After a busy busy month with the RPGaDAY entries, it is now time to attend the 2026 SaltCON End-of-Summer at the Davis Convention Center in Layton, Utah. The last I checked, there were still tickets available if you wanted to come roll some dice. I will also be packing my Convention Backpack that I have documented about in a previous blog post.
I’ve volunteered once again to help spread the RPG love. Basic Fantasy, Star Trek Adventures and my odd-ball game for this time around is Mutant Crawl Classics. And since you can reserve your spots in advance, I can say that the MCC game on Sunday is already full. As I mentioned in my USS Magnanimous Episode 2 Play Report, I’ll be running a Star Trek adventure that I used with my local gaming group.
The games that I’ve signed up for include Shadowrun Anarchy. I’ve created a character for this cyberpunk game, but I’ve never played it at the table. I’ll be participating in a play test as well with one of the designers at the con for a game called SCP. I’ll post more about it in the after-action report. I’ve got a slot signed up for a Dungeon Crawl Classics game titled Emirikol Was Framed. The next game is Through the Breach which is some sort of wild-west/magic mix game with cards. It will be interesting to try something new. The last game that I’ve signed up to play is called Starship Infernum. A space-horror-Survival setting. I think that DCC is the only game that I’ve played before and that makes me happy. One of the things I try to do at gaming conventions is to try out a system or two that I’ve never played before.
Considering how bad this year has been, I don’t think I’ll be spending a lot at the convention this weekend. But I am very much looking forward to seeing some old friends and meeting new ones. Once again I’d like to give a tip of the hat to the volunteers and coordinators for SaltCON. I hope you realize how much these events are helping me out this year. I’m looking forward to leaving the real world behind when I enter the convention center doors. I’ll see you there. If you are coming to the convention, please come up and say Hi. I’ve met a few readers of this blog face-to-face at this event.
What should I be on the look out for? Any recommendations for the games I’m going to be playing? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.
Star Trek Adventures- USS Magnanimous episode two play report
Wait, Carl, I don’t see the play report for episode one of the USS Magnanimous STA game that you ran. Did I miss it? Nope, you didn’t miss it. The reason I haven’t posted it yet is because it is the same adventure that I’ll be running at the upcoming SaltCON End-of-Summer event. I know some of the SaltCON attendees read my blog, so I’ll have to post that later.
And we have reached the final day of the RPGaDAY 2026 Challenge with the prompts Edge, Ability and Fair of Face. While these are very common terms used in roleplaying games, how do I make this article unique?
I’m seeing a lot of posts about the characters having an edge. Or what’s beyond the edge of the map. These are tempting topics of discussion. And I have enjoyed reading a few of them. But there is one group that I believe has an edge when it comes to roleplaying games.
The Gamemaster themselves. Sometimes called Dungeon Masters, Referees, Game Operation Directors (GOD) and a host of other names. But the position is the same. Set up the outlines of the story for the shared storytelling experience, run the non-player characters, and keep the flow of the game moving at a reasonable pace.
Each gamemaster is unique. They all run their tables in their own way. Some use a GMs screen; others prefer an open table. Do they run theater of the mind, or are there maps and figures? Is gaming limited to just at the table, or do they provide opportunities between sessions? How do they handle house rules (agreed upon rules that tweak the system) and table ruling (temporary decisions made to keep the game moving that can be revisited later)?
Where their edge comes from is the ability to alter the game on the fly. As mentioned before, this is a joint storytelling experience. Even as a GM I’ve had my players bring something up that made me think “yeah, that’s better than what I had planned” and I went with it.
In my Star Trek Adventures campaign that I’m currently running, I sent emails to the players with different nuggets of information that their characters would know. Because I didn’t want to make it blatantly obvious “here is your bad guy/McGuffin/clue” I had other nuggets of information seeded into the emails to give it flavoring. Well, one of the players took one of these seasoned nuggets and pushed a theory into the scenario. Suddenly, the pirates who were only going to be seen in a brief appearance became the bad guys who they fought at the end of the night.
Unless my players are reading this blog post now, they never knew that there was a slightly different ending to the episode. I used this ability to give the edge to make my game enjoyable. I always ask for feedback at the end of each game session, and the players told me they all had a good time. So, I’m believing that I used my GM powers wisely.
Gamemasters, you have the edge to make your games enjoyable. Have some flexibility in your games. Use the ability to think on your feet. Be prepared for the players to come up with solutions that you hadn’t thought of. Use the ‘rule-of-cool’ when your players brainstorm. This allows you to be surprised as well. And not knowing how it’s going to end is what makes it unique for everyone.
