Traxx (a place holder title) is the draft of the game I want to play. It is an hybrid of @Nickwedig 's Mesopotamians, Avery Alder’s Dream Askew, seasoned with my play style preferences.
I thrill at the improvement of my design-fu, proceeding by modules and layers, and ladders between them, instead of each version mutating into another as a whole. Not committing to a layout (it’s never finished) and using spreadsheets did a lot to it.
I hope the colour I put on it will attract the right players for the game.
What are you working on right now?
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Wow. I’m replying to my own post, which is dated July 2019.
It became something that I took down, put away, took down again, rinse, repeat.
It helped consume and/or distract me during some serious quarantine as I moved countries.
And now I put it on itch.io
https://dannythewall.itch.io/battlestreets
It drifted a lot from the description I posted in '19, but it’s still got the DNA I mentioned, and the “tactile” elements which is basically just resource management that supports the story of side-scrolling, pixellated hereos that streetfight their way into being heroes.
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I’ve just finished the 2nd Draft of Simple Superheroes #1: The Experiment and shared it with backers. This is the first adventure module for Simple Superheroes. Several subsequent issues will also be set in New Carthage.
The current draft is a little longer than I had planned, at 42 pages, with some white space between sections. Those white spaces will be filled with black and white interior art, which is currently in progress. The layout may be tweaked, and cross-referencing is not yet in place (though a solid hyperlinked Table of Contents is). The text should be entirely playable.
Anyone feeling unusually keen validate that assertion and to provide feedback, please reach out and I’ll arrange something. You could also subscribe to it and the 3 more issues here.
Excited to begin turning the outline of the stretch goals for Against a Dark Conspiracy into actual rules in time for play tests in April/May.
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Feudal Fairy World is a tabletop roleplaying game for 3–6 people about creating and exploring fantastic feudalistic worlds through honor, love, and fellowship.
If you like games about adventuring in Arthurian Mythology or similar, you might like this PbtA RPG.
I’m excited about this game because it’s a game about hope in the face of despair and right now I think I need something like that.
I’ve got a lot of work to do on it, but it’s giving me life now after about a year away from it.
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Elevator pitch: Generational Shadowrun-inspired PBTA that plays through the backstory instead of presenting it “fait accompli”.
Why I’m excited:
- Games where “all the cool stuff already happened” are a pet peeve.
- I love games where you play a family or lineage through multiple generations (Pendragon, etc). I like the tension between the optimism of “I can make things better for future generations” with the grimness of “life in the shadows is cheap, and my PC will eventually die, probably violently, but the game will continue”.
- Similarly, I like the tension between highly episodic runs and a cross-cutting story that is more PC-focused than opponent-focused.
- I think playing through the history year-by-year can lampshade some of the more WTF elements of the Shadowrun backstory and make them feel less like they come out of nowhere.
Why not use existing options: Shadowrun is too rulesey for me. The Sprawl and its supplements (Touched Prime) and hacks (Shadowrun in the Sprawl) will serve as major inspiration, but need expansion to accommodate the generational nature (aging, one character affecting another).
My hopes: Not really intended for publication per se, I hope I can eventually get to a point where I’m satisfied enough to playtest the hack, and have a long enough run with a group to get through a significant amount of the history.
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@Pyske have you looked at The Veil? I know of but am terribly familiar with The Sprawl, but The Veil is another cyberpunk PBTA game.
What made me think of it is that the Veil uses emotional “States” to determine what you add to a roll. How you are feeling about the action is what matters. This could make good sense for more long-term action, and “generational” stuff.
The emotion states also reminded me of Pendragons passions at first blush. States are opposed so Mad/Peaceful, Sad/Joyful, Scared/Powerful.
It has some moves for Obligations between people (which could be expanded to groups and families) and beliefs are connected to gaining experience.
It’s available here among other places: https://composedreamgames.com/marketplace/the-veil
(I run the marketplace so would get 10% of a sale.)
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Thanks, Joshua (@jkitz). I actually own a copy of The Veil, and more recently of Runners in the Shadows (a FitD game). The Veil is maybe a little too high concept for my groups, but I appreciate the suggestion.
