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Festivals In Your RPGs

In my campaign building, the one thing I left out of the calendar was festivals.

Not a problem in my Sunday game.

Through a combination of a random encounter with a farmer taking a load of turnips to town & the death of an every faithful NPC, my player’s made their own festival.

The first annual Saint Mark Turnip Festival was in Session 64 on January 31, 2021. Yesterday was Session 130 and in game it’s less than a month until the next Turnip Festival. Of course, it could be January, 2023 before we reach the in game date. One player hasn’t forgotten & mentioned spreading the word. So I checked. The anniversary will be in just under a month on the game calendar.

Order of The Iron Turnip

The party was returning to town one session and there was an encounter with a farmer taking a load of turnips to town. They were suspicious and rather than attacking they speculated that it was a plot and their imaginings went wild.

After all that wild speculation and associated cross talk, the party then decided that they would call themselves “The Order of the Iron Turnip.”

One player made a graphic to go with it and put up shirts & magnets online, so most of us, including me ordered shirts, etc.

He also made a party map token with this image that we still use in Roll20.

Party Crest for the Order of the Iron Turnip with Latin motto “Ordo Ferrum Rapa” with a background of radiating bars of alternating blue and yellow. Pile of fallen leaves, with a turkey with knife and fork preparing to eat a turnip with a cartoonish face. Art by Patrick Burke, AKA Wicked Wayz. RIP (10/23/69 – 6/2/2022)

Map and Tavern Sign

Patrick also made a much fancier map than I had made for the starting town, Farthorpe. Farthorpe is the most distant West settlement of the Kingdom. Its name is used as a hyperbolic sayings to indicate how far away things are, or how long a journey is.

Patrick made this map of Farthorpe based on my crude scribblings in Roll20.

He liked doing things like that, he even made a sign for a tavern in a different town, The Wizard’s Dog.

He took art from other places and mashed it together.

Tavern sign for the Wizard’s Dog tavern with a fancy border on a blue field and a scraggly, ugly dog with a wizard’s hat sitting on a spellbook. The words “Wizards Dawg” frame the dog and book. Art by Patrick Burke, AKA Wicked Wayz. RIP (10/23/69 – 6/2/2022)

Mark

Mark was an NPC who was hired by the owner of the tavern to round up “Conleth’s” cattle. The campaign started in the aftermath of a powerful earthquake that unleashed a horde of undead that cleared the valley and drove off people from the surrounding villages and farms. The undead were only an occasional issue by the time the PCs showed up in town for Session 1.

Conleth was the second richest man in town before the undead caused so much chaos. He used what was left of his home and the rubble of his former neighbor’s homes to make the tavern that became central to the early portions of the campaign. Conleth hired Mark to go gather “his” cattle for food for the tavern.

The party liked Mark and one PC hired him as a retainer when they went west across the dunes of The Broken Lands.

A Festival is Born

After the loyal retainer Mark the brave but not so wise or smart was killed by a fireball, the party determined to remember him gave him all the credit for defeating the big bad in the original “plot” of the campaign.

Mark was dead several sessions prior to this conclusion.

To honor him, they threw together a big party and called it the “First Annual St. Mark Turnip Festival”. The planning involved a turnip and cow theme.

I basically said “Yes/And.” We had an entire session to roleplay the Turnip Festival. I threw in archery contests, drinking, feasting, & some more.
Patrick made the art for what was on the poster they put all over town.
This same poster they get printed up & post in other towns they visit since that 1st festival spreading the word of Saint Mark.
That was January 31, 2021. We lost Patrick in June, 2022.

The 2nd annual festival will be better than the 1st. Now I have a lot of planning to do for a future session.

Fancy background frame. A knight in chainmail with a sword in hand over one shoulder, a shield on his back, and a turnip with a cartoon face in the other hand. Framed by the words: “First Annual St. Mark The Brave Turnip Festival, Year 567 of the new Kingdom of Drahn, Farthorpe, Broken Lands.” Art by Patrick Burke, AKA Wicked Wayz. RIP (10/23/69 – 6/2/2022)

Festivals In Your Campaign

When planning the calendar you will use for your campaign, whether it is based on a real world calendar, one of the many calendars of fiction, or one of your own design, festivals and celebrations should be a part of it.

This should include such things as events the calendar is based on like equinoxes and solstices and phases of the moon. Secular and religious holidays, historical events, harvest festivals, and others based on the cycle of nature are also appropriate.

If, like me, you didn’t consider that in your own campaign calendar, then add them as you think of them, or let your players come up with their own. Cooperative worldbuilding is always fun and can get a better result than you could on your own. It also invests the players in your world.

If you do add your own, or have them pre-existing on your calendar, be sure to note how big a deal this festival is and have obvious activity of preparations for the approaching day or days.

Share the calendar with your players and add notes to your version of the calendar with all your notes and things that PCs can notice as preparations begin.

Think of holiday preparations in your own country. In the U.S.A there are obvious signs of preparations in some communities as decorations go up on the light poles. Stores and businesses will have their own decorations. Many homes may have their decorations. The greater the importance of the festival, the more likely the town, merchants, and homes are to be decorated.

If you aren’t sure what festivals to have, copy the calendar and use real world festivals as placeholders for something in your world. Some you might re-name and replace with an equivalent one in your world, or something entirely different. It can be a lot of work, so it doesn’t have to be anything fancy.

You could have 12 months of 28 days with a weeklong festival between each of the four seasons. This gives a calendar of 364 days. If your world doesn’t need a leap day, you have a quick and simple calendar with 4 festivals every year that are a week long.

My Journey To Obsidian – RPG Vault Structure

Post 1Post 2Post 4 (Worldbuilding, Campaign & Session Prep) – Post 5 (Running Games)

This is post #3

This was to be the last of three posts, but it would be very long to do in one post, so I broke out the last half about worldbuilding with Obsidian for next time.

An RPG Vault should support Worldbuilding plus Planning and Preparation of Sessions and Adventures, and creation, editing, and finding the information input into Obsidian when it is needed.

My Campaign Vault

Coordination of Information

This is your method for storing your information and retrieving it when you need it. Are you a visual person who needs to see the information or can you just do a search? Or do you need a bit of both?

Will you use a folder structure plus tags, or only rely on tags?

Will you use a Kanban board, a homepage, or both?

Having a top level page or MoC (Map of Content) for your entire vault whether it is all of your RPG information, only your GM information, or only one world, one ends up with a lot of information in just a few sessions of play. Planning a method to organize it for growth and ease of use is beneficial. Also being flexible enough to modify your system as you learn what works best for you.

In my experience, I didn’t know what organizational method would work best for me until I jumped in and used it. Running things in the old days with pen, paper, and notebooks is different from using a computer. Obsidian is so flexible, that I’ve gone through multiple iterations to find what works best for me.

What I have settled on for me is a combination of folders and tags. I use both Kanban Boards and a Landing Page, AKA Home Page. The following headings are the types of things for which I have folders, and possibly tags.

My Home Page is a “master” MoC. It points to the Kanban Boards I use. I have one Kanban for my GM screen for use with play and another Kangan for Session Planning. Each folder has it’s own MoC that I link to from my Home Page, and/or one or both of my Kanban Boards.

My Campaign Home Page
In my Session Planning board I have the following lists:
  • Long Term
  • To Do
  • In Progress
  • Ready For Session
  • Past Session Planning.
My Planning Kanban (Slowly consolidating)

For my GM Screen I collect information that is most useful and needed at my fingertips. This includes such things as various random generators for NPC names, ship names, and random encounters. I have a page that is the Party Record that has each PC and which player they belong to in a table to see all their state, saving throws, and other quickly needed information at a glance. I have lists for combat, quick reference, NPCs, and magic items.

My GM Screen (Also Slowly Consolidating)

I have templates that help me create Session notes, NPCs, Places, Magic Items, Spells, Monsters, etc. I have found that I need more automation so I don’t have to do as much manual edits. I have a MoC of all Places, all Spells, all Magic Items, and all Sessions. After 129 sessions on Roll20 I have a HUGE number of files for my current campaign. It is an open-ended sandbox game, so while there was an initial big plot I set in motion, the party dealt with it, and now they’re going about doing their own thing and finding new challenges.

I created each of these MoCs manually so they are more difficult to update the longer they get. Switching this over to use Dataview queries will make updating these lists automatic.