What abilities do you think give a GM an edge, and what’s the best unexpected idea your players ever came up with? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.
Day 27 Prompt: Hunger Week 5 Prompt: Emotion Weekday Prompt: Far to Go
The prompt of “Hunger” is what we’ve been given for Day 27 of the RPGaDAY 2026 Challenge. And I had to wonder how I was going to connect a generic term to a positive post about roleplaying. Then it dawned on me, when you are hungry, you eat. And while eating is a natural biological function, it is also a social opportunity. Every year my Star Trek fan club host the Admiral’s Banquet to celebrate the club’s anniversary and to highlight the member achievements. It’s now a tradition to get together and break bread with members of our Star Trek family.
We’ve seen similar traditions in the show. So today I’d like to talk about some of the traditions seen on the show and how they can be implemented in your Star Trek Adventures campaign. Some of these are food related, some are not. This gives the gamemaster the options to introduce some role-playing opportunities at the table.
The first tradition that came to mind when I saw the prompt hunger is from The Next Generation second season episode “A Matter of Honor”. Commander Riker is transferring to the Klingon Defense Force vessel IKV Pagh as part of an exchange program. He will be serving as the vessel’s executive officer. He participates in the practice of the feast before the transfer to try some Klingon dishes.
If an officer is transferring to a planetary assignment, they could use this feast to learn about the local dishes. I could see an eager young ensign using this feast to learn about the traditional dishes from the home region of his new commanding officer. Confirming what those dishes are (or the favorite dishes) could lead into a B-plot similar to Ensign Sato being assigned to find out what Lt. Reed’s favorite food is in the Enterprise first season episode “Silent Enemy”.
We saw even more food-based rituals when we saw Cadet Uhura attending her first meal at the Captain’s Table in the first season Strange New Worlds episode “Children of the Comet”. Welcoming banquets have been seen in “Journey to Babel” (TOS season 2), “Sins of the Father” (TNG season 3) and more.
Now not all of these traditions require physical sustenance. In the first season Strange New Worlds episode “Spock Amok” we learn about Enterprise Bingo. A list of challenges that lower ranking crewmembers try to accomplish without their superiors catching them in the act. It is very possible that each Starfleet vessel has its own bingo traditions. While there is a list of the Enterprise entries in the link above, here are some possible suggestions for a bingo list.
Sneaking into a ceremony or banquet that they were not invited to.
Make it from Deck 1 to Engineering without using the turbolifts.
Swim in Cetacean Ops.
Find the oldest food recipe in the replicator.
Hide your signature in a space you don’t think anyone will find it.
Spend one minute alone on the bridge.
Change the ringtone on a crewmember’s combadge without them noticing.
There is a current naval tradition called “Crossing the Line.” Sailors who travel over the equator transform from Pollywogs to Shellbacks in a ceremony held on the ship. A Shellback is someone who has been accepted by King Neptune. Well, there isn’t really an equator in space, but there is the border between the Alpha and Beta quadrants. This could be called “Crossing the Divide” with an initiation process that marks the crewmembers as “Wayfarers.”
And sometimes new traditions starts on a lone vessel. This could spread to other vessels with transfers and interactions with fellow Starfleet ships. In the Deep Space Nine sixth season episode “Behind the Lines”, there was a crew practice held at the end of a successful mission with the used power cells from the phaser array. Rather than recycling them immediately, the spent power cells became visible reminders of what the crew had endured together.
In your Star Trek Adventures game, look for opportunities for the players to create their own traditions like this for their characters. After each successful cargo haul, the crew has to drink a certain brand of Saurian brandy. What happens if they are getting low on that brand? For each new first-contact, how would the crew want to mark the occasion? The options are endless.
So, are your players hungry for something that makes your sessions actual Star Trek episodes with an “A” plot and a “B” plot? See what traditions you can shuffle into the adventure.
What traditions would you have on your Starfleet vessel? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.
Day 24 Prompt: Distance Week 5 Prompt: Emotion Weekday Prompt: Fair of Face
We have a new weekly prompt of “Emotion”, and we’ve cycled back to the weekday prompt of “Fair of Face”. The Day 24 prompt for the RPGaDAY 2026 Challenge is Distance. So, what am I going to do with this one? I’m going to lay down some common sense.
When characters need to get somewhere, then remember this simple rule. The game should move at the speed of plot. Think about it. When John McClaine was moving through the ducts at Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard, we saw the character-building moments. But we don’t see him going through every inch of the ducts. We didn’t see every light-year that the USS Voyager traveled to get home, or all the steps that Phileas Fogg took on his 80-day journey. We see the parts that help the story.
