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Also on itch.io. The heatwave has stretched on for three long weeks and will go on for another two. People step quick and quiet between buildings to avoid the heat. AC units strain. Those working outside burn a deep red. At night, it remains hot. There is no escape. You. One of you is cousin to Orsino Bepette. He has been missing for weeks, and his student flat rendered only a single clue; his…
Writing For Violence With the Violence in July jam upon us, I figured this would be useful. I have tried to avoid general scenario writing advice here. These are as much for me as they are for you. Give people names and identities. You can get a surprising amount out of two contrasting facts or three elements in juxtaposition. Further, when someone breaks the rule and all facts point in a single…
Written for use with Violence. Get the pdf here. You Desperate. Hungry. Poor. Perhaps you have read your Malatesta or Marx or Macdonald, and this is a strike against the oppressor. In any case; kidnapping a child of the Baas family and holding them to ransom. You have heard he will be away from home and vulnerable. Or. In the world of whispers there are those who silence. You are one such…
Special thanks to CK and Nate for this one: my loyal hauscarls. Update uhhhhhhhhhhhh march something: i liked this so much that i made it a core part of violence and update d it. i also simplified it a bit, taking out Threat. go read it there instead. Violence assumes the main conflict is with guns. The hand-to-hand is quick and dirty - usually over in a round. The below slows it down, and makes…
Player Characters can call on their contacts for help. Often this is just information, but it might be muscle, gear or setting up a meeting with someone they know. Whenever the PCs ask for a favour, note it down. Contacts who are owed a favour will regularly contact the PCs for favours in turn. The PCs don’t have to do it, but this degrades the quality of the contact. When contacts ask for a…
When encountering Bandits 1 roll 1d10. This is the AC of their leader. Their lieutenants have 1 worse AC , and rank-and-file have 2 worse. If you roll multiple dice to determine the number appearing, use the individual dice-values to give them equipment. Determine an order to the dice, and then pick from the list below as appropriate to their nature. I tend to assign these values left-to-right on…
Magic is the religion of the other. 1 Remove the Cleric class. Instead, you have a library of supernatural forces that can be called upon. To do so, make a Reaction roll. A supernatural force has Disposition. The Disposition lists the base dice to roll against the Reaction Table. In these early versions , the Disposition is 2d6. All of the results are available by default. Fire is ubiquitous, and…
Characters improve in two ways; by taking on Obligations and by forcing others to break theirs. An Obligation is an ongoing commitment to another group or entity. Once sworn, a character gains +1HD and +1 to-hit. A character failing to uphold their obligation loses this advancement. They may not take on further Obligations; this includes when being forced to choose between two mutually exclusive…
Written by Luke Gearing & Dan Boyle Somewhere in your Smoke… A Wall runs through the city. The Wall is older than the buildings around it. Many lean against it like drunks, breath foul, eager to explain. Dogs piss on it. People piss on it. Within the Wall, rooms have been built over unknown centuries. On one side of the wall, a district of the poor. At the ground level, a sign reads “ The Beer…
Written by Luke Gearing & Daniel Boyle. You know… (Regular Swyvers roll 1d4 times at character creation.) A Racing Horse Stable Owner. A Butcher. A Oarswoman. A Ratcatcher. A Rat. A Talking Dog. A Librarian. A Watchman. A Watchman, Honest. A Pickpocket. A Beggar. A Priest. A King of the Orphans. A Poet (Terrible). A Gardener. A Soldier. A Wise Woman. A Tinker. A Sausage Merchant. A Wildman. A…
In January, I quit my job to work at Tuesday Knight Games full-time. Wages of Sin ( crowdfunding soon! ) is my first book written whilst doing games full time. The core of the book is 100 Bounties, each a complete scenario. A major point of inspiration was 76 Patrons , which is still one of my personal favourite RPG books. The manuscript clocks in at around 80,000 words. I learnt a lot writing it,…
When travelling, shit goes wrong. Each day (or watch or whatever) of travel, make your encounter roll as normal. In addition, check for a travel mishap: Roll 1d12, and look up the x-in-12 value on the chart below. Note that Roads are a modifier to the x-in-12 value, to a minimum of 1. If the roll is equal-to or below that value, then roll on the Mishap Tables. In the case of mixed groups, select…
Instead of a ± to Reaction rolls or whatever, track individual events the characters take. To do this, we first make a Reputation Table. At its most basic, it’s an empty d100 table. Whenever the PCs do something people might talk about, write it down on your Reputation Table - representing both fame and infamy. Particularly noteworthy stuff should go in there multiple times. Then, in future,…
I’ve seen a lot of critics and readers talk about the strength, quality, quantity and absence of hooks in adventure modules - often held up as an important indicator of quality. This metric is bullshit. What is the use case of a hook? It’s a reason to engage with the content of the module/adventure/whateverthefuck. First and foremost - if the content itself isn’t interesting enough to drive…
Players in my Thursday Whitehack game are going carousing every damn time they get back to Fester, the coastal city of the ghouls. A dinky little d20 table won’t cut it anymore. For those unfamiliar - characters choosing to carouse spend a randomly determined amount of money, gaining XP equal to the money spent. If the number rolled is higher than their current level, they have to roll on the…
When a child has stopped growing, those who wish to live as men must be initiated. First they must find a Shaman 1 and beg from them the use of a team of flesh-boring beetles. They may be rejected and try again elsewhere. Those consistently rejected, or who do not wish to try, live forever as children or become women, subject to their own inductions. With the team of beetles stored in a gourd or…
Whenever the PCs enter the domain of a lord, government, municipal council etc etc, roll 1d10. If this is under the average level of the PCs, they are summoned to court. 1d10 Reasons for Summons 1 Paranoia as to their reasons for being here. 2 Prospective job offer. 3 Desire of the power to associate itself with powerful and notable individuals. 4 Assessing the party as potential destabilisers of…
I’ve been doing a thing for a while in OSR Thinking Adventures style games I’ve been calling split initiative which I almost certainly read somewhere else and stole but here we are. Those of you using the Wolves rules have seen this before. Basically at the beginning of each round of combat (or general dangerous time) each character rolls to get over/under some value. Those passing the check go…
MENTORSHIP APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED I am now open to submissions for round 5 of the mentorship scheme I’ve been running. This is done free of charge to give back to the wider TTRPG scene. Submissions sent before September 17th 2023 will be considered - anything sent after this is not eligible for this round. As outlined in the retrospectives (see below) the mentorship consists of regular calls…
Needed an animal encounter table for a job the Travellers are taking in a jungle. The planet is being colonised and has a reputation for the hyper-predatory nature of the wildlife. 4+ on 1D to encounter, rolled twice per day. 2d6 Type (Pack Size) Size (in KG ) Hits Damage Mod Damage Armour 2 Carrion Eater (7) 50kg 17 - 1D as Blade None 3 Eater (3) 50kg 14 - 1D as Halberd None 4 Reducer 25kg 11 -…
Prison Planet is an adventure for Classic Traveller, first published in 1982 and credited to Erik Wilson, Dave Emigh, John Harshman, Chris Purcell and Rose Geier. Something very striking about the early Traveller adventures is the total lack of uniformity. Many are nearly totally unrecognisable to the modern concept of an adventure whilst others prefigure some of the forms that became dominant…
1HD , AC as Armour, Damage as Weapon, Morale 7. 1d100 appearing, rolling again and combining results if 90+ is rolled. Bandits From the cities burnt, from villages parched, caravans left to dessicate in the heat of the wilderness. Many will wear stones of prayer to their city-gods, now lying in rubble at the feet of the victors. For every 10 Bandits, a 2HD leader is present, wearing medium armour.…
On October 6th, the agents receive the usual summons: “ Special delivery requires pick-up. Unit 798, Eastside Industrial.” Within the unit, the door unlocked, a large table with a large shipping crate. To the side, a tape-player and a manilla envelope marked with a green triangle. Within the envelope, a shipping manifest, a tape and a chartered flight contract. The tape is a recording of Mr Green.…
These are the hexfills I used for my Pariah game. You can see how the minimal hexfills get used in the play reports. The Map - you probably want to open this up big. I didn’t fill them all in, but had rough ideas for each area. The Hills 1203: Learned shamanic baboon with 14 human captives. Flint mine. 1303 : Hunters stash - 6 javelins, 2 bows, 10 arrows. 1304 : Entrance to Cave Network. Bears…
As is the nature of horror media, it’s time for sequel. Intro I’ve been running a Delta Green campaign using Violence for a little while now, and I’ve run into an issue - the Endurance soak method of damage outlined in the original Inhuman Violence sucks. It’s just not fun in actual play - it reduces the monsters to feeling like big meat sacks you keep shooting til they fall down. In a horror…
For the unaware, Carcosa features magic rituals requiring sexual violence, sometimes against children. This is discussed below in the abstract. A version was created with these egregious aspects removed, although I’ve not read it myself. I have often said in conversation that Supplement V: Carcosa (McKinney, 2008) is one of the most personally inspirational RPG works I’ve ever read. Known for its…
It’s been about two years since I started selling Wolves Upon the Coast Grand Campaign, and about 10 months since the last retrospective. I’m not going to repeat myself, so give that a quick scan. Accountants Upon the Coast Data taken 27/05/23. Calculating exact performance is slightly tricky due to the bundles combining Wolves with Volume 2: Monsters & and &&&&&&&&& Treasure - I’ve tried to…
The Cleric represents something not present. A representative of an outside force - the Church hierarchy, or a God. The other classes could be agents in a similar way, but the Cleric alone must be. A mystic seeker seems better represented by the Magic User, unbound by the titles and ethos of a firm known structure. A Cleric cannot be a force unto themselves - unless they are a Heretic. The Heretic…
So you want to make shit (meaning books) for/with Wolves? If you want to just use the rules chassis as its own thing without using the name, feel free. Saying thanks is nice but not required. If you want to use the Wolves name on something, make it clear you’re not associated with me. If you want to make Wolves content (i.e. something that integrates with the Grand Campaign, Volume 2: Monsters &…
When writing NPCs, you can communicate 2 or 3 things, or 4 related things. Anything more than that, and you’re either going to be ignored by the person running the game, they’re going to change it, as is the nature of translation, or they’ll be checking your notes so often that they do a worse job of running the game than if they’d just winged it. That said, NPCs changing when used in play isn’t a…
An adventure for Delta Green. I’m running it using Violence. You could run this for any modern paranormal game with a little work: mostly replacing MJ12 and DG with appropriate factions. Upon the Pacific coast rests Haystack, a crumbling town of 687. Boats rust in the harbour, and trash accumulates in the streets. De-industrialisation and a failing fishing economy leaves most of the population…
