Greetings, all! The weekly Gauntlet Hangouts video roundup post is now up on The Gauntlet Blog! Check it out, and be sure not to miss all the other great Gauntlet Blog posts from the week!
Thanks go out to all our Gauntlet Hangouts videos game runners, facilitators, and players this week, including: Agatha, Ary Ramsey, Asher Silberman, Bethany H, Bryan Lotz, Catherine Ramen, Chris Newton, Chris Thompson, Chris Wiegand, Christine Maunsell, Christopher Grey, Darren Brockes, David Jay, David LaFreniere, David Morrison, David Rothfeder, Donogh McCarthy, Fraser Simons, gene astadan, Gerrit Reininghaus, Gigette, Hijos Del Rol, Jesse Abelman, Jim Crocker, Jim Cummings, Joe Zantek, Joshua Gilbreath, Kurt Potts, Lauren McManamon, Leandro Pondoc, Lowell Francis, Marco Barreto Bittner, Maria Rivera, Marissa Chabon, Mathias Belger, Matthew Doughty, Mikael Tysvær, Noella Handley, Patrick Knowles, Phillip Wessels, Richard Rogers, River Williamson, Sabine V, Seraphina Malizia, Simon Landreville, Skyler Nelson, Stentor Danielson, Tina Trillitzsch, Tomer Gurantz, Tony Hahn, Tyler Lominack, Wen Reischl, and Yoshi Creelman.
We just finished the second (Charlie) sector of 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars on Saturday, and I think this last…
We just finished the second (Charlie) sector of 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars on Saturday, and I think this last session was a real stand-out.
Nice to see that we can have feels and breakneck action at the same time!
3:16 really helps bringing new players in quickly. Every week is a completely new planet as I’ve been running it and so every session is a discrete unit. Also character generation is super quick! At this stage we’ve had 9 players over 6 planets, with one on 5 missions, four on 3, and four on just 1.
Some highlights for me:
Ary Ramsey as MT Murken, who we discover on Whistler doesn’t really want to be a trooper at all! He just joined up to find his lost brother. The choices he has to make between the troopers under his command, his platoon and his brother are riveting.
Christine Maunsell as Cable, who’s just angry that their coveted position as best killer with the biggest gun is under threat!
David Jay as “Professor”, figuring out a technical solution to an imaginary foe, only to save the day with it at the end! Also, racking up serious kills for someone with the lowest FA
Funny moment when after closing the mission on Michelangelo, the players realised that those walking reptiles with hard-shells, red sashes tied to their limbs and ninja-like abilities were all too TMNT-like!
Codex – Flame is now in our $4+ Patreon feed. Flame is the first issue in Volume 3, and I’m going to just come out and say it: this the the best issue of Codex yet! If this is what Volume 3 is going to be like, I think we all have a lot to look forward to.
Codex has always been a terrific mirror of The Gauntlet community—the games we’re playing, the games we’re creating, the PEOPLE playing and creating them, the beauty—and Codex – Flame continues that tradition in a huge way.
The issue starts with that jaw-dropping cover by our new cover artist, Chris Spence. Chris has a tough act to follow in Claudia Cangini, whose Codex covers are iconic, but this first cover is an amazing start. It’s very different from Claudia’s work in terms of style, but like hers, it is distinctly his—and distinctly Codex.
The non-Miscellany features in Codex – Flame are entirely original games, and each encapsulates the issue’s theme of love, loss, and glorious failure.
The first is Fire Ships at Midnight by Tyler Lominack. This story game tells the story of the failed invasion of England by the Spanish Armada in 1588. It’s for three players, with each player playing a composite character that represents various social tensions in and around Spain at the time of the invasion: The Duke of Medina Sidonia, Cardina Ribera, and Captain Salazar. The game is played over several phases, with each containing problems to be either overcome or endured, with each character competitively angling for certain types of solutions and outcomes. But intriguingly, what’s at stake is not whether any particular action is a success, but rather, how each of the men will be received when they return to Spain. It’s a fascinating game and I can’t wait for folks to check it out. It features original art by Anna Aphelion.
The next game is A Hand Full of Ashes. It’s a LARP by David Rothfeder about grief and letting go. In it, you are people attending the wake of a character from a book, and as you confront and resolve various issues you had with the character in life, you tear out pages from a copy of the book and burn them in a real fire. One the game’s neatest tricks is how you use the back of the book’s dust jacket to eulogize the dead character. All in all, it’s a really neat exploration of subject matter that is not often interrogated in games. It features art by Devon Serket.
After that comes Like Matches to Paper Dolls by Sidney Icarus and Jesse Ross. This is a play-by-post (as in mail post) game where one character reaches out to another, a person they used to be in love with, to see if there can be anything between them. The players send letters to each other, back and forth, inspired by prompts connected to a set of paper dolls, which are also sent back and forth. I think this line from the game sums up what it’s all about: “Do you feel moved and loved?… If you do not, don’t answer anything. Instead, take all they sent you and burn it. Collect the ashes and send them.” This one features art by Cecilia Ferri.
Finally is our tried and true Miscellany section, this time entitled “Three Dozen Separated Lovers.” Ryan McNeil is doing a fabulous job of curating the Miscellany; this is his best work yet in that regard.
Codex – Flame is, simply, a triumph. Huge thanks and congrats to Jake Householder for their dazzling layout, Lauren McManamon for the sharp edits, and the entire Codex Team for their hard work.
You can get Codex – Flame in our $4+ Patreon feed right now!
We managed to hit our first stretch goal last night and now The Discern Realities Annual will be included in the…
We managed to hit our first stretch goal last night and now The Discern Realities Annual will be included in the Codex Volume 1 Hardcover book! But we’re not slowing down!
