This is very much a joke that got out of hand, and now I'm slowly clearing out my drafts folder. It's like, what if you took inspiration from the 4th edition of no game in particular and used that to make Cairn backgrounds. I am not sure if any of this is even playable.

Dragonlings

Starting gear:
3d6 gold pieces
Rations: 3 uses
Torch: 3 uses
A strange mask (see below)
a dagger (d6 damage)

Deep underground in an ancient ruin you found a leather mask, ornately carved into scales. When you put it on your head becomes that of a dragon. Your breath can kill. You are haunted by dreams of an ancient kingdom, older than anything anyone remembers.

Your mask acts like an artifact with one charge.

1. fire: 1d6 damage. The targets take an additional 1d6 damage next round if they cannot put out the flame. Flammable items on their person have a 3 in 6 chance of being destroyed. To recharge, you must watch a candle flame for the entirety of a day.
2. lighting: 1d6 damage. The damage is enhanced if the target is in water. To recharge, you must go without water for one full day (becoming deprived until the end of the day).
3. poison: 1d6 damage to dex, bypassing armour. If not treated by being immersed in clean water, they fall unconscious within one hour, and die within 3 days. To recharge, you must go without food for one full day (becoming deprived until the end of the day).
4. acid: 1d6 damage. All edged metal weapons do impaired damage until they can be re-sharpened. To recharge, you must spend a day with no metal items within ten paces.
5. cold: 1d6 damage, and an additional 1d6 damage to dex, which can only be healed by spending an hour in front of a fire.To recharge, you must spend a day without fire: no torches, no campfire. If sleeping outside, you will become deprived.
6. A cloud of blinding fog, obscuring the vision of everyone in sight.To recharge, you must place the mask under water for a full day. During this time, you cannot see beyond 5 feet

What did you find that you are sure is from this ancient kingdom?

1. An ancient coin (petty) that nobody recognizes. Wherever you leave the coin, you always know if that direction lies to the north, south, east or west.
2. A shield with a forgotten emblem on it.
3. A sword (d8) with a snarling dragon's head.
4. A pendant with strange writing on it (petty) that will gain you the interest of dragon cultists and certain types of academics.
5. A map of the region on a bronze tablet, millenia out of date.
6. A strange, fossilized egg. Perhaps there is some way to hatch it. 100 gp to the right buyer.

Demonspawn

Starting gear:
3d6 gold pieces
Rations: 3 uses
Torch: 3 uses
A ritual dagger (d6 damage)

In a strange ritual, you mingled your blood with that of a demon, taking on demonic characteristics yourself.

1. What infernal appearance do you take on?
2. You have horns: they act like a helmet.
3. A barbed tail: you can hold a third object, but it's hard to manipulate. For instance, you cannot effectively use a weapon or shield, but you could hold a torch.
4. Cloven hooves: you can climb rock cliffs and stone walls so long as they have a slight slope (exterior castle walls yes, interior walls generally no).
5. A forked tongue: those who can understand your speech, who are not already hostile to you, have a positive impression of you as long as you are talking to them. This fades the moment you leave.
6. Eyes of a snake: you can see warmth - warm-blooded creatures appear as a sort of reddish blob in the dark.
7. Hands like talons: they act as a d6+d6 weapon as long as your hands are free.

What drove you to undertake this strange ritual?

1. Knowledge. Throughout the game you can ask the GM three questions that might be found in a book somewhere in the world and get three correct answers.
2. Revenge. You have a poisoned dagger. It deals d6 damage as usual, but if it does damage to strength, an hour later, the target must make a strength save to avoid falling dead.
3. Love. You have a locket (petty) that, when you spend a quiet moment contemplating, reverses most negative mental effects.
4. Power. You have a badge (petty ) that falsely marks you as a member of the nobility.
5. Survival. You always find one extra ration when foraging.
6. Religion. You have an amulet (petty) that may make cultists better disposed towards you.

Commander

Starting gear:
3d6 gold pieces
Rations: 3 uses
Torch: 3 uses
An arming sword (d6)
A mail coat (1 armour)

You carry a banner into battle. This takes up one hand. The banner is ancient and storied and motivates all your allies who see it. Effects of the banner:

1. So long as you spend your turn motivating your companions without fighting, they all add +1 damage to their damage rolls.
2. Fighting retreat: designate one person who can flee the battle without making a roll, so long as you spend your turn coordinating that strategy.
3. If someone takes critical damage and survives, and the nature of the critical damage does not prevent this, they can stay on their feet for one more round.
4. You can spend one action to survey the battlefield and then come up with a plan for the party to manoever into much more advantageous position (e.g. reach something on the ≈far side of the enemy, cut off their escape route, etc)
5. Formation: If your party stands roughly together and you spend your action instructing them, they can each gain +1 to AC.
6. When you and at least one of your companions rolls to attack the same enemy and your die roll is higher, their next attack is enhanced, at the cost of you taking fatigue.

What item do you always bring with you into the wilderness?

1. a blessed stewpot. Eating food from the stewpot at the end of the day restores 1d6 will.
2. a small bag with 3 bandages, a splint, a sling, and needle and thread.
3. herbs that, when chewed, allow you to ignore the effects of deprivation at the cost of one fatigue. 3 uses.
4. a roll of parchment and a charcoal pencil.
5. a compass (petty) that always points west.
6. a wheelbarrow (bulky, +4 slots) that can carefully be carried up and down stairs by two people.

What item have you carried into every battle?

1. A chipped longsword. d10 damage.
2. A sturdy shield with the emblem of an army that no longer exists. A spike on the front deals d6 damage.
3. A gambeson (1 armour, goes under the mail coat), quilted by a relative. Stained but functional.
4. A helmet with a very impressive, noticeable crest (the crest is removable).
5. Spiked boots that give you firm footing on any surface and make you very hard to push or knock over.
6. A horn that can be heard from six miles away as though it were next to you.

Warlock

Starting gear:
3d6 gold pieces
Rations: 3 uses
Torch: 3 uses
An engraved metal rod (d6 damage)

You have a patron who requests that you harvest souls. They may be human or animal; alive or dead, but they must be a reasonable challenge to kill (rats don't count unless they're giant rats. Chickens don't count unless they are demonic chickens.) Each such creature that you kill gives you 1 point. You can use a point to do the following:

1. Your patron has power over fire, ash, and wastelands. You summon a pillar of fire. It cannot be put out and burns for 1 hour. It does 1d6 damage to STR to anyone who touches it.
2. Your patron comes from somewhere deep, deep in the woods. You stare at one creature. As long as you stare at the creature uninterrupted, it cannot see you.
3. Your patron comes to you in dreams with a star of ill omen is in the sky. You ask the GM one question which has a yes or no answer. The GM answers the question (rolling the die of fate if necessary).
4. Your patron comes to you from the land of the dead. You can turn into a ghostly form which damages WIL instead of STR, bypassing HP. Attacks from non-magical steel are impaired, holy water and similar things do 1d12 damage. You turn back if sunlight falls upon you.
5. Your patron speaks to you from a tiny statue of an ancient king, older than any kingdom you know. You utter a command up to three words in length which a target must make a WIL save or be forced to obey.
6. Your patron is unknown but sent a messenger to you in the form of an immortal imp. You can ask the imp to perform one task. The imp cannot be harmed and does not feel pain, but has the strength and physical abilities of a small child.

At the GM's discretion, killing a particularly powerful enemy gives you access to greater power.

What price did you pay for power?

1. Your memories. You remember nothing from before meeting your patron. You have a mysterious signet ring (petty).
2. Your eye. You have a replacement glass eye that you can see out of so long as you are touching it.
3. Your name. After three days, nobody who has seen you remembers you.
4. Your heart. You are immune to any effects that might affect emotions, positive or negative. Reduce your maximum strength by 2.
5. Your hand. You have a mechanical hand instead. Actions using the hand are impaired, but the hand is impervious to most damage. If it is free, it acts as a shield.
6. Your voice. You sound like whoever you last talked to.

Fighter

Starting gear:
3d6 gold pieces
Rations: 3 uses
Torch: 3 uses

Instead of attacking, you can spend your turn being the biggest threat on the battlefield and drawing the attention of your enemies.

When you roll the highest damage on your damage die and are not impaired:

When you roll the highest damage on your damage die and are not impaired:

1. You can push the enemy away from you about 10 feet. You start with a shield and spear (d8).
2. You do blast damage instead. You start with an arming sword (d8)
3. You instead trip or entangle the enemy, making their attacks impaired and their movement slow until they spend their turn getting up. You start with a polearm (d10, bulky)
4. You instead disarm the enemy. If they aren't armed, they're impaired for a round. You start with an axe (d10, bulky)
5. You also grapple the enemy, if you have an empty hand. You start with a flail (d8).
6. You ignore their armour. You start with a mace (d8).

d6 table of what armour you have

1. You have a shield with the emblem of an ox on it. It is exceptionally difficult to make you move.
2. You have a helmet with the antlers of a deer on it. You can run twice as fast as most people.
3. You have mail made of a strange and unfamiliar metal. If a weapon rolls 1 damage against it, it breaks.
4. You have steel, spiked gloves, perfectly molded to your hands. They each deal 1d6 damage when empty, up to 1d6 + 1d6 damage.
5. You have a shield with the emblem of a lion on it. You can dramatically throw it away before doing enhanced damage that round, at the cost of one fatigue. You cannot pick it up again until you have had a moment to rest.
6. You have mail made from the skin of a snake. It is impossible for you to be grabbed or otherwise restrained as long as you wear the armour, unless you take critical damage.

Bladewizard

Starting gear:
3d6 gold pieces
Rations: 3 uses
Torch: 3 uses

You count as having a shield so long as one hand is empty and unused.

When you meditate for a minute, you can create a sword which does d8 damage, which you can then deliberately destroy to unleash its power. Destroying the sword is done by releasing your focus at the right moment.

1. You pick up a rock and create a sword of obsidian. It shatters when it leaves your hand. Shatter the sword into fragments of obsidian to turn this into a blast attack that deals d8 damage.
2. You light a spark and create a sword in the shape of a flame. It extinguishes when it leaves your hand. Release the sword to have it set the enemy on fire, doing d8 damage directly to Strength.
3. You blow onto a mirror. Out of the congealed steam you draw a sword of silvery mist. It dissipates when it leaves your hand, turning to mist and enveloping you. As long as you don't attack, attacks against you are impaired.
4. You rub together some dry cloth in a sealed container. You draw from it a sword of lightning. It makes a loud, crackling noise, preventing you from being at all stealthy. It vanishes when it leaves your hand, turning into a bolt of lightning that strikes everything in its path for d8 damage.
5. You pick up a stick and it sharpens into something alive and vital. It turns back into a stick when it leaves your hand. Throw it at an enemy, and vines will spring forth from your hand and pull them next to you, slowing them down until they can disentangle themselves.
6. You pour a cup of water into your hand and create a sword which is an impossibly sharp shard of ice. It shatters when it leaves your hand, or shatter it against a creature to create a pillar of ice rises from the ground and freezes the creature in place. They must make a Strength save to escape. Attacking the pillar also frees them. They otherwise cannot attack or be attacked.

Previous blog posts:

• My first miniphracts based off an early version of Vanguard
• How I set up my games
• How I run operations

[Jump to factions and abilities][Jump to timeline]

Summary

If you know what I've been up to, you might think this is about the game I just finished running. It isn't. I'm a whole game behind. As such this is a little messy, even for one of my blog posts.

The rules I used can be found here. The main changes I made are:

• Revolts are NPC armies that will harry enemies and, when possible, find someone to join as detachments
• I completely reworked ships, making them basically work like land detachments that can only go on the water. The two could fight at coasts and on rivers without disembarking.
• I added in a chance of death after battle (which never happened)
• I simplified strongholds to basically all be towns and elimited sieges
• I shortened the time frames for various things

Overall, though, it was mostly base Cataphracts.

I'll start by going over my conclusions and then discuss the game in detail, because I'm not sure everyone is interested in the full game report.

Short summary

There were three factions: the Kingdom of Azi, who controlled the river valley, the Mountain Kingdom, who controlled a smaller river valley, and what I will just call the pirates.

The Mountain Kingdom had a more offensively oriented goal (take a city from the Kingdom of Azi) as well as the goal of holding onto three relics, the Kingdom of Azi had a loot related goal (more defensive) as well as a goal of finding and getting back a relic that the Mountain Kingdom had. The pirates were broken into three subfactions in a three way competition to get the most loot, while at the same time protecting and avenging any other pirate.

Everyone was given a hand-drawn, incomplete map. It gave detailed information of their own territory and limited information otherwise.

Things that worked well

I actually was pleasantly surprised at how well the sea faction with competing goals worked; they did basically exactly what I hoped for, which was to subtly undermine each other but unite in the face of external threats.

I made a game expectation doc and I think nobody was really surprised by what type of game it was. This could just be because it's a smaller game, maybe drawing from a smaller community, and thus I would have had to deal with fewer expectation clashes regardless.

Having slightly different names for different locations depending on which faction you were from was fun, and caused surprisingly little confusion. Likewise, giving everyone different maps worked quite well.

Having evocative titles (which I mostly chose in order to try and invent some plausible gender-neutral titles) went a long way towards getting everyone on the same page about the setting and culture despite the fact I did almost no worldbuilding.

The boat rules I think worked really well. The barges were not used all that much, but didn't cause problems either. Three hexes a day on the sea felt plenty, and while in some ways they were nerfed compared to base cataphracts, I think rules for raiding the coast without disembarking made the pirates feel fun, thematic, and less mentally cumbersome for both the refs and the players. They were loosely based on the war canoe from various cultures, which did take some explaining.

Reduced supply worked very well. I had there be about 3/4 of the supply needed by all the armies in the first forage. About 1/2 of the way through people were having to make decisions about foraging twice.

Operations were I think easier to manage than they can be in a larger game. Likewise, tactics were not really a big problem, although I did two things to make them manageable: you only get to do them if you know a battle is coming a day in advance, and I wasn't very generous with the bonuses.

I think I did a good job of using terrain to make a very small map feel a bit bigger.

Looking back it had a charming wackiness. I don't know how much of that was wonky rules, unbalanced teams or players not spread as thin, or even just the relative newness of the experience. It was more work than my previous game, maybe less "fair", but there were more surprises, more twists and turns, more memorable stories.

Things that went less well

I think the map was maybe too small (though actually I might revisit this thought in the next blog post, where I made the map bigger.) A very dense map makes for a lot of work for the ref. It is possible for everyone's scouting ranges to overlap, and I like to sort of mentally separate the players into clusters of scouting ranges and process them by cluster. It also doesn't force decisiveness, as players feel they have a lot of time to achieve their goals.

Mercenaries as player characters is not a good experience, probably even more so than base cataphracts. You are almost certainly not going to be hired until it's very late in the game, and you have the usual problems of having less clear motivations.

DPR was right about his rules, especially harrying being bad, needing to cap morale, needing to remove the benefit of having multiple commanders in one battle, and army size not mattering enough.

If you don't give people the goal of defending their cities they might not do it.

A fixed end time and a short game meant people tried to game things a bit too much, often to their detriment. I think it's probably better to try and achieve your objectives early and hold onto them.

It was a pretty big time commitment to run for the size of the game. The second game I ran though was a lot lower of a time commitment - some of that was improving my processes, some of that was a bigger map and thus fewer battles and less player interaction, some of that might have been just getting used to it.

The Factions

We started off with three main factions, one of which had three subfactions.

The Mountain Kingdom:

Once the gods walked down from their mountain and created a kingdom here. Now all have forgotten. All but you, who guard the artifacts they have left behind, whose priests guard their ancient secrets. Now the great valley is overtaken by proud kings who toss their gold into the sea, whose knights terrorize the countryside, who desecrate the first temples of the gods. But the priests have interpreted the calendars. This is a year of catastrophe and rebirth. Pirates are massing on the horizon. The last of the Holy Artifacts has come back to you. It is time to march on the people of the valley.

[Faction doc]

Special abilities:

• Off-road wagons: your wagons can travel offroad but have half the capacity. (This was never meaningfully used)
• Miners: count as double when assaulting strongholds.
• Started with three artifacts, with powers that had to be discovered in game. They give +1 to morale if your morale is less than 9.

Goals:

• Capture and hold one of the Kingdom of Azi's two cities
• Do not lose the artifacts.

Artifacts:

• Silver Crown: the one wearing this cannot die.
• Obsidian Dagger: any one person who you try to kill will die. This supercedes the Silver Crown. Only works once a day. (Unused)
• Gold Mask: when worn, you take on the exact appearance of the Gold King of the Mountain Kingdom and can be recognized as nobody else. (Unused)

Kingdom of the Azi River

The Kingdom has grown rich and powerful. The fields are rich with crops, the mines and forests and workshops are busy. The priests have consulted the oracles, and all agree: the god Azi must be thanked for this good fortune with the greatest temple the world has seen, and the Princep must be seen to stand before their people bearing the Silver Crown to put to rest any rumours that they may be losing the favour of the gods…

[Faction doc]

Special abilities:

• Riparian infantry: Ford rivers as cavalry. Attached wagons can ford rivers in half a day. Double strength when fighting next to a river.
• Dread Knights: -1 revolt chance when torching. -1 to resist pillaging. Also I think the only heavy cavalry in the game. (These had basically no effect.)
• As long as you hold the city of Buvik, 6000 loot arrives in taxes every 3 days.

Goals:

• Have 50,000 loot in Pith by the end of the day
• Locate and retrieve the crown of Azi, which is one of the Mountain Kingdom's artifacts.

Children of the Sea and Sky

In a month's time is the celebration of Lady Meswe, the goddess which is the source of all life and to which all lives return. Her festival marks new beginnings: spring, a new year, and this year, the beginning of another 12 year cycle. You will bedeck her altars in stolen gold and find what House this year shows the most courage, daring, and cunning, who is most worthy to rule for the next 12 years.

[Faction doc]

Special abilities:

• House guard: Double strength when fighting defensively. If more than 50% House Guard, they will never rout, and will never leave on a negative morale roll. If you fail a morale check with a 2 they will simply kill you. (This was mostly flavour, these were very small detachments)
• Reavers: 2x strength when attacking from a boat (not when defending)
• Favoured by the sky: Your boats treat a heavy storm as a light storm and a light storm as rain. However, you take -1 to defending strongholds.
• Each one also got a mostly flavourful secret ability.
  • Whalesong: know tomorrow's weather
  • Shark's nose: you can tell if an army in scouting range has lower morale. You cannot tell if it has the same or higher morale, or by how much. (This was probably too powerful.)
  • Once per day you can tell the approximate direction of one member of the Children of the Sea and Sky who you have previously met.

Goals:

• Avenge the death of any commander of your faction, and free any imprisoned commander.
• Bring more gold back to the altar in your main city than any other house.

Osre's scholar ability: Riders on the Storm: Once every seven days, when at sea and visibility is reduced due to weather, you can disappear from your current location and instantly reappear in a location in the sea up to 4 hexes away. You must have previously seen that location.

Cosrat's scholar ability: The Kraken’s Song: Once, you can summon The Kraken. You must be at sea, or adjacent to the sea. It will take several hours to arrive. You aren’t totally sure what will happen when it does. (spoiler: it attacks everyone in range)

The Timeline

I wish I'd written this as I went, it's a lot harder to follow now that it's all in threads, but I'll do my best.

Princeps Sidok, the lead commander of Azi, starts off by recruiting Edart and Arit. Edart goes to explore what's over the mountains.

Viceroy Earu, of the mountain kingdom, represented by the pokemon Xatu, heads south.

Of the pirates, Eyrete heads south, Reynira heads to the peninsula west, and Osre Caytren heads around the peninsula, exploring as far as possible. They all leave a garrison, which they eventually forget to feed.

Edart runs into Earu, they have a nice conversation, and Earu decides to go on a pilgrimage (?) or something (?) to the holy river. My rules require that a garrison that is sufficiently large has a commander, forcing Earu to recruit a new commander, Eopai, who is instructed to guard the location more or less indefinitely.

Meanwhile, Eyrete pillages the stronghold of Ipeha.

By the end of the first week, The Azi kingdom recruited another commander (Narp), explored their southern forest, as well as some of the lands across the mountains.

Reynira loots the stronghold on the peninsula, brings it back to town and then continues around.

Eyrete loots the closest stronghold and gets so much loot she recruits Rayslen to help bring it back

Sidok spots the pirates, but there is no battle for now. Osre discovers a small hidden stronghold.

Earu hangs out with a tiny army with Arit, much to everyone's confusion, including my own. Eopai has the patience of a saint but is increasingly confused and dismayed, sending letters and getting no responses, wondering if maybe letters cannot traverse the mountains or something. She meets Edart and they get along great (remember this for later).

Eopai, having been ordered to stay put, technically fulfills her orders by recruiting another commander (Eomeo) to go free their city to the north.

Sidok attempts to attack the city and fails, joining back up with Edart.

Osre meanwhile, having asked the garrsion to send her mail every day, learns they are running low on supply. She considers just taking over all the loot at the end of the game that other people brought back.

Sidok travels back around, runs into Earu, and they try and find out if there is a way for them to mutually win. Sidok almost just kills Earu several times, and Earu manages to vaguely stall and not do anything.

Narp notices there is a ton of loot in Buvik, doesn't know why, and does an operation to find out a bunch of stuff about the mountain kingdom as well as his faction objectives.

By the 21st, the mountain kingdom has fought back, against Earu's orders. They used their relatively small army to launch a surprise attack of the pirate stronghold and suddenly become extremely rich. In fact, Eomeo ends the game with the most loot despite being from the only faction with no loot-related goals.

Pirates torching let me try my new rebellion rules. The pirates hit their first real resistance in the form of Duxe Narp.

The Azi kingdom realize they need to get serious about their goal of moving a lot of loot to their city by the ocean.

By the 21st, the mountain kingdom has fought back, against Earu's orders. They used their relatively small army to launch a surprise attack of the pirate stronghold and suddenly become extremely rich. In fact, Eomeo ends the game with the most loot despite being from the only faction with no loot-related goals.

Pirates torching let me try my new rebellion rules. The pirates hit their first real resistance in the form of Duxe Narp.

The Azi kingdom realize they need to get serious about their goal of moving a lot of loot to their city by the ocean.

Then things really heat up. Cosrat summons a kraken with his scholar ability and over the next few days of him not fleeing at all, it pulls his entire fleet bit by bit under the waves. Eomeo hires a mercenary who decides they don't want any part of this kraken fight, sails off and captures that one little island with the town on it. This doesn't stop Eomeo from bringing back an absurd amount of loot, after buying a lot of ships to do so.

Reynira makes what ends up being the absolutely critical decision of recruiting someone just to bring the loot home.

Cosrat succums to the kraken, after several days of being attacked.

My dearest Osre, I have done my best and I fear it was not enough, or rather, I fear it was TOO MUCH. I once asked to come witness what I was doing at the mouth of the Fork River but now I’m warning to stay awaaaaAAAAHHHHHGGGHH Blub blub blub brlblbrlblbbbbb

The "torment hexagon" phase of the game begins, as there is a massive daily battle with three or more armies as the pirates clash with the Azi kingdom.

Then the dramatic end of game. Eopai admits to Edart that the Viceroy will betray him. Edart makes some desperate moves to try and salvage the situation, is captured and executed, and writes a real life song to commemorate the occasion called "I May Have Made A Huge Mistake". Earu feels guilty enough to pay for a memorial.

Eomeo meanwhile thorws a msasive party with Eopai.

