#Fun free single player rpg games

[holocene-sims]

for better or for worse, i've been bitten by the fallout 76 bug 🫡

[blueskittlesart]

pleeease give a review for infinity nikki ive been thinking about downloading it but i dont know if i have the space and if its worth it to clear some up for it !!!

as someone who spent HOURS on flash-based dollmakers as a kid, i absolutely love it. the gameplay hits somewhere between dressup game and open-world RPG, in that there's a large botw-like open map to explore, but the express purpose of exploring it is to unlock new clothes for your character. The exploration itself feels very calm and cozy most of the time, with the emphasis being on small collection tasks like fishing, bug-catching, and foraging. again, all of this is specifically to craft new outfits for nikki which you can both coordinate with no limitations to wear in the open world and use in scored styling contests with npcs, some of which reward you with game currency and some of which help you progress the story quests. the only place where i feel the gameplay truly suffers is in combat. you have one attack, and it's a ranged shooter, but there's no aim-assist whatsoever, and the mobile joystick isn't NEARLY sensitive enough to justify this. aiming in combat is one of the most difficult parts of the game, and nikki can only take 5 hits before she dies and has to respawn, making combat decently frustrating. However, there are very few places where combat is strictly necessary in-game, and both of the boss battles i've done so far had hitboxes large enough that it wasn't an issue; it's really in the open world against hordes of smaller enemies that the lack of targeting becomes really frustrating. other than that, though, the controls are fairly well-designed and intuitive, especially if you've played similar games before.

The clothes themselves are the star of the show, of course. I've yet to see a single clothing item in the game that I don't want. there's a good mix of fancy intricate outfit pieces and basics to obtain early-on, and without even touching the gacha you can coordinate some really cute outfits via in-universe boutiques and quests that reward you with clothes. Even the very obviously themed ability outfit sets that you craft early on almost always have a few pieces that are easy to mix and match with, so there's a TON of styling potential even for free players! As for the gacha, it's actually one of the more generous games i've played in terms of rewards and pity systems. My one complaint so far is that the 5-star gacha outfits especially seem to be very accessory-heavy, meaning it's possible to pull shoes, multiple necklaces, gloves, socks, and hairpieces before ever pulling the dress they're very obviously designed around. there is a pity mechanic to prevent this, but it requires you to pull a few too many times before your guarantee imo.

The story is ridiculous in a good way. It kind of reads like a 2000s-era barbie movie to me right now, in the best way possible. there's an amazingly predictable sexy villain, cute little flying creatures that follow you around, and every conflict is, of course, solved via clothes in one way or another. My absolute favorite thing about the writing, though, is how blatantly earnest it all is. at no point does the game poke fun at its own wacky concept or even attempt to make some self-aware joke about it to the player--it plays everything completely straight, and in this aspect it almost feels MORE self-aware. it knows that the kind of person who wants to play a dressup rpg is also the kind of person who does not, under any circumstances whatsoever, want to be questioned or made fun of for their love of fashion or their engagement with that game. It very much feels like the devs know that they're working with primarily girls and young women and a subject matter that those girls and young women are often looked down upon or made fun of for seriously engaging with, and so it promises to engage EXTRA-seriously to make up for that. (side note: there's one point in a story quest where, when asked to make a wish, nikki wishes that all girls never get cramps again. that was when i knew this was a game that knew its audience.) If I wanted to nitpick, i might say that every quest so far has sort of felt like an increasingly ridiculous trading sequence--you learn what you need to do very early on, but you'll always spend several hours of gameplay encountering obstacles and doing other smaller tasks to circumvent those obstacles so you can reach your original goal. this might annoy me more if the game was trying to market itself as a serious RPG, but it seems very self-aware to me, and despite how i'm describing it none of the quests ive played have actually FELT tedious. I think the fact that it's such a wild concept to begin with gives the writers a bit of leeway in how they handle the story quests, and because I as the player am aware i'm playing a dressup game I don't really expect quests to immediately get to the point and let me fight something. I will say that there are certain things that aren't super intuitive especially if you aren't a seasoned gacha rpg player, particularly the features relating to advancing your skills and the styling points of your clothing. though the game does technically explain what you need to do, it doesn't explain the RELEVANCE of the feature, just that it exists, so I had to lose multiple styling contests before I realized i could upgrade my clothing to get higher scores.

The final thing I'll talk about is performance. I'm playing the game on my iphone 13, and the performance is.... not great, i'm ngl. Off the bat, if you play the game on a mobile device, you're going to be getting a HEAVILY scaled-down version of the terrain graphics. all of those screenshots you see online of beautiful terrain full of flowers and particle effects are from ps5s or custom pcs. truthfully, the mobile app looks like a game from 2012 and it will still turn your phone into an incinerator. I've also encountered multiple graphics bugs, some during pivotal scenes, and I get consistent lags when playing for longer than a few hours, likely due to the strain on my phone's hardware. it's also an INSANE battery drain, so i only play when my phone is plugged in. All that being said, the game has been out for less than a week, so visual bugs are inevitable, and the developers have stated that mobile optimization is a priority, so hopefully we'll at the very least no longer have to overheat our devices to play it soon. Also worth noting, from what I've seen the rendering of the CLOTHING doesn't suffer AT ALL on mobile devices. presumably they sacrificed terrain rendering to allow for such beautiful texturing on the clothing itself, which, given that the clothing is the main focus of the game, I can't fault them for. Basically, if you're going to try to run an unreal engine game on your iphone, be aware that it will run like an unreal engine game on an iphone. and prepare yourself to have to let your device cool down every few hours.

tldr: i love the game so far. i'm really excited to keep playing and see where the story goes, and I think they should make more games for girls <3

[eemamminy-art]

Hi, I've been seeing you post a lot of FFXIV stuff, and I've been kind of interested in trying it for a long while but am absolutely broke. Do you think it's worth getting into even if it's just the free trial version?

