Saturday, May 4, 2019
The Deck of Fire used in 1.1 Act by Act
A Breakdown of the how the Deck of Fire is used in the first Incursion session for INTO THE RING is now available. Here at https://professorharbinger.com/start-here/
Friday, May 3, 2019
The Call to Adventure 1.1
Heed the Call to Adventure and become a Psychonaut! Or come learn the Role of the Storyteller, in the month long release party for INTO THE RING, the Blood Red Dreaming Incursion Book by Aardvark, Aardwolf, and Ape Productions. Here at https://professorharbinger.com/start-here/
Thursday, May 2, 2019
Into the Ring Set up and Running a Game and Campaign
The Release Party page for the Blood Red Dreaming Incursion book: INTO THE RING now has the sections up for Setting up and Running a Game, Running an Ongoing Campaign, and a full list of the Deck of Fire for this first Incursion Book. Here at https://professorharbinger.com/start-here/
- Setting up and Running a Game
- Running an Ongoing Campaign
- The Deck of Fire for Incursion 1
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
An Introduction to Blood Red Dreaming
So begins the Month Long Party for the Aardvark, Aardwolf, and Ape Productions release of the Blood Red Dreaming Incursion Book: INTO THE RING. Learn more here at https://professorharbinger.com/start-here/
Blood Red Dreaming is a Tabletop Role-Playing Game. If you've played other Tabletop RPGs, you'll be familiar with certain conventions of the games: multitudes of dice, character classes, experience points, storytelling by murder killing hosts of allegedly evil monsters. Well, Blood Red Dreaming doesn't do most of that, and what it does do it does very differently.
Gameplay Resolution is done with a deck of cards rather than with dice. A Player's Avatar in the Shadowlands can do whatever the player themselves is physically capable of doing. Anything beyond the capacity of the Player requires the expenditure of cards to accomplish. Attempts at success can be bolstered by points earned through activities in the real world, like a pen and paper Pokemon Go. Character death is not a major set back, with penalties being only that the player cannot participate directly for the remainder of the session. Stories last a single session, like an episode of a TV series. These sessions can and will be strung together to form a myth arc, but each session should be a complete story in itself.
Combat is no different that any other story/action resolution attempt. All conflict in broken down into Scenes and Phases to keep things rolling and prevent sixty seconds of in game combat to taken three four hour gaming sessions. Negotiations, or heists or research in a musty library are all viable grand finales to a session if handled well. Story points have mechanical value in the game's systems, and negative consquences and penalties can be purchased to gain short term advantage now- and players will know when they risk major consequences nearly all the time.
If You've Never Role Played Before
Learning Blood Red Dreaming will actually be easier if you've never played another Tabletop RPG before. All Roleplaying games are basically collective story telling games. Most RPGs forget this for a simple reason. Most RPGs were built from the old miniature war games where old men moved civil war figurines across meticulously created dioramas. All really cool stuff, but if you just want to tell an amazing story then the baggage of this origin story needs to go. So sit back and relax. Think of this as improv, the storyteller is both audience and movie director and also plays all the extras, while the players are the lead actors and sometimes the villains (more often than many players would admit in many games). The rest will become clear in short order, sit back and relax.
Blood Red Dreaming is a Tabletop Role-Playing Game. If you've played other Tabletop RPGs, you'll be familiar with certain conventions of the games: multitudes of dice, character classes, experience points, storytelling by murder killing hosts of allegedly evil monsters. Well, Blood Red Dreaming doesn't do most of that, and what it does do it does very differently.
Gameplay Resolution is done with a deck of cards rather than with dice. A Player's Avatar in the Shadowlands can do whatever the player themselves is physically capable of doing. Anything beyond the capacity of the Player requires the expenditure of cards to accomplish. Attempts at success can be bolstered by points earned through activities in the real world, like a pen and paper Pokemon Go. Character death is not a major set back, with penalties being only that the player cannot participate directly for the remainder of the session. Stories last a single session, like an episode of a TV series. These sessions can and will be strung together to form a myth arc, but each session should be a complete story in itself.
Combat is no different that any other story/action resolution attempt. All conflict in broken down into Scenes and Phases to keep things rolling and prevent sixty seconds of in game combat to taken three four hour gaming sessions. Negotiations, or heists or research in a musty library are all viable grand finales to a session if handled well. Story points have mechanical value in the game's systems, and negative consquences and penalties can be purchased to gain short term advantage now- and players will know when they risk major consequences nearly all the time.