An endless series of battles result in Eyerete getting captured, all the pirates focusing on getting them back, and after many, many, battles, the Kingdom of Azi almost entirely being destroyed. Reynira executes Sidok, Edart is captured but not executed. Arit manages to get almost all the supply to its destiation in time, thus becoming the new Princeps by defaut.t. This is, incidentally, the part that convinces me to adopt DPR's rules.

Viceroy Earu launches a successful suprise attack at the last minute. Meawhile, Murai manages to go recapture the one stronghold at the very last minute.

In the end

• The Mountain Kingdom achieved their goals: to capture either Buvik (Bupehit) or Pith (Pitehit), and to maintain control of their three artifacts. They also manage to somehow maintain control of all their strongholds despite not being in agreement that that's what they're doing.
• The Kingdom of the Azi River did not achieve their goals (retrieve the Silver Crown, bring 50,000 loot to Pith), but were only 500 short of the last one despite having only one surviving and free commander, which was pretty impressive
• The winner of the loot collecting competition among the Children of the Sea and Sky was the House of the Azure Octopus, with 16956 loot, vs 0 for all the others because a third party snuck in and stole it all when nobody was looking. They did achieve their goal of freeing any captured commander and avenging any killed commander of any of the Children of the Sea and Sky.
• Ra starts the House of Ra on that little island, which I'll count as a win.

I'm starting the third game today, and I was going to write up the last game, and evidently I haven't finished, but I did realize I should do how I set up my games as a separate blog post.

Difference vs larger games

My knowledge of larger games almost entirely comes from spectating one. I've also played in some very large games, but that gives a pretty narrow window on what the game looks like. So I'd be interested to hear how much people agree.

The big difference with a larger game with lots of players and a big map is there are a very large number of fairly routine things happening, every day. Most setups for these games focus on making these routine things more efficient. Sending mail, for instance, becomes a lot more overhead in a larger game. Also, some things that happen occasionally in a small game (such as foraging) will happen more often with more players, and thus become more work.

With a small, short game, the main problem I find I have is that everyone is on top of each other all the time and it's very easy to get confused. It can happen, for instance, that one third of all your players are in one single battle, which should never happen in a more standard sized game. Most of my setup is about not getting confused, and being able to undo things if I mess up because I'm confused.

The really big thing I would recommend is scheduling time to figure out what makes you confused and how to address that. I would recommend starting shortly before a weekend where you don't have a lot going on, so you have time to adjust your setup on day 2-3. I've also done a "long day 1", where I give the starting players their armies and all the information and then they have a lot of time to ask questions and for me to realize anything I might have overlooked.

Spreadsheets

I don't use any discord bots because I have a vague feeling that the amount of effort to set them up is not outweighed by the amount of work they would save in such a small game. Part of this is also that even contemplating learning about how the discord API works makes me immediately feel tired. It's probably worth it in a larger game.

I did spend a lot of time polishing my google sheets, though.

Aside from the commander sheets, the big one I have is one to globally manage supply. It has one tab for each commander. Each day has a column for supply in, out, daily supply consumption, loot in, loot out, the action taken, and notes. This makes it easy to track anything, go back and fix any mistakes, and make sure I am updating each commander every day. A summary tab at the front lets me see at a glance which commanders I've processed that day. If there's a garrison in a stronghold that needs feeding, I make a tab for it as well.

Template for supply tracking.

I also have a template for commander sheets. It connects to that summary sheet. I've added in per detachment morale, per detachment noncombatants, and carried loot (as of this upcoming game). I have my own custom rules for ships so you can ignore that. The major new addition, which I think most people do in some form, is a separate tab for calculating army strength. I have three scenarios: normal, assaults, and whenever any special detachment rules might apply.

Template for commanders.

Discord

Letters get forwarded into a thread. There was still a bit more friction here than I'd like - maybe in the future I'll have one thread per day and forward them onto the next day. However, at the scale I was operating I could eyeball it 99% of the time. In the first miniphracts, letters were messengers on a map. It got a bit confusing, but I might do that again for the next game as I'm trying new things with messengers.

Because I'm running several games in this server and the games are short, for organization I have one thread per commander in the commander channel and one thread per parley in the parley channel. I also have a channel for ref notes, a channel for news and weather, and a channel for administrative announcements. In the end I added a debrief channel.

This time around I'm adding a channel for spectators and a channel for the game timeline, separate from the ref notes.

The map

I started by hand drawing a map, then made it in HexKit, then added annotations in affinity, then imported it into Foundry. I made a lot of use of "outdoor walls" to handle terrain blocking the view - I do more of this than I've seen in most games. It probably isn't worth it on a large map, but on a small map it lets you have things close together while somewhat reducing the number of interactions.

The big thing I added for the second game is a macro to change the vision radius.

Points of friction

The biggest point of friction at the moment is transferring detachments between sheets. Copy pasting between sheets doesn't work that well. The way I think other people have handled this is to have one giant GM sheet and have player sheets import that. I'm not yet quite annoyed at the process to figure it out.

The other big one is, as I mentioned, there just sometimes being too many things happening at once. I'm trying a slightly larger map this time to see how it improves things.

If you haven't played Cataphracts you probably need to read the rules for this post to make sense. But if you don't, operations are a rule that allows players to spend money in order to accomplish things not defined by the rules. The rules for operations are quite vague and open to interpretation, and I thought it might be useful to see how I've run them.

Different Cataphracts games also run very differently - the game draws people from a very wide range of game cultures, even within a single game. I run small games that last about a month with one referee and a small numbers of players, so far no more than 15. Most games are bigger, longer and more complex. I also enjoy a wide range of cataphracts games. But when I run this game I mostly run it as Problem solving, non-authorial, and world-favouring. This puts it more on the RPG side of things than most conventional wargames, probably more than is to the taste of many cataphracts players. My personal RPG background as a player is mostly a mix of OSR and story games (along with a wide range of solo games and also D&D 4E), but I almost exclusively GM OSR games, and that comes through in how I run Cataphracts. The principles of Cairn have been particularly influential on how I run games in general, though I don't follow it strictly.

I'm ok with operations introducing wildcards players have to deal with. I don't run Cataphracts as a game that is entirely solvable by reading the rules, and as a player I have enjoyed surprises, rolling with the punches, and heavily unbalanced situations. While as a player I strive to win, for me it's still more about the journey than the destination. This is not how everyone likes to play, however, and I think it's a good idea to think about how you would run operations and other similar aspects that are heavy on referee preference in advance, and communicate that to players.

This is all under development and likely to evolve as I run more games. Some of this is sorting out my thoughts in preparation for running a new game. I'll probably revise this all after running another game.

General Principles

Again, this is one method of running operations. Assume everything I say is qualified accordingly.

The most common operation and the one most likely to succeed is to gather information.

Operations should supplement but not replace the main mechanics of the game. Operations that can have a substantial impact should be very risky and expensive, and most suitable as a last-ditch effort.

Operations should always be optional. It is assumed all commanders are taking all reasonable precautions. There are no counter-operations.

You might be able to do a shoddy job with less money, but you cannot do a better job with more money unless you can describe a specific mechanism by which more money would help.

Relatedly, operations are only possible if you can describe a specific mechanism by which they can happen. Even if I am not running them via a tabletop RPG per se, they should be thought about as a sort of brief and extremely rules light RPG rather than a button to press. Some operations may only be possible by acquiring resources that are difficult to obtain. Some operations may require that you personally risk your life to carry them out, or that you convince another commander to undertake a particular course of action.

Anything that could plausibly happen is possible, but that is not the same thing as being likely to happen or succeed, or a good use of your resources.

A plan is more likely to be considered plausible if you don't introduce any new elements into the world or if you only introduce things which are common and expected.

You can always ask. Be ready to hear no, but I'm glad you're engaged in the game.

The Process

First, I decide if what the player is asking is plausible and what would be required. I think about what elements in the world might allow it, and what might be missing that the players are assuming is there. At this point I may go back to the player and ask clarifying questions or set conditions they would need to achieve first. At least half of operations that players propose do not get past this point.

If they are able to satisfy the preconditions, next I come up with a series of possible outcomes. If the entire operation happens in one step, I sort them from best to worst, and assign probabilities.

If the operation happens in several steps, I list the things that can go wrong in order, and the lower you roll, the earlier things go wrong.

With the number of players, it amounted to one operation every few days and was a fun diversion from the usual orders. With a much larger game, it probably doesn't scale.

Some examples

Looking back, I was maybe more permissive than I'd be now. However, this gives you an idea of how I structure them and think about them.

These are also going to make way more sense when I write up the report from the whole game, but oh well.

Example: Not able to meet the preconditions of damming a river

I asked them with what - a dam needs a lot of material. After some back and forth, I agreed that if they found a really substantial source of wood, they could spend some time cutting down trees and building a big dam, beaver-style. Unfortunately there wasn't a forest nearby, so they sailed upstream to find one, and ended up fighting a series of battles instead and never had a chance to build that dam.

I was more permissive because it was a short game - in a longer game it would be harder. I was slightly stretching the plausibility of how fast a dam could be built.

Example: Finding straightforward information

Someone wanted to find what was happening in two nearby cities. To do this, they sent someone to go scouting around at a distance.

They would have to pass vaguely near two enemy commanders to do this. Aside from that, the task seemed rather easy. So I decided:

The expected outcome here is that the commander should get at least some useful information. Unortunately for them, they rolled a 3, so it failed. The enemy who captured them never investigated what it was all about.

You don't need this complicated a table, but I enjoyed making it.

Example: a crazy last-ditch plan

I had previously told the commander that if they were going to try and steal the crown, it would be possible as an operation, but it would come with substantial personal risk.

And how I dealt with it:

He rolled a 3, and then was executed. Pretend that I didn't forget that a 2d6 table starts at 2.

This is one example of how I see operations being used - a wild last attempt to try and get back in the game when everything is hopeless. If Edart had succeeded, he'd have a chance of achieving his faction's goal, but the Viceroy could still chase him down and a battle would probably ensue. It required he put his life on the line to get that one last chance. The operation was grounded in the circumstances of the world and in several weeks of establishing trust.

Most importantly, the best way by far for Edart and his faction to have gotten the crown would have been to have attacked and captured the Viceroy in a conventional way at basically any point in the past when they had ample opportunities to do so, before Edart got left with no other choices.

Example: non-straightforward reconnaisance

The plan here was to go find Earu's crown. The crown was, incidentally, on Earu's person the entire time and the faction leader already knew that, but the person in question - Narp - didn't. So he hired someone to go find out. His plan was to go poke around the castle and then if that didn't work, kidnap one of the Viceroy's advisors (!!).

Operation to go spy on Viceroy Earu
2: get captured by Eopai
3: Get captured by Eomeo
4-5: it's impossible to find anything because the city has been thoroughly looted, go to kidnapping
6-7: confirm it's not here, send a letter, go to kidnapping
8+: confirm it's not here and was with Earu, return to Duxe for further instructions

He rolled a 7. The agent failed to find the crown in the city (because it was on the Viceroy's person), sent back a letter to that effect, and then kidnapped someone.

Kidnapping operation:
2: Get caught, agent dies
3: Get caught
4-6: Get official, alert city
7+: quiet success
2d6

And rolled a 10. Remarkably, the kidnapping went well and they found out that the crown was being carried by Earu. Also they could have found that out by sending a few letters, all of this was completely unnecessary, but it was fun.

Assassinations?

I only allowed one actual assassination attempt. In this case, it was against a target whose army was in the process of being completely destroyed. It seemed plausible to me that any precautions he'd set up were not holding through. The assassination failed, but the target died for unrelated reasons shortly after after his army was utterly destroyed. (The background here is that the target had summoned a kraken and then refused to flee. )

I think assassinations should be possible, but extremely unlikely, much like in real life, especially in the time period considered. While assassinations exist in real life, in the time period considered it was almost never how wars resolved.

In a few other cases I said they could attempt it if they were able to achieve some precondition that they were never able to do. I think even so, in the future, I'd be stricter.

Other operations

Narp did a much more straightforward operation to find out his faction's goals by forging a letter to allow him to rifle through his lead commander's documents while he was gone, at the risk of his lead commander finding out. He managed to completely pull it off (but later confessed to his lead commander).

There was an operation to basically bribe locals to give basic information about the local area, which had no risk attached to it other than them not having useful information to give. The player got medium useful information.

Thoughts post game

Overall I think the approach was fun for everyone involved, and the operations added some spice to the game without becoming the meal. They gave the opportunity for players who wanted to to try creative ideas, but no player suffered from not doing operations. The game was ultimately decided by some clever diplomacy and a series of battles, not operations. However, operations still had an impact on how the game felt to the players more subjectively.

I think maybe I should have made some of the wackier ideas a bit harder in the future. Rolls for operations for whatever reason ended up being pretty low; I think the typical outcome should be that they fail in entertaining ways.

This will probably seem like a fairly arbitrary distinction, but I would generally like for anything that could happen in the logic of the game world to be possible, which is a bit different from being meaningfully a part of the game.

Next is to see how well this all stands up with a new group of players and a second game. Incidentally, if you're interested in the next round of miniphracts, contact me.

This post will be mostly about the first Miniphracts, and as such there is no actionable intelligence for any current Miniphracts commanders.

Background

Cataphract, or Cataphracts as people often call it, is a game by San Sorensen, you can read about it more in this series of blog posts: Part 1Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 I've played in a half dozen games so far (many of them short lived ) despite the game having only been around for a year and not yet formally published.

The impetus for running "miniphracts" was Vanguard. Unlike other Cataphract games, there are a fixed number of commanders per faction, and there was at least a month between when we got the factions set up and when the game started. As I (I believe) was the only one with previous Cataphract experience, it was suggested that I run a small training exercise. This turned into a 2 week long game with a greatly pared down version of an early version of the Vanguard ruleset. I believe a different faction in Vanguard did something similar, independently.

That has since completed, and now I am running a more complete, 1 month long Miniphracts, based on the original ruleset, and incorporating things I learned from that game. While Vanguard is in many ways a very different game from Cataphract, I still think I learned a lot from that about running smaller games.

Setting up Miniphracts

I think it's good to be clear about what your goals are when you go about modifying the Cataphract ruleset and setting up a scenario. My goals were:

• To take under 2 weeks, to make sure we were done by the time the real game started
• To use only people in our faction in Vanguard, with no recruiting
• Help me understand how tanks, artillery and fuel change the game
• Help people who have never played Cataphract get used to how you think about the game

The main changes to the rules were:

• Cutting some of the more complex rules introduced by Vanguard: no airplanes, rail, road destruction, telephones, telegraphs or foreign powers
• Having only one type of stronghold.
• No boats.
• No sieges or weather. A complete map.

You can read the rules we worked off of here. It's slightly different from the Vanguard rules, as they were also refining the rules at the same time we were playing.

Making a small map

I went with 8x8, which is probably the right size for a relatively intense 2 week game. I'm actually mostly quite happy with this map. Features:

I've mostly thought about this map (and subsequent maps) in terms of circles, very approximately borrowing from dungeon design ideas about Jaquaysing and so on. This one is one big circle around a lake with four nested circles (in terms of roads). Chokepoints can also I think be interesting, but with 7-8 commanders on a small map, forcing them to spread out keeps things interesting. There are various shortcuts and other approaches that are opened up if you can go offroad.

I don't think you have to do it this way - I think chokepoints and defensible dead ends can also be interesting - but in a short game, this keeps things moving.

I'll have a lot to say about the role of terrain in a small map in a subsequent post, once I can talk about my next game.

There were 3 factions and 4 strongholds. Because everyone got a full and totally accurate map, this added in I think just the right level of incomplete information.

Faction Goals

This is something I'm still working on doing well.

I wanted something that could be achieved quickly (I very much failed at that), that gave some flexibility, but which would encourage conflict. The goals I came up with were:

• The Sword faction needs to defeat the Hand faction
• The Hand faction needs to control cities with enough fuel production (which basically amounted to needing to capture two cities)
• The Gem Tower faction must charge a toll on anyone crossing the river

I wanted unstable 3 way conflict. The Sword would obviously fight the hand, but they would have to cross the river a lot - would they be able to get along with the Gem Tower? The Hand faction needed one of the two strongholds the Gem Tower would want to control, but might not immediately know that.

What happened

Even with two weeks, a full writeup would be very long, and so I just have an extremely high level picture of the major battles here. You can read a complete, rather chaotic writeup here. This also gives some idea of how I ran the first game, although I changed a lot the next game. In particular I no longer do this level of bookkeeping to track what's happening separately from the discord.

Stage 1

The Sword and the Gem made a sort of an informal alliance. The Hand had difficulties due to a player dropping out early on and the game not having commander recruitment. They ended up all converging just northeast of the Gem tower and then, after some attempts at intrigue and harrying, they finally clashed at the mountain pass. The Hand army won but the Sword army captured one of the two remaining Hand commanders in the chaos. Meanwhile, another Gem commander captured the Head settlement, setting themselves up for success.

Stage 2

This is where I felt my goals didn't work quite as well. The Gem tried but failed to enforce the toll in the northern portion of the map, failing mostly due to miscommunication and logistical issues. It wasn't clear to what degree the Sword were actually evading their portion of the agreement, but the Gem faction was unwilling to aggressively press the issue. Meanwhile, the Hand managed to survive an attack by the Sword, defeating them after retreating back to their stronghold through the mountains then launching a counter-attack. The Sword then returned home and the Hand tried but failed to seize the Head settlement.

At this point there was not much chance of anything changing any time soon so I ended the game.

In the end, everyone achieved about half their goals. The Gem Tower controlled the river crossings but never actually got their toll. The Sword captured one commander but not the other. The Hand managed to stay alive despite some extremely bad luck so I'll call that half a win.

Most importantly, we at some point saw basically all of the game mechanics in action, so I think it was a big success in terms of understanding the game better.

Thoughts on Making Miniphracts

I'm definintely going to have more complete thoughts after running the month long one, but are the thoughts I went into that game with.

Complexity

Just adding in fuel as a second resource made this at least as much work to run as my current miniphracts, which contains a lot more rule systems overall (including recruiting). Things like weather (which I cut because I thought it would just be more mental overhead) have been way easier to run. Having two, rather than one, resource to manage is probably going to increase the difficulty of running the game more than anything.

I ended up having to basically redo all my spreadsheets a few days in to get my workflow down. Vanguard did the same, but being a much larger game, they did a pause. They also have a very large number of GMs and I was GMing solo.

Given the frequency of day 2 pauses in big games, I would recommend a lone GM incorporating this into their plans. A miniphracts game probably won't take up so much time that you need to entirely pause, but I started the current one on a Friday before a quiet weekend to give myself time to fix things live.

I would very strongly recommend setting up your spreadsheets so that every change you make is accounted for individually. I have a separate spreadsheet for tracking all resource changes by date, and every increase is linked to a decrease elsewhere (unless it's a forage or something, in which case I leave a note). This has made it much easier to notice, avoid and address mistakes, especially as I am not using automation. I was going to write something about mistakes and fixing them, but Sam just published a really good blog post on that subject, so read that instead.

Supply

One good thing about having fuel in this game is that managing fuel ended up being pivotal. The Sword faction had major problems supplying themselves with fuel and could have been in an enormous amount of trouble.

I say that because supply did not matter at all. In retrospect, it should have been obvious.

For my current game, I recalculated supply and greatly lowered the settlement scores everywhere to make sure there would be supply constraints in that game. I made a big spreadsheet of all the hexes and calculated supply by approximate region and for the entire map. This was a lot of upfront work, but it meant that supply would end up mattering, and it also made foraging really easy to track later on.

The Smallest Possible Game

This is probably it. It actually ended up being slightly less than two weeks. It took about one week to manoever into position and have The Big Battle and a second week to deal with the fallout. I think an 8x8 map where you only really do battle mechanics, no real logistics around supply, just moving around with limited information, is a pretty fun game. It's something that a lot more people could find the time to run as well. Generally I think I prefer the one month long format but I would definitely consider doing this again, and I would recommend this extremely pared down format for anyone who wants to do something quick with a group of friends. I think it would be a good way of testing certain kinds of mechanics changes as well.

The Experience of Playing the Game

I was not a player, obviously, but I think this format asks more of players. I have played games where the default order frequency is once per week, though you put in orders more often when things are actively happening. At a game of this scale, you have to put in orders every day pretty much. I was doing letter delivery multiple times a day as well - something I decided not to do in subsequent games, in part to reduce the demand on people in less compatible time zones.

The Experience of Running the Game

I was a bit worried because several of my previous games had ended in GM burnout. The amount of time and effort it takes to run is quite large, and making that sustainable has been a big topic of discussion. I think it's one of the most important things to think about when setting up a game, and is a lot of the reason why I'm spending more time working on Miniphracts and sharing what I've learned.

So that being said, I want to emphasize that running a game is extremely fun.

My favourite part is getting a front row seat to all the dramatic irony going on. In OSR games people often talk about stories dynamically emerging from player action and randomness and this is one of the best examples of that.

It's also a lot of fun to see people approach the game in different ways. Player psychology probably has as big an impact as strategy. At the same time, there isn't really a correct or incorrect way to approach the game. I saw an approach working brilliantly one time and failing terribly the next. The game is this kind of amazing chaotic dance which cannot really be predicted. It's a game where in some ways player skill does not play a huge role in the way people often think of it - I think you can be quite successful without being good at strategy games in the conventional sense - but also one in which the decisions you make do very much matter.

One of my favourite parts is how the lack of information means you get wilder, more interesting ideas, as people don't have the social pressure to do things the same way as other people. I hope that as the game and community grows, we keep that aspect of it - I already hear a lot of people hoping that they will learn how to play "correctly", or that they worry that they will play "wrong". But I think the fact that nobody really knows how to play is some of the magic of the game. In this game, as in life, you are just a small part of something larger beyond your control and comprehension, and often can't really understand or predict the impact you are having, and yet there is nothing more important than the things you choose to do.

Some comparisons to other games

First of all, I don't exactly know what people mean by wargaming. I've never done traditional wargaming. I've heard the term used to refer to various non-war training exercises, which are about roleplaying through crisis scenarios without actually playing a fictional character other than yourself. I've heard the term used to refer to some games that are somewhat less war focused and somewhat more diplomacy focused, including:

• Diplomacy, a game with entirely deterministic combat where the game is determined by your ability to persuade or deceive other players into supporting you.
• Cataphracts, which focuses on a mix of managing logistics and interpreting extremely limited information, having access only to information about your current location and what you can glean from unreliable letters from other players
• This one megagame I played, where something like 50 people spent a day playing members of various national governments, each of us responsible for either war, science, the economy, or diplomacy, alongside members of the media and mysterious aliens from outer space.

While these games all contain some war, what they have in common are that they are about managing limited information, misinformation, deception, trust, and alliances. Combat in these games exists mostly to give stakes to the social conflict at the core of the game. These are also games that tend to be full of surprises, which results in great stories that arise spontaneously and without any prior planning. They tend to be chaotic and high stress, which I personally enjoy. While most people probably did not, many people did play Over/Under in a very similar way to how you might play those games.

Over/Under was often specifically compared to the cold war (albeit with very different political ideologies). There was no good reason to fight during the second half of the game, and war would likely have been ruinous, but suspicion and mistrust repeatedly brought both sides to the brink of war. So I think you could maybe consider it a wargame in the way that the Cold War was a war (i.e. not really, but it's the best word we have).

A wargaming attitude vs an RP attitude

Unlike O/U, all three of those games are not RP heavy games. Diplomacy is entirely a board game, with any RP being for flavour. The megagame I played encouraged light RP but discouraged playing a full fledged character, saying in the past it had been disruptive. While people tend to RP in letters, the very limited information flow of Cataphracts means RP is not a major focus of the game. O/U, however, had a lot of RPing, which took the organizers by surprise.