I Use the Following Plugins with Obsidian:

  • Advanced Tables: I use a lot of tables, and its addition of the to my vault was a big help.
  • Admonition: I also like callouts and like how this plugin enhances them.
  • Advanced Tables: Improves working with Markdown tables.
  • Dataview: and the scripts from Nicole van der Hoeven help with automation and creating MoCs.
  • New Tab Page: For the tab functionality and Home Page.
  • Kanban: Allows setting up multiple Kanban boards. I use one for a GM screen and another for Campaign and Session planning.
  • Leaflet: For maps and map pins, although I haven’t done much with it.
  • QuickAdd: For automation when combined with Dataview and Templater.
  • Timelines: For making timelines.
  • Pandoc: For exporting to different file formats. I need to connect it to LaTex to get more power out of it.
  • Recent Files: is great for finding the most recent files I worked with. Especially before I implemented a Home Page or before I get it linked to at least one of my MoCs.
  • JSON/CSV Importer: To import information from CSV files or spreadsheets.
  • Buttons: Make buttons to run scripts.
  • Fantasy Calendar: Create a custom calendar or use an existing one. Add links to documents like session notes.

I am a fan of using header levels. Header levels let you collapse the text at that header level. With multiple headers of the same level I can collapse certain sections of my session notes. I do this when running games with the recap of last session, housekeeping, and last session’s XP so I can focus on the bits important for what’s going on in the moment. This will be covered in more detail in my final article.

As I do more with Obsidian and refine how I can get the most out of it for both preparation, planning, and running games I improve optimization for my use case. Using Obsidian at work gives ideas for improving how I use it for gaming and other personal projects and vice versa.

My Journey To Obsidian – World Building

In this series: Post 1Post 2Post 3 – Post 5 [In Process]

Check out my Worldbuilding Cheatsheet on Cheatography.

For worldbuilding, it should support both Top-Down and Bottom-Up worldbuilding. This does not need any specific structure or scripting, since out of the box, Obsidian lets you choose how you want to organize, whether by only files and tags, or with folders, or a combination.

It is possible for one Obsidian Vault to accommodate all of the following, but it’s practicality will depend on what types of information is shared between genres and rule systems.

Another practical example is Nicole van der Hoeven’s player notes and gm notes templates and javascript files. For me, it is less confusing to have a separate vault for GM duties and keep player efforts separate. If there were information to share between vaults, I would just copy the *.md files or copy & paste the data.

Josh Plunkett’s YouTube is dedicated to showing different ways to use Obsidian for RPGs.

Genre Specific

Any effort at worldbuilding should be planned to complement the genre selected, such as science fiction, fantasy, steampunk, intrigue, horror, apocalyptic, etc.

Many genres have sub-genres, and some genres are a combination of two genres, for example science fiction can have a horror element like Alien, and fantasy can be high or low in regards to magic.

Science Fiction might be wide open to explore multiple galaxies, solar systems, planets, times, dimensions, etc.

Fantasy could have similar variety, but the majority focus is usually on one world, and often only one continent on that world.

Genre is independent of system and one could run any genre with any ruleset, but most games were designed with a specific genre in mind.

Rule Specific

Once a GM has chosen the rules for the game/campaign they want to run it will determine how they organize things. While a player will have the choice of rule from the GM, unless the GM seeks player input or the player exercises their own agency to choose which ruleset(s) they wish to play.

Rules handle the situations one expects in play at the table. Exploration rules for a game with an exploration component, creatures in the bestiary, character generation, magic or mental powers, equipment, etc.

Rules have as much variety as genres. No ruleset covers everything, but those that try have multiple rulebooks and tend toward complexity. Some rulesets encourage GM rulings where there is no rule. Story type RPGs may have minimal rules and focus on the roleplaying amongst friends.

The rules one chooses will be guided by one’s preferences and the experience they seek with those at the table. Often the choice of rules is in favor of the game that was our first experience playing RPGs. It sets in our mind what an RPG is and for many, anything that falls outside that box isn’t desired. Others will play any game any time and have no preference for rules and just want to game with their friends.

What Do I Need To Prepare?

This all depends on your selected worldbuilding model, top-down or bottom-up, or a combination of the two.

Top-down worldbuilding in a fantasy campaign would decide what is the top element and drill down from there. For example, the world or planet and go down from there.

This also brings up how much of that world do you create? Do you deal with the origins and creation myth and the rise and fall of deities and civilizations? Or do you plan the world in media res with a moment in time and refer back to the past as it comes up in play?

Whichever end of the scale, or the middle, that you start with, what you end up with will be largely the same information.

World

What makes up your world?

How and when was it formed?

What sets your world apart?

How is is special?

Continents

Is there one big continent, like Pangea with scattered islands on the periphery, or multiple continents separated by varying distances from the others?

Or is your world a collection of scattered archipelagoes?

The way you choose to organize this leads to many variations you may not have considered.

Regions

How many regions will there be across a continent or archipelago?

Nations

How many nations are there currently?

How many nations have fallen into the past? This is usually the source of dungeons and tombs for exploration.

How many nations are in a region?

Settlements

These can be villages, towns, or cities.

Adventure Locations

These can be found in many varied places:

  • Tombs
  • Ruins
  • Dungeons
  • Caves & Caverns
  • Mines
  • Forests
  • Swamps
  • Wilderness
  • Etc.

Bestiary

What kinds of people and creatures populate your world?

Which are specific to certain regions, environments, or locations, and which are ubiquitous?

Will you only use creatures from official rules, or will you modify existing creatures, or make up your own?

Religion/Deities

What role will religion play in your world? Will places of worship be rare or common? Will there be any named deities, only one, or multiple pantheons with each nation or ancestry having its own?

NPCs

Who are the people the players’ characters will interact with? Townsfolk, merchants, minions of the chief evildoer, the chief evildoer, etc.?

Lore/History

How much detail will your world involve? If you decide to start with the top, how much is really needed to begin play? If you write a book will that vast amount of information be relevant to actual play at the table?

It is my experience that while worldbuilding in all its details is fun as a GM, all the time spent coming up with elaborate descriptions of the overall setting is not necessarily supportive of time around the table.

This can include calendars. What time keeping system is used in your world? Do all use the same calendar, or does each nation and ancestry have their own way of tracking time? This alone can be quite complex, especially if the year is different from our own, or your world has more or less moons than Earth.

Magic

High magic, low magic, or something in between?

Spells

Will you have any custom, AKA homebrew spells?

How will your player characters learn of them?

Will this be in a handout from the beginning, or only learned of through discovery in lost and forgotten tomes or hidden ancient scrolls?

Items

Similarly, will you have homebrew magic items. How will knowledge of them find its way to your players?

Information Tracking

How will the actions of the players be organized for keeping track of things?

What does one need to track?

In my experience, tracking what occurs in each session from the places visited, NPCs met, monsters dealt with, treasure gained, time tracking, and so forth are the points that are connected by the roleplay at the table. This interaction makes the game world come alive.

If the GM allows the players to change the world by either saving it or letting it burn, it has more verisimilitude.

Sessions

A folder for Sessions and a Template to create “buckets” to place session related information, plus link to other parts.

Dates

Some means of tracking your calendar and placing date specific entries that are tied to your calendar.

Will you track only the real world calendar and what happened each game day, or will you track the in-game dates, or both?

The Fantasy Calendar plugin can help with that.

Will you plan out certain events that will happen unless the party interacts with the time and place involved? Tracking when such things happen in the game world lets you know when to bring it up during play.

Places

Tracking where the players have been and plan to go helps the GM keep track of the situation between sessions.

Some places, like an adventure location, may have something of interest, be it a landmark, hidden entrance, special treasure, hints to other places, etc.

Weather

How will you generate each day’s weather for your game?

Sometimes the players will stay in one location for many days and you need several days worth of weather. Will you generate each day as it happens in game, or generate it ahead of time so minimize delays at the table?

Events

These can be weather, harvests, festivals, accidents, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, eclipses, comets, meteors, prophecies, etc.

This is another use of a calendar and the effects of those events are better planned in advance.

Putting It All Together

Once you have decided how you will approach each aspect of worldbuilding, you can build the structure to support it in your Obsidian vault.

Even if you use folders to subdivide things, a clear understanding of the tags you will use will help you find things without having to spend a lot of time.

Templates can be made for each relevant type of note you need, such as for Monsters, Spells, Gear, Magic Items, etc. Each template can be set with the tags relevant to that type of information.

To consolidate a large amount of notes into an index or MOC (Map Of Content) you can do it manually, or use the Dataview plugin. I prefer the Dataview plugin as it saves so much time getting information in one place.

The system you devise in Obsidian will lend itself to continued worldbuilding, session planning, notetaking about the session, and even running a game.

