#and the kind of gm i never want to be
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look, i need to say this somewhere or i'll explode. candela obscura spoilers kinda.
to say that i disagree with spenser's game decisions would be an understatement. in this essay i will,
(first off, don't read this if you liked the guy's style! i'm not about needless pettiness, i just need to get this off my chest so i can go to sleep tonight. i see you, and i respect you, and i'm genuinely glad you enjoyed something i wasn't able to!)
but anyway
two main things i disagree with:
he doesn't honor player choices, choosing his own narrative over the top of their actions every time
he doesn't honor player successes. even on a six (full success) he still deals out a frankly preposterous amount of damage. invariably, on a mixed success they also will ALWAYS take damage. this fucks up the statistics.
there's a bunch more little things (dodging player questions, refusing to allow clever tactics - general hallmarks of the frustrating gm) but these are getting into nitpicky territory so i won't go on.
my analysis of the issue boils down to this: spenser is a good horror storyteller. but he is a bad horror game master.
let's break that down. the point of a game is to be an experience. and the point of horror, as a genre, is to be scared in a safe environment. to have an outlet for rage, and fear, and all ugly emotions.
all games are concerned, at their core, with a simple question: what does this game choose to punish or reward? sometimes it's in the rules, e.g. 'killing monsters gives you loot'. sometimes it's an unspoken question, e.g. 'my gm likes when we think our way around things rather than fighting all the time'.
the way spenser runs his game - always punishing mixed successes, and sometimes even punishing full successes - he destroys the core of a punishment/reward system by reducing it entirely to a system of punishment.
this might sound fine for a horror game. (for some people, i bet it is). but as a person who enjoys playing punishing games (pathalogic cough) a great deal of the appeal is that your struggle has meaning beyond your own survival. when the struggle is simply futile no matter what, well... why bother at all?
in other words, when you punish everything your players attempt to do, you encourage them to do nothing. in real life, this is when people walk away from the table, or develop suicidal characters
so much for game design. here is how he fails on a storytelling level. his goal, in most scenes, is to kill his characters. so there's no wider stakes. oh, he creates tension, and frustration - sure. man knows how to ramp up a scene. good storyteller, remember? but it's not his story that matters to us. it's the characters.
spenser refuses to honor player choices in a meaningful, narrative way.
in fact, that is the exact cause of our frustration!
and as far as spenser would have it, the characters will die, or remain helpless, and so our frustration has no outlet.
still, having laid all that out, i wonder. maybe there is catharsis in this kind of hopelessness. to become so deadened by tension and rage that you slip into a darker mental space, and you begin to long for any escape at all... you long to utilise the only agency you possess: that is, where exactly you choose to die. is there agency in that? you have to believe it, right? otherwise, what's the point? yes - why bother at all?
and maybe the story could be something. if spenser engaged with this idea. if he let go of the need to punish. but when his characters die, i have no expectation it will be anything other than inglorious, and possibly even accidental. and we will have lost a valuable story in what they might have done, if he'd let them. what answers they might have found to that age-old question: why should we bother?
to reiterate: the point of a game is to be an experience. and the point of horror, as a genre, is to be scared in a safe environment. to have an outlet for rage, and fear, and all ugly emotions.
when the goal of the game is survival, and you create an environment so punishingly tense that your characters are no longer scared of dying, they lose interest in the goal. games kinda need goals, you know? anyway, this is the experience spenser fails to deliver
to quote marisha, s2 e2. 'throw the whole quickstart guide out! throw it all away!' or at least, get a better dm to try and sell it! because i've read the guide front to back, and it's not a hopeless game system. but having a hopeless dm... yeah, you couldn't pay me to play at his table lol
rant over, keep scrolling. if you're one of the people who liked his style, that's okay and i respect it! i wish i had half the masochistic streak you do ^^
#candela obscura spoilers#i have a great deal of empathy for his position#its not easy#i get that#this is a great deal of pettiness that i hope he never sees#and you know what? i found his incompetence useful#in learnign what i don't want to do#and the kind of gm i never want to be
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Matt designing an encounter around using a very much immense-in-comparison-to-the-other-minis Halloween Toad as a D&D Mini is everything I have ever aspired to in wanting to GM.
And the toad didn't make it to the studio. Fuckin' tragedy.
#CR3-71#Critical Role#CR3#Matt Mercer#D&D#Critical Role spoilers#I've had the chance and time to GM like twice and never got anywhere near using some of the weird shit I've wanted to use for minis#so holy fuck I feel the pain here#look if you have a 1/2-foot tall dinky halloween skeleton it's maybe kind of lame#but if you glue it into some Dark Souls ass pose and put it up to some like <1'' D&D minis it's a completely different story
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I'm so tired of my job I wish I could kill myself in front of everyone and come back... I just want them to know how close to the end of my fucking rope I am I hate it there so much.
#i cant do a single thing right#i do what im told i do my fucking job yet i miss ONE thing and its the end of the world and im the mkst useless member of the management te#team im so upset all the time and never wantt to be there literally like 2 weeks ago i was fine and happy with my job but now im suddenly#not doing enough and my gm is pissed all the time#i literally cant do it anymore i need to look for aomewhere else but no where is going to have the pay im getting currently and ill#most likely hate my life more#i dont. dream of work i want to fucking work 2 days and be off the rest#i shouldnt die if i dont have a job i should lose myself and tbings around me its unfair that the world isnt built for people like me#i hate it all im constaly battling shit that doesnt make sense to me like whats the fucking point of sending this email that NO ONE CARES AB#ABOUT. and?????? whats the fucking point of it all stupid pleasantries and kindness gets you nowhere and life just fucking sucks#ugh
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I think a lot of folks in indie RPG spaces misunderstand what's going on when people who've only ever played Dungeons & Dragons claim that indie RPGs are categorically "too complicated". Yes, it's sometimes the case that they're making the unjustified assumption that all games are as complicated as Dungeons & Dragons and shying away from the possibility of having to brave a steep learning cure a second time, but that's not the whole picture.
A big part of it is that there's a substantial chunk of the D&D fandom – not a majority by any means, but certainly a very significant minority – who are into D&D because they like its vibes or they enjoy its default setting or whatever, but they have no interest in actually playing the kind of game that D&D is... so they don't.
Oh, they'll show up at your table, and if you're very lucky they might even provide their own character sheet (though whether it adheres to the character creation guidelines is anyone's guess!), but their actual engagement with the process of play consists of dicking around until the GM tells them to roll some dice, then reporting what number they rolled and letting the GM figure out what that means.
Basically, they're putting the GM in the position of acting as their personal assistant, onto whom they can offload any parts of the process of play that they're not interested in – and for some players, that's essentially everything except the physical act of rolling the dice, made possible by the fact most of D&D's mechanics are either GM-facing or amenable to being treated as such.*
Now, let's take this player and present them with a game whose design is informed by a culture of play where mechanics are strongly player facing, often to the extent that the GM doesn't need to familiarise themselves with the players' character sheets and never rolls any dice, and... well, you can see where the wires get crossed, right?
And the worst part is that it's not these players' fault – not really. Heck, it's not even a problem with D&D as a system. The problem is D&D's marketing-decreed position as a universal entry-level game means that neither the text nor the culture of play are ever allowed to admit that it might be a bad fit for any player, so total disengagement from the processes of play has to be framed as a personal preference and not a sign of basic incompatibility between the kind of game a player wants to be playing and the kind of game they're actually playing.
(Of course, from the GM's perspective, having even one player who expects you to do all the work represents a huge increase to the GM's workload, let alone a whole group full of them – but we can't admit that, either, so we're left with a culture of play whose received wisdom holds that it's just normal for GMs to be constantly riding the ragged edge of creative burnout. Fun!)
* Which, to be clear, is not a flaw in itself; a rules-heavy game ideally needs a mechanism for introducing its processes of play gradually.
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pixels [ newt x reader - modern text au ]
ch. 2 - drama queen core
summary: minho's drama finally catches up with him, but newt becomes a hero.
warnings: strong language, mutual pining, none really.
