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#RPGaDay2025 - 11 Flavour

All games need flavour, but adding flavour is a delicate thing. If you don’t have any flavour, the game ends up boring and monotonous, and players don’t see a reason to come back. If there’s too much flavour, a game can seem too intense, or might just lose its way with conflicting ingredients leading to a muddied mess.

Getting the balance of flavour right is a delicate art that takes practical experience and theoretical understanding. It’s something I haven’t mastered, sometimes I get it right, but more often it’s a struggle and I feel like I’m not getting it to work.  

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Final Ashcan Release

Hello! It's been a while since the last update for the Ashcan! I'd like to inform anyone reading these that this is the final Ashcan version and hence final free version of the game. 

The Kickstarter campaign goes live in a little over three weeks! Prelaunch page is here! So if you've been following along with the project and like what you see but haven't yet followed the prelaunch page I'd really appreciate it if you did!

Any way lets get on with the Update notes! 

Some new Job abilities all round for those that weren't done. The Engineer is now complete with eight Abilities to choose from!

The Gear and Crafting Chapter has had an update with advanced items (essentially upgraded versions of the basic stuff) that also have crafting recipes!

One or two new spells!

A minor change to Overdrive, you now get a point when you're hit by a Critical hit as well. I've also added optional Battleground mechanics to spice up combat a little with the environment.

A small section on the Greater Elemental Crystals found through the world which includes a bit more history to the world.

A section on Journeys which includes some weather effects and their impact mechanically.

Skyfolk Enemies! A bit of an overhaul all round with the inclusion of Advanced Recipes in some of the monster sections for gear that can be made by components found from those enemies. I've also added in sections for all the monster types in the corebook with place holder text taken from other monsters to give myself an idea of final page count but also to tease what might be in the final published book!

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Clutch Devlog #43: Ambushes

Instead of regular perception checks to tell when the party is about to be ambushed. Clutch has it's own system to determine how an enemy sneaks up on the party.

Pardon the resolution, had to zoom out to get the entire thing onto one screenshot.

The main purpose of this mechanic is to avoid rolling when it's not necessary. As an example from another game, when traveling in D&D, rolling perception for a random encounter that isn't going to happen, whether you rolled high or low, it has no consequence and it just wasted time. This system replaces that by having the GM go, "hey guy who's performing the lookout activity, roll intuition and subtract 4 because shit's about to go down."

It seems more mechanically satisfying to roll high or low when it actually matters, than say for that D&D Example above, when the GM didn't roll an encounter and there's an awkward silence for a few moments before moving on.

One of the main philosophies of Clutch is to remove rolling dice when it's not necessary.

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Little follow up to the "How many different games have you played" poll Out of the more than 700 games polled on this blog , which ones are the ones that interest you the most?

Reminder that you can find the complete list here

I'll go first (I will remove Heart from that list, cause it is scheduled):

Wanderhome (I want that book and can't find it anywhere)

The Wildsea

Spire the city must fall

Gun & Slinger

Speedrun rpg

Most trusted advisors

Sonja & Conan versus the ninjas ( i want to try the "multiple" gm and one player thing)

Sleepaway

.Dungeon

Yazeba's bed & breakfast

Inevitable

I'm sorry did you say street magic

Bloodbeam badlands

Mythic Bastionland

The far roofs

...

You know when I see the size of this list, I understand why I am in the 51+ different games played category

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ttrpg sale for blind cat adoption fees

my dog laika is 11 years old and absolutely loves cats. she's a gentle soul and is in her golden years. she's always been an only dog, but up until now i've always had roommates. i thought it would be good to get her a companion while she's in her retirement age so she isn't lonely when i'm out of the house 

i found a young cat at a local rescue who is an absolute sweetie and is great with dogs. he's also fully blind. i think laika would make a wonderful caretaker to a young, disabled cat and i think it would give her a lot of purpose and love in her grandma years. i'm running this sale to help cover the costs of the adoption fee and pet deposit so these two can be happy together in their forever home 

[ID: two photos. one is of a tan pit bull asleep on a couch. she's wearing blue space-themed pajamas and is cuddled with a blanket and pillow. the second photo is a young orange cat laying down but facing the camera with fur completely covering where his eyes would be. end ID]

i have solo games, two-player games, and multiplayer games!! some highlights:

shadow / giant: a two-player wolf & cub trope game about a jaded adult and traumatized, magical child trying to outrun a threat to get somewhere safe

interstate 10 1/2: a one page multiplayer game about a quirky roadtrip through an eldritch middle america

a heart starts beating: a solo journaling game using dice towers & rituals about a haunted house brought to life by tragic, toxic lesbians

devil x crossroad: a two player game where you play poker against the devil using tarot cards in order to trans your gender

little celestial fieldwork guide: a solo+ game where you divine the disguises of spirits and tiny gods and then go out to photograph them in your real life city

familiar field trip: an all-ages competitive multiplayer game where you play as witches' familiars causing havoc in the village

if any of these sound interesting, there are 17 games total on sale on my itch for the next few weeks!! please check it out!!!

