Wolves Upon the Coast - Solo #2: Kill or Die

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Thorn looks at the slowly rippling flesh before him, knowing enough now to not touch its foul slime. He looks back to the others and their meager weapons. He raises his javelin in his right hand and holds his battle-axe in his left, yelling out in a rage as he beckons the group to do their worst to the creature - hack a path through before whatever wrecked head and claws it may have finds its way to them.

He throws his javelin, hoping to - if nothing else - give himself a means of climbing over the monster without touching it. The 6 remaining rowers at his back follow, screaming out in honour of their downed and dying allies in the next room. The party hacks away at the creature, doing their best to keep their distance.

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Keep Us Guessing: Worldbuilding with Real-World Details

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Recently, I played through Pokemon: Red Version for the first time since I was a child. Most of the key details I remembered, but one recurring element I did not - that has been all but sanded off of the franchise entirely at this point - was the inclusion of several real-world references throughout the game’s setting, the Kanto region.

Early on, you visit a science museum. Here, a nice man tells you about “the moon landing,” even giving you the date is happened: July 20, 1969! A model space shuttle in one corner of the museum’s ongoing space exhibit is labeled: “Space Shuttle Columbia.” Oh wow, so I must just be in the Pokemon-laden part of the real world? Like there’s a United States and Russia out there! Maybe the S. S. Anne sails to California!

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Wolves Upon the Coast - Solo #1: The Flesh and the Fruit

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The men and women take Thorn as their leader. It is, after all, only due to him that they are free - as short-lived as it may be. The isles of Abhaus and Argadnel sit to the north and south, respectively. The crew looks to Thorn to decide their course.

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Wolves Upon the Coast - Solo #0: The Tale of the Free Thirteen

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Luke Gearing’s Wolves Upon the Coast recently got a massive discount as part of the Bundle of Holding. I picked it up and have been diving into this grand campaign setting and its accompanying ruleset over the last few days. I seen so many great player stories, sketches, and more come out of this game, and I’ve been looking for another game-as-writing exercise (similar to the The Isle play-by-blog I ran on Tumblr a while back) so Wolves was the perfect reason to get back into a bit of regular solo play and writing up the play reports here.

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BLUESTAR: Bluesky as Galactic Setting

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Earlier this week, Theo Sanderson released a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualized by follower patterns. Because I have some sort of cursed brain, my first thought was “I wonder if I could use this as inspiration for an on-the-fly galactic sci-fi setting.” After thinking about it more, you definitely can, and I’ll show you how. Welcome to BLUESTAR!

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