In the next article I explain how I use Obsidian to run games.

My Journey To Obsidian – Beginnings

In this series: Post 1Post 3Post 4 [currently in process] – Post 4 [currently in process]

This is the second of three five articles of my experience with Obsidian. I wrote this a couple of weeks after I started with Obsidian in December, 2021. The program has changed a LOT in almost a year. It went from beta to version 1.3 currently.

Since I wrote this a year ago you will see things I mention here that are no longer the same or no longer an issue. I have indicated these things in square brackets [ ]. What I want to draw your attention to is how easily I moved my existing data in text format into Obsidian*. This is the great power of such a tool that relies on plain text files. It is both easy to work with and easy to maintain your data.

* I had to get data out of other Apps to get it into text format to then put it into Obsidian.

Obsidian For RPG Campaign & Session Prep

Original Date Written: 2021/12/11

I switched to Obsidian about two weeks ago.

I love the idea of reducing all the different places I store information digitally.

Having multiple “silos” that don’t talk to each other and are not easily accessible to me if the service goes away, such as the end of a free version, or the total end of the service. The only limitation is now power and a working device.

Having it in a format I can read on any device is important. Markdown files are just plain text files that any text editor, like Notepad can edit.

If you are careful, you can even edit the files outside of Obsidian.
You can re-arrange folders and add or delete new files.

DO NOT do this while Obsidian is open, as that might cause a problem like data corruption.

Obsidian reads the data in the folder with the vault and will “re-build” it’s understanding of their relationships, such as links.

This is helpful if you just want to drop in a bunch of text files with the Markdown extension of *.md or image files or PDF files.

So instead of copying each note from Evernote and pasting into a new Obsidian Note, get Evernote exported to Markdown files and just copy them to the Obsidian Vault.

For Evernote export each folder one at a time – ugh! to its format, then import that format into Joplin. Joplin can then export each folder to Markdown files. Use the Markdown with Frontmatter option. [Fontmatter is important to help organize and search for information.]

Obsidian lets you right-click or drag and drop to move files between folders. If you do this in Obsidian, it will update it’s internal database and links, and append 1 to duplicate files.

Within the OS if you move a file, it won’t let you keep two files with the same name, and it won’t preserve any links in the file.

Obsidian has a merge feature, so if you have files with similar content, and perhaps one has a 1 at the end, you can merge. Right-Click the one you want at the bottom of the other note. Be careful, as there is no undoing that. Make a backup before starting and go back to that backup if you make a mistake.

If you have a lot of such files, I suggest using git or other versioning software to make large numbers of updates easily reversible without undoing the ones you want to keep.

Obsidian will not display files that are not PDFs or images or text files with the extension .md. It will let you know a folder isn’t empty if you try to delete it. Right-Click and then Left-Click “Show in System Explorer” and it will open a window with the contents of that folder.

EXIT Obsidian before doing anything with these files outside of Obsidian. You can then evaluate if you want to keep the files or not. If the files are text files and you want the information in Obsidian, just change their extension to .md. If you use Windows and have the default setting that hides extensions, go to the View menu of the Explorer Window and check “File Name Extensions.” Just in case, check “Hidden Items” to verify that you don’t have any files hidden from view.

– Once you have renamed, moved, or deleted files from this folder, re-start Obsidian. Then you can move the files that now show to empty the folder, then you can delete it within Obsidian without issue.

NOTE: When I did this, Obsidian did not open with the files I had open when I exited. I had a text file I changed to .md and I had an HTML file because I was testing a Pandoc conversion from .md to HTML. I don’t know if Obsidian’s internal database picked up those files and modifying them caused this, or what.

– This is when I found that the PIN option can have a keyboard shortcut set. The fewer mouse clicks for me the better!

A Checklist of My Initial Takeaways:

  • [ ] Go easy on the Folders in Obsidian. Less is more.
    • [ ] Obsidian only needs 3 folder: (You can call them whatever you want.)
    • [ ] Notes (The Root folder) – Any other folders would go here, but that just adds complexity, so give it some thought before adding them.
      – In my experience, adding a folder for all the information I have from Evernote lets me review each item and clean up its tags and formatting to match my other files.
      – Another option would be make a new Vault just for Markdown files imported from other software and use Obsidian to clean up that data before copying it to your main Obsidian Vault.
    • [ ] Attachments – Images, PDFs, etc.
    • [ ] Templates
    • [ ] Obsidian is designed to connect information through Tags and Links, and this eliminates the need for folders as organization, since you have multiple ways to find what you want.
    • [ ] I recommend only using folders for topics that have very little overlap with everything else.
      • Such As:
        • Separate Campaigns
          • Separate Games/Rules
          • Separate Projects
      • Some things may be so totally different that it is better to separate them into its own Vault. A good example would be for personal information, so that is separate from game/hobby, work, or other very specialized information.
        • How to link to an Obsidian Vault with a shortcut. It took me a bit to find the correct link and realize what process they meant to create the shortcut, as they did not use the same verbiage as on menus. [NOTE: You can also easily open and switch between vaults in Obsidian with the “Open another Vault” button in the lower left corner. It is the top of the three buttons. It allows switching between vaults and creating new vaults.]
        • Use the method of your OS for creating shortcuts.
          1. In MS-Windows it is Right_Click then Left-Click Create Shortcut.
          2. Type in the link to your Vault with the Obsidian filetype URL: obsidian://vault/VaultName
            1. The Vault name is the name of the Directory (Folder) that contains the .obsidian Directory (Folder).
          3. Give the shortcut a meaningful name, such as the name of the Vault.

Below are screenshots of the process in order:

You will end up with a shortcut like this:

If you Right-Click then Left-Click Properties, it will look like this:

  • [ ] Files and Folders sort alphabetically just like on your computer. Punctuation and Numbers come before letters. You can use this to force the folders for attachments and templates to the bottom so that they are out of sight, unless you need to look at them.
  • [ ] Customizable Keyboard Commands. Nearly everything has the ability to have a Key Combination.
    • [ ] Templates – Have to add it
    • [ ] Toggle Pin – Have to add it. (Keeps file open when open more files.)
  • [ ] Review Tags in the tag pane to eliminate invalid tags, such as if you use # as an abbreviation for Number. I had a tag S because I had #S, so I had to prefix with \ so that it was \#S so that in preview it looks like #S. This then removed the bogus tag from my tag list.
    • [ ] Group Tags. For example, RPGs, Campaign, Play, GM, Notes could all be tied to RPGs, so instead of separate tags, created separate RPG sub-tags (IF it works for you.):
      • [ ] #RPGs/Campaign #RPGs/Play #RPGs/GM #RPGs/Notes
        • [ ] This separates RPG Notes from general Notes. For personal notes in the same vault, you may want a more specific tag like:
          • [ ] #Notes/Personal #Notes/Finances #Notes/Car #Notes/House
      • [ ] Look out for similar or identical Acronyms. For example OBS is used for both OBS Studio and One Book Shelf, I can’t just use OBS as a tag, because in 6 months I won’t know which tag has the information I need.
      • [ ] I suggest a tag for each note indicating it’s source, such as:
        – Sticky Note (Physical or the M$ App)
        – Evernote or similar program
        – Text File
        – Index Card
        – Notebook
        – Loose Papers
        – etc.
        This will aid you in organizing and future proofing (AKA frustration proofing) your information.
  • [ ] Templates. There is no limit to how many you can have. I recommend naming them so that the one you use most is at the top. If you only have one template, the keyboard shortcut you set up will just load it. It is only when you have multiple templates that you have to pick one.
  • [ ] List of plugins and how they might apply
    – Better Word Count – Displays word count of the focused Note in the lower right of the Obsidian screen.
    – Calendar – This can be placed wherever works for you.
    – Periodic Notes – Same author as Calendar – Create notes for each day, week, month, and year. It is best to have a folder for these notes to keep separated from all others.
    – Kanban – Good for projects, can use to make a GM screen NOTE: if you pin a Kanban to keep open, then the links don’t work. Use the back button (is there a KB shortcut?)
    – Recent Files – If you want to go back to a file but don’t know its exact name.
    – Sliding Panes – If you want to squeeze in multiple open notes. NOTE: With Version 1.0 of Obsidian the general features of this plugin were added to Obsidian, so the plugin no longer works.
  • [ ] CTRL+E for toggling between edit and preview. Be careful as if you hit CTRL+W in error, it will close the pane with the focus. This is because Obsidian uses browser code for a base, and CTRL+W closes a tab, or closes the browser if there is only one tab open.
    • [ ] You can either change the toggle for going between edit and preview, or change the key combo for closing panes, or just don’t make mistakes 😉
  • [ ] Resizing and placing bits where you want them. Each pane can be dragged to place above, below or beside another. The possibilities are endless.
  • [ ] Linking panes for a two-pane view with one for edit and the other for live preview. Emulates WYSIWYG editors.
  • [ ] BACKUP plan!!! You need a plan to backup your notes and your settings, just in case.
    • [ ] Saving or syncing to DropBox or Google or M$ OneDrive is NOT a backup if it is your live data.
    • [ ] Regularly zip up the Vault directory and save it off, perhaps once a month and twice a year. Some use Git to hold it, then they have versioning.
      • [ ] You want a back up plan that isn’t hosed when the free service goes away, or the limit to free space shrinks, etc.
  • [ ] Phone app. I haven’t gotten my vault working for sharing with the app. {This is still on my list to figure out.]
    • [ ] I don’t really look up info on my phone when I used Joplin, I had it for Just in case.
    • [ ] I just use Google Keep for short notes that I can add later to my Obsidian Vault, then delete the note.
  • [ ] If you are a Realmworks user looking for how to preserve all your hard work, and still be able to use it, there is an export tool, and a series of YT videos by Josh Plunket for Realmworks users migrating to Obsidian.
    – The sound on a his early videos has some sort of background noise or artifact. He has lots of interesting information, even for those who don’t use Realmworks.
    – He also started a FB group for using Obsidian for RPG campaigns. It is focused on Realmworks users, but also has lots of questions and answers that you might find useful. [The focus has shifter from Realmworks to getting the most out of Obsidian for use in TTRPGs.]

