Shadow & Fae

Art by Jorge Jacinto Skip to the Game A Game About Stories Without question, I play games for the story.  My favorite video games, TTRPGs, and even board games all contain these beautiful, unpredictable stories that leave me with feelings  about the events that transpired while we were having fun. And the trouble I've run into lately with writing RPGs is that my systems tend to consist of different mechanics to tell the same type of stories: stories about monster-hunters and treasure-delvers who risk life and limb for gold and glory.  Sometimes the stories stretch beyond those simple bounds, of course, but they usually do this on their own , not because the rules actively encouraged them to do so. Saving children doesn't make you a better Barbarian. There are few game mechanics that actually encourage you to save the orphanage or pursue whatever else it is your character believes in. 5e has its oft-forgotten "Inspiration", but it falls flat when put to the test. It is...

  Iron Town - Princess Mononoke Let's condense as much as we can, as small as we can. MiniREALM is an addition to MiniLOG and MiniDELVE that aims to condense as much as possible about creating overland regions for D&D into a single sheet of paper.  This does mean that a lot of what is on the paper is intended as useful inspiration that the referee will need to interpret. The goal of this is to offer a little bit of everything, from overview Region Prompts, to risky but rewarding Points of Interest,  and even a tiny  section on ruling a realm.  Much thanks is due to Chris McDowall for getting me to think about the overland aspect of OSR games via Mythic Bastionland. I think this does it for the MiniSERIES for now. One last thing that I've wondered about is a page of MiniFEATS that players can roll on at the start of a game to gain an unusual ability. This wouldn't just be a numerical bonus, but a page of actions that your average human couldn't perform. Not ...