What are you working on right now?

[Deckard]

My Sep. idea: Working title: Interplanetary Fauna Protectorate
The Elevator Pitch
You pick and environment in a Durance style way but focused on dangers to both the Fauna Protectorate Patrol (FPP) and the endangered fauna on the planet in a PbtA game. Then, you are given the equivalent of rumors to determine where potential dangers are to this fauna. The game will be mission based but with an overarching story.

Why you’re excited about it
Even though this would obviously be a game about illegal poaching and environmental issues and include the spin out of PbtA games, this game would focus on how the FPP could succeed. This could be through a similar mechanism to the revolution track in Comrades and building up a base of operations. Resources in the base of operations would eventually allow the Patrol to plan ahead and cover more ground and potentially keep ahead of the struggle.

What your hopes are in relation to it
I would love to get it to be both a fun and educational game. Ideally, I would hope to eventually sell it and donate the earnings to the World Wildlife Foundation or a similar charity.

[Adam]

Pitchness:
Towerlands is a fantasy setting based on early-14th-century Hungary but in a parallel world with elves and stuff.

So Excite:
Geography: Pannonian Basin! Carpathian Mountains! Vast limestone caves! Flood plains and swamps! The Danube!

Stuff plucked out of Hungarian folklore and warped for fantasy: Stormdragons ravaging cities! Táltos shamans and druids. Griffins! Fene (illness demons). The World Tree!

Stuff plucked out of Hungarian history and warped for Towerlands: Baron-Oligarchs! The Voivode of Transylvania! Three or four kings all vying for legitimacy! Important crowns! Important cathedrals!

Very Hope:
My first hope is to turn this into a gripping campaign for some local friends, then to expand to run at least one parallel campaign for friends online. My first main goal is to finish a Player’s Guide so that players can make characters and start playing.

Eventually, I’d like to publish products for it.

[Haladir]

I am working on “Ultraviolet World,” a hack of Jesse Strandberg’s “Homebrew World” for use in The Ultraviolet Grasslands.

So far, I’m hewing pretty close to Homebrew World, although I am adding back in a few things from vanilla Dungeon World, such as weapon tags and a slightly less-abstract money and treasure system. I am also pulling in a bunch of mechanics from UVG, including a good chunk of the caravan travel system and the buying/selling trade goods system.

I’ve converted all of the playbooks except the Paladin and Weilder (which don’t really fit the setting) and the Druid (needs more customization for the setting). At the request of my players, I made conversions of The Earthling playbook from Adventures on Dungeon Planet and The Con Artist (from a collection of thief character playbooks from an author whose name escapes me at the moment.)

I’ve also written my own version of the HBW Basic and Optional Moves. Most are identical, but I had to tweak a bunch due to the UVG’s overland travel time-scale of one week. The other challenge is getting the right level of abstraction for equipment. Both HBW and UVG do so in very differnt ways, and I’m not sure if I’ve quite squared that circle.

I am in the process of making a new blog where I can post this stuff, and I’ll put up a link when it’s ready for others to see.

[Haladir]

After getting some feedback from the Gauntlet Slack, I’d like to share Ultraviolet World v1.0.1.

https://theultravioletgrasslands.obsidianportal.com/wikis/rules

HUGE thanks to Jeremy Strandberg for his feedback on the first draft. This work is more his than my own!

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[Deckard]

This is a great idea! I wanted this to exist ever since the OSR book was covered on Fear of the Black Dragon

[Ludovico_Alves]

I’m working on four projects:

Praeuro: Of Priests and Donkeys.

A post-apocalyptic game of mysticism and science. The world of bronze and iron gave way to a world of ice. You play as priest-workers of the last Commune, trying to seize material means to maximize the Work of the community. You venture into the icy expanse, accompanied by your comrades, necromancy, your tools of the trade and faithful donkeys. You brave petty tyrants, vampire owls, god-storms and the merciless weather for the hope of warmer days. The game is based on the Legacy, Ironsworn, Word of Dungeons and Throphy engines. It operates on a binary stat (Warm/Cold) that modifies the moves you can use and the entire engine rotates around a shared, communal dice pool. Think Frostpunk, but with actual punk, meets HBO Rome.

"Trophy" Ruby
You have watched Critical Role and Stranger Things, you listened to The Adventure Zone, and you have been hearing about DnD for a while. So you get a few friends, or join a game, or just get the game manuals…
… and this is nothing like what you seen. What Gold is for OSR, Ruby is to the pop culture take on dungeons and dragons: drama, hijings, classes, rich backgrounds, joviality all around, sillyness, gachapon and that damned d20.