Spellcheck Isn’t The Same As A Year Ago

[Spelling was crude back then, but now it works as you would expect. Obsidian now uses the Chrome spellcheck and additions to the dictionary are stored in the file “Custom Dictionary.txt.”

On a Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/obsidian/Custom Dictionary.txt

On Windows: C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\obsidian\Custom Dictionary.txt

I deleted all of my original notes from this article on the spellcheck feature as it no longer matters what the issues were. It works very well and as I expect it should.]

A quick note about text files.

I added this to help remove confusion about what a plain text file is. If you don’t need to know the difference for other reasons, you may not know this.

A plain text file is what I mean by text file. This is a file that one can open in Notepad or other TEXT editor and it is displayed normally. The extension of a file does not make it a text file, but the file FORMAT. This means that files with extensions such as CSV, HTML, CSS, MD, etc. can all be opened in a text editor and one can make sense of them.

RTF ( Rich Text Format) files are NOT plain text. The term RICH gives it away. Instead of wrapping text in symbols like two asterisks either side of a word it uses program code that the special format of the file and an editor like MS-Word or Libre Office or MS-Wordpad can read. Open an RTF file in Notepad and you will see characters that aren’t what you want.

Word Processors are NOT text editors. Yes, they can edit text files and save them in plain text format, but one usually doesn’t do that. Save a text file as a Word Document and then open it in Notepad and you’ll see all these funky control characters.

My Journey To Obsidian – Midpoint

In this series: Post 2Post 3Post 4 – Post 5 (Article In Process)

I started using Obsidian about a year ago. At first, I was interested in moving my data from other programs into a text format so they would be less likely to be lost to a vendor’s idea of what is “best” for my data.

I soon discovered it was a great tool for organizing and planning TTRPG campaigns and sessions.

This is the first of three articles about My Journey with Obsidian.

Past Tools

NoteTab Pro – This is a programmable tabbed text editor that works with text formats. It has it’s own scripting language called Clipcode, each “macro” is called a Clip. Clips are gathered in Clip Libraries. There are in an outline format that mirrors the outline format of its Outline file format. Outline files are text files with the *.OTL extension and header lines of code that indicate the start of each topic in the Outline. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s showing it’s age. I got started with it in the late 90’s. It really only highlights HTML, which makes it difficult for things to stand out.

I first used NoteTab to deal with text files at work and implemented it into my personal projects. I was so involved with beta testing that I got my name listed in the help file.

Evernote – I’ve used it since the free version had a lot of options, maybe even before it became a paid service. I kept general notes, things I thought of while away from my computer, my shopping list, etc.

Cherry Tree – A proprietary text outliner. I had different outlines for different things, like my AD&D campaign, and personal stuff.

Campaignwiki.org – I use it for my online campaign notes for my players. It is free, easy to get the data out, and my players can add to it. It supports Markdown. I have more than one campaign in it.

Joplin – I had found it a couple years ago and really liked it, but it was not as easy to use as I’d like. I put a lot of time into it. I mirrored my Campaignwiki in it, but the syntax was a bit different and it wasn’t as easy to add notes. It was dead simple to synchronize with the phone app and it is free.

OneNote – I’ve used it off and on for personal stuff, but don’t like that my information is stuck in it and copy and paste seems to be the only way to get it out. At my day job we’re a Microsoft Partner so it’s MS-Office and OneNote. I don’t like that the program is tied to the cloud and you have to login to OneDrive for it to work. It has limited utility offline.

Obsidian – I stumbled into Obsidian about a year ago in November, 2021. I dove right in and decided I liked it enough that I was soon looking to make a switch. I was motivated by a combination of frustration with Evernote and looking for a way to get my notes out. Joplin was another frustration, plus information in Cherry Tree, and elsewhere motivated me to simplify.

First I found that I could easily get information out of Cherry Tree and Joplin and get it into Obsidian. Exporting from Campaignwiki was also very simple to get working in Obsidian. Evernote was the big headache. I finally found a tool that let me import an Evernote export into Joplin.

Now I had my Evernote, Cherry Tree, and Joplin information in Obsidian, along with a copy of my Campaignwiki campaigns. No longer needing the other programs I uninstalled Evernote from my PC, cell, and deleted my account. I also uninstalls Joplin from my PC and cell, and also uninstalled Cherry Tree.

I still use NoteTab at home and work, but am slowly moving my data over to Obsidian. I keep working to build a set of Clips in NoteTab to help get my data into a format I’m happy with into Obsidian to minimize further editing. The ease of programming Clips to do what I want has made it difficult to move to something else. While Obsidian can’t do all the things NoteTab can do, Obsidian can display data close to that way plus even more. The various Obsidian plugins add so many options.

The one thing I have yet to crack is a way to get my OneNote out in a bulk method. I haven’t looked in the past year to see if perhaps there is a tool, but I hope to find one when I am ready to get that information.

My Obsidian Experience

On discovering Obsidian it was in reference to the Zettelkasten concept. It’s an idea I liked and the tool is awesome!

I had my information for my AD&D campaign organized into folders and made use of tags. I discovered the Kanban plugin and used it for my GM screen and my Campaign & Session Planning. I used the Stacked Tabs plugin and Pinned notes along with the Recent Files template to keep track of information. Someone I know online mentioned they used Obsidian for RPGs and did a couple videos on it. I thought to do some, but then I stumbled upon Josh Plunkett’s Obsidian videos. I took a bit of what he mentioned in his early videos, but soon was doing my own thing.

The way I was using things was NOT optimal. When I ran my Roll20 games on Sunday, I had Discord on my second monitor (we use voice and chat only, no video), Roll20 in my browser, NoteTab open with a list of weather, my AD&D PDFs open, and Obsidian open and frantically jumping around trying to find information that I knew was in there.

Over the summer I was on hiatus for my Sunday game as I travelled around the Western United States. I did keep playing in a Wednesday night Roll20 game and I used Obsidian to take notes. As a player I have a similar setup, Discord on my second screen, and Roll20 and Obsidian on my main screen. It was much less hectic, but still sometimes things got lost. During the Summer, I had my laptop with a single screen and I made it work.

I was plugging away with the usual workflow when suddenly one day, “BAM!” the Obsidian 1.0 update appeared and broke my workflow. I tended to have a LOT of tabs open in my GM vault and with so many, I couldn’t get them to display so I could read them.

I was NOT happy. I ended up closing all my tabs and getting a new workflow figured out, after ranting about it on the Obsidian TTRPG discord and the Obsidian Forums. I slowly started figuring out how to get a new workflow back. I re-watched a few of Josh Plunkett’s older videos and many of his newer ones. I also came across Nicole van der Hoeven’s videos and between the two of them and the Plugins they demonstrated and Nicole’s cool scripts she showed, I soon had a much improved RPG workflow.

