A safe haven for Seattle / Pittsburgh / Reed gamers and their various unclaimed progeny

Brought to you by
ars ludi,
Lame Mage Productions,
the Infinite Tiger Zoo,
and the secret society of scamamaze

 

the Game Room
Everybody's a gamer, just some people haven't played yet... -anon

Story Games Seattle
We meet, we play.

2011

2010

My score for Story Games Seattle 2010: 38 meetups (plus one social). Played with 51 different people. Not bad.

Run Club
The first rule of Run Club: good GMs run games. More games = good. Everybody who plays in Run Club must GM.

Round 3 has seven sworn GMs so far (Chris, Mike, Kevin, Ping, Jem, Gavin and me). How many will survive? We'll see...

  • Run Club #1, vol 3 - XXB: Republic Commandos (Gavin)

Round 2 finishes up with 83.333% compliance (10 out of 12 ain't bad).

Round 1 complete with 75% compliance (yes, someone got half credit). Boo, ya.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time
Everyone likes PB&J.

  • Jewel of the Phoenix / Barbarians of Lemuria (Ben)
  • Danger Patrol Beta (Ryan)
  • Mecha-Knights / Microscope
  • Blood of Shoguns / Mountain Witch (Ben)
  • Deep Freeze / Geiger Counter
  • Danger Patrol (John Harper)
  • Cracks in the World / Microscope
  • Mouse Guard (John Harper)
  • Ghost/Echo (John Harper)
  • On A Wicked Range / In A Wicked Age (John Harper)
  • Company of the Shattered Star / Reign (Brandon)

Game Room Friday
We keep the basement warm with fun.

  • Principia (Niccolo Cassandra Machiavalli) (Tony)
  • Forbidden Planet / My Life With Master
  • Exterminate All Aliens / Microscope
  • Megadungeon / Tunnels & Trolls (Tony)
  • Pharloss / Storming the Wizard's Tower (Tony)
  • Horse-drawn horseless carriage / Sons of Liberty (Tony)
  • Spears & Glory: Long March Home / Agon (Ben)
  • Recycled Entertainment / Shock
  • Villains of Hyperion City / Nine Worlds (John Harper)
  • Devil & Zah Eil prequel / In A Wicked Age
  • 618 playtest (Ben Lehman)
  • Alien Crystal Ziggurat / Geiger Counter
  • Steampunk Muskateers / Principia (Tony)
  • Catacombs of the Mad Wizard / Basic D&D (Tony)
  • Psi-run playtest (Tony)

Free Range Gaming
Sino loco anno nomini

Light Exploring
Games played at unusual places and times.

Go Play NW 2011

Fabricated Realities 2011

  • Decian & Dragons / Microscope
  • Fast-o Cola / Remember Tomorrow
  • Zoophage Exodus / Microscope
  • Let the Dead Lie / Polaris
  • Providence Rhode Island Teen Friends of the Beyond Committee / InSpectres

NemoCon 2011

  • Art for the Star / Shock
  • Capes & Cthulhu / Microscope
  • King of Lepers / On Mighty Thews

GameStorm 2011

  • Until We Sink
  • ReDuvai / Free Market
  • Argolis' Curse / Microscope

Johnzo-conzo 2011

  • Bee Gulch / Drifter's Escape
  • Monster Hearts

2010 and earlier

Spawn of Run Club
The bastard children of a social experiment gone horribly awry. These games really have nothing to do with Run Club, but the name is catchy.

2011

  • Wheels Within Wheels / D&D 3e sci fi (Ben)

2010

  • Legacy of Heroes: The Owl / Microscope
  • Legacy of Heroes: Blue Eagle & Skyhawk / Microscope
  • City of Plague / D&D 3e (Ben)
  • Too Many Cults / Remember Tomorrow
  • Synth & Genodyne / Remember Tomorrow
  • Save the Shire / D&D 3e (Ben)
  • Proust Corp / Microscope
  • Predator & Prey / Microscope
  • StarCraft / Microscope
  • Swords of the Stellar Empire / Flashing Blades (Ben)

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

 

