This December, at the end of a year that’ll stand in infamy among years, we looked at “When the Bad Guys Win“. Here’s a roundup of all the articles submitted as part of the carnival, and what a carnival it was!
Tom Homer of Plastic Polyhedra — the hosts of January 2021’s RPG Blog Carnival — asked (When) is it okay to TPK? He looks at some of the pitfalls of common solutions for rescuing a campaign from a TPK and suggests that TPKs might be unavoidable, but can have negative consequences. Understanding this is an important part of being a great GM.
I want to build stories around the PCs, so what happens if all of those PCs suddenly die? — Tom of Plastic Polyhedra
Steve Rakner of Roll 4 Network wrote about creating the ultimate boss battle. Steve brings more ways to up the ante in a boss fight, all of which have little to do with power levels or adding buckets of HP to the boss. Follow his advice and your players are sure to remember the Big Bads of your table for years to come.
Gonz at Codex Anathema wrote about The Darkest Hour — how to deal with a Total Party Kill (TPK). There’s life for your campaign after death, and Gonz reveals how you can go from a TPK to a memorable campaign that builds on the legacy of characters that have come before.
Tony Bro001 at Roleplay-Geek posted about the bad guys winning, and looks at it in terms of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. He also looked at a number of well-known movies and stories to highlight the importance of beating down the heroes, and how an NPC can be a useful proxy for the PCs.
Here, at Rising Phoenix Games, I talked about upping the stakes for memorable encounters in When the Bad Guys Beat Christmas. Similar to Steve, we looked at ways you can put the pressure on the player characters to create encounters that they’re invested in.
And that, as they say, is a wrap!
Thank you to everyone who took part, as well as to Scot Newbury of Of Dice and Dragons, who herds cats to keep the RPG Blog Carnival alive and growing. If you’re an RPG blogger, do consider joining us on our adventures.
Rising Phoenix Games is 10!
The last day of the year marks the anniversary of the founding of Rising Phoenix Games. We’re looking forward to bringing you more exciting games in 2021!
It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week we’ll look at what a painting plan can do for your next painting project.
I feel like I’ve come a long way since I painted my first Adeptus Astartes some 20 years ago, but I also feel like I’m just scratching the surface of what we might call the basics of miniature painting.
For the Emprah! My first Space Marine.
Below are some of the Space Marines I’ve painted since my very first. While painting the ones on the left I learned about varnish, brush selection, dry brushing, edge highlighting, and making my own transfers. And that’s on top of learning better brush control. Now we’re going to talk about something that will improve your painting, save you time, and help you assimilate everything you’ve ever learned about model painting: writing up a painting plan.
Get Organised with a Painting Plan
Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as saying “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.” Drawing up a plan puts this wisdom into practice. A plan sets out your paint scheme for a mini, while breaking it down into steps. It can also guide you when batch-paint many models at once, so that you can have a table-ready army in less time than it would take to paint each miniature individually.
My plan for my Angels Encarmine has evolved with each model I’ve painted so far, and now looks something like this:
I have a painting plan for my Orks, Genestealer Cults, and for fantasy races like drow. But you don’t need to follow the plan step-for-step every time. The plan’s more like a set of guidelines, and breaking the rules is often a great way to improve your plan.
Do you use a painting plan, or do you like to do it off the cuff? Let us know in the comments!
Christmas at Aurora’s
Christmas is almost here, and Aurora has a whole emporium full of goodies for your Dungeons & Dragons 5e party.
From now until Friday you can get 20% off great RPG games and supplements in our RPG Cyber Sale! Just use the coupon code “CyberSale2020” on the Rising Phoenix Games Store.
Aurora’s items are purpose-built to add flavor — without complex, campaign breaking rules — to your campaign. You won’t find earth-shattering magical items or expensive gear, only goods inspired by the Forgotten Realms, the practical needs of adventurers, and a world of imagination. The bundle also includes the Manual of Masks and Undersea Sourcebook: Feats & Equipment, so you’ll be well equipped for any adventure.
The catalogue contains loads of gift ideas for each of the core classes from the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, as well as more ideas for celebrating this special holiday in character, such as Christmas treats, scented candles, confectionaries, and even magical stockings.
RPG Blog Carnival kicks off tomorrow, right here on the Rising Phoenix Games Blog. Our theme for December is “When the Bad Guys Win.” Be sure to tune in for loads of interesting articles from RPG bloggers from around the world.
