlessly wordy when it comes to room descriptions - which for me at least, pretty much makes running it from the official book impossible.

Check this out:

SCIENCE LAB 1

The lights in this room flicker, and the stench of decay is overwhelming. There is a pile of gnawed bones in the room. The main lab has an enclosed decontamination area on the main examination table—and under the de-con hood is a perfectly preserved metallic urn. A malfunctioning deep cold freezer with a smashed glass door has four more of these urns in it. An ooze has seeped out of them, forming congealed pools on the floor. Strange, black fungal nodes are growing on the urns and in the pools.

BONES: A Medic or Scientist who examines the bones realizes that they are not all human. There are Neomorph and Abomination bones mixed in as well. This room was the nest of an adult Neomorph. If you use the “Hunter and Prey” event, this Neomorph is still around and could attack at any time.

URNS: These, of course, are the Engineer Ampules that contain the black liquid 26 Draconis Strain of Agent A0-3959X.91–15. Ingestion of the pure form of the agent has fatal results (it counts as a Virulence 12 disease). Each urn is a regular item in terms of encumbrance.

FUNGAL NODES: These are in fact Neomorphic Egg Sacs, ready to eject Motes and infect any PC or NPC with exposed orifices of any kind (see page 292 of the core rulebook). A PC examining the room learns that the nodes are underfoot throughout the room, and difficult to avoid. Moving through the room without disturbing the egg sacs requires a MOBILITY roll.

KEY CARD: Sitting half-submerged in a pool of black goo on the floor is the emergency key card access to the MU/TH/UR mainframe room on the Cronus—dropped here by Ava during a scuffle with the Neomorphs. The key card is a Tiny item.

It’s not even the longest room description, and it’s still far too much to expect a GM to read this all at the table. If you read my piece on making good adventure prep notes, you’ll know what work I had to do next in order to turn this mini essay into usable notes at the game table. If not, we’ll, go check that out right now - it’s totally game changing (props to Annie from DIY & Dragons for the method).

Conclusion

Despite my issues with verbosity and layout choices (How dare you make me read, book!), I absolutely love this system and adventure. If you have players that can get on board with a horror setting, and especially if they like the idea of covertly working against each other - then Chariot of the Gods by Free league gets a good ol’ Fonzy thumbs up from me. If you want to pick it up, please use one of my Affiliate links provided (Chariot of the Gods) and I’ll get a small kick back at no extra cost to you!

Have you played Alien RPG yet? Tell me about your experiences in the comment below - I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter!

Either way, catch you laters, alligators.

This post contains affiliate links.

I started a Gaming Blog in Jan 2025. How’s It Going?

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated Tabletop Gaming Person

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TL;DR: I started a blog in January 2025. It’s been great and occasionally soul-crushing. I’ve learned some things — Us indie creators should stick together.

Intro

Back in January, a mere boy with a dream, I started up Domain of Many Things with next to zero knowledge about creative writing, front end web design, back end website management, SEO, or social media. I did however have a niche in mind where I have a mega passion, and a love of the Alien films and cassette retro aesthetics.

Somewhat inconveniently, I also had some principles! I’m North of 40 and I try to be one of the good guys. I lived through the start of the internet as a teenager, and the wildly optimistic promise that it came with - free at the point of use, democratised information for all, totally unenshittified. I wanted, and still want to offer a community resource that adheres to those values - I’m not here to exploit some easy money out of people.

That means that whilst this is very much a side-hobby with dreams that it might one day pay for itself, I have absolutely no interest in obnoxious banners or popups, no interest in producing zero effort content churned out by LLMs, and no interest in loading my content with vaguely incorporeal SEO terms so that I might please the ever distant and neglectful Internet Lords at Google and friends.

Mostly, I just want to share my ideas and find some meaning in knowing that maybe I brightened someone’s day.

Initial Expectations

Just Lol. On top of a full time day job as a database engineer, I figured that if I turned out one well thought out article a week, the combination of syndicating it on social media, and organic traffic from search engines would give me a decent number of views. Views which I could convert into newsletter subscribers by offering exclusive freebies, and from that self selecting fan base, maybe even earn some affiliate sales to make this thing self sustainable.

As time went on, I’d build a following on social media accounts like BlueSky and Reddit, and form a community that would keep me motivated and inspired, as well as a ready made audience of folks engaging with, liking, and sharing my content.

Let’s review that shall we?

What’s Gone Well

The Website Is An Asset And A Place to Share My Voice

I’m really happy with the website design, especially since I had to learn everything on the fly. Like I’m actually proud of it.