Omg yes!! The free trial honestly has a LOT in it, it takes you through the base game (A Realm Reborn) and the first two expansions (Heavensward and Stormblood, the latter of which is my favorite in the whole storyline), which goes up to level 70. You have a few limitations on the free trial, such as being unable to send private messages or join free companies (guilds, basically), but you can still party up with people and fully engage with the story and gameplay! They also have made it now where if you want to have a solo experience, the main scenario has support for partying with a group of NPCs instead of other players too, though there are a few parts where you'll need to play with real people. But I might be presuming too much, maybe you like the social aspect of MMOs :D

The character customization is really nice! There are a bunch of different races to play as, though sadly two of them will be locked behind a paid subscription (viera, which are bunny-people, and hrothgar, which are like a lion anthro race), but all the others are available on the free trial. I love making OCs in it, it's a lot of fun! I'm really fond of roegadyn, which are giants basically, and elezen, which are elves but if the elves were weird gangly pointy things. There's also cat and lizard kemonomimi (miqo'te and au ra respectively), chibis as the smallfolk race (lalafells), and stock standard humans in two varieties (midlander and highlander hyurs, one is like a normal human and the other are like bodybuilders). I'm probably forgetting something but.... Yeah!

The story is really good... ✪ ω ✪ Like extremely good!! I have been a fan of Final Fantasy for my whole life and not really ever much for multiplayer games, but FFXIV's story grabs hold of you in a way that a single player rpg does!! It's amazing! I've played it on and off since the ps3 beta of the game a decade ago, it's really special to me :3

I might be biased because I have like, nearly 12000 hours logged of playtime but.. yeah I think it's worth getting into ahaha

If you had specific questions about it I'd be glad to answer! I'm honestly kind of surprised to get an ask like this since I have been posting my art from ffxiv for the last few years, but I'm assuming you followed me for something else since I draw a variety of things! But always glad to share the gospel about this beloved game ahaha

[willknightauthor]

I'm so stoked! I've had so many breakthroughs simultaneously on this system!

I've been churning through RPG after RPG, trying to find everything useful, see every way it's been done. It's been a whirlwind, and I'm still in the middle of it, but I've been surprised at how little variation there is. Even the free form, "roleplaying forward," GM-less jam games do a lot of the same things as each other. Even if the mechanics are technically different, using different dice, the goals and ethos of the designs are identical. And we're all aware of the hoard of OSR/NSR games.

It started out with my fascination with balancing simulation and character-driven storytelling in a fun way, eventually becoming a desire to fix my frustrations with the World of Darkness. While I enjoy the campy, B-movie side of horror in the World of Darkness, I myself am more of an A24 type of writer (e.g. Midsommar, The VVitch, Under the Skin). The worlds I like to build, even when surreal, have solid internal logic. I crave that balance between the impossible and the gritty, between the beautiful and the horrifying.

I figured out how to tie everything to one health system, which itself is tied to one 10d6 dice pool. Now stress and health are one thing, and it directly affects what type of dice you roll, which changes odds and side effects. Your stats and your combat exhaustion determine the number of dice rolled, which means the more you do in combat, the fewer dice you have, and the lower your odds of success.

Because it's a d6 pool with success on one 6, the probability changes roughly linearly compared to other dice pool systems. Because there's only one vector for probability--more or less dice--difficulty is an easy thing for the GM to determine, and the probability of the roll quickly judged.

By tying actions to the dice pool via fatigue, I realized I can encourage scrappy, gritty, tactical combat by rewarding players with a second wind, meaning they get dice back. Now there's momentum between attackers and defenders. If you get backed into a corner with no options you start getting exhausted, but if you find a way to scramble out of it, jab them in the eyes, utilize the environment, make them hit their ally, then you recover and turn the tables. Even the initiative system ties into this scrappy back-and-forth, since initiative changes non-randomly during combat. And this is all in a zone-based “theater of the mind” combat system.

I've completely eliminated experience. Instead when you do difficult things and take risks, you get temporary boosts to that skill for future rolls. To permanently advance it you must engage in training, either as a side activity or during down time, over a realistic amount of time. At the highest levels you have to go on personal quests to advance your skills. Thus your skill advancement is tied to roleplaying.

Going up a single point in anything is very difficult though. Most of the "character advancement" instead is about character change. You gain new skills and abandon others, and via your new skills you can acquire a new "class." Basic advancement is quantitative, but all significant advancement is qualitative, using skills themselves as currency. You don’t just advance, you adapt.

Your "class" is advanced through a customizable narrative achievement tree. Thus to become a better mage, you must pursue life goals, narrative turning points, and personal transformations, based on their own ambitions and your ambitions for them as a character.

Almost every stat is an abstract representation of the character's internal qualities and state. Those internal states then have mechanical effects during the game if you can roleplay them: goals, passions, memories, knowledge, social ties, reputation, etc. It's conceptual, but it's not the loosy-goosy LARP style. There are mechanics with numerical and statistical effects, they're just tied to qualitative stats driven by roleplaying.

Importantly, there are many hooks for alternate or additional systems, especially weird and supernatural ones. I hate it when "magic" just amounts to a list of very narrow spells and their usages. Now there are many mechanical hooks for supernatural things tied to capabilities, knowledge, motivations, social role, self-image, core memories, etc.

I designed it backwards from multiple future games which will be very weird and abstract. The system as it stands represents the gritty foundation of any number of future games emphasizing social intrigue, personal horror, heart-pounding combat, and Lovecraftian worldbuilding. It's the ruleset for the regular, mortal humans, doing possible things in the real world… but with mechanical possibilities for much more.

Here are the games which inspired or influenced the design. I think it gives you a sense of how diverse and specific the design choices are.

Wraith: The Oblivion

Alien RPG

Over the Edge

Heart

The Wildsea

The Burning Wheel

Fate

Thousand Year Old Vampire

Na Ratunek Marsowi

Feng Shui

Barbarians of Lemuria

Mythras

Exalted

Fireborn

Delta Green

Reign

Gumshoe

Shock: Social Science Fiction

The True OSR: Obsolete Shitty Rules

The Devil, John Moulton

Cyberpunk RED

Dune RPG

Mothership

Streets of Peril

His Majesty the Worm

The Cypher System

Next I need to look into more (genuinely) experimental systems, especially ones involving memory and investigation. "The Between" and "Brindlewood Bay" are next on my list. The closest vibe design-wise I've gotten is from "Broken Empires" (which I'm so stoked for).

It's getting to the point where the overall rules are all set enough that I can drill down to specific numbers for everything, make some premade characters, and start playtesting. Fuck yeah.

[thydungeongal]

Hey, I've had an idea kicking around in my head for a while about a dice system wherein you assemble a D6 pool, but instead of anything fancy like certain sides representing different degrees of success, you just add up your total result and compare it to a target number. I've never made a game before, and I've also never seen a system that uses this system. I was just wondering if you had either any insight as to why nobody uses this system (too swingy, too consistent, etc) or some examples of games that do, and what it specializes in. Thank you very much in advance.

