#Grant Howitt

[herecomesthementalmeltdown]

[angelmaking]

welcome to orc borg city USA

[codassential]

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 somethin my heart is set aflutter

[rqgender]

Today's gender is a disembodied tit.

[baddywronglegs]

People who've played Honey Heist:

I've been thinking of a game about Goblin Energy. I don't need to explain Goblin Energy to Tumblr. But the idea is that the characters' Goblin Energy is an attribute that increases and potentially decreases over the course of the game.

Does this sound like something Honey Heist's core mechanic already handles? If not, what would have to change about it?

Has anyone used Honey Heist's mechanics for anything other than a heist and how well did that go? Or ported it in as a subsystem of another system? If so, how did that go?

[haveyouplayedthisirlgame-poll]

Beautiful Space Pirates is a one-page scifi RPG by Grant Howitt.

[animesickos]

OUT NOW: Grant Howitt, a game designer who rules, joins the Sickos (plus Gwynn and Allie from Modesty City, Sicko Shock 2, and Shuffle Quest) for a one-shot game of GOBLIN PUNKS, an RPG where you are shitty goblin teens fucking around. Will we be able to disrupt the community car wash and become goth? Listen and see asshole

You can get Goblin Punks here: https://gshowitt.itch.io/goblin-punks

[merelymatt]

Audio Drama Sunday is perfectly paced

My favourite roleplaying game! Naomi Clarke, occasional guest on @merelyroleplayers! Nathan Blades, star of @inyourbenevolence episode 8! Kieron Gillen from comics! Grant Howitt who wrote the game! This was going to be a blast even before you factor in @maddyisabstract and Cai Gwilym Pritchard in the production team. 'Going to a fucked up wedding' is such a great campaign frame for Heart, I'm incensed I didn't think of it. I've always found Heart a pacey rollercoaster of a game and the editing preserves that feel, without me losing the thread of what's going on. All the characters are so distinctive and odd right from the start. Thank you, everyone who threw money at Dagger in the Heart and made this happen.

Farewell to the Drac polycule for another year. Get some rest, friend Jonathan.

I was reading along in the Dracula Daily book this year, and on paper, the climactic scene is brisk – it goes by in a flash, it's almost over too fast. @re-dracula paces it beautifully, giving it the time for each heroic act and definitive blow to land in the listener's heart.

And new from me and @foggyoutline this week:

The penultimate episode of season 1, which is about the mortifying ordeal of being known.

We've had a run of plotty (as much as any episode of I Need A Miracle can be called 'plotty') or worldbuildy episodes, and the season finale needs to have a certain amount of narrative drive to make it a satisfying point to end on. So this episode is a pause. An in-breath before the top of the coaster. It's pure character in a way the show's premise really allows to sing. (Now's a great time to catch up on the season so far before the finale!)

[preventthetoast]

A BATSHIT insane one shot I ran: Welcome to Durn city, Neo-Brazil.

they found you a fossil. an important artifact from before before was before. They dug you out. like a worm from its home, desperate cilia grip and grasp and then they pulled you out. with lasers and knives sharper than atoms they chipped away at you. cell by cell. day by day. ad by ad. appointment by appointment. they rasped and replaced until they met it. they met the wall. the part of you thats real and would always be real. the part of you that would not dissolve or wash away. the part of you that would be stone. they met that matrix of collagen and calcium and pure human soul and they had to stop. there was nothing for them there. they patched you back up and told you to go back to work. like sonar blocking a whale call the gadgets and apps and rotten impurities of frivolous "neo-plastic" drowned the desperate call of bone. the desperate call of you. day by day dripped by as a slurry of neon and pointless mindless busywork. then one day something clicked. you ran to beat your friend to the vending machine. you accidentally indulged in the purest expression of the soul. you shared a moment of love. you shared a moment of friendly rivalry. you shared a moment of food. you shared a moment that would waste the pennies of the men upstairs. at this bone screamed and tore through, briefly, the facade they made you into. you felt it in your bones, your soul. you felt it in whatever else was left. the flecks of organelles clinging to your fake cheeks. the last vestiges of papillae dutifully sifting through fake food in a fake intestine. you. where. going. to. dissipate. what you didn't realize is. that you where never really you at all also your car can talk and its your best friend <3

