Bastion23: Edge-of-Town

Categories: Gaming

Edge-of-Town is a nautical, isolated little borough. Plenty of room for things to get weird. Also I really like lighthouses.

January 16, 2023 · 7 min · Bryant

Bastion23: Harshbiscuit

Categories: Gaming

This is the first week’s borough from my Bastion23 project. Harshbiscuit turned out to be a fairly wealthy borough – I imagine Gilded Age mansions. Map

January 8, 2023 · 6 min · Bryant

Dungeon23 in Bastion

Categories: Gaming

My rough plan for Dungeon23 is to write one borough of Bastion per week, as follows: Monday: Basic map of transit lines Tuesday: Points of Interest named and described Wednesday: Complications written Thursday: Three to five One to three factions outlined Friday: Three to five One to three NPCs outlined Saturday: Encounter table Sunday: A Treasure Update: three to five NPCs and factions was optimistic. One to three is better. I will capture the day’s work on Mastodon, hash tagged #Dungeon23 and #Bastion23. The completed borough makes a Sunday blog post, which are also tagged as #Bastion23. ...

January 1, 2023 · 1 min · Bryant

Czech New Wave as Gaming Inspiration

Categories: Culture, Gaming

I watched The Firemen’s Ball recently and enjoyed it quite a bit. The way Forman extracts humor from the banality really struck me. It also reminded me of the Electric Bastionland mini-campaign I’ve been chewing on. I mean, tell me this isn’t a Bastion Council at work. You could just run the whole movie as a background thread while other things are going on. “Ah, no, Monsieur Bagatelle can’t speak right now, he’s at the Firemen’s Ball.” “Well, I’m willing to do you that favor, but you need to make sure my daughter wins the beauty pageant.” “Huh, when did that building burn down?” But it also intersects nicely with the Piertown Borough ideas I’ve been toying with. Don’t read after the cut if you’re playing in my mini-campaign. By which I mean if you want to play in this, drop me a comment, I have two slots I need to fill.

January 30, 2022 · 3 min · Bryant

Saint Freeman's City: Concept & Mapping

Categories: Gilt

I’m really deeply thrashed this weekend. Pets with digestive problems, G1 Climax wrestling tournament, and a fun online gaming convention (original). Nevertheless. In my copious spare time I’ve been kicking around an idea for a West Marches style Electric Bastionland game. Short explanation: Electric Bastionland is a deeply weird minimalist urban exploration fantasy game; West Marches is a campaign style in which there’s a large pool of players who self-organize self-directed game sessions, designed to lessen the load on the GM. The driving motivation for Bastionland PCs is paying off crippling debt (oh, so it’s a reflection of 2020!) which works just fine for a player-driven game. Since I’ve been wanting to play Bastionland for a bit, and since West Marches is an intriguing campaign style, I was pleased to realize I had a good match on my hands. Here’s how I put them together and started fleshing the idea out.

October 19, 2020 · 6 min · Bryant