dankdungeonsrpg

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Multi adventure RPG cover I did art for

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The wizard scours an ancient tome for mystical secrets (Russ Nicholson, from "A Spellcaster's Guide to Arcane Power" by Bill Milne, White Dwarf 23, Feb/Mar 1981) 

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FF X MtG Revised

Recall Illus. Richard Kane Ferguson

First of all, a big shout out to @uncleasriel for really digging into my last design post on this! Sorry it took so long to put this next post together. I hope to answer (most) of your questions.

One line in particular really stood out to me from their post: "Does this lead to fun gameplay? Or does it slow down the game? I feel I'm trying to make Magic: the Gathering with RP elements rather than a Roleplaying Game with MtG elements"

This is an important design decision that is so easy to lose sight of. Do we want Magic to be central to the game (ie, all characters use it, this is a game about dueling sorcerers) or do we want it to a sub-system within the RPG (ie wizards have this spell mechanic, rogues and fighters have their own things going on)

Personally, I like it as a sub-system. That behooves us to be slim in our design for risk of making the game overall too cumbersome.

Buckle in. This is a long (and somewhat disjointed) post.

Fighting Fantasy Skeleton

Kjeldoran Dead Illus. Melissa Benson

I spend a lot of time in these posts talking about Magic, but let's talk about Fighting Fantasy. I did a whole video series breakdown on the system if you're interested.

But actually, let's not talk about Fighting Fantasy. Let's talk about TROIKA. As I've said before, Troika makes one extremely smart mechanical change that fixes a lot of Fighting Fantasy's issues. It reduces base Skill. This ends up making rolls matter more because in the original game a high Skill (by and large) ensures victory. Let's adapt that.

Sidenote: I've done this before with my game AZAG

So here's our stat generation:

Skill - Roll 1d3+3

Stamina - Roll 2d6+12

Luck - Roll 1d6+6

And how we determine starting spells:

9 minus your Skill Stat are how many Ability Points you have

There are 5 Colors of Magic: Black(B), Blue(U), Green(G), Red(R), and White(W)

Distribute your Ability Points among them. Putting a point in a color allows you to cast it. Also, for each point you may choose 3 Common Spells of that color

Another very good thing to look at Troika for is flavor. Troika is a weird science fantasy rpg. It communicates this through it's backgrounds. They are delightful. Ranging from Burglar to Fellow of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks.

from TROIKA! Numinous Edition

We could make all sorts of character archetypes inspired by MtG's multiverse. Or we could just do one per color. Lots of options in this framework. Plus both settings have multi-planar themes, they just approach them very differently.

Also worth noting that Troika advises 12 Ability Points when creating a custom background. This makes sense, but I just want to dial that back a bit for testing.

Testing Set: 5th Edition

It's not just the most popular D&D edition, it's also a great MtG Core Set.

For testing, I think a core set is important to keep things simple and avoid expansion specific gimmicks, but why use 5th ed in particular? Mostly personal preference. I think it represents a good cross section of the early days of the game, which are the days I'm most interested in.

Maybe it would make the most sense to use a starter set...

Banned Cards, Rarity, and Finding Spells

So what cards do players have access to? The basic rules are:

Remove the Creatures

Remove the Artifacts

Remove the Lands and land dependent cards (Enchant Lands mostly)

Remove Bounce (Unsummon/Boomerang)

Low cost creature destruction bumps up in rarity to Rare (Terror, Pyroblast/Hydroblast)

Remove Reanimation (Raise Dead/Reanimate)

When players choose their three spells on character creation they're looking at commons.

When they find spell scrolls or spell books? Random cards! Maybe not even in a color anyone can cast. Really make it feel like opening a pack. If they're easy to find then maybe just Commons, but if its the archmages study? Gotta be Rares.

Multiple copies of Commons are fine, a couple copies of Uncommons, maybe okay. More than one Rare? I wouldn't recommend it.

Monsters

Chub Toad Illus. Daniel Gelon

As I talked about in my last post on this topic, summoning creatures slows the game down to a crawl!

They're great as enemies though! (as long as an NPC isn't summoning them)

So right now that's all I'm using them for, but in future play tests I may introduce (very) limited use of them as summons.

In terms of creature abilities, particularly those that cost mana, I'm currently ruling that GMs get a Mana Die (see A Round of Combat with: The Mana Cube below). So creatures can activate or do more later into combat.