So, with the players controlling their characters, we don’t need to see everything they do all day. Even during the gaming session. Focus on the parts that enhance the story, build the characters, or are just entertaining. There was one game that I was involved in where the GM made the players roll just to dock their starship. It wasn’t a challenging event, but it made the players freeze for a second because there was no helmsman that was a PC. They eventually remembered: “Oh yea, we have Ensign so-and-so who can do that” I remember rolling my eyes thinking this interaction didn’t help. The ship was never really in any danger; we weren’t collecting in game currency (like momentum), the scene didn’t really enhance the game. In my humble opinion, it should have been skipped. “Ok you’ve ordered your helmsman to dock, and you hurry to the Admiral’s office for your briefing.”
If there is a distance between plot points is where you get the characters to assist the gamemaster. Hopefully you’ve already had a session zero where you know some of the goals the players want to do with their characters. “In the seven days it took to travel to Promise Station describe what your character did to improve their fencing skills.” Perhaps that could be worth a die roll to see how well they did on that front.
Another GM trick that I just recently used is correspondence from connections the characters have. This is a good way to get PC knowledge into the minds of the players. This allows them to contribute to the game when clues pop up that their character can assist with. Just before session two of my Star Trek Adventures campaign (yea, I know I need to post play reports here) I sent emails to my players with different nuggets of information. Two were personal correspondence letters from contacts which were directly tied into the next session. The CO, XO and Chief of Security all got the same security briefing that was sent out by sector command. Some of the nuggets were valid; others were just there for flavoring. The Chief Engineer got a subspace message from a friend in the Quartermaster Division talking about what supply requests were and were not fulfilled. This helped when the ship went into battle, and the character already knew what was missing out of inventory for repairs. The Chief of Communications got a duty report from the third shift which really didn’t connect to the upcoming session but did still give them some ‘this is real’ vibes on what happened between sessions. Some time and distance had happened between session one and two and the players noticed it, but it didn’t drag down the game. It also kept the players engaged between sit-down sessions as some players sent character responses to me. And when player A popped up with “well this unknown term came up” then player B was able to quickly say “Oh, that’s this…” without hearing it from the GM before they parroted it out to the rest of the table. I received several compliments about the between-game emails and how it helped with the roleplaying in the session.
So, if your players are on their way to Far2Go to reach Promise Station or traveling through the jungles to find the Well of Desires in a lost city you don’t have to track every mile. But you can make it feel like it was a long distance by the way you presented it. If done right, your games can run a lot smoother.
What suggestions would you recommend for keeping travel distant without drying up the adventure? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.
Regard is the Day 14 prompt for the RPGaDAY 2026 Challenge…. and I’ve got nothing. I wracked my brain for this topic, and I really don’t know what the organizers are going for. Let’s look at some of the other entries that have been posted for inspiration. (Checks BlueSky social media)
Wait, Fellow RPG blogger Craig Oxbrow asked a question “What is a game held in high regard you have yet to play?” Perfect, I’m going to go with that one. Thank you Craig. (and after I started working on this, it looks like other participants used this same idea)
“Have yet to play?” Hmm… I’m going to break this into two categories since they would both count. “Never played” and “Never played outside of a one-shot.” As I’ve mentioned in my SaltCON reports, when I sign up for RPG sessions at conventions, I try to play at least one game I’ve never played before. I had also had the pleasure of being invited to a few one-shots outside of conventions (thanks guys). And no, I don’t count making characters for the Character Creation Challenge as playing the game.
Amazing Adventures– This is the “D20 Modern” variant of Castles and Crusades by Troll Lord Games. It’s a D20 based system that uses the siege system for resolving skill issues (driving a motorcycle, climbing wall, finding a hidden item, haggling with a merchant for a lower price, etc.) What I like the most about this system is it allows the player to say, “I want my character to do this” instead of “My character sheet says I can only do this.” Kind of like how you can with the 2D20 system Star Trek Adventures by Modiphius.
Planet of the Apes– The D6MV (the “magnetic variant” of the D6 system used for the Star Wars D6 game from West End Games). This game had a very successful KickStarter from Magnetic Press Play. Yes, I ran this at a SaltCON, but it was the intro adventure from the Quickstart. I would really love to play this in a campaign as a player.
Traveller– The latest version from Mongoose Publishing. 1- I’m a fan of science fiction. 2- This is one of the original RPGs that shaped a generation like Dungeons and Dragons did. I’ve seen the 2d6 system spawn off many retro-clones and imaginations. So I’d like to try it in a campaign at least once.
