Around 11 AM EDT this morning, Misha B, R Shel Kahn, Stras Acimovic and I will be making our 4th attempt at the...

Around 11 AM EDT this morning, Misha B, R Shel Kahn, Stras Acimovic and I will be making our 4th attempt at the #SwordsWithoutMaster Speed Run Challenge live on the Actual Play Twitch Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/actualplay

Join us if you can!

Sean Nittner will be hosting and monitoring the chat, and I believe some of our Rogue Players will dip their toes into the chat as well. I'll try, but I'm an old wizard who is confounded by these new was. So there's no guarantee there.

Many fine seers will be watching our rogues' activities from afar, scrying for clues to what fate has in store for them! You can join them with the Ritual of Scrying: http://www.worldswithoutmaster.com/blog/2018/5/30/to-craft-an-enthralling-short-story
https://www.twitch.tv/actualplay

Speed Runs on Twitch

Speed Runs on Twitch

Here's our first speed run of #SwordsWithoutMaster up on the Actual Play channel on Twitch. I was super nervous going into this for some reason, despite having played Swords approximately a thousand thousand times, but I had absolutely no reason to be. It was glorious!

The link to the video on demand is below. The whole video is about 2 hours long, but our speed run, from first Overtone to last Reincorporation, minus the brief intermission between first and second Motif, was 50 minutes and 16 seconds.

The beginning of the video is Rogue creation and a brief barfing of the rules. The speed run itself starts around 42 minutes in.

Technical Details

I can't speak to how the Twitch set-up worked entirely. Sean Nittner worked that magic. Our gorgeous playmats are courtesy of Tim Denee.

But I can tell you how we made the dice work in Roll20. I've uploaded all 36 pairs of dice facing to the Swords Community resource folder. You can get them here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FIZqfa_bVq8Dj525W1GGJJq2ru154YFu

Log into Roll20 as a GM and set up your game. Go to the Collections tab in the sidebar on the right. At the bottom of that you should see Rollable Tables. [Add] one and then click on the table you just added. That should bring up a dialogue box for creating your table.

Name it something fun, like Tone-Bones. Check the box next to "Players can roll from table?" because you'll want that.

Now let's add table items. Click [Add Item] drop g1j1.gif in the icon spot and label it 1 Glum 1 Jovial. Now repeat this 35 more times. Save changes.

Now on the sidebar by your Tone-Bones there should be a button that reads [Token]. Click that and dice will appear in your play area. As the GM you can move them about, adjust their size and do what you will with them. Most importantly, you can right-click on them, choose Multi-Sided from the pop-up menu, and then choose Random Side to roll them.

Fun!

Now double-click on the dice to bring up the Edit Token dialogue. There is a bit in there where it says Controlled By. Make sure that reads "All Players" so that your Rogues can grab, shove, and roll the dice as well.

I think that's it. Go forth and adventure!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/255806623

Folks, if you're familiar with Mastodon the social media (as opposed to the mammal or the band) you can find me at:...

Folks, if you're familiar with Mastodon the social media (as opposed to the mammal or the band) you can find me at: dice.camp/@epidiah

If you're not familiar, Mastodon is a bit like a Twitter-substitute with a 500 character limit. It does some neat things with localizing control. For example, instead of joining Mastodon as a whole, you join an instance which is usually made up of a collection of like-minded folk. The https://dice.camp/ instance is dedicated to tabletop gaming with a healthy contingent of roleplayers.

I'm new to the whole Mastodon thing, but enjoying it thus far. I'm particularly intrigued by the 500 character count. Especially, intrigued by the rogues you can write up in 500 characters. But it might be a bit tricky since, with punctuation and spaces, at least 76 characters are already accounted for:
Eidolon:
All that Deserves a Name:
#SwordsWithoutMaster
Glum:
Jovial:
Trick:

Might save some characters by just linking to the eidolon and labeling the trick by it's name instead of both "Trick:" and it's name. Also, no shame in trimming "All Deserving a Name:" down to "Names:" The #SwordsWtihoutMaster hashtag is vital, though. Mastodon is only searchable by hashtags. Might even want to slap a #Rogue on there, too.