There are obviously a bunch of edge cases, even in a core set. Honestly I'm just flying by the seat of my pants on a lot of these.

Players fighting spell casting NPCs is something I've tried a bit. Still not super worth it for enemies to be able to summon creatures but starting with minions is fine.

An evil goblin sorcerer with a Flame Spirit, a couple Mon's Goblin Raiders, and a small deck of spells was a great boss encounter!

A Tale of Two Decks

Here's a thing that may change, each spell caster has two decks: One for combat, and one for narrative.

A wizard can decide which spells from their repertoire go in which deck at the start of the adventuring day.

Combat Decks are similar to MtG

We'll get into Combat later, but you're basically just casting these spells as written. You draw, you have a graveyard, the whole thing. One rule I'm not sure on yet is what happens when this deck runs out. In some instances we've reshuffled the graveyard back into library, in others we just view the casters as depleted for spells for that combat...baring a Feldon's Kane.

This deck lends itself to the crunchy cards we may see as better outside the narrative. I'd rather have a Brainstorm in here than in deck number two.

We just don't really care much about color symbols. If you can cast Green spells and Red spells than any mana you generate (outside of an artifact) is Green or Red in any combination you choose.

Outside combat cards are Narrative Decks

This is all about flavor and role playing. You're taking about taking a card name and interpreting it.

Flashfires creates spreading flames

Stasis holds objects or creates in place

Giant Growth makes a creature big

Portent gives a sign of weal or woe

Tsunami summons a wave

Flight...well you know

In a previous post I referred to this as Miltonian Casting, citing the way spell effects work in Ben Milton's Maze Rats, although unlike that game, we're not really generating spell names on the fly, just what they do. Also, pretty sure Milton is not the first person to do this. So I'm just going to call it Narrative Casting for now.

There are some limits, most obviously that if spells are in your Narrative Deck they can't be in your Combat Deck. Also, Narrative Casting is fire and forget. This allowed me to justify Armageddon. Ongoing spells last a number of Turns (10min intervals) equal to their Mana Value. Saving throws isn't something I've tried yet, but tying that to Mana Value in some way also feels like a good first step.

A Round of Combat with: The Mana Cube

Mana Vault Illus. Mark Tedin

I tried out the Hearthstone mana method mentioned in previous posts. It worked pretty well! We used a d6 (since it's the only die type in FF) that ticks up each round to track mana for casting.

Here's how Round 1 of combat currently breaks down:

Place character sheet, any artifacts or other items you control, your Combat Spell Deck, and a d6 (Mana Die) in front of you.

Set the Mana Die to 1

Draw a card

Take an Action (This can be casting any spell, activating an Artifact, or swinging a sword. Tap cards as normal and consider yourself tapped when you're done. Remove the Mana Die if you spend your 1 mana)

Pass Turn

Subsequent Rounds:

Untap

Increase Mana Die to 1 higher than it was last round (it's like lands, so spending your 1 Mana on Round 1 doesn't mean you're starting over at 1 Mana on Round 2)

Draw a card

Take an Action

Pass Turn

You can do things like activating abilities or casting Instants whenever, as long as you have the Mana.

We were worried this would be slow, but actually the narrowing of choice helped a lot. When players started with a multi card hand and could cast with Stamina it was overwhelming. Remember, it's still an RPG. You can use your action to attack with a sword or climb a way. There's still plenty to do while you wait for your Mana Die to increase.

You may also have noticed that the Mana Die (being a d6) means players cap out at 6 mana. Yes. I may change that later but for play testing right now. It's a workable limit. Get your hands on a mana generating artifact, play a Dark Ritual, or just play Green if you want more.

Misc Rules

Pentagram of the Ages Illus. Douglas Schuler

Artifacts: They're basically just items. Find them in the word and use them as written in most cases. They're not spells so you don't draw them. They're just on your character and thus "in play" when combat starts. Outside, as with any card, we interpret narrative-ly.

Enchantments vs Auras: Currently Enchantments are what you cast on yourself and Enchant Creatures are what you cast on others. Sometimes you can cast Enchant Creature cards on yourself too...its a bit squishy right now.

Lands: Still not involved. Not that there weren't some great ideas thrown out about them, but it's just an element I don't feel comfortable incorporating yet.