So, this is in fact how West End Games's proprietary system, the d6 system, used to work! An early version of the system was what powered their officially licensed Ghostbusters RPG and the system was also adapted for their Star Wars RPG. It was finally released in 1996 as a standalone game and has since seen intermittent support. As far as I know, there is a version of the system released under the Open Gaming License which is in free circulation.

Another game that uses a similar system is RISUS, a free comedy RPG. RISUS is very much influenced by the d6 system, especially its Ghostbusters incarnation, and it is explicitly meant for silly, comedic gameplay.

A couple of obvious benefits to such a system: it is simple and it's actually quite fun to roll lots of dice. It also has quite easily calculable probabilities. Like so.

The biggest issue with such a system is that it does not scale in a way that is very elegant without some work. Where do you set the floor and roof for player character attributes? If the minimum attribute is a 1, you will still obviously want there to be difficulties that can be achieved with a single die. A target number of 5 or higher will mean that a character will have a ⅓ chance of hitting it with a single die, but with two dice that chance of success jumps up to ⅚. And so on. Almost whatever number you set up for a certain number of dice as an appropriate challenge, the addition of a single die into the pool will almost invariably alter the odds to trivialize that challenge.

Which may not actually be undesirable, depending on your goals! In fact, what it will almost invariably result in is very clear character growth. If a difficulty of 5 is very easy, while it will present some difficulty to characters with a rating of 1 in the relevant attribute, it will almost literally be trivial for anyone with a rating above 1. In that sense it avoids the issue of d20-based systems where even moderately competent characters will fail at "very easy" tasks 20% of the time.

Also, since you're already rolling lots of six-siders, why not make it even more fun and make them explode? Idk, I just wanted to make the following program.

[iamthedukeofurl]

On “Play Another System”

I see a pretty constant drumbeat of Don’t play D&D! Play X System instead!”, which is not INCORRECT by any means, but I feel those kings of posts are often incomplete. It’s wrong in the same way that “Don’t Order from Dominoes, Order from Quiznos!” is incorrect, because they serve different food. Different RPGS are good for different things, and all have different built-in assumptions about what the player will find enjoyable. These assumptions can be reflected in different ways. D&D assumes that the things you’ll find fun are interacting with the mechanics of character creation, tracking spending resources over an adventuring day, and engaging in fantastical tactical combat. It also assumes you don’t mind a decent amount of mechanical complexity with your character.

THEMATICALLY, D&D assumes what you want is a high-fantasy action-adventure story. So, I see people saying, for example, “Don’t Use D&D For a Superhero game, Play Masks instead!”. Masks is a fine game, but it’s got it’s own assumptions about what the players will find fun, and if what you want to play is “D&D but we’re Superheroes”, Masks is kind of a terrible choice. Masks isn’t a game about tactical combat or engaging with the mechanics of building a character. Mutants and Masterminds or HERO system are probably better for that, but those have their own mechanisms of mechanical engagement (For example, both use a complex points system for building custom powers from scratch, rather than using a class system). So if what you want is D&D, but as Superheroes, hacking D&D into a Superhero game is probably best. I DO think it’s good for people to branch out the RPG systems they’re playing, but it’s important to give good recommendations that include some idea of the mechanical experience of playing the game rather than just describing the theming, or something you can do in the game. It’s the equivalent of saying “Oh, you should read this story, it’s got Enemies to Lovers”, when that could equally apply to a story about two rival bakers entering a competition and ending up opening a bakery together, or a story about two generals who end up sharing a single kiss at a diplomatic event before they both die leading armies against each other. It’s also important to note that there is a difference between telling a story about something and playing a game about something. D&D is pretty light on any mechanics for roleplaying or storytelling, so those aspects tend to be pretty free-form. If you played D&D and loved RPing how your rag-tag band of outcast misfits comes together into a found family, you may assume that you’ll enjoy an RPG that advertises itself as being about a rag-tag band of outcast misfits coming together as found family. However, actually playing such a game may mean you find that the thing you enjoyed so much, telling this story about these people, is constrained by mechanics intended to “create” that sort of story by giving you specific guidance about when your character is allowed to accept affection from others or what have you. My point is that as you explore the many wonderful RPGs out there, it’s important to think about what you enjoy about different games, rather than just focusing on the thematic aesthetics or buzzwords.

[irradiatedsnakes]

I've ran out of current vods from my favourite streamer, do you have any recommendations for fun rtvs vods to watch? I've really been meaning to check some out

oh yes absolutely!!

i don't watch every rtvs member stream, so if anybody wants to chime in with vods from other folks, please feel free! i pretty much just watch wayne, holly, and scorpy's streams, so:

from wayneradiotv:

looking through wayne's catalogue i'm running into the problem that most of my favorites (like the among us, jackbox, & 420 streams) are best enjoyed when you're already pretty familiar with the crew, so maybe save those for later if you end up enjoying rtvs' stuff. all of the proximity chat among us videos are fantastic (and i like watching the same one from multiple peoples perspectives, holly's in particular are great). RTVS congress, a stream by baaulp, is also great and worth watching once familiar with the crew

i think my best wayne (well, on wayne's channel, all of these feature multiple members of the crew) recommendation though is gonna be I.M. MEEN, which is a completely normal playthrough of a regular copy of 90's kids' edutainment game i.m. meen, which has nothing wrong with it. for some of the other "rtvs brand of weirdness" sort of streams, check out waynekenstein's lab (fun with ai generated faces) and chex quest hd (just.. watch this one)

wayne does a lot of "grand tour" streams (technically the im meen one is one of these but), where he goes through older/weirder/obscurer games. fin fin on teo the magic planet is a FANTASTIC one (fin fin needs no introduction, but in case he does, odd 90's virtual pet with a great theme song), plus the echs bachs catalogue (a bizarre collection of pretty awful games made by one dude called Echs Bachs), and club penguin rewritten (it's club penguin, bro).

if you like seeing a game played over many hours and multiple streams, i'd check out chulip, lisa: the painful, minecraft 24 hour charity stream, and moon rpg: remix. lisa and moon remain unfortunately unfinished, but the streams are still absolutely worth checking out.

