A Rune Awakening 9: Taking Care of Business

The sihedron medallion

Our heroes finish the first module of Rise of the Runelords and find that an adventurer’s work is never done.

Featuring Aser, James, Jonn, Landan, Megan, and Patrick. Music by Kevin MacLeod, “Battle of Five Armies.” Edited by Steph Kingston. 

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What’s Cool on Kickstarter

There’s many interesting items to be found on Kickstarter, but these are the coolest ones this week.

Swirled Chocolate and Gummy Dice
If you have a gamer that you love, you need to check out this Kickstarter. They’ve promised delivery by Valentine’s day, and what better way to say I love you then a set of delicious dice. The gummy dice come in a variety of colors, and you can get the chocolate dice swirled as well. If you don’t want a whole set, you can just buy a huge d20!

Campaign image showing various gummy and chocolate dice.

“We are C.W. and Daemon Wolf, of Lunar Wolf Treats! Our Etsy shop has practically exploded with orders over the past year and a half as we expanded our selection of chocolates and gummies for geeks and gamers! We started out simple enough, with a TARDIS and Dalek mold set and a large D20 mold, and we’ve been growing our collection from there!

Recently we came up with the idea of mixing chocolates together in a swirl pattern inside the actual mold, to create swirled chocolate dice that resemble some of our favorite patterns of dice in real life.”

Continue reading What’s Cool on Kickstarter

Beyond the Threshold 8: Putting the AK Back in Alaska

Anchorage-Skyline

As the team flees San Francisco, Alice finds that there might be trouble on her boyfriend’s continued fishing adventures and persuades everyone to head to the Last Frontier

Featuring Aser, Matt, Megan, and Phil. Music by Kevin MacLeod, “Hitman.”

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What’s Cool on Kickstarter

There’s many interesting items to be found on Kickstarter, but these are the coolest ones this week.

 

Octopedestrians
This print is from the guy who makes the wonderful Calamityware plates. Plus, I can’t resist the octopuses!

Gif of various octopuses from the print

“A few months ago, I became infected with a mysterious urge to draw octopuses. I couldn’t get enough of their big eyes, sinuous tentacles, and languid poses. Now I’m ready to share my pointless obsession with you!

Could you use more whimsy in your art collection? If enough sponsors pledge, we can justify a production run to print my Octopedestrians drawing on heavy, museum-quality paper that you can frame.”

 

Ultimate NPCs: Skulduggery
I always have a hard time coming up with names and details for NPCs, but with a book like this, you can generate all of these details much easier, and hopefully not bumble through as much.

The book, open as well as an example of the cards

“How many times have you been put on the spot in the middle of a game and needed to generate one or more highly detailed and well thought out NPCs? How many times have you spent valuable time pre-game building a fantastic NPC from scratch, only to have the players pass by the tavern he or she was located? How many times have you been a player wanting to join a party but didn’t have any good ideas on a character build? How many times have you been running a game and had a player want to join but just didn’t know how to create a character and level them up to be comparable with the rest of the party?!

Ultimate NPCs solves all of these issues as well as a great deal more! The book is packed with exciting, versatile and dynamic character builds that can be used in a myriad of different ways, and is written in 5th Edition, Pathfinder, and Swords & Wizardry formats to suit most fantasy RPG systems!”

 

Shakespeare vs. Cthulhu
This book combines some of the classics, Shakespeare and Cthulhu in to a series of short stories. I like the idea of introducing Cthulhu into Shakespeare’s plays, and I hope that they really explore the idea.

A Shakespearean man chants for Cthulhu

“Imagine if it had been William Shakespeare, England’s greatest playwright, who had discovered the truth about the Great Old Ones and the cosmic entity we know as Cthulhu, rather than the American author H P Lovecraft.

Imagine if Stratford’s favourite son had been the one to learn of the dangers of seeking after forbidden knowledge and of the war waged between the Elder Gods in the Outer Darkness, and had passed on that message, to those with the eyes to see it, through his plays and poetry. Welcome to the world of Shakespearean Cthulhu!”

 

The Burning Wheel Codex
Burning Wheel is a very crunchy system that I’ve never been able to sink my teeth into. But I really love the ideas of the mechanics and the way to level up your character. This codex gives more information on the system, commentary on the system, and more for Roden, Trolls and Great Wolves. (This kickstarter takes a bit of work to decipher…)

The Burning wheel

“We shall create a tome of similar dimension and density to the urtext, Burning Wheel Gold. Its cover shall shimmer cerulean and gold. Its pages shall have the hue of gossamer and bone. Its ink shall be black.