➥ m.list
__
THE GLADE
[ 12:08 PM ]
y/n: gm pookies
newt: it’s the afternoon.
y/n: yeah well
ur east coast
newt: so are you y/n
y/n: FINE BAD MORNING THEN ARE U HAPPY?
minho: drama queen is awake
newt: you’re the drama queen min let’s be fr
minho: u want me to die be honest
newt: see .
tommy: hey guys :3 been waiting for you all
y/n: awwww tommy <3 gm
tommy: morning sweetums
minho: ew stop
newt: how did you sleep?
tommy: good! used my new heated pillow
newt: not you
minho: not you
tommy: wtf
WHO THEN?? THERES LIKE 7 OTHER PPL IN HERE
minho: he means y/n
and there’s 4 other people not including newt and y/n dumbass
y/n: oh
why just me????
newt: cuz you stayed up til 6 am
y/n: ..
how do you know that
newt: i saw you were active on discord
gally: doesn’t that mean you were awake too then
newt: ok and?
minho: thats crazy newt
newt: no it isn’t
i just casually saw it
y/n: hehe
im ok i need to sleep more. sims 4 was really consuming me
why were you awake??
newt: up for work
minho: you get on discord before work?
chronically online..
newt: can you choke and pass out and hit your head please
minho: THE WAY U WANT ME DEAD IS INSANE
y/n: he’s gotta check on his discord hoes before hitting the grind
newt: there are no discord hoes
unless you count thomas
and i don’t
tommy: well why not
newt: because you disgust me
tommy: love u too :3<3
minho: y’all about to kiss aren’t you
newt: never say that shit again im outside your door with a b*mb
minho: why censor it
just blow me up it’s my grandmas house anyway. u want to jump her that bad????
gally: blow that bitch up i say
y/n: HELLO???!,!!
gally: minho not grandma
she loves me cuz im so tall
minho: tall people always gotta remind you they’re tall 😒
like we get it bigfoot
gally: shut up tinkerbell
y/n: you’re somewhat tall minho
minho: any man under 6’0 is considered short
y/n: yeah but newt is 6 ft trapped in a 5’10 body so not totally true
newt: what does that even mean
minho: give me a break
i can tell you exactly what that means
she wanna hit
newt: stop
tommy: don’t get his hopes up
newt: dude
stfu
y/n: what newt said
gally: can we appreciate the only one actually over 6 ft here
minho: no.
tommy: im the same height as newt!!!!
y/n: yea but ur like 3 ft trapped in a 5’10 body tommy not the same
tommy: oh ..
minho: kind of real
newt: can someone kick gally i’m tired of seeing his fucking name on my phone
gally: then turn your phone off don’t you have old ladies to tend to at the library
newt: yeah and they all love me
y/n: so real
if i was old i’d go in there and imagine you’re my young boyfriend and cling to everything u say
tommy: true im the old ladies
y/n: LMAO
minho: write a fanfic y/n why don’t you
newt: yeah you both are old and not beating the dementia allegations
y/n: IM THE YOUNGEST HERE
ur just mad you’re old as dirt
tommy: youth has left you newt and it has turn you bitter in your old age.
minho: thomas knows big words who knew
newt: which word in that sentence was big??
y/n: shut up minho
minho: wtf did i do
y/n: idk but i imagine you sitting there typing on your little phone and i got pissed
minho: WHAT???!.‘wKWHFO
newt: LMAOOOOOOOOOOO
yeah chubby little fingers hitting the wrong letters on his iphone 8
minho: im leaving
tommy: dont leave i forgive you for what you said
minho: i don’t give a damn
y’all mad y’all are all fake im the realest i’ve been prophesizing and reading scriptures 7000 years before y’all fake asses were born be so for real right now
y/n: not reading that
congrats
or sorry for what happened idk
about to drink my coffee in a wine glass
tommy: just drink wine
newt: it’s noon tommy??
tommy: ok and?
newt: explains a lot
minho: no coffee for me this new year only water and pussy juice fr fr
[ newt removed minho from the group ]
tommy: woah
y/n: woah..
newt: i can’t take it anymore
alby: How did you get that access..?
newt: don’t worry about it
in times of need i have to step in like that
y/n: hi alby!
alby: Hey y/n!
tommy: you’re such a hero newt
gally: that was deserved
who wants to play minecraft rn
y/n: me!!
alby: I’ll play, I’m off work today.
y/n: let’s go to the desert i want a camel
gally: alright but then the caves after i wanna mine
newt: if you mine with her you gotta bring extra food and storage when she dies so you can pick up the fallen items
gally: i forget you’re her designated babysitter
y/n: oh please no he isn’t
and i’ll bring my own food
newt: you always say that and then leave it in the stove oven
y/n: WELL I WONT THIS TIME
newt: sure ok
i’ll get on after work
[ alby added minho to the group ]
minho: when i get you.
newt: why did you add him back alby
alby: He was harassing me.
newt: be a man and take it
gally: im leaving
[ gally left the group ]
minho: im going to throw up and die
newt: im staying out of this
minho: (guy who caused it) im staying out of this
y/n: why does gally alwyas leave 😔
newt: why question a gift from the heavens
tommy: get online y/n gally is attacking my dirt house w a pickaxe :((((
y/n: NO IM COMING
minho: im coming to your work newt
newt: okay im locking the door early then
minho: i’ll smash through the glass idc
newt: i’m leaving my shift is over at 1 today.
minho: i’ll use life360 on you
newt: i deleted that app
minho: i’ll stand in the middle of the street
newt: ok let me position my car in front of you
just come to my apartment and we can play w them on pc and xbox
minho: …. fine but i hate your guts
newt: fine
y/n: HURRY GALLY IS ATTACKING MY SHED NOOOOWWW
newt: i’ll just rebuild it
minho: i’ll set it on fire just wait
#the maze runner#the maze runner fanfic#tmr#tmr newt#newt x reader#newt imagine#the maze runner newt x reader#the maze runner newt imagine#the maze runner newt#thomas brodie sangster#thomas brodie-sangster#thomas brodie sangster x reader#dylan o'brien#reader insert#text au#modern au#newt x reader au#fanfic#the maze runner imagine#newt tmr#thomas brodie-sangter x reader#hi#idk#reader is funny#kind of a self insert obvi#tbs#tbs x reader#tbs imagine#thomas the maze runner
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@alizarinessence thank you for your patience as I took my time to respond to you!
PbtA games can be pretty daunting, and I certainly didn't understand how the play flow was supposed to work at first. I personally learned through trial and error, as well as watching other GMs who had figured it out - I am blessed to have a friend who is very experienced in running PbtA games so I was able to play in some of his games and ask him questions.
That being said, there have been a few things that I've also found helpful that I can refer to you, so I'm going to put them up here.
The Flow Chart
This flow chart was originally posted in a Dungeon World reddit post, and later referred to me when I started asking for PbtA advice. You'll likely see a similar flow chart in Apocalypse Keys, where Rae Nedjadi illustrates how a typical session of play is likely to look like.
In any given PbtA game, you as a GM are going to be presenting pieces of information to the players, just as you would in any other ttrpg. PbtA codifies this information as "moves," and each game will present you with information that is considered useful for the kind of story that it is design to tell.
In Masks, the players are teenage superheroes, so the game encourages the GM to introduce facts such as "civilians are in danger" or "your dad thinks you're being irresponsible."
In The Ward, the players are medical doctors in an Emergency Ward, so the game advises the GM to introduce truths such as "a patient's condition is worsening" or "someone's dad is fighting with a nurse in another room."
This reinforces the common maxim that the game is a conversation, a cycle of presenting new information, letting players decide what they want to do with that information, and making a roll if the fiction calls for it. This is a rather simplified cycle of course - the "see what happens" sections may include moments when players may jump in with their own characters' reactions, generating more events that the GM doesn't need to add to in order to make them interesting. Many PbtA games thrive off of player conflict, which can occupy the table for a couple of hours without the GM needing to add anything (Last Fleet is a good example of this kind of play.)
Listening to Others
Listening to other people play PbtA games can give you a sense of how the game is meant to feel, especially when the GM's and players take their time to talk through their moves and how they work.
I found Monster Hour to be exceptionally helpful; they started out as a Monster of the Week podcast, and even though I've never run MotW specifically, listening to Quinn talk the players through how to ask questions or use different moves made the game very easy for me to understand.
Joining a Community
Joining a community that loves a specific PbtA game, or PbtA games in general can be very helpful when seeking out advice. The PbtA Discord channel has a number of players and designers, who have a lot of game experience and are more than happy to dish out advice.