It feels unique and easy to navigate, and thematically nods towards the cool things I enjoy such as retro futurism, pixel graphics, and of course, Alien!

Additionally, I’m pretty happy that the blog has found it’s voice - it feels genuinely me, warts and all - and in a sea of soulless AI generated content and professionalised corporate speak, here’s to hoping I come across as refreshingly human. A little bit of 2002 in your 2025.

I’ve made new connections

I’ve had the huge satisfaction of being able to use this platform as an excuse to speak to game designers I admire, and lend a voice to passion projects that otherwise do not get the attention that they deserve.

I hope that in time I can reach out to other bloggers and build a sub community with those guys - a place to share ideas and support, and make some new mates. That sounds like it would be cool.

Kind Words Have Made My Day

It doesn’t take much, but when a single person takes just a moment to leave me a few kind words about my work, it completely makes my day. I’m not just shouting into the void, I am reaching people.

That’s a great feeling, it costs nothing except kindness, but it fills me with the kind of motivation I need to keep going.

If you’re one of those people that’s said nice things on here, Reddit, Bluesky, or over email - thank you sincerely :)

Month On Month Views

Brace yourself if you didn’t expect super low numbers!!! Buuuut, whilst the graph below shows that I have good months and bad months, my viewership trendline is going in the right direction. That’s probably the most important thing in terms of measuring the health of DMT since everything else is built upon this foundation, so it’s good to know that whilst it may only be rising steadily, it’s still rising.

Mailer of Many Things Subscribers

Mailer of Many Things subs are steadily rising - I love these guys and what their actions say about my work. That they trust me, and enjoy my content enough to make me custodian of their contact details to stay in touch.

These are the folks who’ve slunk (slunked? slinked? …whatever) over to my Subscribers page, left me their email, and then lived happily ever after knowing that they’re never going to miss a post. Be like those guys!

Some major challenges that Younger Naive Me totally did not see coming

Is Google KillING the Indie Web?

Not so long ago, if you’d have Googled “Domain of Many Things“ then this site wouldn’t even be on the first page. Thankfully that seems to have recently changed! However, despite being ‘high’ up the results tree for low volume topics such as “GOZR” and “Mothership RPG”, there’s no sign of this site listing anywhere with a chance of visibility for “D&D House rules” or “TTRPG House rules” - arguably one of the most frequent topics I’ve written about so far.

To give that some meaning, of the 10k visits DMT has had from Jan 25 - mid Jun 25, 9k of them have come from social media referrals, and less than 200 have come from Google and other search engines. Of those 200, a good chunk will be bots, trackers and trawlers.

Add to this the rise of AI-generated summaries on Search Engine Results Pages, which, while arguably consumer-friendly, essentially pull content from sites like mine and present it for free without users ever needing to click on my link. Combined with Google’s algorithm prioritising large, ‘trustworthy’ brands, primarily its own, like Reddit and YouTube - it’s starting to feel like Google is slowly killing the internet as we know it.

I’m still here though, still publishing, daring to dream. I shall not be browbeaten by a sodding search engine owned by a mega-corporation that’s starting to resemble Weyland-Yutani more and more each year. Blogging has had to adapt to find new ways of being seen.

A Nice Little Cathartic Rant About Social Media Trolls!

More tea, vicar?

As you can see, with Google and pals accounting for exactly 1.99% of incoming traffic, all hope of survival comes down to successfully syndicating posts on social media and building from there. (If you know something I don’t, and have a better idea - please get in touch!)

Of the two that I use, Reddit and Bluesky, Bluesky is still in it’s problematic infancy (there’s very little engagement unless you’re famous or established, or find yourself in a popular starter pack) so Reddit’s the key one, but it’s a double-edged sword. I owe it most of my traffic - and sadly also most of my migraines.

You see, Reddit’s great because it has these huge ready-made communities with thousands of likeminded people who’re united behind their interests. Happily for me, that includes subreddits for TTRPG fans.

However, be still my beating heart, because the biggest groups have also got strictly enforced rules on how frequently you are allowed to share links to your own content, usually once per week. Great for deterring spammers and people trying to sell you things, but for people trying to add value in the TTRPG blogosphere - you’ve only got one shot to make your week’s work worthwhile. That’s a lot of pressure.

Side Note - I mean, I get it - there’s a lot of low effort AI slop shovelers out there, but I have literally come across people asking a question that a) I’ve written about, and b) justifies a long form answer, but if I’ve already shared a link once this week, or plan to do so then I’m simply not allowed to point them to my blog.

