I really like this idea; not just for the Magpie content, hehe. I love little folk rhymes and rituals. Did you ever they love me/they love me not with a flower? I’d also like to suggest Floreat Pica as another name: ‘May the Magpie Prosper’. It’s the motto for my football team - but it’s Australian rules so no-one will no that you stole it. 
What are you working on right now?
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I’m working on a mystery module, called Stuck in Jawbone until I think of something better. It’s somewhere between a campaign starter and a full-fledged adventure module in length and complexity. It’s set in a small town with a magical factory, an abandoned temple, a vermin-filled sewer, and way more than its share of undead.
I originally wrote it for my face-to-face group and ran it with D&D 5E, and it made for a really good introduction to D&D for the players. I just playtested it with Dungeon World, with a very different group of players on Roll20, and they seemed to enjoy it even more than the first group, so I figure I’m on the right track.
I’m filling in a few gaps, adjusting the custom moves, etc. There’s a lot more social interaction and information-gathering than fighting, so I’m trying to populate it with interesting NPCs and make sure there are multiple routes to the big bad. Moving it from the rough draft stage to what the workshop draft, where I’m actually willing to show it to other people.
I’m just testing it with Dungeon World now, but I eventually want to try it with more systems. I’d love to run it with Beyond the Wall, for example, and see how that changes things.
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Depending on the audience, here are a few elevator type pitches… feedback is appreciated.
Part mortal. Part god. All Law.
Vigilance: The Epic Code of Living Laws
Vigilance is a roleplaying game about dealing with loss and injustice in your fallen Bronze Age community that you serve, reborn as a Living Law.
Living Laws are survivors of injustice who are remade to right the wrongs committed against your community.
You are the last hope against anarchy, corruption, and the Wildstorm that stole the Golden Age from the world.
Why I’m excited about it: It’s produced some amazing stories at the table through the various one-shots. The setting is rich with potential as an alternate fantasy hypothesis for the fall of Bronze Age civilizations. The mechanics are coming along as well.
What my hopes are in relation to it: To keep pushing it forward and run more than one-shots to test its vitality, scope, and design to see if I want to continue working on it towards publication.
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Well that sounds rad! Sounds like everyone is a Paladin, hehe.
I’ve also used shorthand for Vigilance: Robocop meets Ancient Mythology.
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Elevator pitch:
You’re hipster vampires who want humans to be healthy–fighting their own laziness, bloody vendettas, their inner evil, etc. I want people to just plain ebay their old WW books.
Why I’m excited about it:
It’s a new take on an old story. It’s the most different-from-other-rules thing I’ve written. It takes safety seriously. It’s good cringey.
What I hope for it:
I hope that 10 groups of 4 or 5 people play it for an arc of five sessions. Ever. Doesn’t have to be at the same time.
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Since you asked…
In “The Pack: Post Apocalyptic Pets,” players play domestic dogs in a pack that’s trying to survive after an apocalyptic event. The playbooks highlight typical dog types like The Companion (like a beagle) and The Sport (like a fox hound) and The Stray. It’s a game about camaraderie, seeking help from your friends even when they need to save you from yourself.
This idea occurred to me Saturday morning and I’ve been fleshing it out ever since. It’s turning into a mash-up of The Warren and Comrades, with a few twists. (I’ve got four other games in the works, so it wasn’t like I was looking for something new to work on.)
I’d be happy for feedback on the pitch. I haven’t uncovered any games with a similar premise (which is surprising) so if you know of any, please let me know.
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Weeellll, I’m working on two things currently, so…
The elevator pitch: The Virtuous (working title) is a Powered by the Apocalypse game which has also taken elements from Fate, Facade, and Belonging Outside Belonging. You play as vampires, with their own society inside of/alongside human society; each playbook is a vampire breed, and there are only 5 different ones, names inspired by Plato’s virtues: the Patient, the Wise, the Brave, the Driven, and the Filial.
Why you’re excited about it: Playing it with my friend, mostly, and “fixing” the problems I have with Vampire: The Masquerade! I basically started making this for them, because the WoD stuff is just way too overcomplicated, and we’d prefer something with a more optimistic or at least not nihilistic mood. I am also excited by simplifying down the clans into a much smaller list, combining some of them into the same umbrella in ways that make sense to me.
