What are you working on right now?

[Deckard]

Well, as PbtA is not allowed in the 24 HR rpg writing contest on rpggeek.com, instead I worked on an Old West game.

Elevator Pitch
The game is inspired by Dust Devils using a card game more popular than poker at the time of the Old West…Faro. You play a Ranch Hand, Prospector, or Politician trying to make a new life in the west. The game focuses on themes of fortune (through gambling or prospecting), revenge or justice (through vigilanteeism or the law), power (dirty and honest), and love.

The game had to be written within a 24 hr time period so it is only a first draft but here it is.
Leadtown

Why I am Excited
The mechanics support the themes and motifs. It is also my first attempt at a storytelling game. Lastly, it is fun to play as the mechanics are based on a real world (if archaic) gambling game.

Hopes
Having read half of the entries so far, I am still hoping for a 3rd or better finish.
I am looking forward to adding details to be sure it is fully playable without me running it and to provide an example adventure.

[LarpWellington]

A kiwi cli-fi larp for NaLaWriMo, all about climate grief, dislocated communities, and our idealised relationship with the beach. Basic design is done, and I’m about to begin the grind of churning out characters.

[Airk]

My current design project is Bracers – a PbtA game/hack of hopeful JRPG-style fantasy. Okay, I admit it, this is a no-serial-numbers-filed-off fan game for the Trails/Kiseki series of console RPGs. Because there wasn’t anything else that would work.

The “elevator pitch” is simple – play as youthful members of a guild of professional do-gooders who help and protect the everyday citizens of an industrializing fantasy world. Grow to trust your companions and use the strength of your bonds to help others.

This excites me, because I really need a hopeful fantasy game. Not one about thinly-veiled colonialism, or some sort of grimdark or “realistic” world, but an idealistic one about friends and allies making a real difference in people’s lives.

I hope this is a thing that some other people also want, and that someone other than me might someday play it and enjoy it. As a fan game, it’s not “publishable” in any meaningful way, though if somehow there seems like interest, I might make a genericized version so it can be available on the usual platforms instead of just trapped in a Google Doc forever.

This is me officially saying “I think this is good enough to have people look at”; Mechanically, I think everything is there, though a few sections need more development, numbers may need to be tweaked and the sample scenario has a few holes. It has about half a session of playtesting. =/ If anyone has any suggestions, consider them solicited critiques, and feel free to PM me or add comments to the document.

[Dissonance]

So I just released a custom playbook for Blades in the Dark that I’m proud of titled The Sleuth

But my upcoming work lies in refining and play-testing my Post-Fall Sci-Fi FitD game Moth-Light.

Some current challenges:

-refining the rules text for better flow of information.

-play-testing some of the more finesse heavy elements like Strain balance as well as Doubt and Strife.

-deciding where thy heck to go when I’m done. Crowdfunding, marketing, and publishing really intimidate me.

[The_Bearded_Belgian]

I’ve started two play by post games on rpol and am slowly modding the games to the style of play I want.

One is Black Hack 2 because there’s no rolling a GM must do, so there’s less posting needed with confirming and stuff, where the main thing is building a bit of weird fantasy setting. Making it my own.

The other is seeing if I can use SWN to run a space satire game. It’s called Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Stars without Number. But it’s got equal parts Red Dwarf and Spaceballs etc thrown in. Still on session 0 there. Mostly people don’t have any idea what kind of story they want to tell but already have character concepts ready. Which feels kinda like the other way around. This one also needs a bit more work since the system is meant for serious and lethal play. Most protagonists in Space Satire survive stuff, for starters, and rather than all edgy and serious, things should be subverted in genre and silly.
But I’m confident that it’ll work.

[Anders]

Since throwing together Love & Horror in the Kinesthetic Play and Creative Play thread I’ve started working on making playsets for it and so far it’s a lot of fun.

Once I get to my three weeks of Christmas/New Year’s vacation I’ll make what I hope will be the final assault on Forerunner, my attempt at a D&D 4E inspired game construction kit. It’s been a long road, but this time I think I’m actually getting close to the end. The big parts remaining are some bits of terminology, reasonable xp calculations for low levels, and skill encounters. For the latter I have a set of rules I like, but they need to be refined, rebalanced, and written down in a format someone else but me can use.

[Wilhelm]

Can you guess the genre of my current project?

After my horror RPG Kuf I wanted to challenge myself to write something way out of my comfort zone. (Yes, it’s game design for its own sake, if the game is playable/enjoyable comes further down the list of priorities. :-)) So I decided to try to write a game that emulates the romance genre. I spent the summer doing research and now I’m hacking Solar System/TSOY to make a romance novel RPG.

I hope to have the Swedish version of the game done in time for Easter. An English translation will most likely follow in the summer of 2020.

[Deckard]

My entry Leadtown landed in 5th out of 17 in the end. I just played it one on one with a friend and it is actually pretty fun! It would certainly benefit from a dedicated GM and more players and many clarifications but once revised, it could be quite good.

[Alex]

Maybe you ought to start one of these for 2020!

[Czevak]

Elevator pitch
Reskinning Hit the streets to fit the Unbreakable trilogy

What am I excited about
The Be Super mode is a central theme of the movies. This is what the Clover secret society is fighting against. The switch from Be Normal to Be Super should lead to nice ropleplaying scenes.