RitS actually has a lot of the components I’m looking for, although each in a separate subsystem (Stash, Trauma, Heat, Entanglements) instead of the clock-based system I’ve built on PbtA. I’m still working on defining how younger characters will be better equipped to deal with newer technologies, and how to ensure that there is not too broad a gap between young and experienced characters.
Ideally characters should follow a bell-shaped competency curve as they age.
I am happy to discuss further in a separate thread, if people are interested in detail.
I slowly but steadily continue the work towards publishing my very first game “Paris Gondo - The Life-Saving Magic of Inventorying”.
The elevator pitch: This game is a tongue-in-cheek tribute to encumbrance rules and other tropes found in beloved dungeon-crawling games through the lens of contemporary well-being influencers who spark joy.
Why you’re excited about it: I’ve never designed a game before this. I have now run playtests/demonstrations for more than 100 players, I purchased art and now I hired an editor. The next step is to publish a “text-only” version to help me with the cost of hiring a graphic designer and purchase art for the interior.
What your hopes are in relation to it: It would make me very happy to hear about people playing it. As a podcaster, I also look forward to being the one talking about my game on shows rather than the interviewer. Also, it is nice to develop something that I have full creative control over. My day-to-day job is very creative but see decision-making often distributed across many different people.
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I’ve just finished the alpha draft of Silver City Legends.
The elevator pitch: Silver City Legends is a game about larger than life heroes set in a mythical version of the wild west filled with monsters and magic from every corner of the world. Players determine the outcomes of their actions with playing cards.
Why you’re excited about it: The moment to moment gameplay is simple fast and fun with a lot of flexibility. There is an attribute system that is really fun for both payers and GM to use. The character advancement system encourages players to create big cinematic moments in combination with “leveling up”, but you can only advance so many time until your story comes to an end.
What your hopes are in relation to it: I dont really know. I’ve done some playtesting and gotten positive responses and I’m excited to run a test campaign. I’m not sure what the next step is once I finish the document. I have some friends who I want to commission some art from, but after that who knows? I might like to put it up somewhere for pay what you want but mostly I think it would be cool to know someone is enjoying the game.
I’m going to update an old post with this new draft so keep an eye out.
Thank you!
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POWER UP ENGINE
The elevator pitch.
Power Up Engine is an anime emulation dice engine. It is perfect for using advanced moves and producing held-breath drama. The core mechanic is a metaphor for the power of working together. Things go well when dice align: if you role a 2 and a 2 things go well. If you role a 3,4,6 there is a bad outcome.
Why you’re excited about it.
I love the tight genre generation of PBTA but wanted a more tactile sense of advancement. This provides that.
What your hopes are in relation to it.
I want to playtest it and then license it so anyone may use it to emulate tons of anime in their games.
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I’m currently translating and adapting Tony Dowler’s How To Host a Dungeon for use in class as a game at the end of the lesson. While translating it I’m hacking it as well for my own use.
I’m exited about making a drawing game that can be played with kids.
My hopes are that I’m able to translate it not only from English to Dutch, but also from DnD Tropes to general kid imagination. A lot of it, as written, relies on knowledge of DnD (derived) games. These kids don’t have that. They don’t know what’s the difference between a goblin and a kobold or a dwarf and a gnome.
I’m thinking of using some of Trent from Miscast’s Monster Jam techniques and letting the kids invent their own monsters.
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I’m thinking of using some of Trent from Miscast’s Monster Jam techniques and letting the kids invent their own monsters.
Right on!
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The elevator pitch: It’s Marie “Kondo for Murder Hoboes”. Players embody Adventurers who, as a a Party, have reached the last level of a Dungeon and defeated the Boss who presided over it. Play starts as Adventurers discover Loot you create. The objects you decide your Adventurer carries home makes up what you pack as their Final Inventory.
Why you’re excited about it: It is now available on Itch.io. It is the first game that I ever designed and published. I received encouraging feedback from playtests and demonstrations that I’ve run for around 100 players now. I can’t wait to hear from people playing it without my involvement.
What your hopes are in relation to it: The rules are complete but this first release is “text-only”. It’s currently presented in a very minimal fashion which I took care of myself. I started a “Sale” with a goal matching what I am missing to hire a graphic designer. I can’t wait to be able to proceed with that next step (either through sales or when I’ll be employed again and will afford to cover it myself).
