Parrying is for wimps!

Threads and nightmares......... It is pretty sure that if you meet someone of around my age that grew up in the 80s and they watched Threads , they will have been terrorised by the threat of nuclear Armageddon and had nightmares at least through their teens.   Think of all the crazy government fear mongering of recent times and multiply it by about 1000 to get a taste of what the apocalyptic doom that we were all subjected to felt like.   Threads is truly horrific – so for Christmas 2022 I finally plucked up courage and bought a copy of it for my wife.   She was equally traumatised by it.   We watched it again and I can say it is still terrifying. ..what has this to do with a blog about RPGs?   Well obviously it’s my spurious lead into talking about my recent introduction to Free Leagues Twilight2000 that was updated and published a few years ago.   I actually had the original box set back in the 80s – part of my doomsday obsession with nuclear warfare i...

Resolutions or just get stuff done..... New Year resolutions are a pretty awful concept.  I mean why wait till the 1 st January to do something you should have done at some point during the year?  Feel fat?  Stop eating so much and get some exercise – now. Wanna stop smoking?  Do it – now. Want to solve climate change? Go to school get a degree in something related and find the solution – now.  Stop moaning and throwing paint at pictures and just get on with finding a solution. As for dry January – get outta here! Whose idea was that! Crazy…………. Anyway I digress…..it is with some smugness that in the summer of 2022 I thought – the last few years playing online has been great – I have lots of people I can play with and the community on discord is fantastic, but the wholesomeness of actually playing with other people across a table and interacting just can’t be beat – so I need to get back to that.  A quick interweb search and I found a club about 30mins dri...

Imagine waking up in a hotel in Manchester after a few too many drinks, breakfast only available via a walk into the city centre and wondering why you volunteered to run a game that afternoon.  Well that was me on Saturday 12 th November (and I suspect a few other Grognards). After finding a place for breakfast that was more ‘I saw you coming’ rather than ‘Greasy spoon’ (I had POSH beans on toast I’ll have you know!) and took serving its customers as an optional extra, it was time to head to fanboy 3 and play an RPG blast from the past – Star Frontiers, reffed by Dirk.   The title of the scenario was ‘Bugs in the system’, which kind of gives away some of the scenario to be honest, it’s like a Cthulhu scenario I recently ran called ‘The Dragon of Wantley’, a decent adventure but the front cover gives away a rather massive clue as to what is going on and what will be encountered during the scenario… My choice to play Start Frontiers on the Saturday morning was actually diffic...

And so it is over…..my second Grogmeet ends and I amble around Manchester Piccadilly for an hour or two until my train arrives to whisk me away to deepest darkest Milton Keynes.   My initial thoughts after returning home and reflecting on the weekend are... What a great community of people.     I know nothing about RPGs compared to most of those who are in the Grogsquad Trying to find a pub in the northern quarter of Manchester on the first Xmas market weekend requires a luck roll or two… The Grogsquad appear to be of an age when pubs with loud music (which is just about all of them in the northern quarter) are not the preferred option…. The Northern Monk pub serves great beer. Anyway here are my more detailed thoughts about the RPGs and the events that took place over the weekend…enjoy Sunday 6 th to Thursday 10 th November I decided last year to ref a game at Grogmeet in 2022 – so I had registered Delta Greens ‘PX Poker Night’ to run on the afternoon of 1...

System: Call of Cthulhu (modern) - A Tableau of Red Played on: RPG Nook Discord and Roll20 Players: Yeti / Orf / Speed / Newman / Hedge / Jeremy A I remember having an argument with my daughter when she was choosing her options at school.  She wanted to do ‘art’ and as parents we thought she should do something more academic.  However, she got her way (as she does with most things :>), completed two years of artwork (we even went to the Lake District so she could take photos of herself in a lake for her final project!) and came out with an A.  as I tell everyone who will listen, if you do something do the best you possibly can and don’t create excuses for yourself or listen to those who think they know better than you (although she did drop art after leaving school as it wasn’t what she hoped it would be…so I was right in the end…lol).  What has this to do with a scenario by Helen Yau for Call of Cthulhu?  Well first of all the story is based around a bunch ...