1st playtest of a Cyberpunk game

I'm currently working on a solo cyberpunk game, its currently in very early days... only one type of mission available and as yet unwritten look up tables and loot tables etc. So here's how the little story went...

***

The mission was a hit on a convoy. A rich lawyer had purchased a one of kind A.I. and was transporting it, my team's job was to hit that convoy, locate the A.I. and steal it for the customer.

The team was three unnamed characters (names is a table yet to be written), Engineer, Heavy, and NetLogger. They rolled up on the convoy seeking the vehicle carrying the A.I.

The first vehicle they encountered was a likely looking transporter, but it turned out to be a dummy. My NetLogger however managed to sneak into the driver's phone and grab some intel' that would make identifying the correct vehicle easier.

Next vehicle approached was a van full of gun men, some smooth nudging and ramming pushed the van out of the convoy to fall way back and beyond concern. My team now knew that any similar vehicles could be ignored.

Next vehicle turned out to be a cop in an unmarked vehicle, obviously the lawyer running the show had some contacts down town! the cops started shooting and my team returned fire, and simultaneously hacked his cop car computer. The intel, gained help eliminate other vehicles in the convoy. The cop caught some bullets and fell out of the convoy.

The team rolled up on the next most likely vehicle... but a chromed up raging cyborg punched through the roof of the vehicle and started blasting away. The team returned fire, but in a very short time Engineer was dead, Heavy seriously injured and the cyborg almost untouched. NetLogger made the call, and the team bailed on the mission, sadly unsuccessful, they lost "Notoriety". 

***

The game mechanic worked well, and I proved the mission is doable, rolling one pip higher on the dice for the vehicle check would have had my team hitting the truck with the A.I. and only dumb luck made them hit the car carrying the cyborg.

Now I need to put some more thought into the "tween-mission" rules. The team need to recruit a new team member, and I need to weigh up the factors that will figure into that. With damaged notoriety definitely playing a hand.

Life Paths for Solo play

I've come to the conclusion that RPG system that embrace a life-path mechanism for building characters are ideal for solo RPG players. The systems that do this build up a neat story around the character before the actual play even starts.

In Mekton (giant fighty robots) the life path generates not only a family for you, but breaks down the relation ships with your relatives and co workers. Do you have sibling rivalry? Hope so, because that will make for a very infesting character play. These relatives can come into your story at any point for twists and rescues.

In Vaesen, your character has to have been through a terrible mythic trauma. You can make one up yourself, or pick from a list. You also get motivations for your character's involvement in seeking the beasties. This is so much better than going in with a bland character, you are given a drive and reason to push the story forward, 

Even Classic Traveller had a sort of life-path system, you would follow the character through their employment and you would have to invent any details around that framework. BUT as the versions have iterated up to Mongoose's, they've enhanced the life path by adding events into the term system. So you start with a character's employment history, but also some life charging events that you can bring into the actual play.

With this addition of character history you are better equipped to make an interesting and rich story, you start armed with threads to pull on. 

Of course classic D&D and OSR games don't incorporate more than class and stats which is a very poor form of life path. I actually think that's fine for playing with others and the story emerges much easier between the player's characters, which is something that is just not there for solo play.

If someone is looking to make a small RPG product, can I request that you pump out a life path system for all the classic OSR races and classes? Please. Pretty please. 

Well, shit.

I've just picked up another little title from Michael Brown (compatible with CE, DC, and Trav'), simply called Hygiene, and as the title suggests it presents a few rules for centred around the title. I've so often watched films and even when reading book, and remembered the words "even the queen poops", and wondered how it applies to heroes on screen that are in action for 24 hours.

The rules he presents will need some careful application to your game session. The idea being that "personal grooming and visiting a fresher" is required in order to prevent your character entering the throne room smelling like a beavers bottom. 

A possible problem with applying these rules is players getting annoyed with having to actually say that their character is doing something so mundane as freshening up. I've come across this sort of thing  in D&D games where players want me as the referee to assume Dwarves are checking for slopes all the time, and elves are always looking for secret doors. Yet, as I've said to these players, if you can't be bothered to mention it, I can't either, and your character definitely wont.

It doesn't take much to apply these rules quickly and easily. Not visiting a fresher only matters...when it matters. Who cares about freshening up when nipping to the corner shop, but who cares when meeting the King? Huge difference. So if players talk about polishing their armour before meeting the King but DONT mention that visit to the most important room, that's when you can bring the rules into action.