from hollowtones:

most of my favorite holly vods are biiiig long streams of a playthrough of a whole game. her stuff tends to be pretty chill and i find them nice and relaxing. sometimes there's friends joining her, sometimes it's just her. of these, i really like bugsnax (adore these ones. idk how to succinctly explain bugsnaz. is bugs, is snax, are you a jokester?), hypnospace outlaw (PLEASE watch these ones especially if you havent played/watched hypnospace before), and moonglow bay (really sweet fishing game).

holly also does a number of wikipedia streams, where she (and friends) read and discuss wikipedia articles about food for upwards of 6 hours a piece. it's really good. it's really good. i like the soup one.

another favorite holly stream is GO-FISH DELUXE FOR SUPER PLAYERS, where holly and a friend play a custom game of go fish for 7 and a half hours. i love this one.

and i would be remiss to leave out, of course, the pigmas in july peppa pig stream. which is where holly, joined by her sister if i remember correctly it's been a minute since i watched, plays the peppa pig video game for nintendo switch. this one is very worth watching to the very end.

from socpens:

my #1 recommendation from scorpy's catalogue is going to be every single one of the VHS VIEWINGZ streams. scorpy obtains and plays a bunch of vhs tapes on stream with friends, it's always always always a good time. my favorite of all of them is probably this one, which among other things, includes a tape about learning to be a clown. make sure to watch to the end for a t-bone tickler! this one, featuring Escalator Safety and VOLTON THE ELECTRITY DEMON is also great. i'm having a hard time choosing just a few, they're all really good, so i'm just gonna link the eye palming one and be done with it.

for gameplay with scorpy, i really like a way out with wayne (unintentionally hilarious 2 player narrative game about escaping from jail), any of the david cage game vods but here's detroit become human, and not for broadcast (a FMV game about running a tv station- censoring stuff, monitoring broadcasts, that sort of thing. has a very interesting narrative)

and a couple other things

ok so these aren't like, the typical stream vods, while they are technically livestreamed stuff they're not quite in the same category. but they're all really fucking good.

of course, half life VR but the ai is self aware. there's full stream vods available for these, but if you haven't watched before i highly recommend watching the edited versions on wayne's main channel linked above. in case you haven't heard of hlvrai before, basic concept is that it's an in-character playthrough (wayne roleplaying as gordon freeman) of half life 1 in VR with a cast of self-aware ai NPCs (played by other members of the rtvs crew) accompanying him through the game. no prior knowledge of half life necessary. just fantastic.

next up, GAMECLAM. a yearly e3-style gaming conference about the best video games console that doesn't exist. here's the first one, there's currently 3 in total. there's also a commentary video on scorpy's vod channel. PLEASE experience the gameclam. PLEASE experience the gameclam

lastly, half life: alyx but the gnome is TOO AWARE. wayne does a gnome run challenge of HL:A with a mod that gives the gnome a biiiit more personality. (due to some references, best watched after hlvrai, but they're not part of the same series/continuity). not all the way finished at the moment- the finale's been streamed (and you can find a 3rd party upload of the finale stream on youtube (thank you youtube user sawsily for everything you do)) but the edited version of the finale should be coming out pretty soon.

[galpalaven]

After Veilguard did not meet my expectations, I've seen a lot of recommendations for FFXIV. Should I try to play it? This is coming from someone who lost money from purchasing Veilguard, does not have much money for when I eventually reach the threshold of the free trial and DLCs (and also despises monthly fees and games that will shut down at any time), and doesn't always have a stable wifi connection.

i mean jfksdl personally i think FFXIV is a beautifully written and fun game that does an excellent job of both storytelling and having engaging gameplay and fun armor / gear / minions / mounts / etc.

but if you hate subscriptions and live service games then idk? esp if your wifi fluctuates a lot it could be annoying?

that being said, FFXIV is alive and well and likely not going to be shut down anytime soon. it just released its 5th Expansion in June and is actively adding stuff every few months.

The free trial currently goes through the 2nd expansion, 3rd part of the story, which is the equivalent of 3 full length RPGs for like. nothin. and even buying up through Dawntrail I think is like the same as Veilguard, maybe less, but that gives you 6 whole RPGs worth of game (including the first part of the game) for that price. It is a LOT of content for the price -- monthly its like.... 15 bucks which isn't bad imo but I also really love the game

Unlike most MMOs, FFXIV can also be played mostly solo so it's not as scary, though I enjoy playing with others now, if thats something that might bother you

The story arc from A Realm Reborn to Endwalker is honestly some of the best writing I've ever seen in a video game, it made me cry so many times, I was always engaged and it is my very favorite game in the world and lives rent free in my brain all the time.

It is also more linear than a traditional single player rpg — your choices are mostly flavor text — but it does such a fine job of making you feel important and included that it doesn’t really feel like you have no control. There also ARE callbacks to side quests and things you said to characters previously, which is… more reactivity than veilguard lmao

Ultimately, though, it's up to you. I did the free trial first and was hooked pretty fast -- but since the free trial goes for so long, you can easily do it and get past the admittedly slow first part of the game and into the Oh Shit this is Great part without paying for anything, which like.... 3 whole RPGs as a demo is kinda fantastic imo

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

tl;dr -- up to you. the game really loves its players and the lore is fun and the music is fantastic and the characters are wonderful and i think about it all the time as one of the best and most lovingly crafted pieces of media ive ever encountered and my only regret is not trying it sooner

[mindstormpress]

Illusory Sensorium ran a game of Barkeep and their writeup is one of the clearest signs that the hard work we put in was worth it.

Here's the recap. I genuinely was laughing out loud a few times. Highly recommend: https://illusorysensorium.com/b1-wand-of-embiggening/

If you want to delve into the design theory of Barkeep, keep reading! ⬇️

When we were working on the book, we came up with a sort of mantra for the encounters: Is it sticky? Is it toyetic? Do the NPCs have means, motive, and opportunity? Is there information, choice, and impact?

That's a lot of jargon, and it's been synthesized from across multiple sources. Prismatic Wasteland summed it all up here:

Sticky means that the encounter isn't something the characters can avoid. It sticks to them.

Toyetic came from false machine as well, but also from a post now lost to time from Rebecca Chenier. Basically—will the players and GM want to pick up and play with the encounter?

MMO is just a way to conceptualize NPCs in a simple, understandable form.

ICI is from Bastionland. We can't make informed decisions without information, and there's no point to making decisions if our choices don't matter.

Building the encounters meant looking at each of them carefully and considering those foundational elements. Not EVERY encounter needed every single thing. In fact, with the way WFS wanted to write the book, each encounter had to be relatively short and packing a punch.

