Shadow & Fae

  If you can't tell, I drew that myself. It's been an interesting few days for me, as I have taken a step I've never really done before.  I've published a full adventure over on Itch, "The Bones of Ol' Bill." The process of drafting, re-drafting, and editing it into a workable product was a bit bumpy, and I even changed it once post-publication, but  it's been stupidly fun. See, I've been running a game in my own homebrew world for years. There are places, people, and problems that have been sitting in a file on my desktop that I doubted I would ever think about again. And then I had an idea. What if I shared them? What if I took those people beloved by my table, fleshed them out, and organized them into an adventure? Arnesport The town of Arnesport wasn't the first place I ever ran a game—it was the second. A band of town guards (my players) were following the trail of a group of kidnappers, and they caught a boat from Arnesport to the next st...

  Grab it Here I just got home from a bit of a trip with my wife and boys, and during the trip I decided to run a quick campaign. I considered breaking out a dice app and making some rough stats, but I thought, what the heck, the boy's 4 and my wife's driving, we'll just play pretend. It was... alright. I missed the little bit of grounding that mechanics lend to a game, but it got me thinking, how could we make an RPG without dice, or RNG at all? I've heard tales of such things, but - in the serviceless wastelands we were driving through - I couldn't research them at the time.  So here's an abomination of my own creation. I call it Luckless . Luckless works by giving each character a set of spendable Ability scores. If a challenge's DC is less than or equal to your current ability score, you may simply succeed at it. No sweat. However, if a challenge's DC is greater than your ability score, you may spend a point from your current ability score to add you...

In working on the rules for Shadow & Fae, I've come to a section I intended to write on how to make travel fun. There are basic rules already for travel speed, how often to roll encounters, camping, hunting, etc. But mechanics alone cannot create fun. How do we take a road—a line on a map—and make traveling along it exciting? Here's what I've got so far, and I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say. The Story of the Road When the party sets out on their journey, consider the road and what lays along it. What are the Denizens, Landmarks, and Detours along the way? Denizens Random encounters don’t mean “Random” as in totally gonzo. Rather, there is a randomized chance to meet something that dwells along the road, and there is risk and reward present in each of those encounters. Consider that there is a nearby village suffering from Wasting Disease. From that 1 fact, we can imagine several kinds of people and creatures who might be on the road. 3d4 Villagers l...