#elfgaming

[inklesspen]

D&D and D&D-derived elfgame players, an question:

Does the Wizard class in your game rules have to pick spells for the day from their spellbook, such that during the "day" they will only have a limited subset of spells available to cast?

For example, in D&D 3.5e, the Wizard gets a number of slots and must assign spells to each slot. Want to be able to cast fireball twice? That'll be two level-3 slots please. In Worlds Without Number, on the other hand, a wizard does have to prepare a selection of spells, but may cast each prepared spell as many times as she likes, as long as she does not exceed a spells-per-day limit.

If your game has this rule, does your table actually abide by that rule?

If so, how do you (and/or your fellow players) feel about that rule?

Additional bonus question: If your ruleset allows the Wizard some flexibility around prepared spells (swapping out a prepared spell during a short rest, for instance), do you think that rule goes far enough? Too far? Something else?

[inklesspen]

#and she’s like ‘what like it’s hard?’ while the rest of the party stares in horror

a dnd concept: halfling community where all the bonkers dangerous magical artifacts brought back from various Adventures are kept in the local mathom-house, safely gathering dust under glass

when young halflings find themselves seized with the urge to go adventuring, they are permitted to check things out from the mathom-house as long as they promise to be careful with them and keep them polished and read the instructions before using them. also if they find any new bonkers dangerous artifacts the mathom-house gets to keep them

in this way the sleepy, peaceful halfling village gets to stay sleepy and peaceful while sitting on the magical equivalent of several unexplored nukes

[bad-quail]

How is this for a pitch?

The Basics

Plunderdark is a Dice Game for Heroic Adventures in a Late Medieval Dark Fantasy Anti-Canon Sandbox. It centers play around underdog Heroes pursuing their Convictions to make their grim and perilous world a better place.

Dark Fantasy

Imagine the world at the start of Willow or The Dark Crystal. The world is in the grip of an Evil Despot. The forces of Good, insofar as they exist, are in hiding or on the back foot. Foolhardy scholars collude with the powers of the Hidden World to work sinister sorceries. Remnants of past ages dot the countryside, promising wealth and fame to those who plumb their depths, and doom to those who linger too long in their hollows.

Late Medieval

Imagine our world in the decades preceding the Protestant Reformation and the invasion of the New World. Armored knights exist alongside castles and early firearms. The printing press is a new invention, allowing information to move and propagate faster than ever before. The progeny of conquerors and despots have grown fat on the exploitation of the common folk for nigh on a thousand years. Wealthy merchant adventurers exploit the trust of their common kin and the greed of the nobility they aspire to surpass to amass their own great fortunes.

Anti-Canon Sandbox

The Gamemaster is not solely responsible for defining the setting of play. The entire table collaborates to define the contours of the world, and creates Heroes invested in that world. Play is directed by the Heroes and their Convictions. The Gamemaster does not compose a plot, but provides opportunities and obstacles for the Heroes to pursue their Convictions.

[lazyajju]

Children of Silentown is a point & click adventure game telling a mysterious and endearing story.

Available now on Steam, GOG, EGS, Xbox, PlayStation & Nintendo Switch.

[inklesspen]

I once read this post about a dragon with 16 hit points. Yes, 16.