Attunement: I really liked the Attunement ideas in @uncleasriel's post. It's something I want to mess with in my next play test.

What even is Banding? Scientists just don't know.

End Step

The next thing to do here is just to write this up as a play test rules doc. That probably would have been quicker than writing this whole dang post...whoops. Anywho, that's my next thing, along with another play test.

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Wonderful work!

-BG3 Tav commission for Ryo !-

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Jorphdan and I did a video flip-through of this a while back. Really great book!

Let’s have a quiet moment. This is The Sorcerer’s Enclave (2022), a narrative art book by Aaron Howdle. It isn’t really an RPG book, but it also isn’t not an RPG book.

Essentially, it is a very large cross-section illustration of a school of magic, secluded on an island, done in a style reminiscent of early Warhammer, or perhaps Fighting Fantasy. Each spread of the book zooms in on one particular area of the cross-section — the orrery, the golem manufactory and so on — and in brief prose details what goes on there. The world is both fanciful and dark (of course the island’s necromancer is up to no good). It’s brief, but beautiful and fascinating. There is seemingly an infinite amount of detail to pull from the illustration, something new for each browse. I keep pulling it off the shelf to look at, just one more time.

And while it isn’t formally an RPG book, it would take very little effort to make it one, the setting for an adventure or two. And if not that, there’s no shortage of inspiration to draw for other aspects of a game. I hope Howdle does more, I’d fill a shelf with these.

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Manuel Bujados, 1927

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Some excellent thoughts on this!

I need to return to this concept, it's definitely got a lot of potential BUT one big thing I realized when looking back over playtest notes was how completely unbalanced creature destruction is.

Being able to spend 2 mana on a spell that blows up a creature? Of any size? (especially when those creatures are the main opponents and not summons) Devastating. (sidenote, don't even get me started on Unsummon)

My current best ideas are a B/X style HD limitation (spells can blow up any creature with current Stamina less than or equal to the spells Mana cost. Ironically this makes high cost destruction spells *better* than low cost ones, a totally inverse of MtG's meta)

OR playing with the rarities of cards. If Terror is nearly impossible to find, its okay that it's more powerful.

I guess my main takeaway in hindsight is "damn, parts of this fit neatly and others REALLY don't"

FF X MTG Continued

A Game of Cards

(This is the second installment of what will probably be a long series about building a Fighting Fantasy / Magic: the Gathering hack. First post here!)

I play tested some Fighting Fantasy + Magic the Gathering rules. 

They worked pretty well!

My god my players hate spending Stamina to cast lol.

We discovered a few interesting things. Here are some key rules I implemented:

A Hint of B/X

I had been about to use the FF initiative system when I realized that BX D&D’s round procedure of “Movement, Missile, Magic, Melee” is not unlike MTG’s “Untap, Upkeep, Draw”.

So I made an altered version that’s a bit of both, allowing for Instants to happen in-between any other declared step.

Landlessness

As I implied earlier we used the FF base rules of Stamina to cast. This meant we didn’t use the MTG concept of Lands.

FF base rules say:

“One spell a round, pay for it with Stamina then roll to cast”

My altered rules were:

“One sorcery-speed spell per round and an instant if you want. Spend Stamina but don’t roll”

This worked pretty great aside from people being upset they had to spend life. This may be because they’re used to modern games which don’t impose stuff like this.

At any rate all land associated cards can’t work in the game, but Green still seemed to hold up well.

My next attempt will try out the Hearthstone method of one mana generated per round. We’ll see if they get upset that they only drew expensive cards and can’t cast round one.

Miltonian Casting

One of the things I was unsure about was what spells do narratively and, importantly, outside of combat. I wanted spells to work better with role play.

Some MTG spells just don’t make sense in that context, like drawing and discarding cards. But their names still sound like they should have great narrative potential.

This reminded me of Ben Milton’s Maze Rats (and Knave 2e) in which a spell is named then from that name the players and GM decide what it does. This seemed like a fun direction to go in so we tried it out.

The result was really fun. Players got to have those mechanical specifics when they wanted to be tactical in combat but still got to be creative during other modes of play.

The only thing we figured should be changed are what spells are accessed when. Our next test will allow for learned spells to fall into two buckets, one for in-combat and one for out-of-combat.