Delving with NoteQuest

Today I had my second dungeon delve using the NoteQuest solo RPG system. The game is self contained so this is not an add on for any other system. At 24 pages its relatively short and a very quick read, and my game only went about fifteen minutes, although I can see how the game could go considerably longer.

Character creation is a matter of rolling on two (sometimes three) tables. My "little" fella for this delve turned out to be a Dwarf Locksmith armed only with a dagger and carrying 10 torches. Torches I should add, are the time limit on your adventure, if you're still underground when your last torch goes out, your character dies in the darkness. So... don't stay down too long. Various activities you undertake in the dungeon will consume torches, such as picking locks and searching for secret doors.

The game follows a strict loop with limited options at each stage and tables provide the results of your activities.

With your character rolled up, you roll to see what type of dungeon you'll face. There are 6 general categories of dungeon, and each has it own set of tables, for rooms, monsters, loot, etc.

You'll burn your first torch opening the door to the dungeon, then you start using the provided tables to build the dungeon as you explore. You'll need paper and pencil to draw out the dungeon and keep track of where your character is..

You'll roll up and move from room to room, checking each room for monsters, and its content. Some monsters and rooms will have loot for you to acquire. There are stairs in the dungeon leading down, and when you get to the third level you'll find the dungeon boss.

My descent was into a relatively small dungeon, I found the stairs down very quickly and had nowhere else to go. I defeated an Orc looted the body and found treasure in the room besides. The boss enemy was a dragon, and I simply ran away as the DPS of the beasty would have killed little Dwarfy long before he could defeat such a beast.

The game has out-of-dungeon actions you can do too, and my character paid to heal up, and sold off what loot he could, this enabled him to replenish his torches. On his next delve he'll be much more prepared with a magic spear, and healing spell that he'd looted on the first trip down. The character survived so he can go onto another dungeon or even back to that first one, and chance his luck.

In summary, this is neat little journaling game that lets you go-a-delving and have a little adventure. The length of game will vary based on what you roll on the dice so be prepared to stash your notes and map ready to return another day.

RPG Page Layout

I'm an avid reader of RPGs. I don't just play them, I read rules and scenarios for fun. Therefore as a consumer I've got a lot of experience. I've come to a few conclusions about the digital layout and presentation of RPG books that I want to share in the hope that the thousands of professional RPG authors might catch a glimpse.

Alternative/Optional Rules: I've seen this "sin" in a number of rules sets. The principal is especially common in OSR games that like to offer Ascending and Descending Armour class options. I recently read WhiteBox which is a prime example of doing this. They offer two AC stats every time for the two alternatives. Yet even worse, is that in the "attack" section of the rules they offer two different ways of calculating if you've hit your target.

No. Just no!

This is a bad practice in a technical sense, Instead of providing clarity the rules-book is offering a set of alternatives, a mental fog if you will. And it not just on the initial reading, its also every time you need to look up something, you will have to wade through the confusion time after time.

Much better to separate your alternate rules and mechanisms, either stick them in a side bar, or better yet, add a footnote referring the reader the appendices.

Columns: When it comes to laying out rules books, there's always the question of columns. Should I use two column layout, or three? People with a lot of rules such as the Rules Cyclopedia, just default to three columns so they can cram the rules in.

Sadly, most people are asking the wrong question. Its not what looks best, its not how to cram text onto a page. The real question is: How will this book be used?

So, who is reading the book, and how are they reading the book? 

PDFs are read predominantly read on phones, sure at the game table you might have a laptop, but the majority of reading is on the humble phone. Multi column layout sucks on a phone, keeping the reader pinching and scrolling on every single page. So if you're creating PDFs for the love of all that's good in the world, keep it in a singular column.

White Box , Silver Arrow

I recently picked up White Box and was sitting in bed reading the booklet last night when I got to the equipment list and was brought up short by the classic "Silver Arrow".

It's listed as Weight 1, cost 5gp. That's fine, but when compared to standard arrows which are 20 for weight 1, costing 5gp.

How the heck does a single arrow with a silver head cost 50 silver pieces? How on earth does it encumber the same as 20 normal arrows. I'm assuming that a normal arrow has an iron head on it.

I put on my "rationalizing head". 