So the party needed a magic item, and they researched and found that a hero wielding said item was slain by a dragon. They get some info from a different dragon’s drake-in-human-form servant, and go and steal said item. Remember, magic in this world doesn’t mean ‘magic’ in the +’s sense, but this spear can pierce souls and is thus necessary to defeat a sorcerer king. Ok, so we have a very angry dragon about to attack something. 16 hp again - ready? The party is riding back into town ready for a nice hot bath, some resupplies (their rations were running low), and a re-focus on hunting down the sorcerer king. The moon goes out for a second, they feel the wind shift, and then something lands on city hall with a massive crack. They have a few seconds to blink before they see a serpentine head snake down and shred a guardsman in mail in a single hit (announce future badness, this is the ‘messy’ tag). They kick up the speed and head towards town. I plop down paper, and quickly draw some snaking streets, sketch out some boxy houses, plop down a big die to represent the dragon. As they’re about to walk in, I pick up a handful of red tokens, and describe the inhalation they feel from this far, and the words in dragon-speech, and basically drop a pile of red on town and explain it’s on fire and how the flames themselves are being shaped and commanded by the dragon. Their horses freak. They manage to get off (a few taking some damage from a panicked horse running and one being hit by a branch). They start advancing through this hellish landscape, where an inconsistent shadow would swoop down and split someone in half, and people burning to death beg for mercy and help while holding swaddled children turning to ash in their arms. The group starts to help the townsfolk (this is not a magical node, so the wizard can’t just ritual up some rain) when a building shatters with the landing of a 4-5 ton creature, and it opens up its pipes, it’s golden eyes burning and it’s metal hide resonates with a roar (terrifying). Their charges scatter, the PC’s have to defy their own terror to attack the thing. They do negligible damage (yay 4 armor) for those that DO anything, and realize that the only person who has a shot at killing this is the armor-penetrating wizard spells. Unfortunately, so does the dragon. What ensues is horrific. One fighter takes up defensive position, when the dragon strikes it doesn’t just do 1d10+5 damage, it rips off his arm (messy remember?) and shreds mail like tissue paper. It does breath weapon attacks that cause ALL of them to defy danger or burn. The party breaks and runs. The dragon laughs and settles to ash the village and eat any survivors. The Dragon had 16 hit points. The party did 9 to it before they left. And when I said left, I mean they ran like rabbits into the night with few provisions, no easy means of recovering them, and no thoughts in their heads other than survival. The moral of the story is it’s not about the hitpoints. In my 4e game the party had a dozen dragon kills under their belt. The dragons were mechanically threatening, they were tricksy, they were tactical, but their claws and teeth didn’t do damage, they did numbers. After this session they explained that they had never been so scared of a monster. Make the fights epic. Use the fiction. Describe their skin curling black from fire. The bones shattering from the unyielding stone grasp of the earth elemental. Most fights clean up the fiction by saying you take 5 damage. Make it stick, make it hard to heal, make them scarred and battle hardened having earned every mark, and every wound a story. You don’t need 2500 hp to make a fight scary or hard.

"Their claws and teeth didn't do damage, they did numbers."

"Most fights clean up the fiction by saying you take 5 damage. Make it stick, make it hard to heal, make them scarred and battle hardened having earned every mark, and every wound a story."

The mechanics described here are from Dungeon World, but the principle can be applied to a variety of games. Remember, "hit points" aren't a measure of how alive you are; they are a measure of how many hits you can take and remain in the fight. You don't need a lot of hit points if everything about you makes it really fucking hard to land a hit on you. And, yeah, it should be really fucking hard to land a hit on a dragon. It's a dragon.

of course there are limits to what kinds of attacks a dragon can perform in-game but it’s fun to think about the actual horrifying possibilities of a dragon battle. like a dragon is a six-ton savagely intelligent flying murder machine with jaws like a steel trap and a voice that can shred you like tissue paper. nothing but your own agility and cunning is stopping that smug bastard from catching you in its claws, lifting you ten thousand feet in the air, and dropping you on a sharp rock like a gull trying to crack an oyster. even the wind from its wings is probably enough to knock you down. and it’s fast too! its scales are tough enough to blunt your sword! it’s got thousands of years of experience with killing noisy little tin-clad toothpick-wielding idiots like you! do you really want to fight that thing? alduin broke through a stone wall with his head

[myofficeassistant-blog]

Looking for a last minute way to surprise a family or some kids? Our “You’ve Been Elfed” kit and our roll an elf game are easy to print and play and gift. Add some treats and hot cocoa and make someone’s day magical. Find these in our bio in our Etsy shop at Grinandprint on Etsy #elf #youvebeenelfed #xmasgifts #kidsactivities #elfgames https://www.instagram.com/p/CmFHvY5PpXz/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[progressordecay]