Virtual Valhalla
Where do adventurers go when they die? Heaven? Hell? Or just virtual valhalla on the web...w

  • Grief-filled merchant Tacresis immolates himself and bastard tyrant-king Thartomen gets shived by desert cultists. How come only Jem dies in IAWA? Because he's playing right. [In A Wicked Age]
  • Father Cinder, Maherry Thistledown, and Salim Al-Haddad all go down in a classic lizard man massacre. Dromnel Ironhammer beats the curve and gets eaten by a door while Father Dominic Santiago scores points as the shortest-lived PC ever. [Ziggurat of U'buz]
  • Skorja the thief, mauled by troglodytes. Morek Stonebelly, poisoned by a medusa. Irony of Stonebelly not getting turned to stone, duly noted. Or is that double-irony? [Ziggurat of U'buz]
  • Henry Thompson, US Marshal aka Tom Cassidy, frontier outlaw. Died two or three times times actually, depending on who you asked. I thought we weren't using the clone rules? [Western Paranoia]
  • Shiloh "Running Elk" Goldstein, obnoxious hippie, smacked down for insubordination to a teacher. Well, a cyborg teacher controlled by an alien slug-roach. Budget cuts and all. [Third Period: The Reckoning!]
  • Kayla (bbn 10 elf) barbarian, born again elf, and unrequited love of Sir Malrick Gladwell. Bravely raged a few rounds too long. [Port of Kazadeen]
  • Bloody Bell (ftr 10) swashbuckler, sailor, and well let's face it, pirate queen. Stricken by the unholy malevolence of the ghost giant. [Port of Kazadeen]
  • Ong-bak (bbn 3) sacrificed himself to a troll for the good of the party, leaving them without a tracker. Or a barbarian. Unless you count the orcs. [Flood Season]
  • Number 17 tried one bluff too many and went into the acid pit, but was probably too drunk to notice [Romancing the Stone]
  • sh'Omock Blood-eye (ftr 3/clr 4 half-orc) noted diplomat and warrior priest, killed by cyclops. And manticore. And ice storm. Big-Orc-In-Sky say keep the XP in the party, yo! [Long Walk Home]
  • Old Doc Dru (drd 8) smacked down by the terrible Black Lord while waiting for a train at Duodenum Station, avenged by numerous crossbow bolts [Bobolds in the Blood]
  • "Captain" Earl the mecha-leper, Miss Polly Wally, Nurse Mallory Practice, and Gorgalox-7 lovable preparer of nutritious comestibles - all food for the space werewolves. Polly is survived by Mr. Dog. Don't worry, he'll make another one. [Starship Campers, Run Club]
  • Hildegarde (clr 9) "the Cleric", implacable archer-priest of Tyr, gulped down shortly after Thoth. A bad day for religious figures. [Cenotaph of Umo the Mad]
  • Thoth (drd 8) "the Druid", master of fire and lightning, neither of which could save him from the lizard's belly [Cenotaph of Umo the Mad]
  • Sir Malrick Gladwell (pal 7) died valiantly going paladin-on-fallen vampire paladin. Never again to tie bows or weave pretty braids into the mane of his heavenly steed, Silvermane Snowfire. [Valley of the Black Wizard]

More honored dead in the Virtual Valhalla Archives. [fantasy etc/nostalgia]

Atlas
Random maps from the past for art and/or nostalgia (could you tell I got a scanner?):

[misc/campaign maps & nostalgia]

Game Lists
By unexpectedly popular demand. These are the scribbled lists of who played what when and where. The ultimate anti-SLAN (sino loco anno nomini: without time place or name - sheesh learn Latin already) Showcased currently are Fall 89 and Spring 90. [nostalgia]

Table Top Slaughter
Haven't played Divine Right for a while. Where for art thou, Lake Erie Eagles?

Awful Green Things
The ultimate game with one simple modification: no fire extinguishers! Be nice or I'll publish my psionics for Star Frontiers rules.

West Marches locked
A game that seeks to answer the question, what exactly is treasure beyond bearing?