I think what was surprising is not that people RPed, but that the RPing lead the gameplay. I did RP a fair bit in over/under (and I will eventually write a blog post about that), but I took a more wargame-adjacent attitude to it. I approached it as a game to be won, though I made up my own win conditions. I spent most of the game pursuing goals, using the explicit and implicit rules of the game to do so. My character, Alcyone, was created to be suitable for achieving those goals rather than the other way around.

For example, when I became president, I set for myself the following goals:

• Introduce democratic reforms and greater transparency
• Find the truth about Sanyang's death
• Put an end to any threats towards the Union

These are not not RP goals - they probably would have been different if I was playing another faction - but they were not character-driven goals. I wanted to investigate the death of Sanyang because the people who voted for me wanted me to do that. Alcyone did not have a strong in game motivation to suspect the official story. This investigation then lead to a lot of RP and me thinking about how my character would deal with the fallout and what seemed most appropriate in the world we had built. It also involved a lot of meta thinking about game mechanics as well as the larger social and political situation.

I actually didn't think as much in terms of the goals the GM gave us. For instance, investigating Thatch was not necessarily the right move to make if my primary goal was to get that T-shirt. Nor was greater transparency. But those were still motivated more by player goals - of having a satisfying ending, of improving the game for the people who voted for me - rather than character goals.

Denizens

I often heard people express the opinion that denizens do not interact with "the wargame", and that as a result, the correct way for denizens to approach the game is as non-adversarial RP. I do not think this is true of Over/Under. This game was one of the most incredible politics simulators I have ever encountered, and approaching it even as a denizen, as a challenge to be solved through semi-adversarial, semi-cooperative play, was one of the best experiences I have had in a game of that type. It also became clear once I became president that denizens had had an enormous impact on the political landscape of the game. The nature of my experience as a boss was not that different from as a denizen - being a boss was just a lot more intense and a lot busier.

It wasn't necessary to engage with the game in this way - a contrasting approach to this way of approaching the game is described here. But it was definitely a very important option that Over/Under provided, one which I have not really found in any other game.

IC, OOC and a Secret Third Thing

People often talked about in-character versus out of character in the game, with the assumption that if you are out of character, you are not playing the game, which I don't actually think is true at all.

I would instead propose 3 levels (at a minimum) of approaching the game.

You as a person. You want to have fun, maybe produce some good stories you can remember later, avoid content that is objectionable to you, and avoid preventing other people from having fun. At this level, in an ideal world, all players are on the same page and are working towards the same objective, though with a 1000 person game, that gets more challenging.

You as a player. You have game goals, either set by the GM or by yourself, and you pursue those game goals. You use out of character knowledge of the mechanics to do so, within the bounds of the rules of the game. In a social, adversarial game, social interactions are effectively part of these mechanics.

You as a character. You try and do the things your character would do, based on what they know and their personality. If you have goals, they may be more oriented around a character arc, or around exploring how certain aspects of your character interact with the larger game setting, depending on your style of play.

The fact that most discussions of OC/IC separation did not consider approaching the game as a player was I think responsible for a lot of the tension around OOC/IC separation. When people indicated ((out of character like this)), it was often unclear which out of character they were referring to.

When everyone is playing the same game, say a more LARP oriented game, it makes sense to enforce that you are either entirely out of character or entirely in character, but that is not how this game was advertised and I don't think was a reaosnable expectation to have of all players. Within the Union, my expectation was that you are talking as yourself in #union-airlock, which was reserved for among other things OOC safety checkins; you are approaching #union-hall primarily as a player, who needed to have knowledge both of the in-game bylaws, the out of game rules, and the difference between the two; you are approaching #teamster-dispatch entirely in character. In fact I tagged my coffee shop as "RP" because I originally assumed RP would happen primarily in designated spaces. I don't think these expectations were universal, though, and it wasn't until after the game I was able to articulate this clearly.

More generally, I think the person/player separation is often overlooked when we talk about RPGs. In fact, this boundary is essential even in games that aren't RPGs. It allows you to be a gracious loser and a gracious winner, to set boundaries and respect people's boundaries, to play within the spirit of the game and without cheating. It makes it possible to have games about lying and deception without affecting your real life relationships, and to have games about taking risks you would not take in real life. This separation is a part of all competitive games, and arguably many cooperative games, including board games, video games, sports games, tag on the playground, etc. It also is subject to bleed as well - losing a game can feel bad even with no RP at all!

Challenges in Combining Play Styles

In some ways the two fed into each other quite nicely. RP oriented players made the political wargame a lot more vibrant and complex and added a layer of realism which usually isn't possible. And, while I wasn't as RP-focused, I found myself doing more RP than I expected. The real-world conflict simmering in the background gave more weight to the RP. It also gave me a greater appreciation of low-conflict RP than I usually would have. I found myself seeking out moments of peace and quiet, or of absurdity or comedy.

The big issue is that the two styles of play have very different player boundaries that come with them, and it was very difficult to communicate these boundaries in this type of game.

On the wargame side, it was unclear whether conflict - either declaring war, using assassinations, or just lying a lot - was going to make the game not fun for the more RP-oriented. This became a bigger concern as the game progressed and people who maybe did not intend to play in an RP oriented way became more invested in their characters. With no good way to indicate OOC your comfort level with aggressive player actions, you found yourself unable to know how far you could take things. You'd also start to feel like your opponents are pulling their punches.

Also, the rules of the game set certain factions in conflict with other factions as well as internally, which was not always immediately obvious to players, including players who wanted to play in a low-conflict style. This especially came up in the Union/Bratva conflict as well as with players within the Union who wanted to avoid politics. However, if you were playing from a political wargame perspective, these conflicts were the game. This is something I tried and failed to have some conversations about, and which I think I would want to see addressed more in a hypothetical future O/U 2.

On the RP side, an incredibly wide range of content was introduced that people may not have realized they were signing up for, though the mods who were added mid-game did an excellent job here at managing this. Furthermore, there were several distinct RP communities with very different expectations. As a side note, I hope eventually to write something about the ones that have been less well represented in blog posts so far, since I feel like a lot of what has been written about O/U implies that there was one canonical experience, whereas even within people who were more RP focused people were playing vastly different games.

Dying in Games

Most games with rules for death use those rules a lot. But what if death is present but almost non-existent? I've previously tried exploring this concept with OSR-adjacent solo games (solo because I'm not sure I can get anyone else to put up with my bullshit), based on the concept that the real world is a high-lethality system but you still don't die very much.

There were maybe 6-10 assassinations in the game. 6 murders out of 1000 people is catastrophically high by real world standards, but minuscule for a game with mechanics about killing people. And the possibility of dying had a huge effect on how people played the game. At the beginning some people were afraid to speak openly against bosses out of fear of being assassinated, though this was soon dispelled. A fear of assassination surrounded every major element of Union politics, especially after the Union president died under mysterious circumstances, and resulted in an elaborate assassin-proof election procedure. The death of every boss in the game affected the entire course of the game.

Because it was a long game as well, you started to not want to die. About 2/3 of the way through the game I thought I might be making decisions that would put myself in danger, and I decided to go forward anyway, but the thought of dying made me sad in a way that it hadn't in other games. It also gave my decisions a weight and significance that is rarely achievable in a game. When I and a conspiracy I was a part of said we were all willing to die for each other, that was a touching emotional moment that was only possible because death felt more real than usual. Death was significantly less abstract in this game than in most games that contain violence.

I had an idea once (probably stealing a bit from jay's Wanderhome) for a game with exactly one mechanic: there is a gun in the game, and at any point someone can use the gun to kill one character and immediately end the game. Even if nobody ever used the gun, it would change the entire dynamic of the conversation.

That was basically what we got with this game. One reason why I think it's reasonable to call the game a wargame, especially the politics side of things, is that the possibility of war affected and informed everything else that happened. If there had been no mechanics for war, the political game would have been completely different, maybe even nonexistent. Even if the war mechanics had not been used once in the game, it would have been on some level a wargame, because that gun would have been sitting on that table and we'd have been staring at it the entire time. Likewise the rules for assassination.

A Final Note On What Playing The Political Wargame Was Like

Overall I hope to one day do a separate post on this. But I can only describe my experience with the political wargame in the Union as exhilarating. It was like riding on the back of a dragon or some enormous monster, something beyond control or understanding, too big to see in its entirety. The situation only spinning more and more out of control as I rose higher and higher, constantly teetering on the brink of catastrophe. Just constantly rolling the dice and them coming up in my favour often enough. Putting complete and utter faith in my new friends despite knowing most likely at least one was betraying me. A lucky hunch, a moment of wild and unreasonable trust in an old enemy, these all mattered more than any reasoned conclusion or careful planning could. I don't know if I will ever play a game like it again.

I am very late for the trend, but also I have been working on this blog post for at least a year now, so I might as well finish anyway.

This is hard for me to do, because my inspirations are kind of all over the place. Insofar as they come from books, they're mostly from books I read when younger that I no longer remember. I used to read a lot but rarely remember what I read.

Overall sources of inspiration

• Places I have lived (Northern California and British Columbia, mainly) and visited
• All the time I have spent on Wikipedia, and reading random nonfiction books. Almost anything I write, or even just home games, involve going down a rabbit hole
• As a kid I was really into mythology, fairy tales and folklore. I started with the typical Ancient Greek and Roman mythology, then expanded to more of Europe, then beyond.
• I didn't read much "epic fantasy" and mostly it didn't make a big impression on me. I do remember reading a lot of Redwall, Sabriel, books inspired by King Arthur and Celtic mythology, regular kids that found magic and went on adventures, etc. I don't read a ton of fantasy these days, maybe I should get back into it.
• I don't watch a ton of movies or TV shows and mostly they don't affect what I write.
• I have a big interest in pre-industrial crafts (especially fibre crafts but anything that I can get my hands on that I can make at home). Out of this I think has come an appreciation for the lives of regular people from the past. In terms of books, I'd recommend Women's Work: The First 20,000 years.
• I have a somewhat non-typical cultural background for this hobby (not European, though most of what I've read is from a European background) and religious background (not Christian) and while I generally avoid talking about it, it probably does influence my work.

A Gathering storm (Cairn edition)

I've written a few versions of this for different systems, starting in 2020, but I'll go with the most recent one.

• In 2020 I was missing BC, a rainy place with immense forests, as I lived in a drought-stricken place and didn't know when I'd be able to even visit anywhere else. Later on, we had some catastrophic flooding here as well, as I was rewriting it.
• There's a drawing of a precarious staircase that is based on a real staircase in ruins in this city.
• Other drawings were of plants in the local conservatory of flowers, which don't match the temperate climate at all but was the lushest place I could find for inspiration. Few trees naturally grow where I now live.
• The berserkers are from a meme on tumblr about wanting to become moss, leaving behind the worries of everyday life, and what better reason to join some sort of nature cult.
• The library that preserves knowledge is inspired by Anathem.
• I didn't realize it was inspired by climate change until my playtesters pointed it out.
• The tree which is a forest which is a god is probably kind of inspired by My Neighbour Totoro, much as it annoys me when people say their games are Ghibli-like when they really aren't, as well as the forest above the temple where my grandmother's side of the family would go, which made a real impression on me as something ancient and immense when I visited as a kid, something that has brought a sense of awe for a thousand years or more

Procedures to Discover the Path Ahead

• This was written to try and solve a problem that I ran into in a different, never published zine, and it sort of got out of hand.
• It was mostly written on a trip I took exploring Central California mostly via public transit, which made it a lot more of an adventure. I was also doing a bunch of hiking while I was there as well. I got there by train. So I really saw a lot of the changing landscape.
• The tables of food were inspired by a mix of food that I like and this big map of all the staple crops of the world I found on wikipedia.
• Most of the tables came from wikipedia in fact. I was trying to make it as universal and untethered from a specific time or place as possible.
• The NPCs were very much inspired by the art I used. I was reading Wanderhome around this time as well and the approach there to defininig character playbooks made an impression.
• I'm not totally sure all the touchstones for cities, but there are elements of one city in A Magician's Nephew there, along with thinking about cities as they must have appeared in the very first days of cities, in ancient Mesopotamia, as sites of power that distort the world around them. There was one moment standing in a museum in New York that made a big impression on me.

A game I an working on about taking the train

• Taking the train, specifically Amtrak from Emeryville to Denver
  • There's also part of a different train I took in Europe once - I needed to splice trains together to turn a train into an interesting dungeon
• Going down rabbit holes googling things about the 1920s
  • The Automat is a real thing which I found super weird and reminds me of some of the discourse around like Waymo
• San Francisco's earlier history - I have been going to some local museums lately
• Modern conflicts over technology and who gets to benefit
• My many foamer friends (affectionate)
• Labor history
• Sometimes people on the Internet sound a bit too excited about one day being justified in shooting someone so I put such a person in the game.
• Probably Gods' Man to some degree, which I was cutting up for parts for an unrelated project recently

Murky Bog

• The name is a joke, I started with that
• There's this cool bog near Tofino I saw as a kid that totally changed my view on bogs
• Bog bodies and mummified mammoths
• The constraints of my drawing abilities at the time

Other

• My part of the Exquisite Corpse adventure was very much inspired by the graphic novel Stages of Rot
• Some people think that Overdue is about my experience working for a library, which is very flattering, because I've never worked for a library. It's about grad school. The dragon is about academic publishing.
• I have trouble figuring out where What Remains on Copper Island comes from. I am sure there are all sorts of pieces of books I read in the past in it but I just do not remember. It didn't consciously come from anywhere.
• Same for A Stolen Sword in a Dark Forest.

The last two are definitely more on the "Grounded fantasy" side which probably comes more from an interest in history and how regular people lived than fiction writing.

One problem with awards like the Ennies is that it takes a long time to know if a game is good. It's not just that you can't play all the games in a year - you aren't even likely to hear second-hand or third-hand how it plays, from anyone but the game's creators or people in their circle. Also, the first year is when marketing and hype is at its peak.

I decided to go back 2 years and see what games held up. Specifically, the year 2023 (I'm not going to try to do the Ennies thing where it's split across years, because tracking down the month things are published is too hard). I considered three years, but way too much came out in 2022.

It turns out it's really hard to make a list of rpg books published in a given year. Kickstarters and early versions make publication dates ambiguous and some of you DID NOT INCLUDE A DATE OF PUBLICATION. So my list is very incomplete. It's also biased towards the kind of OSR and story games I'm interested in or that I hear about in communities that I'm in. This blog post would be most useful in making my point if I could somehow show you what publications you thought were really good in 2023 and how that compares to the ones you care about now, but you'll have to come up with this list yourself.

So here is my rough list of games. Games in italics won or were nominated for Ennies (I may have messed this up if they have a different definition of when a game was published than I do). Games in bold I've actually played or run. I have only done three categories which are not the categories in the Ennies.

Systems and Standalone Games

• Trophy
• Yazeba's B&B
• Liminal horror
• Shadowdark
• City of Winter
• Pasión de las Pasiones

Adventures and modules

• Reach of the Roach God
• Monster Overhaul
• Ultraviolet Grasslands
• Valley of Flowers

This list is a bit shorter because there are so many adventures and so I didn't track down as many publication dates as I could have. Also for whatever reason all the adventures I've actually run or played have been published before or after 2023, mostly before.

Solo Games

I don't see people talk about a lot of these, so these are exceptionally biased towards my personal preferences. I didn't go through all the journaling games I've played so I've focused here more on games with unique and interesting mechanics.

• Haxen
• One breath left
• Wreck this deck

Thoughts

I'm not going to say anything bad about any games, except to vaguely say that some big name games with a lot of money I never heard about again.Conversely, there are a few games on here I didn't hear about until years later (e.g. City of Winter), or which I dismissed at the time and later learned were more interesting than I thought.

It's also not completely off. For systems or standalone games, half the ones I listed were at least nominated. I'm left thinking maybe the Ennies have slightly more validity in predicting what games will be relevant for the long term than I thought.

But after doing this exercise, I do feel like two years has made a big difference in understanding the games of 2023, and I have a much broader and deeper view of what was published then.

Other Reasons To Talk About Games From Two Years Ago

As I went through some of my games, a few jumped out at me. These are games I don't know much about because I haven't heard people talk about them, and haven't played them yet. But they also are not games that I bought because of temporary hype - I'm still very intrigued by them. In particular, Beyond Crony Gron, Wulfwald, and Border Riding.

Games are often only present on social media very briefly, especially if you don't have much of a marketing budget or a huge social media presence. The player base may retreat to specific discords or other communities where those outside those communities stop hearing about them. It would be a shame to miss out on a game you might have loved because the collective attention of the community is only on the hot new thing. If we had something like the Ennies but looking 2 years in the past, we might do a better job of keeping good games alive for longer. But I'm not going to be able to organize that.

Previous NSR camp writeup

I managed to get 4 games in:

• Stygian library, Cairn (run by me)
• Sussurating tower, GLAIVE (run by the creator of GLAIVE)
• Abbreviated Harkenwold, 4E (run by me)
• The Grafter's Tomb (Electrum Archive)

Games I played

I played 2 new game systems. Briefly, my impressions: GLAIVE is a nice medium-weight OSR-ish game. It fits nicely in a niche I haven't played in before - medium-weight, not a retroclone, upbeat in tone. It has a nice kind of cartoony aesthetic, and the Sussurating Tower is also kind of a fun, lighthearted module. It's probably pretty approachable for someone coming from 5E who wants a bit less complexity but not like to the degree of Cairn.

Electrum Archive is also a lot of fun- definite Dune inspirations but takes itself a lot less seriously. Someone in the game died after trying to graft a rat brain to themselves, for instance. I played a member of the merchant houses, and I see the potential for a really cool extremely faction driven campaign, but I don't think there's a lot of module support at this point - I'm tempted to make a module for it.

Games I ran - Stygian Library

This was my second time running it (see the previous blog post for the last time). Also, someone ran two games of Gardens of Ynn - depthcrawls seem to have captured the NSR imagination at this point in time. It sounds like we ran it very differently (or the players played it very differently), we hit about 3x as many rooms in Stygian Library as they did in Gardens of Ynn.

(Spoilers for Stygian Library ahead)

The story ended up very different each time. The one thing that it had in common is that both times the trapdoor spider room was very deadly. This time the party basically sacrificed a party member to the trapdoor spider; in their defense some people had cancelled last minute so there were only 3 people in the party.

They saw a very different slice of the meta-story this time. The first time there ended up being a "big boss" which was the wasps, this time it was a devil. Nobody has found the really deep secrets of the place. However, there was a fair bit of overlap in rooms, especially in the like 12-22. The rooms at the beginning and end show up a lot less.

This worked great for a one-shot, but if I did a campaign in here where people really delve the secrets of the place, I wonder if rolling a d12 or even d8 would work. It would take longer to get to the lower levels, but you would get less bunching of rooms, since then the depth would matter more than the die roll. You'd be less likely to move beyond the early rooms without ever seeeing them. The library might feel more distinctive as you go down.

Games I ran - 4E

I was most worried about running this. I was worried people wouldn't like it, even though people signed up to play it specifically. I was worried I'd forgotten the rules, but after a quick refresher it seems like I have permanently devoted an unreasonable amount of brain storage to the rules of 4E.

I ran an abbreviated version of Reavers of Harkenwold. The scenario was that the players were to go to Harkenwold, find out why nobody had heard from the place in a few days, and then report back. I started with E1, and then had exploring the valley as a skill challenge, with two possible final encounters (E3 and E4) depending on the outcome of the skill challenge.

I had wondered if my PbtA experience since last running 4E would make me run skill challenges better. I say this because there are commonalities between clocks and skill challenges. Skill challenges actually came first, and do feel like a less mature version of the general concept. And, in fact, I'd say this experience did help. What I didn't account for is that the math behind skill challenges makes it almost impossible to succeed. I don't think the players ever had a chance. I think I was able to make it lead to some satisfying RP in terms of developing a relationship with an antagonist who showed up in the final battle, but I think the players were a bit frustrated at how hard it was to succeed.

Another big problem with skill challenges as written is that whoever wrote the rules was really concerned about players "abusing" the rules. The rules as written were too narrow and seemed to discourage creativity, which is where skill challenges would shine, and so I ran them with more flexibility. My overall verdict is that they are workable with a lot more houseruling, but they feel very much like an early implementation of a mechanic that has since been done a lot better. I'm a bit disappointed it got entirely abandoned in 5E though rather than just fixed - if they'd been willing to draw from the world of indie games they could have done a good job, I think.

In fact, now that I've played a lot of rules light OSR games, it seems like about 50% of 4E's verboseness is due to a fear that players will try to rules lawyer everything. For instance, the charge rules, which I inexplicably mostly remembered, could be replaced by a GM making reasonable rulings about what charging at someone looks like.

It was a lot of fun to see people familiarize themselves with the system and learn to use it well. 4E is a game that really rewards teamwork - that's one thing I like about it as a modern ("trad") D&D system. For instance, when 5E got rid of flanking, it greatly reduced the need to think about other players and how work with them effectively. Many character abilities work best in combination with the abilities of other classes. I was a bit worried in the first combat, which acted as a tutorial, if people were grasping the rules enough to enjoy themselves. And then when they failed the skill challenge they ended up with the harder of the two battles. But in the last battle, they had figured out the system well enough to have their characters' effectively build off of each others' powers and strengths. This I think made their victory feel really earned.

More thoughts on 4E, 5E, and combat as sport

In OSR, there is the concept of combat-as-war, where you try and avoid fighting as much as possible. When you do have to fight, fight unfairly and prepare as much as possible to have things go your way, because combat is deadly.

This contrasts with combat-as-sport, which is often maligned. In combat-as-sport, there are basically two teams, each team is expected to be somewhat equally matched, combat is not meant to be avoided, and it occurs mostly within well-defined rules.

In 4E, both sides should feel more or less evenly matched in terms of raw damage. However, you don't lose 50% of the time - teamwork and clever tactics are used to put the odds in your favour. To get this experience, character classes need to be fairly complicated and the rules need to be sufficiently complex. You need different types of resources to manage. Not everyone finds this level of complexity fun, though.

5E was meant to bridge various playstyles, ans stepped away from this level of complexity of the rules. Many classes don't have a lot going on other than swinging a weapon, and positioning or other factors doesn't really affect how well they swing that weapon. This often makes combat-as-sport unsatisfying, as results can feel random or like the GM is pulling their punches. But ultimately 5E is not trying to focus on combat-as-sport, as that narrows the appeal of their game system. And I think 4E and its offshoots are fairly fundamentally different from 5E in their design and in the intent behind tht design. I think if you're trying to determine how you feel about combat-as-sport, you should look at 4E or 4E-like games.

As a side note, 4E has a pretty good DMG. It has the most comprehensive section on understanding player motivations and resolving possible interpersonal issues. Although, between that and the extremely defensively written ruleset, I wonder wht sort of players the writers of 4E were dealing with.

Thanks to J Alan Henning for pointing out I forgot about low fantasy!

Images are public domain.

Within the NSR community, there are aspects that I find more interesting and aspects that I don't - I'm not hugely into dungeon crawls, for instance. They can be fun but I'm not motivated to write them.

What I'm interested in is what I've heard called "grounded fantasy". I'm not totally sure where I've heard it and I'm not sure if anyone has explicitly written about it - if so, let me know, because I'm curious if other people see the term differently. I'm sure that, as with most genres, everyone could come up with a slightly different definition of it.

I'll also note, because this is the Internet, that I enjoy a wide range of genres and they are all fun in their own way and none is inherently better than any other, this is just one that I like.