DAMN - haven’t posted in ages, do people still check? Or is it just stories and reels? ?? I was going to curate this feed some how but I think keeping it chaotic is nice. What do you think about otters? TTRPG related news, going to start sharing more finished art, landscape crops a bit weird, forgot how to compose messages on here, so it’s now a ‘dear diary’ format. 👏 This is Maggot Queen and her children, they have names but I forgot to write it down. Umm… I guess I’ll generate some hashtags now. thanks for watching. #dogfreestyling #dogfestivals #TTRPG #OSR #5e #dungeonsanddragons #dnd5e #elfgames #horrorart #horrorchildren #spamTags #notyourbarbiegirl Edit: dang, there is so much new features on IG posting now. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl2qentyYRl/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[bad-quail]

An Idea for Hexcrawl Random Encounters

Borrow a page from depthcrawl procedures and have your encounter table be 1dX+Y where X is the size of the die you want to use and Y is your "depth", measured as distance in hexes from a central "safe" hex. The higher the encounter roll result, the more dangerous or weirder the encounter. So, you can get the feel of the world becoming more and more dangerous the farther from town you get.

[prokopetz]

Hi, Mr Prokopetz, I'm a big fan. Apologies if you've answered this before, but I was wondering what software you use to create the pdf and epub layouts of your ttrpgs, and whether you'd recommend it to a hobbyist who wants to try putting together something more professional than a gdoc for their own ttrpg?

My workflow is unfortunately not terribly accessible unless you have a fair amount of technical know-how.

In brief, I write all of my games in Notepad++ as HTML documents, taking care to use only the subset of HTML5 tags which are supported by most popular EPUB readers. I then use Calibre (or, more, precisely, the command-line utility that comes with Calibre, though you can get mostly the same results via the GUI) to bundle the HTML document as an EPUB3 file. I typically distribute both the HTML and EPUB versions (the former in a zipfile with all of the fonts and images and such) because web browsers tend to have much better screen-reader support than EPUB apps do.

The PDF, meanwhile, is generated from the same master HTML document using CSS paged media extensions – the layout is all generated automatically based on rules specified in a big, gnarly CSS file, and is never touched by human hands. There are a number of software packages which can do this sort of CSS-driven HTML-to-PDF conversion, some of them free or open source; I use a commercial product called Prince because, to the best of my knowledge, it's the only such software which has out-of-the-box support for PDF/UA semantic tagging (i.e., the stuff you need to do in order to make your PDFs screen-reader friendly), but you have more options if you're willing to tag your PDFs manually. (I am not.)

As for whether I'd recommend doing it this way? Like I said, unless you're a proper gearhead, not really; it's super efficient once you get it all set up – the only version of the game I actually maintain is the master HTML document, and generating updated versions of all the other formats is a one-click affair – but it's really only feasible for me because I already knew how to all that workflow automation stuff for unrelated reasons. I can't imagine teaching yourself all that from scratch just to write elfgames!

[zedecksiew]

THE BLOGGIES 2023: FINALISTS

(If you just want to skip to the list of BLOGGIE finalists, scroll to the "Who Are The BLOGGIES?" section below.)

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WHAT ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Awards for some of the best tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) blog posts to come out in 2022. There will be five awards: Best Theory Blogpost, Best Gameable Blogpost, Best Advice Blogpost, Best Review Blogpost, and, the biggest one, Best Blogpost.

I won Best Blogpost, last year. So I am hosting the BLOGGIES, this year.

+++

WHY ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Blogs are worth celebrating. Barring the actual playing of actual games, they are our most fertile field, our most volatile laboratory. Longform, text-based, and informal---they are a place to jot down our most outre design ideas. Free and publicly available---they are a vector for open debate and serendipitous discourse. Perhaps most importantly: relatively free of algorithmic social-media pressures---they are the best chance we have at a cultural memory.

I got into TTRPGs because of blogs.

The BLOGGIES are, at best, an affirmation of the above. At least, they are a way to celebrate 64 excellent blog posts from the last year, and maybe get them in front of people who did not read them the first time.