Great trials. Horrific encounters. Epic adventures. Glittering prizes. Victory. These are all a part of being a hero in the fantasy worlds we explore in our games. But what happens when the bad guys win?
This month’s RPG Blog Carnival is all about “When the Bad Guys Win.” We’ll be putting links in the comments below that cover the topic in all sorts of ways, so be sure to check back here often. At the end of the month we’ll compile all the articles into a list, so keep an eye out for that too.
The RPG Blog Carnival is a virtual, traveling, monthly event that moves from blog to blog, covering interesting topics related to our wonderful hobby of tabletop roleplaying games. It’s a great way to see what many talented RPG bloggers are up to, get some ideas, and expand your horizons. Enjoy!
Calling All Bloggers
If you’re a blogger, why not join us?
Write a post on this month’s topic, then post a link to the article in the comments below. How you interpret this month’s topic is up to you, but here are some ideas:
Talk about running a game where each member of the party is a dastardly villain.
Give us ideas for cunning, recurring NPC enemies.
Stat up some diabolical monsters.
A fiction piece where the heroes lose the fight.
Paint up some diabolical enemies and share your tips.
Teach us how to roleplay a great villain.
Throw some ideas at us for dealing with character death.
It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming.This week we’ve got an Ork Weirdboy kitbash.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the current Ork Weirdboy from Games Workshop. It’s because of the chains and the weird poses, but anyway. I also love kitbashing, so I took the chance to add a little spice to my army. Happy #Orktober everyone!
I love the stabby pose, though the spear is ridiculously flexible.
Body Work
I chopped off the spear and drilled through his hands to accommodate the wire. I then added some plastic tubing to attach the shock prod.
I used modelling epoxy to replace his neck after hacking off the little orc head. Onto the new neck I stuck the head at a cocked angle to make him look more menacing.
Since he looked like a Runtherd anyway, I stuck the whip from the Gretchin kit onto his belt at the back, so now he can fill two roles in my army. Maybe hanging around with all those grots made him really weird.
Lastly, I attached him to a 40mm base and this Ork Weirdboy kitbash was done.
Nightscape: Red Terrors is in Print
Nightscape: Red Terrors, the game of cosmic horror set in post-Soviet Russia, is now in print through Drive-Thru RPG.
In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian government decommissioned several publicly hidden research facilities devoted to ‘arcane science,’ chief among them, PERM Laboratory 37. Recently, due to several strange energy emissions, the location of the PERM 37 facility has been discovered by various parties with an interest in the lab’s inventory of eldritch artifacts.
You’re an agent of one of these factions on your way through driving sleet to the facility. Dusk is falling as you pass through the broken security gate…
Continue the Valkyrie: Ragnarok story as Faya is taken in by an old crone and discovers a malicious alliance with the forces of evil in Servants of the Crone!
Last Month
Faya sat, wounded, atop the spires of Bastion, watching a sun she’d not seen in years pass across the sky. After a harrowing night, an ash dwarf brought a strange woman to tend to Faya and her pulped leg.
I’m going to change things a little, and the reason will become apparent. Faya’s story is evolving, much like any storyteller’s tale evolves over time, through retellings and the teller’s exploration of their story and art. The world of the Valkyrie saga exists in my head and in a growing collection of notes, and these ideas are slowly knitting into a more realised whole. I hope you’ll enjoy watching this story germinate and take root, and that you’ll forgive the few unchecked branches.
The crone’s refuge was hidden away in a hollow spire, high above the chasms of the city. A vagrant’s home lost to the world among the uncountable spires of Bastion’s skyscape. It was dark inside. The ash dwarf’s chains had kept him from following us. She had given me strange berries that numbed the pain but brought back the terrors of the night. We hobbled through a twisted nightmarescape of shadowy towers and thin stone bridges, me leaning on her shoulder, where one misstep would spell death.
In her hovel I lay under mildew covered hides and rags. Hours blurred into days, blurred into weeks, maybe months. Sometimes there was a small fire, but it was always cold. The deathly cold of death’s presence.
I remember tinctures and vials tucked into the rafters, glass and pottery vessels that shone like bat’s eyes when the crone’s fire flared.
