Category: RPGs
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Starting #Dungeon23
I started #Dungeon23 a little early, hoping to hit the ground running on New Year’s Day. Blogged a bit about my intentions. Took some notes to help me visualize the big picture. Sought inspiration from locations and maps for Dark Souls and Elden Ring. Read articles (and started reading books) on dungeon and adventure design.…
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Early thoughts for #Dungeon23
If you’ve read 2400 (or are wondering when I’ll ever finish or revise my various other long games), you know I find it easiest to make RPGs in bite-sized chunks. No wonder that I was immediately excited by Sean McCoy’s #Dungeon23 idea — building a 12-level, 365-room megadungeon, one day at a time for a year.…
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Thoughts on collecting 2400 for print
I’ve wondered for a long time now how to best adapt the 2400 series for print. I get asked about it enough that I thought it might be worthwhile to share my thoughts here on the blog, and invite feedback from anybody who has it. The file on my computer for this currently has the…
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2400 terminology update
2400 is not a terminology-heavy game. It has very few rules, as contemporary RPGs go, and every game in the series was designed to be internally consistent. I found I had trouble explaining how to combine 2400 modules, however, because I used the same terms to refer to different things. I can only write “traits…
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2400 actual play: Xot
If you’ve ever wondered what 2400 looks like in play, you might find something useful in the thread of links to actual plays and readthroughs on the Itch forum. One glaring omission from that thread, however, has been any sense of what it looks like when I run it myself. I’ll try to fix that…
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24XX devlog: The SRD
The 24XX System Reference Document (available on Itch.io and DriveThruRPG) is a free, Creative Commons licensed version of the rules used by the 2400 lo-fi sci-fi RPG series (also on Itch.io and DriveThruRPG). I was on the fence about writing about the SRD in a series of 2400 devlogs because the 24XX SRD is not,…
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2400 devlog: Battle Moon
Battle Moon is a 24XX combat rules primer disguised as a patently ridiculous (but still quite usable!) one-shot scenario. Create a black-belt vidcast celebrity with a bandolier of plasma grenades, a robot chessboxer with a glitchy force-field generator, or a cephalopoid master of disguise with a sentient Rigelian worm-whip, and see how they fare at hoverboard…
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2400 devlog: Legends
Legends is the one (and likely only) “lo-fi hi-fantasy” entry in the 2400 series, an homage to D&D that might actually fit into a unified 2400 setting (if you squint hard enough). You can find it in the full 2400 series on Itch.io, and on its own and in the 2400 bundle on DriveThruRPG. Legends…
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2400 devlog: Xot
In Xot, players take on the roles of settlers crash-landed on a world that forces them to adapt. You might play an undying priest with an aversion to gravity, a sharp-eyed mystic with cameras for eyes, or a horned mechanic with finger-plugs that interface with machines, or any number of other bizarre combinations. It’s available as part of…
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2400 devlog: Resistors
Resistors is a game about activist hackers struggling to get by and make a difference in a hyper-corporate cyberpunk dystopia. Download it as part of the entire 2400 collection on Itch.io, or on its own or in the 2400 bundle on DriveThruRPG. Cyberpunk aesthetics vs. praxis As I wrote on the original Itch devlog, I…
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2400 devlog: Habs & Gardens
Habs & Gardens is the very first (and probably only) hi-fi sci-fi 2400 microgame. It features (probably) mundane community first responders, dealing with (most likely) low-stakes situations on a (seemingly) idyllic space station. Find it in the full 2400 series on Itch.io, and on its own and in the 2400 bundle on DriveThruRPG. Influences The most obvious influence…
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2400 devlog: Data Loss
Data Loss is a soulslike sci-fi TTRPG scenario about waking up in a cloning station on a ruined world, tasked with gathering memories of the dead to piece together the situation and how to survive it. It’s available as part of the full 2400 series on Itch.io, and on its own and in the 2400…
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2400 devlog: Codebreakers
Codebreakers is an action-thriller microgame about hackers, investigators, and innocent bystanders who know The Truth: This is all just a simulation. They’ve glimpsed enough of the code behind reality to exploit it, at the risk of attracting the attention of relentless daemons. Get it as part of the entire 2400 collection on Itch.io, and on…
