Gangs of Titan City (solo) session #4 (2nd cycle)

So... the inevitable has happened: I have postponed the City of Ghosts Friday Lunchtime Sandbox... indefinitely. It became too disheartening waiting each week only for it never to happen. I'm going to blame the format for this: thanks Luke Gearing!

Anyway, I DO hope to get the same sandbox (basically a PARIAH version of a dungeoncrawl) up and running again soon, maybe over longer sessions and at more sociable hours? Let's see... anyway, in the meantime I've made use of my long Friday lunch break by test-driving Soul Muppet's Gangs of Titan City, and so far have found it to be ideal for solo play. You can read all my reports  (as well as other posts related to the game) at this link, which may not be visible on your screen (so scroll to the end).  

Some of Ben Brown's very fun art found in GoTC

In case you don't know, Gangs of Titan City is a sort-of mash-up between Necromunda and Blades in the Dark, in that players control gang members ("gutters") in a grimdark hiveworld (the eponymous Titan City). It's narrative-focused, though probably more on the story game end of the spectrum rather than the rules-light end (though the mechanics are pretty light). It's closer to PBTA than 24XX. I play solo with a notebook, pencils and real dice and write up the sessions from those notes at a later date. So far I have not felt the need to use additional oracles or solo tools with the game book, but that could change.

Read on for more!

Developing Pariah's Dawn Realm (the influence of Scavengers Reign)

Last year I returned to the untied loose end of the Dawn Realm (crudely, Pariah's equivalent of the feywilde) with this slightly long, sketchy post. It's been fermenting since then with a great deal of reagents added following conversations on this blog and elsewhere, of which many were with Max Cantor of Weird and Wonderful Worlds. It took watching Scavengers Reign for me to take this pot of potent brew off the flames and let it cool, let the residue crystallise, and then snort a big hefty old line of the stuff.

This is not a post that includes a Scavengers Reign hexcrawl... but I've robbed a few of the details, because the big breakthrough that show provided was to really show how the world interacts with not just the explorers, but the elements within it.

If you wanna someone with real OSR chops talk about this show, please go and bother Patrick Stuart's substack, linked here. This post is extraordinarily long and I don't finish it properly: there's at least one further post before I get all the ideas down, and then 

Blueholme & The Stygian Library, solo preparation

I've recently been playing Gangs of Titan City as a solo game, but you may have noticed various other RPG luminaries engaged in this dark practice. Indeed, it was friend-of the blog JFUR who first inspired my return to the labyrinth alone with her Into the Odd solo campaign. While ludic onanism has long been a staple of the frustrated forever GM, seeing Skullboy aka Better Legends transform his own game into an entire comic book, Delvers felt like something of a shift in the sands. Why, even friend-of-my-idealised-higher-self Semiurge has been at it—as this write-up of Grant Howitt's Big Gay Orcs (CW: butts touching one another) can testify.

Where's this suspiciously professional introduction headed? Into the Stygian Library, that's where: because when I'm not already writing about playing RPGs by myself or reading RPG books (all by myself) I like to play RPGs about books. By myself. And then write about it.

A crop of just about the first illustration in the book, by Alec Sorenson

Gangs of Titan City (solo game): session #3 (Fallout phase)

At time of writing it is still uncertain as to whether tomorrow (14th June) will witness a return to the City of Ghosts sandbox, and while I'll definitely be running ANOTHER session of GoTC if it doesn't happen, I feel like I want to run through the fallout element while I have some spare time just to get the wheels turning ahead of the next operation.... so: it's time to spark up an imaginary plasma-cig, chuck some Cryochamber in the headphones and see what's going down in Plutogia!

Not actually Plutogian, but Necromundan.. still, an obvious touchstone!

Spell-spirit houses: small shrines to small gods

This post envisions how spirit houses could work in PARIAH (or your animist RPG of choice). Before I get into it I want to say a quick word about its provenance. I've previously written 3 posts on the topic of shrines but they crossed over into real life recently when I started to consider the act of building a birdhouse through an animist lens in this post. 

I've also begun watching SCAVENGERS REIGN (only a few episodes in so no spoilers, please): without giving too much away I am completely in love with it. So much resonates with the psychedelic animism I have made my life's mission to evoke (and there's a post percolating as we speak on this very topic) but it was a much more subtle moment that crept into the ultimate genesis of this post, which I will mention towards the end.   

But for now, spirit houses...

Spirits of the Here & Now, visiting the shrine I built to house them     

...instead of invoking and binding spell-spirits, why not provide them with a nice place to live?

Gangs of Titan City (solo game): session #2 (operations phase)

I set aside 31st May for a session in the City of Ghosts but was unable to attract the required number of players. A few weeks ago I decided such occasions presented me with a great opportunity to test out Gangs of Titan City  as a solo game, but as it transpired it would not be until yesterday (7th June) that I'd be returning to Plutogia.

Alternative cloth-bound cover to the book available from Soul Muppet

This was the first "operations phase", the segment of the game I predicted would be the most challenging to resolve satisfactorily as a solo player. In the event 

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D12 Unexpected Intelligent Entities Interloping in Other Realms

The pariahs of the titular RPG are outcast from their paleolithic culture, and thus are outsiders thrice over: first as unaffiliated humans in the wilderness of the Here &  Now; second as nomads among the proto-Neolithic settled folk; third as psychonauts interloping in realms beyond the Here & Now.

PARIAH Volume 1 grants a vague overview of six of these realms, how to access them and the types of entities most likely to be encountered there. This information has been added to on this blog with numerous posts over the past four years, but is but a tiny taste of realms even more diverse and complex than the quotidian of the pariah's day-to-day lives.

Anthropomorph (Earth) copyright 2000 Luke Brown https://www.lukebrownart.com/ 

What's more, as well as the native inhabitants of the se realms, there are those like the pariahs: visitors, travellers and interlopers exploring a reality beyond sight and sound. Sorcerers, witches, wise-ones and ghost-walkers are perhaps the most likely fellow travellers a stone age psychonaut might run into, but there are others of more obscure origin. 

12 of these intelligent entities are listed below, alongside the realms within which they are most likely to be encountered.