Evil Genius Productions (@evileniusgames), a black-owned game publisher contacted us this last week to give us some interesting information on a new game they are working on Everyday Heroes, intended to be a spiritual successor to the venerable D20 Modern game system.
To learn more, visit www.evilgeniusgaming.com.
So to try and make the podcast proof against Apple removing us from iTunes for the crime of having episode numbers we had a little technical hiccup. It SHOULD now be fixed but if you find any broken links to episodes or episodes you cannot download please let us know!
Wherein Mawdrigen tells you about a lovely kickstarter you might want to support if you have contrary players like his!
Check out 3 New Sidequest Decks: After the TPK; Modern; & Lovecraftian by Inkwell Ideas on @Kickstarter Kickstarter
Hi there guys!
Just a bit of information for you all, I’ve recently been doing some writing for a project which has now gone live! So I thought I’d let you know so if you fancied taking a look you could.
The project in question is a set of Adventure Seed card decks (available Here) for when your inspiration has run a little dry, or even if your players take a hard left rather than engage with the adventure hooks you have placed for them! These cards contain an adventure premise, a couple of ways to get the players involved, a few encounter ideas and even a couple of ways you can extend the adventure out into a longer narrative.
So if you want a stack of quick adventure ideas give them a look, you may even end up playing one of the ones I wrote!
TLDR Review: Oh My God I Love This Game.
I played Mansions of Madness 1st Ed with the rest of the Cult of Tea And Dice, and we (for the most part) liked it. It was a gorgeous game and despite issues with some of the missions it was enjoyable. It did suffer a bit from the same “Evil Overlord” problems that Descent has where the GM player had to play very hard and really victimise the players as much as possible to keep the game working as appropriate. It was less prevalent in Mansions however and I believe this was actually due to the subject matter, you expect a Cthulhu Mythos game to be “harsh and murdery”.
One thing about it that stopped us playing it more? Set up.
It took FOREVER to set up, and if the GM made a mistake the mission could be impossible but you wouldn’t necessarily realise that until the end. You had to create the decks of items and so on, build mythos decks, select and set out the clues in the rooms and so on and so on. The set up also mostly landed on the GM making the separation even more pronounced and making the GM position less fun. We tend to play games to get together with people and have fun, anything that isolates one player, then make them do more work than the other players? That’s not a good thing.
Does this get solved by Mansions of Madness 2nd Ed? YES
Mansions 2 now supports up to five players, and although one of them has to drive the app everyone gets to play. Which is AWESOME. No one is left out, and the work is taken out of the set up. Now you just sort the components and grab starting items, then the app shows you the first room setup, complete with “things you can look at, interact with, or go through” the player party sets all this down and begins play. Which is where the App comes in.
One thing that I would say is that the app probably should do more “keeping track” of how many actions that you have and are performing. Specifically I think it should keep track of how many “puzzle steps” each player has available. Also a back button, might be worthwhile, we skipped a monster attack by accident as we didn’t realise we had moved on to another monster of the same step.
That said the is pretty awesome, not only does it tell you your starting equipment, but going forward keeps track of what you have and have not investgated, controls the movement and attacks of monsters and NPCS and generating the map and “random occurences” which where before would be triggered by the GM to mess with the players, is now triggered by the app during the mythos phase.
As you take an action you move on the board, and then click on the appropriate item on the app to find out what happens or what tests you need to make. If a puzzle is required although it doesn’t keep track of how many actions you should have, it will record your progress and inform you once you have completed it and what happens next!
Handily the App doesn’t “take over” the game. As the rather fine review over at Rock Paper Shotgun noted, the app runs stuff, but the board is still integral as are the card decks and so on. You never end up feeling that you may as well just be playing a cooperative Ipad game instead of a board game, which is good. It does help to have a person do the voices however we found!
To give an idea of how the app works I’ll give an example of entering the Bathroom in the mission we played. I clicked to investigate the cupboard above the sink, only for the app to inform me that the floor had collapsed! It then asked for a Speed; 2 check, and told me if I failed I had to take facedown damage, and if I suceeded I took an item, and moved back to the hall. The Tests in the system work much the same way as before, with a slight difference. You still roll a number of dice = to your stat, but the dice ar d8’s with either Elder signs (Success) Blank (Fail) or magnifying glasses (mayyybe?!?) on them. You need enough elder signs to reach the target number, but if you have clue tokens you can turn magnifying glasses into elder signs on a one to one basis. I LIKE THIS A LOT. It makes clues powerful but not always so, if you have rolled no magnifying glasses those clues are useless.
It works similarly with the attacks as well, you choose what weapon you are attacking with (for example a bladed or heavy weapon) and the app tells you what to roll. In the starter adventure I’ll admit I murdered a ton of cultists and deep ones by the fact that I was a grave digger with a machete. Even better the app keeps track of the monsters hit points for you, no more pushing cardboard hearts into slots for me, and it will also tell you when they die.
The only vague worry I have is that the creatures attacks and horror checks can repeat fairly often, indeed the person I was playing with ended up worrying whether she was related to a deep one for most of the fight. With a few App updates however this should cease to be a problem.
One thing I havent done yet but that I intend to do at the weekend is to use the conversion kit and include everything from the first edition and it’s expansions. The inclusion of this kit is very definitely a feather in FFG’s cap, they could after all have made us all buy expansions to include these things, but they chose not to and I support this stance. The method of adding these items into the app is very easy (you just click on the extra item and mark it as enabled).