Tone

Grounded fantasy is neither grimdark, nor heroic, nor cozy. It's not gonzo but it's also not quite "realistic" - it's still a little larger than life. There can be elements of darkness, or of lightheartedness and whimsy, and most likely elements of both, but neither dominate. Grounded fantasy is typically fairly earnest, as opposed to satirical, or cynical, without being utopian, either.

Grounded fantasy happens on the scale of ordinary-ish people with ordinary-ish problems. It's not about a medieval farmer tending their vegetables and coming home to a nice pot of tea (that would be cozy fantasy), but it's maybe the kind of adventure a medieval farmer might daydream about. It's not about nobles or rulers; it's not about heroes; it's not about kingdoms or empires.

This is the most important part, to me. Over the years I have increasingly found myself interested in the lives of ordinary people, the kinds of people like you and me who don't make it into the history books. I want to imagine people whose lives I can more directly relate to, though I still want to imagine their lives being a bit more interesting than mine.

Grounded fantasy is not about "historical accuracy" per se, although I think it's common for people who like this genre to like cool facts about the past and want to sneak them into their games - things about folklore or herbalism or boats. Grounded fantasy is perhaps about appreciating how people in the past were not so different from people today, rather than enforcing some sort of barrier between modernity and a stereotyped version of the past. It especially is not about enforcing your hangups or bigotries about gender or sexual orientation or race or whatever as part of some (ironically very modern) "culture war".

There is some overlap with the concept of low fantasy. Definitions of low fantasy often focus on the amount of magic, or how the setting relates to the real world. For me, grounded fantasy is about regular people who view their own world as relatively mundane. The Hobbit leans towards grounded fantasy, but Lord of the Rings do not. Works set in the real world where the fantastic elements intrude on or transform the world are a different genre, as is most horror, most dark fantasy, and most political fantasy. In fact, I don't think it's a terribly common genre in literature, outside of folklore - certain Terry Pratchett novels maybe come closest to what I have in mind.

Common setting elements

In grounded fantasy, violence is deadly, but death is not assumed, and this is what differentiates it from grimdark. In grimdark, you fight a dungeon full of skeletons and then get gruesomely disembowled or something and roll up a new character. In grounded fantasy, you try to avoid fighting a dungeon full of skeletons.

One way to explain how high lethality doesn't have to mean grimdark: I live in a high lethality world and I haven't died once. I've also never attempted to fight a bear and, if I find myself in an area with bears, I employ a variety of strategies to avoid even the risk of fighting a bear. These two facts are probably related.

In grounded fantasy, you're still a bit tougher than you are in real life: you can be shot by one arrow and then be back on your feet tomorrow and not worry about gangrene. You aren't so tough that you can shrug off getting hit by 5 arrows.

It also flips some other OSR-ish tropes on their head. Your character doesn't matter to the world, you're nobody special. But much like in real life, so what? You matter to your friends, to the community. And interpersonal relationships are more likely to matter in grounded fantasy. You are part of a larger society. You can't just roll into town, commit a bunch of crimes, mess things up for everyone, and expect people to be fine with it. But you aren't a disposable pawn, either.

NPCs tend to be important, as are factions. Interpersonal relationships tend to play a much bigger role than they do in more classic OSR games. Motivations for adventure might also be more pro-social: you are protecting the society you live in, solving an immediate problem that affects you and the people around you, or you fit a well-defined social role, albeit not one that sets you above other people.

In grounded fantasy, good and evil are fuzzy, and formal alignment is probably not present. If there are bandits, they aren't just sitting around twirling their mustaches - there might be a reason they turned to banditry, and a non-violent solution to the problem of them being there. But a non-violent solution isn't guaranteed, nor is the reason they turned to banditry necessarily a good one. The important part is that intelligent beings should have motivations and behave according to those motivations, even if they're unsympathetic ones.

With apologies to Brad Kerr, grounded fantasy tends to be where NSR-type games start wandering out of Door D&D and into Sticky D&D.

In grounded fantasy, magic is rare, or it's weird and neither convenient nor easy to control. It's something to approach with a sense of wonder and discovery. It also isn't common enough to affect day to day life or regular society; it exists entirely outside of society, as a series of exceptions. If it impacts society, it's only to help handwave aspects of medieval life that don't make sense to dwell on, such as why people aren't dying of minor infections all the time.

Grounded fantasy is often inspired by fairy tales, folklore, or history, more so than the greater implied setting of D&D-type games or the typical media listed in the Appendix N of those types of games.

Since power levels stay low, monsters should remain scary and powerful. Meeting a bear in the woods should never be mundane. In fact, anything dangerous should not become mundane.

Usually most characters in grounded fantasy are human. If they aren't human, there's something overtly supernatural and probably rare going on.

Games that fit this

Most games fall roughly into the rules-light NSR type category, although not all rules-light NSR games fit. Some story games also fall reasonably well into this category, though. This genre often tends to be at the intersection of the two. For more information about the notion that there is overlap between NSR games and certain story games, see my blog post on the subject.

A very incomplete list of games or adventures that fall under this category, based mostly on games that I own and/or have played:

• Cairn, depending on how you play it, especially if you are not doing a lot of dungeon crawling
  • Beyond the Pale
  • the parts of Frostwyck I have played so far
  • Tannic
  • Darkness Moves
  • Caers and Crannogs
  • A Traveler's Guide to Echelon Forest
  • A Fistful of Feathers
• Corny Gron (I think, I've only skimmed it so far)
• Where the Wheat Grows Tall
• Mangayaw
• Ironsworn
• Wolves Upon The Coast
• Woodfall
• HOME (the supplement for building settlements)
• I don't think anyone else has heard of the Merovingian hack and it is now impossible to obtain, but that
• I'd also include supplements that go really deep into a specific subject like Tome of Tombs, Lowlife, or A Herbalist's Primer

Games that fit but are in a somewhat different genre

• Knights of the Road
• Wild Blue Yonder
• Fallen
• Mausritter but only when you're being particularly mousy
• Mouseguard

Things that partly fit

• Apothecaria
  • pretty magic themed, but it's still a fairly low power magic
• Wise Women (likewise)
• Pariah
  • also fairly high-magic but contextualizes it in a lower-power way that feels like it fits (I haven't played it)
• Wanderhome, especially if you keep some of the darker elements in to move it away from strictly "cosy"
• If you took the points of light setting from 4E and then played it with something else

My work that I think fits this

• Procedures To Discover the Path Ahead
• A Gathering Storm, especially the Cairn version
• What Remains on Copper Island (ish, leans a bit grimmer and with less social interaction)
• If I ever finish A Stone Sword in a Dark Forest

Blog posts that fall into this

• 20 Virtues and/or vices as a replacement for alignment
• Early draft of an oracle deck
• Replacing races with supernatural transformations
• Character retirement
• On religion

And a Cairn actual play that I think exemplifies what I'm going for, part 1 and part 2

Here are some miscellaneous ideas that were supposed to be for the the conclave blog thing.

The problem is I tried to just polish up some existing notes and then started writing a new Cairn 2e background (which I've given up on for now) and next thing you know there was a pope and it was too late.

Part 1: Falsehoods Worldbuilders Believe About Religion

This is a reference to "falsehoods programmers believe about names".

I have a non-Christian religious background, both religiously and culturally. I tend to not talk about my own cultural background these days. But it is fairly notable that people tend to think that all religions are one of the following two religions:

• Christianity
• A specific set of Ancient Greek beliefs as understood in pop culture.

So here is an extremely incomplete list of falsehoods worldbuilders often believe about religion, based on a combination of people I have known and their beliefs and a lot of time spent on wikipedia. I'm a bit reluctant to name specific religions as inspiration for these, because a lot of what I'm thinking of is not just the beliefs of a particular religion, but the beliefs of a particular religion as believed by a particular culture in a particular point in time, which probably doesn't fully represent what other people believe.

The Actual List (of Falsehoods)

• You can only follow one religion at a time.
• Religions have gods.
• Religions have holy texts.
• Religions have a canonical set of beliefs that everyone agrees on.
• It is important that members of a religion believe the correct things.
• Gods have human attributes.
• Gods have a physical form on some level of existence.
• Gods created the world.
• There is a clear distinction between gods and other supernatural beings.
• Gods dictate correct and incorrect behaviour.
• Gods need or want followers.
• Religions believe that the faithful are rewarded after death.
• Religions care about faith, as a concept.
• Religions believe that good people are rewarded after death.
• Religions believe that bad people are punished after death.
• Religions describe an afterlife at all.
• Religions desire converts.
• Religions allow converts.
• Religion is clearly distinct from culture; you can always easily determine what beliefs or actions are religious and which are secular.
• Religions which enforce strong social norms align with modern, conservative notions of those social norms.
• Conversely, religions which do not align with modern, conservative notions of social norms do not have strict social norms.
• Religion is a well-defined concept.

Part 2: Religion In My Implied Setting

I'm slowly settling on a vaguely defined, implied setting in at least half of what I do. It especially exists in my solo Cairn games but you may recognise aspects of it in other things I have written.

Despite listing all of that above, I am not going to do anything wildly unconventional, to set expectations.

Religions in my vaguely defined setting. I am actually not going to do anything terribly unconventional, despite the above list. This default setting mostly exists in my solo games but also to some degree in some of the adventures I write I guess, and more in the things I haven't written.

What gods are like

I like having gods be local: beings of power that you can deal with directly, like factions. They're usually weird and capricious, with motivations not in line with mortal concerns. They exist on a spectrum with spirits and other supernatural forces: the difference is that they are more powerful, and they intrinsically effect the world around them in some way.

In particular, gods can die, but it permanently changes the world, usually for the worse. If the god of a river dies, the river runs dry. If the good of the deer of the forest die, the deer sicken and die and then there are no more deer. If the god who watches over the village dies, calamity after calamity happens until the village is abandoned.

There are important gods as well, like the gods of the sun, but these are above most adventurers' paygrade. A large city will have a temple to the sun, and the priests will make offerings to encourage it to keep rising, but that's probably not your problem. You are unlikely to personally have any issues with the sun, or any problems you can reasonably ask the sun to solve. There might be holidays around the god of the sun. In that way they are a lot like an emperor: the emperor's coronation day might be a holiday, but you have little direct interaction with them. The gods you deal with are more like local nobility.

Gods generally do not have gender as we understand it. They do not have a physical form, but have small areas of strong influence (e.g. a temple or a holy site), and large areas of weak influence (e.g. a forest or a village). They may occasionally manifest a physical form in those areas and often have several shapes that they prefer taking.

Some Cairn rules

The way I've been modelling their power in Cairn is assigning them some spells they can basically cast as much as they want within their areas of influence. Some they can cast only in their areas of strong influence. They can directly intercede in mortal affairs, but their scope is limited. Clerics do not intrinsically have access to these spells, but may be better at asking for help from their gods in areas of power.

Some gods:

• The deer god of deer mountain. Appears as a deer with golden antlers. Will only allow those it deems worthy to hunt its deer - otherwise trespassers are trampled to death.
  • Spells anywhere on the mountain: Anthropomorphise, auditory illusion, hatred (on deer), frenzy (on deer)
  • Spells in its holy glade: Beast form (Cast on someone else), Command, Cure wounds, pacify. Can also cure any contagious disease.
• The god of the village of Cold Rock. A very old rock in the middle, that is always cold to the touch. A shrine was built around it. The god wants to protect the village from danger from outside - or what it thinks is danger.
  • Spells anywhere in the village: control weather, earthquake, fog cloud, phobia
  • Spells next to its shrine: ward, snuff, raise spirit, icy touch
• The East Wind of the Straits of Tears. Sailors make an offering before passing through this perilous route so that the winds don't dash them against the rocks. This god, it is said, is easily offended, with certain words being best avoided. Many do not speak at all after the sacrifice is made.
  • Spells: control weather, that's all it needs.

Clerics

Clerics and priests and so on generally don't go adventuring because they usually have daily responsibilities and are expected to remain respectable. Adventuring is not really respectable.

Clerics, as mentioned, don't get spells from their gods, but religions as institutions are more likely to have access to spellbooks and are especially likely to have thematically appropriate ones. In general, a cleric's power comes from being part of a long-lasting institution with political importance: from the loyalty of their followers, the wealth of the institution, their importance to mortal power, and maybe some relevant artifacts. Clerics are also likely to be educated, and to have access to secret knowledge.

Extremely WIP Cairn cleric background

I started writing a cairn class for an ex-cleric, but I ran out of time. There is exactly one table, not even complete, that I think is worth sharing at the m:

Why are you no longer a priest?

1. At your temple, a priesthood lasts 7 years, and now it's done.
2. Your temple was destroyed, sacked. Perhaps you have sworn revenge, or perhaps you want to rebuild it elsewhere.
3. You were assigned to the priesthood as a child, but as an adult, wished to see beyond its walls and fled.
4. You were kicked out due to corruption: asking for bribes, or stealing from temple offerings.
5. You were kicked out due to heresy: your beliefs were unconventional, or your temple lost a political battle, or political reforms forced uniformity on the religion. You were forced to flee, or ordered into exile.
6. You are still a priest, but you belong to a remote temple of a minor god and your duties are limited. You do weddings, births and funerals, and a few yearly holidays, but otherwise you need to find other ways to make ends meet.

Part 3: Types of Gods

I don't really like the usual fantasy domains, because they seem mostly based on a limited set of real world religions and also not have a lot to do with how people live their lives and what is important to them. Like probably a lot of religions have a god associated with "thunder" but I think it was not necessarily one of the most important things people would have a god for. But having sets of domains is convenient for designing games. So here's an alternative set

1. Gods of the state. The sun, the king, humans who become gods, etc. They represent power and authority, justice and the law. They are most concerned with right and wrong, and their followers are most likely to have institutional power. They are most likely to be hierarchical in nature and to require uniformity in belief. Paladin-types would be associated with these, whether they represent justice or tyranny. You are most likely to deal with this god's representatives, rather than this god directly.
2. Gods associated with sustenance. Gods of farming and the harvest, the seasons, the hunt, the rivers and the sea. Everyday gods, maybe small and local ones. Celebrated in festivals that mark the rhythm of the years. Of most immediate concern to ordinary people. Clerics may be more informal, more embedded in the community, with more regional customs and more differences from village to village.
3. Chthonic gods: gods of the underworld, of death, of curses and oaths and vengeance. Perhaps gods that go unnamed, that are propitiated rather than worshipped. Feared, but not necessarily evil. Death is a part of life. Laws may also fall under their domain, but only the oldest laws, laws even the gods fear to break.
4. Mystery gods. Gods of secrets, the knowledge of the universe. Books and monasteries, or initiation rituals and hidden places. Remote places, altered states of mind. Things only a few are meant to know. Old and forgotten gods, and gods that appeared yesterday. It's disappointing that this type of god is usually relegated to evil cults, because there is so much more that you can do that's interesting.
5. Gods of the home. Your ancestors. The hearth. Children and childbirth. Sickness and health. A home altar, or perhaps something small you carry with you as you travel. A mischievous spirit. Few priests: perhaps someone to bless your house when you lay its foundations, but it's everyone's individual responsibility otherwise.
6. Gods of work. Of wealth and good fortune, of travelers and merchants, of artisans and skill. A god for a guild; for a marketplace; for a ship; for a harbour; for an old mill, or the winds that drive it; for the magic that keeps a blade sharp. These gods are very specific, and their worship is aligned with other institutions and traditions.

Combining These

Picking some random combinations:

• gods of the state + mystery gods: A temple that only a select few can visit, the center of royal power, the place the ruler communes with the gods and thus gains the right to rule, would make an excellent dungeon.
• Gods of the home + gods of work: Certain jobs stay within certain families, the worship of the relevant god passed down from generation to generation. A mill, perhaps, where the last miller died, and now the mill is angry.
• Chthonic gods + mystery gods: almost too obvious a combination. But perhaps you have sworn to take revenge, or you must find a particular sword that can slay the dragon or something, and the only way you can do that is prove yourself in the dungeon of someone or other and gain an audience with a god at the gates to the underworld at the bottom.

You could also have more than one god in each category. A village with a god of the fields, of the forest, and of the sea as their main gods (each falling under a god of sustenance) tells you something about how the town sees the world. A town with 4 gods representing 4 civic virtues (gods of the state) also tells you something about it. Maybe these gods aren't even considered to be supernatural beings, they are explicitly meant to be metaphorical. Contrast against one whose state religion consists of the patron god of three powerful families who compete for power.

Previous History with Online Conventions

NSR camp is not a convention, but it makes sense to talk about it in the context of online conventions.

I've really enjoyed the online conventions I've been to. Typically at online conventions, as at regular conventions, I mostly take the opportunity to play a lot of games, especially games I otherwise wouldn't get to play.

I've been to two - an RPGSEA one, and an Exalted Funeral one. Both were fairly early in the pandemic, but the idea kind of died off. I imagine they are a lot of work to put on, and that people started preferring to put that effort into meeting people IRL.

For me, it's a lot easier for me to justify going to an online convention over a physical one. There is basically just one in my area, despite living in a big city, and it has shut down at least for now. While I can afford to travel to a convention, I find it hard to justify that as well as taking time off work given that I'm not a big name author nor do I plan to be. I'm trying to limit the amount of flying I do. I often feel more comfortable playing with strangers online as I feel it's easier to make sure that I'm playing with a group I'm comfortable playing with (please don't yell at me about this one, this apparently makes some people pretty angry).

There are also things I particularly liked about the online conventions. I find they tended to attract more people who are not big names, by their nature they tend to be more indie, they tend to better reflect the parts of the scene that interest me. I talked to people in countries I would be unlikely to normally meet.

I could of course just schedule a bunch of online games, but scheduling is hard and committing the time is hard. Having a one off event makes me more inclined to make an effort to clear my calendar of lower priority things, or things that can be rescheduled.

What I Did at NSR Camp

This is specifically not quite a convention. It's just a weekend to play games. There are no panels, no vending sessions, etc. It's kept as simple as possible.

I've managed to play one game and run one game the last two NSR camps (the first one, I had family in town so I missed it.) I've wanted to play more - I could definitely do 3-4 games in a weekend and did significantly more at Big Bad Con - but life has gotten in the way.

For running games, I have mostly looked through my bookshelf of unplayed games, using this as an opportunity to try new things. The first time was Knights of the Road, which I basically wrote and playtested an adventure for. The adventure went really well, I think, and let me regain a fair bit of confidence GMing and writing adventures that I'd lost after the past year or so had left me with no time to keep up with that. I will eventually publish it, but probably not until late this year.

The second time I didn't have the energy to prep so I did the Stygian Library, which I've now promised to run again in the future.

I also got to play Lancer, which was pretty cool: that is one I've wanted to try for quite a while. I also played another one of the Borgs, which I'd fallen out of playing the last year or so.

This also lead me to realize that 9-10 AM is a pretty good time to run a game. You have the whole rest of the day ahead of you, and you get people who usually can't make it because of time zones.

General Thoughts on NSR Camp

A decent number of people who have never played any kind of indie RPG end up showing up to these. I think it's a fairly non-intimidating way to get started. I also find games advertised online are rarely one-shots: scheduling something is a fair bit of work so I think people find it to be not worth it unless there are several sessions. So this is a good opportunity to try new things without a multi session commitment.

It's also more accessible than an actual convention: it's free, you don't have to travel, etc. You don't get quite as much of the spontaneous conversation, but they have a channel open for general discussion. It was only active when I was online for one of the camps, though. This is still a relatively small event.

I hope it can maintain a critical mass to keep going. A problem we often have is not having enough players for many of the games people want to play. A lot of games end up being scheduled at roughly the same time, likely due to certain time zones being better represented than others. A bigger group would also make it easier for people to run less mainstream or more experimental games - these often don't fill up. My hope is that this grows over time, but I worry it might instead shrink.

This is I guess the third of my not-review reviews, in combination with a play report.

Haxen is an interesting solo game. Most solo games tend to follow a handful of mechanics, or get fairly complicated; this one is mechanically simple and pretty unique.

I play a lot of solo games when travelling alone. This one is pretty great for that as it is a slim 8 pages including the cover; it plays quickly, and it needs nothing aside from a pencil, eraser and maybe some additional paper. No dice and no cards.

I didn't play this for a while because I was a bit sceptical of a diceless solo game. Dice or other forms of randomness in solo games tend to play the pretty important role of adding in some external contributions to the game; for keeping it from being just a matter of writing a story (which is fine, just not what I'm trying to do.)

What it does instead is have you mark off runes on a matrix; the next result is the next rune but in some cases you can jump ahead and mark any rune. The runes correspond roughly to a full success, a partial success and a failure; full successes are rare. Everything is done by marking a rune, the matrix is relatively small, and if it fills up, you die, making it a fast, tense game. There are limited ways to clear used runes while on an expedition, and on returning safely, there are a lot more ways to do so.

I also have generally had trouble playing more mechanical, delve-y types of games solo, I have found they tend to feel overly mechanical, and not really capture my imagination or really make me care about the stakes. I've generally preferred playing systems not intended to be played solo in those cases, or solo journaling games. I did really enjoy this one though - probably due to the mechanics adding to the tension more effectively.

I played two rounds of expeditions. An interesting side effect of the ability to erase runes between exploration sessions is that your chances of success will go way up the second time, because you are probably clearing the good runes. However, you have much fewer runes - and probably a few scars - and so you have even less time to succeed. My second expedition ended up feeling like effectively an epilogue to the first.

Between expeditions, anything not named (which takes runes) disappears. I wasn't the biggest fan of that mechanic. Especially given how short each expedition was, and the fact that naming things literally shortens your life.

As a side note this is described as being based on blades in the dark, which I find funny, because it is so much its own unique thing.

Thoughts on hacks

Some things I might try doing to hack this in the future/make it more campaign oriented:

• Have a separate rune matrix that can only be used for names and for anchors (forms of inspiration, like a spark table)
  • or maybe split things into a GM and a PC matrix. The GM one would also have lore, weather, locations, encounters and prophecy. This would mean that the more unique events are not competing against the player's chance of success - as it is, if you encounter more interesting things, you will probably fail at dealing with them.
• Have a bigger set of runes, and the ability to clear more marked runes between expeditions
• Nothing is cleared between expeditions but you can enter at any part of the map

At some point here I am basically proposing another game I guess - but I think this rune mechanic is interesting enough that it is worth doing. This game leaves me with a strong desire to play around with these mechanics more. Are there other games that use these? I guess it is creative commons so I could hack it. I think.

The story

The ranger Lazen, equipped with Rope and Bone, sets off into the Requiem to follow a bird with blood-red markings.

It flies through skyscrapers. Lazen chases it, seeing glimpses of its plumage on the broken blue shards in the sky. It isn't until stumbling out of the expanse of skyscrapers that she notices a deep gash on her arm, the same red as the bird.

She has lost sight of the bird, so she bandages it as best she can, and looks around at where she is - a river of crumbling black rock stretching in each direction, a flat scar on the land. A broken green sign says "Orsi".

A large machine sits on it, saying "Ark" on the side. Lazen climbs up and fiddles with it and it starts ponderously moving down the black river.

It travels for a while, and then in the middle of the asphalt is a giant humming obsidian spear coming out of the ground, giving Lazen a horrible headache. She tries to get off the vehicle as it moves closer, but it's picked up speed now.

She notices it's headed straight towards a pit, a giant hole in the ground around the monolith. She tries to jump out and falls. She grabs onto something - a lever - and the machine shudders to a halt - but the lever snaps and she falls, out of the vehicle and into the pit.

The pit crackles with electricity. She sees a red bird, the red bird from before, and sees a way out, grabbing a strange object as she goes that fits in the palm of her hand. Did the bird guide her out?