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2400 devlog: Zone
Zone is a game about scavengers, scientists, and soldiers exploring a once-ordinary landscape where the laws of physics no longer apply. It’s available as part of the full 2400 series on Itch.io, and on its own and in a bundle on DriveThruRPG. Influences Zone was born from my interest in Roadside Picnic, Annihilation, and Into…
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2400 devlog: The Venusian Job
The Venusian Job is a heist scenario generator, sending players up a space elevator to rob the swankest casino in the inner system. It’s available as part of the entire 2400 series on Itch.io, and on its own and in the 2400 bundle on DriveThruRPG. Influences It should come as no surprise that The Venusian…
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Three layers of RPG rules
When I think about what rules I want to put into and emphasize in 2400, I tend to think about rules in three “layers.” I suspect somebody else has already written something like this (and probably even better informed by theory and history), and I’m just ignorant if it. That’s okay. It’s helpful for me…
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2400 devlog: Tempus Diducit
Tempus Diducit (which I sure hope is Latin for “time unravels”) is a genre-bending, multiversal mishmash that welcomes you to bring in characters from any game made with the 24XX SRD. It’s available as part of the full 2400 series on Itch.io, and on its own and in the 2400 bundle on DriveThruRPG. As I…
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2400 devlog: Emergency Rules
Emergency Rules is a (slightly) longer version of the 2400 rules, offering no setting-specific information to make space for clearer guidance for play. It was the first 2400 document I ever wrote, but not the first I ever released. In a way, I hoped it would never be needed. And, in a way, I think…
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2400 devlog: Orbital Decay
Orbital Decay is a one-shot space horror scenario generator. It was the first 2400 game to include a map, four broad skillsets, stress rules, and guidelines for creating and running scary monsters. Get it as part of the entire 2400 collection on Itch.io, and on its own and in the 2400 bundle on DriveThruRPG. Influences…
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2400 devlog: Exiles
Exiles is a microgame about strange castaways on a xenotech-riddled quarantine world. It’s available as part of the entire 2400 collection on Itch.io, and on its own and in a bundle on DriveThruRPG. Influences As noted in the original devlog, I honestly don’t know what genre Exiles belongs to. I designed it while geeking out…
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2400 devlog: Project Ikaros
Project Ikaros is a microgame about rogue psychics fleeing from or fighting against elite agents. Which side you’re on is up to you. Find it as part of the entire 2400 collection on Itch.io, and on its own and in a bundle on DriveThruRPG. Influences Project Ikaros is supposed to play like an action/thriller — and…
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2400 devlog: Eos
Eos is a microgame about humanity’s entry into a diverse galactic community, seen through the eyes of a crew that’s expected to serve as soldiers, explorers, and diplomats alike. You can get Eos as part of the entire 2400 collection on Itch.io, and on its own and in a bundle on DriveThruRPG. Influences Eos is…
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2400 devlog: Xenolith
Xenolith is a microgame about a multi-species crew responding to crises caused by the very same ancient relics that made galactic civilization possible. You can get Xenolith it as part of the entire 2400 collection on Itch.io, and on its own and in a bundle on DriveThruRPG. My favorite game on the Citadel Let’s get this out of…
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2400 devlog: ALT
ALT is a game about transhuman operatives in a star system where memories are stored on magnetic tape backups. It’s my lo-fi love letter to Eclipse Phase, Altered Carbon, and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. You can find it as part of the entire 2400 collection on Itch.io, and on its own and…
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2400 devlog: Cosmic Highway
Cosmic Highway is a game of space truckers trying to keep their ship in the air, inspired by Firefly, The Expanse, and the Mothership RPG. It’s available as part of the entire 2400 collection on Itch.io, and on its own and in a bundle on DriveThruRPG. In the original devlog for Cosmic Highway v1.0, posted about a…
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2400 devlog: Inner System Blues
