I was excited enough to back the kickstarter, but I’m waiting for that to be complete before I dive in. I think it’ll fit the same niche as the Alien RPG but perhaps leaner?
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Yes and yes. Mothership is (to my brain at least) faster, cleaner Alien. Easier to get to a table for sure!
A friend of mine just launched a Kickstarter for NPC generator dice. Clever solution to quickly create an NPC for a game on the fly. Only use the attributes you care about.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/petulantpudgies/dungeon-helper-dice-character-creator
Awww yish, Quinns talking about the Excellent Lancer RPG.
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I’ve been continuing to run my 5e game, and have incorporated some of the extremely excellent DM tools from Worlds Without Number (plus cyberware from Cities Without Number because I love me a dose of cyberpunk in my fantasy games), and I gotta say, I am extremely impressed with the quality of the Without Number games.
I have this suspicion that Kevin Crawford himself might be a bit of a shitberg (I took a look at Wolves of God and as a medievalist who studies that time period and culture, I have Several Questions), but the tools he’s developed to support sandbox-style worldbuilding are the best I have ever seen in a game. I’m using the Faction stuff and the Community tags and it all just flows without being burdensome. I highly recommend checking out the free version of his games - you get all the DM tools and the entire game, so it’s literally no cost to you.
I also ran into this game the other day, and it scratches a very particular itch I’ve had for a while:
This is a hack of Pathfinder 2e that uses Paizo’s ORC license (developed during the WotC OGL fiasco of late) that seriously compresses all the bloat of Pathfinder while retaining the feel of incredible flexibility in building a character. It takes some inspiration from more contemporary lightweight RPG design, but also doesn’t bolt it to yet another OSR chassis. And, it’s both cheap and entirely complete. Definitely worth checking out if, like me, you like flexible character creation but also don’t want to deal with the ridiculous bullshit of actual Pathfinder.
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Sadly I can never get people to play more than like a one-shot of mecha games.
The player action/mech management free web-based software (Comp-Con) does worlds for handling admin/tracking things if that’s part of the issue.
Just got it, feels great. Also the hardcopy includes a download link for digital versions (PDF and epub)
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I just bought that. I probably won’t play Lancer much in person (well, maybe, we’ll see if I can get my D&D group to budge at some point), but I really like Massif and want to support them. Plus the cover is siiiiiick.
My original plan was to pickup the digital to run the game with but the new cover was too good looking to pass up.
I’m really glad I picked up that physical copy of Lancer, because after reading through the rules it really makes sense to me. I always have difficulty doing my primary learning in an exclusively-digital format, so the physical book helped me grok things.
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Fresh hot Quinn’s Club goodness. Validating my yolo purchase of the Delta Green bundle.
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I became a backer on patreon for Quinss Quest and I highly recommend it. Full interviews with designers, side videos, whole lets play series on RPGs not covered in the main videos, blog posts and more. If you enjoy Quinn’s writing its well worth it.
Man, it’s been a minute since I wandered by this place. Hey y’all, sup?
Recently, after years of diddling around with game design, I finally completed a project, and I think it’s one that some of you might find interesting.
Presenting: The Genesis Deck!
Physical version from The Game Crafter
itch.io - pay what you want for the print-and-play
Screentop.gg - try it out online
This is a card-based procedural worldbuilding tool that I designed to work with a pretty big subset of fantasy TTRPG’s, aimed at facilitating solo roleplaying. The goal was to create something similar to a GM simulator (like Mythic), but more streamlined and with a little more authorship required, and coupled with a physical map builder. The gist is that you build a deck of Terrain cards, start in a settlement, deal out new terrain as you explore, and use a small number of Plot Point cards to generate things like quests, encounters, dungeons, and other world content. The exact details of each thing are left up to you, and most of the entries on the various tables are more like writing prompts than complete answers - enough to get the juices flowing, but not enough to tell you the whole story.
Initially, I came up with the idea in order to solve a very relatable problem - I’m a forever DM who is interested in playing a lot of different RPG’s, and my main gaming group is really interested in D&D. I mean that’s fine, I’m having fun with it, but I really want to play other stuff, and carving out the additional time in my calendar is a Chore. Solo roleplaying offers an avenue to at least let me get some dice rolled and see how various systems play out. But I wasn’t satisfied with the GM simulators I was trying out - they took a lot more fiddling that I was loving, when what I really wanted was something tight and usable.
But…you can’t really design from a purely negative space, y’know? If all you do is think about fixing problems, then you spend a lot of time thinking about what your game isn’t, instead of what your game should be, and before you know it you’re making yet another fantasy heartbreaker. At some point, I slightly shifted perspective - rather than just trying to solve the problem of unplayed RPG’s, I thought about building a solo experience that would engage me. It’s not just that playing RPG’s with a group is work - it’s also that, sometimes, I actually just want to do my own thing without having to worry about what someone else wants.
That’s how I circled around to JRPGs as a core inspiration - those are gratifying solo experiences that don’t apologize for being solitary endeavors. My touchstones were games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy specifically - something where the world unfolds as you roam it, and where you rock up to settlements and find new problems. The “world unfolding before you” vibe was really important to me - I always found it most engaging when I would walk to some new screen and I’d see some point of interest on the map. “I wonder what’s over there” or “how do I get there” - the gradual revelation of the world kept me wondering what else I might find.
I’ve started working on a free lightweight fantasy RPG rooted in the 24XX ruleset that I’m specifically aiming at complementing this thing, so that it’ll actually function as a package deal. That’ll get released at Some Point.
So anyway - check it out, lemme know what you think, and if it’s cool maybe buy a copy for yourself!
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Game looks supercool, built on top of the Dungeonworld Idea and the PBTA rules, also the publisher and distributor is local to Philly (Plus One Exp).
I haven’t watched this yet, but the Indie Game Reading Club has a nice deep-dive on Stonetop from 2024 and writeups from a ten-session actual play.
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I really wanna buy it because I loved Dungeon World but a more fleshed out and less D&D style setting is even more up my alley. (Un)Fortunately I recently indulged in 3 kickstarters/gamefound games with some disposable income so I don’t feel like I can pick it up for awhile.