Personable Thoughts

  Recently, there has been discourse on the social medias about the prices we pay (or perhaps rather, do not pay) for our RPG PDFs, including the thread by Chris Bissette of LootTheRoom, and a sternly worded blogpost from Ramona of Alderdoodle. Discussing the value of RPGs is of course something I have done before , and every time I see this discourse, I am tempted to get involved (as indeed I sometimes do ). However, I find that my opinions on this issue are too nuanced to be neatly presented in a series of social media posts, hence, a blog post. Another few bits of preamble that I would like to make clear, is that I don't want to dispute what Chris and Ramona are saying. They run tabletop businesses, I do not. I am just a customer and hobbyist creator. Probably the kind who ought to buy more PDFs. An Outside Look a the Landscape Let's start with an assumption that we can hopefully all agree upon: A professional RPG writer designer deserves to be compensated fairly for the...

  As has been established by the big pink bird over at Prismatic Wasteland, 2025 Is the Year of the Beta . To that end, I have been working hard (ish) in the game mines to finish a first draft of my game Mistwalker . It now sits somewhere in the vicinity of a beta, ashcan, playtest version, or similar. It's out now on Itch, and I'd love for people to read it and tell me what they think. I was asked by Elmcat of  Among Cats and Books to come up with a tagline, so of course I came up with two, depending on whether you want the setting and vibes, or the mechanical stuff: An RPG about venturing out into the mist between cities in a fractured world, inspired by polar expeditions, Nordic folklore and the worldbuilding of Disco Elysium. A classless system with trait-based character building, 5e style skills, abstracted wealth, and high-consequence combat.  If either of these sound cool, maybe take a look? The game started out as a hack of Songbirds 3e, which I have been playin...

  Hot on the heels of my previous review (of the down and dirty game of criminals, Swyvers ) comes another look at an even bigger book! This time, the tarot-based Forged in the Dark game The Hidden Isle with design and writing by Daniel Adams and James Patton , and art by Eliot Baum and Viv Tanner , published by the Austrian Causa Creations under their Sefirot brand. Evolved from the background lore of their previous board game offering, Sefirot , the game revolves around around Agents from the fictional Dioscoria, the titular Hidden Isle . The book is 190 pages of content, roughly A4 sized, and full of beautiful art. Set in what is ostensibly our real world with a dash of magic (inspired by the real beliefs of people at the time) on top, players take the role of agents sent by the Dioscorian government to meddle in the affairs of the rest of the world. Dioscoria itself is presented as a bit of an imperfect utopia: a multicultural haven of enlightenment and tolerance in an other...

Once again I have read a book. Swyvers is not the biggest of books, but it's a nice hardback and thus not a zine, and as we all know "Zine" and "Big book" are the only two types of RPG. Swyvers is written by Luke Gearing with art by David Hoskins , published by Melsonian Arts Council . I backed the Kickstarter for the fancy deluxe version, so this is the version I have read. To the best of my knowledge, the only difference between this and the standard hardcover, is that this one has shiny gold foil (making it a more enticing bit of loot for anyone who would burgle me, I guess). The book has a total of 95 pages of content, written by Luke Gearing at his nastiest, accompanied by David Hoskins' excellent art, bringing Luke's dark fantastic Britain to life. Swyvers is a book full of tables, and this is a good thing, since this is also where the work shines brightest. Gearing's writing is darkly funny, leaving me unable to suppress my chuckles at sever...

It's no secret that I kind of like the bones of the 5e skill system, even if that implementation is flawed. I also think that 5e is a clunky, bloated system, but I do understand its appeal. Making your little Blorbo is fun! Some discussion in the Discord server hosted by Prismatic Wasteland prompted me to expand upon my own thoughts on building characters through skills, stats, and feats, in lieu of traditional classes. In particular the focus of this blogpost will be on how I am for character building to work in my upcoming game Mistwalker (which I have mentioned before ), similar to how Josh wrote about his design thoughts while working on His Majesty the Worm . As in 5e, I do want  players to make their little Blorbos in Mistwalker, but I find that relying on a 5e-style (what some would undoubtedly call " trad ") leads to too much overhead, as well as a very prescriptive, and thus limiting, set of character options. In particular when it comes to advancement. I like...

 A recurring element of many role playing games is crafting systems, whether for alchemy and magic, or more mundane pursuits. These system often end up too simple to capture any interesting nuances of the crafting (spend X worth of "alchemy ingredients" and succeed an alchemy check), or too fiddly to engage with in a game where they are not the main focus (long list of specific ingredients for a long list of exact recipes). There are of course exceptions to this, where the level of abstraction allows for interesting gameplay while removing excess complication. One example of this is His Majesty the Worm , where monster guts will always yield an alchemical effect thematically appropriate for their origin, or the excellent Scrabblecraft from 400 independent bathrooms (among approximately one billion other blogposts each with their own solution ). In this blogpost, I will attempt another solution to the problem using playing cards and common blackjack mechanics. One of my m...