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I’ve edited and self published the pdf of Paws, my animal game !
pitch up : Be an animal, act it, voice it. Meet another animal. What’s at stake ? When you find out : touch hands. Say something decisive. Is there trust between you ?
elation : I took that old .odt draft, edited it up and put it in display in a couple of hours.
hopes : for it to be played, understood or read some.
- edited : if you got the game before April 6th, there has been a major update to edit a mistake in the Food scoring formula.
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I’m working on an .EPUB edition of my newest game, LONG HAUL 1983.
Elevator Pitch:
The game tells the story of a dangerous journey through an empty world. You play a long-haul truck driver trying to make their way home. Every day, you’ll hit the road, navigating treacherous highways, fleeing from menacing threats, and dealing with the psychological impacts of isolation.
And at the end of each day, you’ll find a payphone, make a call, and leave a message for the most important person in your life. They never pick up. You never stop calling.
Why I’m Excited:
This is the biggest game design project I’ve ever finished, and I’m really pumped to get it into more formats and in front of more players. Also, the EPUB version is going to be 100% screen-reader friendly. Which will be great.
My Hopes:
Players have started to share recordings of their playthroughs. (It’s an audio-journaling game,) I really hope that more people feel brave and creative and share what they do with the text. It feels so magical.
A Question for the Community:
This is my first time dealing with the .EPUB format. Is there anyone with experience willing to share their tips, tricks, or traps to avoid?
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Now that I’ve finally wrapped up my first RPG product…
…I need to revise the early draft of my second Trophy Dark incursion, Penumbra, before working on art and layout.
Pitch: A colony planet is quickly running out of a necessary resource, the oil-like Sap, on which nearly every facet of life relies. A rag-tag group of Sap drillers is sent to confirm whether a massive asteroid, passing nearby on its millennia-long orbit, has the deposits the colony’s sensors claim it does to keep them alive a few more decades. After a rough landing cutting off communication to their dropship, they begin stumbling upon unsettling signs that there have been previous, failed missions, many failed missions. As they delve deeper toward the center of the asteroid, they’ll uncover something unthinkable that fills them with existential dread (naturally) and endless questions about the future, and past, of the colony.
Excitement: I love the theme (recursion) and the idea of a sci-fi Trophy incursion in the hostile atmosphere (or lack thereof) of an asteroid. I’m also toying with some minor expansion mechanics to account for the crew’s gear, but I’m worried they’ll distract from the horror…
Hopes: I want this to have things that haven’t been seen before in a Trophy incursion, but I’m also having trouble defining evocative threats in this peculiar environment. We’ll see!
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After multiple drafts, I’ve made my rules pretty and ready for playtesting. It’s exciting to see it all take the form of an actual book.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AjqNWpXZBUjiJ9724O8taPsYGkK4cgnw?usp=sharing
- The elevator pitch
Thornwood School of Magics is a rules-medium narrative game about being students at a magical boarding school. I think its spell creation, motivation, and emotional burnout rules really make it stand out and help facilitate a sandbox story of both magic and mystery and the day to day of school life. In terms of mechanics think Forged in the Dark meets Ars Magica with some monster hearts and gumshoe mixed in combined with an original terf-free magical boarding school setting. - Why you’re excited about it
I’m excited about getting it into this playable rulebook format. I’ve been slowly working on it for a while and while it doesn’t have any art done and there’s still tweaks to be made its never been as close to a real game as it is now. - What your hopes are in relation to it
My main hope is to get someone other than me to run a game based on the rulebook and get feedback from that. I want to test how well the rules actually teach the game and what other GM’s make of it. I’ve got some locals who are going to give it a go but the more the merrier. Just getting people to read it would also be great though
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Hey I did it!
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#LADYBEARD
Pitch:
An RPG loveletter to the idol/wrestler Ladybeard! This game is about fabulous fighting and friendship.
Why I’m Excited:
Thematically this game is a simple celebration of a singer I love. Mechanically, this game uses dice physically flying at each other to see who is knocked out of the ring, which I think is so sweet. I remember hearing about a capoeira themed game that uses a similar mechanic and am trying to find its name to give it credit! (let me know if you do!)
Hopes:
For Ladybeard to play it herself!!!
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