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 ...

We're playing as these guys. MiniLOG Ages ago I wrote a One Page GLoG as a challenge to myself. I looked back on it recently and shuddered. While there were some good ideas there, I felt it lacked precision, beauty, and was still plagued with too much bulk. I slimmed it down and painted it up into MiniLOG, which is everything a player really needs to know to enjoy a game of GLoG. The basic rules are: 3 Attributes (Might, Grace, and Will) that are  the modifiers. 3 Fixed DCs Boons and Banes that stack, cancel each-other out, and boost the Crit/Fumble chance. A simplified Death & Dismemberment table. Simple and familiar gear, spells, and leveling. Plus some other things. All on one page. You can take a peak here . MiniDELVE   We're slaying these things. To accompany such a small game, I needed an equally small but punch-packed GM toolkit. Enter MiniDELVE, a distillation of everything I know (or think I know) about dungeon crafting. Dungeon overview prompts. Layout guidelines...

An article for GLoGtober '23 ,  Challenge 1: Failed Gods and their Consequences Art generated via Bing Image Generator "The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to." - Terry Pratchett, Small Gods . Practicing Religion While a cleric or similar class gains abilities from their associated deity or pantheon, any character may practice a religion of their choice. Adherents of a religion may:  seek out the blessing of their religion's priest (a d6 added to any dice roll, which is lost once used. Most priests may only have 1 such blessing active at a time),  pray for wisdom at a shrine of their deity (once per day, base 1-in-10 odds of receiving a minor but useful divine revelation, +1 each for an appropriate offering, a recent act of service, or additional follower present, up to 5-in-10),  pray for a miracle related to the deity's domain (X% chance of success, where X is the character's level. Praying for a miracle takes an action, and ca...

From time to time I tinker with a ruleset that is an abominable crossbreed of OSR concepts and the Heroic Fantasy aimed at by 5e. This ruleset may never see the light of day, but here's a little portion of it, inspired by Skerples and various others.  Boss Fights A Boss is a unique creature that is designed to be dangerous for a full party of 3-5 adventurers of average level equal to its HD. Boss creatures are marked in the creature section with an *. A boss’s HP is equal to its HD*10. Boss Actions: A boss activates 3 times per combat round: once during its normal turn, once at the end of the combat round, and once as a telegraphed action. A telegraphed action is announced at the start of any player’s turn, and then occurs immediately following that player’s turn. Boss Saves: If a boss fails a saving throw it may choose to only partially suffer the negative effects. E.G. it may be polymorphed into a half-dragon, half-rabbit abomination. Or a knight targeted by the sleep spell may f...

Inktober 16, Mike Phillips The Mirror Academy To test out "Magus Ludus", a domain game centered on each character being a wizard, I threw 10 level 4 GLoG wizards into a school and told them they were responsible to raise up the next generation of students. Things did not  go according to plan. NOTES ON PLAY Co-Creating With Microscope To begin our game, we played a few rounds of Ben Milton's "Microscope". This resulted in this document (not required reading, but it contains much of the lore). Turn Structure Each turn, players described their goal and how they pursued it. For the most part this meant they were working towards a particular plan of their own design, gaining progress on it until poof  it happened at 100%. While this resulted in some interesting hijinks, I found that it often fell flat in terms of interesting play. Players had a lot of freedom to choose what they wanted to do, but the process often looked identical and presented few risks to the cha...

  "Address to the Deil" by William Hole “Eyes that fire and sword have seen, and horror in the halls of stone, shall look at last on meadows green, and trees and hills they long have known.” - J.R.R. Tolkien Roam: Version 0.1 Rules The Lord of the Rings, The First Law, A Song of Ice and Fire, these are stories that follow a diverse cast of characters as they pursue their goals in a world opposed to them. If I could create a game that fosters those kinds of stories, I'm not sure I'd play much else. I have no idea if I've captured it or not, but I intend to find out. Roam is largely based on my previous post, Magus Ludus , and takes a few pointers from Into the Odd. I still hold to the belief that the best rules are the ones that stay firmly out of the way, and only step in during moments of uncertainty to show the path forward. With that in mind, Roam is a minimal 2-page ruleset that includes suggestions for Tests & Saves, Stamina & Rest, Combat (including ...