+++

HOW ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Nominations: I put an open call for blog-post nominations on Christmas 2023; I also canvassed the TTRPG communities I am part of. Nominated posts had to be from between 1 December 2022 to 31 December 2023.

I closed the nomination period on 1 Jan 2024 with 149 blog posts for consideration. I read / re-read them all.

I chose a slate of 64 finalists, according to the following metrics, in order:

Enthusiasm---a post got multiple nominations;

Diversity---no one blog was allowed to be a finalist more than once in a category (except the Reviews category, where this rule was tied to individual writers, due to shared review blogs);

Notability---a post was extraordinary in presenting a novel idea, addressing an important subject, or reflecting a community current.

Obviously, that last metric is highly subjective, and limited to my knowledge and perspective in the scene. I did my best.

I will not have final final say. Finalists will go head to head, vying for to be anointed best of the best by ballot. The bracket was seeded in order of number of nominations received. The BLOGGIES await your vote, o TTRPG folx.

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WHEN ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Throughout January 2024! Voting is >>>NOW OPEN<<< on Google Forms according to the following schedule (I will link to the forms and result threads as I post them):

First Week January - THEORY

3 January: Round of 16

4 January: Round of 8

5 January: Round of 4

6 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

Second Week January - GAMEABLE

10 January: Round of 16

11 January: Round of 8

12 January: Round of 4

13 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

Third Week January - ADVICE

17 January: Round of 16

18 January: Round of 8

19 January: Round of 4

20 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

Fourth Week January - REVIEW

24 January: Round of 16

25 January: Round of 8

26 January: Round of 4

27 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

31 January - FINALS

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WHO ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Your BLOGGIES 2023 FINALISTS are (presented in bracket order):

(High-res version here)

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THEORY

🥉 (1) being a problem - playable orcs at the limits of humanity, from Majestic Fly Whisk Some deep thinking about the racialisation of the orc in elfgames, why mainstream fixes fall short, and ways to move beyond.

vs

(16) #132: Axes of Game Design, from The Indie RPG Newsletter An exploration of the design axes / spectrums on which every TTRPG may fall.

(8) The Genres the OSR Can't Do, from A Knight At The Opera Sketching the limits of the OSR playstyle by looking at genres which are too differently-bound for it to emulate.

vs

(9) RPG Transcript Analysis: Critical Role, from Trilemma Adventures Examining a style of play through transcript analysis (looking at what is actually being said during a session), with Critical Role as case study.

🥈 (5) Critical GLOG: Base Resolution Mechanics, from Goblin Punch A deep dive into dice and resolution mechanics, and what they do in practice.

vs

(12) My favorite problems, from Failure Tolerated A list of design problems in TTRPGs, and a case for game design and theory to be driven by problem-solving.

(4) Roleplay Is Folk Art, from Wizard Thief Fighter An impassioned call to consider TTRPGs as folk art as opposed to corpocratic walled-garden IPs.

vs

(13) ART, PRODUCT, BOARD GAMES AND MAUSRITTER, from Fail Forward Critique of reviews that accuse TTRPGs for being too slick; interrogating the assumptions behind the label “commercial”.

(6) Toolbox Design, from The Dododecahedron Considering the principles of designing TTRPGs like toolboxes, through the lens of Cairn RPG and similar.

vs

(11) Mario vs ActRaiser vs Final Fantasy vs Zelda - Types of Advancement in RPGs, from Rise Up Comus Identifying some general types of advancement in TTRPGs, using videogames as a comparative lens.

(3) Posters, Posers and POSR(s), from Prismatic Wasteland Relitigating whether the OSR is dead, and defining its successor, the Post-OSR.

vs

(14) psychosis is badly written in tabletop games, from paper cult “Attempting to mechanize something so intensely personal, different, and mutable as mental illness is complicated. I think that makes these depictions bad!”

(7) “Rules Elide” and Its Consequences, from Jared Considering the implications of the maxim that "a game is about X when you have rules for everything but X".

vs

(10) Models of High-Level Play, from Benign Brown Beast Loose but useful classifications for types of high-level play: domains; god-like play; etc.

🥇 (2) OSR Rules Families, from Traverse Fantasy Sketching the landscape of the OSR, how various systems function, and how their attributes cluster and trend together.

vs

(15) Moralising and manipulation in tabletop roleplaying games, from Playful Void The importance of having design preferences without tying these preferences to moral judgments.

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GAMEABLE

🥉 (1) Flux Space, from Papers & Pencils A point-crawl procedure specifically designed for labyrinths / dungeons that are architecturally confusing / samey.

vs

(16) Generating Elevation in a Hexcrawl, from Traveler's Rest Procedures and advice on how to generate a mountain-crawl: hiking-focused adventure geography.

(8) The Autumn of Summers, from False Machine God-monsters born of summer, the hunting culture around such beasts, and random tables to generate their attributes.

vs

(9) MIMICS, from Vaults Of Vaarn A spread of novel pretender-creatures, with ecological and social implications.

(5) Another take on demihumans as social constructs, from Cavegirl's Game Stuff What if we consider fantasy races not as separate species, but as differing social roles?

vs

(12) The Apocalypse Archive, from Bearded Devil An unfinished by exemplary #dungeon23 attempt that includes wonderful maps and soundtrack notes.

🥈 (4) Pointcrawling Character Creation, from Rise Up Comus A framework for tying character generation to a geography, generating history and familiarity with campaign locales.

vs

(13) how to be erased, from Straits Of Anian Procedures for getting lost and getting led astray, and the kith and spirits one meets in those places.

(6) Dungeon Skirmishing, from All Dead Generations Feature-complete skirmish combat mechanics for OD&D, and the design rationales thereof.

vs

(11) Zelda-Style NPC Personalities, from To Distant Lands A system of generating quick and punchy NPCs, inspired by the way Zelda videogames present NPCs.

(3) GULCH, from Mindstorm A starter town specifically designed for contemporary (horror, urban fantasy, non-fantasy) campaigns.

vs

(14) Down the Road: Local Situation Design, from Deeper In The Game A procedure for quickly generating a powderkeg situation in a local geography of play.

🥇 (7) Laws of the Land: meaningful terrain via in-fiction limits and conditions, from Was It Likely? A method to generate meaningful diegetic terrain and tone in an adventuring region.

vs

(10) False Equivalent Exchange, from The Graverobber's Guide A novel magic system, done in natural language, with discussion on how it could be used in play.

(2) Deeper Catacombs, from Benign Brown Beast Iteration notes and a presentation of a comprehensive dungeon tracking procedure.

vs

(15) Inadvisable Decisions (GLΔG), from The Nothic's Eye An evocative alienist character class, based on drawing the attention of alter-describable things from beyond.

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ADVICE

🥈 (1) How to Handle Parley as an OSR DM, from Goblin Punch Comprehensive notes on how to run non-combat encounters without resorting to boring rolls.

vs

(16) GM Pointers: Live-Text Games, from Shadow & Fae Good reminders on how to run live-text games better, so they are better coordinated and don't take forever.

(8) ONLY Roll Initiative, from Bastionland Considerations on how to adjudicate combats, if initiative were the only dice roll in a combat system.

vs

(9) Action Mysteries, from A Knight At The Opera Asserting that good TTRPGs mysteries involve action---not just figuring out the truth but opposing the antagonist's goals.

(5) Modular Ecology, from The Graverobber's Guide A practical approach to including gameable ecology in TTRPGs, by tying materials to specific locations and conditions of the world.

vs

(12) ULTIMATE ANIMIST MECHANIC: EVERYTHING IS A REACTION, from Alone In The Labyrinth How to run a game where all actions are resolved by reaction roll: everything in the world responds by how much they like you.

(4) Game Mastering Like A Park Ranger, from SILVERARM Advice about GM-ing, based on the real-world work experience of being a park ranger.

vs

(13) An OSR approach to Spotlight, from Permanent Cranial Damage The suggestion that intentionally spotlighting characters solves the real-life problem of spotlighting players nicely.

(6) #Dungeon23, from Win Conditions The idea that spawned a thousand notebook dungeons, plus salient advice on how to start / keep going.

vs

(11) The Storyteller Technique, from Possum Creek Games When writing TTRPGs, imagine your game text as a diegetic artefact in the world of the game.

🥉 (3) RANSACKING THE ROOM, from Mindstorm A simple and powerful three-step method to handle room-searching in games: inspect, search, and ransack.

vs

(14) Cairn Crash Course, from Widdershins Wanderings A masterclass example on how to write player guides to a game, for Cairn RPG.

(7) AN EXAMPLE OF FKR (NEAR-)DICELESS COMBAT (WITH COSMIC ORRERY!), from Underground Adventures Describing combat in a Free Kriegsspiel Roleplaying (FKR) game, useful in understanding that playstyle.

vs

🥇 (10) Re-inventing the Wilderness: Part 1 - Introduction, from sachagoat Figuring out problems with wilderness exploration, and applying a mental-map framework from urban-theory academia.

(2) Dungeon Design, Process and Keys, from All Dead Generations A detailed process to designing and keying a traditional dungeon adventure.

vs

(15) THE D&D IN MY HEAD: In Only 6 Load-Bearing Numbers, from I Cast Light! Identifying the essential and minimum rules you need to remember, to run D&D.

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REVIEW

🥇 (1) An Empty Africa - PF2E's The Mwangi Expanse and the strange career of Black Atlanticism, from Majestic Fly Whisk A review of Pathfinder’s "The Mwangi Expanse", and a discussion of Black Atlanticism's fraught relationship with its sourcelands.

vs

(16) What Hull Breach Teaches Us, from Mazirian's Garden An assessment of the Mothership RPG third-party "Hull Breach" anthology as a "new standard for anthology companions".

(8) Grave Trespass - Jim Henson's Labyrinth: The Adventure Game, from Bones Of Contention A review of the Labyrinth RPG. It’s got all these things which are "bad" in RPGs, so why does it work?

vs

(9) The First Rumor Tables, Part 2: Caverns of Thracia or Caverns of Quasqueton?, from Tom Van Winkle's Return To Gaming An investigation into the origins of rumour tables in TTRPGs. Did TSR plagiarise Jaquays?

(5) Standing up for D&D's Gen X: 2e (Part 1), from Mythlands Of Erce A full-throated defense of D&D2E, viewing it in the context of its time and as a refinement over 1E.

vs

(12) Systemcrawl: Break!! RPG, from Widdershins Wanderings A review and system analysis of Break!! RPG, which marries JRPG and OSR inspirations.

(4) Dungeon Crawls in Cinema, from Directsun Games Evaluating several films on the basis of how well they function as dungeon crawls.

vs

(13) Reasonable Reviews, from Rise Up Comus A general overview of TTRPG reviews, and what may or may not make them useful.

(6) Deep Dive: A|STATE, from The Indie Game Reading Club A review of a|state, and how it builds on and departs from the Blades In The Dark formula.

vs

(11) I Read Cloud Empress, from Playful Void A review of Cloud Empress, the first descendant of the Mothership RPG ruleset.

🥈 (3) Plagiarism in Unconquered (2022), from Traverse Fantasy A forensic analysis of how Unconquered plagiarised Ultraviolet Grasslands and Vaults Of Vaarn.

vs

(14) Rod, Reel, & Fist (Review), from Benign Brown Beast A substantial review of Rod, Reel, & Fist, a "system-forward fishing simulation RPG".

(7) Pedantic Wasteland - Vampire Cruise, from Bones Of Contention A review of Vampire Cruise, a largely system-neutral horror-comedy adventure set at sea.

vs

(10) Dragon Magazine: Player Advice Collection Overview, from Attronarch Athenaeum A comprehensive read-through and rating of 143 Dragon Magazine advice articles.

(2) Spire: The Monstrosity of Empire, the Necessity of Violence, from A A Voigt A comparative-literature analysis of Spire RPG through R F Kuang’s spec-fic novel "Babel, or the Necessity of Violence".

vs

🥉 (15) MICROBLOG: CHILDREN'S BOOKS AND TABLETOP GAMES, from Fail Forward Considering the influence of children’s books on TTRPG designers and works like "Barkeep on the Borderlands".

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It is difficult to describe how hard it was for me to whittle down the list of nominees to these finalists. I consider each of these 64 a landmark in 2023's TTRPG thinkings, and the folks from which they issue essential reading, going forward. They already deserve a prize.

So here it is, dear bloggers: a hand-carved linocut "finalist's pin" graphic you are free to use on your sites / posts, should you wish:

(High-res downloadable version HERE)

Thank you for writing! And good luck in the coming rounds of voting!

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CORRECTION: A blog post from 2021 (Not All Crunch Is the Same, from A Knight At The Opera), was included in the soft-launch posting of this list. An error on the part of its nominator, compounded by a data-entry error on my part. It has since been replaced by a post from the same blog with the actual most nominations (The Genres the OSR Can't Do). I have also double-checked my lists and all finalists. Apologies for my error!

[farmergadda]

NEW BLOGPOST! Go to Hell! Literally, it's a Shortcut. Here's my proof of Concept for a Minecraft Nether Depthcrawl for OSR/POSR Elfgames, complete with the Nether Wastes Biome for your adventuring dis-pleasure!

[scrumpyfan43]

Me making big dumb tables that make something interesting, rather than actual games with mechanics and an intent to tell any kind of story

No offense but I think some of you would be a lot happier writing a fictional atlas or encyclopedia instead of a narrative story

[dankdungeonsrpg]

Thalassophobia

Nefarious Lich by Jerry Tiritilli

A little while ago I talked about FEAR mechanics, considering some ways we could adapt Mothership or ALIEN to our #elfgames.

I discussed a couple possible systems, preferring a d20 table.

So I Made It

I'm slowly but surely working my way through the manuscript for a Shadowdark setting guide. A greatly expanded version of something I did for an itch jam in '23.

Here's the rule from my previous post:

Any time a Character finds themself in a terrifying or desperate situation the GM may choose to have them gain 1d6 Stress Points. Track these points somewhere on the character sheet.

Whenever a Player makes a d20 roll, if their result is less than or equal to their current Stress they consult the Panic Table to see how their Character reacts.

Players may give their Character 1d6 Stress to gain ADV on their next roll.

Critical Failures always result in Panic.

Critical Success reduces total Character Stress by 1d6 points.

To make the roll table I looked to results from Mothership, ALIEN, and Call of Cthulhu.

forgive some really nasty justified text, put the layout together quickly

As you can probably tell from this table, it is effectively a heavily edited version of the Mothership list.

However I was really taken by results like Hysterics and Amnesia which appear in Call of Cthulhu, so I ran with those for the second half of my table. The idea is that the further you get in, the more the results show the mind reflexively protecting itself from what it's experiencing.

My only issue with this list is that not all results give clear role playing direction for the player. Suspicious or Persona can offer some great moments at the table, but Accursed not as much.

Something to think on.

Up Next...

The setting guide has all sorts of body horror in it, from the harm of living in an alien environment, to the strangeness of deep sea creatures, to bizarre arcane mutations.

I'm really excited to share those tables and associated rules!

[petterwass]

It will never not be funny to me that my workplace computer blocks pretty much every non-news site I could use to waste time: I can't go on RPG.NET to discuss elfgames, I can't go on Goonhammer to get articles on tabletop gaming, but it does NOT block Ao3! So I can, and indeed have spent entire surgeries reading fanfics about my blorbos :)

[lazyajju]

Children of Silentown is a point & click adventure game telling a mysterious and endearing story.

Coming to PC & Consoles on Jan 11, 2023

ABOUT GAME:- Children of Silentown is a dark adventure game that tells the story of Lucy, a girl growing up in a village deep in a forest inhabited by monsters. Explore the town and its dangerous surroundings, meet its quirky inhabitants, solve puzzles and master minigames.