The only thing that does worry me is the app currently only has 4 missions in it, one of which is the *easier starting adventure. That said the app alters parts of the adventure each play through so the replayability is there, but I would like to see more adventures released for this via APP updates pretty quickly, specifically extra missions that use the 1st ed missions might be nice.
On the whole Mansions of Madness Second Edition is frankly awesome and i want to play it more, and with more missions!
*Easier here is relative. It just tried to drop a Star Spawn on us in the starting adventure… We ran away. FAST
Cult 112 should be up today, but will be probably the evening!
The delay is entirely down to Coldplay at Wembley!
I run a lot of games, like a LOT of games. However if you have listened to the Cult you will likely have noticed something; I almost always GM.
I would say something like 95% of all of the games I have been involved with I have been the GM for. As such I thought I’d let you into some of my confessions. Continue reading
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, so this may end up being Spoilerriffic. So here is the Spoiler space… Continue reading
Good News Everybody, from Episode 60 we’re going to attempt to move to a weekly release schedule. Whether or not this will become the norm I can’t say as we do all have real lives but we are going to attempt it!
Woooo! Weekly Cult Activity…
As you should by now know in a few weeks we will begin playing the Call of Cthulhu Campaign: Horror on the Orient Express 2nd Edition. While Episodes should start appearing on the Website, hopefully early January or Late December I thought that I would go through first how we created the characters, and then give you a taster of them.
Given that I know how deadly Cthulhu can be we decided to make a number of characters each. Effectively each person created their initial character, then four other characters that would be selected by the other players. All five characters that they created however had to be connected, which would give us a reason for them to “turn up” if their initial character died. This way, as characters die there should always be someone who the remaining characters could draft in to help. Whether these people will want to be drafted in is another question of course.
Even better, until they have become “Live” I can use them as NPC’s. So people could Telegraph back to London to talk to their friend, or ask for assistance. Admittedly 25 total characters is a lot to create but at the same time it means that the players can get to choose between those in their “set” when they need a new character.
Once all of the characters were made, everyone introduced their initial character, then explained the other four and how they were connected to the initial. These were then split into piles and everyone in order got to choose their first choice. Obviously they could only choose from a given pile once, however this did mean that certain people chose from given piles first when there were characters they particularly wanted (for example the “High Class Rent Boy” went very quickly). It also meant that most players ended up with a mix of characters they were excited to play and a few they were not expecting.
Interestingly some of the characters actually harkened back to a campaign I ran before the Cult started (“Blood of the Father” which was written up on the site) not least of all because the foundation that the survivors of the Cult of the Gorgon’s plot created will be a central part of the campaigns beginning. For more information on Blood of the Father please see: thecultofteaanddice.net/2013/07/18/all-those-other-games/
We’re running from the Proof copies of both the campaign and rules, however for character creation I didn’t have enough electronic items to give each player their own so instead I printed out the character creation section of the investigators handbook, one for each player. The method used was “Roll stats in order, one free reroll (must take the new roll), if stats uniformly below average then delete and restart” which seemed to work quite well although we’ll have to see how the actual stats and skills play out.
Archive’s Characters
Sadie Terrence-Smythe: Flapper
Grand neice of Henry Terrence-Smythe the defacto leader of the Dalley-Delmorte Foundation which looks into the unusual and also aids those who have escaped from bunkum religeons and odd cults. That said she doesn’t really know all that much about the Foundation. Her Father, Frederick is Henry’s nephew, and is still alive, while her mother Irene sadly died a few years ago from some sort of illness. As a result Sadie has determined to experience as much as she can of life, enjoying everything and go on to befriend all sorts of people. She does not however approve of Bert Lloyd, who is her friend Ruby’s gentleman friend, but so long as Ruby is happy she would never say anything.
Main skills: Persuade, psychology, with credit rating at a lower level.
Mary Flanagan: Farmers Wife
One of the school girls at the Ambergate school, Mary was one of Izzie’s good friends, although not particularly good at school work. As it was however this was fine as having left school she married George Flanagan, a farmer in Derbyshire, and settled down. Now she does a lot of work round the farm, as a very solid woman, she shoots, repairs tractors, and has been known to settle drunken fights between the farm hands with one solid punch apiece!
Main skills: Mechanical repair, Brawling, and shotguns.
Tiny Tim Boxley: Street Punk
Timothy Boxley was always one of Algernon Warfstache’s greatest fans, regularly using his street gained skills to sneak into the theatres to watch. Eventually he even snuck into a rehersal and saw how some of the tricks were done, and ended up due to… misadventure, first meeting his idol and then becoming his Protege. Since Algernon has fallen a little on hard times, Tiny Tim has had to return to his former job… that of climbing in through peoples windows and abstracting their jewelry.
Main skills: climbing, palming things, and opening locks.
Barnabus Lynch: Dilettante
Barnabus lived in Barking when Clarissa lived there and went to the school at which she taught. He didn’t take any classes with Clarissa, but was a student of Chester Fillman’s, although not a terribly good one! In fact he really didn’t Excel at school and once he left went a little off the rails, drinking too much and using a little too much of the modern drugs. However the Reverend who was a friend of his fathers, spotted his downward spiral and sent him to Dr Milton Ripley
Main skills: Credit rating, driving, and being charming.
Errol Oldstaff: Occultist
The young son of the Oldstaffs, Errol is a bit of a drip to put it mildly. Obsessed with the Occult and with the shop girl Barbara Buckley, he moons about Oldstaffs Oddities with the look of a dog kicked once too often. Disliking his parents less than serious nature he attempts to affect an air of someone in the know about the other realms, but suceeds solely in seeming like a complete berk. He follows the antics of people like Crowley and the Theosophical society avidly, but lacks the will to follow suit. He’s pretty good with electrical items though, so possibly he could end up a wireless repair man. He is never seen without his raven, Lenore.