This was a game of Tonight, Tonight by Grant Howitt, but the worldbuilding is mostly mine.

here's some of the stuff in the far future of 1 billion years from now

cars are sapient and have children ("carlings"). the carlings are cryptically colored for camouflage reasons. instead of steering wheels they got silicon lips (to communicate). they also have little hands under them which they use as claspers during mating. this one is named Orbeez.

Turns out more guns was more effective at stopping plane/spaceship highjacking. this anti-TSA agent has a greek statue for a head.

The roads are often blockaded by gangs which attempt to extort people for money. this guys is a spider kind of. his hat casts a very very very dark shadow but his eyes and mandibles are very very very very bright

Our players worked at the very very very tip of an unimaginably powerful company/cult/god called The Red Hand. their boss sends them on random jobs for seemingly no reason.

this is the boss of course. an eye in a jar and the foot of a toad. its whatever

The streets are inhabited by many forms of wildlife. there's the lava piranha. the ppppppigeon. and the three-eyed-legged-fish.

there's also GMO pets. this is Romeo. the pet of one of the players. he's a "raptor." his legs cannot move and so he must move on wheels. his arms, neck, and head, and tail are fully articulated. he's basically an organic animatronic.

the end of the day arrives. as is the plot of Tonight, Tonight, our players feel that they are about to fade away into nothing. the waxing sun begins to rise. they share one last ride on the highway, before arriving at a strange building just before the night truly ends. this is, I suppose, the HQ of The Red Hand. they go inside.

cybernetics and implants slough off as they enter, leaving geometric, bloodless scars in the flesh. the building is much deeper than they could see. it spirals off into darkness. night vision implants come off. the only sense is each others hands. miles and miles of facade and wire trail behind them as they stumble through the murk. finally they each touch something. a door. rough stone. two hands squeeze together. their owners are now ragged and skeletal. barely anything remains, but what does is rarified humanity. their final embrace is the most tender touch shared in a billion years. "I'll see you later" they say to each other. their tongues catch in their throats. they know the truth.

...

I needed to post that somewhere. I hope this is legible (if even barely) to anyone not part of this campaign. thanks to my friends, @sentient-deer-skull and another not on tumblr, for playing my batshit insane absurdist world, and thanks for making me cry during what was otherwise the goofiest thing I've ever done.

[shyestbarbarian]

#6 RPG That Is Easy To Use

Can't go wrong with Grant Howitt's "Honey Heist"! It's one page, easy to learn, and chaotic to play!

[jkcorellia]

"Grant Howitt made both Spire: The City Must Fall and Honey Heist" feels like the TTRPG world's equivalent of "George Miller made both Mad Max and Happy Feet"

[carfuckerlynch]

do you happen to have a link to the ‘here is the game: today you are not going to die’ piece grant howitt wrote?? i’ve always loved it as your blog title & did realise it was a larger think especially by grant howitt bc i love his rpgs so much & i just did some googling to see if i could find it myself but i wasn’t successful 😔😔

i don’t :(((( he posted it on his twitter a long time ago and i didn’t keep it :(((

EDIT I FOUND IT. LINK HERE (it’s an image no plaintext sorry everyone)

[ex-libris-craux]

So not long ago I ran Sexy Battle Wizards for my Friday night game group to give our forever DM a break, and I am dropping the opening here for posterity because I love it very much:

You are returning from a successful rescue mission, assisting The Vestal Vanguard in retrieving the holy, gem-encrusted Garter of the Order from the sleek and lovely thigh of Synchron Moreover, villain (and sexy, sexy beast). Moreover is now moreunder guard (possibly moreunder moreguards), and you have returned to the College Errant, where wine, the spa facilities, seven masseuses and masseurs, an Olympic-sized swimming pool (the mountain, not the event), a chef, and twelve puppies await you.

