Tag Archives: Fiction

Articles, Table Fiction

Table Fiction: DIE: Lenny’s Halloween Party Pt 2

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When the football players show up, it’s clear Lenny’s Halloween Party will be a success. That doesn’t mean everything will go smoothly, though, and especially not for Donnie. Be sure to read part 1 if you haven’t already, and then check out DIE on Cannibal Halfling Radio for another story. If you’re more interested in commentary than characters, though, be sure to check out Seamus’s In-Depth Review.

[Content Warning: This section of the story contains some mild sexual content, and casual homophobia like any of you who went to high school in 2003 probably heard regularly.]

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Articles, Table Fiction

Table Fiction: DIE: Lenny’s Halloween Party Pt 1

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This past weekend, Seamus treated our shared gaming group to a full run of the ‘Reunited’ scenario for the DIE RPG. While you may have heard me run DIE on Cannibal Halfling Radio, the scenario I ran was an adaptation of both Reunited and the one-shot rules, and was significantly shorter than Reunited. When all was said and done, we played for roughly ten hours of some of the most exhausting, emotionally draining, and rewarding gaming I’ve ever done. As often occurs with emotionally involved games, several of us had gnawing itches to engage more with our characters; this included me. My character, Donnie, became the Fear Knight, and had to engage with the fear he had for the future and how it was shaped by his past. Although the character creation in DIE takes some time to let you build the high school version of your character, I needed more. Less than a week after the game concluded, I started writing, and the resulting short story is the product of my post-game rumination. This is Lenny’s Halloween Party, and it stars all of our player characters as they navigate the opportunity to throw a real high school party on Halloween night of their senior year.

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A Glimpse Into The Vault, Articles

A Glimpse into the Vault: Infomocracy

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A Glimpse into the Vault is one of the oldest features on Cannibal Halfling, giving us opportunities to look into our respective “vaults” at other media we consume. These articles have covered a range of different items, but tended to stay in the gaming space…until now. You see, my personal vault doesn’t have many board games in it, but I do live surrounded by books. And recently, I finished a book that is not only a great read, but has some pointed lessons that gamers can learn about worldbuilding.

Infomocracy is written by Malka Older and was first published in 2016. It tells the story of a world in the near future where most of the world is ruled over by a unified micro-democratic government. The population that participates is divided into “cententals” of 100,000 people, who each vote on a government to represent them. Each government has power based on the centenals which elect them, but there is special influence (and statistical benefits) afforded to a government able to win a “Supermajority” of these centenals. The story, which I’ll summarize soon, focuses on the lead-up to an election where such a Supermajority is in play.

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Articles, Editorial

“I’m going to turn my campaign into a novel!”

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When we play RPGs, we tell stories. For some it’s a fun consequence of the characters’ exploits, while for others it’s the whole point of the game. These stories can often have great power for the groups who create them, creating characters more personal and compelling than any novel ever could. It’s natural, then, to want to share these stories outside the group. The problem here, really, is that a tabletop campaign is a big, extended instance of “you had to be there”. As fun or dramatic or gutwrenching as it was at the time, you cannot recapture those feelings by turning your campaign into a novel.

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Articles, Table Fiction

Table Fiction: High Impact Heroes, the Backstory: Morgan “Showtime” Teller

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Greetings! For those of you who have been checking out our High Impact Heroics Adventure Log, you recently were treated to the backstory of Gil Phillips, the Beacon. Continuing the trend of, “How did we get here?”, our prologue revealed that the team broke some rules during their first teamup and got the attention of The Lawman. So, here is a little window into how that began, through the eyes of Morgan Teller, the Delinquent.

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Articles, Table Fiction

Table Fiction: High Impact Heroics, the Backstory: Gilbert “CryptoHertz” Philips

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Have you been reading the High Impact Heroics Adventure Log? Wonder what got the team together, or why their secret base is under a game store? Well, this story won’t actually answer either of those questions. However, you can get an in-depth look into how Gilbert Philips became CryptoHertz, the Beacon and erstwhile team leader. Confused? So am I, and I wrote the thing! The High Impact Heroics Prologue should give you some background, or if you’re already familiar you can jog your memory with the most recent edition!

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Articles, Table Fiction

Table Fiction: Star Wars: Lost and Found Pt. 5

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They may join up in a cantina because they’re desperate. They might not have started off as friends. Some of them fought on different sides of a war. Some might have had to take a (more literal than usual) leap of faith. Adventuring crews often start off as a ragtag bunch of misfits, and in some ways that may never change . . . but over time all the good ones come together to become something more. As our tale of the crew of the Lost and Found comes to a close, the various members notice something going on with their Captain, head to the planet of Centares, and offer some new people a home among the stars. If you haven’t listened to Season 4 of Dice for Brains, now’s the time . . .

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Articles, Table Fiction

Table Fiction: Star Wars: Lost and Found Pt. 4

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Sometimes it’s the last ones to arrive that end up being the secret sauce that make an adventuring party, and even a campaign, fully coalesce into something truly memorable. It was that way with White Coat and High Impact Heroics, it was that way with first Caleb and Patience and then the Alliance troops aboard the Borrowed Time, and so it was with the crew of the Lost and Found. The Dice for Brains Season 4 Pregame crew was coming together pretty solidly as a band of ne’er-do-wells, but even with Zaja they might not have turned out as friendly without the help of their final member, who certainly made an interesting first impression (on the hull) . . .

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Articles, Table Fiction

Table Fiction: Star Wars: Lost and Found Pt. 3

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Here’s the thing about adventuring parties, ad hoc teams, and ragtag starship crews: they don’t always get along with one another. Whether it’s past associations, disagreements over a course of action, or basic personality conflicts, every group is going to have moments where they’re fighting among themselves (hopefully only verbally). The crew of the Lost and Found is no different. Carga found himself joining up with Zaja’s eccentric crew of data pirates, and has even gotten along with the curmudgeonly technician Thraga, but the fact is that the crew has both an ex-Rebel and an ex-Imperial on the roster, and that was bound to come to a head at some point . . .

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Articles, Table Fiction

Table Fiction: Star Wars: Lost and Found Pt. 1

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No plan survives contact with the players. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the Pregame for Dice for Brains Season 4 some time ago, a method that GM Ross uses to populate the story with interesting NPCs and setting details. We were told we were to be data pirates, and the assumption going in was that we were going to be (possibly nefarious) antagonists for the main characters of Season 4. That . . . wasn’t exactly what happened. The crew of the Lost and Found operated in the background as Mor’a, Darlene, and Lon tried to complete their own job, only the L&F‘s Captain Zaja meeting them openly. In this five-part Table Fiction we’ll see how that crew came together and how they became what helped shape the events on Centares. Our tale is from the perspective of one Klatooinian thief, and begins on the Smuggler’s Moon . . .

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