"'Winning' and 'losing,' things important to most games, do not apply to D&D games!" declares Tom Moldvay in the especially influential Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rulebook. The concept of "winning" doesn't appear at all in the original "little brown books" released years before. And so we've told ourselves in the years since that you can't really … Continue reading Playing RPGs to win
Design Diary: Grave Knave
I recently wondered aloud whether I'd be better off rethinking my soulslike game Exhumed as a Knave hack, especially given that my earliest pre-playtesting version of Exhumed unwittingly looked quite a bit like Knave. (I ended up using much of those rules in in a Fallout hack instead.) Now, I know the smart move is … Continue reading Design Diary: Grave Knave
WIP: Down Town
One more hack for my backlog of works in progress: Down Town, inspired by Chuck Wendig's Blue Blazes and Joel Priddy's Underground. To be honest, this one's low on my list of priorities because I don't need to create it in order to run the campaign I want to run. After all, Underground's 4 pages already offer … Continue reading WIP: Down Town
WIP: Agents of the O.D.D.
Here's a glimpse of another work in progress on my 2019 to-do list: Agents of the O.D.D., an Into the Odd hack inspired by the Hellboy and BPRD comics, among other weirdness. Characters are occult and fringe science consultants, law enforcement academy washouts, and unfortunate individuals marked by the odd, conscripted to investigate the paranormal. I actually … Continue reading WIP: Agents of the O.D.D.
WIP: Xenobioddity
And after writing 3300 words on excruciatingly detailed fantasy combat, I figured showing bits of some of my other works in progress might be fun. To that end, here are some early notes for a space/sci-fi hack of Into the Odd, tentatively titled Xenobioddity. The project's on hold while I focus on Exhumed, and I still have … Continue reading WIP: Xenobioddity
Exhumed design diary: Action-packed minutiae
I'm still sorting through the trickiest design issues in Exhumed, my soulslike tabletop RPG: how frequently characters act, and the options available to them when they do act, as I wrote awhile back. I got to try some ideas in my last playtest, and have been approaching various problems with different kinds of actions atomically, … Continue reading Exhumed design diary: Action-packed minutiae
Designer’s block
Do game designers get writer's block, or some equivalent thereof? I'm very curious how you other designers, hackers, and homebrewers experience this (or not). Me, though? When I get stuck on a game, it feels like the exact opposite of writer's block. With writer's block, I just stare at the page blankly, trying like hell … Continue reading Designer’s block
Dungeons & Dreaming
Sometimes I get game ideas while dreaming. I used to post them to G+, but since that's soon to be gone, I figured I'd share a few here that I dug up. I dreamt I designed a super-simple D&D variant that fit the rules entirely on a quarter of a standard 8.5″ x 11″ page, … Continue reading Dungeons & Dreaming
1d52
A misreading of something in Index Card RPG got me thinking about how you might replace d20 resolution with a standard deck of playing cards, if you were so inclined. (I’m guessing most people would not be so inclined, but it was a fun exercise for me when I wrote it up on G+ months … Continue reading 1d52
20 supernatural backlash effects
Awhile back, I ran a playtest of Halos & Hellfire, a hack of Lasers & Feelings I designed to run urban fantasy adventures of angels and demons inspired by In Nomine. I used the magic system from Sorcerers & Sellswords, which effectively allows you to produce any supernatural effect thematically appropriate to your background, but … Continue reading 20 supernatural backlash effects