Start With Games That Have Guide-Rails
Not all PbtA games are created equal, and while the original spirit of the game was to make sure you didn't plot out a story-line, there's still some games that have a certain amount of prep that will give you the tools you need to gain confidence as a GM. Here's some of my favourites:
Visigoths vs. Mall Goths can be played as a one-shot, and doesn't require players to make a lot of decisions when putting their characters together. It has a number of scenarios that you can throw at your players, a mapped-out mall with details on all of the NPCs (and whether or not you can flirt with them), and some pretty hard limitations on what you can and cannot do. You can't leave the mall, for example - go through an exit on one side of the mall and you'll just pop back in on the other. You can visit the stores throughout the day, but each team of players can only go to so many places before the mall is closed for the day, therefore bringing the mission to a close.
Apocalypse Keys has a game structure that looks daunting but can be broken down into steps, and also comes with pre-written scenarios as well as instructions on how to create your own. The concept is pretty straightforward - you're solving a mystery, and you need to do it before one of the Doors of the Apocalypse is opened. This puts the game on a timer, which helps GMs keep their players on task, and also provides the Game Master with a list of clues to drop into the story as the players look for them. I've heard very good things about how Brindlewood Bay, which inspired some of the mechanics in Apocalypse Keys, makes itself easy to run for new GMs, so if you can get your hands on that book, you might find it helpful!
Last Fleet is laser-focused on a very specific premise - you are humans, in space, running away from a terrible and insidious threat. What is more, this threat has the ability to infiltrate your fleet. The laser-focus brings everyone at the table to the same page pretty quickly, and the setting includes a mounting pressure track that will make sure things keep happening, so as the person running the game, you won't have to do much after you set up the initial scenario. The game also comes with some really good advice on where you want to start with your players, to make sure they're on edge, but not fully panicking yet. Then you just need to tip the scales enough to cause them to ask questions, make questionable choices, and start a series of actions that snowball into catastrophe.
Wrapping Up
This is all the advice I have for stepping into PbtA, but more than anything, I recommend just diving in and giving it a go! As with any GM-ing endeavour, you will likely walk away from your first session with a list of things that you'll want to do differently the next time around, but that's just a sign that you're learning.
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The thing I've realized, in the broader Actual Play space, is that a lot of creators are trying to turn Actual Play shows into TV shows.
You mentioned Kollok in your tags, and the creator of that has mentioned creating Kollok in a way to try to appeal to the Netflix audience.
And I'm all for experimentation, but tbh if I wanted to watch a TV show, I would go watch a TV show. That's not what I'm looking for in an Actual Play and over editing and gimmicks actively turn me off from it.
Folks creating Actual Play seem to put a lot of weight on it, but I don't know if it's that important from an audience perspective.
Hey anon,
Huge same - I've been thinking about this for a while, especially in regards to choices I didn't like (notably on D20, though the Candela split screen in chapter 3, while relatively minor, felt like part of the same trend and I'm really interested in seeing whether they keep it). I actually did mean to write more about this not in the tags of a reblog, so thanks for this ask because it gives me that motivation to do it!
Earlier this year I was at an event and someone who to be totally honest I found kind of annoying was talking about Dimension 20, and I decided to keep quiet and listen to what other people had to say, and another person (whom I respect and specifically know to be like, left-leaning and inclusive and not gatekeeper dudebro type, which is relevant to the next statement) who is solidly in Gen X and has been playing D&D since at least 2e mentioned that he doesn't like Actual Play at all because he is from the era where D&D was frequently played in third person and is somewhat of a purist in that sense. Ie, this guy would say "Gawain pulls out his sword and smites the dragon, with a 24 to hit", rather than "I'm going to pull out my sword and smite the dragon." He described his idea of D&D as being very much collaborative storytelling in the sense of a bunch of third person narrators who happen to be the storytellers for one specific character, not a first-person acted scene.
I happen to like both forms of narration and am not a purist either way, and indeed use both third person and first person myself as a player (as do many actual players; you see this on CR and D20 all the time). But I think this does show just how broad this spectrum is. You have people all the way on the "I am narrating an improvised story, I am the storyteller puppeting my character and I am not trying to be immersed" side and then you have shows that are trying to push this into full immersion...but so long as you have dice rolls, you'll never achieve it.
I prefer something in between: I do love watching people act, but I really like the gears and wires! I love mechanics! I think people who say "I love actual play D&D but I don't really care for combat, only RP" don't actually like actual play D&D! This is a specific format and I do not want people to hide the fact that they are using the rules of a game and are at a table, because they are and we know it.
This came up when I and others talked about the Legend of Vox Machina adaptation: they're probably going to have to find a way to convey the same tragedy and gravity of Scanlan's ninth level counterspell that doesn't require viewers to know the mechanics, because if you watch that scene as actual play the meaning of Sam saying "Nine" is immediately apparent. It hits hard with that one single word, but that won't be the case in an animated adaptation where no one is rolling a D20. Mechanics are in intrinsic part of actual play. You can enjoy actual play without that knowledge, but a solid grounding in those mechanics will only enhance that enjoyment (well, unless you're one of those rules-lawyery weirdos who gets bitter about any GM rule of cool/homebrew that they couldn't predict from the rulebooks but those people will never be happy).
The more general context of "being in a game", not just mechanics, is also in my opinion valuable. Brennan, on a Worlds Beyond Number fireside chat, referred to certain NPCs like Caramelinda as "furious that they are in a D&D game" and it's a funny and true statement. I feel like trying to push actual play into the realm of scripted shows is that: it feels like you're trying to hide the origins, and I think the quality of the show will ultimately suffer when you do that. It feels almost ashamed of what it is, and I don't think you can make something that transforms a medium/genre/thing in between the two without having a profound love and respect for the original, even if you also find it flawed. (This is also, tbh, how I feel about a lot of attempts to divorce D&D from the fact that it is ultimately a game influenced heavily by sword-and-sorcery fantasy, or about attempts to turn high or heroic fantasy into something that neatly affirms all of one's 2024 real world political beliefs, but that's another post).
I also think that the out-of-character element of actual play is a big draw. I have been open about having complicated feelings about the parasocial and projection aspects; but those feelings are "hey, this is still a show that is a source of livelihood, you are not hanging out in someone's living room and getting weird about the fact that the CR cast no longer responds to every tweet is dumb" and "you have not been betrayed by the creators because you didn't get the plot you wanted," and "the fact that two actors sit next to each other is not, in fact, a solid basis for shipping." I am equally opposed to the idea of "the actors do not exist, only the characters do," put forward in that attempt to make actual play Netflix-ready. It's fun to watch the CR cast rib Travis for turning bright red for, as people said, pretend kissing his real wife. It's fun to watch the Intrepid Heroes heckle Brennan when he plays a villain. It's fun to hear Aabria and Erika scream at WBN plot developments and for the McElroys or the NADDPod crew to wheeze with laughter and all of these shows but CR are to a degree edited, and all leave that element in, which I think says something really important about what actual play is understood to be!
It does not escape me that the seasons/shows using heavier camera edits have often, in my opinion, sacrificed story quality for a visual style I don't even care for. I do watch prestige television, and one of the more striking cinematographic choices I've seen lately are the extremely long single take shots used on both Succession's final season (Connor's Wedding, 4x03) and The Bear's first season (Review, 1x07). Prestige TV is not doing the glitchy Neverafter stuff. Hell, I liked Sagas of Sundry: Dread and never finished Madness before it went offline and haven't made an effort to seek it out specifically because the black box theater feel of Dread felt fun and new but not too removed from actual play vibes, whereas the higher production values of Madness, ironically, made it feel too artificial and stilted to keep my interest.
Actual play is its own beast, and in trying to appeal to a new audience you're probably going to lose a lot of the one you have. A big part of why I haven't been motivated to check out Kollok is that everything I hear about it, even positive reviews, makes it sound like it's missing the things I like from actual play and doesn't achieve the level of scripted shows. Honestly I think the REAL answer here is that if you want to find a space between a Netflix drama and an Actual Play show, ditch the rules and make stuff like Midst, which is as discussed inspired by ttrpg/actual play spaces, but is broadly plotted out in advance. I think that approach can combine the best of both worlds, whereas I feel as though attempting to be a Netflix show will usually spend so much time trying to hide the fact that there's a table there that it will detract from the actual story.