FrontierSpace by DWD Studios. This company is a small one-man operation that has put out a lot of different games . This entry covers science fiction and is his love letter to Star Frontiers (while using an original system). He has also created the espionage game, White Lies, which should also be on this list. While White Lies is based off of the Whitebox Fantasy Adventure retro-clone, the system used for FrontierSpace is very unique. It also has the “do what I want, not what my character sheet says” vibe.
And you know what? I’m going to call it there before this turns into a post 20 miles long. There are quite a few more that I could hold up and state that I hold it in high regard. I own them either in PDF or deadtree version. I’ll probably bring them up in future blog posts.
What are the four games you’d hold up in high regard that you haven’t played yet? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.
So apparently I am insane enough that I’ve been busy working on my two new campaigns (and getting ready for SaltCON End-of-Summer) that I haven’t blogged about them yet. So this is a quick catch up on what has happened so far.
We held a session zero where the players made their characters for the Starfleet game. We are going to run a six-episode season and then re-evaluate from there (keep going, change eras, etc.). We will be playing in the “Lost Era” just after the end of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and before the end of the 23rd century. We did have one more player drop out, but that left us with seven players in total with the following crew:
Captain Fae Hy-Lyra- Efrosian Commanding Officer
Commander Jean LaFluer- Human Executive Officer
Lt. Commander Gemini Jones- Human Chief Engineering Officer
Lieutenant Clay Frtizberg- Human Chief Communications Officer
As for the vessel they would be serving on, while I was scanning their hand-written character sheets, I pulled out my massive book of FASA Starships and dropped it on the table. It was so heavy that it made the table bounce in a loud thud. I advised against any dreadnoughts or massive battleships. This crew would be filling in the gaps while there was a massive shift of fleet resources to help out with the Klingon evacuations. They almost went with the Chandley Class Starship, but they didn’t want to deal with a Marine contingent. They voted for the Miranda Class Starship that was used quite a bit in the show. The name of the vessel came down to USS Magnanimous or USS Taylor (to be named after Roger Taylor) with the Magnanimous getting the larger number of votes. So I reached out to a friend who was a massive starship fan and he generated the registry number of NCC-31947 (note the 47 in the registry). Another friend who generates starship SFX for several Star Trek fan films was generous enough to make a graphic that I could use for the campaign (see the image above). Thank you Dennis and Ross.
We were able to have the first session, but we haven’t completed the episode yet. So I’ll have another blog post when the episode is completed. So far, the crew is reacting in typical Star Trek fashion.
We had a session zero for this campaign as well. There are two less players for this campaign so we have five in total. I’m hoping that the last player who had to bow out at the last minute can get his his schedules freed up to play. I have a place in the campaign where he could be slotted in.
This world is a new one of my “making”. I’ve set down some basic items, but I haven’t filled in every nook and cranny. The reason for this is that I’m allowing the players to contribute to this world since this is a shared storytelling experience. They get to make up the names of the villages and kingdoms their characters are from. If they follow a deity, they get to make that up as well. This means that I don’t have to work on minutia that may or may not be used in the campaign. Already some of the players have come up with some items from their backstories that I’m weaving into the campaign.
The magic users in this world received a special “Puzzle Scroll” that challenges them (those that pass get a free 0-level cantrip that allows them to easily create the Puzzle Scroll on a blank parchment). If the magic user solves the puzzle, then they have made it to the next level and a new puzzle appears. This is how the player knows that their character has received enough experience points to go up to the next level. It also allows them to test possible recruits into the Magic User’s Guild.
After the session zero, I was able to get some one-on-one RPG sessions with individual players to find out why their characters are traveling to the Grand City of Roses. Think a medieval city with a cross between London and Venice where different races (even Goblinoids) have their own Petal (sector). Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get all of the one-on-one sessions done, so I ended up having a session 0.5 to get them all caught up. The players are under strict orders not to talk about what happened in their one-on-one with each other. I wonder how the married couple are getting along with this challenge? We will be having the session one very soon and I’ll blog about that separately as well.
So far the characters are:
Noturin Boshk- Half-Elf Rogue
Ellywick Cogsprite- Gnome Wizard
Victor Goldweller- Dwarf Bard
Lorelei Murphy- Human Cleric
Albert Shepherd- Human Ranger
I can’t wait to torture…. errr…. put the characters through the story that I’ve planned out.
Do you have any questions (that I can answer publicly) about the campaign? I’ve even set up special channels for the two campaigns on my Discord server. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.
