Shadow & Fae

  Stapleton Park, John Atkinson Grimshaw Where our characters are going is infinitely more important to consider for tabletop games than where they have been. Some may decide that's not true, but hear me out. You can write pages and pages about where your character has been, what they have done, and how their past life has affected them up to the point of the beginning of the campaign. These pages can be written to the level of a masterpiece novel, but never actually effect the game. Now, you could say, "Well, the GM should be doing more to incorporate the character's backstory." And that's a fair assessment. Many GMs have sorted through those novels of backstory and fished out interesting hooks to wave in front of their players. I am not saying this is wrong, or even that backstories are unimportant. In fact it's a useful process for making stories at the table engaging, however, backstories bring the characters to a point, but they do not inherently propel t...

  Trespasser As my current campaign is on a short hiatus, I've had ample opportunity to peek around and see what other folks are doing in the indie TTRPG arena. One work of heart that I've come across is called "Trespasser", available on itch here . It's written by Tundalus, and is an excellent Old-school system inspired by 4th Edition D&D's tactical combat. A few highlights from the rules include: The "Potency Die" a scaling dice used for all kinds of abilities, especially magical damage. Tight grid-based tactical combat. "Recovery Dice" which fuel healing and are regained via long rests. Slow/quick initiative, determining whether characters act before or after foes. "Main Action / Minor Action / Move" Action Economy, with well thought out options for Main and Minor Actions. Special moves are granted by combat "themes". Which determine how characters act in combat. Characters start with 1 theme chosen from their cla...