Silverarm RPG Newsletter: #11
Back to Blogging, 10th Century Central Asia Mothership Hack, Print Copies of The Shrike Are Out
Howdy,
Welcome back for Issue 11 of the Silverarm RPG Newsletter. I’m back on the horse writing blog posts. 10th century Central Asia stuff! Also a low effort post! I’ve got a nice set of sweet RPG links I’ve been reading again too. Work continues trucking along on Interloper and print copies of The Shrike are now available on the webstore. On with the newsletter!
My Blog Posts
Beyond Iskander’s Gate: Mothership Hack for a 923 A.D Central Asia Campaign
Beyond Iskander’s Gate is my hack of Mothership and campaign pitch for a 923 A.D. Central Asia setting—where scholars, rogues, and warriors navigate warring empires, treacherous travels, and conspiracy.
Players are members of the Ikhwān Al-Ṣafā (Brethren of Purity), a secretive philosophical order out of Baghdad, tasked with investigating a cryptic letter from the traveler Ibn Fadlan about strange sightings in the forests beyond the Volga. Paranormal investigative weirdness meets historical sandbox—you cross into the lands of the Volga Bulgars, Khazars, and Rus vikings, and probably get in over your head.
The post includes tweaked Mothership RPG character creation with backgrounds like Esoteric Scholar, Siege Engineer, Hermit, or Market Inspector, along with why Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness is an incredibly gameable primary historical source.
New Year, New Slop
Also kicked off the new year late by embracing the "just do it" philosophy—expect more frequent blog posts, polished or very much not. Also, I finally started an in-person Traveller campaign, and lifepath character creation ruled. Players built homeworlds, got invested, and now we’ve got a celebrity noble, a pirate, and an ex-marine mob enforcer all gunning for revenge against Wesley the Rat. Made me rethink how much depth in character creation pays off.
Print Copies of The Shrike Are Here!
The Silverarm Store now has The Shrike by Leo Hunt available with all released digital files. The illustrations really pop even more in print and full page sized hardcover is hefty enough to use as an improvised club against infernal vermin.
Reviews and Play Reports of Silverarm Stuff
Vibechete! Play Report & (small) Review by Archon’s Court
Fun description of their groups wild run through of the slasher module I wrote for Hull Breach Vol.1 and some critiques of aspects of the adventure.
Mothership: Vibechete! Playthrough by Mystery Quest
Somehow I also forgot to share this in any newsletter but Mystery Quest did a super entertaining six part Actual Play of Vibechete! with a hilarious crew and some great tweaks to the module. If you ever heard of the Yogscast, it’s from the same people! Wild going from watching their Minecraft videos years ago to seeing something I wrote get played.
Playing by Post in Spaaaaace! by A Room Containing 1d6 Goblins
They’ve got some sweet tips for using Discord to run a play by post and are starting off a campaign of Desert Moon of Karth. Stoked to see where it goes!
Sweet RPG Blogs I’m Reading Lately
Different Character Creation Methods at Different Times by Rise Up Comus
This post gets into how different points in a campaign call for different approaches to character creation. New players do best with structured playbooks that ease them in and tie the party together. Mid-campaign replacements? Quick, random generation is the way to go—gets them in fast and keeps things weird.
Challenge HP for Mothership
Simple, great idea. Have a hard challenge that might take a variable amount of time to resolve depending on success? Give it challenge HP the players deplete from their rolls! Battle that stuck bulkhead door or state of the art computer security program.
On Creativity; or, the Grand Art by Throne of Salt
Talks about creativity and how to forge things from tearing apart the things you like and extracting their juicy innards. Felt bad you’re distracted from your game prep by watching this sweet new show or reading that book? No worries, you’re harvesting grist for your Frankensteining. Analyze exactly what you dig from a bunch of sources, rip out those elements and recombine them into a cool thing. We’re all brain prisms for the light around us.
Silly Little Minecraft Bestiary by Dungeon Doll
It’s the creatures from Minecraft written as simple stat blocks! Written on in-game Minecraft books. Awesome.
See ya soon,
Joel
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