by Alexandre Correia

Day 3244. November 18, 2025. Xamiquelengue & Luó...

We woke up in the middle of the night to beat the rain in its own season. The jeep bounced over muddy tracks before darting at subsonic speeds when dirt gave way to tarmac. Our objective lay more than 300k away, and we needed to be in the field and working as early as possible to catch as much of the clear skies, glorious sun, and stifling heat as possible. A sure recipe for deluge in the afternoon, maybe sooner.

I thought about plugging in a gaming podcast or a guided meditation to see me through the night ride, both eliciting somewhat similar feelings, albeit from opposite directions. Alas, fragmented sleep took the upper hand and won the race for my attention.

No need to check the weather app to know what's coming.
When we arrived at the "new" mining site, the place was just like I'd left it a couple of months before. Abandoned in a perfect, derelict state for an end-of-the-world story. We didn't dwell on it, though. As soon as we got the all clear from the locals, we jeepped further into no-man's land, through a track nearly invisible by the luxurious underbrush and high grass, until we reached the take-off clearing.

The jeep left two of us there, while the rest of the team went elsewhere. As we prepared the equipment, we heard a rustle from the jungle around us.

Here's something that will always have the power to jaw-drop me. Like the spectacular sunsets, or the sense of something lost when I'm in the middle of a jungle in this place, in Angola, you will always find people in the most forgotten, unusual places. Out of the jungle emerged two young men, one holding a machete, his ragged dark red t-shirt and worn-out flip-flops matching the rust on the metal weapon. If they were surprised to see us there - we were after all trespassing on their usual commute track to the closest garimpo hole - they didn't show.

They passed by us, everyone staring at each other as they did, before being swallowed by the jungle again.

Jungle breaks.
For the next two and a half hours, until the rest of the team returned to pick us up, we remained silent. Birds of all sounds and pitches, the occasional gust of wind. We just wanted to make sure nobody would startle us again.

When the drone landed for the last time, we had about five minutes to pack everything into the jeep before the scorching heat transformed into Noah's wet curse. Rain fell so hard and so suddenly that it was surreal to think the weather could flip that fast and with such furiousness.

No more breaks.
That was it for the rest of the day. The rain didn't let up until much later at night, preventing us from doing anything else outside. I thought about breaking out a game sometime during the day, but the chance never came. Instead, I used admin time to listen to the latest episode of one of my favorite gaming podcasts, Chris McDowall's Bastionland Podcast.

It's only a yearly seasonal event, and each season has but a handful of episodes, in which Chris asks personas in the RPG sphere which three games most influenced, inspired, or informed their career path. The Rule of Three, as he calls them. But every now and then, he snatches a guest out of left field. Like Quintin Smith last year or Cole Wehrle in today's episode.

The games we fight for other games, by Jody Lee
I was surprised to learn that Cole is also an RPG player, even if only through waves of scarcity or abundance. Unsurprisingly, one of Cole's chosen games was an RPG. Pendragon, a game about questing Arthurian knights, often praised for how it marries its mechanisms with the setting and the stories created during play.

Pax Porfiriana was no surprise, since it was the game that made Cole pitch his own Pax creation to Phil Eklund a few years later. Titan, on the other hand, was a game I've never heard of. A fantasy wargame of last titan standing. An oldie that obsessed young Cole, where fantasy is barebones and the wargame is dice-rough, eliminating players.

As always, it was a treat to listen to Chris (and Cole!) talk about games' common design grounds. More so in such a strange place.

⭐⭐⭐
One year ago: ...rise of the oaxaca people...One year later: N/A

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by SeaofStars

Bread riots, famine, and other cycles of starvation and reaction drove many historical events. But not something that often shows up in games.

Perhaps something for a future QotD?

by dysjunct

Related Item: ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game: Core Rules Evolved Edition

Oof. Hopefully they are better than Awaken Realms.

by bootleby

shammois wrote:

Loved this list John. I'm inspired to go away and do one myself now. Thank you.

While waiting for Sam's, I made my own

by mexilplif

Happy Birthday my Friend

by trystero11

Related Item: ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game: Core Rules Evolved Edition

My initial-rewards box arrived today, with just a tad of shipping damage:

The Core Rules book, Game Mother's Screen, and Rapture Protocol box are all partly crushed, too.

I'm waiting to hear from Free League's support folks, in hopes of getting replacements.

A new episode has been added to the database: The Misfortunate 4 - Pt 3 - A Bomb Went Off

A new episode has been added to the database: Night at the Clue-seum - pt 8: Planes, Trains and Elevators

by mattyd777

Congratulations!

by CountDeMoney

pdzoch wrote:

brumcg wrote:

Given how important bread has been throughout history, that could be used as a story hook pretty easily.

When I was working on my Masters in Medieval History, one of my peers' thesis was about the history of bread and the rise of the bread guild. (which I thought was a pretty good pun tossed into an academic paper). At first, I thought it a non-serious topics, but as we talked, it turned out to be a fascinating subject involving industry giants, consumer protection, politics, trade secrets, etc. Start an adventure off as "bread inspectors" for the local bread guild to certify the quality and compliance to bread guild standards of all the bread at a local fair. Sounds like a small task, until they discover an unscrupulous baker adding sawdust to the bread to make it weigh more, or the novice baker decorating the bread with toxic seeds, or the vender thumbing the scales on bread sales, or the one non-guild baker who does not pay dues, guild sales fees, or king's cut in taxes. The players suddenly have to become enforcers, which may be met with resistance! Who knew bad bread would cause bloodshed!?

Good call. Another historical angle could be the absolute unavailability of bread as well; certainly had an impact on the French Revolution.

What do you do when the kingdom has riots over the price and availability of bread? Is it the crown? The guilds? Those #$!@*$% halflings again? Or are there nefarious supernatural forces at play yet to be uncovered?

by mawilson4

Not quite the same, but in a similar spirit, I made this Geeklist in the wake of BGG's attempt to make a hall of fame:
Hall of Game: Mark's Personal HoF

It's a chronological retrospective on my relationship with gaming, highlighting 25 games that acted as touchpoints, indicative of larger trends in my gaming and life.

It doesn't go into as much nostalgic detail as yours here, but I feel as though it came from a similar place of wanting to talk about gaming as it relates to life, not just games in and of themselves.

by skalchemist

An item RPG: The Fire Burns Low has been added to the geeklist Missing Images: RPGs with no logos