Shadow & Fae

  "The Underworld" - From Mythic Bastionland's Quickstart Mythic Bastionland  captured my attention when the quickstart came out, and—having now run a few games in it—it's amazing how simple and versatile it is. That said, all characters are knights sworn to Seek the Myths, Honor the Seers, and Protect the Realm. While this does create fun stories that swing from Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail to something like Elden Ring's crumbling world, there certainly remains some room for new ideas. One that's pecked at me for awhile is the idea of Sorcerers or Mystics. Here's a quick crack at it.  You can find the final edition (including custom character sheets) on itch .  Mythic Bastionland - Sorcerers All sorcerers begin with a pony and a staff (d6, shatter to  deny  an attack).  Instead of gaining glory, sorcerers gain  wisdom . 0 Wisdom - Novice - Worthy to learn. 3 Wisdom - Mystic - Worthy to speak. 6 Wisdom - Magus - Worthy to teach. 9 Wisdo...

    Beware what you wake in the dark... At some point last year I bought Mothership, and after reading through the player's survival guide I decided to give it a shot. I ran some friends on the GLoG server through a space station as they tried to rescue... someone. There were lots of laughs along the way (My ma' was a robot!), but I'd hardly call it horror. A little disappointed, I put it back on the shelf. Still, I've been meaning to come back and read through the Warden's Manual for some time, especially as I keep hearing it called one of the best referee books in the Old School vein. Friends and foes, I was not lied to. The Warden's Manual is punchy, blunt, and full of hands-on guidance about how to create situations that are already bad, and destined to get  really bad  before the get better (and some day even worse). The usefulness of the manual extends beyond sci-fi into the realms of all role-playing games. A few items that I found especially good were: T...

"What if all the Ghibli movies—or stories very like them—were happening in the same world?" That was the question behind West of Lune , a setting I've started to poke a little bit. No doubt it will evolve beyond this initial question, but a rich world of spirits, nature, and growing up in the shadow of war is a vibrant seed to begin with.  Also it has a forbidden tea shop in the middle of the map. West of Lune 200 years ago, spirits were first trapped in the city of Carav. Spirits began to hide from humans. 150 years ago, steam was mastered in the city of Kaisil. The city holds an annual Festival of Iron, in which young inventors show off their latest creations. 100 years ago, Kaisil demanded fealty from Carav. When Carav refused, the Great War began. 80 years ago, Carav destroyed itself while experimenting with a spiritual weapon, creating the Poisonwood. 10 years ago, Varis was captured by Kaisilian troops wielding rifles. 9 years ago, the city of Ashir was destroyed by...

  I 've been desperately trying to get this out before Halloween, and HERE IT IS! https://shadowandfae.itch.io/harwood This idea struck me a few weeks back while I was watching Over the Garden Wall and reading "Where the Dark Stands Still" I knew if I didn't get on it soon, I'd never finish it at all. It's been a very fun little hex crawl to write, but I must confess it is not fully play-tested.  Things I'm Proud Of A complete mini-hexcrawl, dungeon, and human-made art! A little village with its own history, holiday, and hauntings! A solid adventure scenario with some interesting possibilities. Things I'm Not Sure About I think the village could be fleshed out with a bit more intrigue, but it's probably sufficient for play. I hope you enjoy... A Walk in the Harwood!

Death & Divinity Artist Unknown Look upon the world, how rain falls, trills down the hillsides, pours into the rivers and seas, and rises again as mist in the air. If our world is so careful to conserve the stuff of rivers and seas, how careful shall we suppose it to be with the stuff of souls? And yet, as one can never step in the same river twice, it is known that no being is ever truly reborn. The stuff of their soul melds into the great Will of all things, blending with the immaterial essence, the Materia Animae, of all other souls, and from this great sea, new souls are drawn. And they are born into the world we leave them. Our lust for divinity will not lead to life, but to an eternal lingering death, in which nothing is renewed, and all things fade. The Fault of Eternity Immortality is not agelessness.  All things fade, crumble, and give way in time. Though some have achieved immortality through binding their souls to arcane constructions known as “Bastions”, even those ...

You're Hex-Crawling.  Each night and day the Referee rolls a handful of dice, waiting for the opportune moment... There it is! She rolls the d12, because  bell-curves are for cowards , and peers down a sheet of notebook paper to see which  interesting encounter  she's about to throw at her fatigued, over-encumbered party on their way back from her dungeon . She rolls a few dice, smiles, and announces: "As you walk through the flowered woods, sunlight streams through the branches. You climb over a fallen log in the path. Just then, you hear an odd sound—the squealing of a pig followed by dozens of unmistakably goblin voices shouting screaming threats and insults from behind it. The noise is headed directly toward you." A Model for Regional "Scene" Tables You may grab the Google Doc for the above example  HERE .  Save a copy by clicking file > Make a Copy, and edit to your heart's content. How do I use it? Once per day, roll a d6 for weather and a d4 to...