#answered#Anonymous#i should probably watch an ep of kollok before passing full judgment#but like...god. everything i hear about it makes me go oh god they massacred my boy#long post#on actual play
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apologies if this has been asked already, but I'm curious as to why you enjoy monsterhearts so much? you recommend it because the mechanics support narrative arc, due to the way the skins are narratively connected to a certain high school clique. but I found that to be the most frustrating part of the game, honestly.
I was constantly hitting my head against the narrative and my character because it felt like there was only one way to really play a skin and their arc. one of my favorite things to do in ttrpgs is to Subvert classes and tropes, but in monsterhearts your relationship to your class (and the mechanics that go with it) feel either static or inevitable. The Queen is always the Queen Bee, which I guess makes sense, but it simply feels boring.
your monsterheart post was in response to why everyone likes d&d warlock, and op said its because warlock's mechanics are strictly tied to its narrative, but i disagree: I think a lot of people, me included, like warlock because of the Choices and freedoms that come with the class. you didn't Have to play a warlock with a direct, antagonistic, and codependent conflict with their patron. because the game does not have any specific mechanics for patrons, you can kind of do whatever with them.
I always think that limits will make someone think more creatively in those bounds, and I was hoping monsterheart would have that sort of creative energy, but when I was playing it, I felt like I was wrangling the rules and my own moveset at every turn.
am i simply not viewing the game in the right way? is it just not for me? am i not being creative enough? I'm trying to get over the mindset that rules are the enemy, but idk. i just haven't been able to really get into smaller ttrpgs except like, troika! (which i do love a lot tbh), and i want to know what I'm missing. sorry for the long, rambling question
It might simply not be for you. For me the fact that the skins each represent a clear narrative trope within high school drama that has ways that the rules encourage them to act in (those ways being Bad because the point of the game is to produce explosive melodrama) is a net positive, because the character skins are not just "classes" but also archetypes. And while within a single skin the narrative arc of the character can feel like it's prewritten it never exists in isolation: there are always the other PCs, the rest of the school, and the town the characters live in, as well as whatever Threat threatens the town this time. All of those, in combination, are what makes the arc and what makes the narrative truly emergent. Monsterhearts really shines as a game where the PCs are at each other's throats and working at cross purposes, and because of that the best experience comes from approaching it via simply producing the most fun melodrama while trying to fuck with the other characters.
Also I do think there's something to be said for the freedom afforded by the Warlock in D&D in having the license to consider the character's relationship to their patron, but I also see that there being very little meat to the relationship with the patron, mechanically, means that there is also very little narrative weight attached to it. Because narratives in RPGs emerges from mechanics. The Warlock is a great example of a class that has well-established ties to the fiction of the world and that suggests drama, but still leaves all of that up to the group. Or, as @rathayibacter said in the replies to that post:
the thing that kills me is that, rules as written, your warlock patron doesnt actually matter. dnd gives zero tools to the players or gms for how to get a warlock's patron involved in the game outside a few vague suggestions. it's the best the game's got to offer, and its still 95% people bringing their own soup to the restaurant that only sells stale crackers.
Anyway, D&D also has strong character archetypes for the point of the game it's mechanically most opinionated about: combat. While people do complain about Rogues doing nothing but sneak attack all day, that's literally what the fiction sets them up to do, and a Rogue that sneak attacks all day in D&D is doing God's own work. So too with the Mortal who ends up in the middle of a romantic triangle/square/pentacle in Monsterhearts thus making the situation more fucked up, because that drama is what the mechanics of Monsterhearts are concerned with.
But yeah tastes on this do vary and some people are okay with background stuff being just suggestions, but I personally like it when it is actually in harmony with and supported by the mechanics, because that makes the fiction tangibly real in the game. But idk
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I got such an amazing gift from a fellow player in DnD today, I am still glowing with happiness and excitement.
I made the conscious choice at the start of the campaign to play a very young, very naive religious fanatic in a world designed to only contain shades of grey (Shulassakar in Eberron). Suffice it to say, I did not intend for her to live very long.
What I did not know before our first session was that a fellow player decided to play a very liberal, very hedonistic blood cleric Dhampir named Corvin, whose morality is firmly on the darker side of grey. We clashed from the beginning, and I had already attacked him once, but was stopped by other members of the party. I also saw him help and heal others, and we had each other's back in a few fights. For someone like Selise, who was born into an eternal, holy war to keep one of the Overlords from taking over the world, that means a lot.
I was just accepting that maybe, just maybe, 'good' might include other things than I was taught, when we went to the desert to find an old battlefield that became a manifestation zone for war and strife. Because Corvin hadn't fed for several days on the journey, he went into a blood frenzy, killing and feeding on a swarm of blood bugs.
Long story short, after he found himself again, I challenged him and we ended up fighting each other, becoming more and more locked in and angry until it truly was to the death.
As a player, I was hesitant at first. I had never taken such a big swing before, and it felt wrong to attack another player. Thomas and me had talked about it once it was clear our characters may be headed that way, and our GM and the other players had OKed PvP as well, so all was fine on the consent front.
And still I needed the dice to make the final decision, and I was quite shocked when they decided it was time to fight. But now I was commited, and so I went for it with a heavy heart. I love my Selise, and I really did not want to kill another player's character. It was a long fight with lots of dice rolls for me, since the third PC tried to stop us. Well, mostly me.
Halfway through, Corvin asked Selise if he will ever be safe in her presence, and I had to actually think about it. I talked myself through it out loud, and came to the shocking conclusion that no, he would not be. And after that, when we both knew this was to the end, I lost my doubts, and it became so much fun. I still did not want to kill Corvin, but I was OK if Selise died, and I knew it was OK if Corvin did.
In the end, Corvin had one hit point left, Selise had 4, and it was the third player's turn. She decided to use up all her inspiration to get the two NPCs around us to grapple me. I got out of her grasp, I got out of one of the Elf's grasp, but the third one pinned me down in a pool of blood. And then it was Corvin's turn. He casts Toll the Dead, my dice rolls, and it is only a 10. Selise is dead.
And then this motherfucking blood cleric, this awesome player and very kind friend, uses all his inspiration to cast a ritual and make me into a Dhampir like himself.
Fuck me, I did not see that coming.
It is such a beautiful, beautiful gift to a fellow player, a way to take the big swing, see it through to the end, and still keep a beloved character, and give her such an interesting new twist.
And Thomas told me after the game that it was his plan all along if we ever got here, and our GM knew about it, too. That means he thought about this, thought about a way to both let me be true to Selise, and let me keep her as well, and it is such a kind and generous thing to do that I'm still crying about it now.
And now it is my choice where we go from here. There are so many cool possibilities, because as Shulassakar, Selise is basically a mix between Aasimar and Yuan-Ti, descended from the Couatl: god-like beings with wings and a snake's body, and what does that mean for her now?
But that is a thought for another day. Today, I will go to sleep with a stupid smile on my face, firm in my conviction that telling stories together is good for the soul. Good night, gentlefolk, or god day, and may the story gods look upon you favorably always!
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LBTE: Jared (175)
We did it, everyone! We made it to the end. I had no idea what I was getting into over six years(!)ago, and I probably would have balked if I had, so it’s for the best I didn’t.
This is — tough. These two have been constant companions for over half a decade, and in that time I thought about them, without exaggeration, every single day. It’s really difficult to leave that behind. But it’s the right place to leave them, and it’s time.
The LBTE answers some questions re: timeline and the like. I haven't tackled any asks yet since I didn't want to accidentally spoil anyone, and that worked out, because a lot of the asks are answered below.
Okay. Part 175.
Here's the series page one last time, for those following along. Scroll all the way to the end.
Brian’s the one who gives them the news.
Brian does not have to give them this news, frankly it should be Dave, but Brian finds out and he’s so excited(!) he calls Bryce right away. In case you’re wondering if Brian is still the best GM.
He doesn’t know what it takes to be untouchable, but he’s pretty sure trading a Conn Smythe winner with a sweetheart deal would get Brian run out of Vancouver.
The Cup win is a year before the epilogue takes place. Yes, Eastern teams are getting kind of pissed off about this run of Western Conference winners I have going on. Especially because the Scouts are still in the wings, being an annoying as hell dynasty.
Bryce signed an 8x8 in the summer following the end of IJ(aoe). 64 million dollars is obviously nothing to scoff at, but he could have made 9+ on the open market, easy.
Jared’s was 2.5x4. Which is MORE than he’d get open market, especially regarding term, but like, did you just see the hometown discount Marcus gave them? His husband being there is kind of a condition.
