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 … Continue reading Metatopia Design Diary: Nighttide
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 … Continue reading Agents of the O.D.D. now out in the field
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 … Continue reading Gauge: A diceless RPG about survival
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 … Continue reading Hit + Die: A 1 page, 1 HP RPG
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 … Continue reading Grave 1.0 release notes & alternate rules
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 … Continue reading Aetherway: Tunnel Goons meets Troika!
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 … Continue reading Advanced Let’s Play Pretend 2nd Edition
