It’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
Whoever said that obviously never had to use a rail replacement service bus or had to commute to work.
Let’s face it most journeys are tedious and soul destroying . So that’s another thing that The One Ring gets right with its journey rules.
Otherwise, it’s best to decide on some events for a journey and leave it at that.
In case you had t realised, I don’t really like travelling.
As every amateur detective knows, any scenario needs three things: means, opportunity and motive.
Means: the actors and resources that are in place to challenge or aid the characters.
Opportunity: where and when the scenario occurs, i.e. the setting and timeline.
Motive: why is all this happening? What will happen if the players don’t go blundering through like bulls in the china ship.
Not a bad little theory that I’ve knock up in 5 minutes….
What would RPGs be without ancient things?
There’s hardly any games where Ancients don’t feature… Twilight 2000? James Bond?
But otherwise, Sci-Fi (Twilight’s Peak), Fantasy (lost shrines, hidden valleys, dread isles, stupidly long histories), Horror (most stuff for Cthulhu) - Ancients have been there since the hobby started.
Let’s face it, investigating places or finding things or fighting things that are hundreds, thousands or even millions of years old is what drives many great adventures.
As an aside this also reminds me of the bit in one of the new Star Wars films where Han says it’s all true, like it wasn’t just 30-odd years ago. Thatcher, Reagan, Deeley-Boppers… it’s all true…
And of course ancient civilisations feature in my favourite D&D adventure Night’s Dark Terror.
Plus ancient things make me feel less old…
This prompt reminds me of the message the players get near the end of Shadows over Bogenhafen, which takes them to the man who tells them what’s going on and where to go, thereby rendering all the investigations they have done so far rather pointless.
Otherwise, I've not got much for today's prompt.
Firstly, a link to the autocratic blog: https://www.autocratik.com/2025/07/announcing-rpgaday2025-in-august.html
And the picture to remind me what's what.
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| RPGaDay prompt bookshelf |
So day 3 is tavens. You meet in a tavern and all that I guess.
As a player you always know something bad is going to happen when the GM starts describing the tavern in detail.
Anyway, I'm going to mention a different kind of tavern, The Gmaing Tavern. A UK based forum of RPG’s and related nerdery.
An impressive number of RPG creators, bloggers and podcasters post there and all kinds of games are discussed, which may be surprising as most of the members are Generation-X grognards.
Unfortunately, the UK government’s crackdown on children accessing user generated content on the internet means that you can’t register there any more.
Oh it's RPGaDay again and as I've got a blog, I may as well answer some of the prompts.
Albeit late.
So Patrons then. An unkind blogger may say that Patrons are just a way for the GM to railroad the players (It's not me making you fight the dragon it's that shady wizard you work for) but lets ignore that.
So I was thinking about patrons and how I hadn't played many games with hem then I remembered The One Ring, which seems to do patrons right. And also I can talk about my adventures in the Shire.
Anyway we were playing online and getting close to the end of an adventure but also it was quite late at night. We had encountered Tom Bombadil and Goldberry who had offered up a song that would help on the quest but we the players were messing around instead.
So the frustrated GM, in Goldberry's voice, said something along the lines of "Look, take this fucking song and sing it at [redacted quest location]" to much hilarity.
And thus Sweary Goldberry was our new patron.
So the prompt is prompt. How meta. Let's roll some dice to get some more inspiration: Why, Envious, Lesson. Doesn't help much.
Hmmm... why am I envious of GM's with players who are prompt when it comes to their turns? Is there anything I can learn from them? Probaby. But would I? Probably not.