Okay, so maybe Jared isn’t exactly calm, because he doesn’t think running through negative scenarios is calm, exactly, but it does calm him just enough that he isn’t plastering himself to Bryce in an attempt to eavesdrop.
Maybe not plastering himself, but he is inching closer and closer as this conversation goes on.
“Yeah, he’s sitting right beside me,” Bryce says. “He hasn’t ripped the phone out of my hand yet, but he’s definitely considering it.”
And glaring. Oh, the glaring Bryce is on the receiving end of right now.
“I’m up for the King Clancy,” Bryce says.
A leadership and humanitarian award, though the Mark Messier Leadership Award (HAH) is defacto now more straight team leadership, and the King Clancy has mostly become charitable impact in local community. Though it does tend to go to players in leadership roles (captains, alternates), it isn’t exclusive to them.
"Wouldn’t I just be a distraction?” Jared asks.
Bruh. You think Bryce would go to the Awards without you? Like, for any award, but the one for starting a charity that he never would have been in the mental place to start were it not for his relationship with you?
If he’d thought for even a millisecond before opening his mouth he would not have said this. Some things have not changed in the Marcus Matheson household.
“Us doesn’t take things away from me,” Bryce says. “I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t met you.”
“I know, but—“
“No, seriously, J,” Bryce says. “That’s not — you think the guy you met would have done like, any of this? I couldn’t even think about shit without needing to climb out of my head.”
So like — if IJ(aoe) was the traditional storyline following a hero’s ups and downs, the hero pretty clearly would be Bryce. And when the hero’s struggling and lashing out and pretending to be someone he’s not, and hating both himself and the person he’s pretending to be, he gets assigned community service and he meets the most beautiful person he’s ever seen.
And now he has to face those parts of himself he’s trying to bury, because those parts are loudly telling him he needs to be around this person every single second of every single day.
And this person doesn’t like the persona the hero’s put on. He likes the person the hero is, which is sensitive, and empathetic, and emotional, all those things the hero’s been told he can’t be, shouldn’t be, that’s what the love interest wants him to be. Exactly who he is.
Bryce wouldn’t have had the guts to take off the mask if, every step of the way, Jared wasn’t letting him know, with word and deed, that guy under the mask was the person he was in love with.
And that’s not even getting into the fact that, from the beginning, Jared is much more comfortable with his sexuality, and people knowing about his sexuality, than Bryce is.
Bryce kisses him quiet, and Jared’s grateful, because he wanted to take the words back as soon as they left his mouth, stomach twisting just saying them. He suddenly felt this visceral, totally illogical anger toward someone who doesn’t actually exist, or like, exists somewhere, not knowing there’s this huge hole in his life because Bryce Marcus isn’t in it. Fuck that guy, though. Better him than Jared.
Jared doesn’t fight but he’ll make an exception for that guy.
“You’ll come?” Bryce asks.
“Yeah,” Jared says. “I’ll come. Of course I’ll come.”
An echo of all of one part ago! Of course. Jared’s answer to Bryce’s question is of course. Even if it’s a ride in an obnoxiously showy convertible or a trip to Las Vegas in June.
Or any other month, he supposes, though the league’s getting pretty deep into talks to make it an expansion team, so that may change.
I still haven’t decided vis a vis expansion teams (and certainly haven't decided when that would take effect) but I’ve realised I can yoink players from other teams and then put them on one team TOGETHER, like one big summer camp, and that sounds chaotic and fun.
Bryce squeezes his knee, like he knows he’s thinking angry thoughts. Probably not hard to guess. They pass a building’s display flipping from the time to the temperature. 106. That’s a life-threatening fever. They’re in a life-threatening fever.
I checked the temperature in late June over the course of four years so this would be accurate, and accuracy is a high grade fever. If it’s 106 inside, go to the hospital. Outside, you’re in Vegas in late June.
“Did you know it’s forty-one degrees out?” Jared demands.
Bryce squeezes his knee again.
“I know,” Jared mutters.
Look at Bryce handling him without a word.
snapping a picture of the view from their window for the group chat, captioning it with Man’s hubris, then changing for dinner.
Jared Matheson, everyone.
He’s halfway through a reply when the elevator doors open, which means he doesn’t realise he’s sharing the elevator with Brandon Simcoe until the doors have already closed behind him, and now he’s trapped with him for the next 23 floors. Unless he hits the button for the next floor, but that’s showing weakness, right? Jared’s pretty sure that’s the opposite of what you’re supposed to do when faced with an apex predator. What’s he supposed to do, though, ignore him? Play dead?
He’s such a drama queen. Shithead’s harmless.
(This is not true even a little; it’s fun that the first real view anyone got of Shithead was Joey’s, because Shithead IS harmless to Joey. He loves Joey! Then you’ve got Holden getting cross-checked black and blue by him even though Shithead likes him in COTT. Bryce? Not his friend. Not harmless.
“Yeah,” Jared says. What’s he going to do, disavow his own husband to save his skin? It clearly wouldn’t even work. “That’s — yeah, I am.”
Got to love Jared’s moral calculus does take into account whether going ‘Bryce Marcus who?’ would save his skin, and only rejecting that option because Shithead clearly wouldn’t believe him.
“Cool,” Simcoe says. “You know, my best buddy back on the Scouts is gay. Fucking love that guy.”
Joey: Bud you gotta stop telling everybody that.
Shithead: That you’re gay?
Joey: That I’m your best buddy.
“What, that I love him?” Simcoe says. “Oh man, I didn’t mean that way, he’s got a fiancé. And I’m not gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. Obviously. You know.”
;-; Brandon
Anyway, no ScratchnMoney marriage yet. We haven't gotten THAT far into the future.
“We’re not like—“ Jared says. “You know we don’t all like…talk, right? We don’t have a gay player group chat or anything.”
“You should, it’d be sick,” Simcoe says.
I’m with Shithead on this. Get on it, Marc.
The elevator doors open, and Simcoe claps him on the back so hard Jared has to put a foot forward so he doesn’t careen right into the elevator wall, says, “Love is love, man, love is love,” then walks away.
Your periodic reminder that Shithead is the Bruins’ YCP rep.
He sums things up to the group chat while he waits for his heart rate to slow, his knees to cooperate again. He’s just finished when Bryce walks out of the restaurant across the lobby, beelining for him like he’s got a Jared-dar.
I spelled that so many ways before I settled on Jared-dar. Jaredar. Jared-Dar. Jare-dar. Nothing feels right.
Anyway, Bryce definitely has one of those installed.
“You’re sure you’re good?” Bryce asks, fingers in Jared’s hair now, like he’s feeling for bumps and bruises.
Jared laughs. “Oh my god, the most violent thing he did was pat me on the back a little too hard.”
Bryce starts patting down Jared’s back.
Both of them reacting like Jared just got out of a tiger enclosure is great.
Summers, thankfully, doesn’t take Bryce ditching him over an elevator conversation as an insult. He thinks it’s hilarious, in fact, and it ends up being the nicest dinner Jared’s had with both of them. Which isn’t saying much, really, but it is something.
‘My husband was stuck in an elevator with a dude I’ve punched in the face like half a dozen different times’ is delightful to Dave. Emergency accepted.
Anyway, Bryce and Dave aren’t suddenly David and Dave, they still tend to get under each other’s skin, sometimes accidentally, sometimes not, but they’re both getting better.
Elaine and her boyfriend arrive from Vancouver not long after they wrap it up, and Bryce shakes his hand and says his name without scowling once, which is also a first.
Never mind the reams of paper I could have written about the road to the Cup, and the Cup, and Raf’s wedding, and Chaz’s wedding — this right here could have been an arc in itself.
He’s definitely had help. From Elaine, of course, but Jared suspects Ash’s involvement too, along with possibly Erin’s — ‘my beloved sister’ certainly sounds like her doing. He wouldn’t even be surprised if PR Grace took a swipe at it — some of it has that PR gloss to it, though not so much that it feels over-polished.
All have had a hand in this speech, yes. Also Stephen and Gabe. (Bryce used Stephen as a stand-in for Jared in the ‘make sure this isn’t too cheesy’ aspect.)
“Really,” Jared says. “You can probably cut the stuff about me by half, though. Possibly three quarters. Just leave it at, I don’t know, ‘shoutout to my husband Jared’ and move right on?”
It’s cute you think that’s even worth the effort of saying.
