Rom'Myr's Mighty Backstop

 This is my one-two punch for "my" Dying Earth setting in the homebrew world of Rom'Myr. This is a hell of a sturdy foundation to run my game of B/X Dungeons & Dragons. I conjured up the city on the edge of Empire known as Valla'Tair back in 2014, I think. I had only read a few stories by Jack Vance, but I easily saw how much it influenced the flavor of early Dungeons & Dragons. And I like that flavor. Some call it vanilla fantasy, but that isn't it. An end-of-time setting gives a staggering amount of lore and locations to explore and manipulate. The fusion of magic and sci-fi is pretty seamless and monstrosities lurking in the landscape do not need much rationalization. Who the fuck knows, somewhere in the last 5 billion years? 

I have decided an Aeon is 500 million years, give or take a hundred million. Is Rom'Myr Earth? No, I don't think so. I do know it is the end of the story for this planet which begins in the primordial world of Xoth. This is where I run all my REH-inspired pulp fantasy. Matter of fact, I just received A Means to Freedom, the written correspondence between Lovecraft and Howard. Fascinating. Anyone who loves the "art" of writing would do well to read the compilation. Don't be scared off by the open racism in their thoughts. It is a good look at white American thought of the early 20th century. You know, like a fact of existence which still stains our culture to this day. No, the treasures in these pages is the fount of pulp fantasy and its far-reaching influence to come.

The DCC: Lankhmer boxed set is to help fill in my campaign home base of Valla'Tair, situated on the eastern edge of the Sea of Salt. The DCC: Dying Earth boxed set gives me a wide choice of nations and cultures which can be found north, south, and further east of the city and the Yanni'Hor Mountains. This homebrew stew of published material mixed in with my own ideas gives me the DnD game I have always wanted to run. But it is not just a wish or a dream. It had a great 2-1/2 year run back in 2014. It is getting some traction once again here in 2025. Huzza!

 

Savage Sword Audio Up on Spotify

 I have found some time to crack open my live play sessions and edit the audio for snappy playback. Here is the first one out of the box; The beginning of the Savage Sword online campaign!

I Bend the Knee to My Lord and Master

 I find this following blog post aligns with my tastes in fantasy fiction. Long live the king, King Conan!

Professional GM'ing, so far...

 The biggest take-away for me has been how bad 5e DnD is. For me, as a GM. I guess players love it. The character builds are more bloated and involved then a superhero game. But without being a cool superhero game. The discord channel for the startplaying.games service is filled with informative first hand experience of successful GMs running games of 5e. It seems they have to live on their laptop. Everything meaningful about 5e is linked to a digital platform of some sort, it appears. There just seems like such a heavy load between the GM, players, and the actual game. 

This has everything to do with how I learned to play ttrpg's, I get that. I just don't see how the GM/DM can have any fun. I don't see much player-agency in this gaming sphere for one. Or it is really an illusion. Everyone is running a campaign off of Hasbro product, so a determined storyline. Besides, a GM is not going to go off script when they have put a gajillion hours into the VTT set-up and balancing encounters. Not that this isn't what the players want. Everyone is getting what they want. It just feels so prefabricated. My eighties punk aesthetic just goes condition red on contact with this stuff. 

Therefore, I am only offering games I know I can run which offers true player agency. And that means old-school systems. Game systems designed as true tools for your imagination. For me this comes down to DC Heroes 2e, B/X DnD, Chaosium's BRP, Classic Traveller/Space Opera, and Gamma World 2e. Chaosium covers much ground for me. Any genre not covered by the others I've listed can be run with BRP. Just customize the skill list to make it genre specific.

This does mean the campaign world is built by me. But being a student of emergent play, this isn't much, really. Being enthused about the genre, reading original source material of the genre (reading Treasure Island for a game of pirates, for example), and coming up with an interesting and exciting start. After that the game kind of writes itself. 

I also have no problem poaching adventures written for other systems and using them in my campaigns. Ideas, I just need ideas. Nightmare fuel so I can get out of my head and expand my scope of view. 

All of these intentional actions serve one purpose; make the game fun to play for me. I like being a GM because it is a hard thing to do. It pushes my ability to interact with others to the maximum and demands my brain make quick connections which fit some type of relative pattern, contextualized into a fictional story, after the fact. Like a battlefield. I'm in a mental struggle which, at the end of the session I can survey the carnage and decide "did we win, did we lose?"

This truly puts me at odds with 5e's gaming products. They are designed to make the players feel special and their tastes catered to. To give participants the insular feel of a video game. The ability to disconnect as soon as they feel "uncomfortable". Heavy roleplay in 5e is a "look at me" proposal and "optimal" builds. Old school play is the guarantee if players and GMs do their part something amazing will occur. An unscripted performance done in one take by pros. 

So I guess that is what a "professional" GM is to me. The person who does the heavy lifting to make this experience a quantum potential when the game is on. And yeah, I think it is enough of a work load (mentally) that paying the GM makes sense. Game products and comic books are expensive.