I’m Glad That Obsidian 1.0 broke My Workflow

I still use Kanban boards or a GM screen and campaign and session planning, but I’ve added the homepage option of the Default New Tab Plugin. There are a long list of plugins that I use.

My Plugins:

  • Kanban
  • Default New Tab Plugin
  • Recent Files
  • Advanced Tables
  • Leaflet
  • Admonition
  • JSON/CSV Importer
  • Templater
  • Dataview
  • Quickadd
  • Buttons

There are also the plugins for TTRPG Statblocks, monsters, and the dice roller. At the moment, I’m not using them for more than seeing what they do.

The biggest new additions are Templater, Dataview, and the JSON/CSV Importer. I was able to get the information from the PDF of the AD&D Monster Manual into a CSV that I was able to import into my Obsidian RPG vault. I also figured out how to do the same with the Cleric Spells from the Players Handbook after I had already gotten all (All levels for Cleric, Druid, Magic-User, and Illusionist) of them in by hand.

I did use NoteTab to make a clip to format the text of each spell I copied and then copy it to Obsidian. The problem is, I didn't make some tags that I should have as I went, so I couldn't do some of the things I knew I could do with Dataview. So I'm still using NoteTab, but more for its ability to manipulate text than to store information.

My Takeaways Using Obsidian

  1. Organization is key. This is true for TTRPGs as well as personal and work projects. PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) is all about capturing information and being able to find it when you want it. Understanding the ability to use folders which other applications have ingrained in us and can be used just fine in Obsidian, but the true power comes with having a good understanding of tags and how they can help you find your information later. A poor implementation of tags shows its weakness when you can’t do fancy manipulations with the Dataview plugin.
    1. Frontmatter matters. Having a solid plan and structure to the frontmatter of our files includes a consistent use of tags. Having those things in place makes finding and manipulating the information into useful formats so much easier. This gives Dataview even more power with a well thought out structure for tags and frontmatter.
  2. Limit the number of vaults. Too many vaults become cumbersome and every time there is a plugin update you have to update all the plugins. Granted, you don’t have to do it right away, but to avoid things breaking you need to remember to update themes and plugins if you haven’t used a particular vault for awhile. The key is to split out information so different you wouldn’t want it mixed, such as your work and your campaign if you used one computer for work and personal. For personal, multiple campaigns in one vault may not make sense, or be confusing. Also personal projects like a personal journal or a hobby like genealogy may not be conducive to good work. A demo vault to try things out is a good idea to avoid breaking things in your active vaults.
    1. Related to this is don’t try to put too many projects in to vaults until you know what you need out of Obsidian to make it do what you want. Part of this is exporting the data from old tools with helpful tags to minimize additional editing once you have it in Obsidian.
    2. I have information in multiple vaults that makes sense to only have in one vault. This leads to know being able to find something as I can’t recall which vault it is in.
  3. Don’t be afraid to start over. After seeing the possibilities after revising my Obsidian workflow and organization, I am also inspired by watching videos of how others are handling things in their own TTRPG, work, and personal vaults. I am working on an article to help me clarify my thoughts on RPG Vault Structure. So far, it is just me writing out my thoughts, roughly organized. It looks at how the vault structure chosen should work whether one does Top-Down or Bottom-Up worldbuilding. It’ from the perspective of if I made a new campaign, what vault structure would I want or need based on my years of playing RPGs and my experience and new learnings with Obsidian. I hope to share this along with the final version of my Worldbuilding Cheatsheet on Cheatography.
  4. Find a good text editor that can help you with editing the files in your vault(s) if you need to make mass edits. I can do this with NoteTab, but it requires a few more steps do do a mass search and replace on all the files in a directory.
    1. I’ve worked with Vim and Gvim over the years, but their power is also several more steps to access.
    2. I downloaded Atom from Github last year, and finally put it through its paces recently. It can open an entire directory of text files as a “project” and do a search across all files and find something with amazing speed. Similarly one can do a replace across many files.
      This suggests mass editing tags and other parts of frontmatter.
  5. Automation prevents typos and other data storage blunders. Nicole van der Hoeven has demonstrated the power of the Dataview plugin combined with a few javascripts to autoupdate filenames and headers and get notes into the appropriate folder with Templater and Quickadd.
  6. There are so many options with Obsidian, it is best to start small and figure out what you can do with Obsidian. Learn Markdown if you don’t know it, figure out Obsidian options and watch YouTube videos to see what others are doing. Build a demo vault to play with so you don’t mess with any of your data.
  7. Backup. As always it doesn’t matter what your system is, if you don’t have a way to recover when your computer or hard drive fails, you will have much weeping and gnashing of teeth.
  8. Syncing data between my computer and phone is one thing I haven’t cracked for Obsidian. I haven’t tried again since I did about a year ago. I’m also considering syncing one or more of by vaults with Github. I can keep GM notes in a private vault, but how to separate GM from Player visible notes?
  9. It is easy to get data in and out of Obsidian. Getting data into Obsidian is as easy as copying text files into a folder and renaming the .txt extension to .md. It is recommended that you have some frontmatter to track what system/program the data came from, and other helpful front matter and tags for ease of use going forward.
    Similarly, one can copy or even delete files from an Obsidian vault (folder). However, one should not do that when Obsidian is running on the vault you are moving or deleting files through the OS rather than with Obsidian features.
Definitions:
AD&D - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
D&D - Dungeons & Dragons
Frontmatter - Text at the beginning of a Markdown file that is used to define certain parameters of the file. It is places between a row of three dashes before and after.
RPG - Role Playing Game
TTRPG - Table Top Role Playing Game (To distinguish from computer RPGs, even though pen & paper, AKA Table Top RPGs came first.)
CSV - Comma Separated Value file
JSON - JavaScript Object Notation a data format in text files.

NOTE: I wrote this blogpost in Obsidian and it took very little editing to get it onto my website.

Some links in this post contain Affiliate Links.

Gateway To Adventure Trilogy For Old-School Essentials

UPDATED – Updates will be appended to this post as the Kickstarter progresses. It is also the pinned post on my Twitter account.

A new Kickstarter, Gateway To Adventure Trilogy For Old-School Essentials, a third party OSE (Old-School) Essentials collection of supplements launches tomorrow. It is by Appendix N Entertainment, the blog and publishing arm run by Ryan (RJ) Thompson.

Gateway to Adventure is the umbrella for all of Ryan’s OSE offerings.

It features three volumes:

  • Class Compendium
  • Caster’s Codex
  • Combat Conspectus.

Class Compendium will feature new class options, backgrounds, skills, and so forth.

Caster’s Codex features new spells, an alternate magic system (non-Vancian), ritual magic, blood magic, magic items, etc.

Finally, the Combat Conspectus has new combat options, tournaments, alternate initiative, and more.

There are several stretch goals, one of which I have agreed to write. It will be a remaster of my PDF No, Really, It’s Me! [Affiliate Link] to fit the rules and layout of OSE and the Gateway to Adventure series. It will have a Kickstarter exclusive print copy for print backers and a PDF option for all backers.

My adventure is one I’ve run at multiple conventions. It is also the adventure I ran for the first group of games livestreamed from the old Gygax House on 330 Center Street, where D&D took printed form. This was all to benefit Extra Life.

This adventure is about a group of adventurers who met their end at the hands of a band of dopplegangers. The leaders have selected a group to impersonate the adventurers and convince other adventurers to stay away and thus stop upsetting their food supply and killing them.

I have a few ideas for expanding and improving it and look forward to the challenge and sharing it with a new audience and refreshing it for the existing audience.

At the time this is published, the Kickstarter is just shy of 50% of it’s base goal.

I’ve known Ryan personally for several years. He has run multiple Kickstarters and successfully fulfilled them.

NOTE: I will update this blog post with milestones as the Kickstarter progresses.

  • 16 September 2022 c. 2:00 PM EDT – $52.00 shy of 50% funded in about 30 hours.
  • 19 September 2022 – Passed 50% funded.
  • 21 September 2222 – $199.00 shy of 60% funded with 99 backers.
  • 28 September 2022 – 92 % Funded. $1,000 left to reach funding goal.
  • 29 September 2022 – 97% Funded. $456 to reach funding goal.
  • 02 October 2022 – Passed base goal. $1,500 to first stretch goal.
  • 04 October 2022 – Getting close to the first stretch goal.
  • 06 October 2022 – Reached 1st stretch goal, $400 to 2nd stretch goal
  • 10 October 2022 – Reached 2nd stretch goal, 3 days left.
  • 15 October 2022 – Funded! 199 Backers and $17,204 137% Funded.