Main skills: Library Use, Occult, and strangely Electrical repair.
Nyx’s Characters
Isabel Allyson: Dilettante
Isabel Allyson aka Izzie to her friends is the daughter of Mrs Mary Allyson who set up the Ambergate Gardens Private school for Girls. Her Father died relatively young and this forced her mother back to work, where her unique management style built up an impressive school, she never forgot that her fortune was new and the remembrance of her childhood as the only daughter of a poor curate, Mrs Allyson delighted in helping others with the profits of her school. Unfortunately Mary Allyson is now dying of consumption, but Izzie has kept in touch with a number of the teachers and ex-students who used to be at the school. Izzie herself is very rich, but possibly less frugal than her mother, she is planning to go and rejoin her mother at some point in the near future, who has gone overseas for her health. One of the speakers at her school had mentioned the Dalley Delmorte foundation (Rowena Towers one of the survivors of the Turkish escapades) and obviously having talked to her thought her interesting enough to mention to Henry Terrence-Smythe.
Main skills: Credit rating, numerous languages, and listening at doors.
Dr Wade Roberts: Professor
A correspondance friend of Algernon Warfestache, he is actually a member of the Dalley-Delmorte foundation and actually mentioned Algernon to Henry Terrence-Smythe. He and Algernon correspond regularly discussing occult matters and other such things. The Professor is mostly interested in the rise of the “new religions” made famous by such people as Madame Blavatsky, and Aleister Crowley.
Main skills: Occult, Library Use, and rifles.
Rev S Charles: Clergyman
The Reverend S Charles, was before the war nothing more than a Village teacher and took tea with the worthies of the village, while dabbling in History and the appreciation of Art.The war however changed everything. In the War, he was actually a concientious objector, but instead served as a stretcher bearer, rushing out into No-Man’s land to rescue the injured and dying. Unfortunately after he returned the horrors he had witnessed affected him badly, but through the ministrations of Dr Ripley the issues he faced have been reduced to occasional nightmares. He knows Clarissa Click as she is a regular at his church.
Main skills: History, Appraise, and first aid which he learned in the trenches.
Ruby Ellis: Gangsters Moll
Ruby has been Sadies friends since they were at school. She was one of the girls who always seemed to fade into the background a little, but she’s determined that won’t be the story of her whole life and being with a guy like Bert seems a good place to start. As she actually genuinely likes him this is a bonus.
Main skills: Stealth, persuade, and shooting handguns!
Barbara Buckley: Sales Person
Shop girl at Oldstaff’s Oddities, where she is very happily employed. Barbara is quite religious, but that doesn’t stop her being an utter terror if someone tries to steal from the shop (something that happens with depressing regularity). She is a relatively independant girl, paying for her own house rather than living at the shop or with her parents. She is aware of Errol as a good guy, who really needs a better hobby, and Mr Russel who she considers a ‘diamond in the rough’.
Main skills: First Aid, spotting shop lifters. and stealth
Hardwick’s Characters
Clarissa Click: Teacher
Clarissa was a Teacher at the Rippleside Preparatory school, where she was until recently a English teacher. Now however she is now preparing to travel to take up a position in Instanbul. However she has been invited to a meal at the Dalley-Delmorte Foundation, which helped her brother when he got mixed up with a cult that flourished in the west of London after the first world war. As this saved him from being mixed up when the police finally stormed the cult headquarters arresting a great many people involved she does feel somewhat beholden to them. A staunch churchgoer, she never really held with the Cult activity.
Main skills: English, Library Use, and Credit rating
Rupurt Herncastle: Musician
Sadie’s Boyfriend, who has been dating her for a little while but not too long. He is from a wealthy family, but they cut him off when he decided he wanted to take charge of his own life and became a musician. He hopes that marriage to a girl from a good famile, and the Terrence-Smythe’s are a good family, might placate his parents.
Main skills: playing the trumpet, listen, and a passing skill with shotguns gained from pheasant shoots.
Rosamund Laverne: Nun
Another of the Ambergate students, she was originally a scholarship girl that Izzie had befriended at the school. Having left the school she went into the Church having heard the call early on. However the church itself did not agree with her, indeed certain incidents have left her decidedly conflicted, while still religious she feels a creeping dread stealing over her whenever she thinks of churches and priests, and has left the Nunnery to travel, seeking a way of ridding herself of these feelings. Why is she scared of the church now? Could it be connected with things she has read?
Main skills: psychology, stealth, and also strangely fluent in Arabic.
Charles Macklethwaite: Film Actor
Probably Algernon’s best friend, he and Charles originally met in the theatre but since then their careers have taken a very different trajectory. While Algernon has slipped towards penury and obscurity Charles has gained a following in the burgeoning british Film industry, starring in such films as “The Killer Knocked Twice”, “The Abbey at Ipswitch” and “The Crowthorne Prisoner”. His preparations for this last film however have left him fatigued and he has decided to travel. Luckily for Algernon, Charles has always been ready to forward him a little ready money.
Main skills: Acting, being charming, ride
Mavis Oldstaff: Shopkeeper
The Amazonian scale wife of Oliver is an imposing woman who rules the shop with an iron fist. It’s a brave brave person who considers shoplifting in her shop. Slightly overbearing, she does actually genuinely care for her family and in part of her overbearing nature is ensuring that their well being is looked after. Not much goes over her head not least because she is so huge.
