#jenna moran

[windienine]

befriend rats & kill god in a lush portal fantasy adventure by jenna moran

come on a journey with me?

there - past the scaffolding, past the rafters, up above past the windows and gables and fire escapes, if you make it to the roofs -

you'll encounter environments not of this world. rooftop gardens that have twisted themselves into dense forests, church spires that have , tiled expanses that stretch into the horizon and become meadows, gutter-lakes, deserts, mountains...

you'll encounter them, too, if you really look: the rats.

they want to show you these places, navigate them, map them, study them, know them. they want to befriend you, guide you, tell you their stories and weave new ones where you feature alongside them. if you want to make any headway, up there on the roofs, you'll need their help.

after all,

this is a place where the gods do tread. if they find you creeping about their domains, they will find you, kill you, transform you, dig their hooks into your very soul and never let go.

the rats know a secret.

gods can be killed.

you are the key.

the far roofs, currently crowdfunding, is home to some of the best role-playing game i've ever had. participating in several playtests has completely sold me on its viability as a system. notable are its set of unique oracle mechanics that tie into its freeform roleplay system, determining the physical and emotional outcomes of different events. gather hands of cards and tiles to weave together magic that can alter even monumental fates, fight peril with dice rolls, and collect components for spells and make headway on character advancement by spending time getting to know your companions, both human and murine.

it is, of course, written by dr. jenna moran, best known for previous innovative ttrpg experiences about divinity, such as nobilis, glitch, chuubo's marvelous wish-granting engine, and wisher, theurger, fatalist (WTF).

the philosophy of the far roofs is that dungeoneering is about the journey - the sights you see, the meals you make, the tales you tell, the companions you gain and lose - as much as the monster-slaying. each combat is a descriptive crescendo of the experiences faced up until that point, encompassing everything you've felt thus far. if any of this intrigues you, then, well... come on a journey with me?

[jennamoran]

King Death lives on an island on the lake and he looks out from the shore.

Long ago, Grandmother Rat took a raft out on the lake and found herself on the island of the Solitary King.

She was not yet wise, then—just a middle-aged ordinary rat. She hadn’t yet woken up. So when she smelled King Death, she tried to hide, but there was no hiding on that shore. When he came for her she fled; tucked herself away between two halves of a broken branch … but it did not do.

King Death’s hand came for her. He pulled her out and dangled her above his maw.

A cornered rat will fight, even if she is a common rat, even if there is nothing special to her at all.

She twisted. Got her tail and head and two legs free and bit deeply into King Death’s hand. This gave pause to Death.

“So, little rat,” he said. “You would bite Death. Well, you shall know what you have tasted. ...”

Now on Kickstarter!

[morkaischosen]

Based on something that went past on Discord, and in the full knowledge of the bias inherent in posting this in the context of the rest of my Tumblr, I'm curious as to the relationships between which of (a specific subset of) Jenna Moran's games people have heard of. We'll obviously get a lot (relatively) of "all three" since I'm posting this in a cluster of jennagamers; the interesting output is the differences in the one and two game responses.

This is loose and informal so I'm not too bothered if an individual's answers are "I've heard the name" or "I have some idea of the premise of this game," as long as you're consistent with your own answers.

The games I'm focusing on here are Nobilis; Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, or CMWGE; and Wisher, Theurge, Fatalist, often abbreviated WTF.

Reblogs appreciated, and notes as to where you've heard about the games would be interesting - part of my thinking here is about the contexts in which the games get talked about. In particular I'd love to compare the dynamics of my corner of Tumblr* against something like the RPGnet crowd, but I recognise the methodology here won't achieve that.

[emmavoid]

Dragul's Marvelous Wish Granting Land of Yeld

is this anything

[xavidotron]

Just posted a Chuubo's hack based on The Far Roofs and Dream Askew // Apart, for if you want the goodness of Chuubo's miraculous arcs in a less-maximalist lo-fi form easier to parse at the table.

Part of the Rooftop Library Jam, still ongoing!

[fortitude-calendar]

Harvest Festival

Today is the start of the Harvest Festival: make yourself a grain, berry, or flower crown.

[wizardsvslesbians]

It's a bonus episode! This time around we read a book which is about one hundred different things but may be primarily a cautionary tale about trying to raise children to be heroes. With special guest Leora!

[the-wizarding-woodsman]

If I had the World Breaker's Hand, I'd absolutely use it to shave.

[jessica-problems]

Jenna Moran will write some shit like "The Shadow Is a moral implication, but it does not have one. Construe events accordingly" and you'll have no idea what she's talking about but nevertheless understand that she is obviously correct.

[ofhedgehogsandpumpkins]

hey guess who just wrapped up a game of Wisher, Theurgist, Fatalist, which is/was (probably) a game that is (probably) made by (probably) Dr. Jenna Moran

it's good it's silly it was a good silly time

(only the first 3.5ish hours are WTF, the rest are a different game)

[jennamoran]

There is a mystery, and its name is Unicorn ...

You hear hoofbeats where you shouldn’t. You hear the sound of bells. You see flowers growing where they shouldn’t, and the flowers are overpowering in their sanctity. You feel a cold, sharp, fresh wind coming in suddenly from the distant sea. And if you’re vulnerable, if you’ve opened that door in you, you feel it, too:

This is it This is the thing This is what my life is for

But I will tell you now, this is not so.

It is a sacred thing, the sacred thing; but, sacred things destroy.

The Far Roofs, now on KIckstarter. A game of talking rats, and monstrous gods ... and you.

(300% funded, with 46 hours left!)

[geostatonary]

Version 1.0 of The Far Roofs by @jennamoran is out on backerkit and I'm in love with the new art

[xavidotron]

As a sort of counterpart, I'm fond of negative outcomes that are either impossible to reach or hard enough to reach you need to be really trying to get there, but sorta loom over you anyways.

One example is the Ending Books in Glitch, which sorta make any Wound or Cost expenditure make you feel like your character is that much closer to being unplayable, even though it'd be actually pretty difficult to cross the unplayability line even if you gun for it full speed ahead in the length of most Glitch campaigns.

Another is some of the darker chapters of Yazeba's, with "bad end" outcomes where it might not be immediately obvious how reachable that bad end is, which creates some good bleed re-enforcing the emotional state of the characters.

i love games that play with impossibilities in the mechanics to create mood or storytelling through empty space. roll tables that have numbers too high or too low, dice that don't physically exist. i imagine there's a lot more you could do with it. tarot cards not in any real deck, 42 of spades, dice towers 100 dice tall

i've always been such a fan of blank space in narratives but sometimes the best use of your time really is just to spell it out. here's something you can't have. this is exactly what i want you to think about and know that you won't get, not in this game at least

in my lyric game about werewolves, your 'beast' stat goes up a die size for all the animals watching you, and if you get past a d100 you have to roll using the moon. in my most recent little bookmark game, you take a baby girl (your daughter? someone else's?) and leave her to be raised by humans instead of the fey, like you. it's a simple game. roll a d6 to find out what happens to her when you come back 10 years later. lower numbers are worse outcomes, higher good. pretty simple. the outcome for 6 is pretty good, she knows shes a fey and has some friends who know too, she's even happy to see you, and i couldve left it at that. but it was for the 36 word jam and i had some words left. so i made a 7 where her new parents also know and they still love her. and that just really changes the whole game for me. sometimes its sad and sometimes its less so. but even with your best chance at a good life for her shes never actually going to be loved for who she really is, and you did that to her. it might not be on her mind but its going to be on yours and you know you know you know its out of reach. thats what the whole game is about now, to me. the 7 you can't ever roll

i think the impossible mechanic is definitely something that fits well in a certain genre of game (lyric games or really absurd ones especially) but i wanna see it used more in general. what should the players be aware of the absence of? whats your mechanical haunting of the narrative? if yall have examples or self-promos feel free to drop em

[roundearthsociety]

It's easy to think of weird chronic illness bullshit as a Strategist thing, but writing various mallows has led me to think it's ideal on a Deceiver. Something in the space between "moldy chuuni eyepatch giving you pink eye", "if I ignore it it won't affect me", and "health is a social construct", yknow

[fortitude-calendar]

Pancake Week

Today is the fourth day of Pancake Week: a day heavily focused on fighting, particularly grappling.

[the-wizarding-woodsman]

The Omegaverse is an Actual; a virulent calamity born from the hubris of Supernatural fanfic writers that seeks to assimilates queer relationships to understand them and destroys their soul in an accursed stew of logic-defying heteronormativity.