Tea Wagon Games

 One of the toughest parts of worldbuilding is developing consistent yet different map labels. Even without a map, I need city names, continent names, cultural identifiers, etc. I know there are hundreds of random generators out there, but I have another trick I like to use; Google Translate. What I do is pick a language family that will represent a culture, and use them to pull up words for to give to a map feature. For example, if the culture is in the frozen north, it makes sense to pick languages such as Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, etc. Then I pick a common word to describe the feature, maybe Rocky to describe a mountain range. For the family I listed previously Rocky translates to: grytt, steinet, and klippig. From these I would choose the one I like the best. I'm going with Klippig for now. Then I would play around with the final syllable to make sure it fits with other nearby features. For example if other features end in -en, I might change it to Klippen. However not eve...

Haveno is just one city within the greater world of Vaeth. It is located on the island of Krucho, which is just off the continent of Beleco. Haveno is a sprawling paradise. Situated at a leyline junction on the Northwest of the island of Krucho. The weather is mild, with only tropical storms and cyclones threatening it in the late summer. Millions of tourists visit the island every year, drawn by the glittering beaches, pulsing nightclubs, and world renowned casinos. It appears to be a minor player in the world; just a fun place to play. In fact, Haveno is a major player in the international underworld of drugs, crime, politics, and corporate greed. It is a place notorious for money laundering and as a staging point for smuggling drugs into Beleco. Most visitors are vaguely aware of the corruption and graft from movies and TV. But they usually do not experience it first hand. Haveno is a city I have written a TechNoir style plot generator (what they would call a transmission). It is t...

 Today is the day. Dwindle base set is going live. Tomorrow, I'll push it a bit on Reddit. But it is about time to get the game out there. It could still use a little polish, but I think it is in a good place. So to kick it off, here is the pdf of the base game. I'll update the Dwindle page to match, as soon as I can. And hopefully by Friday, I can get the final character sheet uploaded. So, here it is  Dwindle-Basic . The Dwindle Page will always have the most up-to-date version of the pdf  on it. Note that this is just the basic rules of the game. Most of it has been posted here. I am trying to finish up a slightly illustrated version to offer as a "Thank You" once I set up a patreon.

 Luckily TroubleShooters was the chosen focus for our next campaign. This is good for a few reasons. The first is that it lends itself to episodic play. With 6 players and myself, scheduling a full group will be rough. The second reason is that it lends itself to TechNoir style plot building. I can easily roll a few items off of a table, throw in PC connections, and build a case to be solved. The third is that TroubleShooters can fill many niches. They might be collecting bounties, solving crimes, or performing a heist. Finally, it is a settingless concept, so I have a lot of freedom to create the world for the players. Here is a quick rundown: Vaeth This is a cyber-fantasy world. The world has an energy emanating from it, known as Vaethir. It began as a standard fantasy world. Some people are able to tap into Vaethir to perform what we would call magic or psionics. Some cultures vilified these people, others worshiped them. We will use Sorcerer to describe these people for now. La...

 In the poll for our next game, I left a blank for someone to write in your own idea. Only one person submitted an answer, and I think it would make a great one shot.  Senior citizens with diverse handicaps and unusual assets work together to escape an olde folks home. I'm thinking something like this. Fogeys Select your age group. Octogenarian : You are in your 80s. Your Spry and Gumption have a total of 7 points. You have 1 Quirk. Nonagenarian : You are in your 90s. Your Spry and Gumption have a total of 5 points. You have 2 Quirks. Centenarian : You are 100 years old or older. Your Spry and Gumption are 3 total. You have 3 Quirks. Stats and Mechanics Spry is your strength, mobility, and agility. Roll it anything you attempt to do anything physical, regardless of whether it is a fine motor skill, such as threading a needle. or a gross motor skill like climbing out of a window. Gumption is your mental facilities. Use this to read a newspaper, deceive an orderly, to interfac...

 With the end of Dwindle, I need to make a new game for our group. Thus, I made a poll in Google Forms to help us pick our next game. I wrote up several game concepts with examples of the idea from media. For example: Monster hunters . You are the good monsters chasing the bad monsters. There are factions also chasing you, because you are monsters. Supernatural, Witcher, October Faction...  I then allowed them to score each idea from 1 to 10. Here are the results: For absolute disclosure, I did vote as well. I figured I am also playing, so I should have a voice in what we do. TroubleShooters are the clear winner, with 6 points over anything else. Stargate, Resistance and Hunters are also closely clumped together. I may try to tie in some of the runner-up clump into the main arch of the story. I have some ideas for the game, such as the setting, and the rules, I just need to get them typed up, my goal for this week. My hope is to run it with the concept of the TechNoir transmis...