A really really sticky encounter didn't need to be as toyetic, and a really fun and interesting encounter that the players would NEED to investigate didn't need to be all that sticky. Everything is a gear of a different size that turns the whole engine.

Illusory Sensorium thinks that they ran the game "wrong" and I disagree. They used the tools provided by the book and had fun! Mission Accomplished!

But one thing they point out very early on is how they "trusted" the encounters in the book as written. The very first one they got is quite simple: 54 skeletons in a conga line, labeled like playing cards.

Incredibly toyetic, not sticky. But the players immediately joined in!

They could have moved on, but that situation was too tantalizing to skip. The rest of the game unfolded from that first encounter, and was filled with shenanigans. The work we put in—hand crafted encounters—worked out!

I'm incredibly proud of the work everyone on the team put into Barkeep, from the writers, artists, and fellow editors. I'm especially proud that people are playing the adventure and having fun. People playing the stuff you've worked on and made is the best feeling as a creator.

Thanks for reading. There's a lot of links in this thread, because I love tracing the history of things. It's no surprise that blogs are the home for so many of these ideas—word of mouth and common practice are easily lost forever when not documented!

The bloggies, a celebration of rpg blogs, are happening now! I've got a post in the running, and I'd love it if you voted for it. My competition is FIERCE (and I recommend all the nominated posts as reading material!)

Vote for RANSACKING THE ROOM today!

[enarei]

the levelling experience in retail WOW is so mind numbingly dull. like I understand that they have a complex problem in their hands and leaving it unchanged wouldn't work. I understand the game has literally two decades worth of content, and just forcing new players to go through all of it as close as it was on release would not only be extremely technically challenging to balance, but also an insurmountable task to anyone with a job. but their solution to it shows such an utter disregard for the very core of what makes MMORPGs fun, and all the work they put into previous expansions.

it's actually sad to me to go Outland and see that everything scales to my level. that the bonechewer orcs on the cliffs to Hellfire Ramparts are the same level as the ones that patrol the road proper. that the handcrafted experience of surmounting each tier of orc progressively through questing, until you are powerful enough to climb the Hellfire Ramparts and take on a dungeon with a group of friends, and so on for each new area of TBC, all that has been sacrificed in the name of "current content". all of it has been homogenized such that it doesn't matter which area you do first, which class of enemies you choose to pick fights with, what quests you prioritize with each new level, it's all rendered equally (un)challenging so that players can speed through all of it to get to current expansion without a care in the world. there's zero incentive to care about the world besides the promise that once you're close to the end of your levelling journey, it'll get really good.

people might say that's always been the case since expansions became a thing, once new gear comes out, the old world is irrelevant. and I don't have a reason to disagree, except that I'm still presented with meaningful choices when levelling in classic WOW. the level 65 quest rewards might not be remotely relevant to {current max level content} Ice Crown Citadel in that game, but just being in the overworld itself is fun because the journey feels authentic instead of merely being there as "legacy" content to fulfill the requirement of some levelling experience in an RPG.

it's quite ironic that in an attempt to 'free' the player of the burden of being forced to level through every expansion linearly, so they can Have Their Own Adventure, they completely ruined the sense of autonomy that encourages you to actually do that. you wanna do a really hard quest 6 levels higher than you so you can skip the boring gathering ones appropriate to your level? or maybe you'd rather go to this other place that is full of beasts that you can skin and ore you can mine, so you can train your professions at the same time. have a friend close by? try to do this insanely stupid escort quest and get suckered into world pvp for half an hour when the Alliance shows up to ruin your day. like you get this very organic interaction between game and social systems by virtue of level ranges providing irregular bumps to perceived difficulty and thus how seriously you need to engage with your class's mechanics, how efficiency you need to use your cooldowns to survive an encounter — you get to pick the difficulty, and it turns out it's incredibly fun to challenge yourself.

In retail that barely ever happens, because every single enemy you'll fight in the overworld will be scaled to the same level as you, its health and damage output will never allow them to be exceptionally trivial or meaningfully challenging, which means you barely have to change your tactics.

I know the carrot is real. I know the class design has considerably more depth and the gameplay has the potential to be much more fun just by virtue of dungeons actually having interesting mechanics when they never did in classic. But it baffles me how much of a slog they expect you to push through to get to it as a new player. I find it very hard to believe I'd have gotten into WOW if this was my first experience with it and I didn't have friends telling me how awesome Dragonflight is.

[verynaughtyboy42]

Treasure Hunter Egypt - Tabletop RPG Zine

This Table-top RPG Zine is set in modern-day Egypt, and you play a Treasure Hunter exploring a newly discovered Tomb. However, this being me, I couldn't make a "serious" version of that idea, so this zine is packed with (hopefully) funny references to items, characters and stories and even songs "inspired" by other franchises, such as ... well, I don't want to spoil the surprises! Let's just say that spotting all my little jokes might be almost as much fun as playing the game itself!

To play this game you need a blank crossword (taken from a newspaper or magazine, or printed from one of the many free online crossword sites), a copy of the Playsheet (spare copies are included, and you can photocopy as many more as you need), two six-sided dice or an app that can generate dice rolls, a pencil and an eraser (you can use a pen too, but as there will be a lot of crossing out as you play, a pencil is easier). The length of the game depends on the size of your crossword and how lucky (or unlucky) you are. In play testing, most games on an average newspaper crossword lasted around 30 minutes.

The rules are not difficult to learn and are given in a step-by-step format. Some optional rules are included if you wish to make the game more challenging. Whilst designed to be a single-player game, there is a "score" you can calculate if you finish the game, which you can then challenge yourself or a friend to beat.

There is no offensive language or content in this zine and as such can be safely played by anyone of any age. However, many of the jokes and references relate to things younger players may not recognise or know of. If you're a parent and your child is playing this game, it might give you a fun excuse to show them where the reference comes from :)

The Zine itself is printed on nice quality 120gsm paper. It has 24 pages, measures 10.8x14cm, and is staple bound.

You can purchase it now from my Etsy store: https://lindsaybakerart.etsy.com/listing/1641449651

[basedkikuenjoyer]

Now these two that came next were my jam. One of the first times I really got hyped for something to release. A whole new world we live in, a whole new place to see. (Do-de-do-da-loo-loo) But the vibes man...the vibes are immaculate. I understand there are some critiques of Johto and Gen 2, I do hear them. I just don't care because the vibes are immaculate. Okay, but seriously because I often think they're a case of not judging based on what the game was trying to do. The idea of generations still wasn't established. Gold/Silver were sequels, and realistically most people probably thought the last ones. The fad couldn't last forever.