Main skills: Listen, Being Stunningly Lucky, Spotting Hidden things, and Intimidation
Bloodied’s characters
Algernon Warfstache: Parapsychologist and Stage Magician
A few years ago if you went to the west end you would have been hard pushed to get a ticket to one of Algernon’s shows. Marked as the high point of british stage magic at the time, his shows were always fully booked, and clapping crowds. Unfortunately, his slightly hedonistic ways were his downfall and he has since fallen a little on hard times. Eager to reignite his fortunes however he has turned to the recent work of people like the SPF who looked into mediums in London, debunking fakes and recording actual phenomena, a job for which his own scepticism makes him perfect.
Main skills: Stage Magic, French and Charm
Bert Lloyd: Criminal
Ruby’s Boyfriend, they have been together a few years, much to both his own and most other peoples surprise as up until now he had not really been the sort of guy to get too attached. Life has mostly brought him trouble, and he’d rather be free to keep running. He does actually Love Ruby, but there’s something about her that scares him a little.
Main skills: brawling, sneaking, shooting guns, and spotting things to steal.
Eliza Everett: Nurse/Matron
Originally a very ambitious woman she came to the Ambergate school as a Matron, but as Mrs Allyson allowed her to study in the school free of charge she had gained a great amount of knowledge of the sciences, and a great favourite of the pupils. She is intending to travel to see the headmistress soon.
Main skills: Charm, First aid, Psycholgy, and Medicine.
Chester Fillman: Fencing Master
Originally the Fencing Master who taught Clarissa to fence, Chester and she eventually ended up in a relationship that has since ended leaving it a little awkward between them. Chester was however in the army for the first world war, and he made a number of lasting friendships within his regiment, especially the Reverend who actually carried him off the battlefield when he was wounded. This Injury caused him some issues after the war, as it was caused when ordered into heavy machine gun and artillery fire. Dr Ripley however was able to help.
Main skills: Sword, Dodging, and Lockpicking.
Russel Ripley: Explorer
An Explorer of the Oldstaff’s acquaintance. Ripley until recently travelled the world engaging in the sort of Exploration that gives legitimate explorers a bad name and inflames the anger of indigenous tribes the world over. He regularly used to locate artefacts and then sell them to the Oldstaff’s. Recently however this has ended, as an ‘accident’ in an Aztec temple has left him with a decided limp. He is still a rugged and adventurous man however.
Main skills: History, navigation, being quite lucky!
Il Porcupino’s characters
Oliver Oldstaff: Antique Dealer
Owner of Oldstaffs Emporium of Oddities, which he travels extensively to procure items for, Oliver is a self educated man of varied knowledge mostly of a historical or geographic direction. He travels Europe and the Middle East looking for items to sell in his London shop, which he leaves in the able hands of his Wife. It is these unusual items that brought him into the notice of the Dalley-Delmorte Foundation, who have used him previously to snag interesting or important artefacts. He is devoted to his wife.
Main skills: History Spot Hidden, and Listen
Selina Burns: Aged Matriach
Sadie Terrence-Smythes maternal grandmother, she has suspicions about Irene’s death and does not trust Frederick her father. She is more than a little protective of Sadie for exactly this reason. She was always interested in the occult, but since her daughter died it has become more of an obsession.
Main skills: Credit rating, intimidate, and occult.
Alistair Symonds: Rent Boy
Although it seems unlikely, Alistair claims to be Algernon’s love child. However, whether this is true or not many would not like to say, mainly as it seems that Alistair mostly uses Algernon for his connections to the upper classes who might be looking for his, shall we say, particular skills. Algernon seems blind to this however and treats Alistair as if his son.
Main skills: Charm, Persuasiveness, Not bad at languages.
Viola Berkeley: Science Mistress
Originally a sulky girl with a shady past, her time at the Ambergate school Had turned her into a fun and youthful woman who was one of the pupils favourite teachers. She has also been told of Mrs Allyson’s illness and intends to go and visit her. She is well versed in the sciences, amongst other things.
Main skills: library use, botany, and biology.
Dr Milton Ripley: Psychiatrist
A friend of the Click family Dr Ripley was born a sickly tired, suffering terribly from some form of palsy that gives him tremors. However this did not stop him going to University and studying the arts of the Psychiatrist. This proved to be in great demand after the war, and he helped a number of people to get over the horrors of the war. He has been of considerable help to the various war wounded of Barking.
Main Skills: Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Occult.
Looks like we messed up the session numbers on game of thrones. I’ve tried to fix it now however!
I reached level 15, grabbed my class quest, and then forgot to finish it before heading into my first Dungeon Satasha.
Which is where I made two very bad mistakes.
The first was that I used the Duty Finder to get into the dungeon. Normally the duty finder is an excellent tool to get groups for dungeons that you need to get done, because it will slap together a group for you across all the servers from all the people willing to do that dungeon, or even high levels doing their low level roulettes and so on, who will be level synced down. This is fine, and nine times out of ten you will get a good group. That last bit was the one that sadly didn’t happen for me for my first run into the dungeons.
This week I have been mostly trying to get my main class (Black Mage) geared up for Coil. This involves me running a lot of the Expert Roulettes and farming what I have titled “The Lost City of Haliflox” (a contraction of Lost City of Amdapor, Halitali Hard Mode, and Brayflox Longstop Hard mode). For a DPS having as high an Item Level as you can achieve is somewhat important, especially as it means that you may survive a bit longer when giant dragons, snakes, and fireballs land on you.