No Bears

A BIG takeaway from this play test was the creatures.

When all your players and an enemy wizard are summoning stuff the whole game grinds to a crawl.

Especially since combat in FF isn’t as instantaneous as in MTG. Exchanging blows in FF means an opposed roll with bonuses and then another roll for damage. When your group doubles in size after the first round this can be a burden.

However, creatures did work great as enemies the players meet in the dungeon and have to fight though. So further play tests will include them as monsters for the GM to play with.

End Step

This was a very helpful session that allowed me to refine a lot of ideas. After our next one I'll probably post a doc here for people to look through.

More soon, - Lex

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Synthesizer Nostalgia

Recently...

NAMM (the National Association of Musician Merchants) happened. It's a trade show for instruments that gets all sorts of YouTube coverage, particularly by channels interested in synthesizers.

This year something that I think is very very cool was shown... The Behringer BX1

This thing is amazing!

It's a recreation of Yamaha's 1983 DX1 instrument, which is legendary.

For starters it was the first FM Synthesizer, the first (I think) form of digital synthesis. The DX1 was also a beast, it effectively stacked two powerful synths on top of each other, allowing for layered, more complex sounds. A feature that didn't become standard until the '90s. It also had a key bed with polyphonic aftertouch, a feature not event standard today! (but we are starting to see more instruments with it in the last few years) Oh, and it was $14k ($45k adjusted for inflation).

Yamaha put out an excellent video about it if you want to hear it/know more:

Another notable thing about the DX1: only 140 were ever made.

The Sound of the '80s

Okay so the DX1 was kind of unobtainable, but its smaller (relatively) brother the DX7 was not. While it didn't have any of those rad features I mentioned, and was wildly difficult to program, the DX7 was still a first wave FM synth. It could do all sorts of things synths couldn't do before.

This became...a very big deal. It basically defined the music of an entire decade:

But There's More!

Did I say the Behringer BX1 was a clone of the Yamaha DX1? Well it's not just that. It's actually more than that!

See, the one big downside of digital synths is they tend to sound...cold. It's hard to describe, but their predecessors, analog synths, have a much warmer sound. I don't want to dwell on this because it's a lot but one way manufacturers can make a digital synth sound warmer is by using some analog components in it, particularly the filter.

Behringer knows this and decided to make their BX1 with analog filters, and not just any old analog filters, but the chips Yamaha used on their other legendary/expensive/small production synth: the CS80:

The instrument that scored Blade Runner.

Wait...Isn't This An RPG Blog?

Well that's just it, when I saw/read about/heard this thing I got the same feeling I had when I saw the Dolmenwood kickstarter.

Retro TTRPG people and retro synth people have a similar need. They both want to harken back to a distant time (the 70s/80s) and to tinker with the devices that produced these feelings.

One uses dice and mechanics to experience a kind of gameplay. The other uses filters and DCOs to experience a kind of music.

WotC becomes Roland Necrotic Gnome becomes Dreadbox B/X (as a system) becomes FM Synthesis The Moldvay Box Set becomes the DX7 Suddenly the Volca FM is an OSR darling retro clone.

okay so maybe it would make more sense to compare B/X to an analogue subtractive synthesis method instead of a digital additive one, but whatever

Dolmenwood is a recreation of an excellent old system with a lot of new features and ideas. The Behringer BX1 is a recreation of an excellent old synth with a lot of new features and ideas.

Bringing Back The Old School

These days the OSR is not only releasing new modules/systems/supplements, but importantly, its making them more accessible than ever.

OSE is a perfect example. It's a rewrite, but what a rewrite! It is so much easier to learn B/X with OSE than with the original books. Similarly, most (though certainly not all) classic modules don't hold a candle to the adventures coming out right now.

Accessibility is a big thing in the synth community as well.

Although in matters of pricing...we are talking about electronic instruments vs books, so bear that in mind.

An original DX1 goes for over $150k, but that BX1 clone? Probably going to cost $1,200. Behringer is also known for its Deepmind 12 synth, a $800 (sort of) clone of the '80s analog powerhouse known as the Juno 106.

Important to point out that many people go the virtual route for their classic synth clones as well. Software can (pretty accurately) emulate almost any vintage synth (and certainly any digital one). These can cost over $100 but that's still a total bargain.