If You've Never Role Played Before
Learning Blood Red Dreaming will actually be easier if you've never played another Tabletop RPG before. All Roleplaying games are basically collective story telling games. Most RPGs forget this for a simple reason. Most RPGs were built from the old miniature war games where old men moved civil war figurines across meticulously created dioramas. All really cool stuff, but if you just want to tell an amazing story then the baggage of this origin story needs to go. So sit back and relax. Think of this as improv, the storyteller is both audience and movie director and also plays all the extras, while the players are the lead actors and sometimes the villains (more often than many players would admit in many games). The rest will become clear in short order, sit back and relax.
Into the RIng Release Schedule
Release Schedule
The Release Schedule for the Blood Red Dreaming Incursion Book: INTO THE RING, and you can find it HERE!Wednesday, May 9, 2018
Hollow Heart and the Darkness
As the Psychonaut steps into the ring, They are bathed in the lights
from the spiraling galaxies that hang impossibly overhead. In the
Foglands, a perpetual blood red twilight washes over the face of any
visiting Pasychonauts. In the perpetual night of the Mirrored city
arcing currents of electricity and neon reflect off the smog and smoke
that threaten to drown the city and any unwary Psychonauts. In Arcadia,
sun and moon and firelight alone will light the Psychonaut's face. In
the Painted Labyrinth, phosphorescent fungi climb the walls and
bioluminescent creatures flit through air and stagnant pools of water,
casting eerie light by which a Psychonaut may navigate the dangerous
tunnels.
But in the Hollow Heart, there is no light.
Dark as the human mind from which the Shadowlands is birthed and in which it the Shadowlands grow. Dark, but not still. The Hollow Heart does thrum with what can only be called a heartbeat. The sense that the Psychonaut receives upon arriving in the Hollow Heart, is that one has been swallowed by some great creature. When Jonah was swallowed by the whale or "greate fyshe," the sense he received would have been similar. And perhaps Jonah had found a way into the Hollow Heart under its other common name: the Hidden Heart.
The Hollow Heart is also the Hard drive of the Shadowlands. The Shadowlands is procedurally generated like an unfolding fractal flower from the stories encoded into the fractal mirrored rooms of the Hollow Heart. A Psychonaut who manages to make the arduous and maliciously concealed journey to the Hidden Heart will find themselves with the entirety of the Shadowlands at their fingertips. The Universe of Stories would be theirs to control and reshape, if they can master the manner in which the Hollow Heart encodes and projects its store of tales out into the world. And, while a Psychonaut who unlocks the secrets of the Hollow Heart can reshape the Shadowlands, the stories and the archetypes which underpin the universe and which are its basis are not changeable from Hollow Heart.
And it is rumored among the veteran Psychonauts that the Hollow Heart is actually the top most layer of a vast underground network of minor realms. But what these are, a Psychonaut will have to discover elsewhere.
But in the Hollow Heart, there is no light.
Dark as the human mind from which the Shadowlands is birthed and in which it the Shadowlands grow. Dark, but not still. The Hollow Heart does thrum with what can only be called a heartbeat. The sense that the Psychonaut receives upon arriving in the Hollow Heart, is that one has been swallowed by some great creature. When Jonah was swallowed by the whale or "greate fyshe," the sense he received would have been similar. And perhaps Jonah had found a way into the Hollow Heart under its other common name: the Hidden Heart.
The Hollow Heart is also the Hard drive of the Shadowlands. The Shadowlands is procedurally generated like an unfolding fractal flower from the stories encoded into the fractal mirrored rooms of the Hollow Heart. A Psychonaut who manages to make the arduous and maliciously concealed journey to the Hidden Heart will find themselves with the entirety of the Shadowlands at their fingertips. The Universe of Stories would be theirs to control and reshape, if they can master the manner in which the Hollow Heart encodes and projects its store of tales out into the world. And, while a Psychonaut who unlocks the secrets of the Hollow Heart can reshape the Shadowlands, the stories and the archetypes which underpin the universe and which are its basis are not changeable from Hollow Heart.
And it is rumored among the veteran Psychonauts that the Hollow Heart is actually the top most layer of a vast underground network of minor realms. But what these are, a Psychonaut will have to discover elsewhere.
Friday, April 6, 2018
The Hell Keys
There are numerous minor realms in the Shadowlands. None of them are so well established as the Realms of Fair Folk. Their realms connect to all the major realms and the liminal realms. And the doors to the various demenses in this realm are the Hell keys.
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