Anyway, I'm going to give it a shot and I invite you to join me. Hit me up on dice.camp when you get there.

A #SwordsWithoutMaster Rogue

A #SwordsWithoutMaster Rogue

Ok, this character is a bit on overdrive. But i think it may be extremely cool to play, and play with.

The Eidolon is a picture of little lady and the silvered one, the arms of Minai dancing around them.

Atum the gutted.

All That Deserves A Name

Veilripper: The curved dagger with which Atum rips apart the gate to the gods - which recides in his belly.

The silver string: the navel-attached string-and-needle Atum uses to suture and heal the veil.

Lovers embrace: armour made of many bronzed arms holding the sutures. Gifted to him by Minai, the capricious gods with which he has fallen in deep love.

the Gods of the dais but Minai: the endless gods who live beyond the veil, residing between the atoms. he can call all but Minai willingly - for she is the god of uncontrollable passion and melancholy.

This shadowed veil: the veiled robe, flowing from the strings in his belly that gives Atum's lower body form.

Pure-tear bauble: The talking, snarking, sadistic bauble that keeps Atum company.

Feats Heroic

Jovial
plunging the veilripper deep into his belly, Atum summons forth "Little Lady and The Silvered One."

Glum
The many arms tighten 'round Atum's chest in a vicegrip of teary calamity, as bronze turns to onyx, and the smoky form of minai glares everywhere.

Trick

Inevitable Foe— The gods outside.

or maybe

Unparalleled - instead of glum, i have chivalry as a tone.

Nergüi

Nergüi

A #SwordsWithoutMaster Rogue.

An outrider, scouting from the High Steppes.

All that Deserves a Name
Chuluun - Nergüi's fleet-footed horse, dun, scarred, and fearless in battle.
Khergit - the horse-archer peoples from whom Nergüi hails.
Sanjar Noyan - the war-leader of the Khergit hordes, who demands their fealty.

Feats Heroic
Barbaric - Nergüi barks forth a disturbing, unhinged laughter as he draws back his bowstring, sighting down the arrow with murder glittering in his eyes.
Jovial - Singing in the way of his people, Nergüi howls deep in his throat as he charges forward, wicked curved sword gleaming as he goes.

Trick
Unparalleled - Nergüi has a "Barbaric" tone instead of "Glum".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mA_Fh8vuIM

J'lmood

J'lmood

A #SwordsWithoutMaster Rogue

J'lmood is a towering Qurn, a rare race of nomads from the high plateaus and savannahs. He is on a pilgrimage to the end of the world, where the spirit-talkers said he could destroy the artifact that had torn his tribe asunder.

All that Deserves a Name
Mokohu - J'lmood's crash, from whom he is in self-imposed exile.
The Coka - An artifact of the sky gods, which J'lmood has sworn to destroy. He allows none to lay eyes upon it, lest they suffer the same dark fates as some of his crashmates.
The Sky Gods - Inscrutable deities above the clouds who cursed J'lmood's people.

Feats Heroic
Jovial: J'lmood bellows forth a great howl, his stomps shaking the very ground itself in his passion.
Glum: The lumbering mokohu warrior snuffs and shakes his head sadly, thinking of home.

Trick
Inevitable Foe: Clayton, a wily poacher who has killed other Qurn for their horns and hides. He has tracked J'lmood since an oasis some time ago, and is out for blood after J'lmood gored one of his henchman.

1.

1. In #InvisibleEmpire  you have as many Favor (~Motif) cards as there are players, but you must discard one of them when a character receives a black mark of displeasure. When rolling you have around 25% chance for this if I'm right.

