Yes, this is my designing style, lol
What are you working on right now?
Oh boy. Been a while since I’ve posted here.
At the moment I’m working on Them Deeper Bones, a game of delving into the forgotten history of a fantasy world to find lost treasures and gain power. It’s a retroclone, as in, stealing everything I loved about the old red box D&D and AD&D 2e, which were the two games I loved to play as a kid. And then adding stuff that I’ve learned to be fun on top of that. Been working a lot with Fate and PbtA the past few years, so it’s refreshing to come back to the basics and work on a trad project for a while.
The whole thing started with an idea for an alternative damage system for old D&D games, and then sort of grew from that to encompass the stuff that’s been bugging me about the game since I don’t know when. I’ve been really bummed about Fantasy RPGs for at least 15 years now, so suddenly finding something that makes me excited about the genre is incredibly exciting.
I’m hoping to get this finished to a “good enough for a public beta” state as soon as possible so I can get back to my other projects. At the moment it’s consuming all my design brain power as it clearly is something that’s been bottled up inside me for years.
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I should likely put these here.
I recently cobbled together a couple of quick adventures (nearly One Page Dungeons) for the setting I’m building out - Tombrobbers of the Crystal Frontier. They’re stated for B/X, OSE, or something similar, but Gauntlet’s Jason recently did a Youtube Actual Play of the second in Trophy Gold and it turned out pretty well - so they’re by no means limited to those systems.
They’re available on DTRPG:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/18552/Ratking-Productions
A third on should be along by the end of the month I hope.
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I really like the design of the covers!! The palette in the first one is gorgeous. Did you create them yourself?
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Thank you,
Yes, I do all my writing, art and now layout myself. It makes everything take a bit longer, but it feels nice to do the whole thing myself. Well except for the editing! Without my editors everything would be 30% longer and 100% less comprehensible. It also cuts my costs so I can hand my hobby labors on to YOU at a low, low price! ($1).
Here’s the cover of the one I’m currently working at:
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“Ma Nishtana: Why is this Night Different” is a story game Haggadah for Passover. It’s a game about ritual and the way stories we tell change to reflect and comment upon our lived experiences.
The system is a stripped down and remixed version of questlandia. The core mechanic is a bespoke safety technique called “Wait Wait Wait!” where anyone may interrupt the flow of play to ask questions, introduce complications, and break immersion to provide meta-contextual interpretations of the scenes. The game seeks to invite all players to experience the seder as we practice Passover at home: welcoming, playful, and deeply relevant.
Please playtest the game! It’s in beta: https://kyotoben.itch.io/ma-nishtana
“Rainbows Forever: A Stonewall RPG” is a story game that meditates upon the meaning of liberation and the way we remember history. The game contextualizes historical events preceding, during, and following the Stonewall uprising through the eyes of a diverse LGBTQ and Ace cast. I am looking for other queer creators if anyone would like to collaborate! Here is the game in alpha gestation:
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Rainbows forever looks amazing! I would love to collaborate, so ping me if you’re interested!
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I’m working on a Yes/And/But/No system for RPGs. It’s almost ready to show.
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I’m right on the cusp of releasing The Hallowed Walk as an app for Android. As a card-based game to be played as you walk, it makes a lot of sense for it to be a available on mobile. Now trying to figure out how to make it be on ios too.
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Like everyone else, it seems, a Carved From Brindlewood game. 
Working title is Night’s Truth (which I hate, and I hope something better comes to mind before it’s done), pitch is basically, “what if the kids from It grew up to be Mythos/supernatural investigators, and all went home to solve the town’s Big Mystery together?”
One of the fun bits I’m looking forward to trying out is that each player has two characters—the kid version, and the adult version—and scenes jump back and forth between the present and the past. Still have a lot of writing to do, and I don’t have a visual direction yet, but it’s gonna be a good time.
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That is a very playable setup, I did something a bit similar in OKULT, though your angle is absolutely different enough. Seeing things change between young/old PCs is so much fun.
Good luck with your project! (And I’ll take a look at whatever Carved from Brindlewood games are, I haven’t heard about those before.)
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I think CfB is the “official” terminology for games based on the Brindlewood Bay setup, but maybe I just imagined that…
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I gave Them Deeper Bones a quick look.
Banked dice seem interesting (thought I haven’t read closely enough to understand the process yet).
Also fascinating that your have individuals roll their hit dice when they take damage. What inspired that?
I always thought that it wasn’t obvious that you only roll your hit dice once. I’ve considered having characters roll them anew for each “expedition,” for instance.
Are you discussing the game elsewhere here?
Right now I am working on the first adventure module for Simple Superheroes.
Simple Superheroes #1: The Experiment (I have considered calling it Project Chronos - as that is the particular experiment that goes wrong, but that may suggest a time-travel adventure which it isn’t) is a adventure module that gives some details on the city of New Carthage, and provides a series of events related to the villain Gravitor getting revenge on Dr Newton.
Dr Newton is the main “inventor” NPC of the New Carthage universe and as such supplies almost all the tech for Blackthorne Correctional Facility for metahumans.
There’s an appendix that encourages the use of a “Connections Web” that ties PCs to important NPC characters and institutions of the setting. There isn’t any direct mechanics related to the Connections Web, though players may reinforce these with Relations or even the Talents they take. (This is inspired most directly by the Smallville RPG Pathways Maps.)
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Thanks for the heads up. For some reason now I can’t find the edit button. The correct link is https://composedreamgames.com/pages/simplesuperheroes.php
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I’m working on The Revenge of the 13th Fleet, a sequel to our currently funded ZineQuest Kickstarter The 13th Fleet.
It’s a sci-fi game of dark humor and treachery - a mix of Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series, Blades in the Dark, Paranoia, Junta, and a Mirror Mirror FASA Star Trek setting!
Writing the core rules was just as much fun as playing the game, and I think design that creates and captures that sense of pure enjoyment really comes across in a finished product.
When you make something like that, you want to share it with everyone. It’s definitely a concept with legs. Unfortunately, it’s a gradual process.
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Against the Dark Conspiracy is taxi-ing to the runway for launch on Feb 11th as part of ZineQuest …
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You got me with the Lost Fleet series reference, and then “Advancing Backward” on the kickstarter page. Looking forward to getting my hands on the game.
Currently I am working on google spreadsheet version of Lines in the Sand, so it could by played online, without o need of using Roll20, Vassal or any other complicated virtual tabletop engines.
For now, I can’t imagine more simple tool than excel sheet.
Recently I’ve been working on a game that’s part map game, part roleplaying game and part street-level activism. It’s meant to be a framework that I’ll make an SRD and jam for sometime, but this one focuses around urban trees. It’s called arbor|culture and it’ll be one of the 7 or 8 games in the San Jenaro CoOp Short Games Digest Volume 8, whose theme is environment, plants and lifecycles. I think it’s one of the most uplifting games that I’ve ever made, and I’m stoked that it’ll be out in the world soon (along with some amazing art of dryads and guerilla gardeners, and sometimes both).
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