What your hopes are in relation to it: I just want it to be playable, basically! I do plan on putting it online, and I hope at least some other people enjoy it, but mostly I want to finish it and get it to a point that it doesn’t fall apart if you try to play it, lol.
The elevator pitch: They howl and grow claws (also a working title) is a Belonging Outside Belonging game that’s meant to be played in two parts, one where your characters are outside, and one where they move inside, over the course of one in-game night. You are a queer group of friends on a final vacation together before moving and going your separate ways, but a monster is in the woods with you. You wind up closing yourself up inside the cabin waiting for daybreak. Some of you might decide to go with the monster.
Why you’re excited about it: GAME JAM! Also, I REALLY love the idea of a game where the LGBT+ cast might decide to shuck off their humanity and go be free as a monster. As a queer person myself, embracing a disconnect from humanity and becoming something Other is a subject that always fascinates me and I love when I see it reflected in other media, whether that’s an RPG like Facade with trans vampires or a poem that’s more about a girl growing up to be a dragon because she sure as hell isn’t a princess.
What your hopes are in relation to it: This one I really hope will be embraced by at least some people. I am sticking close to the classic Belonging Outside Belonging framework, but adding in a few elements that excite me (having two maps and therefore two places to be created and described, and having that done for the second map during a short “intermission” between the two halves of play), and I hope they’ll be well-received.
4 Likes
We just launched our comedy role-playing game on Kickstarter and it took off line crazy! We funded in under 12 hours and I’m so excited to start making stretch goals happen.
Basically it’s about playing the minions instead of the heroes. Overzealous but not entirely competent creatures causing mayhem is what the game is all about.
My favorite aspect of it is the way critical failures are handled. I wanted to make them the most fun part of the game and really tried to double down on that.
Right now my plans are to keep the Kickstarter going strong and crossing off some stretch goals. We’re currently working on an alternative setting book that allows you to play as henchmen in an evil lair!
If your want to check out what it’s all about you can find us on Kickstarter
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I'm still in the concept and planning stage but the elevator pitch is.
The setting is a fantasy setting, with a few races about four or five as of now. The races as of now are Goblin, Gnome, Kobold, Catfolk, and one other still debating it and the Catfolk.
It's a PBTA game that takes place between one and two years after a world changing event. The night of the burning sky and rain of stone.
Your groups story begins in a tribal or clan mound (Underground tunnel system used by some clans and tribes as their places of safety in times of emergencies).
The food supplies are running very low, tension and fear is starting to grow. This is the third time the chieftain and elders have called for brave explorers to come forth.
Your group has been charged with leaving the mound and exploring the surrounding lands to see if the rest of the clan or tribe can leave the tunnels that have been home this past year plus. You are to scout the former village location as well as the surrounding land to look for the previous two parties before returning with your findings.
Like I said this is the preliminary idea and once they determine what the surrounding landscape is like then you continue by journeying to other mounds to see if they were able to survive and if not then scavenge items and supplies to help rebuild your society. You may find other survivors, mutated survivors, or even whole new species that have mutated since the event happened.
My hope is to have the basics more fleshed out and playbooks written and ready for playtesting by the end of the year.
I’m excited because I think this premise allows fow fantasy and horror themed play and possibly other genres of play as well.
Just gotten off the game for Virtual Grogmeet 2019, having run my Carcosa Fringe Festival with The Cthulhu Hack:
An old school friend gets in touch. They’re running a fringe theatre production of A King in Yellow and you’ve been given comps.
I’m excited having just given it a new lick of paint and reached out to an excellent artist to pen me a cover (his graphic style is at odds with most noxious knotting hyperreal tentacles of a lot of Lovecraftian covers). I’d better reuse the sanity drain that is the Edinburgh fringe somewhere!
In terms of its scope and my hopes, I’ll put it out as a PDF on Miskatonic Repository as a nice way to slow roll sales there ahead of a future setting book I’m at an earlier stage of
I just finished compiling VISION but I’m thinking of additional material that can make the game more engaging. I’m thinking of Inspirational Cards (with pictures) and random story seeds generators to take inspiration from
Elevator pitch
Vision us a three senteces RPG.for 3+ players that allows players to collaborate and compete creating Visions of mistery and wonder. And fear. And passion. And glory…
Excitment factor
Vision is quite fast and needs no prep. Doesn’t give you restriction on what the story is about and these are all points that I’m quite happy about. The first idea of Vision came when I was reading about the 200words RPG challenge and its core mechanic is still the same. But the scoring system I added seems to be solid enough to actually be of help in giving the players resons to create the best narrative they can think of.
