I’ve complained at length about the Blades in the Dark rules almost making sense in its review. To summarize, subtly different logic governs the two core mechanics of the game, action and fortune rolls, with plentiful exceptions to how they work in specific cases, making it impossible to comprehend the rules instead of memorizing them. I’ve […]
Sometimes, characters do something they know they shouldn’t, as they let their greed or boneheadedness get the better of them. Cursing them is a traditional punishment. Here you’ll find a rules variant for doing just that, advice on making up your own curses as well as a few examples which range from silly to deadly. […]
13th Age doesn’t much care for terrain or environmental effects. There’s the Tracker and Swashbucker talents, and a bit on using traps in the core book. The GM Resource book has a solid chapter on using terrain and overcoming the stand-and-hit-each-other problem. Good advice, but no mechanics. So, here are some mechanics. This post is a […]
Corruption. Taint. Insanity. Mutation. Warping. The idea that some threats are so horrible, so alien, that dealing with them permanently changes the heroes is very compelling. It’s the cornerstone of Call of Cthulhu games. But whereas in CoC it is an inexorable march toward damnation, it was Heroes of Horror, an excellent D&D 3.5 book, that […]
Welcome to the final (at least for now) installment in the series converting Atomic Robo rules to run a Sunless Sea-inspired game. Previously, we covered character and ship generation, as well as ship combat, trading and zeafaring. This post will have little to do with rules, instead focusing on exploration and mystery of SS, and how to […]
Welcome to the second part of the conversion of Atomic Robo rules to run a Sunless Sea-inspired game. The first installment dealt with character and ship generation, a mostly straightforward matter of applying existing rules. This post will cover ship combat, trading, and zeafaring, all of which required invention of new sub-systems, some of them a departure […]
Have you ever wanted to play a roleplaying game based on Sunless Sea? With a tagline like “lose your mind, eat your crew”, how could you not. It’s a game of zailing (yes, zailing) a steamship in the weird underworld of the Victorian Gothic universe originating in Fallen London, a free narrative browser game and […]
Following post requires knowledge of Don’t Rest Your Head and Portal 2. If you aren’t familiar with them – fix it! This is a how-to on running a crossover game. Cave Johnson here. Boys at the lab have been busy. Built a time machine. Fetched some books from the future. Or from an alternate reality […]
In this post you’ll find several separate ideas smashed together to make a unique (far as I know) add-on system, which transplants directorial narrativism based on informed choice and stated unknowns onto a system of your choice. Don’t worry, all these scary words will be explained. Ideally, it will provide players with a structured way […]