I ran a 90-minute session of Cha'alt using Crimson Dragon Slayer D20 yesterday, and it was one of the best virtual games I've ever been involved with.
To what do I owe such awesomeness? Well, it's an awesome campaign setting, for one. Hard to go wrong with a kitchen-sink type of genre-mashing world where nearly anything goes.
Additionally, I've been running Cha'alt so much over the last few years that I know it like the back of my tentacle. There's also the blind luck factor - sometimes you just get lucky and things fall into place. Of course, as a sorcerer, I'm loath to believe in coincidence.
Before these Roll20 sessions begin, as I've talked about elsewhere, I spend a minute or two in pre-game meditation, gazing upon the Kort'thalis meta-sigil which is my conduit between this reality and the second world collectively imagined by the players and myself.
Lately, I've been re-reading a book from my youth called Prime Chaos by Phil Hine (terrific resource if you're interested in chaos magic). Long story short, I created a magical procedure for opening the door between this world and that of Cha'alt... a gateway into the psychocosm, for lack of a better term.
While I didn't see Cha'alt any clearer or stronger than my last few sessions, I did feel a deeper connection. The events which unfolded gave player-characters actual, meaningful choices, which is the hallmark of a good game.
In blog posts and YouTube videos to come (subscribe to my channel; I'm almost at 1,000), I'll share various magical techniques for achieving altered states of consciousness. In my opinion, this will heighten immersion.
However, I won't divulge the details of what transpired in this morning's adventure because I want to run it again and again, tweaking and refining as I go, sharing my vision with players yearning to experience non-vanilla D&D; something different, something special.
Contact me if you want to be part of the magic, or simply seek out my games on Roll20. My handle there is "VS", and my email address is: Venger.Satanis@yahoo.com
Happy hump-day, hoss! [I wrote this last night and am just publishing it today]
VS
p.s. Still have tickets available for VENGER CON... if you're interested in attending a convention exclusively for old-school, OSR, and traditional RPGs, this is what you've been waiting for!
There was a DM on Roll20 who ran a pay-per-session D&D game and said that as part of it he would HYPNOTIZE you, in order to make the settings and descriptions more vivid as if youbwere really there. I thought he could also get you to pay more off your credit-card than you intended to, while he was at it! He definitely promised an altered state and probably altered bank-account!
ReplyDeleteIf you know what you're doing, it's difficult but not impossible.
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