I would expect a standard silver arrow head to maybe be the equivalent of 2-3 standard coins, so there must be much more to this silver arrow than just a silver head. It cant be that the entire arrow is made of silver, that would meet the strange weight statistic but there's no way that would fly from a bow, far too heavy.

So here's what I suggest. The head of the arrow is silver, but also, silver is inset in a thin line along the shaft of the arrow too. This should prevent the monster grabbing the shaft and pulling it out, as the silvered shaft would make that too painful. So now we have a delicate jewellery-level inlaid silver shaft and a silver arrow head. 

Whereas a standard arrow can take a lot of bouncing around in a quiver, this arrow needs protection from the buffeting of adventuring. Therefore the cost of the silver arrow covers the cost of the effort put into its production, as well as a special lined and padded leather holster to keep it safe.

Play by Post RPGs, and what failed for me.

Playing by Post in a forum is a way of roleplaying without the need to meet with other players in real time, be that face to face or online. Fundamentally its about working together to tell a story in text, with players taking turns...

... and its terribly slow. I've been one of those shits that just fades on a play by post game and stops posting. I'm not happy about that. So I've put some thought into why I became a shit, and have come to the conclusion that playing by post using standard RPG rules is the problem (which means I can blame the mechanism and deny being a shit, huzzar!). The normal RPG process that you would use around the table when applied to the post system fails me. It goes this way...

• The ref posts a situation. 
• Player A responds with a character action, unsure of some narrative fact asks a question
• Player B  responds with character action.
• Ref answers player A's question. And posts story progress.
• Player B responds with an attack action, maybe makes a roll.
• Ref responds to the result of the roll.
• Player A responds with an attack, makes a roll.
• Ref responds to the result of the roll, tells player A to make a follow up roll.
• Player A posts the new die roll result.
• etc

And with each post coming 1-3 days after the previous one, the game drags on. 

Players forget what they were doing and have to read back across a long series of posts trying to find what the story actually is and what's happening. Scrolling back over two or three pages just to read a bit of description from the opening of the scene is tiresome and the answer may not even be there in the text, meaning rather than progressing with his post they end doing nothing more than posting another question... and waiting.

With this drawn out process there's no excitement, and little to no thrill in actual play (writing).

There is a good alternative, but I don't know what it is. However I am going to put some time into coming up with an answer. The play style/mechanism needs to be altered to keep me engaged, and I'm going to see what I can come up with.

REDD Judge, solo session

The following is a write up of a short solo session of REDD Judge.

Judge Taylor is sitting on his RIDE rushing to finish a donut before the end of his mandated fifteen minute break and idly watching the feed of crime reports on the bike's console. A murder report flashes by at a nearby block, but he restrains himself, he's got 30 seconds yet until he's allowed to resume work. A raid on a clothing store, a mugging, vandalism, vehicle on fire. His finger hovers over the console. The last second ticks by, he taps the console. "Control, Judge Taylor, I'll take the body on Rudyard Kipling block". The RIDE roars to life and in seconds he's racing the half mile to Kipling.

He pulls off the main drag and descending the down ramp sees a crowd in front of the block. His arrival innevitably leads to a few people fleeing the scene at speed, and more leave as he barges his way through the crowd. In the centre of the crowd a man lies in a spreading pool of blood . He's flattened some what, Taylor looks up at the block towering fifty stories above him, but by the looks of it the victim didn't fall more than ten floors. He kneels flips the body over, sees what looks like a bullet hole in the man's side. "Anyone know him?" he asks the crowd, but no one answers. Nothing unusual.

He heads into the block, contacting the block management and telling them to get the scene cleaned up. Ten stories up he uses his ident to open an apartment door. "REDD authorised entry, citizens stand back do not interfere." He commands any occupants. Inside he finds the only occupant is a small child, no sign of any adults. "Control, Judge Taylor. Residents apartment 10-67 Rudyard Kipling block have left an underage child alone, schedule a custody retreival for the child."

He slides open the window and takes a half step into the six inch deep "balcony". There's a splash of blood on the ledge, looking up he sees that it's dripped from the balcony above. A glance down confirms that he's directly above the corpse.

As Taylor closes the front door he activates a REDD block to prevent the residents access, and takes the stairs to the floor above. The stair well is filthy and Taylor has to step over a couple of drugged citizens. At room 11-67 he notes the door is damaged, he uses his REDD ID to digitally reverse the spy hole in the door. Peeking through he can see into a living room that's in disarray. A man lounges in a chair a pistol dangling from his right hand.

