My first RPG played this year was Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, but that’s almost always the answer. I started 2023 by pitching my Elemental Apocalypse game to the Blackrazor Guild (my Sunday online game). The campaign asks the question: “What if the Temple of Elemental Evil rose … and the World of Greyhawk fell?”
Eight months later, we’re not quite as far along as I would have liked – we’ve got about 5 sessions under our belts – but schedules have been hard. Finding free time (and focus) to work on the campaign has been even harder … but progress is being made.
The setup for the campaign flips the classic module, B2 Keep on the Borderlands. With the rise of Elemental Evil, the keep is now in the hands of Lord Blyze, one of the Burning Eyes of Imix (elemental prince of fire). The heroes are based out of the hidden community of Hope, located beneath the old “Caves of Chaos” from the B2 module. In the module, the heroes ventured out the keep to battle the orc, goblin, and more terrible threats of the old caves. In this flipped version, they’re now the ones hidden from the Keep and attempting to deal with the “adventurers” sent to find and destroy their homes.
The first few chapters featured the heroes dealing with various adventuring bands and mercenaries dispatched by Lord Blaze to find Hope and other hidden communities. They also learned of factions among the Elemental Evil forces … and potential rifts between those forces and their one-time mercenaries, the para-elemental creatures.
Venturing into the Dark Future of Cyberpunk RED
The first non-D&D game this year was Cyberpunk RED, in the form of a few Talespire- and Owlbear Rodeo-based playtests. That turned into the ongoing Cyberpunk RED actual play over at the Lair of Secrets podcast.
Like Elemental Apocalypse, it’s off to a slow start but it did get off the ground. The first episode features the edgerunners getting hired by the Maker Enclave (a group of techs who like to aggressively void warranties) to acquire some black box tech the Makers want to crack and re-distribute.
- This post is part of the RPG a Day 2023 event. Catch up on Nuketown’s posts via the project page and learn more about the event at its community page on Facebook.
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Cover art from the original Temple of Elemental Evil adventure. Credit TSR/Wizards of the Coast