Prey Species

I really enjoyed this solo rpg. I think it works so well because it is so specific and so confined, both narratively and mechanically. You are conducting research on a tiny cave, digging through layers of soil to discover what lays beneath. You draw on a worksheet as you move through the layers, and at certain depths there are flowcharts to go through that give you a prompt. An artefact is found; a fire pit was dug, a creature died, an excavation was made, an amulet buried. Then you move on to the next layer.  The first thing that caught me were the discoveries made while navigating the flowcharts. First, they are determined by depth. As you build up layers of soil you roll a d6 for the depth of a specific layer. The depth then determines which flowchart you get. Deeper ones are mostly animals, then as indigenous people move in you get some experiences from them. Finally, white colonizers arrive near the top. The flowcharts read like poetry, and at crossroads you roll a d6 to deter...

  Journal logs found beneath Ancient Mecha City. From a computer terminal in bunker ruins on the planet Sumar - 3rd planet from the star Orion - dated 2577 in the Age of Darkness DUST-DOGS/TERMINAL_19/CARGO ROTT/2577_10_29 50 years ago we came down from the The Graveyard to try to make a home for ourselves on Sumar. A corp took The Crypt and with all that firepower we just couldn't keep up anymore. We settled the ruins beneath Old Mecha, made nice with the other scavs, tried to hide from the bigger fish. And then Orion burnt out.  Lucky for us, we found an overlooked bunker with a couple frames, and over time we managed to kit them out with what we could cobble together from the ruins. Radio activity has picked up, and we intercepted some talk about the “Eternal Flame”. Looking it up in the bunker’s records, turns out someone knew Orion’s fate, and tried to forge a relic that could reignite his flame. It's most definitely someone's mad ravings, but it gave us a taste ...

  ~ Rat Factions ~ ~ Crypt lootin'~ ~ Undead parade ~ Comic about were-beasts by Ryoko Kui

~ Oops a quick death ~ ~ A new friend ~ ~ Wizardly secrets ~ Crystal Greatsword from Dark Souls

  ~ Getting back into it~ ~ A change of plans ~ ~ Hammer Wan ambush ~ Dungeon Tavern from Dungeon Meshi anime

~ Quiet Travels ~ ~ The Witch's Temple~ ~ Necromantic Delights ~

~ Skeletal Woe ~ ~ Loot and Run ~ ~ Fog of Death ~

    ~ New Recruits~ ~ Berserker Strikes ~ ~ New Rivals ~ Excavator's Alliance, Tower Dungeon, Chapter 4

 ~ Season Finale ~ ~ Militia's March ~ ~ Goblin Assault ~ ~ Death and the Dragon ~ Record of Lodoss War Winds of Fantasia cover

Played some Ryuutama last night at the LGS and had a pretty fun time! It was also the first time I got to be a player in a while. Here are some details. I played Halibut the Merchant, and was joined by Sho the Healer and his calico cat, Cat, as well as June the Minstrel, Asteros the Hunter, and Sweets the Farmer.  Now, I'm always a little tentative when playing a low conflict game like this, as I think it requires a little more buy in and trust that the table is going to stick to the tone. I was friends with a few people at the table, and a few only acquaintances. They were all great! We did a one-shot, where we all had plans to travel to a neighboring town and attend a festival. The GM (or Ryuujin, Ryuutama does a fun thing where the GM is both a narrator and a character, but we didn't get to experience this much) did narration, which they read from something they had prepared beforehand, and then we began rolling condition checks. You roll a condition check every morning, to ...

~  Lizard exchange ~ ~ Easy dungeon traversal ~ ~ Bone things and banshees ~ Writhing Rotten Flesh from Dark Souls III

  ~prep for undeath~ ~funeral barge spookies~ ~acolyte destruction~ Tibia Mariner from Elden Ring

~ swamp stompin~ ~orc parley~ ~crypt clearing~ a pair of lizardfolk from Heterogenia Linguistico

~ good old fashioned dungeon crawling ~ ~ danse macabre ~ ~ bandit juice ~ Danse Macabre, The Chambermaid and the Housekeeper, After the Danse Macabre of the Holy Innocents’ Cemetery in Paris,  Guyot Marchant, 1485 previous play reports here

~Investment~ ~Bandit Hunting~ ~Petrification~ Cockatrice from Delicious in Dungeon

One of the factions in Stonehome consists of a bounty hunter from the capitol named Sagging Jonas. He was contracted to come and take care of some bandits that sprung up by one of the Generals of the Imperial Army. Since the army is deployed elsewhere currently, and there is a bit of a stigma for deploying a standing military on Imperial soil, the Imps tend to solve things via contracted bounty hunters/militias/mercenaries.  Given an Imperial Writ and a chest of gold, Jonas decided to build a militia to take on the bandits, as well as calling in a favor from an Imperial Frontier Warden to get some assistance for his new recruits. This was going to be a full session, but we had to cancel. I had to keep my promise, however, so the militia still confronted the bandits that day. This is how I notified my players of the results. Sam Elliott

artifacts galore panic in the guts solace, answers, and questions 28a - 5:00 i found a small metal room with a corpse in the center. its abdomen was torn open. i saw something reflect from the flashlight. i reached in and pulled out 6 dark marbles, covered in gore. i ran. 25b - 5:10 fancy bathroom with smashed porcelain. some writing scrawled on a mirror about the minotaur? screws were loose so i pried it open. found a custom rigging gun with a note “ishmael sends his regards”. barbed harpoon, and a battery pack that looks like it’ll send off a mean shock. also found a small plastic canister. 25a - 5:20 an empty lounge. leather recliners and an empty bar. elevator and a fancy electronically locked door. took the lift up. 22c - 5:50 long ass squeaky elevator ride. pretty unnerving. 22b - 6:00 i found a reception area. a corpse swings from an electrical cord, dripping. i think i found the exit. 22a - 6:10 i took a long winding staircase up, until the gravity dropped out. pushing myself f...