I want to make this crystal clear - these communities have bootstrapped themselves up to something huge and valuable, and their custodians have every right to protect that. Their rules are in effect - I respect that.

However, I want you to keep this little situational setup in mind, as it neatly brings me to the fundamental problem I have with Reddit - the trolls and haters simply have too much power thanks to the ability to anonymously abuse the downvote system.

OK, so, you remember that weekly post you’re allowed to make, that one that you’re totally reliant upon to deliver traffic to your website for that week, and upon who’s success you depend upon to give you that little motivational dopamine kick? Yeah, that’s the one…

That post can be, and is; regularly killed off at birth by just a small handful of users downvoting your post for no better reason than they disagreed with it, or even more petty - because they’ve got a personal vendetta against posts that fail to meet their own warped definition of acceptable “self promotion”.

Bear in mind, Reddit’s own rules state that downvoting is only supposed to be done in the case of posts that don’t marry up to the community’s niche or low effort posts that add nothing. Certainly not just because you subjectively disagree with a post, or it’s right to even exist.

So let me teach you how to suck eggs. Here’s broadly how I think Reddit works: If a post is upvoted and commented on it becomes more visible, therefore more people will find it and of those, more people will comment. This creates more visibility and the cycle repeats, it’s called going viral. After exactly 48 hours, Reddit itself draws a hard box around this virality and removes the post from the organic results pages in order to make space for new posts to gain traction. It’s the circle of life, baby.

Flip that though, if the very first thing that happens to your post is that some bored hater sees it and downvotes it out of spite, well my buddy, from that point onwards your post is in a death spiral and is likely going to get buried. You can easily identify these unfortunate posts, because after a few hours they’ll have next to no views, no visible upvotes, and only one or two votes in total. It doesn’t take years of playing Cluedo to see that this murder was committed by ‘two haters’, ‘on Reddit at the opportune time’, ‘with the downvote system’.

Those who can’t create, jealously destroy. Maliciously downvoting new posts without a legitimate reason is just about the most harmful and spirit crushing thing that these guys can do to independent creators, and that’s why they love to sit around all day on social media looking for the opportunity to do it.

Think about it - We had one shot to get seen this week, and for a blog like DMT that’s potentially thousands of views that didn’t happen because of the bitter malice of a tiny number of users. Sadly, this turns Reddit syndication into a miserable little game where you have to ‘post and pray’ that the first few interactions react with enough upvotes to counter the highly motivated inevitable bad actors.

Don’t get me wrong, it is wonderful when a post survives that crucial first 30 minutes, and even more so if it then goes on to become viral. But it’s in the minority of cases. It’s such a shame, because even with just one post a week, as long as that one post wasn’t arbitrarily strangled off at birth, then passionate independent bloggers like DMT and many others would have a much easier time being able to carve out a following.

Want Indie Sites Like DMT to Flourish? Here’s How You Can Help!

Firstly - Thank you for being here and reading this post. It’s not my usual content, but I figured that folks might be interested in some real talk this week. Time will tell if I was right.

Got a blog yourself? Get in touch - we should have a Discord server or something and unite like when the Power Rangers combine all their droids into one big unstoppable machine! Seriously, I reckon there’s something in this, hit me up.

Here to read? Reach out, drop me an encouraging comment and let me know what you’d like to see next - it’s actually quite challenging to know what kind of content will go down well or not, so if you’ve got some thought’s about what you’d like to read my take on - chuck them below the line!

Follow me on Bluesky and Reddit, and engage with and share my posts - it all helps enormously!

If you really want to be a total boss, sign up to the Mailer of Many Things for monthly updates and some exclusive freebies (like my android app that simplifies managing random encounters at the game table).

Conclusion

Phew. OK, this was a bit of a cathartic exercise and I certainly don’t intend on making this a regular occurrence. I really hope that it’s been an interesting insight for you all into what’s happening behind the scenes, and to all my bloggers in arms, I hope you see this too and know that you’re not alone! Take care and stay safe out there, the internet can be an unforgiving place.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

I've been using Encounter Timer for a few months, I have thoughts

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated Tabletop Gaming Chap

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A few months back I made an Android app called 'Encounter Timer'. It was the first app I've ever made and I was so chuffed with it that I decided to make it available to my subscribers for free.

You're welcome mum!

Since then, I've been using it in play at every opportunity in sessions of Mothership, GOZR, and D&D. So much that the Metal Gear Solid style "!" alert sound the app plays has become something of a meme in my games now.

