LRC members test their D&D combat skills against endless tides of monstrous foes! Led by DM Jonny, players Youki, Hailey, Morgan, and Will try to survive for as long as they can and kill as many as they can on a livestreamed game of MCDM’s “Against the Horde”.
Check out where we placed on the Against the Horde leaderboard. Can your party beat our score?
Cover art by Martin Sobr
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As London is gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, the London RPG Community had little choice but to move its games online after pubs and gaming cafés close their doors for the safety of everyone. As we became aware that many of our members would be spending Easter at home with naught to do, the LRC decided to organise a four-day online RPG convention over the long Easter weekend, hosting a boat-load of games from various systems at our Discord server to keep people from getting bored. And thus, the first ever Together @ Home was born.
We saw a total of 21 games being played over the 4-day weekend, most of which were at full capacity that 2 more games had to be added to the initial line-up in order to accommodate more players. We drew in more interested gamers to our community and we met many other RPG enthusiasts, some of whom are scattered across the globe, from the safety of their own homes.
Here’s the full list of the RPG systems that were played during the first Together @ Home:
Together @ Home had a fantastic reception from our members and we are certain to hold more of these conventions as lockdown continues, with even more RPGs to try.
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One of our (once) resident Game Masters, Nuno Teixera, developed this simple formula for plotting out a 3-hour game session — it’s his not-so-secret to running games!
Although it was originally created for Kantas games, it is generic and universal enough to suit most RPG systems, with or without combat. So, let’s get to it:
You will need to prepare:
1 Concept
2 to 3 Obstacles
3 Locations/Stages
The starting premise of your game. Can either be player-facing or not. Just needs to be something to get your creative juices flowing.
“This village is very creepy and you are here to investigate.”
“You are in a village.” – The village is very creepy and they don’t know.
Other types of concepts can be: Monsters, an NPC, a magic item, etc. Everything works as long as you can build a story around it.
These are the pivotal points of your story and are moments you should pause the narrative timeline to describe/explain what’s going on.
Examples: An abandoned house, an NPC walking into the tavern, reaching a haunted clearing, etc.
For an extra kick you can prepare more stages/locations to give the players real choices. This is not necessary as long as they have the illusion of choice – that’s what matters for it to be an enjoyable, immersive experience.
Your classic conundrums.
Examples: Combat encounter, puzzles, negotiations, a lengthy story exposition, interrogations, etc.
As a rule of thumb if you choose to have 2 combat encounters as obstacles, you probably won’t have time for the 3rd Obstacle. If you choose to have only 1 combat encounter then more often than not you’ll end up needing the 3rd Obstacle.
Prepare an extra Obstacle that can easily be included before your climactic Obstacle, in case your players blitz through everything.
This is a formula that works for me, with players engaging in average to low amounts of RP. If your players start RP immediately and do it often, be prepared to cut locations/stages or obstacles.
Even if you don’t prepare for multiple choices/different outcomes, always give the players the illusion of choice. They will never know there was no alternative outcome.
If you know your players well, use this as a skeleton and cut/add sections depending on their gameplay style! If you’re DMing for strangers/new players I’m pretty confident this will work out for you.
Follow Nuno on Twitter and check out his games on itch.io.
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An actual play & interview of London RPG Community put together by Kalum from Rolistes Podcast featuring Andy, Nuno, Dasha, and Riah. Each episode is about an hour long and includes interviews mixed throughout the session’s plot.
A very special thank you to Kalum from The Rolistes Podcast for putting this together and featuring our community!
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