Jared’s in a custom tailored suit made with ‘summer fabric’, whatever that is, other than cooler than the usual suit fabric, thank fuck.
It’s just linen. Jared tends to tune out immediately where any of this is involved because he knows Bryce has it handled.
He’d originally protested that he could just wear the suit he wore at Raf’s wedding, because Bryce was practically obsessed with him in it at the time
That suit was tailored to perfection. Bryce wants to know the name of Raf’s guy.
Anyway, not so subtle implication minimum two years have passed since the end of IJ(aoe) as Raf’s wedding was a year out from the end, and Jared isn’t talking about Raf’s wedding like it was a week ago.
Also summer fabric’s not a bad thing, considering he’s got four weddings to go to in the next three months, including Gabe and Stephen’s. Canucks just can’t stop proposing. It’s frankly gotten ridiculous.
Okay, another ask I got: was the Stanley Cup recent or older. The epilogue is a year after they win the Cup — most of those proposals took place in the weeks following the Cup, and now, a year later, the weddings are happening.
Including Gabe and Stephen’s, and yes: the original just city hall with immediate family ceremony is no longer canon because the sad eyes Gabe would get from his entire team. Why does he not want them there. etc. (Gabe’s mom is so happy I changed this.)
Right now he’s grateful for his suit, because as hot as he is — and he is disgustingly hot — at least he isn’t wearing wool like the poor kid in front of him. He looks miserable. Also about twelve years old, but then, he’s there for the Calder. He isn’t going to win it — there’s a very clear front runner and it’s not him — and Jared feels kind of bad that he’s not only a loser, but a loser in a hot as fuck suit, who’s too young to legally do anything Vegas was built for.
Have been asked a few times who this is. No one who’s been established in the ‘verse, but I fucking feel for this dude. Him and the Calder winner should totally hook up later. For tradition’s sake.
Jared may as well go over to the group, sign some autographs and take a few selfies while he waits for Bryce and Elaine to catch up. He plans on taking his time, but one of the girls asks Jared to marry her, and then asks him to sign her chest.
Jared misses anonymity.
“I said no,” Bryce assures him.
“I wasn’t worried,” Jared says. “You being gay is kind of why we’re here.”
“It was a guy,” Bryce says.
“Still not worried,” Jared says.
“You don’t ever have to be,” Bryce says, very seriously, and thankfully Elaine pats Bryce’s arm so Jared doesn’t have to. Like he said: not worried.
Jared has absolutely zero concerns about Bryce straying. Less than zero.
Jared would protest that it’s just a nervous habit, but that would directly contradict him telling Bryce he wasn’t nervous right before the red carpet, and Bryce clearly knows it.
Why must you call Jared on his lies, Bryce?
“I feel like I’m at the draft again,” Jared says, wiping his palms on his slacks, even though the AC is so high he’s actually a little chilly. They must have it cranked to the max in a war with the swelter outside.
It's fun to send Jared to Vegas in June after he bitched so much about Tampa in June. Boy does not handle heat with grace.
"I've mentioned that I'm proud of you, right?" Jared asks.
"I know you are," Bryce says, which is a very nice way of saying no.
Another call back to last part! Because Jared is his father’s son whether he likes it or not.
"I know, babe," Bryce says. "You telling Ash and Grace and Erin their partners are losers who've never even been nominated for anything was kind of a sign. Which like, you remember Julius won the Calder, right? Because Erin definitely does."
This didn’t make it into the final bit, but Jared receives this immediately after Bryce wins the King Clancy:
"Okay phew Bryce won so I can send this:
I WOULD LIKE TO REMIND YOU THAT UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE (your wonderful husband that you do not deserve) JULIUS HALLA WON AN AWARD IN THE VERY 1ST YEAR OF HIS NHL CAREER AND MOREOVER WAS NOMINATED…"
She would have sent it anyway, Jared's pretty sure, she just would have waited until tomorrow.
"Fuck," Jared repeats. He wasn't one of the top finalists, because the Oilers sucked hard even with all he did for them, but still, he was. "Erin's going to be on me about this forever."
Deservedly. How dare you forget Julius’ Calder.
“If they don’t give you the award I don’t know what I’ll do,” Jared says. Maybe burn the theatre down, though he’d probably die of heat stroke before he pulled it off.
Jared turns to arson quicker and quicker as this series goes on.
“Hey man, good to see you again,” Simcoe says, then looks at Bryce, mouth flattening. Bryce looks back, mouth just as flat as Simcoe’s. They hold eye contact for long enough that Simcoe’s date coughs, giving Jared an awkward smile.
I knew what the people needed: more Shithead.
“I can’t see past his head,” Bryce complains.
“Not my fault you’re short, bro,” Simcoe says, without turning around.
Shithead’s a monster. Like, physically, as well as everything else.
“Be the bigger man than him,” Jared murmurs to him. “Proverbially, if not literally.”
Bryce scowls, foot coming up in position dangerously close to seat kicking.
I think repeatedly kicking the seat in front of you may lose some points on the leadership aspect of the award, but also, the committee might make an exception because it’s Shithead.
“Do not,” Jared says.
“Or what,” Bryce says.
“I’ll switch spots with Elaine,” Jared says. “Hang out with her boyfriend for the rest of the show. Do some nice bonding.”
Bryce makes a furious noise, but lowers his foot to the ground from its current ‘in preparation to kick’ position, so Jared considers it a win.
As you can see here, Bryce is taking Elaine dating with tremendous maturity and dignity.
The show itself is excruciating, a mix of bad jokes, a rock-ish country-ish band Jared’s pretty sure he’s obligated to like as a born and raised Albertan, but refuses to due to the fact they suck, and a distribution of all the awards everyone already knew the winner of.
I’m not vagueblogging about Nickelback or anything, just describing a significant number of bands from Alberta.
Bryce mutely holds out his hand, and Jared takes it, squeezing when Bryce gives him a slightly sickly smile. He looks nervous as hell now, and any other time Jared would point that out, but not right now, not today.
The smile Jared gives Bryce is just as sickly, for the record.
but when Bryce stands up, he does too. Has to, considering how tightly he’s holding his hand.
Literally one unit.
“Can I kiss you right now,” Bryce says. They may be out, but they haven’t, not in public. Even when they won the Cup they settled for hugs until the cameras were put away.
Bryce wholly intended to just hug Jared this time too (or else they would have discussed this before like, that second) but he just — really wants to kiss Jared right now.
“Please,” Bryce says, and Jared’s barely nodded before Bryce is hauling him in.
Needs to, really.
And objectively, it’s a shitty kiss. Has to be one of the worst they’ve ever shared, and neither of them can stop smiling long enough to fix it even a little. But with Bryce’s hands cradling his head, Bryce’s grin splitting his face it’s so fucking wide, Jared can’t bring himself to mind.
And like their engagement, and their wedding, and Bryce doing all the machinations to get himself to Vancouver, the kiss fucking sucks. Because, once again, they’re both grinning too hard to kiss each other properly, but they can’t stop smiling long enough kiss each other properly, and they refuse to stop kissing.
And yeah. In the traditional story, the hero goes from the talented but angry, terrified, self-hating player walking into a hockey camp for community service because it’s that or probation. And then, around decade later, he’s kissing his husband on a nationally televised show, after accepting an award for working with LGBTQ youth athletes, with the frankly too hot for him love interest supporting and pushing him the whole way.
If you’d have told a 20 year old Bryce that was coming, he’d have probably punched you (Oilers fan was a time traveller: confirmed). But he’s done so much growing up — not just from who I thought he was, or Jared thought he was (neither of us gave him nearly enough credit at the start), but from who he thought he was, or had the potential to be.
I wrote the as sort of a summary of the final part about a year ago, an encapsulation of the entire series in one sentence, to keep in mind as I finished the series.
The biggest goal for Bryce, along the way, is being seen and accepted for who he actually is. Bryce wants that for others too. Jared just wants it for Bryce.
The hero of the story doesn’t narrate this one, but the narrator is, without a doubt, his biggest fan.
(He is aware he shares this title with Elaine.)
