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 … Continue reading Exhumed: Pamphlet Dungeon Edition
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 … Continue reading What AGE taught me about stunts
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 … Continue reading Searchers of the Untitled: 2 one-page D&Dish games
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 … Continue reading Play Report: (Soulslike) Veins of the Earth
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 … Continue reading Design Diary: One (more) foot in the Grave
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, … Continue reading Rumors, Legends & Lies for a soulslike campaign
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 … Continue reading Grave: Hacking Knave for soulslike adventure
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. … Continue reading That time we killed the AntiPhoenix
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 … Continue reading Play Report: Knave + Stygian Library
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 … Continue reading Playing RPGs to win