Plus, you're looking at way more features on these modern units, not to mention software programmers. Creating sounds on these modern devices is way easier than their vintage counterparts...kind of like how OSE is way easier to grok than B/X.

Also, like the OSR, there isn't only one company making retro clone synths. Many companies (even the WotC equivalents) are making little retro affordable instruments. Others are taking old ideas and using them to inspire new products. Again, not unlike the OSR, NSR, or indie ttrpg sphere in general.

From both the OSR and the synth community the thing I always hear is: "this is the best time to be part of this hobby" and I think that's just great!

More Alike Than We'd Like

Worth noting as well that just like the RPG community, the synth community has drama.

Behringer particularly has come under scrutiny for creating clones of modern devices produced by other companies. While I don't feel informed enough on the situation to speak on it, there are been just as many YouTube videos and blog posts on the topic as any OSR kerfuffle.

The Future/The Past

Maybe I'm just a nostalgic kinda guy but I'm so excited to get my hands on more vintage inspired synths and more vintage inspired games. They can teach us that old ideas still have value and can benefit from modernization.

But before I do any of that...I think I have a line on a cheap Laserdisc player and some giant disk copies of the first two Bill & Ted movies...

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Man, Games Workshop in the ‘80s was something else. The company had done floor tiles before — there were at least two dungeon boxes at this point, and the sci-fi Citi-Block set would come out in ‘87. In the middle as Halls of Horror (1986), and it presents, well, what the title says! These are mansion tiles probably most suitable for something like Call of Cthulhu, but would work for any gothic game.

They’re delightfully illustrated, with lots of little details. There are pieces of furniture and other stage dressing, too, that can be cut out and placed as necessary — suits of armor, rugs, corpse, body parts, you name it. There’s a ritual room, of course, a grand hall in two pieces, and various sitting rooms. I love ‘em. This might be my favorite set of room tiles.

And damn, that Ian Miller cover. Just, I can’t imagine just, having access to Ian Miller and sticking his art on a box of room tiles, even if it is recycled from the cover of the Fighting Fantasy book House of Hell (1984). So good!

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Big Trouble and the Mythic Underworld

Have you seen the 1986 John Carpenter masterpiece Big Trouble in Little China? ...Because you should.

Briefly, Big Trouble is a fantasy adventure film about a man trying to find his truck.

As you may have seen before on this blog, I'm a big fan of a small family of RPG podcasts, including Keep Off The Borderlands. Currently, this show does a monthly movie call in episode. As you may have guessed, the most recent was about Big Trouble.

This film excels at a lot of things but my favorite is its portrayal of a Mythic Underworld.

Briefly, a Mythic Underworld is a (typically underground) place where reality gets pushed aside. The deeper you go, the more fantastic it gets. IE: a dungeon.

John Carpenter discussing the film on set in a behind-the-scenes interview available to watch on YouTube.

One of most fun bits of this is that it is set in modern-day (1986) San Fransisco, so the introduction of magic and monsters gets wild. We also have the advantage of our audience perspective character, Jack Burton, being an outsider. So he and the audience get to be flabbergasted together when a ghostly sorcerer passes through his big rig.

Some Fun Ideas (d6)

With this in mind, I thought it would be fun to come up with a table of plot hooks that can take us from the ordinary to the fantastic in our RPGs, specifically focused on the modern world and comedy.

Astute readers may recall I did a similar thing with my call in to an earlier Movie Monday podcast episode, and encapsulated that in an article on 1963's The Raven. These kinds of lists are meant to be a reference to the Sword Breaker podcast, which I miss dearly.

d6 modern supernatural story hooks:

Congratulations! You’re the new owner of a historic colonial home. One issue, the flagstones were placed in such a way as to create a door to the spirit realm every equinox. This tends to dramatically reduce market value so it wasn’t disclosed in the sale and your inspector missed it…sorry!

Turns out, one of those early a-bomb tests tore open a rift to the 9th dimension. So that cross country road trip took you from route 66 to between the atomic structure of solid matter. Avoiding the aliens living in there, pretty easy, getting back to our reality…a bit more difficult.

Due to an ancient prophecy the high rise office building you work in is now zoned over a ley line. So you’re gotta have to meet your corporate deadlines while sorcerers from across time battle over the property, but that’s just life in the big city for ya.