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Financial Emergency Status Update August 18th 2025

August Income Quota: $1,161.12/$3,454.82

Deadline: September 1st

Status: Extremely Red. We cannot allow this to fail two months in a row.

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Vibrating vigorously in anticipation of seeing the Alpha of Death Bed

You and me both.. It’s something I’ve been kind of stuck in a rut about, not because I don’t know how to write it, but because so many other more pressing things have been piling up for me in the short term, mostly to do with making sure A.N.I.M. doesn’t sink before Eureka can hit full release. I’ve also been very very sick basically all summer and getting a lot less done each day because of that.

I keep being like “okay after I do these things, then I’m back on Death Bed,” and then a new responsibility comes up, usually to do with Eureka, and it’s more important for me to focus on a game that is actively making us money than a game that still has a lot of work to do on it before it can make us any money.

Right now, the plan is to continue work on the Death Bed Alpha after I have answered all these asks and taken care of a little more stuff to do with the creation of these Eureka quick start and gameplay demonstration videos, so if things go well then we should have new content the Death Bed preview on our Patreon by September, God willing.

I think I left off on writing out a basic draft of a list of spells and their required material components. (Yes, Death Bed is going to attempt to make the concept of spell components actually fun and interesting, wish me luck.)

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In light of that Dracula post you reblogged recently, I know vampires and wizards are both options in Eureka, but can those be combined into a truly Dracula-like character, or do they get in each other's way?

Rules-as-written, characters with the Vampire Trait cannot also have any of the wizard-like Traits, but the Vampire Trait alone has a lot of Dracula-esque features, a few of which originate with the character Dracula himself, and many others are that just features of the character Dracula because they’re also features of historic folkloric vampires, which Dracula is pretty heavily researched/based on. For instance even though (if I remember right) van Helsing says that Dracula can transform into animals because he’s a sorcerer, but, like, vampires transforming into animals has been a thing in the vampire legend for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Just off the top of my head, some things Eureka vampires have in common with Dracula are:

Superhuman strength

Walking up and down walls with ease

Transforming into bats and dogs

Being invisible in mirrors

Being weakened, but not killed, by sunlight

An aversion to garlic flowers

And more

We actually just finished editing and overhauling the Vampire Trait. Patreon subscribers will get the version with the new and improved Vampire Trait around August 7th 2025 and everyone else will get it on our itchio around August 20th or something.

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Finished and published my submission Visions of Lost Lemoria for the Appendix N Jam by Lex Mandrake and Jorphdan over at itch.io. You definitely need to take a look at all the awesome entries you can find there! So much good stuff!!

Cover art by Kim Diaz Holm.

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I am a ball of stinking sweat

But look at all this awesome stuff I wrote :-3

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ROACH MOTEL - SURVIVAL HORROR BUG TF TTRPG USING THE TO CHANGE SYSTEM

FREE

AVAILABLE NOW

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Lately, on my substack, I've been sharing some of the books, games, and music that have been important to my creative process. I thought that maybe someone here might find some of these “monthly recommendations” interesting, so here they are:

"Entangled Life" by Merlin Sheldrake

This is a book I have been wanting to immerse myself in for a long time, as I have been drawn to the magical and strange life of fungi for years. But although they are often on my mind, I only occasionally delve a little deeper into their world.

I have gathered random facts about them, and I have gone photo-hunting for fungi with friends who share this curiosity. I think about them when looking at the lichen beside my window, which a couple of years ago I discovered to be a fungus and an algae in a beautiful symbiosis (in fact, the term symbiosis was born to describe lichen, but now we know that lichens are more than only two organisms on an entangled state, making symbiosis a term that had fallen short to describe lichen).

But I have known for a long time that I need to learn more about them, as every detail I have learned about fungi has opened up a world of possibilities, expanding the repertoire of concepts my mind has when trying to understand life.

So came the wonderful Merlin Sheldrake with his book as a guide to their world. He is a mycologist, and in “Entangled Life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds, and Shape Our Future” he explores the different aspects that make fungi important and remarkable as a species. He beautifully does this by weaving the connections he has with other researchers, with their discoveries, and his own emotional experiences with fungi. Doing so, he delivers a profound tale of how fungi have been here, as spearheads of evolution, shaping us and the world around us from the beginning.

As an entry point for knowing more about fungi, I think that this book works amazingly. If we are talking about TTRPGs, well, you will find in this book that fungi have a large number of very peculiar behaviours, capacities, and ways of expressing what a living being is, that are perfect as inspiration for the ecology of your worlds, their magic, and the weirdest of creatures you can think of.

"Polygondwanaland" by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

Look at this cover, its small details, the way that the different elements are connected and flowing into each other, as if it were the casting of a spell, or an epic tale with a vast lore. This is how this album sounds.