There were moments of clarity too, when she worked her rituals. These cut through the figments and drowsiness but brought new horrors that would stalk me from that day to this. These took the form of creatures from the umbral world that exists in the spiritshadow of our own. These vision creatures bayed like dogs at the crone’s chanting as they danced about the walls like shadows. Their claws raked my leg with icy talons, but never cut the flesh, and only when the crone’s gestures or some other distraction took my attention.
When her chanting ceased the demon shadows fled. The pain would come rushing back with unconsciousness and fevered dreams.
The Geezer had once spoken of the threads of magic, the unseen bindings of reality. Wizards knew how to manipulate these, to pluck on the taught strands to conjure manifestations of their wishes. I know now that they had little knowledge of the effect this plucking had, for it was worse than twanging on some spiderweb of the arcane. The witch knew both the web and those that lurked unseen on the other end, past where our world and a world of dark horror meet. She had made some pact with these servants, and they served her well.
The crone taught me many things too, but I hid my revulsion at her arts and failed at my lessons whenever I could fain a lack of understanding.
The Savonin fear one thing more than anything, and their word for it is ‘Venn.’ It might be translated as ‘spirit beings.’ The Savonin are creatures of the here and now. Their immortality binds them to this world. When they die, they have no souls to send to the afterlife, and so they fear anything from that world. Their fear, I think, led them to their hatred of humans, with their short lives and infinite ever afters. The Savonin elves know only the Venn of depravity and despair, for they are closest to the elves. In the common tongue, you’d call them “demons.”
I will not use the Savonin word ‘Venn’ for the eternal creatures of hope and promises kept, though the Savonin do not make this distinction. There is an older Dwargen word more appropriate: ‘Walkure.’ In the common language ‘angels,’ ‘heavenly messengers,’ or ‘little gods’ might all work. The dwargen knew their hierarchy and pantheon, but only worshipped a select few of the Walkure. Chief among the worshipful Walkure was one with many names, some unspoken, who rules over all. It was His light I sought in those dark hours of toiling at spirit calling.
The rest of the story continues, but you’ll have to be a newsletter subscriber to get the rest of the action.
Yes, that’s right, it’s our 400th post on the Rising Phoenix Games Blog! To celebrate, we’re given away a free game!
400 and Counting
Mmm, 400 is a big juicy number.
We’ve shared some great articles over the years, including our Stranger Things Season 3 RPG campaign that tried—and succeeded in many ways—to anticipate the show’s third season before it aired. We’ve run several article series beyond that, including Write Design Program which looks at game design topics, Magic Life Lessons which delves into Magic: the Gathering to learn important life lessons, and our largest series yet, Mini Monday, which brings you miniature painting, terrain, and kit-bashing projects for your gaming table.
Of all our series, Valkyrie: Ragnarok, our short fiction series, is the one I’m most excited about. It tells the story of Faya, a half-elf outcast trying to surive criminal cults and the city watch in the deadly city of Bastion. Her story is much bigger than her own survival though, but I better not spoil any surprises just yet. The newsletter is the place to read more of Faya’s story, delivered to your inbox each month, so be sure to subscribe.
Of course, we’ve always been focused on our core business, which is producing excellent RPG supplements. The Rising Phoenix Games blog will always be the best place to find out about our newest products and special offers, like our newest game, which is free to download!
D4 Dungeon
D4 Dungeon, is an OSR dungeon crawl RPG I created for the #AGBIC game jam. We’re giving it away to celebrate hitting our 400th post!
The pyramid of Krug lies in the deep mists of the Valley of Bones, drifting in and out of reality as the tides of magic ebb and rise. Four determined tomb robbers have climbed the pyramid’s many black steps to reach the ancient tomb’s pinnacle, and the great door of bone.
Beyond the grim door’s threshold lie the many mysteries and horrors of the pyramid. Those who overcome them may discover great treasures, or a horrible end. Beware, for the pyramid’s power will work for and against you.
D4 Dungeon is a light dungeon crawl and a love-letter to old-school RPGs. It includes all the maps you’ll need to play, four character cards for the greedy Tomb Robbers under your control, a Doom Clock to mark the hour of your ultimate demise, and the rules in a printer-friendly PDF.
Download or Donate on D4 Dungeon’s store page, which you can find by hitting the big orange button below. Can you survive the dark dismal D4 Dungeon?!
Faya swam in a confusing dreamland, half-waking, half-sleeping. She felt incredibly tired, but it was a comfortable weariness. She was aware of pain, but it was numbed and barely real. Slowly her senses coalesced and she realised she was propped up against the hard granite of a pillar. An ash dwarf—maybe the one she had seen on the bridge below—was rifling through her bag.
“Hey, stop that you!”
“Whaaat? Is not stealing I is doing. I is looking fur summin’.” The ash dwarf held up its empty hands indignantly. “You is lost lots of blood, you is. I is ‘opin’ to mend you wiff summin’.” The small grey man was jumping up and down and gesturing wildly, as if that would somehow make him more trustworthy.
The dwarf had ripped her shirt and shawl to make bandages, and had bandaged her arm and braced her shattered leg with a plank.
“You is need ‘elp girl, if you is want walk again. Lots of people is looking fur you too. What ya is gonna do, girl?”
“I know a little of the healing arts.”
“Is ya now? I ‘ope you is, but is ‘aving a betta plan, I is.”
“Oh yes?”
“You is stay ‘ere, and I is coming back. You gotta do me one favour.”
“Oh?” Faya tried to shift, but the pain was too much.
“Ya rest an’ don’t die. You is wait long, but you is patched up. Just wait an’ keep alive ‘til I come.”
There was a shout from somewhere and the jangle of chain. Faya noticed for the first time that the dwarf was chained at the ankle, and the chain was drawing taught. Without another word the dwarf was off, scuttling across the rooftop and down a ladder.
She could see a trail of blood leading from it to where she lay, though she had no idea of how she’d gotten from there to here. More pillars hid her away from anyone who might peer over the rungs. She needed to find a safer place, but as she tried to move again the pain became unbearable. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Image credit: Jace Afsoon
Faya knew she had to do all in her power to keep awake. She was weak from blood loss and pain, and the shakes of shock were starting. She checked the rest of her body for injuries, moving her good hand slowly over her body because of the pain. A fractured rib, a cut across the palm from the whip, the snapped arrow shaft in her arm. Her leg was the worst of all. It was shattered below the knee, and had become an ugly, swollen purple. The ash dwarf had cut her breeches from the ankle up to the knee. She knew there wasn’t much she could do, but raised it carefully up onto her bag.
Her mother had known a great deal of the apothecary’s arts and had spent many hours teaching Faya what she knew. Faya had become an adept apprentice. In the Court of Eight Needles, pain and suffering brought great ecstasy, but all too often a neophyte or guest would take things too far and her mother would have a new patient.
“Healing”, her mother had said “is the bright face of the two-faced moon. The Savonin are despised for their ways with poison and pain, but when it comes to healing, we are without equal. We know the body for we explore it in every way we possibly can.” To suffer and heal in an ongoing cycle of great ecstasy was one of the most sacred tenants of the Lotus Court of Eight Needles.
Far above her a spire egret wheeled majestically. She’d heard of these great birds before, and now, watching them filled her with a childlike sense of wonder. She had heard they were big enough for men to ride to war on, but they wheeled far too high above for her to discern a rider.
The world of spires above the city was a beautiful one. She’d been in the deep shadows of Bastion for so long she’d forgotten what it felt like to breathe the clean air, to watch the low scudding clouds float by, or to see sunlight.
Oh, how good it would be to feel the sun again. She was a child of Savo, it was true. Her kin, at least the elven line of her mother, had spent their lives in the shadows of the great trees of the Forest, and had little love for the sun. The dwarves had taught her to love the sun, even low below the earth. Their homes were warm and bright, lit by clever devices that brought the sun’s warmth far below the mountains. She had spent days with Gawn wandering the dwarven farms above the surface too. They were great hidden terraced fields of wheat and barley that survived only because of the dwarves’ ingenuity.
It was, she guessed, mid-morning, and the sun was behind her. She sat in the obfuscating shadows and watched. And waited. Slowly the shadows crept from left to right. She could hear people far below, the general hubbub of the city, but not a soul disturbed her.
She had only a few sugar cubes, which she ate, and a small flask of her own concoction of herbs. She fought to keep these down, and kept her eyes on the sky to distract her from the nausea.
The rest of the story continues, but you’ll have to be a newsletter subscriber to get the rest of the action.