Inner System Blues (on Itch and DriveThruRPG) is a microgame about cyberpunk freelancers in a grainy retro-future. It’s an action/adventure RPG soaked in neon-glow nostalgia and a grim determination to survive in a world that’s just as messed up as sci-fi authors warned us about (but at least you’ve got a cool computer). But also,…
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2400 devlogs
Whenever I add a new game to the 2400 series, I write up a devlog over on the Itch.io page. These started as pretty brief changelogs, but over time, I got into more detail about the design process behind them, and how to blend them with other 2400 modules. And — somewhat to my surprise…
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Why I keep going back Into the Odd
I recently had the honor of joining Chris McDowall on his Bastionland podcast to talk about Agents of the O.D.D., and other games I’ve written inspired by Into the Odd. Chris asked why I went with these rules for Agents, and I babbled quite a bit about the history of the game’s development, but not…
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What Shang-chi can teach GMs about running combat
Marvel’s Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings isn’t just a terrifically fun martial arts movie—it’s also a master class for how to run fun combat scenes in RPGs. Recent editions of D&D strive to make combat interesting through tactical decision-making and managing economies of actions, hit points, and spell slots, but the key…
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Running Fate content with Messerspiel
I have a lot of Fate games. The Fate Core Kickstarter campaign was famously generous with stretch goals, delivered over the course of years. I went on to back the Fate Worlds Patreon for a bunch more “Worlds of Adventure,” and I’ve bought plenty of Fate toolkits and third-party games. There’s so much in there…
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Soulslike campaign suggestions
I got a nice email today from someone wondering what kinds of adventures I’d run using Grave, and my response was so long I figured I might as well turn it into a blog post. Here are some things I used for my own soulslike RPG campaigns—maybe you’ll find them handy too! Exhumed is a…
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Combat in 24XX
If your experience with RPGs comes mostly from D&D, I can imagine you might be a little confused upon reading 2400, the 24XX SRD, or any of various 24XX RPGs by others. While I hope that GMs will find what they need in the free, expanded rules supplement Emergency Rules, or in the combat-focused Battle…
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2400: From old modem to game jam
My usual method of game design sees me blogging about an idea before I actually publish anything. 2400 unintentionally represents a pretty different approach: I mentioned some ideas for an Into the Odd sci-fi hack awhile back here, but eventually decided to just pick a different direction and run with it. Now that that new…
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On a mission from O.D.D.
For my new playtest of Agents of the O.D.D., I’m running a series of one-shots and short arcs, linked into a campaign. Some of that is my own material (like the intro adventure from the currently available edition of Agents), but most of it is adapted from published adventures, including several from Michael Prescott’s excellent…
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QZ: Welcome to the Quarantine Zone
This week I released a new game for the Eclectic Bastion Jam titled QZ, short for “quarantine zone.” It’s a science-fiction RPG inspired by Roadside Picnic and Annihilation, designed to send modern-day scientists, soldiers, and scavengers on expeditions into an area where the laws of nature no longer apply. QZ is by far my longest…
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How to learn spells in Bastionland
I love the simplicity of Electric Bastionland and Into the Odd and “foreground growth” in place of advancement, but I also understand the appeal of detailed character upgrade options. For a lot of players, getting to plan out and optimize their character trajectory is an essential part of the fun of RPGs. There are, of…
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100 O.D.D. items
I initially released Agents of the O.D.D. with a list of 20 magic items, or “arcana,” but admitted right out the gate that I felt it needed a lot more. So, here are a lot more. The first 20 are rituals, which take longer to perform safely; you might only be able to do them…
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Collecting magic items with a day job
I love roleplaying games with tons of weird little magic items and strange oddities. They’re the secret sauce in games like Into the Odd, Numenera, and (since I realized what those games were doing that I liked so much) my own in-progress game Odd Luck Charms. I think those sorts of things work even better…
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Change Agents of the O.D.D.
I’m running Agents of the O.D.D. tonight for the first time since Metatopia, and looking to playtest some changes. (Please feel free to grab a free “community copy” of the earlier edition if you’re practicing good social distancing or performing essential services during the pandemic, by the way.) We likely won’t even get to all…
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(Un)written rules of play
I tend to design relatively short RPGs because I’m more likely to get them done, and because the intended audience (myself, my personal friends, and fellow longtime hobbyists) doesn’t need much more than the basics. I’m working on a couple longer games now, though, one of which is explicitly written to welcome newcomers both to…
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Pretendo’s first 4 months self-publishing on Itch.io
In September of this year, after much hemming and hawing about where (or even whether) to share my games, I started publishing games on Itch.io. For the benefit of anybody out there wondering what taking that plunge looks like, I thought I’d share a little bit about what the first few months of hobbyist self-publishing…
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Down Town draft: Into the Odd meets Blue Blazes
Awhile back, I blogged about a work-in-progress RPG tentatively titled “Down Town,” a hack of Into the Odd about modern-day urban spelunkers delving into the weird underworld far beneath the streets. I think this game will be super fun to run, so I keep getting distracted thinking about it—but I have more pressing projects, and,…
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When does it make sense for a hobbyist to publish?
I love making games, and I’ve been happier and more productive than ever before since realizing it’s “just” a hobby for me. After switching career tracks out of the game industry, however, I felt a bit confused about what the end goal should be of all my hobbyist design work. Back when I assumed I…
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The more you know
I like RPGs to move fast. I only have a few hours per session, only once every month or two. I want stuff to happen. I don’t want to get bogged down too much in exposition or referencing, so I tend to run games with simple, easy-to-remember rules, and very little required setting knowledge. Exhumed…
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Fonts of wisdom
Please pardon me while I take a break from obsessing over game design long enough to obsess over graphic design. Specifically, typefaces. If one of my students had turned in a 40-page book in a novelty typeface back when I was teaching design classes, I would’ve docked their grade for it. I gave myself a pass…
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Metatopia Design Diary: Agents of the O.D.D.
I ran two sessions of Agents of the O.D.D. at Metatopia, a convention geared toward playtesting games in development. The feedback was a mix of things that made me go, “Great, I was planning on doing that already!” and things that made me go, “Hmm, I’m really going to have to think about that.” Some key takeaways: More…
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Metatopia Design Diary: Nighttide
Last weekend, I ran my first playtest of Nighttide (and the Gauge system on which it’s based), a diceless gothic horror game inspired by Bloodborne and Castlevania. It was a lot of fun! Also, it didn’t work. That session did suggest that it could work, though, and that this game may be worth developing into something more detailed than a page-long scenario…
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Agents of the O.D.D. now out in the field
Late last night, I uploaded my Cryptid Jam submission, Agents of the O.D.D., a game of (paranormal) paranormal investigators. The implied setting is something of a mashup of Hellboy, Planetary, and The Laundry Files, with rules based on Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland. It’s got 100 agent profiles, 20 arcane objects, 1 short scenario…
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Gauge: A diceless RPG about survival
The Your Move Jam posed a challenge: Design a “Powered by the Apocalypse” (a.k.a. “PbtA”) game with only a single move. I’d been sitting on an idea for just such a game for a long time: Gauge, a diceless, token-based game about surviving in hostile environments with tight resources. I’d been sitting on it because…
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Hit + Die: A 1 page, 1 HP RPG
I found out about the One Hit Point jam pretty late, but I loved the concept: All characters in your game must only have one hit point, and must never gain any more. So, with only a few hours here and there to whip something together, I created a very brief game about very brief…
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Grave 1.0 release notes & alternate rules
After five months of playtesting, I’m finally calling Grave (more or less) done. This game offers a minimalist D&D-inspired rule set for soulslike fantasy adventures, built on Ben Milton’s tried-and-true Knave. Like Knave, it only offers hints of an implied setting, so it works best when paired with “Old School Renaissance” (OSR) adventure modules and…
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Aetherway: Tunnel Goons meets Troika!