While it didn’t reach my stretch goal, I will still update my PDF with the ideas I had to make it better. I’m just excited that I was asked to be a part of it.

Random Research

This post was prompted by two players having questions that required NPCs to do research. One PC is a cleric, the other a paladin. They worship different gods, one the goddess of fire/the hearth, and the other the god of death.

The cleric of the fire goddess has a masterwork matchlock musket. I assigned a d12 usage die for the powder. It is down to a d6. Few shots have resulted in a hit. I ruled that it takes one round to re-load, so it is far from overpowered. The one keg of gunpowder they found they soon lost. So finally in the capital they checked the chief temple and the keepers of lore are researching for the location of any other matchlocks and the recipe for gunpowder.

The paladin worships the god of death and has a war scythe. At the temple of death he asked about magic weapons. They are researching this question.

Faced with two such questions for which I had not yet developed an answer, the NPCs told the PCs that they would send word to the inn where they were staying once they had answers.

I took time between sessions to determine how long it would take for the researchers to have an answer and what that answer was.

The PCs left town in a hurry and are slowly making their way back. They teleported far away and are travelling back overland, hoping to reach the sea and sail back to the capital. They have no idea if the researchers have an answer for them or not.

The following is my thought process for coming up with the answers I arrived at for these two questions.

Research by Sage p. 32 1e DMG – d20 to determine the d% target number to know the answer. 

In this case know means either memorized or in their library.

Categories of General, Specific, and Exacting from the DMG are helpful.

Consulting the archivists and librarians of temples and libraries should work much like sages.

Sample questions:

Where are magical holy relics?

Where are magical holy weapons? (for a paladin, etc.)

Librarians, scholars, archivists, or alchemists could also be consulted.

How do I make x?

What are the ingredients for x?

PROCEDURE:

How likely are those asked to know the answer? Assign a target number based on how common the information is. 

A good example would be knowing about legends vs. knowing the exact details of which a legend speaks. 

Some may have heard of an ancient warrior’s sword, but that doesn’t mean they know where it is now.

Roll 1d6 for the number of weeks seeking the answer will take. 

(It’s not like they have the dewey decimal system with card catalogs with meticulously preserved books.)

(NOTE: The amount of time it will take is NOT known to either the NPCs or the PCs, only the GM. The PCs will be forced to decide if they stick around and wait for an answer, or come back to the location at some point in the future.)

Note this on the campaign calendar used by the GM. Start the count on the next day, as the current day already has its own business.

Determine what general time of day they find the answer, morning, afternoon, evening however you define those in your game, then what part of those, or just roll a d8 for an eight hour workday, then a d6 for which ten minute block of the hour, then a d10 for which minute, repeat the d6 & d10 for the seconds of that minute, if it matters.

This will set the scene for those waiting around with a promise to be contacted when the answer is found. Or else if they come back before the answer is found, they still don’t know how long until there will be an answer.

THE ANSWER:

The answer may be “we don’t know.” It will take the number of weeks rolled previously for them to come to that conclusion.

The answer may be vague or incomplete. The answer may lie in an obscure quote or riddle. Or the document may be damaged giving just a few words. For example, the holy relic is in the tomb of an ancient warrior, but no one knows the name of the warrior or the location of the tomb.

The answer may be precise and exacting. 

This all depends on the materials available to do the research.

Time and Survival of Sources:

Vellum and Parchment are more durable than paper, especially when it comes to water, but fire, rodents, insects, etc. lead to damaged (incomplete) or destroyed (missing) information.

A well known ten year old book with lots of copies is likely to have information that is easily knowable. If the particular researcher(s) doesn’t have a copy, it’s possible they may have read it or know where to either view or acquire a copy.

A rare or unique 1,000 year old manuscript may be “lost” in that people may have heard about it, or other writings mention its general contents, but no one knows exactly what’s in it nor where it is.

Other manuscripts are lost in that they are destroyed and no longer exist.

CONTEXT: 

Are they logically asking someone who has a chance to know or find out?

A cleric or paladin asking the archivists of a temple to their own deity are more likely to find answers about relics and holy weapons pertaining to their deity, or those their temple or religion have dealt with. The main temple in the capital city is more likely to have the answer than a shrine in a remote village. Unless that remote village just happens to be near where a warrior’s last stand occurred, etc.

If they go to a temple to a different deity, while they may get help for a donation, unless the question pertains to the deity and religious lore and practice of that group, they may not get a helpful answer.

Does the source exist?

How does the source exist? Primary source, secondary source, tertiary source quotes the secondary source, etc.

How old is the information? 

How well known is the information in the present?

Each factor will weigh the likelihood of a favorable answer.

An Example:

One possible procedure would be to give the chance of an answer a percentage. Say that in optimal conditions there is a 75% chance to get the answer desired by the players.

Note: If you’ve given the players information that an item or information is in the city they have travelled to, they need to be able to get the answers. The answers don’t have to come easily or quickly. They just have to have enough “breadcrumbs” that keep leading to the answer. 

Once the PCs have the answer, they may still have to solve a riddle, disarm or avoid a trap, or avoid, trap, or defeat a monster to get the item(s) they seek. As always, the level of challenge and risk should be worthy of that which they seek.

Modify this based on the following:

Do those doing the research have a source in their possession? If no, then determine if they can get it.

Do they know what source (book, scroll, tapestry, inscription, epitaph, etc.) has the desired answer? If no, determine if they possess a source that will lead them to a source with the information.

If they don’t have any documents that will lead them to a clear source with the answer, will they be able to give the questioners anything to narrow down the search for an answer? If no, then the PCs will have to try a different approach, or ask others, or go to a different location either in the same city or a different city.

You may decide that some form of divination or “bargain” could generate the answer. Something short of a wish. Wishes should be rare and PCs should fear to use them.

However, determine how old this information is, subtract 1% per century and 10% per millenia. 

Determine how common the information is in the present day:

Everyone knows: +5%

Most People Know: +1%

Specialists Know: 0%

Experts Know: -1%

No one knows: -5%

In the following add 1% for primary source, 0% for secondary source, -1% for tertiary source, etc. Roll d% to determine how well preserved the source is with 1% being very bad and 100% being perfect condition.

Source Exists and is Common and Accurate: +10%

Source Exists and is Uncommon and Accurate: +5 %

Source Exists and is Rare and Accurate: 0%

Source Exists and is Unique and Accurate: -5%

Source Exists and is Common and Inaccurate: -10%

Source Exists and is Uncommon and Inaccurate: -5 %

Source Exists and is Rare and Inaccurate: 0%

Source Exists and is Unique and Inaccurate: 0%

Source Exists and is Common and Known to be Inaccurate: 0%

Source Exists and is Uncommon and Known to be Inaccurate: 0%

Source Exists and is Rare and Known to be Inaccurate: 0%

Source Exists and is Unique and Known to be Inaccurate: 0%

Call To March

I had this idea for a short story. I started it about an hour before the Wednesday night game I play in. This is a first draft with minimal editing for the most grievous typos. I’m curious what you think of it.


The youth, slim of build and lean, not yet muscled from long marchings with pack and armor looked to the grizzled veteran. Young Jaran idolized the aged veteran, survivor of many battles, who bore a white scar over his sightless left eye.

Hurry lads, grab your packs and cinch them well before the call to march ends!

How far today, Goram? came the call in unison from the youthful members of the company.

Goram shook his head and spat. Blast you children barely weaned from your mothers’ tits! Didn’t they teach you anything before they sent you? The drummer beat five times before starting the call to march. The call to march tells us that the tune is the tune of 10,000 steps. We’ll here that tune played all through five times before we rest for the night, or make ready for a fight.

Jaran was amazed at the ease with which Goram had all the answers ready for a new soldiers first march to the field of battle.

Soon, Goram was checking the packs and how well they were packed and cinched to each soldier. Chiding a few for awkward or loose placement and sending them to the back of the column to quickly fix their packs and not be a hazard to their fellows marching behind them.

Jaran was well versed in packing and his only challenge had been to learn the best way for a soldier to order their packs. His father was a carter and taught him all the knots and ways to tighten them. He needed no knife to make efficient use of a long rope or cord. Goram was quick to notice this and set him to teaching the others. I’ve only seen sailors tie such knots til now, Goram had said to him. Jaran lived far from the sea, the only ships were those plying the rivers.

Goram was their leader, of this company, third of the four in their battalion, which was last of the 4 in their regiment, the fifth of the kingdom. Each regiment had a long and storied history.

