RPG Deep Dive: Bunkers & Badasses

 The RPG Deep Dive

I am now starting up a new series on a particular Discord community. I am taking non-mainstream TTRPG games and taking four sessions to learn and explore them. The community on the discord is jumping in with me and we are doing the following:

• Session 1: Lore and character creation
• Session 2: Combat and game mechanics
• Session 3: Session zero (prep for the one-shot)
• Session 4: One-shot led by me usually

The purpose of this is to allow me to actually play the many TTRPG games I have collected (and continue collecting). It also allows the community to try out games they otherwise would never have heard of. 

Bunkers & Badasses

The first TTRPG for this series is Bunkers & Badasses! This is the rpg that was inspired by the videogame Borderlands, and the DLC "Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep." The lore is super fluid as it is a parody of fantasy TTRPGs allowing you to create pretty much whatever experience you want.. as long as you include guns! It brings in all the crazy antics of the Borderlands with a fun fantasy spin.

For the first session, we just went through the lore (not much there) and did some fun character creation. We had 2 other people including myself, and we went through creating characters using the tables in the book. Normally the players have some choice over backgrounds, but since I was the only one with the book we did pure dice rolls. Each had a different character and class which was fun to show off. You can watch/listen to the recording here: 

Note!! I am a novice when it comes to recording so the video is almost no help when following along. Feel free to listen more than you watch. I hope to have a better result next time.

That was the first dive into Bunkers & Badasses! I am excited for what the future will bring with this series so stay tuned!

From Archaic to Esoteric

 Discovery of the Old Ways

I have been diving into making RPG props and materials as of late. This has been a unique rabbit whole to fall down as I stumbled upon a section of passionate hobbyists around this idea of the stationary arts in the form of letter writing.

While discovering the almost forgotten art of writing letters, I have fallen into a vast realm that is full of people with passions around these bygone skills and craftmanship. I have discovered a love of wax sealing. This led me to find uses for such a thing which led me to gifts and letters. Gifts and letters led me to rediscovering my penmanship roots. This in turn led me to discovering the world of fountain pens. I continue to fall further and further into this realm of interests, and it is allowing me to grow in ways I didn't anticipate.

The Pen Is Mightier

I have revisited my penmanship roots. I grew up homeschooled through a program that taught what I only just learned is called D'nealian Cursive. I had to teach myself block print to fill out college forms back in 2009. I have always enjoyed my handwriting but have never fully thought about what it meant to actually have the ability to write like this. There is also the imposter syndrome of "I don't write that nice." Picking up the fountain pen to master it is proving both fun and therapeutic. I only have a cheap pen for now, but I am already looking at upgrading. My goal is to master my own handwriting and the fountain pen by writing regular letters. This gives me a chance to do more wax sealing too!

A Legacy

While I have been learning these new skills, my children have taken interested, wanting to help and participate. My daughter loved my handwriting and now is working hard to learn cursive and even asked to learn with the fountain pen. Both helped me to seal my letter and it was a wonderful experience. I have found a strong desire to learn something of value to pass down to my children, and that has been found in this forgotten act of writing a letter for someone else.

I will continue in my adventures with this new hobby but will also be looking to learn a few new things as well! Stay tuned!

PS These will help make the coolest notes to my TTRPG players!

Return to Gaming

The Plague and the Comeback

Greetings after multiple years of inactivity! Talk about a wild ride. New kid, job change, a worldwide plague forcing people to avoid in person gaming and activities.... no big deal...

TTRPGs and My Addiction to Books

Anyways.. so there have been a lot of things going on and gaming fell to the side as a focus and priority. Thankfully things have continued to change, just this time for the better! I have rediscovered my love for gaming, but it has taken a turn more towards ttrpgs. I am now unofficially collecting a wide variety of systems and setting to the point i would normally not have time nor resources to play/run them all. But I have found a solution to this problem!

Recently I have discovered a cool online ttrpg community at the Adventure Syndicate on Discord (link in the side panel). They run a variety of games periodically including ones-shots and short series. I have already run one game there playtesting my own setting (will discuss later). I am now going to be running a series of event called "RPG Deep Dive." The whole point with this is to take 4 sessions to dive into non-mainstream games and settings. This gives me the chance to explore and run all my games and it gives others the chance to check out materials and games they normally wouldn't have. Come join the community!

This comes to my next RPG endeavor: my custom settings. I have been working on two separate settings over the last couple years. One space opera and one fantasy, these two setting have been passion projects of mine as I pulled influences from my favorite inspirational sources. I will be doing features on each setting discussing them in more detail.

As I collect more ttrpgs and expand my own settings, I will be doing more and more ttrpg related content.

A Departure from Wargames

I have taken large amount of my wargame collection and sold it to reduce clutter. I owned more systems and armies than I could afford time or resources to paint & play. I struggled spreading myself too thin and was unable to truly enjoy the hobby or have satisfaction with the games. I would play one game a month of a system, then bounce to another, then another. This meant I couldn't actually gain any skill leading to much frustration. I also started to see that I had an insurmountable number of miniatures I would never take the time to paint. By reducing what I owned I was able to make my painting que much smaller and more appealing to paint.

I haven't given up playing miniature wargames, but I almost never play army scale anymore and really only play two skirmish scale games. This change has shaped a couple rules I follow when considering starting a new game:

1. Is there a community already in my local area? I no longer have the time to focus on starting a new game community. If no community already exists, I will not play.
2. Is it a high model count game? I do not have time to paint hundreds of models anymore. My patience is low, and I enjoy painting very specific models now. If it needs me to have more than 20-30 models, I will not play.
3. Is it more fun than what I play already? When playing games, I have two areas I organize them into: competitive and casual. Competitive are games I seek to play and own what is most optimal. I seek to have a high level of play and that challenge drives me. Casual games I play with the intent to enjoy narrative or "theme" more than what is considered optimal. These are games I will play how I want even if that way has a lower chance to win. If a new game is not as enjoyable as the game I currently have for that purpose (casual or competitive), then I will not play.

This is all under the understanding that I have limited time as is, I am getting pickier with my time expenditure, and I have several real-life things happening that are priority.

Hobby Expansion

I have purchased a resin 3d printer and have begun to expand on several RPG enhancing hobbies like wax seals and even fountain pen calligraphy. Multiple projects will mean I will have multiple things to share as I learn and expand my hobbies! At this point even my kids are wanting to get involved!

This does mean I have slowly stopped playing as many videogames. I will be putting a much high emphasis on tabletop games and the adjacent hobbies.

Exciting Future

I am excited for what is coming as gaming and other hobbies are explored! This has been a great way for me to find new communities and friends and I am looking forward to creating more blog content!