#RPGaDay2026 - Day 13 - "Strain"

Day 13 of #RPGaDay and I'm feeling the pressure, perhaps the "Strain?"

If cheesy line about pressure creating diamonds, what does strain create? 

Hemorrhoids.

And I'm the king of being the pain in the ass for my players.

Because I like continuity, I like bringing one-off scenarios, or flavor text back.   Not everything, but just enough to remind the players that the characters' actions have influence in the world, if not outright consequences.  

But as I ponder options to talk about strain with my Monday night gaming group, the winning answer came from the guys who experienced it all happen: "When Echelon and Talis ran a barony..."

Day 8 I talked about Echelon and Steve.    Two strange bedfellows who became the best of friends until each died. The whole barony thing is where it started. 

Spring Semester '99 - College - a few of the players are locals, they'd like to continue the campaign.  I set up a whole wizard from another dimension, trying desperately to go back home.  While the party visited the capital city, Talis wisely set up rooms at a local brothel.   For the last session of the semester, Kannex the Wizards researched too well, transporting him... and everything in the brothel back to his home world of Talislanta.

For the summer, we converted our AD&D 2nd Edition characters to Talislanta and went on a series of missions exploring the realm, but also getting more components and MacGuffins for the return journey home.

I had left Talis, Echelon, and their friend Brutus the Gladiator standing right outside the vanished building. 

What the rest of the summer group didn't realize was that I ran two additional sessions for Echelon and Talis' players.  

They returned to their established base outside of Eding... then they remembered why they left in the first place. 

• The Talislanta wizards, Kannex?  He was trying to help the group stop a wedding to the local lord that had been infiltrated with a race of spider-people doppelgangers.  (Seriously, read Ballad of the Pigeon God... it makes sense, but its weird...).  Let's just say that wildly different magic systems resulted in spell failure and spell explosions often. 

When he wanted to fireball a group of spider people charging the altar... a reasonable response and rolled a max critical success.  

His well-weighed response, causing minimal civilian death or property damage essentially nuked the entire ceremony, guests included. 

The battle turned to healing, hunting down rogue spider-people, and putting out the fire at the Blue Wizard Inn, the only inn in-town. 

The good news was the spider-person bridge was killed.  The bad new was many other guests of high status... including Lord Athelstane himself were killed!  

In the aftermath, the leader of a rival adventuring party, sent a runner to the capital, and essentially declared martial law in the village, taking charge.  

The disaster in the center of town, the deaths of many essential villagers just a few weeks before harvest,  and the ncompetent rule of "Prince William" set the stage for a rough autumn.

• The threat of famine for the winter.
• Tornados and storms threatening what was left of the town.
• The secret BBEG revealing himself to be the brother of the king... and Talis had slept with his daughter. 
• An uprising by some of the surviving peasants.. for all the wrong reason.  They torched the manor house and sent Prince William and his non-so amazing friends scattering.
• Columns of fire descending from the sky (it was a good things, but horrible optics). 

It was Talis and Echelon who kept people fed, purchased extra supplies, rebuilt essential equipment and fought off the various threats to this village.

... And if they didn't do it, they had the benefit of a collection of NPCs that had become their friends help them.  

Winter would be harsh, rations meager, but the village would survive...

And to make the wild session end on an ominous note, it was uncovered that the Chateau D'Echelon, there base of operations was still under a loan, and that individual, one Mister Nebuchadnezzar Tinpenny, was within rights to call in the entire loan, due to a number of "Act of God" contingencies in the agreement. 

We left our duo nearing the due date on the first day of Yule, and them plotting how to commit enough heinous acts on the moneylender and his well-earned good squad... and I left them hanging all summer until we reconvened on move-in day, Fall Semester, for a wonderful reunion, no one had seen coming.  

Strain: So far, what is the heaviest set of RPG things you have carried to play?

#RPGaDay2026 - Day 12 - "Loss"

 This past weekend, driving up four hours to see the kids, I vacilitated between the latest episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, a full album listen of The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets' The Dukes Of Alhazred, and venturing down the Billboard Top Hits for 1992, trying to figure out where things went wrong musically at the end of high school.