Hope factor
Uhmmm, I got no particular hope for it. I mean, I’d like to develop some tools to help players enjoy it and I hope to get some feedback from players who try it so that I can learn and create better games but that all for now.
Three things:
Hack of MazeRats for Yoon-Suin - more like a bolt on. To be run at the gauntlet some time.
Quests beyond the Warden’s Garden - a story game about Justice and Love where the players take on the role of incarnations of three mystical beings from the Garden. The game has elements from Polaris in conversational conflict. The beings and much of the game are inspired from three Grateful Dead Songs: St. Stephen, The Other One, and Ripple. It came out of a slack discussion about write what you know about, and wanting their to be a game revolving around my faith. Using the mystical beings and the Grateful Dead as a way to make it once removed from my Christian Journey to make it less intense and personal.
Finally more like a tool-kit or a system of practices vs. an actual game that could be used to write various games called Coffee!. If anyone makes a game out of it, then instead of being powered by the Apocalypse, it would be powered by Coffee!. It ties in all the practices and resolutions/rules that I like that powers rules light story games. I see it as one step simpler than PtBA for being able to hack, which takes a lot of work.
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That sounds pretty similar to the premise of a game I’m working on, tentatively titled Cat-Pocalypse World. I ran an early version at GauntletCon this past fall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFYSrl_QP3w
Great minds think alike, etc.
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Neat! I’ll take a look! Are the materials posted any where? (My initial Google search came up empty.)
I’m close on a first draft of playbooks for The Pack, which I’ll post here when ready.
I’d be keen to take a look at the Yoon-Suin flavoured Maze Rats — my own Quarrel & Fable is built on an MR base too
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The elevator pitch:
A Fistful of Darkness is my Weird West hack of BitD
Imaging a world with the magic and mystery of the frontier: wide open plains of the Old Wild West in all its beauty and madness, where violence and sacrifice dominate every single day. Now add the Hellstone rush, underground mayhem in mines and brand new sciences & machines. Don’t forget immigration, injustice, vigilante justice, outlaws, gunslingers, slick talkers and setting suns. This all in the face of an impending doom: Demons and the four riders bringing the end of the world as you know it. How do you make it to the top of this powder keg, which side will you take in the impending war and how much will your soul suffer? Let’s play to find out!
Why you’re excited about it
Blades brought me back from my RPG hibernation and got me excited enough to write this hack in a (for me) non-native language putting in out there to be played by everyone. I’m nervous in a good and bad sense at the same time about it.
What your hopes are in relation to it
Hope that some players like it, play it and play it again. I’m hoping to create a full book with my name on it.
You can find the free beta here
10 Likes
An episodic workplace sitcom (in a dungeon) game built out from the old Tunnels And Trolls module “Rat On A Stick”. If anyone has experience playing that module I’d love to hear about it!
Pitch: Sick of your job? Exhausted by bills? Then let’s play it out in a setting free from real world consequences! The wizard businessman cyclops Cyrus The Distributor has purchased your contract. You must now work off your debt to him by slinging hash at one of his Rat-On-A-Stick franchises in The Dungeon. But don’t worry, in your free time you get to dodge traps and hack monsters for your own enrichment. Countdown clocks track your frustrations and when your work shift starts. Light-hearted and lethal.
I’m excited to have a cathartic group experience with roleplayed rants in the vein of IT Crowd or Clerks.
Hope? I hope it works I guess. 
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It looks like I accidentally started work on a new edition of Diaspora. 30+ pages of notes so far, so it’s a thing.
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Currently I’ve been working on a simple D&D 5e game for Kids! I got the inspiration from the 2E Council of Wyrms box set, I call it Hatchlings. I’m designing it so they have to work together to get to the end, even if they split the party they will have to get back together in the end to continue to the next adventure which is just an outline at the moment. It’s not heavily Dice based, but it’s also a setting stone for Kids (or even brand new gamers) to learn D&D 5e or just a RPG in general
1 Like