My second game jam submission in a week (and, well, ever) is Aetherway, for the delightful Goon Jam featuring hacks of Nate Treme’s Tunnel Goons . It’s meant to be a companion and/or conversion for Troika!, but I think it’s potentially useful to anybody who would like d66 tables of strange travelers and otherworldly portals—and…
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Advanced Let’s Play Pretend 2nd Edition
I submitted something to a game jam for the first time this week: Advanced Let’s Play Pretend 2nd Edition, for OnRamp Jam by Paul Beakley of The Indie Game Reading Club. The purpose of the jam was to provide a small game—no more than two sides of a page in length—that experienced GMs could use…
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This giant, immortal bug wizard seems like an OK dude
Mind control is tricky business. As a player in a D&D-descended game, you understand that you have limited control over the world at large, but you are the final arbiter on how your character thinks and acts. Losing control of your character’s behavior is effectively being denied the right to actually play the game. No…
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Whitehacking Numenera
As we’ve established, I can’t stop hacking Numenera. The more I try to figure out how to mine the parts I like best, though, the more I feel like the most sensible thing is not to house rule the Cypher System—it will always been too fiddly for my purposes—but to run some other game entirely,…
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Knaves of the Ninth World: A Numenera conversion
Featured image artwork is TM and © 2019 Monte Cook Games, LLC. I’ve been kicking around ideas for a far-future adventure and exploration game lately, along the lines of Numenera and In the Light of a Ghost Star. In the process, I stumbled upon the realization that Numenera content maps surprisingly neatly onto the rules…
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MinimalD6 Numenera
As long as I’m posting a bunch of Numenera hacks all at once, I might as well be thorough. Here’s how you can make use of a bunch of the ideas in your Numenera books with the much looser MinimalD6 rule set, which has spawned a bunch of other simple hacks. This post includes the…
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Into the Ninth World: Converting Numenera to Into the Odd
Featured image artwork is by Bear Weiter and is TM and © 2019 Monte Cook Games, LLC. Monte Cook Games updated their fan use license to specifically prohibit use of their materials in Google Docs, so I’m reproducing my adaptation of Numenera using Into the Odd rules as a blog post. See the summary at…
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Decyphered: Simplified house rules for Numenera & The Strange
Featured image artwork is by Bear Weiter and is TM and © 2019 Monte Cook Games, LLC. Monte Cook Games updated their fan use license to specifically prohibit use of their materials in Google Docs, so I’m reproducing my streamlined take on the Cypher System as a blog post. See the summary at the original…
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5 card blood: Fast-paced combat rules
I rather enjoyed John Wick 3, but I must admit that I spent about half of the movie wondering, “How would I model this kind of fight scene in an RPG?” (And I’m really glad I’m not the only one who wonders this kind of thing.) I’m still thinking it over, but here’s where I…
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Playtesting the dullest demonslaying
Yesterday, my group took Grave for a spin for the third time. I knew that they were nearing the end of their journey through the Veins of the Earth, so I prepared a number of other locations for them to visit next, unsure of which they’d pick. An ever surprising lot, they picked the absolute…
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Exhumed: Pamphlet Dungeon Edition
Last night, I completed a version of Exhumed for the Pamphlet Dungeon Jam hosted by Nate Treme—about half a minute after the jam closed at 1:00am local time. (It’s been a rough week.) I was disappointed to be unable to show it off among the other excellent pieces, but I figured, hey, I made the…
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What AGE taught me about stunts
Today I got to play the first session in a campaign for The Expanse RPG, based on the AGE system. I think I’ll enjoy it because the other players and their characters are great, I dig the setting, and sooner or later, the rules will become familiar enough to us that turns will go more…
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Searchers of the Untitled: 2 one-page D&Dish games
