Month: August 2019

Torchbearer – Episode 02, Side B

Posted on by gmcolin

Hello listeners! Welcome to side B of the second recording session of our Torchbearer series!  In this series you’ll hear our cast struggle heroically through their adventure below the Inn of the Three Squires as first level adventurers. Alex played the role of Jimmithias “Jimmy” Dwindelberger, a Human Magician, Kaetlyn played the role of Aaron Gold, a Human Warrior, Kolton played the role of Horrace San Diego, a Human Cleric, and Matt played the role of Nilo Steelkin, a Dwarf Adventurer, in this series. Colin acted as GM, The Adversity.

In this episode the meta discussion continues! Because the players are still recovering from the really rough time in session one and Jimmy fell through the floor at the end of the last episode as a result of a twist. Nilo nearly has a catastrophe, the party suffers a very terrible set-back, and then they deal with the fallout of Jimmy’s twist from his failed cartography roll. We cap off the night with awards and have some talks about how tough they are to give out.

pun-o-meter-1

Keeping that Pun-O-Meter strong at 1, despite the presence of some pretty good jokes.

Please, enjoy the show!

Torchbearer – Episode 02, Side A

Posted on by gmcolin

Hello listeners! Welcome to the second episode of our Torchbearer series!  In this series you’ll hear our cast struggle heroically through their adventure below the Inn of the Three Squires as first level adventurers. Alex played the role of Jimmithias “Jimmy” Dwindelberger, a Human Magician, Kaetlyn played the role of Aaron Gold, a Human Warrior, Kolton played the role of Horrace San Diego, a Human Cleric, and Matt played the role of Nilo Steelkin, a Dwarf Adventurer, in this series. Colin acted as GM, The Adversity.

In this episode we have a lot of meta discussion because the players had a really rough time in session one and needed to regroup. We talk about the current situation that they’re in, the rules that we’ve encountered and needed clarification on, and begin adventuring through the dungeon once more after the group decides that they need to get out of the Inn’s cellar and back up into the Inn proper to scavenge for provisions! This goes poorly… Huzzah!!!

Please, enjoy the show!

Torchbearer – Episode 01, Side B

Posted on by gmcolin

Hello listeners! Welcome to the second part of the first recording session of our Torchbearer series!  In this series you’ll hear our cast struggle heroically through their adventure below the Inn of the Three Squires as first level adventurers! Alex played the role of Jimmithias “Jimmy” Dwindelberger, a Human Magician, Kaetlyn played the role of Aaron Gold, a Human Warrior, Kolton played the role of Horrace San Diego, a Human Cleric, and Matt played the role of Nilo Steelkin, a Dwarf Adventurer, in this series. Colin acted as GM, The Adversity.

We pick up with the dramatic conclusion of the encounter from the end of our last session and then delve further into the cellar of the inn. They found a barricaded doorway and then we discover something rather disturbing in the darkness beyond…

Please, enjoy the show!

Torchbearer – Episode 01, Side A

Posted on by gmcolin

Hello listeners! Welcome to the first episode of our Torchbearer series!  In this series you’ll hear our cast struggle heroically through their adventure below the Inn of the Three Squires as first level adventurers. Alex played the role of Jimmithias “Jimmy” Dwindelberger, a Human Magician, Kaetlyn played the role of Aaron Gold, a Human Warrior, Kolton played the role of Horrace San Diego, a Human Cleric, and Matt played the role of Nilo Steelkin, a Dwarf Adventurer, in this series. Colin acted as GM, The Adversity.

At the beginning of this episode, you’ll hear the Crew use James D’Amato’s Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide to help them flesh out their group dynamic a little bit! The book is full of fun prompts and activities to help flesh out character backstories for any level of play for fantasy adventure games and they thought it would be fun to use it for this series. You’ll hear them go through three of the activities for “low level” characters and you’ll see that these activities are fast, fun, and engaging.

James doesn’t have an special site or online shop where you can buy his book directly from him, so you’ll just have to buy it wherever you usually buy your gaming books!

Once that’s done (around the 30 minute mark), the Crew gets right into the action and facing the party’s first formidable foe… a broken staircase! Seriously. You’ll see that they immediately realize how difficult facing challenges like this obstacle are in this game. Once they’re inside the building, they begin exploring and come face to face with a different danger…

Please, enjoy the show!

Torchbearer – Character Creation

Posted on by gmcolin

Hello listeners! Welcome to the Character Creation recording for Wednesday Night Game’s Torchbearer series!  Alex, Kaetlyn, Kolton, and Matt joined this series as players and Colin acted as GM and helped facilitate this recording session.

Today, you’ll get to listen to this optional content where we discuss rules of the game, character development and creation, group backstory, and some world building and discussion about tone. Really very standard stuff for our Character Creation series of episodes. Also par for the course is that this episode is longer than our normal 45 minutes to an hour long and clocks in at very nearly 1 hour and 30 minutes. Colin comes into this thing strong with some good tone setting… but then succumbs to the groups general silliness as the show goes on longer.

You’ll specifically get to hear us start to get to some Seussian antics latter on in the session. You’ll see.

Also, you’ll hear us mention James D’Amato’s Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide in this episode. It’s full of fun prompts and activities to help you flesh out your character’s backstories for any level of play for fantasy adventure games, or for writing stories! James doesn’t have a special site or online shop for this book, so you’ll just have to buy it wherever you usually buy your gaming books!

And now, please, enjoy the show.

New Series!

Posted on by gmcolin

TLDR: It’s Torchbearer!

Hello listeners! Legends of the Five Rings has come to an end which means that we’ll be starting a new series next week!

The Wednesday Night Crew is excited to say that we’re gonna be presenting Torchbearer by Thor Olavsrud which was Matt’s pick in our rotation!

This game is similar to Mouse Guard, but a little more mechanically robust. Also similar to Burning Wheel, but a little less mechanically complex. We wanted to give it a try since it would give us a full view of the Burning Wheel system (except for Burning Empires, of course).

Content and tone wise, the game is a dungeon delver so it’s styled in the vain of old school Dungeons and Dragons games (right down to gaining XP for bringing back treasure instead of fighting monsters) or the Darkest Dungeon video game but without all the Lovecraft influences. Light and carrying capacity are emphasized mechanically in this game (which we’ll talk about in the episodes at length) and fighting monsters to the death is disincentivized (unusual for this type of game in the modern gaming landscape).

Colin ran the adventure from the back of the rulebook, Under the House of the Three Squires, and the players had an excellent time! Please come and join us next Monday for Character Creation where we sit around and talk about what kind of adventurers will undergo this perilous journey, and next Wednesday for Episode 1, Side A.