She follows it, but the air is full of lightning too, and a storm picks up. It has lead her to a crater, which perhaps is safer from the lighting? And in the crater is a tablet, saying - "Find Gant, the sorcerer. He can help."

After waiting out the storm, she heads back. This must be what the bird was to lead her to.

Part 2

She returns in triumph, but wounded. She thinks she can maybe at most take one more trip into the Requium, but she must find Gant.

Some time passes and there is a new prophecy. He is among a field of flowers.

She heads off in a direction where she has heard rumours of flowers. It is desert, however. She travels as fast as she can but finds herself weak and dizzy from the heat, from not enough water. Drained deeply, she knows she can't go much farther. And yet just beyond the deserts she sees a building. A church? A group of people there, who worship the sorcerer, Gant. She stumbles to their door and they look at her impassively.

Eventually a man appears in robes. She asks if he is Gant, she says she hears he can help. (memetic hazard, a bit vague on how this applies) But he just raises his arms and says something, and somehow the world is reversed in some way. The crowd is gone, she is back in the desert, with a handful of flowers. She doesn't remember why she is there.

She stumbles back home. She is greeted as though she returned triumphantly but she has no idea why. She says she walked through the desert and found flowers and they are talking about how they will send a group to go treat with Gant but she has no idea who Gant is. But when she says that it is as though they don't hear her.

I'm going to ramble self-indulgently for a bit, feel free to skip to the next part.

Last week, I went back home and was looking through some of my stuff from high school. I found the first zine I'd ever seen, given to me by another student, printed out on the school printer. It had never previously occurred to me that you could just make a book and call it something worth doing. It also probably wasn't a coincidence that we were both queer, both closeted, though not particularly close, at a time when one simply could not be out in high school. I saw the hints of a possibility of a community that we defined ourselves, not one that was defined for us.

At the time I had access to the Internet, but in a fairly limited way and it was pretty new. I read about making websites in a magazine about science for kids but couldn't actually do so. So for me this one single zine contained within it all of the possibilities that the Internet might have, if I had been born a few years later. I wasn't part of a larger "scene" either. But this idea of a zine stuck with me for many years before I heard the word again.

Gatekeeping zines (keeping the gate open)

I want everyone to be able to make zines.

I don't want to tell anyone that what they are making isn't a zine. If the word feels right to you, you're free to it. But I also don't want anyone to feel like what they're making isn't good enough to be a zine, because there's no such thing. The concept of a zine opens the door to people to create who are shut out of conventional publishing.

So I won't ever tell someone that they are wrong to call something a zine, but I will tell you if your definition of a zine is wrong. Your definition of a zine is wrong, if:

• You think it needs professional, paid art on the cover or any interior page
• You think doodles or collages or random pieces of public domain art aren't good enough
• You think pages need to be bound nicely, or professionally printed
• You think the layout needs to be professional, to be done in layout software
• Maybe most controversially, if you think it needs editing

A zine should have a barrier to entry no higher than a blog post.

You probably haven't heard anyone actually explicitly say "a zine requires editing" or "my art isn't good enough for a zine". This is probably something you've only heard a voice say inside your head. The gate that needs opening is the one inside your head.

I'm not telling you not to do anything. Maybe you're really into fonts, or love doing layout. Maybe you are actually quite good at art. Maybe you have a relevant university degree. PoD doesn't need a big financial investment, and you can fund a Mixam print run by selling PDFs on itch. The point isn't that you aren't allowed to do those things, or that you need to achieve some platonic ideal of zine-hood. The point is that you don't have to. You are free of those constraints, and can freely pick the constraints that matter to you.

Why zines, though? Why do they matter?

Another thing to consider is, why were zines a thing? Before the Internet, they were a cheap and easy way of spreading ideas in a way that allows for many copies to be made. Zines didn't exist just because people really liked photocopy machines. Zines allowed books to be published without any gatekeepers. Conventional publishing limits who can access it. You need money and time, you need your idea to be respectable and marketable, you need to get your ideas past the gatekeepers of those who can own printing presses or brick and mortar stores.

There are a lot of things that carry the spirit of zines without being zines. PDFs made with free software and posted on itch. Blog posts. Cheap personal websites. Google docs and shared spreadsheets.

And there are other ways of making things more accessible, easier to spread. Creative commons publications, for instance. Games that are entirely markdown files. PDF files meant to be printed.

The point actually isn't the format, although the format is fun and worthwhile. The point is the creative freedom.

On non-corporate media

Every now and then someone makes a grand pronouncement about how we will free ourselves from corporations. We won't post on corporate social media, or use Kickstarter, or any of those things. And it never actually happens - because it's hard, it's too ambitious, and people give up. Yes, some people stick with it, but not the whole community.

Part of the problem is that it is often phrased as an obligation, a sacrifice you have to make, a cause that's imposed on you. And so people don't follow through. And another part of the problem is that it is basically impossible to exist on the Internet these days entirely outside of corporate control, and I'm going to be honest, an extremely niche hobby is not going to transform the entire Internet. When it comes to generally trying to fix things in society, I spend 99% of my energy outside of the world of TTRPGs.

Ask yourself instead, in what ways do you feel trapped or constrained? What non-corporate options make you excited about its possibilities? Maybe you feel you need corporate social media, but can create a space that you control by making your own website. Maybe you have to do Kickstarters to pay the bills or to just fulfill your dream of being published, but your blog gives you an outlet to share ideas without the constant pressure of marketability. Maybe it's learning to draw in this world of generative AI. But most importantly, find something you love, that you care about, and not just something that someone on social media said you need to do.

And maybe none of that is important to you. Personally, I think that's fine. But try and leave room for other people to find those things that are important to them, and maybe spend a bit of time cheering them on.

Related Work

A bunch of blog posts have been written recently on the general subject:

The Zungeon Manifesto: This is the one that finally motivated me to polish up and publish this blog post that has been in my drafts for over a year. If you want to try and make a zine - in the sense of something unpolished and unconstrained - here's a good place to start.

The Year of the Beta - Put out something you've done this year that isn't finished. For me, I'll do one or more of these things - a set of rules for stanalone community and character relatinships I've been working on for over a year, or maybe more elements of my implied setting, probably as blog posts.

1E Manifesto: Put out something that's complete, but a first version. Finish something instead of making something perfect.

Indie TTRPG Scene Agenda: try and be a bit scrappier, a bit less dependent on big corporate platforms and more dependent on your peers.

The website manifesto: Not TTRPG related, but maybe some motivation to put together a website.

I've probably missed some, let me know.

Also, consider looking into non-RPG zines as well. There's a lot of cool stuff out there.

A million people have already done this - I'm kind of assuming you have vaguely absorbed the existing Internet discussions, and are familiar with terms like OSR, Story Games, etc. If you haven't, run away now and save yourself. But Six Cultures Of Play is probably a prerequisite to understand what I'm talking about, or at least what I'm complaining about.

I will try to, as much as possible, only discuss games that I have played. A lot of taxonomies seem to be written by someone who clearly likes one type of game a lot more than the others. For instance, I will not be discussing LARP because I don't have any relevant experience. I'm also not claiming that I am discussing the complete set of all games that exist, but I think I have played enough of them propose a taxonomy. If you're curious, I have an approximately complete list of games I've played or run here.

What is a TTRPG?

First we're going to have to look at everyone's other least favourite subject of conversation.

TTRPGs have 2 or more people taking on the following 3 roles:

• A player, who is responsible for one or more characters who are the protagonists of the story.
• A GM, who is responsible for the remainder of the story, such as providing additional characters and other aspects of the environment that the main players exist in. To do so they might determine the outcome of uncertain events or interpret rules agreed upon by the table.
• An author, who provides additional, reusable material without being present. I'm using the term "author" for a lack of a better one, but it includes game books, blog posts, maps, drawings, or even fixed principles transmitted orally from game group to game group. These serve to facilitate or even replace GMing, as well as to introduce new ideas to the table without someone being physically present.

The same person often takes on different roles at different times, sometimes in the same game.

If you have only one of these roles, you are probably writing a book, doing improv, or some other activity. Which is of course totally fine.

This isn't the only definion you could come up with, but I think most people would agree it isn't totally wrong, and it's a lens that I'll be using to discuss the game taxonomy.

The actual taxonomy

In this blog post, I'll talk about 4 categories at a high level, and how they relate to each other. In a follow up blog post, if I ever finish it, I'll break them down into subcategories, many with a lot of overlap.

Maximalist Games

Apparently "maximalist" means something specific in art but I am not educated in such things and might be using the word wrong.

Characteristics of a maximalist game:

• The three roles: clearly present and distinct, with the GM and author each taking on a large responsibility for the game experience.
• Modularity: Semi-modular: There is a main game system which is designed to be extended by other modules, but these modules cannot be used with other games easily. A game book is typically not a self-contained experience and games are usually open-ended in duration.
• Rules: A lengthy, complex ruleset with subsystems for resolving different parts of the game that are likely to come up, primarily oriented around the success or failure of an action and its consequences.
• Characters: The complex game mechanics provide an opportunity for players to develop a distinct character before playing them, defined by game mechanics. Character and player motivations are usually aligned.
• Narrative structure: Campaigns usually follow conventional narrative structure, but this is driven primarily by the GM, or by adventure modules, which define an outline of the narrative.
• Who makes them: Often require more resources to create and thus are made by corporations, but that is changing.
• Relationship to other media: While often inspired by fantasy novels, their larger budget and longer history has allowed some of them to develop their own genre conventions distinct from other media, and in some cases have inspired movies and books.
• Solo games: Rare, due to the prominent role of the GM.

"Trad" games are a subset of these but a) I hate that word and b) I think the genre, starting especially with 4E and other inspired games, have gone in some very different directions. It roughly corresponds to "Fight D&D" in the Between Two Cairns taxonomy, but some games in this category involve no fighting at all.

Narrative Mechanics Games

• The three roles: Blur the lines between GM and player more freely.
• Modularity: Usually not very. Each game is made to create a specific experience, and the blurring of GM and player roles makes adding external content more complicated.
• Rules: Focused on resolving problems in the context of narrative structures. Rules may facilitate pacing, allow for storytelling outside of linear time, allow players to temporarily take on a GM-like role, and allow for players to work together to create conflict between their characters.
• Characters: Mechanics facilitate creating characters according to genre conventions with defined relationships to other characters and to NPCs. Player and character motivations are often not aligned.
• Narrative structure: Rules are designed to support conventional narrative structures and genre conventions.
• Who makes them: The focused scope of these games mean that they are often made by individuals rather than corporations, but there is a trend towards some of them being made by mid-sized organizations. Long development cycles may be needed to provide a polished experience, leading to some amount of professionalization.
• Relationship to other media: Usually strongly inspired by other media, allowing you to create stories similar to movies, books, TV shows, etc.
• Solo games: Rare, with Ironsworn as a notable exception.

Some "story games" fall into this, but I think "story games" has split into two meaningfully distinct categories. I've met enough people who only like one of the two categories. I think they are perceived as more similar than they are because there's less internet drama about the difference between them.

Prompt-based storytelling

• The three roles: Blur the lines between the GM, player and author, with the GM often being absent.
• Modularity: Usually self-contained experiences with limited modularity.
• Rules: Often entirely forego mechanics for failure or success; mechanics tend to be minimal and about making suggestions regarding the story to tell, with the written text sometimes acting primarily as a GM or even player who is not present.
• Characters: Character creation is usually a minor to nonexistent part of the game, with characters being defined by decisions made at the table. In some cases, all characters are already predefined. Characters are usually defined in words rather than numbers. Player and character motivations are rarely aligned.
• Narrative structure: Stories often forego conventional narrative structures, and are focused around exploring relationships, ideas, or experiences. If a narrative structure is defined, it is usually in the form of a defined endpoint, with the purpose of the game being to explore how the characters get there.
• Who makes them: Leans heavily towards DIY or single creators. Often comes in formats other than books.
• Relationship to other media: Inspiration comes less from established genres and more from life experiences. Genre fiction is less likely to be an inspiration.
• Solo games: Very common, due to the reduced role of the GM.

Adventure/exploration games

• The three roles: Blur the lines between GM and author, both at the table and culturally.
• Modularity: Are highly modular: not only are supplements and adventures often interchangeable, but are often not tied to specific systems.
• Rules: Have relatively short rulesets focused on generating situations (on the GM side) and resolving danger (on the player side).
• Characters: Characters are mostly created organically in play through interactions with the environment, including the tools at their disposal. Random generation is common. Character and player motivations are usually aligned.
• Narrative structure: Campaigns often do not follow a typical narrative structure, aside from perhaps an escalation in danger, scope and/or strangeness.
• Who makes them: Their modular nature means that they are often created in a DIY manner, through zines, blog posts, and informal discussions, though mid-size companies are also prevalent.
• Relationship to other media: Inspiration from other media is often mostly vibes-based, with genre fiction, folklore, and even musical genres and political movements (for better or worse) being prominent. It doesn't seek to emulate the characters or narrative structure of other genres.
• Solo games: Relatively common, usually provided by an additional module that may be specific and general-purpose, often focused on a GM emulator known as an "oracle."

"OSR" games are a subset of these, but a good number of these also make many OSR people very angry. It roughly corresponds to "Door D&D", but dungeon crawling is not inherent to this genre.

Other ways of looking at these categories

You could also map these on axes:

• distinct GM/player/writer role vs combined roles: maximalist vs prompt-based at opposite ends of this spectrum
• Highly self-contained vs highly modular: narrative vs adventure/exploration
• Strong genre conventions vs naturalistic approach: maximalist/narrative vs adventure/exploration/prompt based
• Resembles a D&D vs does not really resemble a D&D: maximalist/adventure/exploration vs narrative/prompt based
• for symmetry I want to put another axis for maximalist/prompt based but I can't think of anything they have in common. Oh well.

But I also don't think this is a complete enumeration of all possible types of games either - this is some kind of n-dimensional space that has only 4 blobs on it

The part of the taxonomy blog post where you realize this is actually just me going on about my own preferences this entire time

I've played and enjoyed all 4 types of games, but putting this together has helped me figure something out - why it is that I like both the NSR side of OSR games and like the "super weird" story games. And why I don't seem to be the only one, even though these are often talked about as opposites. Because if you split story games into two genres, the similarities between prompt-based games and adventure/exploration games comes out.

Previous posts

I made a previous post arguing there's a lot of overlap between modern trends in some OSR games and in some story games, here: I realize now I was actually describing the section between adventure/exploration games and prompt based games. It all makes sense with the circle.

I have another post where I discuss the overlap specifically from the perspective of solo games.

I attempted to come up with my own definition for NSR here.

First, how does the afterlife work

These days most of my writing has a vague, implied setting, but one thing I have not defined is the afterlife. The afterlife is generally something of a problem. For instance, in Baldur's Gate 3, it has been pointed out that the Forgotten Realms having a well-defined afterlife has all sorts of weird implciations on characters' motivations, especially Hell being a literal, real place you can go look at. A lot of character motivations then seem incongruous with the world as presented. On the other hand, fantasy adventures tend to assume there is some form of existence after death, at least so you can like ask questions of the dead. Maybe even bring the dead back (though I want that to be fairly limited).

The solution I settled on is a kind of Sabriel situation (though not dangerous to the dead). There is a liminal space between life and death that the living can sometimes carefully delve into, and sometimes the dead can influence the world of the living, as ghosts. The spirits of the dead may hang around for a while, so long as they are concerned with the affairs of the living. But as their ties to the world of the living fade, most will pass on to whatever comes next. The liminal realm is a rather dreary shadow of the world of the living, liminal not in a cool or atmospheric way but in the way an airport is. As you travel deeper into the land of the dead, there is no returning at a certain point, either for the dead or for the trespassing living.

In some cultures, it's common to stay around for some time to help your descendents, though that help is only subtle and indirect. To encourage this, the living can give gifts to the dead, of the things they enjoyed in life. Where this is common, the land between life and death is more interesting, sometimes even having entire cities. These cities, however, have something of the atmosphere of Vegas - constructed entirely for the purpose of entertainment, as boredom is the only real problem; a strange facsimile of the real world; and surrounded by an endless wasteland on all sides.

In other cultures, you're expected to move on fairly quickly and leave life to the living, just as the living are expected to move through the various phases of life. Specific individuals do stick around for their own purposes, if they have unfinished business, and meddle in the world of the living as a ghost, but they most often would be motivated by spite, vengeance, jealousy, and so on.

Necromancy and the undead

I want necromancy to be feared and somewhat taboo, but I want to give a reason other than "because we said so".

The land of the dead is dangerous to the living, but not to the already dead - the monsters that lurk here need the life essence of the living to manifest in the real world, in the form of mortal blood, as well as a vessel to inhabit, most easily made from something that was once living. They also seem to desire mortal blood for its own sake. And so necromancers can use blood d (themselves or others') to bargain with these beings.

When given the opportunity to manifest in the physical realm, these beings can only have the nature of the blood they were fed in the ritual that awakens them. For instance, a being created from a rat has only the understanding of a rat, clever and able to fight but unable to talk or reason like a human. Some of the more desperate undead may be satisified with this bargain, and a skeleton animated by such a force may be useful to a necromancer. A necromancer can give some of their own blood to bring forth the intelligent undead for a short amount of time, but to create something truly powerful a human sacrifice is needed. As part of this bargain, these beings will usually be asked to swear a binding oath to obey the necromancer, but there are many ways to twist the words of those oaths.

Once in the land of the living, eventually they will exhaust their supply of blood and be forced to return. The only way to remain is by consuming more blood, and they prefer human blood, although without ritual assistance human blood does not make them more powerful. They can also conserve their energy indefinitely by waiting without moving, and so an ancient tomb undisturbed for centuries might contain skeletons that will come to life when disturbed.

Necromancy isn't strictly evil, but at best it's very dangerous. You might, for instance, empower the skeleton of an animal (to avoid grave robbing) with an animal sacrifice, which is no different from eating meat, really, but there's always a danger that it attacks someone. It's also unclear why the creatures of the Beyond are so desperate to enter the mortal world, but some believe that there is some vast and organized plan, and every undead incursion brings this plan closer to fruition.

You can also make other deals with the strange powers of the beyond, such as to bargain for knowledge or strange powers in exchange for a smaller offering of blood, but any power of the Beyond worth bargaining on is powerful enough that it may find a way to slip into the world of mortals - either by finding the dead body of an animal nearby that you overlooked, or possibly even by possessing your body.

Finally, vampires

You, once an ordinary human, have committed deeds in life so vile and unholy that upon death, your soul cannot pass on to wherever it is that souls go after death. Instead, 2d4 days later, you awake in your grave and, no longer needing to breathe, you claw your way to the surface.

You aren't "inherently" evil, in the sense that you still have free will, and you can turn your back on your previous misdeeds, though it becomes more challenging due to your vampiric nature. You can in theory stop drinking blood: you have the option to change your ways, you just are unlikely to do so given you ended up in this position to begin with. Nor are you likely to see any reward for doing so in this life, and the gates to the next one are permantly closed. Still, however, if you manage to avoid being destroyed through the centuries, that is a long time, and you may find yourself changing your ways.

• Boon: Whenever you die, an unholy power knits your body back together and come back to life in 3 days with 1d6 Strength. This costs an equivalent amount of Doom. If there are significant barriers to your body coming back together, this isn't possible - for instance, you have been beheaded with your head buried separately, a stake has been firmly driven into your heart, or your body has been significantly burnt or dismembered.
• Boon: If you drink the blood of a living human (or similar), you drain 1d6 from their WIL save and may restore the same number of points to any of your saves other than Doom. This is the only way you can heal. You otherwise do not need to eat, drink or breathe. If your victim reaches 0 WIL they act as if permanently charmed.
• Boon: You have three of the following spells.
(1) Beast Form (must be a creature of the night), (2) Command, (3) Charm, (4) Control Weather, (5) Haste, (6) Hypnotize, (7) Manse, (8) Smoke Form, (9) Snuff
• Bane: You cannot abide the taste and smell of the food of mortals, and the stronger the smell the more it repels you. Garlic and spices in particular are anathema to you - they smell overwhelmingly vile.
• Bane: You cannot enter a consecrated place, or approach a holy symbol, unless permitted by the god of that place. Likewise, you cannot enter a home unless invited in.
• Your fate: When Doom reaches zero, you can no longer hide that you are a corpse, and you must either flee into the wilderness or face a certain second death.

It's the only game convention I go to - largely because it's local and I try to avoid flying these days - but it's a pretty good one. A lot of the games are a bit outside of the usual set of games I play, which I appreciate. It's a chance to play things I probably won't play for the rest of the year, and I try and push myself to try new things and, in particular, to play games I've never played before. So this post is mostly actually going to be a discussion of the games I played, in chronological order.

I played 8 games. My top 3 were City of Winter, Trophy Dark and Shinobigami in that order; of the playtest games I am especially excited by the potential of Gnostisystem.

Games on demand part 1

I played two 2-hour games, both playtests. One was a Starfinder adventure called Absalom Station Animal Control, about trying to catch escaped cats, where you can't hurt the cats but the cats can hurt you. It was one of the better examples I'd seen of trying to play a game without violence but using all of the mechanics of a "trad" RPG (I dislike the term "trad" in this context but I guess we're stuck with it.) It's not usually my first choice of genre but I had fun. It used a grid-based, initiative-based tactical game system to not kill things, and the increasingly difficult cats are easy to play as funny and cute. It was my first time playing Starfinder, my second time playing a Pathfinder-family game. It was also my second time playing a social media influencer in a sci fi game.

As a side note I'd like to see a wider range of tones in sci fi games, especially for more lightweight game systems. I feel like sci fi tends to be pretty grim, which is fun sometimes, but I think we could use more lightweight space shenanigans games as well.

Next was a playtest of a GM-less game called A Reason To Be about people in a society that is generally pretty good trying to solve minor problems in their lives. The game had an index card based system where you shuffled and drew index cards and each time the same index card came up you progressed your character's story arc a bit more. You also collaboratively create the community, which I enjoyed. It's a nice game for telling a quick and self-contained story. Though after playing through it I feel like I would do a much better job of playing it a second time.

OD&D and Jennell Jaquays

This was my first time playing OD&D. Despite doing a lot of stuff on kind of the "NSR" side of things, I have very little experience playing actual retroclones, although I had played modern rewritings of some classic adventures (White Plume Mountain in particular). We actually played the Fantastic Medieval Campaigns version.

In a lot of ways we played this in what I imagine was a relatively traditional way. We even had a shot-caller, though the way it was implemented actually made a lot more sense than how I heard people sometimes used it - the position was rotated every half-hour, and their responsibility was just to make a final decision after we'd all talked about what to do next.

In many ways it felt surprisingly modern, though. The game was not incredibly deadly (one person died during the final confrontation) and mostly felt pretty fair. We had meaningful choices to make, solved most problems without violence, a lot of the encounters were primarily social, and just exploring the dungeon and piecing together what was going on was a lot of fun. It felt more like a modern "NSR" game than how I imagined actual old school games to be. I wouldn't play this type of game every time, but I'd definitely enjoy playing it now and again.

I have generally been aware that early D&D was in fact played in a lot of different ways, not just what people think of as OSR. This game left me curious about whether there is a notable difference in, say, adventures descended from Gygax's work vs Jaquays'.

Trophy Dark

Finally, got to play Trophy Dark! I'd previously tried and failed during Games On Demand.

The game was set in a convent in Northern California shortly after Vatican 2. The premise is that we are all new nuns heading to the convent, where strange things are happening - strange creatures seen in the woods, followed by a mysterious illness.

