Two of my favorite practical mechanics in Delta Green
Martin Ralya
by Martin Ralya
1M ago
I started up a Delta Green [affiliate link] campaign last September, and it’s been a blast. It’s become one of my favorite RPGs, and with a few sessions under my belt that means I’ve done some noodling about why that’s the case. One part of it — the bit I want to look at today — is that DG deftly combines superb information design with game mechanics designed to reduce handling time and friction. Two examples of that sit right next to each other in the upper left corner of its GM screen. Two tables from the DG screen, which I’ve called out in redDon’t roll dice DG is far from the first RPG to ..read more
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A wild hair
Martin Ralya
by Martin Ralya
1M ago
Seventeen years ago, I wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo 2007. I was proud to have written it but I didn’t think it was any good. Until tonight, I’d never read it. With the benefit of seventeen years of professional and personal writing experience…it’s not bad at all. I’m honestly shocked. It’s a first draft, is all. Rough around the edges (dreadful in places), but with sound bones and raw creativity that still speaks to me ..read more
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Longest campaigns I’ve played from 2008-2022, and other data neepery
Martin Ralya
by Martin Ralya
2M ago
I’ve been logging RPG sessions on RPGGeek since 2008 — 961 of them as of this writing. I was thinking about Ars Magica [affiliate link] this morning and wondered where it stood in terms of my longest campaigns in the past 16 years, and lo and behold it’s right at the top: Ars Magica 5th Edition: 41 sessions, 2016-2019 D&D 4th Edition: 37 sessions, 2009-2010 CODA Star Trek: 26 sessions, 2010-2012 Urban Shadows: 23 sessions, 2017-2019 Hunter: The Reckoning: 23 sessions, 2013-2014 I posted about that Ars campaign here on Yore when it was around its halfway point. It stands as one of my all ..read more
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My 2024 RPG collecting goal: All of Ars Magica 5th Edition
Martin Ralya
by Martin Ralya
2M ago
I’ve decided on a TTRPG collecting goal for 2024: I’m going to try to acquire the entire Ars Magica 5th Edition line in print. If you happen to have any Ars Magica 5e books laying around that you’d like to part with, comment or drop me a line (martin at martinralya dot com)! Out of the 165 RPGs I’ve played, Ars Magica is one of just nine I rate a 10/10. I’ve written a bit about why I love it so much here on Yore. It’s an absolutely superb game. What got me thinking about Ars again was today’s announcement of the forthcoming Ars Magica Definitive Edition. According to the announcement, the 5e s ..read more
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DCC dice, inking, and pencils
Martin Ralya
by Martin Ralya
2M ago
My beloved Kaweco Sport mechanical pencil, which I’ve used in every in-person game session since 2015, finally gave out. Its plastic internals stopped working; all the brass and other metal parts are perfect. I’m hoping to have it repaired, but haven’t had much luck with their US repair partner so far. The Kuro Toga Advance sounds like a Traveller subsector In the meantime, I went down the mechanical pencil rabbit hole. When I came up for air I picked one of the consensus Mechanical Pencils Everyone Should Try At Some Point, the Uni Kuro Toga Advance. It’s the white, sci-fi looking instrument ..read more
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Sailing out of the painting doldrums with Blood Bowl
Martin Ralya
by Martin Ralya
2M ago
I didn’t paint much in 2023. I took stock in the new year and realized that after three years of painting minis for 40k, Kill Team, and BattleTech, I’d played just ten games using those minis (three 40k, six KT, one BT). Now, a big part of figuring out that I secretly enjoyed painting minis back in 2020 was coming to appreciate painting as a hobby in its own right — but I’ve always needed the magic, the alchemy, that comes from knowing I’m painting stuff I will then get to play with. And that’s been borne out across all three of those games: Every time I played, seeing my little war mans in ac ..read more
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New year, new look
Martin Ralya
by Martin Ralya
3M ago
MartinRalya.com has been online since 2009, and has included a blog since 2012. Over the years, the focus has shifted back and forth between blog posts and static pages. When I last overhauled the site, in 2020, the focus was solidly on blog posts. A single-column layout with a discreet hamburger menu made sense, since there weren’t many pages that needed to be highlighted. Yore as of December 27, 2023 But as I started blogging more about miniature-painting, I created more static pages to house painting color guides, army lists, and the like. And the more I added, more I found I was fighting t ..read more
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What will be number 3,000?
Martin Ralya
by Martin Ralya
3M ago
I’m coming up on a movie milestone: The top of my Letterboxd profile as of today Given that A) it’s spooky season, B) my default cinematic comfort food is MST3K, and C) I’m working on some anime-watching challenges, my money’s on my 3,000th film being from one of those three buckets. It’s also a coin flip whether I blow past it by accident, or remember to intentionally choose #3,000. And for good measure: I suppose it’s possible I won’t make it to 3,000 this year — or at all. In a Final Destination movie, just after watching my 2,999th film, I’d get knocked off a cliff by a bus, you’d see the ..read more
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My Black Furnace #dungeon23 project is done!
Martin Ralya
by Martin Ralya
3M ago
I wrote my last #dungeon23 room today! I have no idea what I’ll do with the Black Furnace next, if anything, but I’m proud to have finished it. The Dungeon23 logo in old-school blue This is only my second or third dungeon ever, and by far the largest I’ve ever created. It’s a rough draft, but everything starts out as a rough draft, right? I’ve got nine levels mapped by hand, 365 rooms all typed up, and plenty of notes. There’s still lots to create (monster stats, treasure, encounter tables, etc.), but with a couple hours’ work I could start running this tonight and just develop the later mater ..read more
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Godsbarrow apocalypse narrowly averted
Martin Ralya
by Martin Ralya
3M ago
I haven’t written about the end of the world in Godsbarrow, but the entire setting — everything I’ve ever created for it that doesn’t live here, on Yore — nearly vanished today. I woke up to a corrupted hard drive, which Windows helpfully automatically recovered for me…but without hundreds of gigs of files, including my entire PDF gaming collection and every scrap of my Godsbarrow material. Okay, a pain in the butt, but hey: That’s why I have a cloud backup running in the background, right? Well… Yes, I do. And it works (I’ve tested it). But. But! Only if I configure it properly. Guess what I ..read more
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