  GLoGtober continues! The first challenge I rolled, but second I've now completed, is "Anime-Inspired Content".  While I watch a little anime, I've never considered writing anything strongly inspired by it.  I wrote about 3 half-baked generic systems before giving up and watching an anime I've never seen before. The show is about an MMO guild-master who finds himself pulled into the game after the servers are shut down. The NPCs his guild has created to fill their guildhall spring to life and bow to his every command. But what if he was just gone, and those generals were left to themselves? Thus was born the premise for  DARK POWERS: ARISE!

By Harikayu The second challenge I rolled for GLoGtober 2024 (but the first one I've finished) was a 300 word hack. I give you:  Winter Wyrm Tiny GLoGhacks have been my jam for a while now. I've written 2 or 3 over the years, the most notable one being MiniGLoG , but even that game is 1100 words long. Winter Wyrm  was nuts. It's probably horribly broken, but it is a complete GLoG in exactly 300 words. It even has three 4-Step classes! I did want to do something slightly different, so I switched abilities from d20-based to SWADE's tiered dice chain, with every 4 points being a success. Vivanter  got an early first look at this, and suggested an additional little challenge: Write a 4 step GLoG class of your own in 30 words or less. I dare you to try!

 It's (Almost) GLoGtober! TitleKnown This year's challenges have all been posted over on Glass Candles , and I've decided to take them on! The rules officially state that you can roll or choose on each of the challenge tables, so I made a little game of it. I would roll each challenge in order, but I gave myself two "Picks". After each roll, I could pick something else from the list if I wanted to, but only immediately after the roll, and only twice. Without further ado, here's how it went: Anime Inspired Content [[ Dark Powers: Arise! ]] 300 Word Hack [[ Winter Wyrm ]] A downtime activity you do in real life, but have never seen rendered in a game.  No ideas at all came for this, so I instead chose to combine 2 other options, and do an encounter table for domain level play, inspired by real world artwork . Death & Divinity [[ Bastions, Faith, and Clerics ]] Race-as-class , I'm really not very excited about Race-as-Class right now, so I'll switch t...

  Art by Eric Belisle You are not fully yourself until you realize your place in the wider universe, your connection to the leaves, stones, sun, moon, and all other things. You are the universe. Reach out your hand, and the mountains shall shatter. The Monk: A Class for Shadow & Fae 2e , and Other GLoGs With each Chapter, gain Combatant, and... One, Lesson of Water Lesson of Earth Lesson of Air Lesson of Fire Starting Gear : Staff (d6, 1b, 2H, Light, Shatter d4), Incense (1b), Flint & Steel (1/3b), d4 rations, 2d6 GP. Starting Skill : Cantor | Spirits | Herbs | Brewing Combatant : Gain 2 HP and +1 to Hit and Damage each time you take this. If you take this feature 3 times, you may take an extra action in combat, which may be an attack. If you are Mortally Wounded, roll a d6 instead of a d8. One : You are at your best when you realize your place within the universe. By meditating for at least an hour, you may restore a pool of Ki dice equal to your Monk Chapters. Ki dice are...

I got a great question on my Itch page today, and it got me thinking quite a bit about why I built the game I did, and what I learned along the way! I've reposted my answer below, for posterity, and anyone interested. Hello! Always exciting to hear that someone's had fun with my games. Shadow & Fae was my first complete game, which I wrote to bring a group of players familiar with 5e into a simpler but still diverse game. It works with a unified d20 roll-high mechanic for most things, and has classes with similar features and names to the modern giant games, like PF2e and D&D 5e. I wanted S&F to be a game I could explain quickly, run smoothly, and most of all—create new content for quickly. If one of my players asked, "Can I play a cat?" I wanted to be able to say "Yep! Here's how that could work." Goblin Tales was inspired by a dice mechanic, originally. The blackjack roll. Instead of having modifiers and scores, players just want to roll ...

We're Ogre-Posting today. "Buck", by Changming Xu Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. - Phil. 6:13 An ogre is a hollow creature, never satisfied with its lot, always trying to fill itself up. Despite opinions of lesser  monstrologists (Such as E.F. Curd and Company), it is clear that ogres are intelligent beings, at least as intelligent as the average human. Their fault is in their inescapable longing . - Carrivilus Barq, Monstrologist. 1. Buck At first Buck only wanted friends. As a young human boy, he longed to be included in the gaggle of peasant children that gathered each morning by the well in the early hours, but his twisted face earned him the scorn of his would-be companions. One can feel sad about this for a moment. Unfortunately, Buck chose the route of violence to solve his problems. A thrown stone marred the face of a boy a little older than him, and in the ensuing ...