Player drawn maps the Opal Caves, the Hall of Kings, the Sunken Fort, the Lizard Mound, the Moat House, the Sacred Lakes temples, Zirak-zil, and the Temple of Fenris are not shown. [fantasy/campaign material]

Related sites:

World of West Marches
Further adventures in the wide world beyond the West Marches.

  • Save the Shire
  • Port of Kazadeen
  • In Search of the Unknown
  • Flood Season
  • Cenotaph of Umo the Mad
  • Valley of the Black Wizard (Shushang!)

[fantasy/campaign material & nostalgia]

New Century City
A game that seeks to answer the question, what exactly are villains beyond bearing?

[superhero/campaign material & nostalgia]

Promised Land
Experimental fantasy role playing campaign hinging on player initiated action and complete self-determinism. Players assume the mantles of tyrants, kings, or lords and strive to write history in their own hand.

Sadly nothing at all about Escape from Ulshadore, even though it was one of the best games of all times... [AD&D+/world & campaign rules]

the Fringe
The only-slightly apocryphal adventures of the notorious space rogues Winters and Hightower as they seek excitement and reasonable part-time jobs where ever they sober up. [Star Frontiers/war stories]

King of the Hill
The Lay of Lugarr and the Lay of Pangall are all that remain of the men of Tor Essa (and Pete's creepy frog) after the Goblins came down from the hills... [fantasy/lore]

Doven
Bits of history and lore including The Quickest Step (the notorious and possibly apocryphal treatise on teleportation starring Spriff the Wonder Weasel), the War of Five Shields, the Fall of Keiss, and the legend of the Lost Fountain of Ansriba. Added the Founding of the Wizards Guild.

All eight of the Doven News Flashes are also available in PDF format, covering the whole period of the Southern Tree War, Pavilions of Chaos and Twilight in White (pretty much every game in that period is referenced).

Dug up from the audio cassette archives we have a live recording of One Less Mage (part 2). Monks, skulks and iron spikes.

The intro to the Seven Steps and a classic seventh column from the Lair of the Mad Mage (not as funny as "yes it is a nice statue isn't it..."). [fantasy/lore & war stories]

Doven Seventh Columns
There are millions of these things. Millions. This is just a tiny sample.

Are these impossible to read or is it just me? [nostalgia]

Ars Ludi
The Art of the Game in a convenient blog format. GM craft, game theory, and design tips, all for the aspiring magister ludi. [gm craft/game theory]

Lame Mage Productions
Adventures in a convenient electronic format, delivered to you via the interweb highway. [superhero/campaign material ]

Anon
Ancient copies of the newsletter of the Reed Game Society. Scanned to show the sort of print quality we had to deal with in 1987. You kids and yer new fangled web pages! [nostalgia]

Publish or Perish
Old school material published back in the TSR days when independent publishing was basically illegal. [nostalgia]

The Thesis
"Functions of voluntary, non-prescribed role-playing using Advanced Dungeons & Dragons settings". In a nutshell it compares people to the characters they play and discusses some of the positive benefits of role-playing. Hey, it got me out of college. [science, really]

 

Malaan
The Official Authorized Malaan™ Home Page is vast work of the notorious Mssr Scholz, dating back to the bad old days of Buckland, Moo Moo, and the Bank of Vashun. The Realms of Malaan is a ruler-centric game supplementing the normal adventuring campaign. Promised Land refugees are encouraged to check it out! [external/campaign world]

Stickopolis
Jem Lewis brings us tales of Stickopolis and its heroes. Fighting evil so we don't have to. [external/comic]

Sons of Severin
... has no home page, even though it ran for a million years (from feb 92 to sep 98 by my count). Bad Mike, no biscuit. Ping has saved him from total disgrace by posting a Return to the Temple of the Swan page. I just want to know where they got all those great hats.

Cambeth
Matt's world of Cambeth, "a rebellious domain on the northern fringe of a large and powerful empire known as the Blessed Realm." [external/campaign world]

copyright © 1995-2010, Ben Robbins

Your second cousins have some of the same great-grandparents that you do, but none of the same grandparents. Unless your family is "special."