Xenophon: Rooted in Trophy edition
My story game about the greek expedition returning home, now returning as a “proper” rpg, Rooted in Trophy. A game about Prejudice and what matters or not to individuals, as well as the ways they grow or rationalize themselves deeper into their own internalized behavior. It adapts the Ring rules for Stations, each with their own variations of certain moves. It includes rules on how to use troops to deal with challenges, as well as mass warfare rules.

"Trophy" Kingsguard
Still under-developed, this game takes a more “zoomed out, zoom in” type of play. You are officers of the Kingsguard, tasked with keeping the Forest power in check. That means making sure there are enough treasure-hunter sacrifices, whilekeeping the Monstruosities on check, avoiding the spread of the Forest powers and dealing with “successful” treasure-hunters. Think Darkest Dungeon on Trophy.

• The name Trophy will be dropped for obviously reason, but is there for context on the working title.

[Anders]

I only had time for a quick look but that looks very cool!

[Deckard]

I put my other ideas on hold for now. I just had a new idea though.

The Elevator Pitch
A PbtA game with a Mighty Ducks / Bad New Bears type motif. We all know the story structure, the stereotypes, and the themes and PbtA lends itself to this sort of storytelling.

Why you’re excited about it
I think my kids whom are resistant to trying new things would like to play this. I also think this framework is something I can work within without inventing something completely new and getting overwhelmed.

What your hopes are in relation to it
A 3rd place finish in the 24-hour rpg contest on rpggeek.com

[vorvox]

I just made a very small solo freeform rpg/larp called “Dream Hacker” which is influenced by the cyberpunk genre and occultism. I am interested in exploring the relationship between the player’s imagination and his/her surroundings

https://vorvox.itch.io/dream-hacker

[Axxroytovu]

• The elevator pitch
• Why you’re excited about it
• What your hopes are in relation to it

I’m currently in early alpha for a game called L’Oracle de la Revolution title still in work. It is a political, inward-facing, GMless RPG set during the French Revolution if magic was real and history was malleable. A deck of tarot cards give the game a starting kick, and the web of strings that tie the players together drive the game to a chaotic and climactic ending. Each player controls their specific character during their scenes, and plays the interests of their chosen faction during other players turns.

The general structure of the game is a weird mix of Blades in the Dark, Urban Shadows, and Fiasco, and I’m having a blast trying to take all of these disparate mechanics and merge them together to make a fun and exciting game. I’m mostly building the game to experiment with game mechanics, and to see how a PvP GMless political game would work in practice.

My current hopes are mostly just to finish the darn thing. I’ve rewritten it twice in the last six month, and I’m constantly coming up with new ideas and different things I want to try. I’ve committed to playtesting it at ORCACon in January, so I should probably get something at least playable done by then.

[Simon_Hibbs]

Rings of Power

I’ll try not to repeat myself too much from the linked Google Doc but to an extent it’s inevitable. Feel free to comment on the text, that should be enabled.

Elevator Pitch: The chance to play characters in Middle Earth, with just as much engagement with the Great Powers, consequential events and unsolved problem of that world as any of the characters in the books. No grubbing around on the periphery, trying to to get run over by the wheels of the ‘real story’. What your characters do is the real story.

Why I’m Excited: I think I’ve found a premise that lets me run a game in Middle Earth with the same sorts of stakes as the books. Elf lords and sinister enchantress, great kings, dire foes and Rings of Power. It’s all in play, it’s the Middle Earth game I’d want to play.

What I hope to achieve here: I grew up reading LoTR, The Hobbit and the Silmarillion. This made RPGs a natural draw for me, but I was always disappointed the games never achieved the mythic scale, drama and majesty of the Tolkien stories. The game rules were too complex and focused on prosaic activities to rise much above stab, spell, heal, repeat. Don’t get me wrong, I love dirty down gaming, I just ran a fantastic game of Blades in the Dark, but I yearn for something more. I think with this premise, and the expressivity of the AW engine, I can finally run the game I dreamed off when I first opened that slim blue book, with the dragon and treasure on the cover, back in the early 80s.

[Simon_Hibbs]

@vorvox That’s truly awesome. Nuts, but awesome.

[dannythewall]

Elevator Pitch?
The city’s law enforcement system is upheld by two distinct yet equally important extremes.
Those who hold to a no-nonsense, dedicated commitment to justice and social order.
And … clowns.

I recently found some stuff that I worked on when I was once was pitching animated series ideas to Cartoon Network WAAAYYY back in the day. I figured I might as well try to make it a quick one-page RPG.

So, behold: Good Cop, Clown Cop.

It’s just version 1.0, but I’ll try to playtest it in a session next month. If anyone wants to playtest feel free to have a read-through. You can find on my website at https://wheresdannywall.wixsite.com/home/role-playing-games
Or, at the very least, it was a nice palette cleanser from some of the other projects I’ve been working on.

[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.