Blogging

Annual Blog Check-In

Posted by craddoke on April 2, 2020
Posted in: Blogging, Meta, Uncategorized. Leave a Comment

It has been exactly one year since the last update here. I’m still alive (and healthy at the moment), still running a Stars without Number campaign that just reached sixty weekly sessions, and still working on my next OSR module to prepare it for publication.

There’s a slight chance I will be a bit more active here soon — the initial drafting and layout of the module is complete and I’m now considering how to handle the illustrations. I have high standards for artwork but no talent and little money, so aligning my expectations with those realities is slowing things down in terms of finalizing the adventure.

In the meantime, please continue to enjoy the various random generators here on the Dwarven Automata site; it’s a nice pick-me-up to glance at the usage statistics once in a blue moon and see just how many are making use of things like the weather generator tool. Thank you!

Semi-Annual Blog Check-in

Posted by craddoke on April 2, 2019
Posted in: Blogging, Meta. Leave a Comment

Just a quick post to let anyone following this blog know that it has not been abandoned completely. The Stars without Number campaign mentioned in the previous post has been progressing nicely for twenty sessions; the system has been easy to use and the challenge of putting together a sci-fi game (a first for me) has been refreshing. At the same time, work continues apace on my second adventure module. All the mapping, keying, adventure hooks, and faction information is done and just the random encounter tables, bestiary, and treasure description remain to do.

As usual, my goal in the coming months will be to post here more often. The realist in me, though, has a pretty good sense of the odds on that resolution being fulfilled.

First Publication: Automata Run Amok

Posted by craddoke on November 28, 2016
Posted in: Blogging, City-Based Adventures, Curabel Setting, Graveyard of Empires Campaign, Meta, Publications. 3 comments

automata-title-pageThis blog has suffered severe neglect in recent months, although my RPG-related activities have continued unabated. Besides my ongoing first edition campaign (which recently surpassed five hundred hours of play), I have also been working hard on converting some of that game’s early adventures into publications. The first such adventure is the incident at the tinkerer-wizard Talessin’s tower (see the annotated play reports: first session and second session).

That work is now complete and my first adventure module, Automata Run Amok, has gone live on DriveThruRPG as a PDF with print versions to follow as soon as possible both there and on Lulu.com (spiral bound in the latter case!). This module is being offered for free (PWYW) as an appetizer for what I hope to be a series of publications. Here’s the marketing copy blurb for this adventure:

Out-of-Control automata have driven a wizard from his shop. He would like the PCs to solve the problem (without damaging his creations) while his rival will pay for evidence of the wizard’s dabbling in forbidden knowledge.

This is an adventure suitable for four to five low-level characters written to be compatible with OSRIC and early editions of the world’s most popular RPG.  In addition to full details on a tinkerer-wizard’s tower overrun by rampaging automata, this module includes:

  • Random tables to generate elements of a bustling port city situated in the tropics and titles for books on both magic and techno-magic
  • Twenty unique magical items of variable usefulness and danger with which to tempt players
  • Several unique NPCs and monsters, from a clock maker revolutionary to a brain floating in a machine animated by the spirit of a long-dead racist dwarf
  • Eight illustrations by the wondefully talented Luka Rejec

This twenty-page adventure should provide between four and eight hours of Old School fun. Enjoy!

Here’s a link to the page to “purchase” and download the module.

Interview on Follow Me, And Die! Blog

Posted by craddoke on April 1, 2016
Posted in: Blogging, Curabel Setting, Graveyard of Empires Campaign, Meta. Leave a Comment

Temple Ruins

Temple Ruins

Just a quick note that +Follow Me, and Die! has posted an interview about my experiences with RPGs and our ongoing Roll20 campaign on his blog: Click here to read it.

Yeesh … It’s Been A While

Posted by craddoke on January 9, 2016
Posted in: Blogging, Meta. Leave a Comment

Despite appearances, this blog is not dead and I will be posting regularly again shortly. This week there will be a new random generator for city directions (i.e., the party wants some mundane shop and you need to tell them how to get there) and then I will post the next entry in the session reports — we’re now up to 90 four-hour sessions (!) and beginning the campaign’s third calendar year (soon to be second year of play). Sorry for the long absence — if there’s anyone who cares — but I will always prioritize my DM responsibilities and sometimes that means this blog will suffer.

Check-in and Plans for Future Posts

Posted by craddoke on July 24, 2015
Posted in: Blogging, Campaign Design, Meta, Random Generator Scripting. 1 comment

Colchester Castle under Construction

Colchester Castle under Construction

It’s been quite a spell since my last post, so I thought it might be a good idea to check-in to confirm that this blog is still a live project and to outline some plans for the next few months. There has been a logical reason for the prolonged delay since my last update, leaving aside general laziness and a busy summer schedule. This issue was that the next section of my commentary covers the Dwarven people and there were too many spoilers for my ongoing campaign to address that subject. While some of those secrets have yet to be discovered, my players have made significant progress in their investigation of Curabel’s Ancient Dwarven civilization and it will now be easier to cover that subject here without spoiling the campaign.

With this problem no longer holding things up, I will relaunch the campaign setting Bible annotation shortly. In addition, a number of additional random generation scripts written in Perl are almost ready for upload here — these will cover non-classed NPCs (compatible with just about any system) and treasure package generation (potentially useful in other games, but designed for AD&D 1E). Based on the site traffic, the random weather generator has been the most popular post on this blog, so I think these might also be of interest. Finally, I will also start posting annotated play reports from my ongoing campaign that has just reached its 66th session (covering 264 hours of weekly gaming).

Anyway, that’s enough planning — now it’s time to bring some of these ideas to fruition.

Curabel Campaign Mention on Player’s Blog

Posted by craddoke on February 17, 2015
Posted in: Blogging, Curabel Players, Meta. 1 comment

Portrait of Larry's dwarven fighter, Thorfus

Larry’s dwarven fighter, Thorfus

One of the original players in the Curabel campaign, Larry Hamilton (Follow Me, and Die! on G+), has an OSR/RPG blog and he recently posted a very complimentary summary of his experiences in the campaign along with a link to this site. Since his post deals more with the actual play of the campaign, something that I will not be addressing until after working through the preparatory material, it actually serves as a pretty good preview of the direction this blog will be taking. In addition, his site is generally worth a look for anyone interested in old-school role-playing.

Mission Statement

Posted by craddoke on February 6, 2015
Posted in: Blogging, Meta. 1 comment

Image by Steve Zieser.

Image by Steve Zieser.

My intention with this blog, Dwarven Automata, is to discuss Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (mostly first edition) and OSR (however defined) gaming using concrete examples from the campaigns I run both online via Roll20 and in the flesh. I also hope to post random generator scripts to aid in the creation of similar campaigns, although that will likely be somewhat delayed since my personal versions of these programs include copyrighted material that will need to be changed for web publication.

While some assumptions and theories about role-playing games may be implicit in the material posted here — and perhaps even explicitly remarked upon at times — I have very little interest in edition wars, game theory debates, or whatever outrage du jour has caught the attention of the wider RPG blogging world. This is a small, personal project that will remain grounded in my experiences prepping and running AD&D/OSR campaigns and I imagine it will bore most people to tears. You have been warned.