mooniestarstruck

[mooniestarstruck]

Albert York, 1967

[mooniestarstruck]

Wisptober Day 21 : Honey “Roaming through a forest of dead trees is a living suit of armour.  Even from a distance, you can see the gleam of golden honey dripping between the cracks and hear the buzzing of a hundred thousand bees.” I like to think he stand at the edge of the woods looking over the field while his bees polinate.:3 (he spooks the farmers but they tolarate him)

[mooniestarstruck]

Are you looking for a game to play this Halloween with your friends? Look no further! I got a great recommendation for you! Boneyard is a frantic game about being a necromancer and finding parts to create a body to animate. The fun doesn’t come from that alone, though, it comes from the competition in having to fend against other players and their attempts to usurp your body parts or even destroy them. It’s quite fun to play and only requires a d20, something to draw with and something to draw on, and the prompt list from the game!

The rules are simple: you roll a d20 to see if you get a body part and another to see how chaos ensues! From there, you read what happens from the lists of prompts, and you might get to choose the fate of your fellow necromancers. Mostly, it’s up to destiny to decide who gets ahead, but in those precious moments in which you get to choose who gets a setback, you feel like you’re holding the last +4 in a game of UNO.

The only hiccup with this system is that sometimes the gameplay might become a bit long and repetitive, but my friends and I have a great house rule to aid with that! It consists in rolling the “chaos ensues!” table only after getting a useful result in the “body part” one. To make things more dynamic, a high player count is advised, but it can definitely be played one-on-one.

The game’s design is pretty nice, with really cute illustrations and a well-organized distribution, and it is full of references from different pieces of horror media. Just a treat for the player! It shows that Darkheart Games put a fair amount of effort into this project, and however you choose to play it, I can guarantee you’ll have fun with this game, so I hope you give it a try!

[mooniestarstruck]

The second “instalment” of my generators for GMs is here! This one is about settlements, and it has many prompts to get new ideas and focus on things you might not have thought of before.

If you try it, don't doubt to tell me what you think about it! Useful feedback for future projects is appreciated :)

[mooniestarstruck]

I've been working on a series of generators for GMs, which will focus on NPCs, settlements, creatures, quests, dungeons, and villains. The idea is that rolling a few d8s will produce a series of prompts to build upon, so I present you with my NPC generator:

If you try it, don't doubt to tell me what you think about it! Useful feedback for future projects is appreciated :)

[mooniestarstruck]

Pictographer was my second submission for this year's One Page TTRPG Jam. This game is all about creating a pictographic language, and it has the advantage that it can be played solo. The game can be as fragmented as needed too, for it doesn't have a storyline to follow or a strict gameplay session. It's more of a round-based thing which doesn't follow a plot (unless players get creative).

If you try it, don't doubt to tell me what you think about it! Useful feedback for future projects is appreciated :)

[mooniestarstruck]

More Weird Stats Please

One of the things that I love about non-D&D/Pathfinder TTRPGs is the propensity too make very specific, highly evocative, and extremely funny stats. Grant Howitt's One pagers are great examples of this like honey heist only has two stats: "bear" and "crime" which

Is easy to understand and use, especially for new TTRPG players

Encourages the players to think within the constraints of acting as an inconsistently intelligent wild animal (something they may not be used to)

immediately communicates the tone of the system

Makes me laugh

This isn't just for systems designed for one shots, Golden Sky Stories is a system where you play as a shapeshifting animal called a henge solving problems for humans in a nearby town. GSS has four stats: "henge," "animal," "adult," and "child," the first two used for your animal form and the second two used in human form to imitate their behaviors. I don't think I've played another system with any of those four stats, but they do such a good job of putting a player in the right frame of reference to tell the kind of stories GSS is trying to tell.