Those of the fifth regiment wielded spears. Each bore two shorter spears for throwing, and one long heavy spear for their tight formations to bristle towards other units. They could also spread out and wield their heavy spears like long slicing knives with their long broad pointed blades. This was an old style of fighting that was mostly ceremonial in the movements. Modern war meant packing tight, and only Goram Oneeye had ever seen it used in battle when he was a new warrior like Jaran.

Goram had even marched to the tune of 100,000 steps to reach that battle. He didn’t speak of it, but others whispered it out of his hearing. Goram was the last survivor of the fifth regiment that day, half blinded by a long gash his face hanging from his skull. Faint from loss of blood and the exertion of survival. A cavalry charge had broken the unit, but they rallied with the ancient fighting style, spreading out to withstand the horse born warriors when they wheeled about. Many were out of step with their movements that day and the cavalry cut them down, but Goram and the 25 were well practiced and cut down many from their horses.

No one dared hum or whistle the popular tune, let alone sing “Goram and the 25” for fear of what Goram would do to them. It was said he bore the scalps of many fools who dared even think that tune lining his pouch to hide the sound of his coins. Jaran often imagined what Goram would do. It was a popular tune in many villages and taverns. It told the tale of Goram and 25 who stood with him who fought with all their might against the heavy horse of Zamrithel, the kingdom of which the people of Barnitok were once again at war.

It was only the endurance of Goram who slew 20 horse riders himself that broke the back of the pride of the enemy, the Red Riders all cloaked in flowing red cloaks and red plumed helms. Goram was raised up by the king’s bodyguard who had entered the desperate fray at a near run battle. Then the High Physician tended to Goram who pled for his fallen friends to be the first to receive care.

At least, that was the legend told by the songs and poetry of the minstrels, and repeated by those stumbling home from many taverns. Jaran wanted to ask the old veteran just how true the tales were, but he feared yet honored the memory of the fallen companions of Goram. At least some of it was true, he bore the scar over his left eye, and wore the golden chain that even knights would salute.

Goram just endured these interruptions to his day, “All in a days work for a faithful soldier of the king” he’d say in a tone somehow both mocking and reverential.

Most others in the company steered clear of Goram, afraid he might kill them with a look from his blind eye. It was said among soldiers in other companies that if he looked at you with only his left eye that he could see your soul and if it please him, he could pluck it from your body and you’d drop dead. The more superstitious believed this, or acted like they did. Jaran knew better. He’d heard too many such stories from his father and in the taverns when his father would pay for a meal when what mother packed ran out.

Jaran wanted to know Goram better, but wasn’t sure how to do it. All he knew was that if he paid attention and listened, Goram had much to teach him about war, life, and even love. Goram could spout oaths with the best of them, but could also speak like a poet. Mostly, he only had practical advice about properly tying one’s boots to avoid blisters and packing ones pack to avoid cramps. If one didn’t march with the gear packed just so, they’d end up dead if a fight was at the end of the march.

Goram’s voice brought him back to focus on the preparations for march. Shouting out orders and cursing the fools who still had problems with their packs, he got the company into two columns abreast. “Alright now, lads. The march of 10,000 steps begins … now!” as he stepped forth to begin the march.

“Only 5 cycles of the tune today. Keep sharp for enemy scouts and ambushes. We should be making camp once the fifth cycle is done, unless I’m greatly mistaken. Damn you, Cartlog! Why didn’t you make water before you put on your pack! Double time and get back in line!” He muttered just loud enough for Jaran and those nearby to hear, “I’m too old for this shit. Just one more battle the captain said…” But the self conversation trailed off as he barked orders at another fool who didn’t make water before the march started. You’d think they’d learn, Jaran mused.

What Is The Best RPG?

Listen to the companion podcast here.

Do you have an answer for this?

Is it a good answer?

Is it inviting of new players to RPGs?

I have an answer, and I think it’s the right answer.

What is the best RPG?

The one you play.

Because if you’re not playing it, it isn’t the best one for you.

My answer is all about playing RPGs. If someone is spending all their time complaining about some RPG they never have and never will play, are they really gamers? Do they even play?

If all you do is shit on other’s fun, then you are a miserable lonely person.

For me, RPGs are about getting a group together and having fun.

Back in the day it was hard to get a group together. All we wanted to do was game. We started letting our little brother’s play, and they gladly towed the line because they wanted to play. If we weren’t so shy around girls and thought they’d play, we would have asked them.

We had kids from all the different groups involved. The majority were in band, theater, art, or National Honor Society. There were a few jocks in the mix too. We didn’t turn away gamers because you never knew when you’d be hard pressed and need to invite them to fill out the table.

Complainers complaining about games they won’t play or run can sit in their rooms complaining to the walls. The rest of us want to play.

I’ll play almost any RPG and any gamer that is courteous and respects the others at the table and allows each player to have a share of the spotlight. I have less patience for those that seem to naturally hog the focus to the exclusion of others. We can SHARE the table and each have a bit of the focus.

Play the GAME and have FUN!

Complaining isn’t fun. Complaining is a form of gatekeeping as it seeks to dissuade others from “bad/wrong fun.” That’s the kind of fun one shouldn’t have because it only occurs when playing or discussing games that complaining complainers can’t stand for some ill-defined but supposedly valid reason. I’m not sure they understand what a role playing game is, let alone what it takes to play one.

Games are supposed to be fun, and games are meant to be played.

If you find that a game isn’t for you, that’s all you really need to say about it. If pressed, just the facts will do. Such as, the mechanics or the theme, or whatever just doesn’t appeal to you. That’s OK. But going on a vindictive crusade and ridiculing play styles, types of RPG, genres of RPG, some aspect of players, and stereotyping players of the RPG you don’t like is counterproductive.

If you spent half that energy on doing something positive, like playing a game you do like, or writing your own game, adventure, or novel, you’d be cranking out a lot of product every year.

So go find the best RPG for you, and play it!

Because the best RPG is the one you play!

This means that the best changes as what you are playing changes. It’s OK to have one favorite, or a group of favorites you rotate through.

Gary Con 14 – 2022 Recap

I had a blast at Gary Con 14.

Listen to the companion podcast here.

Wednesday

I arrived Wednesday about lunchtime and went to The Pub Next Door and had one of the lunch specials – spaghetti.

I then made a Walmart run for a couple things I forgot before checking in.

My room was about as close as you can get to the lobby. I was on the building closest to the lobby on the Gary Con HQ side of things. My room was the first room next to the stairwell. I was on the top floor, the third floor.

The landing at the top of the stairs has a group of gamers that set up for the entire weekend. A group of AD&D players and they had a long game that was a continuation of prior years that they’ve come to Gary Con. I never heard them. This made it easy to just head back to my room to drop off stuff or get stuff if I wasn’t too far away.

I then went to see what was what and met up a few friends in the lounge and we then headed to the registration for badge pick up. We got there and the line was already long. We had to wait about ten minutes for the registration to open. It took close to an hour to snake around to the registration window.

While waiting I discovered that I was right behind a friend – hard to recognize with masks on and we caught up. I saw a few others ahead of me in line and said a quick hello.

Wednesday is the weekly OSE game I play in. This is campaign two and it was Session 87, I have made every session. I also played in the first campaign that was about 245 sessions. I never missed a session of that campaign and played a couple times on Wednesday night at Gary Con, and once they moved the game to Tuesday just because, so I wouldn’t have to play from the convention.

After the game, I went to the lounge and got in more visiting before turning in.

Thursday

I had a 9 am three hour slot. For Gary Con 12 – the first one to be affected by Covid, I signed up for all wargames and board games, as I wanted to get those in. I got into every game I wanted. Alas, it wasn’t to be.

I tried to repeat that this year, but there were not as many wargames, and the ones I wanted in were already full. I did find a board game, Diplomacy. We had a full roster of seven players. Five players, including myself had never played before. The guy running the game played Italy, and the other experienced player had Russia. I had Germany, and the other novices had England, France, Austria, and Turkey. Each of the other newbies were college buddies.

The game is set in 1900 Europe and the idea is to use negotiation and deceit to grow one’s empire.

The only random element is determining who plays what country to start. For the rest of the game, the players talk among themselves, either as individuals or groups to discuss plans. We had a blast making alliances then stabbing each other in the back.

As Germany, I knew I was surrounded. The other novices decided we should gang up on the experienced players. So we hammered Russia and nearly knocked it off the board. Then we focused on Italy. Austria was wiped off the map.

Being surrounded, I had an initial alliance with Russia, but quickly took Warsaw, a control center. Having control centers determines how many units one can have on a one for one basis.