Searchers of the Unknown is a one-page take on old school D&D, built on a simple premise: Any character can be boiled down to a five-item stat line of the sort used for monsters (like “AC 12 MV 10′ HD 3 HP 12 #AT 1 D d8 sword”). In a clever bit of design, armor…
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Play Report: (Soulslike) Veins of the Earth
Veins of the Earth is a weird, evocative, generally excellent guide to subterranean D&Dish adventure. There is more in there than I will ever be able to use, but I intend to milk it for as much as I can for my soulslike Knave campaign (a.k.a. Grave), and then dig even more out when I…
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Design Diary: One (more) foot in the Grave
Much to my own surprise, I think I’m about to finish Grave—a variant on Ben Milton’s Knave, built for soulslike games. Today was only the second session I’ve run with these rules, but after the session, the players generally agreed that it’s pretty close to done. I shouldn’t be so surprised, though: The rules don’t…
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Rumors, Legends & Lies for a soulslike campaign
Here are 45 snippets of lore that probably aren’t making it to the final text of Grave, but that I could imagine making use of someday. I figured I’d put them here rather than just leaving them on the cutting room floor. This list came out of an attempt to provide d50 Dark Souls-inspired “Rumors,…
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Grave: Hacking Knave for soulslike adventure
I’ve been wondering aloud for months about how (and whether) to fix the rules for my soulslike game, Exhumed—but learning that its working title is taken by yet another metal band may have been the final straw. (“Titles that inadvertently turn out to be taken by metal bands” may be the only consistent thing in…
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That time we killed the AntiPhoenix
“There is one AntiPhoenix and only one. It’s written on this page; there is no other. It came alive when you read these words. You can use this Black Phoenix in your game. It’s the only one you’ll ever get. When it dies, if it dies, tear out this page. Take it outside. Burn it.…
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Play Report: Knave + Stygian Library
Due to an unfortunate confluence of events, it’s been about three months since I was last able to get a group together for an RPG. Thankfully, I was finally able to get together just two players for a few hours today, and used the opportunity to run them through a completely randomly-generated crawl through the…
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Playing RPGs to win
“‘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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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Nuka World(s)
I have something of a hobby within a hobby: not just making and playing RPGs, but specifically, making and remaking hacks to play my favorite video games with friends. I’ve already made two hacks to play Fallout, and have been kicking around ideas for a third, built on the system for Exhumed. I really have…
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Lessons from playtesting once in a blue (super wolf blood) moon
When I last wrote about playtesting Exhumed, I lamented that it seemed impossible to deliver a fun experience to my friends and whip my rules into shape. I had been trying to test so many different mechanics across so many sessions that each session was getting bogged down with the fallout of experimental fixes that…
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Exploiting Details: An Unfinished System
Last year, I ran a game of It’s Not My Fault! with a new set of “house rules” for a group of players who’d never played any Fate game before. I replaced Fate-specific jargon with terms that made sense in conversation, stripped out some rules exceptions I felt were harder to explain and remember than they were worth,…
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Designing a Soulslike Action Economy
The greatest design problem I face with my soulslike tabletop RPG, Exhumed, is getting the feel right for the action economy—that is, the rules for how frequently each character can act, and what they can use those actions to do. When I showed readers online the initial approach, the most common reaction was doubt that…
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Setting Up (and Upsetting) Settings
Establishing a setting that everyone at the table feels invested in is very hard, but can be deeply rewarding in play. When tabletop RPG players draw on their setting-specific knowledge to solve problems, direct play, and even just make joking references, it evokes a sense that we’re all there to share something fun and special,…
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Playtesting Perils