Well before Time of Your LIfe by Green Day infested every college, high school, and kindergarten graduation, there was a well documented groundswell of Boyz II Men's End of the the Road, with everyone arms over each other's shoulders swaying.  

Yes, some of us might have been drunk.  No, there weren't any Kindergarten graduations around my area... 

But that did bring up today's #RPGaDay2026 prompt, "Loss", in a "In Memorium" sense. 

In reality, "What character loss had the biggest impact in a campaign.

We could talk about the deaths of Talis and Echelon from my 1998-2000 AD&D 2nd Edition campaign.

We could mention the mysterious death of pilot Tarrie Proleck in our Star Wars d6 campaign.

The sudden and tragic loss of most(?) of the Earthworm babies being held by "Squiggles" in Gamma World.

We might even throw in the disappearance of noted parapsychologist, Dr Nathaniel Millheim in the waning days of the Masks of Nylarlathotep portion of our Call of Cthulhu campaign. 

But to me, the biggest change that affected the game was the disappearance of Dr Clarence Pittleman.

Noted Scientist

Gadgeteer

Telekinetic

Sentient Talking Coffee Bush

A scene from campus (L to R,  Pittleman, Grover, and  a Trustee)

Dr Pittleman was run by Nate, or Norm the Dwarf and Dr Nathaniel Millheim fame.  The character in our RISUS Illuminati University (IOU) game was the glue that kept plot lines going.  

RISUS was always the "holiday" system.  So simple to learn, so easy to make a basic character, that we would normally side around the bonfire late in our "Day of Sloth" (Labor Day Eve) picnic and roll six siders on makeshift tables until we couldn't read the results.  

Dr Pittleman was there for many years... until a bad Skype connection and Nate came back on, Pittleman MIA, but a new character Scissorhands John hitting the stage.

And soon thereafter, Nate stopped showing up to the Monday night games.  IOU is still a fill-in game, complete with teenage Roman Legionnaires, middle-aged talking astronaut chimps, and a real-life person called Buckshot Calvert..  

It's still fun and zany. 

But no one has scienced the fuck out of something, and despite most of my d1,000 chart of IOU plot hooks filled up and ready to go, it's just not the same. 

Squiggles and the babies.

Most things end. What is one RPG loss you still feel?

#RPGaDay2026 - Day 11 - "Tact"

 Day 11 of #RPGaDay and we revisit a often used prompt: "Tact"

My first thought on this one?  There's always a charming character or two in each campaign, but very few that would be tactful.

It's mostly a collection of misfits and warriors, warriors and misfits.  

The requisite diplomatic and negotiating missions are there, with decent success.

But then I think of Sonny Helianthus the 10' tall mutant sunflower in my Gamma World game. 

He's pretty direct, still learning why human subtlety is important. But he's has a much more important trait that lends him to today's post.

Sonny puts the "Tact" into Tactical... Nuclear... Weapon

Sure, he's a reliable member of the Restorationists.  Sure, he can figure out how most devices work, without people dying.  Sure, he's the level-headed four-armed voice of reason.

But after 144 sessions, he's been involved in not one, not two, but THREE detonations of nuclear devices.

An inadvertent self-destruction sequence as they investigated "Level A Inc"

The underground detonation of the Iron Society compound, and their leader, The Mutant Master, just above the Koto Dam. 

And most recently, upon discovering a living metal facility, surrounded by Hoppers, he uncovered, and accidentally set off a small device in the petrified woods a day's walk from the Glow Lands... and no one knows the wiser, except him. 

It could be a fault in Sonny's personality, or it's the high probability of atomic weapons in the printed material I've been using.  

Alternate Question: A character made great by having or not having tact

#RPGaDay2026 - Day 10 - "Secret"

Day 10 of #RPGaDay2026 and they drop "Secret" on us.

I'm a full-time GM, secrets stay locked up in my brain, many forever.   Here's three that live in my head, rent-free, everyday... because I'm the GM.

"Why are there of no weasels in Gamma World?" 

I spoke of this regarding Day 2 and Sneaky Pete.  

Why is Terval Sit the most powerful, but most reclusive wizard in Marakeikos now? 