Even if Pokemon is still a huge deal, I remember it like this. Just about everyone in my 3rd Grade class had Red, Blue, or Yellow. Just about all of the kids who already played video games regularly got Gold or Silver, by the next year with Crystal...I was kinda weird for getting it. But c'mon, it was the one you could play a girl! By then Yugioh was starting to creep in. But I'm glad we got to have collective fun with GSC. It might not seem like much, but the little IR strip Mystery Gift was a cool, cool social feature for the era. I remember a really fun time we had a chess tournament when these games were hot. So much free swag between rounds. And does anyone remember the Brain boy? It was like, a Pokemon-specific GameShark type device.

This is where the philosophy behind Pokemon design I love emerged. Day/Night cycles, day of the week events...it feels way less important when you can gamify it and you turbo through it all on an emulator. But for how kids used a Game Boy at the time? Oh when you're hopping on for 20 minutes before school every day it's amazing. This like, largely single player MMO vibe is what I love. You gave me a full RPG story to play through, but I have some incentive to keep fucking around. Which I had no trouble doing for Red. I put 100 hours into that, which Dad gave me shit for being proud of. I remember liking the mechanic of roaming legendaries and feeling really accomplished catching the Dogs.

I think this is also why I don't feel the gripe about Kanto. First off, hell yes getting to go to Kanto is awesome. The oft maligned level scaling and new Pokemon being hidden until after the Elite 4 suck as individual design choices in a vacuum, yes. But think about them together. It encourages you to switch up your Champion team. Try new ones and keep your ace around to make sure you stomp the routes no matter what. Use the rematches with people in your phone book. Or shore up the parts of your E4 team lagging behind because you probably got a bit staggered to get through Lance. Not to mention stuff like, Misdreavus is one of my all-time favorites but I get why it's left until Mt. Silver. For the time that was a very weird, experimental type of Pokemon you'd mostly want for link battles. The Johto gym leaders do need a tweak though, but respect for some tough battles like Whitney's Miltank, Claire's Kingdra, or Jasmine's Steelix. Not to mention the verisimilitude angle, maybe I want to feel like the current champion. It doesn't make sense for random trainers to be on Lance's level. The matches do get a little more creative if you don't just stomp everything because you want to avoid grinding for Red.

Once again though, the vibes are immaculate. Johto is made to be enjoyed at this leisurely place because it's very much Kyoto-inspired. The land has too much history to be in a rush and the heavy Japanese flavor is fun!

[roadandruingame]

RaR Musings #19.2: Market Saturation

There are WAY more ttrpgs out there than anybody realizes. I don't think it's possible to not be surprised by the knowledge that itch.io has 40 000 ttrpgs listed, 75% of which are available for free. But I would hazard to guess that most of them fall into one of three categories, all of which contribute to bloat for different reasons:

One Page Rules. There's nothing inherently wrong with this game format, but the speed of development and shallowness of play mean that it very rapidly blows out the listings. Too many options only bewilders people looking for something to play, and while they might pick one at random, learn it, and play it, and have fun, all in the span of an afternoon, they all start to blur together, until it's this insurmountable wall of products that really don't contribute anything meaningful to the medium.

Reinventing The Wheel. Arguably Road and Ruin can fall into this category, but a lot of them are simply making a game for the sake of it. They aren't really game designers, and they bombard rpg boards and forums with questions like "does this dice system make sense?", "I have an idea, does anyone know if it's been done before", and so on. Generic Medieval Fantasy RPG #23,489 is hardly going to make much of an impact on things, and due to either an overfamiliarity with a single product, never having played another product, or possibly only ever having played a single game session, they end up applying a lot of their resources toward reinventing things that have already been made a hundred times over, believing themselves to be some remarkable visionary.

D20 Reskins. This is a little like reinventing the wheel, but I personally loathe this more than the other two. The D20 system that originated in Dungeons and Dragons isn't a bad system, and it's had some 40-50 years and dozens of designers and hundreds of thousands of players to refine it into a game that is just complicated enough and just easy enough to learn and play that it still dominates the market. But for the love of god, stop reskinning DND. It's infuriating that there is still so much fanatic loyalty to a game system that is, often, and often intentionally, underdeveloped and pushed out for a quick buck, and prospective designers who take that disappointment and direct it toward a new DND, one with new classes (they're the same), new enemies (they're the same), new places, items, spells, or mechanics. The world of D20 reskins and DND homebrew is a massive wasteland, players relying on influencers and streamers to tell them how to play and sifting through the ashes for the occasional nugget of good game design, that just gets lost in the noise of everyone cannibalizing a broken and underdeveloped product for whatever scrap of attention and ad revenue that they can get. A couple decades of "don't worry, YOU make the game!" will do that to you.

Any of the above that are successful are rarely the result of good design. OPRs like Goblin With A Fat Ass are more about shock value, getting a giggle out of entertainment junkies who flit from one novelty to the next, desperate for anything that can be sensationalized for even a microsecond. I've heard of maybe 8 "Avatar the Last Airbender" ttrpg projects in the last couple of years, and that's just since I started reading places that they're posted in, and half of any "brand new ttrpg" based on a recognized license is just a D20 reskin, hastily cobbling together any mechanics like guns or driving that aren't readily available in DND.

No, the ones that are successful are the result of clout. DNDtubers and streamers who command an audience of thousands are a great source of recurring ad revenue and product pushing for anything anyone wants to pay them to sell, and the hit-the-ground-running success of rpgs created by prominent streamers in the wake of the WOTC implosion are solely due to that clout. They might not be good designers, they might not be able to do much beyond fix DND, and they might never have built a game before, but that doesn't matter, here's four million dollars.

I sound bitter about this. In a way, I am. Despite making Road and Ruin for fun, I can't deny that I haven't fantasized once or twice about the project getting fans. Even a hundred, even fifty, even twenty, ten, FIVE people who look at what I've done, and genuinely like it, who'd be excited for new developments as I continue to expand on options for probably the rest of my life.

I think about what would have happened if I'd released Road and Ruin a couple years ago, before the "fracturing of the fanbase", or even during it, amidst the clamor of streamers all announcing their own projects. What would happen if I released it now, or what would happen if I waited a couple years for the market of non-DND games to grow a little, as more people accept that DND isn't the only game in town. Is there an opportunity anywhere? Was there, and I missed it?