Taylor draws his BEAST and activates a STUN. In one smooth action, he kicks the door open tosses the STUN and steps aside. After the first flash and stunning warble he rushes into the apartment. The occupant has dropped the gun and is covering his ears, he's in cuffs before the STUN shuts off.

"I was defending myself." He cries.

"Sure." Taylor acknowledges and pulls out his TRUTH. "Tell me what happened, no stories, just the facts."

The citizen tries to slow his breathing then starts. "He burst in, had a knife. I shot him and he fell out the window."

The TRUTH registered a lie. "Lieing to a REDD Judge is two years buddy.We'll get the rest outta you back at headquarters."

REDD Dept. Gear , released

In my game REDD Judge players get to write "Extras" onto their character sheet during play. Extras are pieces of extra equipment that the player character is carrying or has access to that are in addition to the default equipment all Judges carry. By giving players the agency to come up with this gear just when they need it. It acts almost like a super power.

This book lists equipment suggestions that players can use directly or as inspiration for their own ideas.

Alone Against the Flames, Call of Cthulhu

I've just played through Alone Against the Flames which is a choose-your-own-adventure style short solo adventure using Call of Cthulhu 7th edition. I've not done a solo Cthulhu game before so I was pretty excited to give it a try.

The book is designed as an introduction to the 7th ed' and so you literally follow instructions built into the text of the story to build your character. This is pretty clever, there's no need to spend half an hour building a character before you start. You read a few paragraphs, do your stats, do a few more paragraphs, do your career and skills, do a few more, calculate your hard/extreme values.

Its really well done, and fun to play. Alas, my character didn't make it on the first play through. Am I inclined to try again? Not yet. Once is enough for me at least, but I'm the same way with the full length game books too. I only go back to them after a few months, when I've forgotten enough about them to keep it fresh again.

Recommended if you have an hour or two to fill. I printed out the character sheet, and used the PDF on screen. You could go all digital if you can find a fillable character sheet. You dont need the core rule book to play, I  only had to look up one thing, "what is a hard skill check", but if you want you can download the quickstart rules for free.

And as I'm mentioning Call of Cthulhu ... please consider listening to my fiction podcast which is called "Cthulhu"

Waste Runners scenario, Going Nuclear

Waste Runners is a cool RPG where players are making raids into "The Sector", the devastated remains of central Europe. With bizarre anomalies, destroyed towns, mutated people, and monsters, The Sector is a hugely interesting and fascinatingly dangerous play space.

When I read the rules I was immediately brimming with ideas for missions. Central Europe is full of juicy "things" that waste runners would want to get their hands on. LOOT!

So I went ahead and put together a scenario for the game. Going Nuclear is my first Waste Runners scenario. It builds on the lore of the base game, creating a UK overrun with Europeans that escaped the devastation of the continent, and are reduced to living in shanties covering entire counties. Spain has changed to a fascist dictatorship and stands on the brink of war with a UK-allied Portugal. 

The players will be British agents racing a Spanish expedition into the wasteland to recover something that should never have existed.

REDD Judge, world building video in the wild!

My little drop-in drop-out game REDD Judge has started to take off. John over at Terminal Goblin Games has put out a REDD Judge world building video. If you like big-city post-apocalyptic lawman on the street kinda games, this might be one for you.

Franchise Play

A couple of years back I found myself excited about playing in various franchises (or IPs), and wanted to run games in about fifty different genres. I ended up running games in the universes of Tron, Judge Dredd, and Dune.

At the time Tron had no RPG, Dune was out of print and out of my price range, and Dredd was represented by an old Games Workshop game I disliked intensely, and a Mongoose version that I rejected because of the high cost of entry (you had to buy Traveller and their Dredd publication, and I just noted the Dredd book isn't for sale on DriveThru anymore).

What I did was to fall back on the FATE system. FATE is generic and generic systems usually lack all the flavour and weighting of odds to make a session feel like you are really in the universe of the IP you are playing. BUT! Fate overcame that problem for me. In each case I produced a bunch of IP-based skills and a small collection of IP-based feats and tags. I also produced themed character sheets with art that set the scene. 

