Black Company playtest pre-summary

Six of us played The Black Company RPG playtest rules.

The PCs:

- escorted a VIP

- annoyed Beryl citizens

- brutually demonstrated that you can't mess with the Black Company

- ran from supernatural terror, proving that maybe sometimes you can

- and had a lot of fun. No, wait, the players did. The PCs got stressed out, and chewed out.

More details tomorrow.

Year in Gaming 2025

Here we are in 2026, recapping 2025. How was it for gaming for me?

Running Dungeon Fantasy

I GMed 17 sessions of DF Felltower this year.

Session 203, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part III - War of the Robots
Session 204, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part IV - Mechanical Knights, Gnolls, and Cultists
Session 205, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part V - Mopping Up & Pursuit
Session 206, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part VI - Exploring & Looting
Session 207, Felltower 134 - Exploring the Gate Level
Session 208, Felltower 135 - Exploring the Air Gate, Part I
Session 209, Felltower 135 - Exploring the Air Gate, Part II
Session 210, Felltower 135 - Exploring the Air Gate, Part III
Session 211, Brotherhood Complex 9 - Chop & Hannari's Excellent Adventure
Session 212, Felltower 136 - Steel Knights
Session 213, Felltower 137 - Looking for Evil Temples in All the Wrong Places
Session 214, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS
Session 215, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part II
Session 216, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part III
Session 217, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part IV
Session 218, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part V
Session 219, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part VI - Walls or Death

We started off finishing a multi-session epic fight that ran over from 2024 and finished with a multi-session epic fight that almost ran into 2026. Good stuff!

Same crew of gamers as last year, plus we added my friend Freddie. Long story short, he used to play in my games back in high school and early into college. We always stayed in contact even if not closely. He was out for a family visit, we did some BJJ together (he's a black belt, I'm not), and he mentioned wanting to drop in on a game session as a visitor. Lo and behold, we play online these days . . . and now so does he. He's a good match for the group.

I'm also well pleased that Felltower has been seen as a lost cause recently, due to lots of dead ends and "can't win" encounters. So what did the players do? This is going to sound crazy, but they put their big boy pants on and got to work on a couple of the thornier problems - a visit to the Air Gate (profitable!), a run at the steel knights (not profitable), and an epic run at the first landing on the second GFS and the maw of the "Gith" area (profitable, but less than hoped.) That really made me happy as a GM. Yes, these are hard problems to solve, and tough battles to win. But edging around the problem didn't help . . . and a straight-on assault of all three made headway. The Air Gate is an active place with a lot to do - even if only "raid more giant's castles." The knights are a problem but they have a better idea of how big of one. And the Gith are a serious, potentially existential threat when engaged, but rich as can be (even just from their arms and armor - nevermind whatever cash they have.) It suddenly looks target rich instead of an empty hole.

Playing RPGs

None. Not one session. Again. Hmm.

Other Gaming

I played a lot of Battle Brothers this year, after finally pulling the trigger on it. I really like it. I eventually added the Warriors of the North DLC and it's fine but I haven't enjoyed it as much since I added it. We'll see. Maybe I'm just getting used to the new backgrounds.

Writing

None. I might be done writing, basically. The opportunity cost in time is high, and the payoff is not great. A sizeable project can net me less than a week's pay at my day job and take many more weeks to do, and a small project isn't an option without Pyramid around any more.

We'll see. I do enjoy the finished projects, so maybe if I get an opportunity for something special I'll take advantage.




Overall, a pretty good year for gaming.

But, not a good year overall for our game group. We lost one of my former gamers. I still don't feel up to writing a post about that, yet. She'll be missed. She hadn't rolled dice in anger since before I started this blog, but she was one of my old game's regulars. I didn't want to say nothing, but maybe that's enough for the moment.

Black Company postponed

Unfortunately, I caught a cold and I can barely speak. We put off the playtest session until next Friday.

Black Company tomorrow

Playtesting this is tomorrow night's plan.

The Black Company RPG

We'll see how it goes but I have high hopes for the system as written.

Notes & Oopsies from the big fight

- A clarification on our XP system - multi-session delves get +1 XP per extra session, not a base 1 per session.

Honestly, a base 1 xp per session wouldn't harm anything, but I'd rather have 0 be a real risk so people don't do bored "let's just check level 1 again" delves for 1 xp when no one's around.

- Big Oopsie. That whole area of the big fight is a Low Sanctity zone. Chop should have been at -5 for all of those divine spells he was casting.

I can chalk that up to a benefice from the Good God, but honestly, it was because I knew I had an electronic map of the area and didn't look at my paper map. My paper map clearly denotes that whole area - yes, including the entrance hallway, and the GFS - as a Low Sanctity Zone. So we'll call it a one-off +5 to Chop's spells because of a special, one-time only, NON-REPEATABLE set of circumstances that allowed him to be so effective in his healing and Lend Energy casting. I will double-emphasize the NON-REPEATABLE statement. My players (okay, Hannari's player) will want to figure out some way to have that effect come up again. GM error is bad enough, I'm not going to make something solvable either with an in-town action ("We pray a lot") or bribe/donative ($1776 to the troops, er, $5000 to the Good God) or in-dungeon whatever when it shouldn't be solvable without a much, much bigger in-dungeon action. And that's if it's solvable at all.

- There isn't a Wall of Stone spell. I'd discussed it as a possibility a while back, but no, we never created one. I don't intend to, either.

- I'm well pleased with our new version of Great Haste. It really does make it worth casting, but not a required spell you need to cast because of its overwhelming effectiveness.

Random Links for Friday 12/26/25

It's been a while. Here is stuff to read.

- A nice rule for "cooking" a hand grenade in GURPS.

- A quick rules answer I need to put somewhere besides here - only the consumables in DFRPG Adventurers are available off-the-shelf. Want an Ironskin amulet? Pay for it and await the enchantment.

- These consequences for too much time at sea are really funny over at d4 Caltrops.

Christmas in Felltower

Merry Christmas from Felltower

You'll be lucky to get out alive, but if you survive, may the dungeons grant you a suit of Magescale in your size, an artifact-grade weapon with minimal downside traits, and a bucket of healing potions.

See you all in the coming year.