Those suburban homeowners associations? Satanists. I know, not really that surprising but in order to fulfill your new neighborhood obligations you will have to seek out Belial, do battle with his 80 demonic legions and/or 50 spirit legions afterward presenting a virginal sacrifice.

Government bureaucracy may seem totally soulless, but that’s because it actually is a giant machine that sorta just tabulates everything. So to renew your license there’s a whole labyrinth of mechanized dead traps to fight through for that to be approved.

The cosmic forces of law and chaos hold a tournament for control of the universe every planetary conjunction. The game itself and the champions representing mortals are determined by one of our competitions which happens to start at the time of the conjunction. All this is to say congrats on your bowling league making the finals, but they’re gonna be a bit different this year.

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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!

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Watched a couple of awesome photoshop tutorials, grabbed some screenshots from public domain flicks, and went to town!

Skull from: The Screaming Skull (1958)

Bela Lugosi from: White Zombie (1932)

Castle Backdrop also from: White Zombie (1932)

Photoshop Tutorials Used:

Photoshop Tutorial: Airbrushed Film Poster Style Photo Effect

Photoshop Game-Changer! GRAIN SHADED GRADIENT MAPS

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Combat, for DURF: Expanded

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hot dog, this is a good list

New TTRPGs In June and July 2024

Welcome to another itch.io round up. If this is the first post like this that you’re seeing: every two months I highlight around ten new games. Most of these games are small in scope and I usually have not played or even read them. I’m often just picking them based on whats caught my idiosyncratic eye. I hear about most of these games through this form.

False Kingdom: Survive a succession crisis in 12th century England playing delightful named characters with hilarious special abilities. From Jim R and Marsh D, the designers of TEETH. (PWYW)

Freak Folio: The artist known as Chaoclypse releases a book where you mix and match monsters to create abominations for your fantasy game.

The Girls of the Genziana Hotel: Chambermaids investigating the disappearance of one of their own in a spooky 19th century German hotel. (Hendrik ten Napel, PWYW)

Against Time and Death: Two-player game of war, self-discovery, and connection across all of time and space. Inspired by This Is How You Lose the Time War. (Nick Bate)

Tarnation: Solo journalling in a weird west setting with multiple pre-made adventures. (Symbolic City)

For Small Creatures Such As We: Solo or GM-less game about a human captain and a crew of aliens where you explore the galaxy and your relationships. (Anna Blackwell)

’till it kills us: A game about queer activism, mental health and the delicate balance between the two. Uses a system that requires you to work together to use your cool powers. (Damsels & Dice)

Paranormal Wellington: A comedy roleplaying game about bumbling TV investigators and supernatural shenanigans. (Morgan Davie)

Fight or Fright: A Halloween Trick-or-treating game about magical costumes, possessed decorations, and scoring lots of candy. (Alex Marinkovich-Josey)

Fording the Derbal Yerrigan: A game about removing an invasive species that uses an Uno deck. (Pidj Sorensen)

That’s all for this week!

(As always, this was first posted on the Indie RPG Newsletter).

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FEAR

Alien (1979)

For a hot minute I have been puzzling over Fear mechanics.

Call of Cthulhu's isn't for me, nor was Dread's. Free League's ALIEN peaked my interest though and when I was finally able to play in a game of Mothership...oh boy. With these ideas in mind I went about trying to implement one of these into your standard D&D-like.

Roll Less, Panic More

Since I had played and liked ALIEN first, this was my starting point. I liked the idea of Stress as a motivator, boosting your rolls but introducing the possibility of panic.

FYI: ALIEN is a d6 dice pool system where you're looking for 6s. Every Stress you take adds a special Stress Die to your pool. More Stress means more chances to succeed but also more chances to Panic.

What I came up with was this:

When something scary happens, gain Stress

When you make a d20 roll ALSO roll Xd6, where X = Your Stress

Take the highest d6 roll and add that value to your d20 roll

UNLESS one of those d6s came up 1, then you Panic instead

I still don't hate this idea, but once you start considering regular roll bonuses the player needs to do a bit more mental math for each roll than I would like.

Enter: Mothership

There has been a lot of fanfare over Sean McCoy's Mothership, and damn is it well deserved.

FYI: Mothership is a roll-under d% system. Stress gets tracked on a scale of 2-20. When your character rolls for Panic they are trying to get above their Stress score.