Hopes
I think I will drop the super stats and the powers breakdown in favor of a more simple description as for instance, https://unbreakablemovie.fandom.com/wiki/The_Overseer

[Julian]

d e s e r t is a GMless Cyberpunk roleplaying game focusing on interaction with an within a randomly generated city.

I especially like the token-based reaction system that I’ve come up with to ensure that it makes a difference what districts and even individual buildings characters move through and how they do it. This tangibility comes from omnipresent security and surveillance systems of various types. The city looks at you as much as you look at the city.

I hope that d e s e r t will be received as an interesting take on Cyberpunk as well as Indie roleplaying.

+++

If you’re interested in seing some more wip of the game, I direct you to my blog https://tearlessretina.blogspot.com/ and the twitter https://twitter.com/iam_scire/status/1203458388002295809

[Alexi_Sarge]

• The elevator pitch

The Great Soul Train Robbery is a game of Desperados robbing the train to Hell. You’re a motley crew with mixed motives. Gunslingers, snake-handlers, homesteader widows… Desperados all.

You all have two stats, Lover and Sinner. Use Lover to make human connections, to act with honor, to hold onto hope, to resist opportunities for vice, and for selfless acts. Use Sinner to do dirty deeds, to act with brutality, to lie through your teeth, to resist pleas for mercy, and for selfish acts.

Will you claim your prize from the train, or be overcome, damned, or broken by the heist?

• Why you’re excited about it

I’ve gotten to tell really cool stories with it! Making players think about their motives for each action creates rich psychological storytelling at the table. And the heightened, allegorical setting allows for wild conclusions to the story, like when the Homesteader Widow beat Avarice to death and then transformed into the train’s new Conductor, Wrath.

• What your hopes are in relation to it

I want its Kickstarter to fund during ZineQuest, and to get physical copies of it into many players hands!

[Meinberg]

So my current WIP is (An Angelical Year in) The Angelical Life (of an Angelical Cat).

It is a game based on CATS the 2019 movie but also if it were Silent Hill 2, Bloodborne, and by David Lynch. In The Angelical Life, you play as a cat newly arrived in the City, a purgatorial nightmare riddled by a long standing gang war between the tribes of cats, ranging from the Angelicals who seek absolution and escape to the Devilcats who have rejected the false promise of heaven to indulge in pure chaos to the Hollow Cats who have lost all purpose and meaning to the Void Cats, eldritch beings who predate the City and hate its existence.

Anyway, you mostly do dance battles while trying to avoid being consumed by pain and sorrow in order to put together the best song for the Decision at the end of the year, which offers salvation and liberation.

I’m excited because it’s my most extensive work to-date, likely going to clock in around 10k words, which is a lot for me. Also, I deeply and earnestly love CATS the 2019 movie in all of its ugliness and absurdity, so being able to translate that into a game is something I’m super happy about. Also also, I’m really excited about the dice system which I feel will have te same feel as a dance battle.

I’m hoping it cracks a dozen sales, to be honest. While I have some other marketing engagements around the time of its release, I’m definitely going to be pushing it hard once the Blu-ray comes out!

[DeReel]

A solid concept governing point of view (although not easy to grasp as the blog presents it sdrawkcab). This ties your game to Leviathan Manifesto.

[Wilhelm]

Ökenros is now up on DTRPG, as beta while I wait for my proofreaders to get back to me.

I’ll take a breather and get started on the English translation in a bit. But right now I’ll allow myself to do some small side project.

www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/

[Hopeless_Wanderer]

The setting/premise of Great Soul Train Robbery is genius.

[Alexi_Sarge]

Thank you!

We’ve just broken another stretch goal, so there’s going to be another half-dozen character class options in the game: Gambler, Revivalist, Sawbones, Cattle Rustler, Blind Drifter, and Runaway Bride!

Super exciting to have this going full steam ahead. Check out the Kickstarter for more details: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clovenpinegames/the-great-soul-train-robberyzinequest

[Meinberg]

The Angelical Life is currently available on itch.io!

Now it’s on to The New Tales of Oz, which is my ZineQuest game. My kickstarter goes lives on Tuesday and I have a con game of it on the 20th, so no resting my laurels.

[MrTrollhands]

I’m working on Candlelight - a game of restless spirits seeking hope and reckoning with their dark past in a place which wants to trap them there.
It’s Rooted in Trophy, playable with any Trophy Dark incursion or Trophy character options. It’s also designed to adapt characters from any other game and play them as a ghost in an epilogue.
I’m excited about it as I’ve had the idea for awhile of a game where players are spirits (I think I posted earlier in this thread) but as I’ve ventured deeper into Trophy I’ve found a system and a tone that I really like. I also think it will invite another way to play dark fantasy or horror games by adding an element of hope, as characters have a chance of achieving some sort of resolution with the tragic events that befell them.
My hopes for it are continued success on the Kickstarter and the best produced version I can make of it, once everything is said and done!
If you’re not overwhelmed with Zinequest projects yet, take a look here:

CANDLELIGHT - an RPG zine compatible with Trophy Dark

[Dissonance]

I’m going to be writing my up something special with a conspiracy horror scenario for Cthulhu Deep Green that will also double as an Incursion for Trophy, by Jesse Ross!

I’ll have rules for incorporating rituals into CDG and on playing Agents of The Conspiracy caught up in a doomed journey to the center of a hostile reality.

But what I’m most excited for is the scenario itself which has the Agents searching for missing teens both in my version of the real world city of Olympia, Wa, and a terrifying dreamscape known as The Outside.