I'm direct, conversational, and occasionally profane. I use italics like I'm leaning in. I write about tabletop RPGs, mostly Apocalypse World, OSR...
Apocalypse World is what I would call a narrative role-playing game because success-failure always leads to narrative and fictional consequences for acting. Threats are capable of operating with narrative clocks that advance when players miss rolls, but what if the clocks were literally clocks. You find out Dremmer is trying to overthrow Gibbs, but not acting on that doesn't delay it, the MC sets…
After writing this I can't stop thinking about missed rolls. putting someone in a spot "You absentmindedly touch the bloodstain and you know the name of the killer, Dremmer, Dremmer, Dremmer, Dremmer, Dremmer, you don't know how long you've been saying it, but everyone's looking at you. What do you do?" "You're looking into the well and you can hear a voice whispering a name, Dremmer, Dremmer,…
Open your brain is an information move, and if the maelstrom answers questions then every roll shortcuts the front. A maelstrom that does things replaces other moves so a maelstrom that hands discrepancies to the players forces them to make decisions and take actions. The firs thing I'll do as an MC is decide what the maelstrom is , what it can give , and what it will take . Once I've settle on…
this is a school of magic to be added to those introduced in Wonder & Wickedness and expanded in Marvels & Malisons Phantasm Project a convincing illusion of any person, creature, or object no larger in size or mass than the caster. Creatures that interact with it physically may make a saving throw to see through it, but creatures that fail their save can be genuinely harmed by it (a phantasmal…
This is a hack of 5th edition D&D, so where is the 5e D&D? In a round of combat the players can take one action, take one bonus action (if something grants it), move, and take one free object interaction, plus one reaction that can be spent at any point during the round. Here it is! There's no Stamina in this hack, just the economy of combat. I created a new category of moves that exists outside…
I knew I wasn't going to use Armor Class. Which meant that rolling to hit was likely going to end up being a static number, but I decided to deal with this later (and I still haven't figured it out as of this writing). In the video game there is little to distinguish suits of armor from one another, and often it doesn't matter what you're wearing, which leads to fashion souls . Usually the goal is…
I am converting Dark Souls into a 5th edition D&D rule set. I've been working on this off-and-on for a few months now. I chose to start with 5th edition D&D because that is the most popular. Right away I bolted on some drastic changes to the rules that redefine how the game works, but at its core the rules I am writing rely on the movement-action-bonus-reaction economy of combat that 5th edition…
I have been creating a D&D hack that emulates the gameplay of Dark Souls. I'm starting to put these notes and ideas into a single document, and in true old school fashion I decided the first section should be "create your character" which leads me to discovering, or re-discovering, that so much of Dark Souls lore is implied that it is difficult to define specific characteristics for regions and…
Eris sprawls across an archipelago of islands stretching northward from the feet of Mount Hexvouna, its stone towers and ornate bridges rising from the waters like the bones of some ancient, drowned giant. The Crowkut River splits the city in two as it pours down from the mountain's sheer cliffs, feeding the inland swamps to the east that border the metropolis. In the south, where the Queen's…
There exists a fungal growth known to sages as athervospora tenebris , or simply the Dark Mold. Most fungi consume, the Dark Mold remembers. Nobody knows where it originated, but many speculate about the world's deep forgotten places. It learned to shape bones, it built muscles, it learned to walk, and then it had to learn how to feed. A troll is not a creature in the traditional sense. It is a…