Because of this rule our session was extremely quick, around 25 minutes long. We greatly enjoyed it but had little time to explore our ideas and characters. Did we use the rules correctly? One player mentioned that it would be really cool if a black mark would only discard the last slot in the last Favor card. I'm not sure. I also realize that the session would be longer if we'd have more then 3 players. What do you think?

2. The kids in my class loved #SorceressBloodySorceress  and they wanna play more! I realized that in Judgement phase it is important to point out to the sorceress player that the order of her questions determines the probability of being the guilty guest:
0: ~17%
1: ~28%
2: ~22%
3: ~17%
4: ~11%
5: ~05%

3. Also I had a fun last night with a plain no-hackie  #SwordsWithoutMaster session. Oh, the joy of playing a magic user and describing spellcasting without rules restrictions is priceless!

#GamesWithoutMaster

Here's the final pictures!

Here's the final pictures!

Originally shared by Andy Hauge

I made a thing! #SwordsWithoutMaster  

Epidiah Ravachol I've recruited some new horde members at #thehoustoncon.

Epidiah Ravachol I've recruited some new horde members at #thehoustoncon. We explored the great City and wreaked havoc in the neighboring forest and desert. They said #swordswithoutmaster was just what they'd been looking for for their groups at home.

I'm planning on firing it up at 9 AM EDT as usual this Sunday, but we've had some interest from folks for a later...

I'm planning on firing it up at 9 AM EDT as usual this Sunday, but we've had some interest from folks for a later game as well. Since, apparently, we all don't live on the east coast of the U.S.

Originally shared by Epidiah Ravachol

It's Friday, which makes me wistful for Sunday morning.

#SundayAMSwords  
#SwordsWithoutMaster
#MixedReferences

In the off chance that some of you don't have me circled outside of this community, I thought I'd better reshare...

In the off chance that some of you don't have me circled outside of this community, I thought I'd better reshare this here.

Worlds Without Master, and thus Swords Without Master, has a new home on the Internet. And we're celebrating with a sale!

Originally shared by Epidiah Ravachol

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Nathan Paoletta, I am eager to announce that #WorldsWithoutMaster  has its own website! And I'm celebrating with a sale. 25% off any and all of the back issues (including issue three which has #SwordsWithoutMaster  and issue one which has #EnterTheAvenger  and issue two which has #Wolfspell  and issue four featuring Rachel Kahn's gorgeous cover and more #EnterTheAvenger )! 

(There are a lot of other things I'm eager to announce as well, but we'll start with this.)

So if you've been waiting, for whatever reason, now is the time!
http://www.worldswithoutmaster.com/blog/2014/6/20/announcement

#SwordsWithoutMaster on Google Hangouts

#SwordsWithoutMaster  on Google Hangouts

The Indie+ Exhibition game of Swords went down last night, despite some technical difficulty. We had fun, but it was not quite where I'd like things to be to make it my go to demo video.

So here's the plan. I'm going to continue running random Swords hangouts at random times until we hit upon a session that . . .

✔ Runs fairly smoothly, with few rule hiccups or corrections;
✔ Finishes in an hour or less;
✔ And is as entertaining to watch as it is to play.

This is all very possible, but we may have to take several cracks at it before we hit the perfect one.

Oh dear, that means we have to play a lot of Swords. So watch this space for upcoming opportunities! New players are absolutely welcome.

Also, let's talk best practices for playing Swords online. During the exhibition game I was introduced to the the DiceStream Google Hangout App. It seemed to work fairly well, and it even has a text feature that'll let the Overplayer post the Overtone to the screen, which I like.

Death is No Easy Task

Originally shared by Epidiah Ravachol

Death is No Easy Task
Being a postmortem on  #WorldsWithoutMaster  Issue 3 and the #SwordsWithoutMaster  contained therein.

Last week on Monday, Issue 3 of Worlds Without Master was released about two months overdue and along with it Swords Without Master was released, almost four years overdue. Briefly, this is how it went down.