Despite getting thoroughly trashed at the end of the Hackmaster Burning Trogs Rule! campaign, notes from the Burning Trogs Redux state the immense power and magic item collection he's acquired while being the resident magic expert in Mutumbo's general store in Verge...  If the group does get back together one more time, Terval is going to be a big deal... for unknown reasons.

Why is Tarrie Proleck's soul voice the computer on the Pretio?   

In our Star Wars d6 campaign, some say he was left for dead, others claim he slinked off to die after a shootout in a casino went horribly wrong, but Pretio pilot Tarrie Proleck is dead.... until the ship's computer developed a voice and it's personality mirrors a confused Tarrie.  

Why are things in your Gamma World campaign so much weirder than in the actual (very weird) campaign setting.

Let's just say a more worldly group of players might pick up on plotlines and certain critters/events, and I'm grateful for it. 

Alternate Question: A secret you hope comes out about a character?

#RPGaDay2026 - Day 9 - "Privilege"

Day 9 of #RPGaDay and the prompt is "Privilege."

Outside of the random convention game or the random in-store event, in-person gaming has been a rare privilege, especially for the old group.  

Twenty years ago, the last on-going weekly campaign ended I moved away, got married, and was now an hour away from the regular group.  Game sessions were monthly, if we were lucky, quarterly sometimes once kids were part of the equation.  

We settled on monthly monster sessions of Call of Cthulhu, our group of 20's avatar characters moving from the streets of Wilkes-Barre, a few cross-country trips, finally settling into New York City and, twenty sessions into everything, a simple telegram from their colleague Jackson Elias to throw everything on its end. 

In the end, the actual moment that regular in-person sessions went away was the entire fault of the Imperial Japanese Navy.  

After being intimately involved with the finale of Masks of Nylarathotep, including the death of thousands of Chinese due to a radium bomb, the IJN held the surviving investigators indefinitely for interrogations.  Given the time, and locations of the players, and the personal nature of the sessions, we did everything by e-mail.  

Once the email sessions were over, the Investigators released, the death of the US Ambassador dying under mysterious circumstances (a true historical coincidence on the timeline), and the finale conducted, we never really had more than a random one-shot. for anything... until the Monday night D&D 5e game started up...  A decade later, we've evolved into Gamma World via Star Wars d6, and our only meet-ups are board games during holidays, and wargaming conventions.

I keep mentioning a restart to Cthulhu, and we're probably one more player until we try to arrange another game session, outside of Allentown. 

Alternate Question: Give one reason why it is a privilege to play with your group.

#RPGaDay2026 - Day 8 - "Resolve"

 Day 8 of #RPGaDay and we hit a new prompt, "Resolve."  The alternative prompt is a predictable, "A moment when a character kept or broke their resolve?" 

And my Monday night gaming group throws one out from left field.  

"Remember when Echelon died and Talis' resolve crumbled?"

I did not.

But I have managed to chronicle the entire Ballad of the Pigeon God.

Picture this.  Pennsylvania, 1999.  College, 2nd Edition AD&D.

Talis Makolin and Echelon were the farthest any two could be.

Talis was a lovable rogue of a bard, obviously more lovable with the ladies...

Echelon was some odd man, a priest of some far eastern god of the sea, leading a menagerie of animals with them as the adventuring party travelled, more concerned about his pigeons than his companions. 

Echelon, before the glow-up

When many of their companions simply vanished during a trip to the capital city, they trudged back to their hometown.  They fought famine, villains, and even tornados and foreclosure to keep the village and surrounding countryside together.  

And when the rest of the group finally returned from their multi-dimensional excellent adventure, it was Echelon earning the true honors, becoming the Baron of Eding.  In one of his first acts, he made his friend Talis the first Knight of the Pigeon. 

No one had an explanation for this odd brotherhood, until it was revealed that they were, indeed, (half) brothers. 

Seriously.. if your character backgrounds coincidentally are that close, without player coordination, don't be surprised if the GM takes a part of that and runs with it. 

As the campaign progressed, the King passed away allowing his cousin (the BBEG) to take the crown.  Many in the adventuring party became personna non grata and travelled to escape persecution... and possibly murder.