I'm not sure how typical a Trophy Dark game it was. While we were all doomed from fairly early on, we managed to have what I think was a rather touching story under tragic circumstances, choosing to defy the lovecraftinan Dog-Man despite certain death. We also I think were all a bit too cautious and so our Ruin never got all that high. I also think we had a really good group for this - I thought everyone played their characters in a really compelling way.

I played a down-to-earth daughter of a farmer who insisted for as long as possible that there was a reasonable explanation for everything going on. Unfortunately I didn't manage to incorporate my secret lesbian past until the epilogue.

(I ended up going to a panel later about playing games set in the real world - I think it would have helped me play with more confidence if I knew more about Catholicism.)

Apparatchik

This was another playtest of what turned out to be a kind of interesting take on a "trad" game. Unfortunately at least one of the players was hoping for something a lot more in the realm of story games and was clearly not having a good time throughout.

But I thought it was pretty interesting - you play as bureaucrats assigning resources according to rules in an almost board-game-like way. In a sense this is to worker placement boardgames as D&D is to tactical miniature wargames. But it quickly becomes apparent that it is not actually possible to win. You don't have enough resources to save everyone, and the best you can do is mitigate the damage. Another point of frustration I think was that it wasn't clear to all the players that there was no way to win and they thought they were just playing badly or misunderstanding the rules. If you don't like complicated board games you probably wouldn't like this game.

You create characters that are in over their heads and assigned to this problem more or less due to losing some political battle. I played a naive and ambitious young bureaucrat who didn't realize that being appointed as the head of the committee by the others was not in fact doing me a favour. Like a lot of "trad" style games, the RP aspect is mostly improv and the rules are mostly around the mechanics of problem solving. This is the main thing which some of the players bounced off of - I actually don't mind "trad" games, I've mostly moved away from them due to being dissatisfied with the actual combat mechanics of the ones that are popular now. I think this would be a great game for players who mostly play D&D 5E or Pathfinder who want to branch out a bit, but not too much.

I feel like this is a game I'd have fun running, for the right group.

Panel: Playing Games in the Real World

This is the only panel I went to, it was a pretty good one. Some notes I took:

• A setting as your personal ethnography of a city
• A setting in the real world as your research of something you're interested in (including in the past)
• A setting in the real world about capturing a specific vibe
• A fantasy or folkloric setting that looks for the magic in the real world

• Players may automatically have familiarity with real-world settings. This both can be good and can be bad (if you have different perspectives)
• Real world history: watch out for anachronisms e.g. cell phones. But also be flexible (e.g. allow for player diversity)
• Instead of building from the ground up, you have to consider each element and whether or not to exclude it
• Can be easier to get players emotionally invested
• Easy to visualise, may have more resources to do so (e.g. Google Maps). It can be fun to play in a place and then later visit it IRL

• It is harder to populate a place that you don't have real-world familiarity with, especially if you want to be respectful.
• Actual real-world conflicts rooted in systemic oppression can come up. You may want to explore this, or it could be off-putting to people affected by it. And it can also be off-putting to have it be notably absent.
• Rather than avoid entire subjects, be able to recover from and grow from mistakes gracefully.
• Your responsibilities in a public game are higher than in a private game.

Small Press Vending

This went pretty well. I mostly sold Procedures to Discover the Path Ahead, I was a little disappointed that Friends, Liars and Troublemakers didn't sell that well, but I realized that actually maybe a zine full of stat-less NPCs is actually one of the more OSR-coded things that I sell, in a weird way. There were several people who had heard of Cairn and someone even bought my last Murky Bog pamphlet. Given that this convention is not totally the target audience for the games I make, I was pretty happy.

City of Winter

I got lucky with this one, there was a last-minute cancellation and I managed to swoop in.

I really liked this game and I want to imagine myself having the ability to do a long campaign of it. Unfortunately my current story game type group just established that the group as a whole doesn't like GM-less games, and also I feel like this is a game to be played IRL. It is such a gorgeous game.

It's about an extended family going on a long journey from their home because something terrible is happening. They have cards that represent their culture, and as they travel, they pick up cards from other cultures and may adopt those. It's a really good representation, I think, of the immigrant experience, as someone who myself has a mixed hand of cards.

Each culture is roughly represented by an animal, and the cards did a really good job of being interesting and ambiguous, and of creating areas both for conflict and for cultural exchange as we encountered different cultures. The structure of having a family that grows older over time was also really good - we had a lot of really touching moments throughout the game. Playing members of an intergenerational family (which also is growing older over time) was pretty cool, especially given that RPG games are more likely to be about a group of friends who are peers.

There were two kids where it started out with one bullying the other, where with some help from the adults they ended up good friends and later, adoptive siblings. There was a romance between two characters who just happened to be traveling together at the start but later formally joined the family. I played a grandmother type who tried to keep everyone happy while protecting our traditions - there was an extended running joke of getting the more rowdy kid to carry on traditions involving loud and annoying musical instruments.

Also if I had a dollar for every time I played a game where it was ambiguous whether we are actual birds or metaphorical birds and we realized we were not on the same page halfway through the game, I would have two dollars.

Shinobigami

This was a Games on Demand game. This is a highly PvP story game where we play members of different ninja clans, scheming to end up with the McGuffin at the end.

It had some interesting mechanics - a grid of combat skills where you have some trained skills but can use other skills with a difficulty depending on how far it is from a trained skill, and a health system which wipes out columns of skills. Combat is heavily based around an initiative system which also determines your distance from each other as well as the actions you can take and effectively your HP, and involves secretly choosing an initiative, and was surprisingly tactical.

You also have an ultimate attack with a very long name which you of course have to dramatically say to activate. I really enjoyed getting to have over-the-top monologues as well.

But mostly the game was about relationships between the characters and trying to figure out each other's secrets. Everyone had a secret goal as well. There were a lot of great dramatic reveals and a satisfying ending.

I played a sneaky rogue who had rejected all ninja clans, and I started with the McGuffin, which I managed to hold onto until the very end when I was finally defeated. I had a tragic friendship with an opponent who I was also required to defeat as my secret goal. Despite being a very PvP game, I feel like we were also working together to generate drama and tragedy. This is a case where I can't tell if the game was really good or I just ended up with a really good set of players (or both).

Gnostisystem

I was going to do a LARP, which was then going to be Yazeba's B&B, and after both were cancelled I went back to Games On Demand.

It's very much still in development and I'm very excited about its potential.

It's a "trad" game where you draw an esoteric diagram according to some rules and that determines how combat works. So your character sheet is a cool drawing, made up of circles of three colours and connections between them. The colours correspond to attacks, defences and movement, and the lines between them allow you to have actions do more than one type of thing.

You fight other esoteric diagrams. The rules for the diagrams are pretty simple but have a surprising amount of depth to them. When we got to the final "boss fight" it was legitimately quite hard and we had to really think through the tactics of defeating it. It's also very satisfying to come up with interesting combinations and have those work out in a battle. It was the most engaged I had been in tactical combat in a game in quite a long time, and it has a much simpler set of rules than most other tactical combat oriented games, given the amount of emergent complexity in those rules.

It's about going to a strange spiritual realm and fighting strange entities to fuel some kind of religious obsession. Damage goes directly to your identity and sense of self and you heal yourself by picking up parts of these strange entities and grafting them to your soul. It's a dungeon crawler.

I'm hoping for more focus on polishing the out of combat stuff in the future - I think this entire concept has a ton of potential that is not totally yet realized. In particular, the implications on identity and character growth, as well as what exactly the nature of the spiritual entities you are fighting is, or what your end goal might be, could be fleshed out more. But if the author doesn't go that direction I could see myself just hacking the game a lot and making it into what I want it to be. I'm also hoping for a high-budget kickstarter with a lot of art, like usually I feel we have too many of these, but this is a concept that deserves cool art. I think overall this is my favourite take on a "trad" game in a long time. It's also totally unlike any other game I've seen.

Is it a good idea to play 8 games in one weekend

Usually, it is advised that you do the exact opposite of this. I was very tired afterwards. In between games I had zero social energy at all. But this is also for me my main opportunity to play many of these types of games. I also don't know a huge number of people in this particular scene and the ones I know I don't know that well, the rest of the year I'm mostly in a different corner of the TTRPG world, and in the past attempts to "network" mostly made me feel bad. If you're trying to grow a career, spending an entire convention playing games 12 hours a day is probably not the way to go, but for me it's worth it.

Half of the games I played were Games On Demand. A great thing about Games On Demand is you can ascertain your energy levels like 5 minutes before the games start.

I've decided to publish a blog version of the main idea in Procedures to Discover the Path Ahead because I keep wanting to tell people that I wrote something that solves their problem, but I don't want to seem spammy and ask them to buy something.

So here is the core mechanic. You have a counter that goes from 0 to 6 and you add the results of a d6 to the counter. You then look up the result in a table. This is basically a depth crawl.

1. Water
2. Farmland/village
3. Waystation (e.g. an inn, monastery, friendly military post, roadside stalls). Add 1 to the counter.
4. Gentle wilds (rolling hills, meadows, forests that are well explored and used by loggers, hunters, etc). Add 1 to the counter.
5. Farmland/village, again. Add 1 to the counter.
6. Rough wilds (bogs, scary forests, rocky hills, small mountains). Add 2 to the counter.
7. Barrier (Deserts, oceans, mountains). Place up to 2 spaces away and add 2 to the counter when you reach that spot. Have it extend a few spaces in either direction.
8. Unfriendly (monsters, bandits, army of a rival kingdom). Add 1 to the counter.
9. Rough wilds again. Add 1 to the counter.
10. Town, placed 2 spaces away. Reset the counter to 0.
11. Deep wilds: enter the land of the fey, etc.
12. City. Place 3 spaces away and set the counter to 0.

Example of a journey

A space can be a hex, a day's travel, an hour's travel, etc. If you're doing this without a map, I usually roll 2 options and have the option of going one of two ways at each point. For example:

I have tables in the book to flesh out each location a bit more, but you could equally well use similar tables in other books. You could use this in conjunction with other game rules: add random encounters, for instance.

The goal is to randomly create a map or a journey which also follows a satisfying narrative pattern. Stateless random location generators end up feeling a bit incoherent sometimes, since anything can appear next to anything else. By adding some state, the journey naturally follows a narrative, where it increases in difficulty as you get farther from home, requiring you to reach several obstacles, before reaching your goal. It also feels more naturalistic, with areas near major settlements having smaller settlements and relatively safe areas, and more remote areas being more dangerous. It also means that potential adventure sites (the portal to a strange world, the mountains, the ominous castle), require some effort to discover.

Example of a hex map

You can also do this with a hex map. In this case, write the counter number on each hex. When you go to a new hex, take the average of the hexes next to it that you've visted. You can also pre-seed the map with ocean hexes (e.g. have it be around a bay, or a peninsual like Scandinavia) and it works out pretty well.

I mean to eventually have a page walking through an example of making a hex map, but it would make this blog post really long so it's coming later. Here are two maps that I made using this, though:

Using this structure for other things

I have some other types of overland journey in the book. One thing I've been meaning to explore, but haven't until now, is using it to generate dungeons. Here's a first attempt:

1. A temple or other external-facing structure
2. A sealed door +3
3. An incursion from the natural world
4. A minor enemy, guarding a useful item +1
5. A secret revealed or a useful item +1
6. An obvious trap or puzzle +2
7. A passage heading downwards. +3
8. Another entrance. If the dungeon continues, reset counter to 0
9. A powerful enemy +1
10. A sealed door +2
11. An ancient evil unleashed +1
12. A great treasure

On a 6, the dungeon loops back on itself.

I tried it out and it makes some decent small dungeons. It currently has no guidance on exits for rooms, I'm just doing what feels right in the moment, but if I made this into something publishable I would probably want to come up with a procedure for that, as well as more guidance for how to actually stock the rooms. I also might want to tweak it to make bigger dungeons. But as a first, off the cuff implementation without any effort spent refining it, I'm pretty happy with it. There are multiple paths and a sense of progress as you go deeper.

(Made with Dungeon Scrawl)

Here's a slightly weirder one that I did, that I'm not going to try doing on an actual map. I like that it ended up being very vertical. Also this is the point where I decided we needed another sealed door farther down. It's still super short though - you basically have one choice to make - do you try and fight Big Scary Monster, maybe with the help of Lore, or do you fight the slightly less scary monster and then deal with the door? Or maybe3 the Big Scary Monster leaves to go to the lake sometimes.

If I was playing solo, I'd probably make the room with "lore" be basically a token for something I can then retroactively say applied to the situation.

General design considerations when writing your own

• The more frequent you increment the counter, the faster it goes.
• Anything 1-6 can happen on the first roll.
• Consider things within 6 of each other. Does it make sense for them to occur back to back?.
• Things in the 3-9 range or so will show up more often.

I don't have a license for this "system" because I think 90% of it isn't copyrightable anyway, aside from the exact wording that I use, and I think there is a tendency for people to over-claim what is copyrightable in the RPG world. I'm happy for you to make use of this or to make your own versions of these tables, and I'd love to hear about it if you do.

Intro

I recently playtested Tarnation, although unfortunately I never finished the game because I lost the index card I was using. Maybe it'll turn up and then I'll finish it. I then played God's Going To Cut You Down, and realized they are both kind of Western-y games. They're quite different - Tarnation is definitely Weird, and GGCYD is pretty normal. Tarnation guides you through a kind of clock-based story structure where you should hopefully survive; in GGCYD you are doomed and you're playing to find out your downfall.

I ended up playing pretty terrible people in both games. Also, for GGCYD maybe I leaned too hard into the tropes of the genre, I have never written anything that less passes the Bechdel test. I don't think you have to play either character as that terrible though; in particular the example character in the GGCYD book tends to make mistakes more in the context of his religious beliefs, and his ultimate failure is a lot less serious. I don't have a Christian background (religiously or culturally), so I ended up going with someone who is morally flawed in ways I am better at understanding. I kind of flailed around a bit before I really got my bearings on what was happening as well; Westerns aren't a genre I'm very familiar with either. (Why did I get this game, you ask? I like doomed protagonists, especially when they doomed themselves.)

I think the Tarnation one is the best writing I've done in solo journaling so far, maybe because I was finally brave enough to do real dialogue. I am extremely not confident about my ability to write dialogue. Maybe that's why I like writing adventures, because I am making the dialogue someone else's responsibility.

Tarnation

Me and Daisy heard they were looking for us, slipped out just before dawn. They expect people like me to stay up late and sleep in late, but I've always slept lightly. I heard they were asking questions about a man named Jack who'd disappeared, who had last quarreled with me over a card game.

I considered throwing away my revolver, but thought I might need it where I was going.

Daisy is stubborn but she knows how to walk quiet. As do I.

I could barely see the glow of the sun over the horizon but I could tell it was going to be a hot day. The road was dusty so we kept off of it. The dry grass crunched underfoot, and we headed to the other side of the ridge line before anyone woke up.

I didn't want to head across the border, I never had before, but they were sure to find me on the road. What I didn't expect was that Daisy would refuse to continue. There was another donkey just into the borderlands. Like Daisy, but silvery. And Daisy was not having it.

I'd heard of the quicksilver people. I heard that they would take strange shapes. But why take the shape of my damned mule.

Maybe I could turn her loose and she'd walk back to town? Maybe they'd think, then, that I died in the borderlands. But I couldn't bring myself to leave her. I brought some apples with me and I use them to try and coax Daisy forward. I then have an idea. I walk up to the quicksilver donkey and offer it an apple as well.

It took the donkey, and then it changed shape. It changed into the shape of Jack. I don't remember falling to the ground.

I wake up and Daisy is gone. A man is standing by me. He looks confused. "Who are you, and where am I?" he says. He's holding a strange device.

"Where's my mule?" I reply.

"I can find them," he says, gesturing to the device, "not that I've seen them. But look. I mean you no harm. Tell me where I am and I'll point you in the direction of the mule."

Without thinking, I name the town. He frowns. "I've heard of it. Collected a bounty there once, many years ago."

"You're a bounty hunter?" I say, trying to sound casual.

"I suppose so. Name's Tom. I like to think of myself as more someone who tries to bring some justice to this world. Real justice, you know, not The Law."

"Name's Myrtle", I say, saying the first name that comes to mind.

"Well, I better head into town in any case. Get my bearings, get breakfast, then head back." He fiddles with some dials. "What's your mule's name?"

"Daisy."

He squints. "Closest thing named Daisy is uh thatwaways. Looks like she's ranged, though. Do you know how to range?"

"Never done it."

"It's not safe. Maybe better to head back into town with me. There are criminals and such about too, you know."

I realize this is my best shot, when his hands are full and he's looking down. I don't want to do it. It started with Jack and now it's going to be Tom and who knows where my life is headed now. But if Tom makes it back to town, he'll be hunting me next, and his revolvers look well-used. So I shoot while his head is down. I grab the device before it falls and crashes on the ground. For some reason, running seems right. Maybe from my guilt.

It's a good thing I ran, because a bullet whizzes by over top. Just before I flicker, I hear a voice behind me.

"You poor fool, Myrtle. You really do not know the border lands."

Daisy is on the other side, where it's cold and the land is dotted with the closest thing we ever get to trees here. I don't know if he followed me, and Daisy for once doesn't complain when I jump on her back and run. I don't know if he followed me, this man who I saw die, but I've lost him for now.

God's Gonna Cut You Down

I'm a baker. I have gotten in a big fight with someone, many years ago, and they're now the mayor. Now my fight is everyone's fight, and people are quietly picking sides.

Chapter 1

Verse 1: 5:3:4 feed the poor

On a whim, I give free bread to Anne, whose farm is struggling. She goes from being cold and distant to friendly and grateful. Word gets around and I give bread to those in need. I can't keep it up forever, but I'm winning some of the town back.

Verse 2: 4:2:3 restore what you deceitfully gained

I realize that I have mistakenly underpaid the miller. The miller is the mayor's cousin. I reluctantly admit that I have overpaid him and give him the money back, hoping to bolster my reputation by my honesty. Instead he accuses me of being just afraid of angering the mayor. Rumours spread that I was deceitful in my business dealings.

Verse 3: 6:2:4 don't break vows

I had promised Anne free bread, and don't have the flour for it. But a promise is a promise. I tell her this will have to the be last time.

Verse 4: 2:2:2 don't steal/lie/deal falsely

My old friend the Salesman is back in town. This time he has a grift - he's selling snake oil. He offers to cut me in on it if I can sell it in my shop. I desperately need the money but I can't prove the mayor right and stoop to such dishonesty.

Verse 5: 3:2:6 another one about mercy and truth

Anne's son is sick and is trying to buy the snake oil from the Salesman in the inn. I know she can't afford it. I reveal what he said to me in front of the whole town. I've made an enemy.

Verse 6. 4:3:1 (false witness) - failed!

My son sets fire to the bakery. Insurace won't pay out if it's him. I say I saw the Salesman do it. The timing is right. People believe it. He flees in the night.

Chapter 2

A few weeks later...

Verse 1: 5:6:6 Swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath

The mayor makes a speech against dishonest merchants. He is clearly targeting me. The Miller implies I set the fire on purpose to scam insurance. I say nothing. I don't even acknowledge it.

Verse 2: 3:3:3 Love the stranger

A new person comes into town. They seem disreputable, they come in with a bullet wound. People in the community don't want him here, they want him to move on. He comes to me for help specifically - he heard from a beggar I gave out free bread. I help him with great reluctance.

Verse 3: 2:5:5 Thine own friend, and father's friend, forsake not

My son confesses to me that he set the fire, he is afraid that I blamed my friend by mistake and that he set us apart. He wants to go find him and bring him some of the gold. I, too, am feeling guilty, and the mysterious stranger has given me an equally mysterious sum of gold, so I can afford it now. I send him off with my blessing.

(oops I've been doing wrong number of dice)

Verse 4: 1:6:4 (don't partake of other men's sins) - failed!

It turns out the stranger is a wanted man, and someone comes looking for him. He tells me that if he is found at my house, I will be ruined, everyone will think me a criminal - and I think of the mayor and how he'd use this. I just need to help him escape. So I do. I hear gunfire that night, and try not to think about it.

Chapter 3

It's been a month and my son is still missing.

Verse 1: 5:6:5 Redeem firstborn son

(Wow, this is way too appropriate)

I hear my son was arrested. It is he, not I, who is now being blamed: he had the stolen gold, and he confessed to the Salesman that I lied about who set the fire.

The Salesman writes me a letter. My son will go to prison if I don't go. I go.

Verse 2: 5:3:5 Do not bear a grudge

Before I go, I go to the mayor and I apologize. I say that I was wrong, many years ago, and more wrong to hold onto my anger. The mayor is overcome with sadness. Things could have been so different, so many years ago. I don't know what has happened to you to give you some capacity for self-reflection. I tell him I'm leaving town and I hope to be back but I don't know if I will. I tell him I am going to get my son back. He tells me that looking after my son is the one decent thing I've done in my life and not to bother returning if I don't return with my son. I get him to promise that if my son comes back alone, he will look after him.

Verse 3: 6:1:5 thou shall not kill - failed!

(Another overly approriate one. Though it was my second roll, I skipped the first one, I don't remember what it was but it was too similar to a previous one.)

The trial of my son is tomorrow. I meet the Salesman. We have a bitter argument. He says I'm the worst kind of hypocrite, willing to destroy anyone to make myself look better. This is not how I imagined it going. I finally tell him that I'll admit to letting him take the fall for the fire, to free my son, but too many words have been said. The Salesman shrugs and says, like father, like son, it wasn't an accident, I know you burned it down for the insurance. You sent your son with blood money, you threw me under the bus to distract from your dealings with bandits and murderers. I pull out a knife and stab him. They would hang me either way, and now I get to tell the story.

My son goes free.

I think in my last night about how all my troubles started with that first sin, against Emilia, so many years ago. How as a young man I was foolish and thoughtless. How I tried to be a good father, but my anger at the mayor - my shame - kept me from doing so. And how I let that shame fester and grow larger and larger until it killed people, and finally me.

Recently, I wrote a different blog post that gave some background context behind me writing this, here.

I've been working on my own quasi-alignment system for well over a year now and I'm pretty happy about how it's been able to create NPCs (and PCs) with interesting motivations. It consists of 20 values in 10 opposing pairs, which I tried to phrase neutrally, and which I hope could characterize either a protagonist or an antagonist. I mostly have created it with fantasy adventure games in mind, although it's probably more universally applicable.

The complete list:

1. Mercy vs Ruthlessness
2. Courage vs Prudence
3. Cunning vs Honesty
4. Ambition vs Humility
5. Impartiality vs Loyalty
6. Self-Sacrifice vs Survival
7. Passion vs Stoicism
8. Asceticism vs Extravagance
9. Frankness vs Propriety
10. Novelty vs Tradition

How To Use

While you could go down the list and pick one of each, I find it's easier to make and portray a memorable character if you pick a small number that are important to them. I typically roll a few times. A d20, with 1-10 being the first part of the pair and 11-20 being the second allows you to randomly select a few. I usually do two values for NPCs and three for PCs. Picking just one tends to make characters that are, well, one-dimensional. I skip any repeats or any opposite pairs.

The first 6 are probably more deeply held values, with the last 4 being more something that can set the style, look, or attitude of the NPC, so you could instead roll a d12 and just consider the first 6. Or roll a d12 for one of the values and a d20 for the other.

Another option is to roll a 1d10 and pick based on what makes sense for the character. A classic heroic story might have the heroes always choose mercy over ruthlessness and courage over pragmatism, for instance.

Factions: I'll often also give one or two values for factions. Individual members of the faction might vary, but groups as a whole can have shared values. An order of knights might value courage and self-sacrifice, but the particular knight you meet might seem largely motivated by ambition.

