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Havoc Brigade I love this game. I'm admittedly a Grant Howitt fanboy (possibly to an obnoxious degree) but I think I can look at this game objectively and still say that it is a great pairing of theme and mechanics. It's not a super deep system, but the systems it provides mesh with one another tidily. What is this game? This game doesn't set out to handle every type of story, or every setting.…
UPDATED April 8th 2026: In retrospect I decided I didn't care for how I was handling armour for the Automatons. My design goal was to encourage players to seek situational advantage dice to try to hit the "weak spot" but then they still need to chip away at the robot's absurdly high armour. Instead I think hitting the weak spot should ignore armour. I've gone through and adjusted the Automatons…
Over the last few years at work we've shifted into tracking work on a quarterly basis. Hardly revolutionary for many workplaces, but it was a shift in thinking for me. I've slowly taken a liking to it. I'm thinking of borrowing that structure for my home life — including tabletop roleplaying games — so without further ado here is my self-evaluation for my Q1 ttrpg sessions and my plan for Q2. Q1:…
In the previous session of my solo All-Out Apocalypse game the party finally entered the water park in the West Edmonton Mall, where they hoped to find some chlorine to solve their hometown's water sanitation issues. Unfortunately they did not manage to find what they were looking for and they will have to come up with a plan B. And to make things worse, it seems like the androids have tracked…
This post is a part of December's blog carnival: The End Times and After: December 2025 RPG Blog Carnival Recently I wrote new vehicle rules for my All-Out Apocalypse game (some day I will nail down the specific styling for that title)! If you're unfamiliar with that rule set you can view it here: All-Out Apocalypse . I have already done one trial run of the vehicle rules which went ok, but I'd…
As seems to be my way, it has been approximately FOREVER since I last played this solo game. I'm hopeful that I remember how any of this works. Last time : The gang got into a very hairy fight with some androids and blood birds. They managed to take out one android and steal one shotgun before fleeing outside. After catching their breath and taking stock of their inventory they worked their way…
Photo credit: thomashendele I've been running this West Marches game for a while now. I've posted about it before . One of the key elements of a game of this sort is a random encounter system. The one I'm using is ok but I'm going to outline a slight improvement. The Current Method Everything is based on the region hex. Each hex has a d12 random Creature List which contains potential threats. The…
I've had a busy summer and my autumn does not promise to be any different, so my blogging habit has fallen by the wayside. I'm not sure I had much to contribute to many of the fun bandwagons happening over the past few months but my brother Christian Hendriks brought to my attention a bandwagon (or stagecoach as Tamás Kisbali on Eldritch Fields calls it ) that I can probably squeeze into my…
I read far too many articles offering guidance on how to reduce the amount of time spent prepping for ttrpgs. Ridiculous!! If you are anything like me, you can never have enough time for game prep as a GM / DM. To those Game Masters who advocate for economizing your prep time, I say: "fie on thee!" I've never rigorously measured the time I spent prepping against the quality of the resulting…
This is a mechanic I think might be interesting in a game where combat should feel punishing, and winning a battle does not guarantee your safety. Every time you take damage, you mark down a Condition. For simplicity most basic weapon attacks just deal the same Condition: Infection. Some attacks come with special Condition. Psychic damage comes with Paranoia, perhaps. Poison comes with Illness.…