Random Traveling Sorcerer done with a new toy

Traveling Sorcerer Random Generator

Where my current players are there is a chance of running into "colorful" NPC's. One such category ending up on the "Random Encounter" tables I scratched together is Traveling Sorcerer! 

I turned to D. Vincent Baker's The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions to detail this encounter listing. 

I copied some of the random tables from this LotFP product and pasted them into the Last Gasp online generator tool. Just like that I now have, if encountered, a means of creating helpful and caring random strangers for my players to interact with!

Last Gasp Random Traveling Sorcerer

My Completed OSR Guide For The Perplexed Questionnaire

Zak posted this questionnaire and here are the answers I came up with;

1. One article or blog entry that exemplifies the best of the Old School Renaissance for me: Chris Kubasik's Traveller-out-of-the-box series of blog posts on his blog Tales to Astound are epic. I particularly like “The Expectations of a Traveller Referee at the Start of the Hobby”. Made me go from “I wonder what Traveller is actually like?” to “I need to play this game now!” before I finished reading the post.
2. My favorite piece of OSR wisdom/advice/snark: What James Raggi wrote in the Referee Guide of his Grindhouse Edition of LotFP.
3. Best OSR module/supplement: By far, and much said on this blog, I get more use out of Vornheim: the Complete City Kit. Regardless of system or genre I've been able to use this game book whenever I'm adjudicating action in an urban location.
4. My favorite house rule (by someone else): Carousing Table for experience points. Jeff Reints came up with this? Showed me how to shoehorn carousing rules into USR Sword & Sorcery.
5. How I found out about the OSR: Grognardia.
6. My favorite OSR online resource/toy: No contest; Last Gasp's Generator.
7. Best place to talk to other OSR gamers: It has been G+.
8. Other places I might be found hanging out talking games: MeWe, this blog, YouTube channel and my Anchor podcast. Links to connect are all over this blog.
9. My awesome, pithy OSR take nobody appreciates enough: The rules are for the players.
10. My favorite non-OSR RPG: Scott Malthouse's (U)nbelievably (S)imple (R)oleplaying free system.
11. Why I like OSR stuff: Original, adult gaming content I can't get anywhere else.
12. Two other cool OSR things you should know about that I haven’t named yet:
13. If I could read but one other RPG blog but my own it would be: Playing D&D with PornStars.
14. A game thing I made that I like quite a lot is: USR Sword &Sorcery.
15. I'm currently running/playing: Clockwork & Cthulhu, my online Renaissance campaign and I play online in some West Marches styled B/X games when I can.
16. I don't care whether you use ascending or descending AC because: Because I can subtract from 20.
17. The OSRest picture I could post on short notice: 

Live Streaming the Game Session

The first live stream of my long running Clockwork & Cthulhu online game got off the ground with a real live gatecrasher dropping into the Google Hangout right at the end of the session. It was like some viral bot which persistently entered the Hangout with a prerecorded message. I'm guessing there are automated malicious malware which searches YouTube live for streams? I do not have a clue. Anyone who has experience with live streaming their Hangout go ahead and jump to the end to see what I am talking about. I would like to clean this kind of intrusion up.

Fortunately it did not diminish play and fun being had with this current live session. Using the YouTube(beta) studio I was able to set up a channel (Vanishing Tower Press) and figure out how to generate a Google Hangout which was also streamed live as well as be recorded to my YouTube channel. I'm sure many of you have already familiarized yourself with this online tech, but this was my first look at running it myself. Long story short, it was dead simple to open the Hangout through YouTube. I posted the link to my MeWe game group and let the players fall into just like always. 

The game did take a roll-call hit this outing with the session three players down. This didn't have anything to do with the great G+ migration disrupting communication channels. Just stuff coming up so players couldn't show. Yes this is a pain in the ass as a game master, but we who show negotiate a handwave solution for the present situation and press on. We have come to know the game as deeply serial. Everyone wants to force a resolution so the session grinds on.

And it went like most sessions have for nigh on three years. There was the early settling in, the shop-talk as we all transition into gamer world. Then came play. With fewer active table players I usually see the "journey" through the game world pick up speed so we saw the environment drastically change over the course of the session for the PC's. More questions, fewer answers and less PC's to absorb the certain damage to come, and then the unusual bot hack which brought the whole session to a quick ending until next time.

Being able to replay the session back was waaay cool. Super obvious how it can sharpen my recollection of what just happened. Running a session I can miss some of the witty play coming from my players. So yeah I get to appreciate the social aspects of the game in playback I do miss to a degree as a game referee. Probably the most immediate and useful GM'img teaching tool going too. I was never good enough in sports to make tape and watch game film like the varsity players so I don't have much experience with learning from watching yourself play but the value is unmistakable. I'm not sure what the overall impact to play will be, but review did give me a chance to confirm suspicions and validate some actual play methods I try and stay conscious of. Getting to see the actual walk of the lot of talking we all do around here, it's good to see it work. 

Adding a video library to the campaign along with the written is pretty exciting. Never has there been the ability to manufacture the actual play experience for spectators on such an accessible scale. Now all those papers, notes and scribbled maps are adorned with the sound of voices and images of people playing.