Now, Domain of Many Things was very much still a baby blog when I first released the app. Readership was very low, so I think we’re long overdue an article revisiting Encounter Timer.

You can read all the details, including operational instructions here. However, if you just want the basic gist: It’s a countdown timer that starts at a random number within a range (default: 5–15 minutes). Once it hits zero, that’s your cue to roll on your encounter table.
No more remembering dungeon turns. Just tap, forget, and play.

Encounter Timer Demonstration

What I like About It

The Core functionality just works

The whole reason Encounter Timer exists is because I suck at remembering dungeon turns. Years of 5e's free-flowing narrative left me untrained in structured time tracking outside of combat.

So, having a simple countdown that automates this? Absolutely perfect.

Helpful usability features

In the real world, as a GM, you're going to want to adjust the timer in response to events at the table.

Encounter Timer has you covered there too, as you’re able to easily reduce the remaining timer by a chunk simply by tapping the countdown after the PCs have done something to draw attention to themselves.

It’s a nifty bit of useful functionality even if I say so myself.

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There’s also a “High Danger” toggle which halves the countdown, letting you quickly increase encounter frequency for tense environments.

What I think it's missing

More Encounter Details, Faster

As cool as it is, unfortunately it remains a bit of a badger to have to manually do reaction, specific monster, and distance rolls. Encounter Timer could easily streamline the process further by making these further random rolls for you. The only thing I want to leave out of hardcoding into the app is the specific thing you’re encountering, so perhaps in that case Encounter Timer could use return a d6 value for me to quickly cross check against my own prewritten table.

Support for Systems with Motion Tracker style Mechanics (AlienRPG)

I also quite like the idea of using this timer in games of AlienRpg, however, in that system the PCs often have a motion tracker, which tells them the distance and direction of any threat at whatever point in the game that they decide to use it.

By rules as written, the GM is supposed to be moving their NPCs around the area on a map hidden from the PCs, so the idea of a motion tracker can easily be resolved by the GM consulting their hidden map and relaying the results back to the PCs.

But how would this work with no hidden map, relying instead upon Encounter Timer driven NPCs?

Well, here’s a fact for you: The exact, specific location of the NPCs, whilst it is not known to the PC’s, is totally unimportant. If we can accept that, then it removes the need to be running NPCs around on a hidden map for a start. But it does underline the problem we have with motion trackers, because I hate GM Conflict of Interest, and I don’t want the responsibility to have to decide the details of every encounter using GM fiat.

So, what if, when the encounter timer is running, it also presents the following information to the GM: The direction of the current location of the encounter, and the abstract distance of the location of the current encounter. For example, we might have the following information on screen prior to the alert sounding:

67 seconds (counting down - existing Encounter Timer functionality)

North West (randomly determined, stays static)

Near (Near, Medium, Far - This should update dynamically as the clock runs down past certain milestones)

As GM, what we should infer from this is that the encounter will trigger in just over a minute, the cause of the encounter is currently NW of the PCs position, and right now, it’s in the next area in that direction.

So assuming they’d whipped out their motion tracker and had all that information fed back to them - what would the players want to do with that?

Avoid the Encounter by going in the opposite direction

If they go in a different direction then we could delay the encounter - In terms of app functionality this means we need to be able to add time to it rather than simply remove it.

Avoid the encounter by hiding

If the PCs chose to hide, as GM we can cancel the timer and skip forward in time to the point where the encounter is in the same room as them and then make our checks to see if they’re discovered or not. If not, the encounter moves on and we can reset the timer to start counting down again.

Prepare an Ambush

Similar to hiding above - except the result of failing to detect the presence of the PCs will result in the PCs getting the drop on the NPC.

Cunning Shenanigans, like venting the airlock in the room to the NW

Assuming the PCs are able to do this prior to the encounter timer ticking down far enough to change the abstract distance, then I’d simply cancel the timer and the encounter has been resolved.

Conclusion

After months of real-world use, I’m still thrilled with Encounter Timer. It works exactly as intended, and I’ve got ideas to push it even further, especially for sci-fi TTRPGs.

Have I missed anything? Got an idea you’d love to see added? Drop it in the comments.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

*This article contains affiliate links

I don’t know what to Run Next. I’ve got options. What do you Think?

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated Tabletop Gaming Chap

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S’up?! - My 5e Lost Mines of Phandelver campaign looks like it’s going to be drawing to a close in the next couple of months, I’ll have a write up of my thoughts on that module as and when.