Oh, and also Elysian Traipse, who as you coalesce from ephemeral (and quite sexy) mist greets you with a worried expression, wringing hands, and a wailed "What have you DONE??? There are DEMONS in the INNER SANCTUM!"

A sexy battle wizard's work is never done, in this case because Traipse has locked you out of all the College's amenities until you get rid of the demons.

[rqgender]

Today's gender is too busy smoking cigarettes and kissing girls.

[savevsfacemelt]

Post-game Musings - Heart

Back in December, when talking about Scum & Villainy, I said that I was also running a slightly intermittent game of Heart.

Well, 'slightly' became 'very', and 'intermittent' became 'sporadic', and faced with the campaign continuing to not happen for the next few months, I decided last week to pull the plug. It's a bummer, but that's how 90% of RPG campaigns end - not with a bang, or even a whimper, but the nagging whine of incompatible schedules and commitments slowly grinding into each other just below the waterline.

...but what the heck is Heart, anyway?

--

Heart's great: This game? This game fuckin' rules. It throws wonderfully evocative classes (Wizards made of bees! Train paladins! Debt priests! The Crow, from the movie The Crow!) into a nightmare world of meat dungeons, subterranean moons, gangster druids, blooddrenched angels, electronic hells and interdimensional subways. The art's great, the writing's great, the setting's crammed full of evocative ideas, and the system... reads slightly better than it plays, and the exploration subsystem needs clearer explanations for how to make it work at the table, but it's still pretty bloody good. If the opportunity comes up to run/play Heart again, I'll do it in a, well, heartbeat.

Meaty beaty big and bouncy: The strongest element of Heart are beats, which are the core of both its experience system and its approach to GMing. At the end of a session, each player picks two beats - events, consequences or choices - that they would like to happen (or at least start happening) to their character. These range from the minor ('kick someone off a roof') to the major (''convert an important NPC to your cause') to the extreme ('take final revenge upon your secret master'), and the character gets a corresponding minor/major/extreme power-up when the beat is fulfilled. The GM's job is then to set up all those beats in the next session - and that's how you design scenarios and sessions. No maps, no scripts, no big plans, but a focus on giving the players what they want while building on what came before.

Planning is my heroin: I, of course, fucked that up immediately. Not by pre-planning a big story arc or dropping in railroad tracks, but by getting caught up in the coolness of every character. I wanted to see where they would end up, which meant I started getting ideas about where they'd end up, which meant I planned (rough) arcs for each character and dropped hints and foreshadowing and plot threads for players to follow those arcs. And my ideas are good! The players seemed to like them! But they're my ideas, and I struggle to put my ideas to one side even when a game pushes the players' ideas to the forefront, or to let myself take a reactive GMing role rather than actively driving things. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle - me riffing on player inputs, the players riffing on mine, everyone being happy - and maybe that's how the game would have turned out in the end, who knows.

Everyone's busy again: Look, I'm not saying pandemic lockdowns were a good thing, but at least they meant everyone was home, bored and desperate for online interaction on a Thursday night. It was a good time for gaming - I think I was running 4 games a fortnight (via Zoom) at one point. But that's over now, and folks have a lot of things on their plates again, and I'm back to competing with things like jobs and children and sex for attention again, and I tend to lose those competitions.

Am I advocating for another pandemic? Yes No. But sigh.

--

What else is happening in gaming land?

I tried to get a Lancer campaign off the ground, but I have a limited number of friends interested in a tactical-combat-focused RPG, and most of them were busy, so I'm putting that off until autumn.

I've just started running facilitating guiding a Wanderhome game, and it's got lots of promise, but it's a challenge in some ways. A game with no conflict, no plot and little-to-no external drama? Just vibes? That's not my strong suit - but then again, it's been a long time since I had to learn new gaming skills, so I’m into it.

And I should (fingers crossed) be running a one-shot, maybe even a 3-shot, of Achtung! Cthulhu next month. That'll be fun.

Nothing is more fun than shooting Nazis.

[dumpsterduck]