Dungeon Cocktails: The Action Economy and The Subdual Damage

I made cocktails for my gaming group, and we all lived to tell the tale.

A bugbear enjoys a goblet of something refreshing.

The Action Economy: One is good, two is better, but three will break the game.

The Subdual Damage: (Mocktail) When you're not actually trying to take someone out.

I made these for Session 3 of the Operation: Unfathomable! campaign.

These drinks make use of a homemade shrub that is absolutely worth the effort of mixing up a day in advance.

Cirtus Spice Shrub (and Infusion)

5 medium lemons, peeled (fruit reserved)

1 small grapefruit, peeled (fruit reserved)

1¼ cup sugar

1½ tsp whole black peppercorns, crushed

1/2 tsp allspice berries, crushed

3 cloves, crushed

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 tsp dried thyme

2 bay leaves

Mix all ingredients in a bowl.

A mix of citrus peel and whole spices in a bowl of sugar

Muddle for about 5-10 minutes to release the oils from the peels into the sugar. Set aside at room temperature overnight. In the morning, the sugar should look wet and the peels almost translucent.

The shrub: Juice reserved fruit. Mix w/ dry ingredients until the sugar and salt dissolve. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer, pressing on the solids to get every drop.

Using a fine mesh strainer to drain the shrub into a glass measuring cup

The infusion: Reserve the solids from the shrub and pour two cups of boiling water over them. Let sit for about five minutes, and then strain again.

You now have two amber liquids: the shrub and the infusion. Both are great ways to spruce up various beverages.

Two plastic containers, one labeled "Shrub," the other "Infusion"

The Action Economy

1 oz shrub

3 dashes orange bitters

3 oz gin

1 oz vodka

1 ice cube

Mix ingredients in a container with a top. Keep in the freezer for about an hour, until ice cube has melted. Garnish with citrus peel.

Picture of a cocktail in a martini glass

This is basically a Vesper with shrub instead of Lillet. As such, it is martini-strength, and should be served and sipped accordingly.

The Action Economy Party Mix (serves 7)

1 cup shrub

1/4 cup Martini & Rossi Fiero

1 cups vodka

3 cups gin

7 ice cubes

The Subdual Damage (No-ABV)

1 cup shrub

2 cups infusion

1/4 cup lemon or lime juice

1 liter club soda

1 cup tonic water

7 or more ice cubes

Mix in a large container and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Enjoy!

Comments

Knaves, fancypants

I've prepared a new layout document of Ben Milton's Knaves . Knaves is a great, light rules set that has an extremely elegant core mechanic while retaining total compatibility with OSR material. It's pretty much the rpg of my dreams. This document contains the complete rules, plus a bunch of useful hacks from the community, plus a few of my invention, plus some useful resources from Ben Milton's previous effort, Maze Rats . EDIT: I've updated the layout to fix errata and make a few tweaks. Further, I've made 3 variations: KNAVES TABLET LAYOUT The Tablet Layout is meant for scrolling on screens, and contains hyperlinks. KNAVES SPREAD LAYOUT The Spread Layout is set up to print on Letter-sized paper. KNAVES A4 LAYOUT The A4 Layout is set up to print on A4 paper, and is probably the most elegant of the three versions. This is presented with generous permission from Ben Milton, and should in no way be an excuse for not purchasing a copy of Knav

Maze Rats by Post

In my previous post , I reviewed a bunch of my favorite rulesets for optimization for Play-by-Post. It occurred to me almost immediately that I hadn't really thought about Maze Rats enough. In fact, I'd mis-remembered and mischaracterized it. Upon reflection, one of the mechanics I took issue with is actually a big strength. Re-reading the rules, it seems like just a few very simple hacks could make it a highly-optimized PbP game. As follows: Danger Rolls are rolled by the GM. Danger rolls usually fail, so it is in the player’s interest to describe their actions plausibly and mitigate as many risks as they can, in the hopes that they don’t trigger a danger roll. 2d6 + ability bonus ≥ 10 If you have taken enough precautions to have a distinct advantage in an action, but not enough to have eliminated the distinct possibility of danger, the GM will give you a roll with advantage. 3d6 keep 2 + ability bonus ≥ 10 Because each character only has 3 ability scores (S

Reviewing Rules for Play-by-Post Optimization

I’ve played a lot of PbP games: all your favorite flavors of OD&D, AD&D, and their retroclones, Call of Cthulhu, Marvel Superheroes, Traveller, Dungeon World, etc. ad nauseam. In almost every instance, I forgot what ruleset we were using at some point. Which is a good thing. Once chargen is over, you spend a lot more time describing your characters actions and poring over the GM’s descriptions than you spend interacting with rules. When you do roll, it’s usually a combat to-hit roll, which you’ve probably programmed into the online dice-roller as a macro. Pretty much any game will work for PbP. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t points of possible optimization. Point 1: Resolution. Anything that can keep the action moving is a boon to PbP. A game that requires a back-and-forth exchange of information to resolve an action is going to progress very slowly. A good rule of thumb is that it’ll take 2 or 3 days to get a response from any given player. At that pace, an exch

An Abominable Fancy

Search This Blog