There's a reason why every PBTA system makes slight tweaks to apocalypse world's "cool, hard, hot, sharp, wierd," there's real power to the specific name that you use to describe a character's qualities. A Monster of the Week character with +2 charm, +1 wierd, and -1 cool gives me a much more evocative picture of how a character acts then "18 charisma" ever could.

obv there are benefits to the dnd str/dex/con/int/wis/cha spread, but whenever I open an RPG and see a stat named "grink" or some shit my heart is set aflutter

[mooniestarstruck]

John Austen (1886-1948), ''The Little Ape And Other Stories'' by Ralph Holbrook Keen, 1921

[mooniestarstruck]

Hunting Angel

[mooniestarstruck]

Nikolai Vorobyov • Tugarin Zmeyevich (detail)

[mooniestarstruck]

There are two issues that vex me about combat-focused TTRPGs, the avoidance of both of which at the same time is a priority for the one I'm writing:

"the only hit point that matters is the last one"

the Death Spiral

In the former scenario (for which DnD, at least its fifth edition, is the poster child), characters have a number of hit points, and as enemy attacks chip away at them, nothing happens. As long as they have 1+ HP, they are just as effective as if they had 100% of their HP. For folks interested in a more simulationist, verisimilitudinous (say that out loud, it's fun) experience, this can feel unsatisfying.

In the latter scenario, the closer a character is to death, the less effective they get. As anyone who has ever been sick or injured or tired or burnt out can attest, that is indeed how it works. The problem, of course, especially for games purporting a "heroic" mode of play, is that it can be very frustrating for your powerful Lvl 12 BloodMeister to suddenly be unable to land a blow as 37 NightGoblins pepper away at him with shortbows. Or whatever. In cases where the Death Spiral doesn't match the game's Vibe (and if it does match the Vibe, I'm not talking about your game and it's perfect and carry on), the "realism" can stand in the way of fun. Which is like...a capital crime I'm pretty sure.

The problem I'm finding is that these two pitfalls are at odds in a way where it seems really easy to fall into the one while avoiding the other, or vice versa. The theory I'm currently trying to test is threading the needle by making characters less accurate while giving them damage buffs as their HP falls under 50%, then furthermore under 25% - sort of a wounded animal approach.

I'm neither sure this will be effective nor that it will be enough, but the fun thing about a slowly moving personal project with no deadlines or backers or collaborators is that I can just sit with it for a while and tweak it one million times, so at least there's that.

Definitely open to thoughts here - using HP (as opposed to wound thresholds or other indicators of character health) is not set in stone, but I'm not sure simply changing the health system alone could avoid this particular tightrope. I'm certainly open to thoughts on the matter though.

[mooniestarstruck]

I just released a new solo game called Directionless!

You are a bird who has been feeling a little lost overwhelmed with life. You start the game by taking flight. You will track your journey on a grid map and record your thoughts and feelings along the way. You may end up finding what you were looking for. Or you may remain directionless.

The game can be printed in an accordion zine format. The actions on the back of the zine can be spread out to show which are available. As you use actions, these pages will be folded in so they are no longer available. When you only have one action left, "spread your wings" and open up the zine so all actions are available again. 

This was made for the Say Hi to a Bird jam hosted by @breathing-stories

It's available on itch in the link below. Please share!

[mooniestarstruck]

Pedro Augé, 'Loki's Children', 2014 Source

[mooniestarstruck]

Leonardo da Vinci Madonna with Cat 1478-80 pen and wash 5 1/4x3 3/4" British Museum

[mooniestarstruck]

 Franz Karl Delavilla, Vienna Workshops postcard #19,  Around 1917

[mooniestarstruck]

Create dramatic character relationships before you frame your first scene

Drama has a shape, and it's a triangle. And while the ever-present love triangle is a fine example, drama can really be about anything, as long as one's interest is complicated by another's. In this week's newsletter, I analyze two related ways of creating dramatic triangles in your role-playing games.

I post a newsletter every two weeks, so why not give me a follow if tabletop role-playing is your jam? Or subscribe and get an email every two weeks 📬

[mooniestarstruck]

Infinite metro was my first entry for this year's One Page TTRPG Jam, but it also is the first game I've put out there for people to actually see and try. The space limitations and my lack of experience made it simpler than I wanted it to be, but it's still fun to play and can lead to interesting campaigns because of its setting!

If you try it, don't be shy and tell me what you think about it! I'd love to receive feedback on anything that I might be able to improve in the future :)