Echelon and Talis led a group to the south of the kingdom, finding work in the neighboring Principalites of Emron, helping a wizard family keep their rightful ruler on the throne.  

In the midst of a titanic fight between the realm of dream and the real world, Echelon had his brain sucked out my a mind flayer, 

In the midst of this great fight, Talis, the flighty bard who grew to become a hero, lost all resiliency and ran away, abandoned his other friends and fled like a coward.

He even took most of his ill-gotten loot, to write a Dear Norm letter....  quickly chronicling the actions, his cowardice, and his farewell. 

Ultimately, after a series of his own adventures, even getting captured and becoming the personal pet of a cloud giant, when things were most dire, he joined up with the remnants of the group, on an epic quest to acquire the weapons of power to defeat the dark gods coming to destroy the realm.   In an effort to traverse a dangerous trap to acquire the battle-axe Overslayer, Talis slipped off of the treacherous wooden discs, plummeting into the boiling mud below, lost forever.  

The death of Talis was an even lower point towards his renown than that of his cowardice, because:

1) The next PC to attempt to traverse the mud pit, a dwarf name Norm Dingleberry, not only got across with flying colors, but slew the vampire guardian in total darkness, claiming the weapon for his own and getting back safely, to boot.

2) When acquiring the Whelm, Echelon returned from the dead to help put down the giant crab guardian of the weapon!  

By the end of the campaign:

1) Echelon helped defeat the BBEG, the true BBEG (Big Bad Evil GOD), and would ascend into the pantheon of local gods as a secondary god of seas (and definitely pigeons). 

2) Norm was also at that fight, gaining a Duchy, declaring his own independence when the "Happily Ever After" of the kingdom began to crumble, and slowly began to conquer the dominions that had betrayed himself and his friends in those early years. 

3) In subsequent campaigns, there have been rumors and inklings that Talis did leave a number of children to a number of women.  There may of been a sighting or two of Talis signature weapon, "Hummingbird" a Dagger +1, +3 throwing, with a glass orb in the hilt that resembles a tiny lava lamp.

Alternative Question: A moment when a character kept or broke their resolve?

#RPGaDay2026 - Day 7 - "Mercy"

 

Day 7 of #RPGaDay is "Mercy" and to be honest, it's a slam dunk. 

Half the players forgot that there was a TPK.  Others forget being transported across space and time at the behest of a goddess.  A few barely remember how that all turned out (and that's for another prompt!)

Everyone remembers Dag the Kobold. 

My 2nd edition AD&D college campaign, nowadays referred to as The Ballad of the Pigeon-God was an eclectic one, with over a dozen players moving in and out of the game during its lifetime.  

The group had begun playing B3 - Palace of the Silver Princess, using the "not cool" plot device place in B1-9 - In Search of Adventure:  a TPK and getting saved at the last minute by the goddess.

The group was appreciative of the second chance, and was maneuvering through the palace quite handily, when they came upon the ruined library.  

Velandro was the cool, collected cleric of Akana (the state religion), who usually let the warriors take the lead in dungeon clearing.  But upon hearing scuttering amongst the collapsed bookshelves and shattered tables, followed by an audible shushing, Velandro took the lead, forcing the fighters back and he tried to lure whatever creature out. 

After much coaxing, a lone kobold peaked his head out.  Velandro offered food and show of dominance against his fellow adventurers, forcing them further back.   

After a half-hour of pure role-playing throwing a small monkey wrench into a night of dungeon crawling, it appeared that the kobold, Dag, not only swore allegiance to Velandro, but that of his wife and two young children hiding in the rubble.  Although a bit of a worrisome nuisance, Dag & Company helped the party clear out the palace.  

And, as one might suspect.  Dag's family became part of greater party's family, earning their keep, and ultimately leaving with Velandro to study religion, before returning to take part in the big apocalyptic finale.  Dag di Velandro, his wife Daschelle, his daughter Groata, and his son Scrag are all considered heroes of Crosedes, but more importantly, they are the founders of a kobold monastery in Ispatlia dedicated to creating kobold paladins.  

Alternative Question:  A moment of mercy received or given?