The sessions were a success, and I think that's because the "taste" or "feel" of the world was modelled in the changes I'd applied to the core FATE system through skills sheets, and tags. I would generally suggest that you should go with a franchises actual rules if available as usually (we always hope) the author has put the flavour into the game mechanisms, but a generic system can work as a fall back.

Availability of Adventurer gear, and adventure seeds

Imagine the situation. Playing Basic Fantasy, or OSRIC, or even RuneQuest, your PCs walk into a small town, a couple of hundred people live here, and it serves as the local hub for outlying villages and farmsteads. Now your Elf character looks around the town square, wanting replacement arrows. the Dwarf too, is seeking repairs to his armour.

Let's "f" with the players.

There is a blacksmith, so Dwarf heads in and shows that his helm needs repairs. The blacksmith looks at it. "The linings come away, torn off the rivets. The lining's is leather bring me some leather and I can rivet it in."

Instantly we have a scenario brewing. They need some leather, where an they get it from? Is there a leather worker, is there a tanner, do they have stock, can they cut up a leather belt? Let them know that if they don't have the proper thickness of soft leather its going to rub, hurt and otherwise be a pain in the butt-head.

What about the Elf's arrows? Sure there's fletcher in the town who can put the arrows together, BUT... there's no twine to bind the feathers to the shaft, the blacksmith is on a rush armour job and won't break off to make arrowheads, the goose-herd has no feathers cos a bugbear ate his flock, the coppiced wood that provides the arrow shafts has been infested with Orcs.

How long to get new plate mail?

Does the blacksmith have a full set of armour he can just sell you off the shelf?

In mediaeval reality the answer to that would be no, as armour worth its salt has to be tailored to the individual. Yet in every fantasy RPG I've noted, they just give you prices with no delivery time. 

Now consider it takes a long time to make armour, even using modern machine shop tools which can be months. Consider doing that with a blacksmith's hammer and anvil, it'd take an age. Mind you advanced mediaeval blacksmiths would have access to water-wheel driven power hammers which would help. So lets assume that the PC can return to the armourer for repeated fittings, 

I estimate that it should take about 6 months to produce a full suit, provided that the armourer is ONLY working on that one suit and is provided with access to all the quality metal he needs. This scenario is only likely to be the case if the armourer is in the employee of the PC, your average trader will be having to service other customers in order to make enough money to live, and this could easily double the time it takes to make the armour.

Of course someone at sometime would have been knocking out mail shirts with a one size fits all, yet I think this should come with a penalty, perhaps a -1 DEX mod. If the armour isn't tailored then that crease, or fold, or articulation is going to be in just the wrong place!

Okay, lets assume that the local armourer has 1 or 2 helmets for sale, perhaps a set greaves, maybe one gauntlet from a customer who died before paying for the second one, so where does that leave you when trying to work out the AC? Clearly you shouldn't get the benefits of full plate, but a few solid sheets of metal over some vitals should offer some in-game benefits, and do so in a way that doesn't slow the game too much.

Lets assume you PC is wearing a full suit of chain, but has started adding elements of plate armour to their gear. A quick way to do handle this could be to roll a D6 at the start of every battle, scoring a success on the die means the PC uses a slightly higher AC for the duration. What constitutes success on that die, could change over time depending on what upgrades there have been. 

Greaves 1 in 6

Greaves, vambraces  2 in 6

Greaves, vambraces, helmet, 3 in 6

Greaves, vambraces, helmet, chest plate 4 in 6

...and so on.

REDD Head Guide, released

It's time announce the third product in my REDD Judge line. I've recently release "REDD Head Guide" which is kind of a DMs guide for this pocket system.

I did struggle with this product, wondering if I wanted to expand the system at all, as the main aim of the system is to avoid complication. So... what this guide ended up containing is not new rules, but rather tools for the referee (Head), tables for generating names, crimes, blocks etc along with a few tips for playing. 

REDD Judge is a post apocalyptic RPG where players take the role of lone lawmen trying to bring law and order to the tough streets of one of the few remaining cities. 

Trying out Note Quest

I thought I'd try out a solo game today that has had some good reviews in a few places. It's called "Note Quest", and is a fantasy game that takes you on an adventure using procedural mechanisms a similar fashion to Four Against Darkness.

The first step is to generate a character. Which is done with a couple if 2D6 rolls.

