Author Archives: The Angry Monk

I am a bad little monk

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Well, so much for the plans for mice and monks. I had intended to publish something every couple of weeks. But I didn’t. Sigh.

Okay, since we’re all trapped inside, and a really cool dude name Dirk the Dice followed this blog, I thought I had better get on my pony and do something.

So I have been playing in my regular Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game on a weekly basis. John (Teaman) is the GM and most of the players are in Pennsylvania, which is very far away from me. We play on Roll20 and Skype. John is a great GM and his homemade art really makes the game unique. To give John a break, I have run BFRPG, Star Frontiers, and more recently D&D 5e. Star Frontiers was fun. I had never played this system before. It’s a d100 based game. It’s not too difficult, but it can get bogged down with modifiers and situational mathematics. I think we could pare it down.

Now, I’m reading Monster of the Week. I have played one other Powered by the Apocalypse game (Ruma) and found it pretty cool. I’m trying to get my brains in gear so that I can run this in the future.

I’m a bad, bad boy!

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SBSblog

I know I said I was going to keep this up to date, but just like my plan to start working out again, I have failed.

However, I have been busy with playing, which as Hamlet says, is the thing.

First, my weekly game of Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game with Teaman as the DM has been a roaring success. The games are fun, and Teaman uses Roll20 in a very interesting way. He uses the “tabletop” not just for maps, but like scenery background…which he usually paints…with real paint. I had never thought of using Roll20 like this, but it adds to the theatre of the mind. Our online fan/curator Ol’ School Chris has been recording our games and posting them on his YouTube channel.

Second, I also uploaded 14 quests for the old Games Workshop/Milton Bradley board game HeroQuest to Roll20. We will be using this game as a replacement if the BFRP game is on hiatus. The first session was okay, but a lot of time was spent making Roll20 more user-friendly. Again, thanks to Ol’ School Chris for his expertise and recording.

Third, I’ve been DMing a group of students at my high school twice a week. We’re using D&D 5th edition and playing Storm King’s Thunder. The group is great and we have about 12 members. We’re trying to decide if we need to split the group. Decisions, decisions.

Finally, I finished reading Shannon Appelcline’s book Designers & Dragons: The 70s. I enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World. It’s not as thick as Peterson’s book, but it really shows the reader what a crazy, wild west world the early days of RPG designing was.

So I’ve certainly got my gaming mojo going. More later.

HeroQuest

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Well, after months of delay, I finally completed setting up the board game HeroQuest on Roll20. With help and guidance from Patrick (one of the awesome dudes I play Basic Fantasy RPG with), I have the dice and deck mechanics figured out. I’ve set up the first quest, The Trial, in which the Heroes must “seek out and destroy Verag, a foul Gargoyle who hides in the catacombs.” Next time there is a break in our campaign run by Teaman, GM par excellence, I will have this ready to run.

If you’ve never heard of HeroQuest (board game published by Milton Bradley in conjunction with Games Workshop), it is a simple fantasy roleplaying game. More roll-playing than role-playing, but it is a lot of fun with plenty of cool plastic miniatures and 3D props. I had never heard of it as a kid, which is surprising because my brother and I played board games and D&D. Ah, I can only imagine the number of hours we would have spent in the basement fighting Chaos Warriors and Fimirs.

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