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grid-combat sandbox thing!
i get distracted with new projects a lot, but lately my brain's been hyperfocused on one in particular. i wanted to take a crack at combining 4e-style tactical combat with OSR-style sandbox play, which on the surface seem like entirely opposite directions. and they kind of are, but i think i have something
since i started work on it i ended up dropping the words "OSR" and "4e" from my descriptions of it bc i think they end up evoking the wrong image. there's a lot that's core to both playstyles that i'm omitting to make it play nicer with the other playstyle. but it's far along enough now that i can talk about some of the design philosophy and how that manifests.
little to no scaling
the traditional way modern D&D (and to an extent even old-school D&D) handles progression is with big numerical scaling. a level 2 PC has nearly twice as much HP/damage as a level 1 PC. so you scale monsters to match, because the PCs have to get into fights around their level for the game to work.
skeletons are a real danger at 1st-level. they're manageable by 3rd, easy by 5th, and a joke by 7th-level. so you just stop running into skeletons, and when you're nearing the end of that level range any skeleton encounters that do happen will have a lot of skeletons.
this is bad for sandboxes! say i'm preparing a sandbox setting ahead of time and have a dungeon with a bunch of skeletons in it somewhere. i don't know what level the PCs will find it at - depending on whether they go through it as a 2nd-level or 6th-level party, it might be incredibly easy or so dangerous there's little they can do to mitigate that difficulty. or i'll just have to redo my encounter math the moment they find it, and that sucks for both the GM and players.
so, big numerical scaling is out. there's levels, you level up, but most of what you get from that level-up is a new ability. not a big pile of hit points and more damage. there's some scaling, your numbers are like twice as big at 10th-level compared to 1st-level, but it's a small enough range that a hard encounter at 1st-level will stay relevant throughout a whole campaign.
the game's far along enough i can create & fully level a fighter PC, so i made a 1st and 10th-level (max) character and put them side-by-side to get a feel for the scaling.
the warrior class
speaking of, the first class i made is the fighter, obviously. it's always the first thing i want to get right if i'm making a D&D-like system.
this is a good showcase of what each class is going to end up looking like: you start with a few core features & two perks (3 for warrior bc i like them being customizable). warrior perks range from a few unique moves to useful passives that let you resist statuses, strike multiple enemies, move further, equip heavier gear, parry weak attacks, etc.
the two core features, versatile fighter & combat opportunist, are designed to reward you for engaging in core combat mechanics. you get bonuses to attack from high ground, and this increases that bonus. every weapon has a unique special move you can do with it, and this lets you use any weapon you have with no cost to switch.
i've never liked the way most D&D-likes handle weapons, where you design your build around one specific weapon. you invest all your feats into being The Polearm Guy and when you find a cool magic warhammer or dagger you're just like. well i don't want this. it's not a polearm. so this fighter is instead designed to encourage you to carry around a ton of different weapons and use all of them.
exploration & the ranger
i used to hang out in the 5e community a lot, and people hated the 5e ranger. why? cause nobody used the travel rules, and you can't really blame them. the game has rules for how far you can travel each day, for random encounters & whether they ambush you, foraging, encumbrance, different travel speeds.
but most people who play 5e don't want that kind of experience, and 5e half-commits to it by leaving these rules scattered through the dungeon master's guide and making them too tedious. everything's measured in real numbers - miles, minutes, pounds. you track weight with pounds instead of item slots. of course nobody wants to track encumbrance when they have to stop the game to ask the GM how many pounds the macguffin weighs. nobody wants to dig through the DMG looking for the rule that tells you how many miles you can move. it just gets in the way and stops the game, so nobody does.
all of this screws over the ranger class which gives you bonuses to things like travel speed, not being ambushed while traveling, finding more rations, and tracking. people disliked the ranger so much that a supplement came out that replaced all of their exploration features with naturey combat features and some skill boosts, and since then that's the actual ranger when anyone wants to play one.
with that context, here's the exploration features my game's ranger gets.
the feature on the left is inherent while the right two are perks. there's combat features, but they're not part of the point i wanted to make.
the ranger needs to feel useful, and for that, the exploration needs to be front and center. so what better game than one designed for sandboxes?
i don't want this to be the kind of big-damn-heroes game where you skip to the next setpiece because the travel is boring. the travel is the game. that's where the OSR influence comes in.
you track rations. it's important - if a place is far from civilization, it feels like it because there's nowhere safe nearby to restock rations.
you track encumbrance. deciding how much space to spend on arrows and rations, and how much to spend on treasure, means more decision-making.
you do hexcrawling, you track time, and you care how many days a journey takes because the world changes as time passes. enemies & other factions progress their schemes, new developments come up. so sometimes you go, wow, good thing we have a ranger - we can move 3 hexes today instead of 2!
the ranger is better at foraging rations so you can venture further into the wilderness, better at moving your party faster, better at keeping watch. i want that to matter! i can envision it being so satisfying to play a ranger and constantly come in handy. and i want parties without a ranger to wish they had one in a way that isn't just tedious.
so hopefully that gives you a good idea of the sandboxy direction for this game. will be posting about it more as i make progress, and gonna continue to support iron halberd in between this sort of thing
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Introducing Trilogy
Yesterday I released Trilogy, a new tabletop RPG crafted to support you in having grand adventures in worlds of your own making.
There are several reasons I started writing Trilogy, but the biggest one is that I ran a Dungeon World podcast called Crudely Drawn Swords for seven years and that was a lot of time to think about what we were playing. To a degree Trilogy is the game I wish that we could have had to run the podcast.
Starting from the question "what would a purely PbtA game for epic fantasy look like?" I started thinking more widely - what do I want from a fantasy game? And the truth is that I want a game that supports the structure of characters and their interactions but doesn't tie itself to a specific setting.
Trilogy begins with The Appendices - conventionally in epic fantasy these are at the end and document information about the wider world that might not have made it into the story, but here it is where you sit down as a group and decide what tone you want your game to have, and your world looks like. What kind of place is it? What magic is there? What is religion like? What are the major cultures where the story begins? How would it feel to be in this world? Trilogy doesn't tell you any of these things, it gives you the tools to think through how you want your world to look.
This creates a secondary challenge - without knowing what the world looks like, how could I design character classes for this type of game? Trilogy answers this by going back to the fundamentals - instead of a conventional character class, the playbooks in Trilogy represent a narrative arc. Some of them, like The Fighter, The Priest, or The Magus, look like familiar classes. Others, such as The Volunteer, The Mentor, The Weapon, or The Defeated, are a little different. Character arcs have a set of turning points, story beats that allow you to advance along your arc after you have collected a certain amount of experience. Some are positive and others negative, you choose which ones you want to hit and when, but every character's story has its highs and lows and to get the most from the game you need to lean into both. A character can pass through three arcs as they grow and change, like the three volumes of a trilogy.
The aim of the game is to create a slower but satisfying sense of progression - instead of hit points characters take Stress and Harm like in other Powered by the Apocalypse games that can have both mechanical and narrative effects. That makes combat feel dangerous, but the game also offers more ways to solve problems without getting into combat - I have played games where the player characters never got into a fight, instead resolving confrontations through an ingenious selection of alternative strategies including "lying" and "vomiting magic ink all over the floor."
I'm genuinely enthusiastic about this game - I think I would be as excited about it if somebody else had written it. It leans hard into the joy of discovery and the excitement of adventure - you can play it as spooky and whimsical or gritty and hard-edged and anywhere in between.
Because I was writing it I even got to make most of the examples of play roll out as the story of someone's game, something I always appreciate when I read it. It also contains every technique I use as a GM in the hope that even before people get the chance to play it (heaven forbid any TTRPG afficionado have books we haven't got around to playing yet!) people who read it will still be able to use that advice in their other games.
So that's Trilogy, the game I've been working on for the last few years. I think it's pretty great and I hope you will too:
Obviously it's a full-priced game and that's a big gamble from an unfamiliar creator - if you want an idea of what it's like in practice we've got the CDS team back together and we're starting a streamed campaign so you have a chance to see it in action. You can find that over on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxpXacko9Nc
The first episode includes me notably failing to use OBS at both the beginning and end, and I can't make any promises things will improve in that regard, but it should be a good opportunity to see how the game shapes up from this start and with this crew I know it's going to be funny and take some wild swings.
If you're interested in reviewing Trilogy or you really want to give it a try but you can't afford it, drop me a message
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The Endless family leisure empire is vast -- there are hotels, island resorts, casinos and entertainment venues. Every sibling has to do their time at one of the properties, before heading to the main offices. Dream is has chosen to work at one of the adult only island resorts. It's a high-end exclusive kind of place, that's a little clothing optional.