My first roll gave me a Human with 20 HP. My second roll turned my blank Human into a Locksmith, able to open locked doors, and with an additional 2HP, bringing total HP to 22. I also got given 10 torches and a dagger that does 1D6-1 damage. The torches are a clock, if they run out while the character is underground your PC is dead.

Three more rolls and I was going into a dungeon called "The Sanctuary of the Broken Rest".  I named my character "Jon".

Jon opened a trap door and descended to a door which opened onto a corridor with two doors. This first move burns a torch. Jon opened the first door to another staircase which he then descended to another door. Beyond the door a short corridor with two more doors.

Jon opens the door onto a small room with another door at the far end. The walls of the room are lined with statues but one plinth is no mere statue. It turns out to be a Sentinel Angel. Jon attacks but rolls a 1 which the -1 for a dagger reduces to zero. This 1 on the die activates the Angel's Sorcery ability. The Angel does 3HP damage but sorcery adds 1D6 (2 in this case), and Jon is reduced to 17HP. Jon fights back and his dagger brings down the Angel.

Wondering what the Sentinel Angel was guarding Jon searches for a hidden door (burning a torch in the process) but instead of a door, find a dart trap that stings him for 1HP, reducing him to 16HP.

Open the door at the far end, Jon finds a room lined with pillars with a splashing fountain in the centre. Worse, three fungoids move out from behind the spray of water. Jon attacks, inflicting 2HP damage on the first beast. The 3 of them attack back inflicting 2HP each reducing Jon to 10HP. He attacks once again, but only inflicting 1HP which isn't enough to kill even the first fungoid. They attack once more pounding Jon back to 4HP. Jon realises he can't win this fight and runs for the surface!

So there you have a session report. It is very simplistic and mechanistic, perhaps even more so than Four Against Darkness. The fun is what you make of it, the story once again is what you inject into it. The rules themselves are pretty bland, and I feel like its a stepping stone for first time soloists to get onto the ladder of game complexity.

REDD Judge, in the wild!

As a game author, it's always wonderful to see, hear, or read people playing your game, John over at Terminal Goblin Games has done just that! He did some audio work for me as a promo for REDD Judge, and then decided to take the scenario from that audio and turn it into a solo play game.

[sniff] So proud. 

Experience Points in Traveller

Experience Points are a staple of the role playing genre, but of course being a huge fan of the original Traveller, which was my first played game, I played without XP. In fact I've never really got the taste for XP railroad. I don't even get a hit of self-affirmation when a character I'm playing goes up a level. That's all because I started with Trav' and didn't hooked on the XP crack!

At this point I actually see XP as a concept that I reject in principal. Whatever its original purpose may have been, XP has devolved into a "reward" system that players "earn". It has become a focus, a driving force in the game play. Players make decisions based on XP that can be earned as opposed to what makes sense in the game. Yuk.

But I go even further!

Later versions of Traveller started doing the "training" thing. So you could spend "N" weeks studying and gain a new skill level. This still turns my stomach a little but for no real reason other than it will lead to skill bloat, which is a separate complaint I have with later versions. However its waaay better than giving players chocolate peanuts treats (XP). Players may have their character "train" during jump which is generally much better than encouraging the chasing down of the last orc to get a few extra XP. It certainly effects play considerably less.

When I create a Traveller character I consider it to be "fully formed", with only life to be experienced ahead. I don't look to, or to seek and "improve" the character, I'm playing to tell a great story. So I rarely consider the mechanics of improvement as worthy of consideration.

Back in the last long running Traveller campaign I started issuing XP to the players, as a joke. The points had no effect whatever in the game and they were totally arbitrary. In my opinion, that's the full extent  to which character improvement should exist in Traveller.

YouTube Recommendation: The Basic Expert

I have hundreds of youtube subscriptions that I've subbed to over years, but I'd like to introduce one of these to you as being an exceptional breakout. 

The Basic Expert channel is hosted by Mr Torres and he brings his calm demeanour, his smooth voice, and his insightfulness to the role playing stage. Many of the channels I subbed to have devolved into rage anti-woke rants, but not this one. 

That's not to say he doesn't bring the odd rant to the show, but its not his focus. His channel presents a mixed content of art creation, rpg stream-chats, deep dives into RPGs, topic discussions, and he recently added actual-plays into the mix too. 

I've especially loved the deep dives into Basic Fantasy, and Classic Traveller.

The Basic Expert channel