When I saw that Mothership Stress was on a d20 range I got very interested in the conversion possibilities.

Here's what I came up with:

When you fail a roll or something scary happens, gain Stress

When you make a d20 roll, IF that die comes up under your current Stress score, you Panic

Gain Stress to gain Advantage on your next roll

Here the mechanic resolution gets built into an existing roll. The player just needs to interpret two results instead of one.

"Did I succeed my roll?" and "Did I panic?"

Example: Jimmy attempts to attack a skeleton. He has accumulated 11 Stress and has a total attack bonus of +4. The Skeleton has an AC of 13. Jimmy rolls a d20 to attack and gets an 10 on the die, which would be 14 after bonus. This hits the Skeleton but it's also below his 11 Stress. As a result he hits with his attack but also has a panic attack, checking the Panic Table for whatever the 10 result is.

Gaining Advantage for Stress also gives us that "stress as a motivator" idea that the ALIEN-inspired mechanic captured by default.

A Hint of PbtA

This also introduces non-binary results into our otherwise binary system. Now the results aren't fail/succeed, they're:

Fail with Panic

Fail

Succeed with Panic

Succeed

This gives GMs some more options at the table, which I am always in favor of.

...

Anyhow, that's it. I'm going to be plopping this into my next few D&D-like sessions. Can't wait to run some Ravenloft with panic rules!

[dankdungeonsrpg]

All The Lost Bay playable Vibes

Which one are you?

Firetstarter

Monarch

Scanner

Screamer

Seer

Wildling

Shifter

Junker

Splinter

Sunken

Art by Evangeline Gallagher

[dankdungeonsrpg]

FF X MTG Continued

A Game of Cards

(This is the second installment of what will probably be a long series about building a Fighting Fantasy / Magic: the Gathering hack. First post here!)

I play tested some Fighting Fantasy + Magic the Gathering rules. 

They worked pretty well!

My god my players hate spending Stamina to cast lol.

We discovered a few interesting things. Here are some key rules I implemented:

A Hint of B/X

I had been about to use the FF initiative system when I realized that BX D&D’s round procedure of “Movement, Missile, Magic, Melee” is not unlike MTG’s “Untap, Upkeep, Draw”.

So I made an altered version that’s a bit of both, allowing for Instants to happen in-between any other declared step.

Landlessness

As I implied earlier we used the FF base rules of Stamina to cast. This meant we didn’t use the MTG concept of Lands.

FF base rules say:

“One spell a round, pay for it with Stamina then roll to cast”

My altered rules were:

“One sorcery-speed spell per round and an instant if you want. Spend Stamina but don’t roll”

This worked pretty great aside from people being upset they had to spend life. This may be because they’re used to modern games which don’t impose stuff like this.

At any rate all land associated cards can’t work in the game, but Green still seemed to hold up well.

My next attempt will try out the Hearthstone method of one mana generated per round. We’ll see if they get upset that they only drew expensive cards and can’t cast round one.

Miltonian Casting

One of the things I was unsure about was what spells do narratively and, importantly, outside of combat. I wanted spells to work better with role play.

Some MTG spells just don’t make sense in that context, like drawing and discarding cards. But their names still sound like they should have great narrative potential.

This reminded me of Ben Milton’s Maze Rats (and Knave 2e) in which a spell is named then from that name the players and GM decide what it does. This seemed like a fun direction to go in so we tried it out.

The result was really fun. Players got to have those mechanical specifics when they wanted to be tactical in combat but still got to be creative during other modes of play.

The only thing we figured should be changed are what spells are accessed when. Our next test will allow for learned spells to fall into two buckets, one for in-combat and one for out-of-combat.

No Bears

A BIG takeaway from this play test was the creatures.

When all your players and an enemy wizard are summoning stuff the whole game grinds to a crawl.

Especially since combat in FF isn’t as instantaneous as in MTG. Exchanging blows in FF means an opposed roll with bonuses and then another roll for damage. When your group doubles in size after the first round this can be a burden.

However, creatures did work great as enemies the players meet in the dungeon and have to fight though. So further play tests will include them as monsters for the GM to play with.

End Step

This was a very helpful session that allowed me to refine a lot of ideas. After our next one I'll probably post a doc here for people to look through.

More soon, - Lex