As such my levelling for my gladiator slowed down a bit. While waiting for the roulette to pop up I did a few Leves, and remembered to go back and finish up my level 5 Class quest. Typically however the roulette only seems to pop when I can’t change back to my black mage class by swapping my clothing, and as a DPS class its usually a 20 minute wait each time so that’s very frustrating.
There will be a slight delay to the podcast this week as one of my computers stopped working. Will try and post tonight!
Right I know I said I’d try and level by doing Guildhests, but it turns out there was a teeny tiny problem with that. Guildhests don’t become available until level 10, so for this levelling between 5 and 10 I’ll have to leave them out.
Or leve them out if you will… Ha ha!
Oh wait, you don’t all play the game so that might not make sense.
As I may have mentioned a couple of million times I am at the moment playing a large amount of Final Fantasy 14 recently. The game is one of the most polished MMO’s I’ve played, simply because they seem to have looked at every MMO that came before and taken the good parts from them. This includes a UI that actually covers most of the requirements that other games only have with add ins. For example aggro meters are already built in, as are sortable party lists as standard.
It’s been a while since I talked about FFXIV: ARR (FFarr) which is not to say I haven’t been playing the game, more that I have been too busy playing the thing to write about it.
Over in Oxford (which is surprisingly close to Goatswood), something new and awesome has opened.
Thirsty Meeples, which is a Gaming Cafe (Website).
Now other game shops (including the excellent Eclectic Games Website Here) have both games nights, where you can play the games from their library, and usually either allow food or have vending machines and snacks. However at Thirsty Meeples you have a fully functioning Cafe right there next to where you are gaming. The food and drink selection is very fine, and I was certainly pleased with the selection of Teas on offer. From Green tea, to Darjeeling first blush, to the rather nice Winter Brew (which was similar to Space Imperial) they seem to have a tea for everyone.
As some of you have no doubt heard (read) I have been playing Fufaaarrr aka Final Fantasy a Realm Reborn (aka FFXiV) quite a bit recently. My progress has continued, and now I am slowly getting towards my first level 50 class as a Black Mage. What this means is, ALL THE DAMAGE COMES OUT OF MY FACE AND BURNINATES EVERYTHING THAT DARES STAND BEFORE MY ELDRITCH MIGHT… sorry that just popped out.
One thing I do like about FFXiV is that, at least for your first class to 50, it doesn’t feel too “grindy”. The grind is death in any MMO and is almost guaranteed to make me want to leave a game. The moment a game ends up feeling like a job, you know you are doing it wrong. Its why I stopped playing WOW, its why I stopper playing Secret World, its not why I stopped playing Planetside (that was all the fucking elmos) but you get my point surely.
That said I’ve Continue reading
As I sit here surrounded by the wreckage of the great ritual to try and summon Rhetego ulun shar, the great old one of malice, I am reminded of all the things that have gone on this year.
The first of course is that the Great Old Ones have not yet turned up to eat everyone, as is probably obvious by the fact that gigantic shadowy figures are not currently bestriding the world shovelling people into their maws, and of course I’m busy typing this.
However the other thing that happened was that we started the Cult of Tea and Dice. Having listened to a lot of other peoples gaming podcasts we (I.e. Me and Bloodied) decided that “sod it we should have a go at this!”. So we did! We’ve been doing this nearly a year now, and we’ve learned a lot of stuff about does and doesn’t work, and also made what I think is a lot of good episodes! With our flagship sessions unhallowed metropolis and game of thrones and our occasional one offs like final girl or dread we’re dedicated to making interesting sessions for you all!
That is kind of the point however, we’re not much without people listening to our stuff! Please keep listening and commenting because Without you all there’s not much point to doing all of this!
Hopefully in the coming year we will continue to make interesting things for you all to listen to! Oh and occasionally break Bloodied by shouting “Thirteen!”
Hope you all have a good winter festival of your particular choice and a happy new year!
Mawdrigen
Chief cultist of the Cult of Tea and Dice
Ps we think we know what we did wrong, turns out you cannot replace jimson weed with oregano in the summoning ritual.
Episode 18
The third session of the Game of Thrones Peril in Kings Landing, which will obviously be Spoilerriffic for that campaign. We continue on to Kings Landing finding out more about the Fox Knight, and what he has been up to. We also finally catch up to House Dannet and have a “conversation” about why they are telling people that we murdered all of their small folk.
Surprisingly the Diplomacy was somewhat left to Garrick. What could possibly go wrong.
I might have used the words “heads on spikes” far too often to actually count as diplomacy.
Please let us know what you think either here, at thecultofteaanddice@gmail.com, or @Cultteaanddice if you want to give us any feedback, please also leave us feed back on Itunes if you want to!
NB: this podcast includes swearing, themes of an adult nature, Garrick Snow, potential poisoning, and diplomacy of a strange and unusual nature.
The music is White Noise Labs Metal version of the Theme (here )
Into the Dungeons!
As I may have mentioned I joined Final Fantasy A Realm Reborn recently and have been trying to level up to 50 so I can get involved in my guilds End Game stuff. Currently this involves me doing an awful lot of quests, fates, and levequests (kinda like the daily repeatable quests in WOW).
Yesterday at the Great Big Temple of the Old Ones in Goatswood the cult gathered to play Unhallowed Metropolis. At the beginning of the recording we had a bit of a conversation which went like this:
Mawdrigen: Right what episode is this?