Then I remember that I'm making this game for me, for fun, and that's all it should be. I already hold myself to a lofty standard, but one of quality, not one of fame and fortune or popularity. I shouldn't anticipate any success, but if I want others to like the game, I should continue considering what other people want, what other people feel. I shouldn't ever put anything in my life on hold, using the project as an excuse, or prioritize it over anything important. It won't be going anywhere, and neither will I.

[8bitsupervillain]

End of the Year 2023: The Games of the Year Combined List of Destiny!

So, what I wanted to do originally for this list was use one of the WWE wrestling games and have the twenty best games duke it out. Unfortunately none of them are free on the consoles, and I'm not spending seventy dollars on a goof (I might still do this soon…).

20: Diablo III

Perhaps my standards are lower than they used to be, but I had fun playing through it recently.

19: Doom 3

I disagree with the notion it's a horror game. It just plays like a slower paced vesion of the older Dooms.

18: Higanbana no Saku Yoru Ni

I enjoy a more straightforward horror yarn once in a while.

17: The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings

A fun game with a surprisingly good story that knows when to have sillier moments.

16: Dragon Age II

You push the button and something awesome happens.

15: Hammerwatch II

A fun action RPG that gave me what I was looking for when Diablo IV didn't. Also made me think about how not every gosh darned game needs to be an open world.

14: Might and Magic X: Legacy

I thought it was a pretty fun first person RPG. It doesn't really do anything new, but that's alright.

13: Demon Lord Reincarnation

A fun DRPG that uses a wonderful retro look for its graphics. Surprisingly emotionally gripping, and extremely cruel.

12: Amnesia: The Bunker

It's great someone made a new game in the style of Alien: Isolation. Kudos for using a scarcely used setting as well.

11: Dead Space

A fun remake that makes the original largely obsolete. It basically took everything the original did and tuned it up.

10: Armored Core 6

I appreciate the game didn't really dwell too long on the inherent backstabbing nature of mercenary life.

09: Class of 09 (Also Class of 09: The Re-Up)

Well that's kind of fitting isn't it? I found certain parts of this pair of games to be extremely funny, and at times surprisingly emotionally gripping.

08: Bravely Default II

An expertly crafted retro style RPG with a surprisingly strong storyline.

07: Pizza Tower

I was really surprised at how much I liked the gameplay when every single time I looked at it before hand I was left extremely unimpressed.

06: Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

I won't apologize for my love of this type of game. It's just constantly satisfying combat all the way through.

05: Potato Flowers in Full Bloom

I went in to this expecting nothing and came away with an absolutely wonderful and compelling experience.

04: Resident Evil 4

I swear I didn't do this intentionally. I love the recent slate of Resident Evil games Capcom has put out, they seem to just go from strength to strength. Perhaps one day one will steal the gold medal.

03: Umineko no Naku Koro Ni

Absolutely stellar, a masterclass in mystery story telling. There is not one wasted character in the entire one hundred and thirty hour story.

02: Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

Just as impressively designed as the first Pillars of Eternity, with a fresh new setting. Everything is a ten out of ten with this game, the story, the characters, the gameplay, the whole deal.

01: Baldur's Gate III

But this just stole the show. Unparalleled levels of reactivity and planning for most of the outlandish plans players could think up gave Baldur's Gate III the edge. I know I win no points for originality by saying Baldur's Gate III is the game of the year, but the fact is that it is.

But can you say it in red?

[hungeringheart]

Also! I don't want to flood your asks but what do you think every class symbolises when they're in a session? Like if you have a Knight you don't have enough of that [aspect], how do you think that applies to every other class? Thanks

Oh, 3PagesAnon! Your request was super fun to do and I really like that you reached out again. :) Hello!

I think this is a really nice question because it's really quite bespoke, we all have our own fanon about just what exactly everyone is fixing.

But here's mine.

So, in general, I think that a class has two layers of symbolism: personal (related to the player themself) and sessionwide (related to the statement it makes about the world of the story, usually through a mythic or technological metaphor).

Let's examine this first via the Heir.

For example, John/June, an Heir of Breath, is personally very free, and the narrative is "about" June/John's impact on their friends in some certain capacity. But the friends are also kids with an unusual amount of agency for American children, and of course an unusual amount of influence on the world, and eventually a very firm direction.

An Heir of Breath, then, is an indicator that in the session, Breath is flourishing -- it has heirs!

Additionally, in light of the game symbolism in the comic, an heir can be seen as an allusion to the idea of "inheritance" in programming. Basically, it's the term for when you base an object/class on a different object/class, so they implement similarly -- which is to say there is a force, suppose it's the Windy Thing, and Skaia treats its Heirs as if they were its structurally similar extensions for purposes of Doing the Windy Thing.

What does it mean narratively for your growth and journey to be framed in terms of a guardianly relationship to your aspect? For your aspect to take care of and nurture you, so that one day you can provide its service in its absence?

Doesn't that mean... that the aspect is currently flourishing, but in the last phase before decline?

Well, yes, I think that's why in John's case the plot started so telegraphed and clear and then... all that happened.

The force of narrative predestination, direction, and choice itself was sick and failing over the course of the game. It all ends in the only way it could have.

Happy little webcomic, normal little webcomic!

Well that was depressing. What about others?

Here's a handy dropdown.

Page

Failson class, begins with lack or deficit in their aspect and then bumbles up to learning to provide it for themself and everyone else.

The implication is that the session also lacks or has to grow into this aspect, which is inchoate in it - for example, Tavros picks up where John left off (as Heir of a dysfunctional aspect) and attempts to bring Breath into his session, despite having minimal agency and a meaningful disability (with or without which, he shouldn't be able to fly).

Maid

Page counterpart, doer, improver and maker class. They "fix" and "tidy" their aspect, "make" or are even... "made of" (ha) it.

The aspect, then, needs some work. It's a bit of a fixer-upper; good thing Maids have such strong ties to what they're attached to.

Seer

Sees things. Minmaxes their aspect for their team via the sick power of prophetic vision.

In general, people turn to minmaxing in dire circumstances; a lot of games are designed to sort of haze you for not being game-literate before you start them, for gamer juice reasons related to the elitism of the hobby. You get treated quite cruelly because you don't know the single optimal path forward, which is a fine approach for MonHunlikes where you can pin that in lore on not knowing a monster's ecology, but do we need it that bad in rpgs?