For those who have been waiting for print editions, they are now easy to order thru Lulu ! Click here to get a copy! I've received proofs of both, and am impressed with the end result! They are saddle-stitched, 60# cream pages, with beautiful matte covers that feel sturdy in the hand. As always, you can get free copies of both these, and all my other games, on Itch . Thanks again for all your support and encouragement, it means the world to me.

The other day I dreamed up a dangerous game of desperate folk doing what they needed to survive in a world that doesn't care for them. For now, I'm calling it Goon . The Setting Imagine a world something like 1920's America, and nothing like 1920's America. There's a City on the River Rhynne named San Rheese. Illegal casks of booze flow up river from Port Victoria to the factories of Cipolla City, and trains run from the civilized East steadily deeper into the untamable West. And here in the center, at the Crossroads of the New World, we do what we have to do to survive. The Players The game is about little gangs vying for power and recognition in a corrupt world. Some are dedicated to the good of the people, and some to the size of their pocketbooks. It's up to the players to decide what their little gang will pursue, and how. The System I've taken cues from GLoG and Into the Odd to create a dangerous system where tomorrow is never guaranteed, and drawing a...

  "Poems & Stories" By J.R.R. Tolkien, Cover by Pauline Baynes, 1980 Edition Worlds from Seeds The most daunting foe to many a budding Referee (Sometimes called a Game Master, or even a Dungeon Master) is the blank page. Let's not mince words, Referees are frail, fallible human beings of limited capacity, just like (almost) every other human mucking about on Earth, and yet we're expected to summon worlds from our fingertips, breathe life into the unwashed hordes, and pull intriguing lore straight out of our unmentionables . It's too much to ask. But hubris-filled fools that we are, we're going to try it anyway. Where shall we start?  From Tiny Seeds What is it that interests you personally about fantasy stories? For now, keep things painfully simple. Your list could be as simple as "A Dungeon, a Dragon". There's a reason that recipe works. But there's no harm in spicing things up a little: "A Corrupt Temple, a Falling Star, a 'Vi...

There's a lot of options when it comes to modeling weapons and combat with dice games. I'm of the bent that combat should be just as interesting as the rest of the game. Some like to bypass it by making it as fast as possible, others basically turn combat into the whole game. When the rubber hits the road, I want to see players make interesting choices each turn, so that when combat occurs, it is just as interesting as exploration and roleplay. The trouble with this in traditional dungeon games is you only get one action each round, and if it's anything other than "attack" the rules sometimes punish you for doing something "sub-optimal". My attempt at a solution to this is to give everyone two actions in combat, one of which can be an attack or spell. Fighters get an extra action which can be an attack at 3rd level, but everyone can try various "maneuvers" if they're in a situation where they might be able to do so. Weapon Types On top of t...

  Art from Rune Factory 2 The biological ancestry of a slime is dubious at best. Are they in fact some form of mold given mobility by the evolutionary process? Or are they a magical creation or mishap? Furthermore, some slimes have been noted to carry the bones of a single humanoid within them, forming around them as a replacement for flesh. Is the slime actually the changed body of the old humanoid? Strangest still, and rarest of all, are those few slimes that bear true sentience... Nicholas RookZero Slime: A Simple GLoG Ancestry You may choose "Slime" as your optional race. This comes with the following benefits and drawbacks: Morph : You can squeeze through openings only an inch wide. You can move gear through as well, so long as it would fit. Slimeform : You take 1/2 damage from physical sources, but double from elemental sources. You have about as much mass as an average human, and can shape it as you see fit. Sticky : You can cling to walls and ceilings and move along t...

Art by Andy Romanchik Someone on Reddit got me thinking about a loose class system that really lets you go wild with building your character the way you see fit. This is probably wildly broken. Regardless, I love it. And it should "just work" with most GLoG systems. ModuGLOG At level 1 gain a "History". With each level, gain 2 "Feat Points". Spend a Feat Point on any Path to gain a feat of your choice from that path. Histories Each history grants a Skill, Starting Gear, and a Feature. You may choose your history, or roll a d6: 1-3. Human | 4. Dwarf | 5. Changeling | 6. Returned Human Anywhere you can find water, sun, and dirt, you're sure to get humans. Skill (d8): 1. Chef | 2. Sailor | 3. Smith | 4. Doctor | 5. Merchant | 6. Herbalist | 7. Thief | 8. Noble Starting Gear : 1 Weapon, Light Armor or Bow, Tool related to Skill, 2d6 GP. Versatile : Gain +1 Feat Point at level 1. Dwarf Carved from stone and sung to fleshy life, the dwarves don't ty...