Bloodied: Err 20? 22?
Mr Ed: Check the Recording folder
Mawdrigen: Bugger me it’s 24. We’ve only just released episode 14.
Bloodied: Plus we’re recording again on Thursday because it’s game of thrones…
All: Oooh. Crap.
We have been recording a lot of sessions but sticking to our Two-weekly release schedule. Now having a backlog is good, when Larp season starts it means it doesn’t matter if I disappear off into the Woods for extended periods of time. The problem is though that judging by what we are currently releasing you might be slightly confused into thinking that Goatswood has exceedingly odd weather it being boiling hot in the middle of winter.
Having discussed this a bit with the rest of the cult (or the ones that were there) I and Bloodied have decided to treat you to some Yule-Madness. From Friday until the backlog is down to only 5 episodes again we will go to a weekly release schedule for a bit. Once we reach only a 5 Episode backlog we will probably go back to the two week release schedule depending on how well we think it is going.
Of course this means I now have to go do all the editing.
Oh hell!
I’m a player of MMO’s, I’ll admit it. Now I don’t have many evenings when I’m not stupidly busy of course, what with having to record roleplaying games for you guys, planning games, and you know occasionally doing the social life thing. However I’ve lately been feeling the hankering for more social gaming. Dragon Age wasn’t cutting it, and planetside has fallen off a bit in the face of… well… terrans to be honest.
Go to City of Zombies Kickstarter to back the game (and you really should!).
In this special episode the Cult plays the new game City of Zombies a game in which you use maths to kill zombies!
We have the designer Matt Tidbury here with us to both explain the game and watch in horror as Archive’s ability to square numbers at speed to decimate the zombie horde!
Please let us know what you think either here, at thecultofteaanddice@gmail.com, or @Cultteaanddice if you want to give us any feedback
NB: This Podcast is ACTUALLY clean with no swearing (despite Archive’s potty mouth).
A Cult Day Out
Yesterday evening in … Goatswood (totally not Reading honest) the Cult of Tea and Dice descended on the South Street Arts centre (which is not in Reading either) for an evening of Steampowered awesomeness and comedy nerdery. We had an awesome time and felt the need to review both the evening and the rather fine tea which I purchased from the Professor himself. If you ever get chance to go to AF Harold’s Lovely Cabaret then you really should go, we will be the strange types sat near to the front, but not actually at the front of the place given what happened to Archive (we are getting to that).
Please note we continue to be both British and Irreverent, also you may learn more about dolphins than you ever wanted, or needed to know!
As some of you may have noticed, The Cult of Tea and Dice now has a rather fine logo (and if you haven’t noticed then shame on you, go click refresh and take another look). The logo is the work of the ever awesome Rosie Wigg, a Larper and an Artist, who is currently on the lookout for more commissions.
Take a look at her portfolio here: (http://rosiewigg.4ormat.com/) for examples of her style and work, including some short animations.
As you can see she’s awfully good at this! If you happen to want a portrait of your Larp character her base rate is £40, and she is more than happy to give you a quote if you want a more complicated scene, so in theory I could finally get a portrait of Garrick Snow riding a Mammoth into battle against the Lannisters…
Sorry I distracted myself there.
Please do contact her with work however, she has a Larp habit to fund and a Lizard to support! Plus she made sure we were no longer an egg on Twitter, and if that is not worth a look then nothing is.
Down near Bilericay there is a farm called Barleylands. You would have been excused for thinking however that it had been the site of some kind of Temporal Rift a couple of weekends ago as there were all sorts of attractions from different periods of time scattered across the place!
From the huge palisaded gates, to the sound of Machine Gun fire the Fayre covered the whole gamut of re-enactment from dark ages Viking up to WW2, and also included Larp supplies, medieval crafts and foods, Laser tag and also an Archery Competion. Add to this the many Taverns including the Crimson Moon, well known to CP regulars, in which I’ll admit I spent rather more time than I was intending (I blame ex-Court of the Dragon members!) the Fayre literally had everything you could need for a day out.
Despite being in the countryside it’s remarkably easy to get to the place, a train to Bilericay from Liverpool street, then a 100 bus to directly outside the visitors centre just 50 metres from the entrance. Knowing when to get off the bus, and of course the usual underground palaver were the only trouble we actually had. All told however it was relatively easy to get to from Goatswood. Getting in to the Fayre itself was easy, and impressive as a full on Palisade had been put together to act as the gate (in fact two had but I didn’t get to see the other one) and the staff were quick and very pleasant.
The moment I got through the gate I headed straight to the “Archery Contest” not to compete as the final was the next day, but just plain to have a go. Which was free. Having taken my first few shots however I decided to quit while I was ahead having got my eye in! Shame I couldn’t come back the next day, with a prize of £1500 the Archery competition would have been well worth a try!
Now I will admit that the price of entry for the Fayre was a touch on the high side, which possibly put some people off. However given the plethora of things to do inside it was worth it in my book. Where else can you watch a man make a genuine Japanese style knife and then step 6 yards to the side and buy a Larp mask? The number of traders were fantastic, including an old style jerky and chutney maker, wood turners, bowyers, cosplay and military equipment sellers, and also Larp kit makers. I didn’t see half the places due to a lack of time on my part but the level of craftsmanship on show was ridiculously high. Avoiding buying all the things was the main problem I had, as there was so much good stuff there. Walking back through London festooned in mediaeval weaponry however would have been something of an issue, so its probably a good thing that I resisted. The fact that the sellers were all clustered in one place, with the re-enactors in the other field gave the sellers area a market place feeling which was good, sort of like walking down the high street of a slightly anachronistic city.