I also took Denmark and the Netherlands and made an agreement that I got the Netherlands and they got Belgium. I then mostly sat in place to hold my control centers. I did a bit of movement to the south to keep Italy off my territory.

It was only a three hour slot due to a mistake in scheduling so we only had time for four or five turns. At the end of each turn we’d write down our moves. Once all were turned in, the guy running the game would go through them and adjudicate them. Some moves couldn’t be adjudicated until other player’s moves were considered.

The last couple of turns are when I backstabbed Italy, when we all ganged up, and then I backstabbed France and took Belgium. England made an alliance with me to break our alliance with France.

We then ran out of time and when the score was tallied, I actually won! I wasn’t expecting to win. My use of a strategy to avoid a two front war is what saved me.

Diplomacy can never be the same game twice, even if you play with the same players and each end up with the same country.

We had the right mix of players and had a great time. I can see where people who take it too seriously could end up with hurt feelings.

Diplomacy was published in the 1959, so it is older than I am. Dave, Gary, and most of the old guard played Diplomacy both in person and by mail. I see how it influenced the emergence of roleplaying. If you’ve never played, this is something you should try.

WOTC still sells Diplomacy and you can get a PDF of the rules from their website. Since you can get the rules for free, you can use any map. You just need tokens for armies, navies, and territory markers. You’d have to add control points to the map. The Risk Board could work, or a fantasy map, or a map of your own design.


In the afternoon, I had lunch, then I took a nap, then I visited with friends and took a quick tour of the vendor hall and ran into a few more friends.

I ran into Yolanda Frontenay, owner of Gary’s old house where he wrote original D&D. See my prior post about the Indiegogo Campaign and the immediate need to take out two trees.

I then dressed up as my character Griswald, the namesake of “Follow Me, And Die!” for the wedding of Satine Phoenix & Jameson Stone. Griswald is the fellow with the raised sword and wolf’s head shield with red eyes that is my social media avatar by Satine. She recognized what I was dressed as.

It was a fun ceremony. There was a vinyl game mat for guests to sign and a stack of various creatures from Figurines of Adorable Power for prty gifts for the guests.

Satine & Jameson – Officiated by Luke Gygax

After the ceremony, Satine and Jameson had their picture taken with the wedding party and then the guests. They had two instant copies of each photo. One for the couple immediately placed in a photo album and each guest in the photo signed it. The guests then got a copy of the same photo.

We then had much talking among fellow guests until things wound down late in the evening.

Friday

From 8 am til Noon I played in “Skull Stack Crater” a Holmes Basic scenario by Zach Howard of Zenopus Archives. I played a lizardfolk warrior. We were all third level, the halfling thief was fourth level.

The mix of experienced players easily got through some obstacles. I played my character as a fearless warrior who would gladly go first. I think I had the most hit points.

It was a fun adventure.

I played in Zach’s Return to the Tower of Zenopus at Gary Con 11, the last in person con til now. One of the other players was in that same game and we remembered each other.

I then went to a seminar by Jameson Stone, Indie TTRPG Publishing & Kickstarter. He and those attending the seminar mentioned several helpful things for those doing Kickstarter or other crowdsourced fundraising. He mentioned several things I had not heard or read before in all my reading.

I then took another nap. I live in the Eastern time zone, so I keep waking up as if it is 7 am, when it is 6 am Central. That made for long days. I also hadn’t slept well the prior days.

After supper I attended GM Tips by Satine. I’ve been to several GM Tips presented by Satine, most recently at Gamehole Con last October. She always has something new to say.

The main thing is that there is no one size fits all answer anymore. There are three possible applications: live games, online games, and streamed games. Each of them is different, so the answers for the same question is different for each. Very insightful and something to think about.

After Satine’s seminar I had a brief moment to tell her something I didn’t get to tell her after her wedding. Then we got our annual Gary Con picture. She and Jameson would fly to England for D&D in a Castle the next day, so it was a whirlwind for them.

I then visited with friends in the lounge.

The next day, I didn’t have anything until 11 am so I was planning to sleep in.

Saturday

NARRATOR: “Despite his good intentions, he did not, in fact sleep in. He awoke at the same early hour as every previous morning. He realized this as he looked bleary eyed at his watch.”

At 11 am I had the two hour screening of the documentary, “The Dreams in Gary’s Basement” by Pat Kilbane. I saw a teaser of this at my first Gary Con – Gary Con 8. That was also the first Gary Con for both Satine and I and we kept ending up in the same seminars, and we became Gary Con buddies.

After the screening I bought Pat lunch so we could catch up. We met up with Dave Wesley and he joined us and regaled us with stories of his father’s WWII service. Near the end of that Grif Morgan of the Secrets of Blackmoor documentary joined us.

I then took another nap.

On my way to get supper I talked with a table of younger gamers who liked my denim vest. (I got a LOT of complements about my sleeveless denim jacket with various pins and buttons, and a Death Dealer patch on the back.)

I got the three of them to play my card game. It was the first playtest I got in.

I then ran into Zach Howard and we got to talking about Holmes Basic. Pat Kilbane walked by and the three of us talked about how Holmes Basic was the first D&D for each of us.

I looked down at the desk with Gary’s books on it and realized that one of the books is the Penguin Atlas of Medieval History. I still have that book from college. I can’t find it to get a comparison picture.

Gary’s “Penguin Atlas of Medieval History”

I made another trip to the vendor hall. I missed the presentation of the Gary Con Lifetime Achievement Award, but figured out that it was Lou Zocchi of Game Science, when I saw the award at his booth.

I bought a 5 die set from Lou. I think that’s my fifth set of Game Science dice.

I bought a new dice bag from another vendor.

Next I bought a set of dice from Role 4 Initiative. I didn’t realize that they were a Michigan based company. They are in Portage, MI about 15 minutes from where I live. They are all online sales since they don’t have a storefront.

An online friend gave me a 3-D printed mini of Gary Gygax. He said that there were ten around the convention free to whoever found them. He had two.

I then spent the evening in the lounge visiting. I tried and failed to get any pick up games to try my card game.

Sunday

I sat at a table in the restaurant near the table where Todd Stashwick was having breakfast with someone. When his friend departed someone else walked up about the time I was finished. Todd mentioned he grew up near Lake Geneva (Chicago). I then struck up a conversation with him about old games, like D&D 1e. This was his first Gary Con. He then gave me a card with a Spotify bar code for his gaming/travel playlist. It’s a bunch of songs from late 70s & early 80s and got me all the way home with playlist to spare. He honored me by following me on Instagram.

I managed to get in two playtests with two new players and one of the players from Saturday’s card game.

I then did a playtest of the original deck and the alternate deck. I was glad to learn that the never before played alternate deck was not broken. I did find some phrasing that was wrong, and I used the wrong term on a card that didn’t match the correct term.

I had comments that the art is perfect and that they would have bought the game if it were for sale.

I think this means that I’m finally ready to put together the final deck. I’m not the one to do layout. I can make it look good enough for a playtest, but I need a layout person who knows cards. If you know someone who won’t cost me an arm and a leg, let me know.

I got in a great visit with Steve Winter and we talked about all kinds of things and other gamers joined in.

I talked to someone else and they went to follow me on Twitter and found out they were already following me.

On previous days of the con, I had several tell me that they read the blog, or follow me on Twitter. I met someone at the lounge bar Saturday night and they said that several people said that he needed to read my blog. That is always a cool ego boost.

About 3 pm, I found myself reluctantly ready to head home. I couldn’t afford it, but I could really use another week or two like that. I found my mood lifted, the drudgery induced by Covid isolation eradicated. My spirits were lightened and my creativity renewed. The drive home was easy and not too big of a pain. There weren’t too many drivers that were scary.

I made it home safe and after I unpacked I scripted and recorded, edited, and posted episode 199 of my podcast.

I have ideas ready to flow for more blog posts, podcasts, and more. I don’t have the time or energy to get them done as quickly as I want, but I’m pressing ahead as quick as I can.

For those of you who were at Gary Con and we didn’t connect, I’m sorry we missed each other. For those new people I met, it was wonderful to meet you. For all my friends who I did get to see, it was awesome catching up! I hope to see both those I didn’t encounter and those who couldn’t make it next year, or at Gamehole Con or UCon later this year.

My only negative is that one evening I left my black zippered hoody with my logo and “Follow Me, And Die!” in red letters. I reported it and gave regular updates via Twitter. No one turned it in. I hope whoever has it was able to keep warm and that they get a lot of use out of it.

Crying over my lost hoodie.

GAME ON!