If someone is pushed to optimize and terrified of any other way to go, that's usually an indicator that the games they tend to play were designed sadistically.

You ever meet someone who hoards items in case they need them, often for the entire game? They were, if they're not preexistingly anxious, trained to do that. Old games had hardware limitations and design philosophies that encouraged "permanent missables", some of which were arbitrarily plot-relevant and acquirable in no other way. Bravely Default (for example - newer game in the retro spirit) doesn't exactly do this because it's annoying, but the better ending is gated behind a lot of very fiddly to keep track of busywork with time loops, and it's possible to miss the optimal ending cues. This too is Torah, by which I mean this too is a sort of game dev tradition. The original Final Fantasy games are full of these types of arbitrary thingummy-gates.

A Seer, then, exists in a session that has these related to their aspect, which is at a point of growth and increasing complexity -- someone has to be able to at least see the fuckin' manual if the game is going to pull some "you needed to have this irrelevant piece of garbage from the prologue that you were textually encouraged to throw away, and you needed to have it yesterday" bullshit.

In Rose's case as a Seer of Light this expanded to "everything the light touches" (everything was very much connected to luck, sight and winning), but I don't think that it's a hard requirement for the Seer's aspect to "suffuse all you can see". Just that for Rose and Latula, theirs did.

I like it, though, it makes them a vehicle for the theme of their aspect, almost like an oracle -- my dinky little Time Seer from when I was younger was a character in this type of vein, so I had a strong reason to convince my friends to write about themes of tradition, belonging and continuity.

Mage

Learns about their aspect in a heroic quest type of way, for themself. They may choose to share their insights or not.

I think this one probably actually doesn't mean much about its Aspect in most cases, except perhaps that the aspect is passive enough in the session to be learnable at a reasonable-ish pace. I think the main thing about Mages is that their life is dominated by their aspect in some way -- and they seem to connote that others would also benefit from learning about these things from the Mage's experience, but of course not everyone does.

For instance, Sollux had plenty of time to get acquainted with Doom, and Meulin...

But watch out! Mages can also be consumed by their aspect. Meulin's love life, for example. Well, the less said about that, the better.

Witch

Changes the nature or rules of their aspect.

Wouldn't that mean that it needs a change? Actually you can see this in Damara and Feferi -- Damara's game had no time and her society had fucked up norms and traditions; Feferi's entire species was defined by struggle and mutation and exponential growth.

So then, if the aspect has a Witch, it means it's due for a thorough rethinking and transforming.

Sylph

Heals and heals through their Aspect in others.

Their land quests are about healing the aspect itself, in some way; I think it's safe to say that where a sylph is present, the aspect of the sylph is damaged and actively struggling.

But maybe they don't always only heal. Maybe they also help to pass.

Knight

Protects, champions and nurtures their aspect, which it's implied is flagging or rare.

Bard

Ideological destroyer and inspirer, subverts their aspect for others or upholds and valourizes it for their benefit (depending).

A bard then means either the aspect needs fixing and rebelling against, or it's fine as it is, and even has a troubadour/herald to go spread it around a little, fuck shit up with it and invite it in others.

Rogue

Altruistic redistributor, who begins with either some or none of the aspect and shares it with others. The Rogue implies a lack, but personally reacts prosocially.

Thief

Egotistic redistributor, perceives a lack and hoards for themself. Also means there's a low supply of the Aspect.

Prince

Implies a lack, a very profound lack -- or an overabundance of a toxic influence. Either a champion of their aspect or a rightful destroyer.

Lord & Muse

They're just full-sugar Prince and Sylph (or Bard) for a two-player game. I think. I don't know, it's complicated, I haven't thought of what if a large session had one.

Common Insights/Resultant Fan Theory:

In general, you can read a sort of ying-yang, mercy/severity duality into this. I've come to like doing that.

Aspects seem to also be subject to cycles of flourishing; classes are about how a person would or needs to respond to where their aspect is in the cycle, which usually corresponds to what's going on in their life and their party's society.

Active (-) classes are (-) because their aspect in their game is in a (+) phase -- we could say ying, diminution, stagnation, rest, recovery -- and then they need to do yang things to balance it out and restore it to functioning.

Passive classes (+) are (+) likewise not necessarily because they only do positive things and aren't hurting anyone, but because their aspect is in a (-) phase, and the behaviour required of them to restore their overactive aspect to balance is likewise the opposite of what the aspect does in the moment.

Or at least that's how I like to justify sessions with doubles of either class or aspect in opposite polarities -- either the approach needs to be multifaceted or the problem is.

I do think each class' implication about the aspect is unique even though they fit into polarities -- but to get the full picture of what's currently strong and weak in a given narrativw, you have to consider each person with the same polarity and each person with the same aspect in a session.

I hope this was useful!

[thydungeongal]

If I wanted to have a fun dnd dungeon adventure with my friends, should I use the exorbitant amount of dnd 5e stuff my dad has, or is it really worth it to find some older edition?

Honestly, if you already have a lot of 5e stuff then I don't think there's any harm in using them, but since a lot of retroclones and other games that take after older editions of D&D are literally free if you can spare the time I recommend at least looking into them and seeing how they do things! A lot of their specific procedures won't apply to a fifth edition dungeon crawl but like some of the old-school clones I know of clock in at twenty pages. Or a single book less than the size of the 5e Player's Handbook.

So like. Look around! I'm going to give a brief list of various free old-school clones and other D&D-likes based on old-school principles and if you happen to have the time, check them out!

Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game: Free open source D&D-like that is not exactly like any specific old edition but clearly owes the most to Basic/Expert D&D. A bit baroque in its mechanics but I feel it has a good combination of old-school mechanics with some changes that make it more approachable to modern players.

FORGE: Streamlined free clone based on a combination of old-school simplicity and modern presentation. No classes, characters are defined entirely by their ability scores and equipment. Goes for abstraction and simplicity over detail, and has solid procedures and advice for running the game either solo or for a group.

Errant: A procedures heavy old-school clone that doesn't steal from any edition specifically but is more like an entirely new game built from the ground up using old-school principles. Very neat and has a free version available on their website. I think it's worth checking out if only to borrow procedures from, because it has extremely clear and sensible procedures for running exploration, downtime, dungeons, etc. in a way that minimizes GM overhead.