But this has got me onto thinking about what to run next. Deffo not D&D 5e, I’ve quite had my fill of that system for the time being thankyou!

So, I’ve narrowed it down to two campaign choices - which do you think I should go with?

Campaign Ideas

Shadowdark - Dungeons of Drakkenheim

I came across the Dungeon Dudes’ actual play series a few years ago, and I must confess that I found myself quite getting into it. I liked the grim dark setting and the player driven story style of the adventure - it has a very ‘Mordheim’ vibe about it which tickles my pickle.

The premise is that the city of Drakkenheim has been struck by a magical meteor and now lays in ruin. The residual magic has a mutating effect on the local fauna, creating new beasts and monsters of a Lovecraftian persuasion. However, ‘Delerium’ - the name given to the magical fragments of meteor left about the place, commands a high value in the market, and so there’s no shortage of intrepid adventurers and factions lining up to go a plundering the city ruins.

To cap it off, there’s a power struggle because the royal line has apparently been severed during the incident, with differing factions wanting to install new kings, or hunt down the existing royal family somewhere in the city. Lots of political intrigue to be getting on with.

So it sounds pretty cool, and when they released a campaign book for it (Dungeons of Drakkenheim), I figured it’d be rude not to pick it up!

Sadly, it’s designed for 5e, however now that I’ve got Shadowdark (which is built off 5e, but stripped of all it’s heavy baggage) and the recently completed Shadowdark Monster Conversion kit, I’m thinking that it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to convert the adventure over. Especially since the city of Drakkenheim is sort of a megadungeon, and Shadowdark seemingly seems to be a perfect match.

Mausritter - The Estate

I think I was introduced to Mausritter by Ben Milton over at Questing Beast a few years ago, and I was immediately charmed by it. So I picked up copies of both the core rules and “The Estate” which is a hex crawl sandbox adventure, featuring a dozen or so premade adventures for the different keyed location of the hex map.

The premise is that it’s the familiar D&D trope, except that you’re a mouse, and the world is full of mafioso cats, snakes, owls, rats, and other predatorial critters which essentially puts you at the bottom of the food chain. “The Estate” is a full hex crawl adventure that literally takes place in the property and grounds of a human’s stately home, some some adventures take place in the green house, others in the drainage system or chimney.

It’s built off the rules lite “Into the Odd” system, and aside from the low power level of the player characters, it’s main distinguishing features are that it is classless - your abilities are dictated by your current inventory. Also, you do not roll to hit, all hits are automatically successful, both ways, and it it’s just a question of how much damage.

It’s one of those games that’s been sat on my shelf for a while, having only played it the once with my Wife in a duette, so it’s definitely due it’s time in the sun.

I like it’s inventory system so much that I named it one of my favourite TTRPG mechanics, and built my own D&D house rule off the back of it!

Conclusion

Which gets your vote? Reach out in the comments below and let me know!

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

The Rusted Colossus 03: | How To Prepare Room Descriptions in 4 Steps

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated Tabletop Gaming Chap

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Now then. I was on Reddit the other day, poisoning my mind, as you do. I came across a really good question;

How do you parse dense descriptions?

The poster was asking in the context of a GM prepping for a game - having read a short story’s worth of prose for a room description, then wanting to transform this veritable word salad into short notes that can be quickly and effectively used at the table.

I have a really good answer for this, and I can’t take credit for it either. I think I absorbed this on a Youtube binge one time, but I’ll be squirrelled if I can remember where. Sorry, mysterious Youtube person. (Edit. Found it: It was Deficient Master, and then I think he was only referencing this earlier work by fellow blogger Anne at DIY & Dragons)

As I prep room descriptions for my GOZR module The Rusted Colossus, here’s the method I’m using:

Step 1) The Room Title is an Important Reference Point

Room’s should have a short and descriptive title which reflects both their function [graveyard] and vibe [spooky]. You definitely need to pass this title on to your players too, because it enables them to internally reference similarly functioned rooms to quickly build up a picture of what the room looks like and what might be in there.

Let me give you an example, and I want you to decide which you think is the more efficient description:

“You’re outside, and it’s dark and foggy. The ground is covered in grass with occasional trees dotted about. There’s a dirt path weaving it’s way through the area, frequently splitting off into tributaries. Along this path, some 57 gravestones are spaced with rough regularity, 22 on the East side, and 35 on the West side of the central path. An owl can be heard occasionally hooting ominously.”

or

“You arrive at a ‘Spooky Graveyard’”

The answer is the second example. Players know what a spooky graveyard looks like, just ask them to imagine one. It doesn’t matter if one player’s graveyard is different to another’s, we’ll give them some details soon to make sure that everyone’s on the same page for the important stuff.

