TTRPGs

I'm a relatively active Tabletop Role Playing Game player and game master. Unless it's sailing season. I usually run Mothership or Cairn or other similar rules-light game. Though I'm trying to see if Mythic Bastionland is the right fit for me and my friends. I also enjoy playing Roll for Shoes and Mausritter when my friends run them.

My Game Master's Bag

• Dice. Lots of Dice.
• A timer. Mechanical, 1 hour, with a audible ticking and a loud ring at the end. Mine is a cute little cat. It's great for causing jump-scares in my Mothership games. Set it for an hour. When it goes off, the situation escalates. Next hour: the situation goes catastrophic. Then we're done with our one-shot!
• A tarot deck (sometimes). This one I've used on and off. I've given cards to players and told them that they can "use them" however they choose during the game. If I ever remember what those uses were, I'll note it here
• Pensils, cute cat erasers.
• Index cards. Some used, but they have a useful back side, still!
• Tiny transparent green cubes. Got them from a truly cursed ai-generated game a friend found at a convention once. The game was terrible. The cubes are handy. Little tokens or whatever
• 3D printed d6 holders. Turn my innumerable d6s into little numbered tokens. Occasionally useful.
• Maybe Scrabble Runes? TBD.

Rules and Stuff

Interesting and game running stuff that I use, or plan to use, or whatever.

Scrabble Magic Runes

On 2026-04-08 I came across Ginny Di's video about the Spell RPG. The video is a few months old at this point, but... THIS IS AMAZING! I love this idea. It tickles me the same way that Prismatic Wasteland's Slush Magic. But with even more flexibility and chaos! I have a pretty chaotic home group, so this seems right up their alley. I need to go get some Scrabble tokens and add this to my GM's bag.

I'm not sure exactly how I'd use this. I can see player characters amassing personal collections of runes that they find over the course of a game. This could work in Cairn or Mythic Bastionland or other such games. Roll something to get some number of runes to play with to cast a spell. Twist the language and the meaning for profit and peril. Something like that.

Books and Scenarios

Fun books and scenarios that I've played or want to play

Mothership

Year of the Rat

Ran this one again in April of 2026. It's a relatively fun one. There's enough information in the pamphlet to keep things interesting. Though pairing it with some kind of "I search the body" table would be good (I grabbed the Dead Planet one during the session. I also found a use for my Wall Breach table because one of my players had a Marine with an armor piercing rifle (a wall was pierced, a high pressure hydraulic line was broken (as vibechette), and a limb was lost). Another player rolled a salvage drone so they were able to beeline the black box. And then gamely stuck around to get more salvage. =]

I could probably have run the main rat better. I feel like its actions in combat were a bit one-note (rush, bite, swallow, run away, digest). Maybe I should have added some more changes in the environment, or brought in some smaller rats to raise more choices.

This is still one of my favorite scenarios to run, especially without a lot of prep. Would definitely recommend it, tho be ready to improvise or roll on some supplemental tables.

Mythic Bastionland

What a Horrible Knight

Ran the scenario in April of 2026. It sort-of worked as an introduction to the Mythic Bastionland rules. I've got a group that's well versed in the OSR ways, so they were able to work their way around the various traps and puzzles without too much trouble. The couple of combats we ran went well. Some fiddling with the more complex mythic rules, but they got the hang of the various rolls and feats and gambits. It was really cool when my players started strategizing ways to coordinate their combat turn with reference to the fiction and the dice. They ended up not actually giving their enemies a chance to retaliate, so they were never on the receiving end of all those dice rolls. But that's alright.

As written the scenario is almost entirely a dungeon. So we didn't get to do any of the hex crawl bits that are one of the primary modes of the game. But I'm pretty sure that would be okay. This was intended as a trial run for our group to see if the more complex combat rules would be acceptable for our interests. And it turns out they are. I gotta get my real-building hat back on and finish our first realm for us to kick off a proper campaign.