City of Ghosts One Hour Pariah Sandbox Session 5 Play Report

You can find more information about this is series of games in this series of posts, but in a nutshell I was inspired by Luke Gearing's and Pat Eyler's respective one-hour megadungeon sessions to run a weekly PARIAH sandbox during my Friday lunch break. 

Just wanted to add a small note to say:

• I'm having issues with this blog's formatting: I'm aware of display issues, will hopefully get to sort it out this weekend
• This post is mostly a note for current and future players in the campaign. 

This is the fifth play report, with the game taking place on 29th March. Next game is scheduled for 3rd May, though we haven't been able to make quorum in the last few sessions.

Back in the One Hour Pariah Sandbox: City of Ghosts Session 4 Play Report

Following an extended break the City of Ghosts campaign is once again up and running. You can find more information about it in this series of posts, but in a nutshell I was inspired by Luke Gearing's and Pat Eyler's respective one-hour megadungeon sessions to run a weekly PARIAH sandbox during my Friday lunch break. This is the fourth play report. 

The One Hour Pariah Sandbox: City of Ghosts Session 3 Play Report

Portrait of late (Finnish?) Mesolithic man by Tom Björklund,
used as character art for Wren-in-the-Sedge 

Due to time constraints and inspired by Luke Gearing's one-hour megadungeon sessions, I'm running a weekly PARIAH sandbox during my Friday lunch break. This is the third play report. 

Session 1 is here

Session 2 is here

The One Hour Pariah Sandbox: City of Ghosts Session 2 Play Report

Due to time constraints and inspired by Luke Gearing's one-hour megadungeon sessions, I'm running a weekly PARIAH sandbox during my Friday lunch break. This is the second play report: track down all related posts at this link  

Between sessions, I posted on the r/osr subreddit (and also on the NSR Cauldron), seeking advice regarding this undertaking. There were some valuable responses which I'll summarise below, before getting into what happened in session 2...

The One Hour Pariah Sandbox: City of Ghosts Session 1 Play Report

Due to time constraints and inspired by Luke Gearing's one-hour megadungeon sessions, I'm hoping to run a weekly PARIAH sandbox during my Friday lunch break. This is the first play report: track down all related posts at this link 

Draft cross-section of the valley

The PCs

• Ugly Evening, exiled for forbidden sorcery and Rotten Antelope, exiled for thieving (both played by J). Ugly evening has a pet, "probably a dog"
• Nimble Goat the spirit-touched victim of a blood feud and Wandering Jackal, the strong girl with double-headed axe, an aurochs and dog (both played by C)
• An assumed "quantum cast" of as-yet unidentified pariahs, on standby for when other players drop in and out of the game

New Pariah Generator: CITY OF GHOSTS campaign

Ahead of Friday's inaugural "lunchbox" it became clear that a new generator was needed! Excellent, a chance to tear my hair out over Javascript... here's a post explaining what I mean by "lunchbox" first:

https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-city-of-ghosts-sandbox-playtest.html 

...here's the latest character generator:

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THE CITY OF GHOSTS: SANDBOX & PLAYTEST

A recent trip to Dragonmeet involving actual, face-to-face communication and the rolling of dice instilled a deep longing to get back to the gaming table. Sadly, sitting down with my partner to plan out the next few months it dawned on both of us that our lives are not going to be our own for a very long time. This is the price of having children in a declining former superpower, far from the embrace of a supportive extended family—an arrangement we entered voluntarily and could (in theory) escape at any time, so please don't send your sympathies. Nonetheless the reality remains fixed: no nights off for elf-games.

(Foot note: need an alternative semi-humorous shorthand for the RPGs I play: "elf-games" has the whiff of vanilla fantasy... one that springs to mind was "spirit-games" but that sounds like a Victorian parlour game) 

There's also the matter of this cover image, first shared in this post back in May last year: https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2022/05/pariah-volume-2-city-of-ghosts.html

City of Ghosts cover image by Jef Cox

In short, I have a lot of material ready to go but I want to explore it at the table before releasing it to the world. Fortunately, inspiration was at hand in the form of Ben Lawrence's megadungeon podcast, in which Luke Gearing was interviewed. Turns out that Luke's only gone and been running a weekly online game in his one hour lunch break. Having said that, special mention must go to Pat Eyler aka Foot of the Mountain who has previously shared details of his (face-to-face) lunchtime campaign on his Patreon, which undoubtedly sowed the seed for this latest venture...