In June of 2009, Emily Care Boss, Jason Keeley, John Stavropoulos, Jim Sullivan and I sat down and created the entire game of MonkeyDome over the course of a single week.

At the end of that week, we were on a train from NYC to Greenfield, Massachusetts, to debut the game at JiffyCon. On that train, a Western-themed version of the game based on Young Guns II was hacked together and played for the first time. During this process, Swords Without Master first took root in my head under the working title Sword Buddies.

I had no time for new games. I was trying to get Time & Temp done in time for GenCon. Ah, remember those days? When games had to be done for GenCon. Seems like only five years ago. But Sword Buddies would not leave me be. So as soon as I could, I changed the name and declared that I’d have the game at the very next GenCon.

Oops.

I ran the hell out of the game in the intervening years. At some point, I released the preview adventure “The City of Fire & Coin,” and several other folks started running the game. All the while, I kept repeating my mistake and declaring a deadline for this damn game.

Then along comes Worlds Without Master and once again it became time for me to demonstrate that I will never learn this lesson. So after two successful issues and a bonus holiday issue, I declared that I would publish Swords in the third issue.

::Insert Montage of Eppy Sweating and Drinking Heavily While Typing Meaningless Words::

The state of indie publishing has changed so dramatically in the half decade since MonkeyDome. Audiences have gotten bigger. The iPad popularized tablets, making PDF sales not just feasible, but practically the standard. Kickstarter changed how we fund things and finally slew the mandatory GenCon release date. Then, for me, Patreon slew Kickstarter and the pageantry of the release date.

Indie gamers themselves have changed in those five years. When you see talk about Swords Without Master online, the conversation uses the language of Apocalypse World rather than, say, D&D, which is almost certainly the language they would have been using if it had been released in 2010. And I am so happy about that.

(And don’t get me started on all the personal changes I’ve made in my life since 2009.)

So here we are, in a completely new world. One that grows ever more ephemeral. All this, I guess, is to put the data I’m about to dump on you into perspective. It is, probably, meaningless. But it may be, at least, entertaining to our pattern-hungry minds.

Show Us How You Spent Your Spoils

On March 31st, 2014, I released issue three to a 322 patrons and 45 allies. For this the Patron Horde granted me a boon of $1,491.11. Roughly $270 more than the previous issue and $500 more than the issue before that.

•  2% of these pledges did not go through for whatever reason.
•  5% was tithed to Patreon.
•  6% were wrapped up in credit card fees, a marked improvement over last issues 8%.

This left me with about $1,300, which was about $50 less than what I owed my contributors and editorial staff (not including my own work on the ezine). That’s actually a little bit better than I had hoped to be. I went out on a limb on this one because of Swords. The issue itself was almost twice the size of the previous issue.

This is where things start to slide from glum into jovial for my wallet.

Since releasing the issue, I’ve sold 25 copies of the issue on DriveThru and 45 copies directly. Of those 45 direct copies, 18 of them were bundled with the first two issue, but for simplicity sake, let’s just attribute those sales to the release of this issue.

So, as of this post, through DriveThru and direct sales, I’ve made about $275 over the $50 I needed to finish paying out my contributors.

But more importantly, the Patron Horde has grown by 18 patrons in the past week, bringing us ever closer to that color cover milesone.

A Future Without Master

I’ve already waded into the next issue of the ezine. I don’t know yet whether I should look to this month or next, but I’m going to pull the trigger on that in the next 12 hours or so. Swords has a bright future ahead of it. It’s been largely well-received and I intend to grow it through the ezine in much the same way early D&D grew through Dragon. But at the moment, I’m going to revel in Swords finally being out before focusing on the next step. I’m chomping at the bit to write and publish more fiction. Manyara and Snorri have been knocking at my mind-door lately. It turns out they’ve been places and have such tales to tell.
http://patreon.com/epidiah