My soulslike RPG playtest has hit a bit of a road block. As I described in a recent playtest review, Exhumed is already technically a playable game, and my free time is at a premium, so I jumped right into running a campaign to test every system. Unsurprisingly, this has indeed revealed some issues, which…
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Seven Sorceries
Whenever I come across (or come up with) a magic system I think would be fun to use in an RPG someday, I make a note of it in a document (which I just realized I should probably be referring to as my “grimoire,” “spell book,” or something comparably dorky). Here are a few I’ve…
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Resleeving Eclipse Phase
Eclipse Phase is one of my absolute favorite RPG settings. Humanity is now transhumanity—functionally immortal thanks to regular backups, and inclusive of digital consciousnesses and uplifted animals—but our unchecked advancement lost us the Earth and scatterd the survivors across the solar system. The setting is both deep and broad enough to support campaigns based around political…
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The Basilisk Hack
The Basilisk Hack presents rules for the transhuman horror game Eclipse Phase based on the first edition of The Black Hack, a super-simple take on old school D&D. Being based on one Creative Commons licensed game (EP) and one game under the Open Game License (TBH), the rules are doubly free, so have at. I wrote this many months ago, posted an…
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Decyphering Numenera & The Strange
There’s a lot I like about Monte Cook Games’ Numenera and The Strange RPGs: bizarre science-fantasy settings, evocative art, high-concept character construction, random tables with inspiring items and backgrounds, and rules to encourage continually cycling through shockingly powerful single-use items. It’s a combination that ensures plenty of surprises for everyone at the table, GM included, and the sessions I’ve…
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d20 Ways to Nerd Out About Partial Success
Prepare for some navel-gazing and boring math that probably doesn’t even feel relevant at most people’s tables. It’s mostly for my own reference down the line, but maybe you’ll find something you relate to here. I love non-binary dice rolling systems. Even just adding a single option between success and failure—“yes, you succeed, but…”—adds a…
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Advanced HD&D, 2nd Edition
Someday I would like to run an old school D&D game that uses hit dice as an expendable resource. Here’s how I might do it. The Basics: You have a reserve of as many hit dice as your level, and your hit die size is based on class (d4 wizard, d6 thief, d8 cleric, d10…
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The (Mostly) Indecipherable Spellbook
I have always been a little dissatisfied with the two main mechanisms I’ve seen for magic users to gain spells in D&D: Either the player just picks one from a book and the character suddenly knows it, or the character finds a spell in the world and among loot and gets to learn it when…
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DANGERS, CHILLS & Other Exciting THINGS
I love when RPG rules allow for results somewhere between success and failure. That “partial success,” “success at a cost,” or “yes, but…” keeps stories feeling uncertain and makes the unqualified successes feel even harder earned. Coming up with contextually appropriate costs, however, can be tough to improvise. Rob Donoghue offers Potential Risks (also used in Soft Horizon games)…
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Playtest Review: Exhumed
Every time I’ve run Exhumed—an RPG built on the Into the Odd rules, and inspired by Dark Souls—it seems to have worked more or less like I intended. Playtesters familiar with soulslike games tell me it manages to evoke the same feel, and players new to the genre assure me it’s still interesting and accessible for them too. The…
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A Selection of Soulslike TTRPGs
If I enjoy a video game enough to actually complete it, then I’m unlikely to stop thinking about it after the credits roll. Instead, I’ll find some like-minded fans, and try to find a way bring what we loved about that game to our tabletop game sessions. And so, when I resolved to run something…
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Inventory Management
“What are you working on?” This should be a pretty easy question, shouldn’t it? When asked last year, though, I realized my answer was absurdly long. I could name at least a dozen games I had been “working on” for weeks, months, even years in some cases—but not a single one I had actually finished…
Pretendo Games 