The food on show was good too, although as a long standing larper I went straight to the Hog Roast along with a friend of mine who promptly filled his buckler up with meat. If you have never helped a man devour a buckler full of meat you really haven’t lived! The food vans combined with the taverns meant that there were plenty of options for food, and relaxation. Efforts had definitely been made to make the fare on offer varied and cater to everyone.
There were a number of re-enactment crews present to show off their excellent costume and fighting mettle, all the way from Viking, and Anglo Saxon and ranging up to the WWII re-enactors. They were all exceedingly knowledgeable about their subjects, and at the same time more than willing to answer questions. In fact they were exceedingly informative, and I learned more than I thought I would ever know about WWII rifle patterns. Unfortunately for me one of my mutant powers seems to be sensitive hearing (along with too many taste-buds and the ability to produce minor static charges) so I didn’t get to spend too long near them due to the sheer amount of racket they produced with their machine gun.
There were also a number of talks throughout the weekend but unfortunately I didn’t have time to catch any of them. I would have like to, with such worthies as Matt Pennington (of Empire fame) speaking they would no doubt have been excellent.
All told I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the Fayre and I hope they get to do another one next year! If they do I intend to go for both days, and would suggest you all do too!
Episode 10
Will they get to the bottom of the terrible murders, will the Doctor ever get his money back for that lady of the night he hired, what the hell is going on with Lottie? Investigations are gathering place, but are they drawing closer or just muddying the waters. Perhaps they should look into the information the Doctors friend gave them…
Unhallowed Metropolis continues in this our TENTH Episode! Double Figures everyone! I honestly didn’t expect us to get to this point when we started as I know just how good I am at starting projects but not finishing them, but I’m glad we’ve gotten so far! Please let us know either here, at thecultofteaanddice@gmail.com, or @Cultteaanddice if you want to give us any feedback
NB: this podcast includes swearing, adult themes, intense Britishness, drunks, terrible gin, and worrying plot lines.
Episode 9
No tea as we were still getting over the Lapsang Souchon, but we did play an excellent Indie game called Final Girl. Having heard the Fandible guys (Website) playing this game I was inspired to purchase the game and then we gave it a real Cult feeling!
You can get Final girl from here, and I am not spoiling anything by telling you that you absolutely do need this game! There is a small amount of “imagination overhead” but for most roleplayers this is not diffic
NB: this podcast includes swearing, adult themes, intense Britishness, and creepy creepy death.
I’ve been going to CP for a very very long time. Hell I’ve had people wander up to me and tell me stories about my previous characters without ever realising it was me (in their defence I was playing a leather masked sociopath at the time). Much like everything you do for so long slowly you start to see nothing but the bad bits of it, which is why when I turned up to Renewal I did so with zero Froth.
Recording: No Recording worth reporting on!
Tea: Lemonade again!
The situation was now dire, where before the buildings on the northern side of the square forced the enemy into easily controlled choke points, now instead the wreckage of the buildings would provide cover to any enemies approaching from that direction. Worse however was the fact that the tunnels that ran under almost every building were now breached. This could potentially lead to enemies crossing a comparatively small area of open ground, and then appearing right in the centre of the platoons defences.
No doubt you have all been busy clicking refresh on the feed and here waiting for the new episode! Unfortunately due to large amounts of packing before curious pastimes renewal event I ran out of time to put the early podcast I was intending to do.
I am also at the moment far too tired to do it now (believe me when I say the spell checker is working overtime on this post!) so I will post it up tomorrow. I will attempt to get only war up as well!
Sorry!
As part of the preparation for the Game of Thrones game we had to create our noble house, which A Song Of Ice and Fire actually has pretty good rules for. We split the rolling up amongst ourselves, each person rolling for a separate event and making any choices they were called to make. Making house creation a collaborative action helped to get us all thinking about how we fitted together in the group.
Presented below therefore is our Noble house… House Grimwood:
Please excuse my dodgy heraldry, it is actually what we rolled up! Continue reading
One of the defining features of Garrick is how resilient he is and how covered in scars he is. In addition to hundreds of minor wounds Garrick Snow has taken seven blows from seven of the greatest warriors currently in the Seven kingdoms. The wounds are a big part of Garricks make up as they very much define his past, and thinking about these wounds allowed me to think a bit more about how Garrick became the person that he is.
This Special Episode is a review of Pacific Rim the giant robot vs kaiju film that has recently hit the cinemas! We gush about how awesome the film is, talk about what we’d have like to have seen, and even discuss how we would set up a RPG Campaign to run a game similar!
This is somewhat spoilerific so if you have not seen the film either skip to 40 minutes, and also skip 1:08 to 1:10 or you know … GO AND SEE THE FILM.
NB: This podcast contains swearing, and also themes of an adult nature. Oh and Britishness, lots and lots of Britishness. We are somewhat irreverent, but we totally don’t mean any of it, well apart from the bit about the French.
Hello there all Mawdrigen the Chief Cultist here with some information for you all.
Firstly we are now available on Itunes, so for all of you out there with I-devices you can sign up to receive our pod-casts from there! Please feel free to rate us and leave (constructive!) feedback!
Which brings us to part two of this announcement, should you wish to contact the Cult directly, you can now email us at thecultofteaanddice@gmail.com and it’s actually likely we’ll reply. If you would like to send feedback, ask us questions, or explain to us why we are wrong about something feel free to drop us a line. We may even read them out “on Air”
Finally you can also follow us on Twitter using @CultTeaAndDice on which we post quotes, news, and at the moment complaints about how damn hot it is here!