Sometimes a discussion on the Internet is just too important to ignore, and this post, by Owen KC Stephens, concerns you, our customers. Owen asked about previous customers on Paizo’s RPG web store, and his questions concern how you’re able to access our products, as well as those by other great third party publishers of Pathfinder and fifth edition content. If Owen’s post applies to you, we’d love to hear your feedback.
Our own Rising Phoenix Games RPG web store is growing, and we’d love to be able to offer you the experience you want. If you have any feedback for us, feel free to contact us or drop a comment below. I’ll be keeping an eye on Owen’s thread too, because your opinion matters.
Speaking of online stores, please do check out Rising Phoenix Games on Paizo.com. Buying from our own store is always the best way to support us, but our partnerships with companies like Paizo.com, the Open Gaming Store, Drive-Thru RPG, and Itch.IO mean that you can get your favorite Rising Phoenix Games books and supplements at your favorite online store.
The Best Way to Support RPG Creators
If you’ve ever wondered where your money goes when you buy RPG books online, then hopefully this will shed some light on the subject. The best place to support RPG creators, by revenue split is:
The creator’s own website. We get 100% of the profit off each sale made through our store.
Drive-Thru RPG or other One Bookshelf (OBS) sites. DTRPG and sites like Drive-Thru Cards take a 35% cut of the profit. That said, their tools make promotion and contractor payments far easier, their staff is very helpful, and their library of titles is the largest on the web, so we’ve always been happy to sell through them.
Community creator sites, like the Dungeon Masters Guild. The DMG takes 50% off each sale, which is likely shared between Wizards of the Coast and OBS.
Don’t Miss the Newsletter
I’m busy putting together the final touches for this month’s newsletter, and it’s a whopper. Don’t miss out, subscribe to the Rising Phoenix Games newsletter today. Each monthly issue includes exciting product news, discounts, and free fiction from the Valkyrie: Ragnarok saga. I’ll be posting an excerpt from the story on the blog too, but subscribers get to read more and subscribing is totally free.
It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week we’ll look at a great little trick for getting your army painted.
The easiest part of this wonderful hobby is buying the miniatures. You can get loads of wonderful models, some at amazing prices, for just about anything. I don’t know about you, but the hard part for me is getting them all painted. I still have a good whack of metal and plastic from my high school days that are still a pristine gray. That, my friendly Internet blog reader person, is where this blog comes in, and today I’m going to share my little secret that’s winning the war on bland gray.
An MVP Army
MVP stands for Minimum Viable Painting. I swear it does. No need to look it up.
By MVP I mean the fewest number of miniatures you need to paint in order to play a game where all the models are painted. In an RPG, this might be four characters and the monsters for an evening’s worth of encounters. In Warhammer 40,000, this might be a small combat patrol including a squad and your warlord.
I’ve been collecting miniatures for Warhammer 40,000 for years, but recently I’ve been working hard to put together three armies, so I can have friends over to play (when lockdown ends). I’ll show you what I mean with these three races. For Orks, I can put together 10 Boyz with a Nob, plus a Weirdboy warlord, for 163 points. My Genestealer Cults army consists of a Magus and 12 Neophyte Hybrids, for 162 points. Lastly, my Angels Encarmine Space Marines include a Tactical Squad and a Captain, all for 163 points.
The total number of miniatures I’d need to paint if they were all fresh out of the box is 12 Orks, 13 Gene Cultists, and 6 Space Marines. That’s only 31 models.
Start Small
The point is that it’s easy to go out and buy a 2,000 point army, but much better to start with a small one and add to it as you go. This lets you learn your army as you go, is much easier on the wallet, and means you’ll never be demotivated by a mountain of gray.
This is one of the many strengths of the Games Workshop 9th edition starter sets. You get everything you need to play, and it’s the perfect seed for a bigger painted army.
Also, starting small and painting an MVP helps stave off buyer’s remorse.
Don’t Forget RPGs and Board Games
This principle works well for painting up board games and RPG minis.
If you’re a GM, you usually know what the players will face, so you can paint what you need for your next session.
In the case of board games, you can sometimes exclude unpainted minis, or you can focus on the minis that will see the most play. I’ve got a stack of cards for my Dungeons & Dragon Adventure Board Game collection that includes only painted (and pre-painted) minis, so whenever I play the models are all painted. As a bonus, whenever I finish up new models their cards get added to the game; it feels like a treat.
How about you? Do you have any painting tips to help us get through the gray and bring a painted army to the table? Let us know in the comments.