“King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard” is a band that for years had been lurking at the corner of my ears, appearing from time to time on the lists I hear, and on the online radios I commonly listen to. But it was only thanks to a visit from a couple of friends, fans of the band, that I truly understood how great they are.

The thing that I realized, thanks to these friends, is that their songs are great, but their albums, when listened to from start to finish, are outstanding.

Their albums are storytelling: the way the songs connect suggests the highs and lows of a story. In a way, when listening to their albums, one perceives a world-building that permeates all their musical creation.

Polygondwanaland was the first album by KG & TLW that I listened to from start to finish, and I was enthralled. It made me see a world, made me think of tales, of lore, of magic, and somehow triggered my brain to think of “Runner of the Wasteland”.

If you enjoy pulp fiction, sword and sorcery, or if you play DCC, or you want to run UVG, I think you will find something in their music that will resonate with you.

"Hyper Light Drifter" by Heart Machine

I was looking for a game that, like “Drova”, would immerse you in the story without any guidance, and that placed the discovery of all its mechanics and lore as a central part of the game.

“Hyper Light Drifter” totally scratched that itch for me, but unlike “Drova”, where the mechanics are accessible through gameplay and story, here it was the story and lore that emerged through gameplay, emphasized by its incredible music, and its beautifully melancholic pixel art (some of the best I've seen so far).

The game begins with captivating images and music that quickly draw you in, and from there, you gradually piece together the “story” through exploration and interactions with other characters. And this is something I loved from this game: when talking with other characters, symbols appear in a little “text box”, as if they were talking to you, but they aren’t words to read, but moods to interpret. Here, you will use the musical cues (and sometimes images of the memories of these characters) to build with your imagination what they are trying to communicate to you.

This is a way of presenting “lore/story” that, in my opinion, works very well because it is more personal, since you project yourself into the blank spaces it leaves. It makes the game feel “profound” and, at times, loaded with meaning, as happens with some dreams.

I have taken this as a lesson, something that I have been nudged towards by various stories/games I have encountered recently: Deliberate, well-thought-out, blank spaces can be a powerful tool to make your worldbuilding emotionally connect with players. That’s why, if you are interested in TTRPGs, I recommend you have a look at this game.

If you want to lose yourself in a world that feels mysterious, emotional, personal, and melancholic, with beautiful art and music, I think you will enjoy “Hyper Light Drifter”.

These are my recommendations for this month; I hope that, in some way, even if only minimally, they help you expand the imaginary worlds that live in your head to places you had never thought of before.

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The Break the Rules Bundle

Hey, RPG tumblr. Got a problem with authority?

Me too.

That's why, for the next month, three of my games - all having to do in one way or another with breaking the rules - are on sale.

This bundle includes:

Bad Guys - a 4-page game about a crew of criminals stealing from the rich and powerful to give back to those in need, inspired by the beloved TV classic Leverage.

Broke Wizards - a spoof on Mage: The Ascension in the form of a zine about working-class wizards arguing with magic. It's also about being Jewish, kind of.

Game Breakers - a one-page game about "what if you got isekai'd into Skyrim and had to get out of the game before it crashed?" Also kind of a World of Darkness joke.

Individually, each game is 30% off its normal price. If you buy the bundle, you get all three for half-price.

Oh, and if you get the bundle, you should absolutely distribute these games elsewhere for free. You have my express permission - they're all licensed under creative commons and everything!

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I really love the abstract investigator sprites! they're expressive, clean, understandable, and just evocative enough to get you to imagine the rest of the encounter!

Yeah we call these “snoops” and they’re really one of the best ideas we’ve ever had because they look really good but are also really easy to draw so we can have a lot of them even on a very limited art budget. One of the big inspirations for them was the Vault Boy pictures from Fallout.

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Latest Episode: 2.24 – Unrestful

Very soon, a new Borrowed Light will be upon us, covering even more of the civil unrest around GPol's campus, and this is a good chance for you be fully caught up when it does!

Our most recent episode is 2.24 – Unrestful, which covers a lull in the escalation, and introduces some new faces, before things go sideways once again...

Additionally, Adam spent some time fixing up the deeper recesses of the RSS feed to try to resolve some issues with how the podcast interacts with certain platforms, so hopefully, everything is all the more organized and legible now... He'll only know if he succeeded based on listener feedback, so feedback away, listeners!

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Have you ever read Principia Apocrypha? I'm reading through it and I keep hitting on something and thinking "This is something Captain would say about games!"

I have not read it but I just looked it up and it sounds like something that would be really good to read. I don’t know when I’ll get to it but anyone else can get started right now if they want. It isn’t an RPG, it’s a “primer on Old School/OSR RPG playstyle principles.”

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DOWNSIZING! - a free one-page RPG

DOWNSIZING! is a 4-player roleplaying game about deciding which of the titan corporation's VPs is least important to the company and can therefore be made redundant via airlock ejection. made by @txttletale and @wholesalemagnesiumoxide in a night and change of jamming. check it out here: