Category: RPGs
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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 