We have two new stretch goals to announce…
At $14,000, we will be able to upgrade the hardcover book so the quality level is through the roof. If we can get there, we will 1) add a matte laminate cover with a spot UV finish; 2) increase the weight of the pages to 150 gsm; and 3) add a ribbon marker. The quality of the hardcover book is a major goal for us. We have always said that Codex and its readers deserve this thing to look and feel amazing. In fact, it’s why we came to Kickstarter instead of DriveThruRPG print-on-demand (as a point of comparison, DriveThru print-on-demand uses 108 gsm paper—12 less than what this project started with, and 42 less than what it will be if we hit the stretch goal).
At $15,000, we will unlock our first Digital Stretch Goal: Becky Annison’s “Let Sleeping Bones Lie.” Becky is the award-winning designer of When the Dark is Gone and Lovecraftesque (the latter with Joshua Fox) and when she isn’t knitting or gaming she is writing Bite Me!, a game of werewolf pack dynamics. You can find Becky’s work at the Black Armada website: https://blackarmada.com
“Let Sleeping Bones Lie” is a scenario for Lovecraftesque. Here’s a description: “By 1815, the small British seaside town of Lyme Regis was the centre of a boom in fossil hunting. Only 4 years earlier, the Anning children had found the first, complete Ichthyosaurus by the cliffs, and ammonites virtually littered the beach. Enthusiastic amateurs have descended in droves, but in a world before Darwin’s theories have taken root, it is impossible to tell dinosaur from older and more eldritch horrors.”
For everyone who has pledged and/or signal boosted this project, THANK YOU! There is so much more to come! Please stop by the KS page and take a look if you haven’t yet had the chance!
Hello, everyone! I’ll be in Toronto for a week and I want to buy Dungeon World (as in my home country isn’t available). Is there any place I could get it? I know the Silver Snail only sells only DnD and Warhammer. I’m also interested on buying die sets and battlemaps (things that are also hard to find in my country) for my friends.
The Codex Volume 1 Hardcover Kickstarter is live! We have a bunch of awesome pledge rewards available and several really terrific stretch goals lined up. In fact, we are already getting close to the first stretch goal! Check out the campaign at the link below and let me know if you have any questions.
Hey there, Ben here! Thanks for letting me join the group! I’m a local Malaysian ttrpg writer and game designer with a Psych degree who plans to make actual play stuff in the future! 😀
MAGIC SWORDS is a game I recently made about playing possesed weapons trying to break out of a prison a la Honey Heist! and FINALLY got ready for public play.
Hoping to have lots of fun here with yall, and make stuff together!
Originally shared by Swords and Flowers
REJOICE! The MAGIC SWORDS PLAYTEST is here! After two weeks of development, public and private playtests, and LOTS of feedback, MAGIC SWORDS is now available for all to play and try out!
Magic Swords is a hastily made homebrew in the vein of Honey Heist where you play possessed bladed implements who will enact the greatest jailbreak of all time.
Hiii everyone!! We’re celebrating more lovely guests at Gauntlet Con today with Ryan Macklin and Lowell Francis!!
Hiii everyone!! We’re celebrating more lovely guests at Gauntlet Con today with Ryan Macklin and Lowell Francis!!
Ryan Macklin is a tech writer by day, convention GM and game creator by night. Which is like being an introverted werewolf. He’s worked on Fate, Cortex Plus, Mage: the Ascension, Primetime Adventures, Unknown Armies, and many other games (including his own Mythender and Katanas & Trenchcoats). But Ryan always comes back to his first joy of sitting down with a few humans to tell and play out fun, dramatic stories. Unrelated, his cat is a lovable jerk.
During Gauntlet Con, Ryan will be running Katanas & Trenchcoats.
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Lowell is a freelance writer/editor and gaming enthusiast. He contributed to the Eisner Award-winning Legends of the Guard and IDW’s Rocketeer Adventures. He also scripted DC Comics’s Flashpoint: Project Superman. Lowell runs games regularly for The Gauntlet Hangouts. He co-hosts The Guantlet Podcast and records multiple Gauntlet Hangout rpg sessions each week. His blog, Age of Ravens, won the Silver ENnie for Best Blog in 2017.
Lowell will be running several sessions of Hearts of Wulin during the con. This PbtA game aims to emulate the high drama feel of stories like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Fox Volant of Snowy Mountain; Painted Skin; Proud, Smiling Wanderer; Princess Agents, and more. Tales of misunderstandings, betrayals, and farce mix with martial arts action.
Tomorrow is very exciting. The start of so many peoples’ work on a very ambitious project that has supported and validated countless people in the community will take another step forward with the Kickstarter launch. I believe it will do very well.
Today though, I wanted to take a moment to congratulate Tyler Lominack on his brilliant game, Fire Ships at Midnight.
“players take on the roles of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, Cardinal Ribera, and Captain Salazar (referred to, collectively, as the Pillars).They must endure the horrors of the journey. But most importantly, they must save their own reputations when they return to Spain. The game is played over three turns (referred to as Conflicts), each with four phases.”
It sounds so fucking good! I can’t wait to try it!
It’s always wonderful seeing folks here creating and playing together. But in particular I wanted to make sure I spotlighted Tyler because I believe this is his first game! He has been incredibly supportive of this community, as well as of me, personally. If you don’t know Tyler, know this: he is one of the most supportive, kindest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting and one hell of a GM. Now we can also add and celebrate his work as a game designer!
I appreciate you and I’m happy to see your work in this months Codex issue!