With the first example, I guarantee that the players have long since stopped concentrating by time you mention ‘gravestones’, which is the only really solid clue that they’re in a graveyard.

Step 2) Engage non-visual senses

OK, so this is almost clichéd advice by this point, but it’s no less accurate.

As fully functioning humans, two things are true. Firstly, when we’re experiencing the real world, we get a boat-load of sensory information sent straight to our brains beyond mere visuals. Secondly, when we’re describing things, we take all that stuff for granted and don’t think to mention our non-visual experiences. Consequently our descriptions fall flat as they fail to be evocative.

So what does fixing this look like? In your notes, you might have:

“Spare bedroom / home office.” [our room title]

“Still air, warm, sweaty man smell.” [our sensory information]

Which you’ll be able to quickly convert at the table to:

“You enter a ‘Home office, converted from a spare bedroom’. The air is still here, and it’s maybe a degree or two above a comfortable temperature. There’s a slight stale aroma of man in the air.”

Players should be imagining things like a computer, a messy desk with a chair, maybe a bookshelf too. They might even place a wardrobe or bed in there, depending on how complete they’re imagining the conversion to be. You don’t need to highlight these elements to them, The non visual stimuli should be anchoring them, triggering memories of when they’ve been in warm, sweaty, man rooms.

If a player then asks if there’s a radiator on the wall under the window, you say “yes”, because it makes sense that there could be. You’re encouraging them to build the room in their mind’s eye.

Step 3) Tiers of room element information

OK, this bit covers the important elements of the room that the adventure dictates worthy of highlighting, because they might contain clues, loot, traps, or environmental storytelling.

Make a list of room elements, each bullet should contain up to 3 tiers of information.

1. Free and brief information, given as the PCs enter the room e.g. “There’s a bookshelf containing old leatherbound tomes”

2. Detailed information that’s given as a result of the PC interaction with the element e.g. “A book catches your eye, The Necronomicon”

3. Gated information that’s locked behind a roll or some knowledge of some kind e.g. “You’re able to understand the swirling text for long enough to learn the ‘Speak With Dead’ spell“

In your notes, that should look like this:

Bookshelf of leather tomes > Necronomicon > ‘Speak With Dead’ spell

Closed Laptop > Username ‘Jenny’, enter Password > “PASSWORD” - Email from Jenny’s dad telling her to meet outside the brewery at 10pm

Step 4) Ancillary Guff

Other than a map if required, any other space on the page, usually at the sides or bottom, should be dedicated to ancillary information related to the elements identified in Step 3.

For instance, if there was a key within a box in the room, in the sidebar we might note what the key unlocks, to save the need to flip back and forth through pages of notes to find out.

Alternatively, if there was an important NPC in the room, we might list a few things that they know in the sidebar.

Other good uses for the sidebar might be random tables, stat blocks, small monologues etc

Hang on. Wasn’t This Meant To Be a Rusted Colossus Dev Diary?!

Yeah I know, it is. You see I’m practicing what I preach - I’m bringing all this together in how I’m going to present The Rusted Colossus’s room descriptions to you.

Here’s a WIP example for one of the first ‘rooms’:

Desert Camp Beneath the Colossus

Cool in the shade, load groaning metal of Colossus, stench of Mron guano, presence of military enforcers makes the situation feel tense

• Captain Vorkkol’s guarded tent > Angry muttering inside > Vorkkol venting about missing SPOOKS

• Patrolling Enforcers > 2 per group > 2 groups circling Colossus in opposing directions every 5 minutes

• plasteel lockbox in shelter of open air gazebo > locked > weird weapon inside

• The corroding Colossus appears climbable > covered in Mron guano > Circling Mron will attack exposed gooz

Special Protocol Operatives for Obsolete Kinetic Systems (SPOOKS) were due to arrive 2 days ago to relieve Vorkkol. They’re dead.

Enforcers that witness PCs either meddling with the plasteel lockbox or approaching the colossus without permission will attempt to stop them.

Conclusion

Other than an image, which will either be a map of the room or an illustration of it, I reckon this way of presenting information to GM’s gives them enough to work with without swamping them with small essay’s to digest. It means that they can run rooms straight form the book at the table. Wot do you think?

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things for monthly updates from DMT straight to your inbox! Either way, catch you later.