Reaction rolls: A quick and easy social mechanic can be that matching values result in a positive reaction, and clashing values result in a negative reaction. It oversimplifies the breadth of human experience, but so do any social mechanics. Alternately, you could have it modify reaction rolls. Roll twice and take the higher if the values match, roll twice and take the lower if they clash. Then any result is still possible but shared values skews the results.

More On Each Set Of Values

This part is way too long, but I need to stop spending time on this and get the blog post out.

Mercy vs Ruthlnessnes

I've been struggling a lot with the second word; I'm looking for something both neutral and specific.

Do the ends justify the means? Do your enemies deserve a second chance, or will sparing them only lead to further evil? Someone who believes in mercy might see their opposites as cruel, and someone who believes in ruthlesness might see their opposites as weak or naive.

Protagonists who embody mercy could be healers, pacifists (religious or otherwise), or rogues who use stealth to avoid violence. Those who embody ruthlessness are probably antiheroes: they might be assassins, the person you call in when a hard but necessary task is needed; revolutionaries or those otherwise forced to exist in a ruthless environment. When they coexist in a party, there might be a tension between the two, but an understanding that different methods are needed at different times, and maybe a certain amount of pretending to not know what is happening.

Ruthless villains are sort of the default, but if this comes up, maybe they are willing to kill the party for relatively trivial reasons. A merciful antagonist might be a knight who insists on fighting everyone who wants to cross the bridge, but not to the death; a hive-mind of strange beings that decides you will be happier if you are absorbed into the colony and never allowed to leave; a king who is in denial about the harm he is causing and refuses to let anyone speak of any such unpleasantness.

This is one where the exact meaning of the values should be in line with your table's boundaries as to what to play in a game.

Courage vs Prudence

Someone who believes in courage might see prudence as cowardice, and someone who believes in prudence might see courage as foolishness, recklessness or irresponsibility.

Protagonists who embody courage might include berserkers, monster-hunters, or rogues performing extreme feats of acrobatics. Adventurers necessarily lean somewhat towards courage, but someone embodying prudence might be forced into adventuring through circumstance, or have learned through hard-won experience that prudence is the secret to a long adventuring career. Magic-users or stealthy hunters might better embody prudence. When coexisting in a party, it makes sense for each to fall into roles that take advantage of their predispositions.

An antagonist who exemplifies courage might fight until the last breath; glorify warfare as an end in and of itself, or might be an automaton incapable of self-preservation. An antagonist who exemplifies prudence might be a mastermind who plots behind the scenes, or one who only ever fights from a position of strength, falling apart if they are ever outnumbered.

In the context of adventuring this is mostly physical courage, but courage (and prudence) can take other forms in other settings. This is also one where courage could take different dimensions: a brave fighter may be afraid to take an unpopular moral stand. Interpret this as whatever form of courage is most relevant to your setting.

Cunning vs Honesty

An honest character might place a lot of stock in their word or in their honour; a cunning one is willing to use lies and deception. Think Gawain vs Loki or Odysseus. A cunning character might see an honest one as naive or gullible; a honest one might see a cunning character as dishonest.

Protagonists who are cunning are more likely to fall into a trickster archetype. Rogues, illusionists and performers might be cunning, whereas warriors who adhere to a code of honour are often depicted as honest. Religious figures are often expected to be honest. There are a lot of stories which pair an honest and cunning character together for comic effect, which might be good inspiration for how characters with opposite values can get along.

Antagonists who embody honesty might be supernatural beings incapable of lying; they might find it amusing to keep the letter but not the spirit of their word; they might implacably hunt the party down because they broke an oath; or they might think a strict code of honour is a substitute for morality. Antagonists who use cunning might use traps or spies; they might be monsters that mimic the player's voices; they might be supernatural beings with very dangerous ideas of a funny prank.

Ambition vs Humility

Ambitious characters strive for power (magical, political, or otherwise), wealth, fame, status, respect or personal excellence, and might look down on those who don't seek those things. A character that values humility has no desire to seek these things, and might be distainful or untrusting of those who do. They might have a more egalitarian outlook, or believe that everyone should stay in their proper place in the existing hierarchies of the world.

An adventurer who exemplifies ambition might be actively working towards wealth or power: ruling over a domain, acqurining powerful magic, or making pacts with dangerous beings. Many level-based games assume a certain level of ambition, and so if you pick this one, have it be somewhat more than the baseline. An adventurer exemplifying humility might have devoted their life to a religious order; they could be a rogue openly distainful of nobility; a druid who views the ambitions of human society as frivolous. Different attitudes towards this value don't have to clash if everyone respects each other's paths in life.

An antagonist motivated by ambition might be trying to take over the world (or kingdom, or town); they might be trying to unlock powerful magic better left alone; they could be friendly competitors who keep showing up at every turn to try and snatch away a goal only one group can achieve. An antagonist motivated by humility could be a spirit that punishes hubris; an official who thinks the party needs to be shown their proper place in the kingdom; cultists who seek to have everyone bow to the will of their god.

Impartiality vs Loyalty

Loyal characters put their friends, family, community, leader or organization ahead of the rest of the world, whereas impartial characters treat everyone equally. Loyalty is an often overlooked motivation for a group to stick together given any other obvious reason.

Loyal characters have a strong reason to stick together as an adventuring party; impartial characters need another reason, such as duty or money. They might be a mercenary, or be here because it's their job and they've been assigned to this task. Criminal organizations traditionally stick together through loyalty enforced by violence.

A loyal antagonist could be a henchperson, a closely knit group of evil friends, someone from a different community who hates your community, a monster who kills anyone who it things has wronged its unwitting friend, or an otherwise noble knight who tragically feels obliged to follow an evil lord. An impartial antagonist might demonstrate equal cruelty to their followers as to the players; or mercenaries who will oppose you as long as they get paid; a monster that attacks both you and your enemies equally; a literal force of nature; an unbribeable judge who is determined to bring the party to justice for their misdeeds.

Self-Sacrifice vs Survival

A self-sacrificing character is willing to suffer or even be willing to die for what they think is important. A character focused on survival is, well, focused on survival, which might include a loved one or close family members.

A protagonist who embodies self-sacrifice may be more of a traditional hero, or they may have given up a lot for power. One who embodies survival may be more of an anti-hero if they're in a high-powered fantasy setting: they might have a backstory where they have had to survive, or a well-meaning mercenary. In a post-apocalyptic or horror setting, being oriented towards survival may be more the default.

An antagonist motivated by survival might be focused on trying to extend their life, or be some kind of monster that is only dangerous because it feels threatened, or be someone who betrayed you to protect their family. An antagonist motivated by self-sacrifice might be a fanatic devoted to a greater cause, or they may have made a terrible bargain for power. They could be creatures that explode on contact or otherwise die like bees to protect a larger group.

There are some similarities with courage vs prudence. But a prudent advisor, say, might always advise avoiding risk, and then when their advice is ignored, stick around to help out until the very end. A brave mercenary might do any job for the right price, as long as there's a chance of survival, but they're gone as soon as the money stops coming.

Passion vs Stoicism

Passionate characters express emotions freely and exhuberantly, and might see those who don't as untrustworthy or insufficiently sincere. Calm characters value control over their emotions and might see their opposites as immature.

In terms of fantasy archetypes, barbarians and bards would generally be more passionate, whereas monks and paladins are more stoic. Magic-users might use passion to power their magic, or be required to be stoic to remain control. This and the remaining ones are somewhat less serious as values go, and so while you might play up character differences for comedy, there is no reason that within a party they would have to cause conflict.

A passionate antagonist might be a villain who flies into a terrible rage; a supernatural being whose songs leave you transfixed by sadness or your mind clouded by ecstatic joy, or an immortal undead who staves off the boredom of eternity with cruelty. A stoic antagonist might be an icy cold tyrant; a supernatural being that doens't understand your pain or fear; a religious figure who views strong feelings as weakness that leads to evil.

Asceticism vs Extravagance

Ascetic characters take pride in needing very little of the comforts of life. They might dress simply, own few things, prefer a lack of ornament, eat plain food, and abstain from drink or other intoxicants. An extravagant character might wear elaborate clothing, be fond of food or drink, or the other comforts of life. They may not necessarily pursue all of these: they could be a wealthy noble, or like the hobbits eat 6 meals a day, or spend every coin as soon as they get it.

In terms of fantasy archetypes, some religious figures might be expected to wear plain clothing and live plain lives, whereas others might wear elaborate vestments or hold feasts for the glory of their gods. A druid might distain the comforts of civilization, or believe that you should enjoy the bounty of the natural world as much as possible. A knight might revel in the wealth of their position or believe that a spartan lifestyle strengthens their ability to fight.

Extravagance can be a good motivation for a more heist-themed game: trying to steal the most elaborate cake, most beautiful cape, or rarest wine for instance can be more of a fun premise than just stealing money. Conversely, a more ascetic character might grow dissatisfied with the luxuries of living in a house like a normal person and feel driven to go seek out the simplicity and even discomfort of adventuring life.

An ascetic villain might include religious extremists, a frighteningly disciplined army, a miserly lord who hoards the taxes extracted from peasants, or a lich contemptuous of your weak and fleshy bodies. Good extravagant villains might include a vampire count, a greedy lord who wastes the taxes extracted from peasants, an elven court or a rival bard.

Frankness vs Propriety

Someone who values frankness might see the other as being dishonest or insincere; someone who values propriety might see the other as being rude or boorish. Propriety is likely to be valued when meeting the king; frankness might be valued more in the barracks. People often switch between these to some degree as needed, but others firmly stick to one or the other.

In protagonists, this probably depends more on your background than anything else. Courtiers, diplomats and merchants are more likely to value propriety, but frankness might mean you have the status to get away with speaking your mind. Warriors and others for whom power comes from action rather than speech might tend to be more frank, or they migh speak more carefully because an insult can lead to death. Magic and religion might require precise, careful and polite speech.

A villain who values propriety could be in a court full of intrigue and backstabbing, or the court of the fey where rudeness can lead to death. They could be someone who prefers to couch what they do in euphemisms. A villain who values frankness might respect the party for insulting them to their face (but still intend to kill them).

Novelty vs Tradition

Do you stay in your hometown or always want to see what is over the next horizon? Do you stick to the traditional obligations of your role or break from them?

A protagonist motivated by tradition might be a member of an ancient order or religion. They may have traveled far from home but keep to the things they learned in their childhood. Dwarves in fantasy often exemplify this. A protagonist motivated by novelty may have left their home out of wanderlust or a desire to see the world. They could clash with the expectations of where they grew up - for instance, a noble who ran away from home because court protocol was stifling, or someone who left town so they would not be forced to take over the family business.

An antagonist who values tradition might be hunting down one of the adventurers to make them adhere to an unwanted role; they might be an undead being who is determined to return the world to how it was 1000 years ago; a village where human sacrifice is just how they've always done things. A villain who values novelty could be a dragon that collects people like people used to collect butterflies, a wizard with a terrible new invention, or a monster that eats brains to absorb your experiences.

As a side note, this is a tricky one to give serious examples for, especially for antagonists who value novelty, because the notion of tradition vs novelty exists in the context of us living in the modern world, to some degree. In the past this might have manifested as a genuine belief that people should not step outside of the expectations of tradition and society. I don't think this is a likely attitude of player characters, though. Starting maybe with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, though, you start getting different attitudes about changes happening in society due to science or otherwise. Much as Tolkien denies it, LotR is probably in part about the industrialization of war, contrasted with the nostalgic and pastoral life of the hobbits. Or you could keep this confict as a set of minor character traits.

Poll results and more on develolping this list

To get some idea as to whether these alignments make sense, I asked on mastodon which one people think apply to them. I had about 25-35 answers on each question, and I got enough balance that I'm happy with it:

• Courage vs Prudence: 62% vs 38%
• Honesty vs Cunning: 61% vs 39%
• Ambition vs Humility: 20% vs 80%
• Loyalty vs Impartiality: 42% vs 58%
• Mercy vs Ruthlessness: 79% vs 21%
• Self-sacrifice vs Survival: 40% vs 60%
• Passion vs Calm: 40% vs 60%
• Asceticism vs Extravagance: 54% vs 46%
• Propriety vs Frankness: 29% vs 71%
• Tradition vs Novelty: 28% vs 72%

The least balanced one is ambition vs humility, followed by mercy vs ruthlesnness. These conflicts might be more prominent in stories than in real life, and these are two I feel I have to inclue regardless.

For the approximately 70/30 ones, we had propriety vs frankness and tradition vs novelty. I think this split is reflective of the values of the culture that I personally exist in, rather than a universal trend. For the rest I was pleased to see a more even split. These included some of the ones I was most afraid I had just made up, so I'm glad to see that they divide people in real life as well.

I cut two since when I started: one was "wisdom vs innocence" - I was trying to get at how some cultures value youth more (ours tends to, to some degree) and others value age more, but I felt it was both hard to convey in one word as well as hard to make it actually appear in how an individual character behaves.

The other one I cut was was justice vs - well I couldn't quite find a second word. Accepting things as they are. The desire to change the world for the better vs the belief that the current nature of things are unavoidable. Between struggling to find a way to concisely articulate the concept, and the fact that it has some overlap with other values, meant I decided to cut it, conveniently leaving the final list at 20.

The Problem With Classical Alignment As Character Traits

Originally I was writing a totally different blog post. I still am, but that blog post got so out of hand that I had to break the part about why I'm writing it at all into another blog post.

I don't think that Good vs Evil or Law vs Chaos are useful ways of defining characters unless you are playing an extremely specific type of game. As values, these are so broad as to be useless in characterizing anyone, and also inherently impossible to define in a way everyone can agree on.

The problem with Good and Evil: Most people would agree that their values are Good and values unlike theirs are Evil, by definition. Prominent figures in RPG history have definitively stated that certain actions are Good which I would consider unambiguously Evil. If anyone ever describes their values as being Evil they are usually doing so to be subversive or rebellious, usually to oppose an authority who has the power to define Good and is using that power for evil. You can tell stories about an evil villain who enthusiastically embraces evil for no particular reason, but that isn't usually what people are interested in most of the time.

The problem with Law and Chaos: This seems like the more interesting and sophisticated pair, but that is only because Law and Chaos are so impossible to define as to be meaningless. Ok, so barbarians are chaotic because they live outside of society's norms. But which society's norms? Presumably not their own. Lawful Good characters uphold the law (unless the law is unjust) and Chaotic Good characters oppose unjust laws - but this seems to say more about the quality of the laws than anything. If Lawful characters adhere to a strict internal code, people who are opposed to authority can have some of the strictest moral codes. And if you define "Chaos" as "acts randomly and for no reason", then Chaotic characters are both annoying and unrealistic. Law and Chaos define an assortment of different spectrums of values that can be in opposition to each other.

The one way that a Law vs Chaos axis can be interesting is if Law and Chaos are fundamental forces of the universe, rather than character traits. I tihnk it's even possible for Good and Evil to be interesting in the same way, but only if they are slightly disjoint from actual morality. Consider Good Omens as an example of this. Or maybe taken farther, His Dark Materials.

I actually think the 9 square classic alignment chart has remained popular precisely because it is so confusing and ambiguous. You can argue about what it means to be Good or Evil or Lawful or Chaotic forever. Because it's a topic that is very good at generating endless Internet arguments with no possible conclusion, it has an outsized footprint on the larger TTRPG culture.

Do you have an alternate suggestion?

I do in fact, I have a blog post that I'm writing, but it has grown out of control to the extent that this blog post is actually broken out of the draft of the other one. Although, to be honest, I made this list because a lot of other people have made lists of values to define characters, and I haven't been satisfied with any of them.

These are the goals I had in mind when defining this one:

1. Values should be relatively objective. Of couse it's impossible for values to be truly objective, but people are generally going to have an easier time agreeing on what "impartial" means and what such a character might look like, versus "good".
2. Values should result in interesting, complex characters.
3. Arbitrary combinations of values should be both plausible and interesting.
4. Each value should be able to produce both a protagonist and an antagonist, and should be phrased in a way someone might describe themselves.
5. There should be real life people who align with each, and who would be proud of doing so.
6. Opposing values should clash, and it should feel natural that they clash. They should generate conflicts that feel natural and human.

I did not try to make all the values have the same level of seriousness. I didn't try and make them be topics I personally am neutral on either, even if I try to describe them neutrally.

I brainstormed ideas by a mix of thinking of the cultures and subcultures, past and present, that I'm aware of, including religious and political cultures, supplemented by a lot of reading Wikipedia. I came up with 24, which after about a year I have narrowed down to 20 that I like, a convenient number to pick from randomly using commonly used dice.

The complete list

1. Mercy vs Ruthlessness
2. Courage vs Prudence
3. Cunning vs Honesty
4. Ambition vs Humility
5. Impartiality vs Loyalty
6. Self-Sacrifice vs Survival
7. Passion vs Stoicism
8. Asceticism vs Extravagance
9. Frankness vs Propriety
10. Novelty vs Tradition

This is still a bit of a work in progress. I feel like these require some explanation (coming soon in a later blog post). But I think it is already apparent just from reading this that meaningful conflict can stem from these values. For instance, I expect the reception to this post to relate to differing values with regards to Tradition and Novelty.

I think my main initial inspiration was Blades in the Dark. A character got their final trauma box filled, and in Blades in the Dark, that means they retire. You can no longer play them. Their fate is determined by the amount of coin they have. In this particular game, it occurred to me that perhaps this was the best possible fate for this character: she left the cult before it was too late. In more OSR-ish games, a happy retirement is also probably the best possible outcome for a cahracter. Adventuring is dangerous, and tends to lead to an untimely and likely unpleasant death.

I'm also guessing I'm not the first to have this idea, I'd be interested in hearing if someone has done this before.

I have also been looking into how to make O/NSR games with more ties to the community. D&D has often been a very individualistic game. You have characters that often have no real family ties, no ties at all really, which facilitates them going wandering off wherever and putting themselves in danger. But in reality most people live more complicated lives than that. Even if you don't have a family, you grew up in a community. Even if you have a complicated relationship with that community, it's a relationship.

The actual idea

The idea is that you can retire your character to make your community stronger, which benefits future characters you might play. For instance, they might:

• Pick up a useful profession. Bring some useful skills you picked up in your travels back to the town.
• Provide mentorship and training for new characters. They can start out a little more skilled.
• Wisdom and experience. They've learned the wards to keep out the undead, and the rituals to placate the gods. These are resources future characters can use in-game.
• Take the resources they gained in adventuring and probably poured into adventuring gear and make something useful from them.

Maybe it's a whole thing where young people in the town go off and adventure and then come back and settle down.

This leads to a sort of interesting press-your-luck mini-game. Do you pull out your strongest character for One Last Job, or do you let them retire and make your town stronger?

Some thoughts on death

Maybe you can also do something with dead characters who have gained enough renown. You die doing something famous enough and you become a Legend. Maybe new characters can choose a Legend to emulate and from them gain courage, or the will to keep going, or something. Only the dead can truly become heroes, because then they can never disappoint you.

Or maybe, for an adventuring party, the manner in which a character dies has important in-game social impact. A death is a big deal. People remember how someone dies, and those stories get repeated more than any other. Do you die honorably or bravely? Do you die as a consequence of a bad decision - recklessness, greed, in the commission of a crime? This gives your group a reputation.

I kind of stumbled into the term by accident. I was looking for a discord server that was focused on making games and not too dogmatic about it, and that was friendly to people doing this independently, on their own, without particular expectations of commercial success, and I stumbled on a style of games that call themselves "NSR". The one thing about NSR is that nobody can quite agree on what it is. This is actually something I quite like about it, and so I feel like adding to that confusion by adding another definition.

I feel like overall though most people can agree these four things are true:

1. Nobody can quite agree on what the NSR is. NSR defines a sort of nebulous tendency that can't be pinned down.
2. NSR takes some inspiration from early editions of D&D, but also takes the game in other directions.
3. NSR rejects bigotry in all its forms.
4. The creator of the publication would agree that it's NSR, or at least would say, "sure? I guess?"

There are also a number of optional but common characteristics. Here's an incomplete list:

• People who publish NSR things often also play games outside of the OSR/NSR sphere, or at least have an appreciation for some of them, and draw influence from them in their publications.
• People who publish NSR things often draw from cultural inspiration outside of what classic D&D drew from, or revisit the same cultural influences from a different angle.
• NSR games are often rules-light.
• Possibly as a result of the latter, NSR games are often solo friendly. Many people in the NSR scene are also into solo games.
• NSR games often have a sort of open source ethos. SRDs are common, game jams are common, there is some overlap with zine culture and a fondness for art and design, but with a low-budget DIY attitude, using the resources available to you rather than expecting high production values.
• The person who has published the game has debated whether or not to post it on r/OSR out of fear that someone will get mad and say that it's not OSR.

There are similar tendencies happening all over the place in communities that don't necessarily consider themselves even OSR. I think it's up to them if they see themselves as NSR or not. In much the same way that a mushroom is just a small part of what we see of what lies underground, I think the term "NSR" is just one of the fruiting bodies of a much larger interconnected tendency in the TTRPG scene. By defining "NSR", I'm just trying to sketch out what I see from where I stand of a larger and more vibrant reality. I saw someone, and I don't remember where, suggesting that the term "NSR" is maybe becoming too broad to be useful. I think that's fine. Words exist to serve us, not the other way around, and maybe we'll move past this one soon.

An incomplete list of other blog posts on this subject:

• The New School Revolution website.
• Tim B.
• pandatheist

These are something like curses, but the sort of curse that makes for a good story.

These characters are both doomed and highly unbalanced. They are intended to be played by someone who will enjoy playing a character in a downwards spiral due to an unwise pursuit of power, and with other people who will enjoy having such a character at the table. They might be especially good for solo games, where it isn't as much of an issue if they are a bit disruptive. As of now, these are not playtested at all and may not actually work in game. I may eventually iterate on this and release this as an actual product.

Treat these like backgrounds. For instance, the Faustian probably knows something about the rituals for summoning devils, and other such forbidden lore. You may choose to look physically different, but it could also be a secret that you must hide.

You gain a new stat, Doom. Roll 3d6. You may swap it with any other stat. When you use a power related to your supernatural nature, roll Doom. On a failure, something goes wrong, although the power still works in some way. Whether you succeed or fail, reduce Doom by one. If Doom reaches zero, your fate imminently arrives. You may heal 1d4 to Doom by spending a week or more in relaxation. This may only happen once between uses.

thekernelinyellow wrote a blog post adding a few more, which you can find here.

Elven:

You, once an ordinary human, have journeyed to the land of Faerie and returned safely.

• Bane: You cannot touch iron.
• Boon: You are seen as having a strange and unearthly beauty that transcends any cultural beauty norms that may exist.
• Boon: You have two of the following spells: (1) Befuddle, (2) charm, (3) thicket, (4)sleep, (5) control plants (6) masquerade, (7) read mind, (8) illuminate. When you fail your Doom roll, the spell goes off, but in way that twists your intentions.
• Your fate: When Doom reaches zero, the faerie court comes to take you away forever.

Dwarven:

You, once an ordinary human, have spent a full year without seeing the sun, in the dark places beneath the earth, and your body has started to remember the earth from which it came.

• Bane: You have reduced sight in the sun. Every day you are exposed to direct sunlight, you lose a point of Doom.
• Boon: You cannot be affected by the poisons and drugs of plants that grow in sunlight, and can subsist on dirt and rock. You see in the dark.
• Boon: You can spend a point of Doom to: cleave any rock, build a stone structure ten times as fast as any human for one day, create a strange and wondrous item of a type that you have the knowledge and skill to create. Then, test Doom: on a failure, there is a fatal flaw, or the change is impermanent.
• Your fate: When Doom reaches zero, you turn to stone the next time you are exposed to direct sunlight.