 With the end of our long-running Dwindle campaign, I have the grand task of planning the next campaign to run my players through. I have an idea of the elements I want, I just need to get them all mushed together into something I can mold in the shape of a game. So this will be a bit of a brainstorming post, where I lay out my checklist of what I want (and what I think my players want) in my next game. The Players' Wants Alan wants a Fantasy setting with lots of different species. Brent likes weird science. Brent also likes narrative dice outcomes (aka degrees of success) The other 4 players are all fairly new to our table, but I have a feeling they mostly like silliness, in other words, a setting that doesn't take itself too seriously. My Wants Collectively, we need something episodic. As we will probably be missing from 1 to 3 players each session. I also want Fantasy, but I want it mixed with Cyberpunk. My setting idea of Vaethir will fit this well, and will tie into Brent...

 This is a continuation from my post on Monday. Just in case you missed it, I should restate the opening paragraph for this post to make more sense.  Our game group has really blossomed in the past few months. And with everyone having families and responsibilities it is increasingly difficult to schedule a session with everyone present. We are currently sitting prettily at 7 members. I dropped hints at the game where we reached 6 members, that it might be time to move from our Dwindle campaign. Then there was lockdown level 2.5, a major holiday, and several near game days where we just couldn't get the players together. After we finished playing Spire. We had a short conversation. What to do with our game. With so many players, we will consistently be down some number of players each session. This means we need a more episodic campaign. One of the core players (3 of us have been playing together since 2014 or 2015) finally admitted that it was time to move on to another game. ...

 Our game group has really blossomed in the past few months. And with everyone having families and responsibilities it is increasingly difficult to schedule a session with everyone present. We are currently sitting prettily at 7 members. I dropped hints at the game where we reached 6 members, that it might be time to move from our Dwindle campaign. Then there was lockdown level 2.5, a major holiday, and several near game days where we just couldn't get the players together. Saturday, we decided to just get whoever could make it and run a one-shot. I gave the players a choice between TechNoir and Spire: The City Must Fall.  They really dug the setting for Spire, so that is what we went with, mostly. I had a super busy weekend. A day at Imjingak , tutoring, and travel times left me little time for prep. So I took a TechNoir transmission, and filled the master table with bits from Spire. I rolled up 3 items from this table: A Knight Pub at North Docks, The Guild of Morticians, a...

What follows is a detailed description of the dice test mechanics. The exact steps are as follows: Figure your TN Grab d20s (1 + advantage / disadvantage) Grab your Skill Die (based on Rank) Grab your Domain Die (based on number applied) Increase your Skill Die or Domain Die by using Items. Roll the dice. Determine Pass or Fail (is it equal to or over your TN?) Determine Bonuses or Setbacks (are their dice showing 1s or their maximum values?) 1. Figure Your TN Your TN is equal to 15 + your current number of trauma. Thus if you have 3 trauma, you will have a TN of 18 (15 base + 3 trauma = 18 total). 2. Grab d20s You always have a base d20. If the GM declares you have disadvantage, you will also have another d20. You may also use a resource, such as preparation, to grant yourself advantage. This means you’ll need an additional d20. 3. Skill Die You will have a skill die based on your skill rank. If you have no rank in the skill, then there is no skill die. 4. Domain Die You will have ...

For the example play, we will jump in and follow 1 round of action. Our players are as follows: Grom has the domains: Dragonborn, Barbarian, Wolf-Friend, Wolf Totem, and Dice Games.  Hawn has the domains: Elf, Necromancer, Dancer, Bone-Affinity, Ingz a Skull Familiar   Jard has the domains: Halfling, thief, toolbelt, poisons, and jeweler. Our merry band find themselves invited to a fancy party. They are hunting for someone that has been grotesquely carving up animals in the local forest. It might be part of a ritual, or it could be linked to the sadistic killer of East Docks. Grom is trying to mingle to gain some information. Hawn has snuck upstairs to find information on the mysterious hostess, and Jard has climbed out a window to search for clues outside. Grom: I want to Coax the man in the peacock hat to give me some information.  GM: Great, but you are out of your element, you’ll have disadvantage. Grom: Can I use Preparation to gain Advantage? GM: What do you...

 Chuseok is nearly over. It is a great holiday spanning 3 days, and usually butting up with a weekend to give 5 days of family and food. It is a bit tiring, but also really good. I was able to get my mother-in-law talking about Korea in the '70s and '80s. Something I've learned a little about on my own, but it is always more interesting to hear about it from a first-hand witness. I was able to get a lot of work done on Dwindle as well, and a bunch of reading. On Dwindle  I nearly have the free pdf version finished. with a cover page, it is currently 9.5 pages. with a full page being an example play. There are still a few rule clarifications I need to make, but I will have a lot of time this week. This week, I'll post up the updates to Dwindle as blog posts, and I'm going to try to finish up the pdf in my free time. Then, finally, I'll be able to finalize the Dwindle page. I also recently discovered Spire: The City Must Fall  . It is a couple of years old, but so...

 If you're feeling like these are quick and largely vacuous posts, you are possibly correct. However, in my defense, this week is a major Korean holiday, and I only have about 2 hours to work on a week's worth of posts, to work on my Dwindle pdfs, and to generally take care of my own business, before I head off for work. So today's art is to illustrate using a resource. I was obviously thinking of preparation when I drew it.