And it shall contain: the paths and ways of the Roden, Trolls and Great Wolves; an encyclopedia of traits and skills; an arcane library of magical ways; a libram of magic artifacts; and detailed commentary on nearly every aspect of the urtext itself.”

 

Still active!

Luma Dice
Autumn Cthulhu: An Anthology
The Kraken Mug
Great Old Ones Idols
Keys for Nerdy People
The Ninth World: A Skillbuilding Game
Wyrmwood dice trays and vaults
Changeling: The Dreaming

A Rune Awakening 8: Blinking Baddie

Nualia stands with two Yeth Hounds

Unfortunately Nualia isn’t the only BBEG the party encounters as they clear out Thistletop.

Featuring Aser, James, Jonn, Landan, Megan, Patrick, and Tassia. Music by Kevin MacLeod, “Battle of Five Armies”

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Beyond the Threshold 7: Specimens

Attendants, fully covered, wait along rows of empty beds in a hospital ward

The team infiltrates BABEL to see if they can get any answers. What they find is a bit more then what they expected.

Featuring Aser, Brian, Megan, and Phil. Music by Kevin MacLeod, ‘Hitman’.

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Humbugs and Cheer: The War on Christmas

An ornament with Santa in a captain's outfit behind the wheel of a ship

Merry Christmas! In our holiday special we put a holiday spin on Lasers and Feelings and go to work to save Christmas from an unknown threat. Will Captain Santa wake up again? Will the crew ever figure out who acting Captain is? Will our holiday be jolly? Listen now to find out.

Featuring Aser, Jonn, Landan, Megan and Patrick. Music by Kevin MacLeod, “Jingle Bells” and “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.”

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Have a very Merry Christmas from the bottom of our hearts, and we can’t wait to see you in the New Year!

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TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 12, Call of Cthulhu

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas
My GM gave to me,
Twelve Cthulhu’s calling,
Eleven Strange cyphers,
Ten Sandpoints pillaged,
Nine scary monsters,
Eight prior worlds,
Seven heroes slashing,
Six Fiascos foiled,
Five TPKS!
Four ships still flying,
Three Green Boxes,
Two Draculas,
and a Final Girl fleeing to safety.

A man tries to shoot himself in the head as a shoggoth tries to grab him

Well, how can you have a podcast about mythos horror gaming without playing Call of Cthulhu? You can’t: so here it is. We’ve played 6E and 7E now, with Horror on the Orient Express stretching past 12+ episodes already.

This granddaddy of investigative horror gameplay has made a huge contribution to the history of gaming and continues to offer the same promise of thrilling child and appalling botches that has made it a hit across generations.

Listen to our Call of Cthulhu Episodes
TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas

TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 11, The Strange

On the Eleventh Day of Christmas
My GM gave to me,
Eleven Strange cyphers,
Ten Sandpoints pillaged,
Nine scary monsters,
Eight prior worlds,
Seven heroes slashing,
Six Fiascos foiled,
Five TPKS!
Four ships still flying,
Three Green Boxes,
Two Draculas,
and a Final Girl fleeing to safety.

A view of the Strange with pieces of different recursions peeking into it

We have had a lot of fun putting our own little twist on The Strange. This weird setting of infinite possibility has served as the playground for some of our favorite characters and whacky situations. Whatever happens, we’ll always have Prague.

The great thing about The Strange is that it can take you anywhere you want to go, so naturally we crammed Cthulhu in it. He felt right at home.

Listen to our Strange Episodes
TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas

TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 10, Pathfinder

On the Tenth Day of Christmas
My GM gave to me,
Ten Sandpoints pillaged,
Nine scary monsters,
Eight prior worlds,
Seven heroes slashing,
Six Fiascos foiled,
Five TPKS!
Four ships still flying,
Three Green Boxes,
Two Draculas,
and a Final Girl fleeing to safety.

A fighter stands confidentally while in the background a group of goblins run through Sandpoint

Who would’ve thought it’d come to this: we played Pathfinder. After a year of staying away, we dared to run Rise of the Runelords, and we had fun doing it. We’re still doing it, and may well be doing so for the rest of our lives. Well, maybe not. We have to get back to 7th Sea at some point…

Pathfinder is popular for a reason, and we’ve had fun delving into that power fantasy as our heroes smash their way through goblin hordes and giant tribes.

Listen to our Pathfinder Episodes
TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas