thydungeongal

[thydungeongal]

Dev Pile 2025-11 — Blood And Bones

Starting next week, I will be in a classroom with a bunch of students talking about ideation and experimentation. That’s going to involve some generative tools and showing them ways that they can use those tools to launch off ideas. My plan is to take them the skeleton of Moonshiners and show them the way that these tools can be used to generate the templates of card faces. Then, when I have those concept assets generated, I can show them the steps I go through to take those ideas and make them into my own.

The aim here is to demonstrate the use of these tools as a kind of word calculator. I use Excel to do math for me, and I use it to generate random things. I use texture libraries and public domain art, I know that there is a value to having convenient things to prime the pump, to set up a template.

Anyway, because I have Moonshiners in a skeletal form, and I want to use that class exercise to demonstrate the process on that skeleton, what I’m going to do this week is talk a bit about progress on Bloodwork.

LaunchTableTop is my current toolkit for game making. This means that I have a good framework for volume of cards I can jam in a box, and, indeed, the box itself. I can look at the example of Cafe Romantica, our game they’ve printed, and use that as my framework for how many pieces I want to go into a box. That’s about 120 cards, and some tokens.

Bloodwork is meant to be an asymmetrical game with symmetrical pieces. That is, the players are both playing clans of vampires, and Old Vampires and Young Vampires treat their resources very differently. The Old Vampires have institutional power and can carry resources from turn to turn, with a slowly growing base of power. They’re supposed to win end games, but also take some time ‘waking up,’ while Young Vampires have to recruit and construct themselves out of what’s available. There’s a common area, called the Street, which has resources in it that players can access, but will react differently based on what gang they are.

Stuff in Bloodwork is meant to be therefore, just a set of player mats, showing the nature of your gang and how to play them, fundamentally:

There’s a vampire that’s a multi-level marketing scam, arranging its cards in a pyramid. The start of the game, this player takes 24 cards, and deals them out face-down in front of them. Each turn, they take one of these cards and flip it face up, then takes an action based on what’s visible in that tier for that clan. Originally, this was going to rely on dice rolls to trigger cascades in the organisation. They still care about what’s in the street, though, because while they can’t recruit, any thralls in the pyramid can be swapped with Vampires in the Street, and, they can exploit figures in the Street to get bonus actions.

There’s a vampire that’s running a cryptocurrency scam. They have a resource that drags Thralls out of the Street automatically, and they follow one of four different fake currencies they have going on. At the beginning of their turn, their weakest cryptocurrency (with the fewest thralls) collapses, losing all its thralls and that’s the amount of resources they get to work with that turn. They have to spend resources to establish a new cryptocurrency to call Thralls back, and at the end of their turn, these thralls are dealt out at random between their currencies.

Then there’s the vampire that’s running a police force. Their organisation is a single line. Every turn, they pick a card in their line to ‘retire’ and it fires off everything on one side or the other, then slides the rest in place. This means that they have their existing power structure, and it does change and have good or bad days, but it’s just a matter of rearranging who’s in charge.

The idea I’m currently brewing here is the idea that any given game of Bloodwork has to feature an Old vampire and a New Vampire building out of a shared common deck, where the Old Vampire has the victory condition in their deck somehow, and it’s the job of the Young Vampire gang to find it out. That means the Young Vampire can be aggressive and have limited ways to handle being attacked, while the Old Vampire can be defensive and have limited ways to handle doing damage. In a lot of ways I’m borrowing from the concept space of Netrunner with this idea.

In the original form of the game, it was based on Liar’s Dice; players would roll a dice and then tell the truth or lie about what in their tableau fired. But you could lie, and another player could call you out, and if they did call you out, it meant you’d given up paying attention to one of a small pool of victory-point jackpots known as the ancient tombs.

In this new idea, the game becomes straight up head to head, but where Netrunner was a game of asymmetrical pieces with a pre-emptive deckbuild, the Old Vampires get a cache of cards to start with, and they view the street as a place to play, a way to deploy threats. They can rile up vampires on the street, making Young Vampires have to deal with them, or fight them, before they can recruit them. They can deprive the Young Vampires of access to Thralls, and choke off their resources.

That means the game is going to feature these Young/Old playmats, then along with that a collection of 120+ish cards. Of those cards, the majority will be Thralls, Vampires, Resources and Events, and then there will be the return to those Ancient Tombs that the Old Vampires are protecting as a base of their power, for consolidation and control. They’ll have the same back as other cards – and depending on what the Old Vampire is doing, those cards will rest in some space or other that other Vampires can try and attack.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[thydungeongal]

Person whose exposure to D&D is purely through modern D&D play culture playing Wizardry: Wow, this game rules. If only there was a tabletop RPG that captured this style of dungeon-crawling gameplay informed heavily by attrition and resource management. But alas, RPGs are all about queer found families kissing elves...

[thydungeongal]

nyt on se yö

[thydungeongal]

D&D 5e fans talking about "story beats" and "collaborative storytelling" as if their game is a rules-light storygame feels like a massive cope, like as if there was something shameful about enjoying the pretty trad fantasy wargame. Like, there's the fact that a lot of advice and discussion about running the game that focuses on treating the game as a story being told to the players actually ends up running counter to the strengths of the system and its structure. Send those bitches to a dungeon, your game will improve much more than trying to think of themes or some shit. If you want to roll d20s while not playing a trad wargame and instead something more storygamey (but not too Forgey so as to not go scare the hoes) you can always check out QuestWorlds. Or Quest. You have options.

[thydungeongal]

D&D 5e fans talking about "story beats" and "collaborative storytelling" as if their game is a rules-light storygame feels like a massive cope, like as if there was something shameful about enjoying the pretty trad fantasy wargame. Like, there's the fact that a lot of advice and discussion about running the game that focuses on treating the game as a story being told to the players actually ends up running counter to the strengths of the system and its structure. Send those bitches to a dungeon, your game will improve much more than trying to think of themes or some shit. If you want to roll d20s while not playing a trad wargame and instead something more storygamey (but not too Forgey so as to not go scare the hoes) you can always check out QuestWorlds. Or Quest. You have options.

[thydungeongal]

D&D 5e fans talking about "story beats" and "collaborative storytelling" as if their game is a rules-light storygame feels like a massive cope, like as if there was something shameful about enjoying the pretty trad fantasy wargame. Like, there's the fact that a lot of advice and discussion about running the game that focuses on treating the game as a story being told to the players actually ends up running counter to the strengths of the system and its structure. Send those bitches to a dungeon, your game will improve much more than trying to think of themes or some shit. If you want to roll d20s while not playing a trad wargame and instead something more storygamey (but not too Forgey so as to not go scare the hoes) you can always check out QuestWorlds. Or Quest. You have options.

[thydungeongal]

kaiba made it real weird real fast but yami kept him in line

[thydungeongal]

Re: the post about rolls being kinesthetically satisfying: that's kinda why I think dice pool systems (especially if they give you a bunch of circumstantial bonuses) are pretty cool, at least in theory. Because adding together all your bonuses and seeing just how many dice you get to roll is a really good feeling...

...then looking over all those dice and figuring out how many successes you rolled is of course something else.

I absolutely agree, on a kinesthetic level dice pool systems are in their own category, and I actually think dice pool systems would do well to learn from miniatures wargames in this regard: they often simplify the process down to having a very simple way to build your pool (16 guys ≈ 16 dice) and there's usually minimal friction between the to-hit and to-damage rolls, if they even are separate steps. Anyway rolling lots of dice is fun and there's many different ways to interpret a dice pool, beyond just looking for "X number of successes" or just adding that whole thang together.

[thydungeongal]

Have you played CY_BORG ?

By Christian Sahlén and Johan Nohr

A rules-lite cyberpunk RPG about a rotting megacity constantly in flux.

Based on , as you may have guessed, Mork Borg

[thydungeongal]

People going "Actual investigative urban fantasy roleplaying has not been attempted yet" in the notes of @anim-ttrpgs is, too, a form of gleeblor.

Like, as a generalization, people saying that "X type of gameplay rarely works in tabletop roleplaying games, here's some advice on how to do Y" are usually woefully unaware of the breadth of the medium and what has already been done, and also often have kind of a myopic view of what can be achieved via game design.

[thydungeongal]

“Humans are inherently selfish--" Then why do so many cultures value hospitality, to the point of dictating it in their religions? Why is it so common for hosts to offer their visitors their best food, and as much of it as they can? At some point, multiple cultures decided that they knew what it felt like to be alone and vulnerable, and promised each other to never let those who stay with them feel that way. That doesn't sound very "inherently selfish" to me.

[thydungeongal]

As a trans woman you can generally expect not to be believed about most things: The legal processes you've navigated, effects you've had from transition care, what you had for breakfast, and so on.

But there's one major exception, which is when you're clearly joking.

If you say something like "I'm going to forcefem Richard Nixon for his crimes", you will be subjected to a person who fully and entirely believes that:

You possess the infrastructure and resources necessary to operate a real life forcefemming dungeon sophisticated enough to forcefem not just any captive, but a US President

You intend to wield the power of this forcefem dungeon over political disagreements, and are taking active steps to do so

Your intended target is Richard Nixon, famously a corpse who has been dead for 30 glorious, Nixonless years, and you are apparently going to be able to put him in a state that would be receptive to forcefemming, which is generally understood to require a subject who is alive

Despite the evidence that you are a necromancer with substantial kidnapping abilities, you are receptive to being informed, in a strongly worded post of concern, that necromantic forcefem is immoral.

And once they've caught you in your dastardly scheme, they will not relent at attempts to clarify

[thydungeongal]

Silk & Dagger: A Sensible Drow RPG

Drow: Intensely matriarchal, tunnel-dwelling, scantily-clad warriors obsessed with an evil spider goddess. Why would anyone with access to magic and resources live in tunnels and fight half-naked? Enter: Silk & Dagger: A Sensible Drow RPG.

These dark elves have a long and sordid history, but now they live in a network of tightly constraining social rules, entangling them like a useless servant in the webs of a domesticated spider. Every Drow is the matriarch of a household of servants, and together (and apart), they must navigate the edicts of the Spider Goddess and keep up the Reputation that keeps them safe against other Drow.

Asymmetric Gameplay 

Silk & Dagger: A Sensible Drow RPG features two distinct player-character classes, and two distinct game master roles.

Players either take the role of a brutal mistress whom everything she says goes, whether she understands what she’s talking about or not, and whose position of dominance is maintained by the respect of her peers, respect that hinges on how brutal and controlling she is to her subordinates; or an array of pathetic servants who are helpless without their mistress’s “leadership,” (and maybe even be more so with it).

In addition to the standard game master role, the one who sets up the scenario and runs the NPCs, there is a secondary game master role, that of the Spider Goddess, representing the social scrutiny weighing down on every caste of this strict, ruthless society. Silk & Dagger encourages rotation of players in and out of these roles, rewarding them with points that can be spent to give their own PCs an edge next time they play a PC.

Satire and Deconstruction 

Silk & Dagger: A Sensible Drow RPG takes many of the established trappings of “dark elves” and asks “what kind of society and environment would actually produce individuals like this?” This question is the springboard off which the satire launches, and lands uncomfortably close to home.

Comedy 

Taking inspiration from games like Paranoia, Silk & Dagger: A Sensible Drow RPG presents a situation where survival often hinges on working together, but social pressures, class divides, and constant scrutiny encourage player-characters to do anything but, resulting in a sitcom-esque comedy-of-errors in a grimdark, lightless world.

[thydungeongal]

the term "oeuvre" comes from the french "oeuf," meaning "egg." this is a reference to how artists lay eggs

[thydungeongal]

Throwing a surprise gender reveal party for one of my "cis" "male" friends

[thydungeongal]

Yes, during April and May, I will talk with roleplayers about their local cuisine, the food they bring to the table and which dice is the most delicious

[thydungeongal]

"FORIVA: The Angel Game," a Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy Adventure Module

This previously patreon-exclusive adventure module was just released in beta on itchio!

"FORIVA: The Angel Game" takes place in Shreveport, Louisiana, 1999, as a mysterious condition seems to have taken hold of a growing number of local children and teens, and the word on everyone’s lips is “angel.”

This is a mystery-horror adventure that you can expect to take 2-6 sessions to play through, and, in my opinion, the best piece of fiction I’ve ever written. Also, it was Actual Played by the awesome @tinytablepodcast, here is their linktree and a link to the first episode.

You can download the adventure module here. Payment is optional, but highly appreciated!

Here’s the full adventure hook under the cut.

Somewhere, a mother stares wordlessly at her hospitalized son who doesn’t recognize her, and wonders why this is happening to her family. Somewhere, a private detective smiles as his client offers a generous reward for someone–anyone–to blame for what was done to his children. Somewhere, a young girl tears down the advertisements that were covering up the missing poster of her friend. 

The year is 1999, and society is equal parts optimistic and apprehensive about the new millennium. Fears of the Y2K bug are circulating, Bill Clinton is still in office, and the popularity of video arcades is on the decline.

A rash of hospitalizations and disappearances has struck in Shreveport, Louisiana*, with all of the victims so far being teenagers and children. Each case might at first seem unconnected, save for their close proximity in time to one another sending ripples throughout the community. Local news has been covering the story for days now, capitalizing on the fear and uncertainty of concerned parents, something that might seem like a distant problem to each investigator, until it strikes someone they know….