Starting with a blank character sheet is for me one of the best bits of Role-playing. I’ve played a few games with pre-gens but I always prefer games where I can make my own character. Recently I’ve done that For Game Of Thrones and I’ll be using that character (Garrick Snow) as my example.
I always try to have an idea of the sort of character I want to create before I start, and Garrick was designed to be a close combat bruiser who can also act as a unit leader if we (when we…) get involved in war. More importantly he was intended to be the Bastard Son of the Houses Lord, who should have been legitimate if not for the Machinations of his Grandfather, and a very early birth which carried off the lords first… well not wife but intended wife. The idea behind the character is that during Robert Baratheon’s rebellion he actually took a blow from Rheagar that was meant for Robert, and as he was very near death Robert asked if there was anything he could do, and Garrick asked for his legitimacy, which Robert granted him on the basis that he didn’t expect him to survive. However he did survive and since then has been waiting for the King to get round to actually doing the paper work for it. Which means of course his house is in a difficult position as he is both the heir and not the heir, luckily Garrick for all his flaws is loyal to his family if he doesn’t end up the heir he’ll serve the family. Continue reading
OK I will admit it, I Love the Eurovision song contest. Actually that is not quite true, I really like taking the piss out of it. This year however I decided to try and work out an RPG Session seed for every song.
I was drinking. What can I say! Having spent an inordinate amount of time on this I am now wishing I hadn’t said I would do this. I should stress that some of these were inspired by the song, some by the lyrics, and some by the somewhat bizarre stage show!
Episode 3
NB: This Pod cast includes Swearing (Bloodied was STILL rolling for my enemies) and also themes of an adult nature, like gaming and roleplaying, as Such it is “Explicit”
The Third episode in which the Cult plays the new game Relic by Fantasy Flight Games.
Website
If you managed to get through Episode 2 this one is more of the same! Except it has better sound and won’t make you want to saw your ears off quite so much. This time we were joined by Pontius (aka Darth Turnip) who you will get to know better when I release the first Unhallowed Metropolis Actual Play Session, in which he will be playing Samson the “Gravedigger”.
Recording: It’s a Larp event and I managed to avoid pretty much every camera in the place it seems.
Tea: “Healing Tea!” which was also Sainsbury’s Assam. King of all Teas!
It’s been a couple of weeks now, and I admit I have been slacking a bit, and by slacking I mean writing plot for another LARP, writing up only war, trying to think up some 24 adventure seeds based on Eurovision Song Contest entries, and occasionally firing intrepid Kerbals at space (note I do not say “into space” there, this should give you some indicator of how well that is going). All told I’ve been quite busy so it has taken a bit longer for me to write this up.
What a difference the temperature not being sub zero makes!
Recording: You know the drill with this one by now!
Tea: We seem to have located summer down the back of the Sofa. As such I drank cloudy lemonade rather than Tea!
At the beginning we thought that the Commissar wasn’t going to be played, but we later on found someone to play him. So for the first part the Commissar was assumed to be taking the Handler they drugged back to command for a vigorous interrogation by Delayne, who probably wouldn’t go straight to Castration as a tongue loosening plan. He returned soon afterwards however.
In the mean time the others dealt with the aftermath of the battle, dragging the various bodies into a huge pile near to the Sacristy of the Paupers. Jellin and Liana both took the time to examine them, and both discovered very worrying information. First the Tech Priest realised that the huge mutant was wearing the remains of a PDF uniform from the planet of Bayle, a planet that rose up against the Empire some 400 years ago and was punished by Exterminatus. Although the giant mutant was only “wearing” the armour in the loosest sense of the word, it did seem to belong to it. The Auto cannon it had been using like a rifle however was definitely not standard issue, having been torn off a Palaedeon 42nd Tank. This didn’t bode well for the Palaedeon’s and caused him more than a little consternation.
Tea of the Session: In honour of releasing the first podcast I made myself a Thermos of Spice Imperial. Which was awesome.
Recording: Recorded but not up to standard to cast.
Picking himself off the floor Vyn found himself face to face with the last remaining hound which had not been killed when his Grenade went off. As Narine his companion tried to find her feet again Vyn prepared to fight the mutated creature. However before he leapt on it with his knife, the Commissar vaulted into the pump house and engaged the beast. Vyn’s knife and the Commissars “borrowed” power sword flashed but they only just managed to hold it at bay.
Tea of the Session: I. Forgot. To. Make. Tea. The pain. The agony. I drank Dr Pepper. It wasn’t the same.
Recording: Recorded but I struggled to hear the players, let alone the recorder catching it all.
This time I had the map with me, first however there was the little issue of the Prisoner Jellin had tranquillised at the end of the fight last episode. Considering their options they bound his wrists to his ankles and dragged him, still unconscious to the Cathedral of the Emperor, and began to work him over. It took them a short while before they checked with the medic and found out that beating him wasn’t going to work as a method to wake him up as the drugs were pretty powerful. Also they were running a considerable risk of killing their best source of information.
A Guest Post from Hardwick
The most important thing about making tea is to take your time and Tea made with already boiled water that is only warmi- ish never tastes as good as if you take a little time over it.
Always use freshly drawn water from the cold tap or filter.
Boil the water- As it comes to the boil warm the tea pot or cup with a small amount of water.
Swirl several times to warm and then discard.
Add the tea bag or loose tea, one teaspoon per person and one for the pot is usual.