Were-creature:

You, once an ordinary human, have taken critical damage from another were-creature and failed to dispel the curse within a month. Through strange rituals it may be possible to take on this curse voluntarily.

• Bane: You cannot touch silver. If you catch sight of the full moon, test WIL or transform: you are affected as if by the spell Frenzy for the duration and take on a bestial shape. In this shape, non-silvered attacks are impaired.
• Boon: You may treat your bite as a weapon doing d8 damage, but in doing so your face takes on a hint of your shape when transformed.
• Boon: When you would take STR damage, from any non-silvered source, you take damage to Doom instead and immediately replenish your HP. Test Doom. On a failure, you transform as though by the light of the full moon. You can test again each round until you succeed.
• Your fate: When Doom reaches zero, you transform permanently.

I need to come up with a name for this one:

You, once an ordinary human, have in some way transgressed on an animal court: stealing and eating their food, slaying a noble of the court or a creature protected by the gods, or similar. You have gained an animal skin which you cannot be parted from.

• Bane: You have an animal skin which takes up an inventory slot when you do not wear it. If separated from it, you will become very sick. There is some element of human life that is now difficult for you, e.g. eating certain foods.
• Boon: you may talk to a particular type of animal, and it will not generally be hostile. It may be willing to trade favours for you like a human does.
• Boon: you may put on the skin of that animal and transform into that animal, as Beast Form. You spend one Doom every time you put it on, and every consecutive day you spend wearing it. Test Doom to see if you remain fully in control: on a failure, there is some element of your animal nature which takes over.
• Your fate: When Doom reaches zero, you turn into that animal permanently and forget your human skills, memory and language.

Faustian:

You, once an ordinary human, have made a deal with a literal devil.

• Bane: You cannot enter a consecrated space. .
• Boon: You have two of the following spells: (1)swarm, (2)smoke form, (3)raise dead, (4)mirrorwalk, (5)hypnotize, (6)hatred, (7) greed, (8) filch. When you fail your Doom roll, your demon calls in a favour. Refusing will lead to problems.
• Boon: You can also spend 2d4 doom points to: acquire a large sum of wealth, acquire a position of power and influence, acquire a remarkable skill in something. This also permanently reduces your maximum doom stat.
• Your fate: When Doom reaches zero, you must pay your side of the bargain. Your devil comes for you.

Blessed:

You, once an ordinary human, have been chosen by a god to fulfill its will.

• Bane: Pick an aspect of mortal life that you no longer participte in, as appropriate to the god in question.
• Boon: You can generally obtain followers, though not necessarily useful ones, and you are likely to cause political problems in doing so.
• Boon: You have two of the following spells: (1) command, (2) cure wounds, (3) ward, (4) control weather, (5) earthquake, (6) pacify, (7) raise idol, (8) raise spirit
• Your fate: When Doom reaches zero, your apotheosis promised by your god approaches, or your mortal enemies catch up to you.

Ones I might do later:

• Galatean - created by human hands, come to life. Some sort of reverse-doom mechanism to become a real boy
• Vampire I guess
• Revenant

Appendix N

• Cairn of course: https://cairnrpg.com/
• The World of Darkness series of ttrpgs
• Heart the ttrpg
• Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, and all the subsequent literature based on stories of passing into the fey realm
• D&D dwarves and gnomes, but also Norse mythology in general, and folklore about trolls and other similar creatures.
• Werewolves obviously
• Swan maidens, crane wives, selkies, and other animals that can take off their skins. Reimagined a bit to be a human crossing over and not an animal.
• Faust and that whole tradition
• When you go to an art gallery and go through the section with all the saints being killed in gruesome ways. Also probably some influence from the horror project "The Other Happy Place" which I've been following (content warning: insects, body horror, probably lots of other stuff on that one)

Fantasy Heartbreakers

As I posted about on Twitter a week or two ago, I have an ongoing project with absolutely no commercial value, and I took a bit of a break to poke away at it. It’s not really like D&D, but is also kind of like D&D. It is probably not good “game design”. I’m making it just for fun. And I think if you have the opportunity to make something that is fun to make and is not financially useful, that’s a valuable thing not to take for granted. Don't feel obliged to squander it.

I also love making things that other people will end up using. I love making things that are a product that people will be happy to own. It’s satisfying in a different way. But that’s not the only worthwhile reason to make something, and it’s good to remember that business advice is not necessarily life advice.

I am in some ways kind of opposed to the notion of "good" TTRPGs. I think it can push people towards making things that are less creative than they otherwise would have made. And I think the hobby would be a sadder place if people always put commercial viability first. I want things that are weird, things that are super niche, I want people to take risks that fail (if their financial situation allows for it).

I also don't judge people for doing what makes money. I also have a job that makes money. And I want you to do what you need to do to keep creating (as long as it's not like NFTs or something overtly harmful) and people also make cool things within the constraints of profitability. I even want people to make things that I don't like, that I think are bad (as long as it's not actively harmful, e.g. promoting racism). It would be a shame to have only the types of games I like in the world.

And yeah, ok, there are some TTRPGs I think are bad, but I don't think it makes sense to spend a lot of time dwelling on them. I think it can be tempting on social media to dwell on what you don't like, but it ends up just poisoning your interests for yourself.

Now, every now and then someone shows up on Reddit saying they have spent the last 5 years writing thousands of pages, now how do they publish it, and I don't recommend that. I do recommend writing your thousands of pages for the sheer joy of it with an understanding that it probably won't sell. I think it might make it easier to give people realistic advice if this is something we accept. It's hard to tell someone, "you aren't good enough to do that thing". Because we know it isn't quite how the world works, for one thing. A lot of bad products are commercially successful, because they have big marketing budgets and people who know how to use them. I think if we realize that we can value things other than through their ability to make money, then it becomes a lot easier to temper people's expectations about financial success in this industry, because we can do so without attacking their game.

The Problem with Giving Advice

I do think most online advice is bad. People often bemoan The Discourse, but I think The Discourse is often caused by the fact that it's very hard to give useful advice over the Internet. Good advice is specific, accounts for a person's situation, and can be acted upon. (Also, advice is usually more useful when it's solicited). It almost never will be found in a tweet. As I have mentioned several times, a lot of advice on creating TTRPG stuff is not useful for most people, because the advice you will see will be from people who are good at getting their message out on social media. It's not a representative sample of people's experiences, or even of people's goals.

I do find discussions in private discords to be often more helpful, because there's a more even playing field in whose voice gets heard, and you can seek out people with similar situations and backgrounds.

Feedback

Feedback is, I guess, a type of advice. I definitely recommend asking for feedback, if you are aiming for an external audience. Share drafts and early versions, ideally in other communities where others are doing the same. Volunteer to help give people feedback and practice your feedback-giving skills. Hire an editor, if you've got the budget for it.

I think people get this idea into their head that unsolicited feedback is good, because it's the hardest type of feedback to accept, and if it feels bad, it must be useful, like eating your vegetables. There are however some problems with it. First of all, you aren't always able to act on it (or want to act on it - I see a lot of reviews of things in general where the person is simply not the target audience). Whereas when you ask for feedback, you generally are doing so because you intend to act on it.

Feedback, especially in public and written form, e.g. the form of a review, is also a product you are creating and putting out in the world. For a review, though, if your target is not the general public but the creator, you are basically yourself creating something and demanding that the creator be the appreciative audience of what you have created. And so you're setting yourself up for disappointment. You have in fact put in a bunch of work, but for someone who didn't want it, and it makes sense to be disappointed that your work was not appreciated, but you can't ever expect that one particular person will like what you created for them unless you asked them what they wanted first.

Update: I recently discovered this post which talks about reviews specifically and is relevant to this topic: Here

• If you are largely a hobbyist creator, something like itchfunding during an event like Zine Month gets a lot more eyes on your product. If you're used to doing kickstarters, you might be disappointed, but Zine Month did a good job of getting little zines published for people who don't have much experience with that stuff.
• Asking people to let you know if they intend to buy a physical copy of a zine does not work, you have to get them to actually buy it up front, this probably should have been obvious but I am not good at business.

You can also find a much more general postmortem here, for a different perspective on it.

The game in question was Procedures to Discover the Path Ahead, which you can find here. Physical copies from the US are itch-only, but it's coming very soon to Ratti Incantati. In total, I made $1441.42 on 301 sales.

Preparation

In terms of preparation, I had a largely complete and playable first draft that I'd developed over the last few months. This gave me the confidence to actually take people's money. I am never quite sure I can pull off a project until I've got something complete and playbable, that's the problem with creative projects.

I intended to use itchfunding to be able to hire an editor, something I'd never done before, and print physical copies. I also hoped to get an idea of how many physical copies I should print. I set up a mailing list (you can find it here), spent a lot more time posting on twitter, and a bit of time I think on Reddit, and did some cross-promotin with other projects. I did not make a press kit. I did put more effort than usual into my itch page though, no idea if anyone noticed:

I put up a very early version in January and made $291 on it, which was already a personal record for any particular product.

Marketing

Sadly, I did not save the referrer information on the analytics page on itch, and it seems I can only see back 30 days, but one thing that I learned is that if you get enough interest on itch, you do start seeing organic traffic. I also got a decent amount of visits from twitter, especially after some posts about the process of making the game took off. Even if not complete, having some screenshots of the game to show really helped a lot, I think. I did some cross-promotion with other sort of similar projects as well.

I did not make a press kit. I believe I posted a bit on Reddit, but posted mostly on twitter. I posted some more serious posts showing the game in action, showing screenshots of what I was working on, etc, but this was by far my most successful post:

The second peak was Creator Day, which really helped a lot, though it could also be that people were holding off until that day.

By the end I was actually kind of worried about how successful it has been and deliberately stopped advertising it because I was worried about it getting beyond what I could handle. I think my previous record was like $100 of sales in one month.

I had some very minor, just for fun stretch goals, but I don't think they made any difference, besides giving me an excuse to keep posting a progress graphic:

This kept me posting about it every few days, and was fun to make. It's also thematically appropriate because I used PTDTPA in order to pick what square to draw next.

Results

By the end of the month, I made $1411.42, or 1123.21 after Itch fees. I generally kept costs low by using stock art from Patreons and DriveThru (Perplexing Ruins, Evlyn Moreau, Thomasno, Feral Indie Studio and Direquest). I would like to commission art in the future, but wanted to make use of all the art I already had, most of it in a style that was suited for the tone I wanted to strike with Procedures to Discover the Path Ahead. I had a lot of fun (read: spent way too much time) figuring out how to piece them all together into a cohesive whole.

Physical Printing; Or; In Which Seedling Is Bad At Business

The way that I determined how many physical copies to print was to make reserving a physical copy a reward on itch.io. I didn't ask for money upfront because I was afraid of something going wrong, especially with rising costs. It turns out that was a mistake.

214 indicated they wanted a copy, and while I assumed some of them would flake, I thought it would be roughly indicative of interest in physical copies. But in the end, only 48 of those people have ordered a physical copy so far (plus an additional 6 who have ordered it separately.) Luckily, I've covered the cost of printing them, so really the main cost is to my pride and to the floor space the box is taking up.

I looked into getting the zine printed locally rather than through Mixam. Unfortunately, I had decided to make it A6. This let me send it in a letter-sized envelope, which made fulfilment within the US much easier. Unfortunately, it turns out that many smaller printers are not set up to be able to do smaller sizes easily. The cost ended up being prohibitive, many times more expensive than Mixam. I still hope to work with a local printer in the future, but will have to plan the project around what they can do.

The summer of 2021, I made a one-page dungeon called Murky Bog, and I thought it looked cool, so maybe I'd try getting it printed.

Takeways:

• Pamphlets are tough. I mistakenly thought they would be easier.
• International shipping is tough, especially if you are going to carefully follow the law.
• Branching out from Twitter can be helpful.
• Selling physical things is more work, but it pays off (with a sample size of 1.)

Step 1: Is there interest?

I tried itchfunding. It was kind of a weird experience. It was successful in the end, but not how I'd expect.

I set a target of $75, which was about half the cost of ordering the physical copies, minus a rough estimate of the itch.io overhead. I figured if I could raise that much in a month, there'd be enough interest. It might seem like a small number, but I had never gotten that much money from a game in a month. And I made it! Mostly through a lot of advertising, plus the fact that Mork Borg was quite popular by then, and there were places that were open for advertising, including the subreddit. At the very least, itchfunding motivated me to go out and market it with some urgency. I did not however achieve the levels of success that are considered normal on kickstarter.

Ordering Physical Copies

I ordered from Mixam, which was a pretty pleasant process. I looked at some more local places, but they wanted you to fill out a form and get a quote, and I got the impression they mostly handle political mailers, so I wasn't sure they'd be able to do this format. I would consider looking into them more in the future, though. I'm very interested in other peoples' experiences and the pros and cons here.

I first ordered a pack of samples, and decided to go with 100lb. Cover paper Satin. I'm quite happy with what I got, except I think 100 lbs was actually too much. I worried that it was sufficiently rigid that it would be likely to be permanently damaged if bent, so I ended up adding a second, non-machineable stamp to the envelope I sent it in, which necessitated walking 20 minutes each way to the post office, which meant I didn't mail them all that often, although it was a good way to get me to go for walks.

Selling Physical Copies on Itch.io

The main takeaway is that this is good and a cheap option, as long as like going for a walk during the hours that the post office is open anyway, and don't consider that as time to pay myself for, otherwise it isn't worth it at all.

Being able to fit things in a standard letter sized envelope and mail them via USPS was really nice. It kept costs way down. For that reason, my next game is A6, which fits in a greeting card envelope.

I sold 21 over apparently 71 days. I'd go to the post office about once a week, or after a few had built up. Towards the end I was taking only one to the post office here and there. I got the biggest single batch of sales after posting on Reddit. Referrer data shows that twitter was probably the biggest source (but spread over a longer time period), and Ex Libris was second after twitter.

I spent a bunch of time looking into international shipping. Strictly speaking, it seems like you aren't supposed to send things with a monetary value in the regular letter-sized mail internationally, presumably because that bypasses the customs/exports stuff they do. I am guessing some people ignore this, but as a non-citizen (permanent resident) I try to be extra careful in following the law. This meant reaching out to stores to find someone who can ship internationally. They also have a bigger audience than me.

Selling to stores

It's a bit more stressful, because you have to contact an actual person and then wonder until you hear back if they're going to hate it. But I generally had really good experiences here. Most of them were quite friendly and helped guide me through the process, even if they weren't interested. For instance, one said they currently aren't looking for pamphlets, but got me onto a discord where I could meet other booksellers. Two others were interested, and I more or less stopped there.

I read a guide online once that said that costs usually go up at least 2x at each step, so you sell wholesale for at least 2x what it cost to print, and they sell for at least 2x that, maybe a bit more because they generally pay the cost of having it shipped to them, and shipping can be a big part of the total cost. This was useful at giving me some idea how to price things.

You'll have to package them for sale, obviously, and you want to make sure they are well packaged, but also with a small number of paper products, the packaging can be a big part of the weight, and the weight determines the cost to ship. I kept a bunch of old rpg book packaging, which was really convenient for figuring out what what works to package it, rather than go buy something that ends up being too big or too small or something, and I was able to get it just under a threshold after which the price would jump a lot.

Did I judge things right?

It didn't take too long to recoup my initial investment, itch alone covered it. It took a bit of time, though, so I spent a month or two worried I'd sell 20 max and be stuck with the rest forever. I printed 100 because 100 cost only slightly more than 50, but there is the psychological effect of having a mostly full box for a while, when I regretted that decison. But in the end so far I have passed 50 sold.

When asking for advice, someone said 200 copies should be easy to sell. I'm glad I didn't listen. One challenge when finding information on this stuff is that the more successful someone is, the more you are likely to hear from them, so the general conversation on how to be successful is biased towards people more successful than average, who think their experience is representative cause that's who they are hearing from as well.

I'll probably avoid pamphlets in the future. They're definitely harder to sell, and more expensive to make per word. I would also use a lighter weight paper. I didn't realize how much the weight of the paper actually affects the cost of shipping.

The numbers (in USD)

• 35 * 3 = 105 total in selling to stores.
• Itch sales: 163.21 in sales + 80.28 in tips. Credit card processors got 28.78, and itch got 23.91, leaving 190.80 after all fees.
• Upfront cost of mixam: 133.62 total (1.33 each). I should have gone with a lighter weight paper and brought the cost down.
• Amount spent on shipping for itch distribution: 0.57 in base stamps, 0.21 in non-machineable stamps, 0.05 per envelope, for 83 cents total per item mailed. This is assuming I'll eventually use all of the sheets of stamps and the envelopes I bought.

In the end, I made 145.58, by far the most I've made on a game (including on 5e adventures). Federal minimum wage is 7.25, and more than twice that locally where I live, and I definitely spent more than 10 or probably even 20 hours on this. So I would say this very much remains a hobby. It is however moving into the territory where I could maybe start thinking about eventually commissioning art for a cover or something though. I think for my next product I'll even hire a professional editor.

Next Project - Zine Month

I'm doing zine month. An initial version can be found here. My tentative plan right now is to use itchfunding to raise the money to pay for professional editing. While I wait for that money to come in, I'll try and figure out how or if I want to expand the product a bit. I'll then raise money to pay for printing physical copies, and if you're in the US, give discounted physical copies to people who previously paid for a PDF, assuming I can get the logistics to work. I'll still do international shipping via third parties, and I'll send the booklet in a greeting card sized envelope via USPS for super low shipping costs.

These are something like curses, but the sort of curse that makes for a good story.

These characters are both doomed and highly unbalanced. They are intended to be played by someone who will enjoy playing a character in a downwards spiral due to an unwise pursuit of power, and with other people who will enjoy having such a character at the table. They might be especially good for solo games, where it isn't as much of an issue if they are a bit disruptive. As of now, these are not playtested at all and may not actually work in game. I may eventually iterate on this and release this as an actual product.

Treat these like backgrounds. For instance, the Faustian probably knows something about the rituals for summoning devils, and other such forbidden lore. You may choose to look physically different, but it could also be a secret that you must hide.

You gain a new stat, Doom. Roll 3d6. You may swap it with any other stat. When you use a power related to your supernatural nature, roll Doom. On a failure, something goes wrong, although the power still works in some way. Whether you succeed or fail, reduce Doom by one. If Doom reaches zero, your fate imminently arrives. You may heal 1d4 to Doom by spending a week or more in relaxation. This may only happen once between uses.

thekernelinyellow wrote a blog post adding a few more, which you can find here.

Elven:

You, once an ordinary human, have journeyed to the land of Faerie and returned safely.

• Bane: You cannot touch iron.
• Boon: You are seen as having a strange and unearthly beauty that transcends any cultural beauty norms that may exist.
• Boon: You have two of the following spells: (1) Befuddle, (2) charm, (3) thicket, (4)sleep, (5) control plants (6) masquerade, (7) read mind, (8) illuminate. When you fail your Doom roll, the spell goes off, but in way that twists your intentions.
• Your fate: When Doom reaches zero, the faerie court comes to take you away forever.

Dwarven:

You, once an ordinary human, have spent a full year without seeing the sun, in the dark places beneath the earth, and your body has started to remember the earth from which it came.

• Bane: You have reduced sight in the sun. Every day you are exposed to direct sunlight, you lose a point of Doom.
• Boon: You cannot be affected by the poisons and drugs of plants that grow in sunlight, and can subsist on dirt and rock. You see in the dark.
• Boon: You can spend a point of Doom to: cleave any rock, build a stone structure ten times as fast as any human for one day, create a strange and wondrous item of a type that you have the knowledge and skill to create. Then, test Doom: on a failure, there is a fatal flaw, or the change is impermanent.
• Your fate: When Doom reaches zero, you turn to stone the next time you are exposed to direct sunlight.

Were-creature:

You, once an ordinary human, have taken critical damage from another were-creature and failed to dispel the curse within a month. Through strange rituals it may be possible to take on this curse voluntarily.

• Bane: You cannot touch silver. If you catch sight of the full moon, test WIL or transform: you are affected as if by the spell Frenzy for the duration and take on a bestial shape. In this shape, non-silvered attacks are impaired.
• Boon: You may treat your bite as a weapon doing d8 damage, but in doing so your face takes on a hint of your shape when transformed.
• Boon: When you would take STR damage, from any non-silvered source, you take damage to Doom instead and immediately replenish your HP. Test Doom. On a failure, you transform as though by the light of the full moon. You can test again each round until you succeed.
• Your fate: When Doom reaches zero, you transform permanently.

I need to come up with a name for this one:

You, once an ordinary human, have in some way transgressed on an animal court: stealing and eating their food, slaying a noble of the court or a creature protected by the gods, or similar. You have gained an animal skin which you cannot be parted from.

• Bane: You have an animal skin which takes up an inventory slot when you do not wear it. If separated from it, you will become very sick. There is some element of human life that is now difficult for you, e.g. eating certain foods.
• Boon: you may talk to a particular type of animal, and it will not generally be hostile. It may be willing to trade favours for you like a human does.
• Boon: you may put on the skin of that animal and transform into that animal, as Beast Form. You spend one Doom every time you put it on, and every consecutive day you spend wearing it. Test Doom to see if you remain fully in control: on a failure, there is some element of your animal nature which takes over.
• Your fate: When Doom reaches zero, you turn into that animal permanently and forget your human skills, memory and language.

Faustian:

You, once an ordinary human, have made a deal with a literal devil.

• Bane: You cannot enter a consecrated space. .
• Boon: You have two of the following spells: (1)swarm, (2)smoke form, (3)raise dead, (4)mirrorwalk, (5)hypnotize, (6)hatred, (7) greed, (8) filch. When you fail your Doom roll, your demon calls in a favour. Refusing will lead to problems.
• Boon: You can also spend 2d4 doom points to: acquire a large sum of wealth, acquire a position of power and influence, acquire a remarkable skill in something. This also permanently reduces your maximum doom stat.
• Your fate: When Doom reaches zero, you must pay your side of the bargain. Your devil comes for you.

Blessed:

You, once an ordinary human, have been chosen by a god to fulfill its will.

• Bane: Pick an aspect of mortal life that you no longer participte in, as appropriate to the god in question.
• Boon: You can generally obtain followers, though not necessarily useful ones, and you are likely to cause political problems in doing so.
• Boon: You have two of the following spells: (1) command, (2) cure wounds, (3) ward, (4) control weather, (5) earthquake, (6) pacify, (7) raise idol, (8) raise spirit
• Your fate: When Doom reaches zero, your apotheosis promised by your god approaches, or your mortal enemies catch up to you.

Ones I might do later:

• Galatean - created by human hands, come to life. Some sort of reverse-doom mechanism to become a real boy
• Vampire I guess
• Revenant

Appendix N

• Cairn of course: https://cairnrpg.com/
• The World of Darkness series of ttrpgs
• Heart the ttrpg
• Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, and all the subsequent literature based on stories of passing into the fey realm
• D&D dwarves and gnomes, but also Norse mythology in general, and folklore about trolls and other similar creatures.
• Werewolves obviously
• Swan maidens, crane wives, selkies, and other animals that can take off their skins. Reimagined a bit to be a human crossing over and not an animal.
• Faust and that whole tradition
• When you go to an art gallery and go through the section with all the saints being killed in gruesome ways. Also probably some influence from the horror project "The Other Happy Place" which I've been following (content warning: insects, body horror, probably lots of other stuff on that one)