Choose your own Adventure:
1. Hob is a rich guest who sets his sights on "staff" Dream; the customer is always "right" and Hob demands Dream, personally, meet all his needs for the length of his stay. Maybe, that's Dream wearing shorter shorts; or maybe Hob wants to see Dream in one of the (indecent already) Hostess bikinis while he's serving Hob in his VIP villa; maybe Hob is sleazy and handsy (Dream's ass gets smacked by more than just Hob, but Hob's hand lingers). Maybe Dream doesn't necessarily mind over-the-top rich dick! Hob; This money'ed Hob runs in the same circles as his family and Dream might have had a small crush when he was younger.
OR
2. Hob is the GM or Head of Security for the resort Dream chose. Hob never likes having to deal with the nepo placements the Endless family forces on him -- he expects his employees to work and not just faff about. So maybe he was a little mean to this Morpheus Endless when he started.
Listen, the kid looks like jailbait; Hob's VIP asshole guests are going to eat him alive; just to be safe, at least the first few weeks, Hob literally assigns security guard Matthew to shadow the Endless kid when he works the VIP villas -- good thing too, that Burgess asshole got himself banned as fuck for what he tried to the kid.
But Hob has to admit he's surprised, the kid (Dream, please!.....And I'm not a kid) does pull his weight; he's stronger and more resilient then he looks. Hob might even like Dream. The tight short shorts suit him.
Ahhhh I really like both of these potential concepts so much!! Just the whole idea of Hob being pervy with Dream definitely hits the spot for me. But also Hob protecting Dream from pervs?? I love that too!! I want to combine them somehow.
So yeah, maybe Hob is a rich guest with what they call "fuck off money": he can pretty much do whatever the fuck he wants and pay for the consequences. Dream is just trying to survive the summer working at the family's most luxurious, classy, VIP resort. There are so many gross old men trying to get in his pants, it's totally gross. In comparison? Hob is like a breath of fresh air. He may be sleazy, but at least he's good looking. And he's started rescuing Dream from the worst elements of his job, by insisting that Dream hang out with him. And since he has fuck off money, no one can tell him no. They go sailing, play golf, hit the nude beach, go to the spa. Hob wants Dream with him all the time, even at dinner. And if any of the other guests complain about him monopolising Dream's time (and they do), Hob gets this nasty smile on his face. Like he's looking forward to beating someone up. But security always get involved before it gets that far.
And yes, Hob is sleazy and a little over the top, but Dream minds it less and less every day. He's seen every inch of Hob’s body now and he can honestly say that he wants him. But as much as Hob flirts and ogles and hides Dream’s swimming trunks so he has to come out naked, he never makes an actual move. Dream is getting quite frustrated.
What can he do but slip inside Hob’s room in the middle of the night... catching him in the middle of an extensive masturbation session, by the way. He crawls onto the luxurious bed, smacks Hob’s hand away from his cock, and starts really working.
Hob doesn't know how he's ever going to leave this place, now that he knows what it's like to cum down Dream’s throat. And yes, he's going to flaunt his conquest to all the other guests. He can't wait to see the look on Burgess's gross old face when Hob pulls Dream into his lap at breakfast tomorrow <3
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Comfort Headcanons And Scenarios Of Cod Men With Your Kid
Basically CoD characters comforting your kid. (Single parent Reader)
Synopsis: He has a romantic relationship/connection with you (Singleparent!Reader) and he comforts your little one, making you further realize how much he loves and cares about you and your little one.
Characters Included: John Price, Simon "Ghost" Riley, John "Soap" MacTavish, Kyle "Gaz" Garrick, Alejandro Vargas, Rodolfo "Rudy" Parra.
Taglist: @puff0o0 @wishesforyou @simping4konig @blingblong55 @azereus @rustic-guitar-notes @shadofireshinobi @09maruchan @anonymuslydumb @skeletalgoats @icarustypicalfall @ghosts-cyphera @cutenote @connorsui @capuccino192 @miss-gms-and-the-rotten-womb @celestialhole @trepaika @starryylies
This is short but I'm back lovelies! This was originally posted on January 7 however I posted it too early :)) AND YES I KNOW I'VE USED THE PIC IN THE MIDDLE SO MANY TIMES NOW, CAN'T HELP IT IT'S TOO DAD!COD CODED.
That 1k special really took it's time didn't it? Sorry you guys, it needs to cook a little more. I do want to thank you all for how far I've made it despite going through a lot. The messages I've been receiving regarding puff definitely have not gone unappreciated and I hope things take a good turn from here. @blingblong55 has been craving some Dad!Ghost content and even though this doesn't really count for now, this should at least be like a little snack for y'all and her.
Simon "Ghost" Riley
❥ Simon never really considered himself a family man, but damn did that all change when you and your little one made your way into his lives and worm yourselves in his heart.
❥ Whether Simon likes it or not, it breaks him to see your child upset. It could be something small like they're craving a certain kind of food or a scratch on their knees from taking off the training wheels on their bike but Simon was always and I mean always there.
❥ So much so that your little one started calling him something that you didn't even know about till later. Overhearing them as Simon took the initiative to feed her while you finished off some chores. You put the mop down only to hear them talking, you peek into your kitchen..
"Daddy!" Your eyes widened as you heard your little one squeal.
Simon tried his best to deny and dodge your kid calling him their dad, trying to correct them and pass it off as a mistake.
It was taken as an offense and their lips started quivering, their cheeks becoming even more chubby as their lips steadied to a pout. Simon sighed in defeat, patting their little back, trying his best to take back what he said.
Only to have them squeal then call him "dada", "daddy", and "dad" repeatedly while they squish Simon's face between their little hands.
"I love you, dada" It was almost inaudible with how butchered it was but you and Simon knew your little one the most, it was easier for both of you to know what they're trying to communicate even with the words and letters they had difficulty pronouncing.
You saw how Simon teared up, he refuses to cry but no matter what he did, his body was saying otherwise.
He couldn't help himself, he held the little one closer to his chest seemingly hugging them tighter. He kissed the top of their head over and over having his eyes closed, you could've sworn you heard a sniffle if it wasn't for the giggle of your child.
Little thing has him wrapped around their little chubby fingers.
John Price
❥ John was always protective of those put in his care, that being said, when you walked into his life with the little munchkin trailing behind, he became far more of a father figure than he was before.
❥ The more he interacted with the both of you, the more he toyed on the possibility of being with you, being there for them. Something he never thought of having due to risk, a family to call his own.
❥ The aggressive pats on his men = tight hugs from him to your little one after they said they missed him. It wasn't really a surprise to you when your kid starting confiding more to John, being more attach to the man as another parental figure.
John decided for the first time ever to take your kid with him to work, though sure it was just a short visit due to him wanting to finish up something however your child seem to think otherwise.
It was intimidating, huge ceilings, long hallways dreaded to be in no color. Overstimulated to say the least, it was difficult being in a new environment for your child.
Especially all the new people they get to see, "I don't like it here.. it's dark and scary.." It wasn't really dark however it was quite dim. John took initiative and picked them up in his arms, telling them short stories of what they used to do on base.
Slowly, they came to the realization that they were safe there and no one would harm them. Being a shy kid now open to meet their dad's co-workers and second family. (Might as well be their brothers)
John "Soap" MacTavish
❥ Honoring everyone's headcanon of Johnny having a big family, I'd like to think he does, few brothers and sisters and a ton of cousins.
❥ Surely Johnny knows his way around kids, though not liking those ones in family gatherings as much.
❥ Meeting you, Johnny was a little too ecstatic finding out you have a little one of your own. More often the two spent a ridiculous amount of time together, he was living for it, one of his ways to show his love your you and your kid.
Johnny held the bike up, guiding to help your kid as they've been asking him over and over again to teach them ride a bike without training wheels.
After a while he lets go of the bike and it manages to go smoothly until they got distracted and hit a nearby tree. Johnny quickly rushed to them hoping they weren't hurt too bad, he was met with a teary eyed child covering their knee.
"It's alright, it's a wee wound. Nothing on my big strong kiddo right?" To Johnny's surprise, it worked. They wiped their tears away, putting their arms in the air, signaling Johnny to carry them.
You got them patched up in a bandaid and a kiss on their knee from you then back it was spending time with Johnny instead indoors this time around. (Little thing made Johnny kiss the boo-boo too, how could he deny such a sweet request <3)
Kyle "Gaz" Garrick
❥ We've established this before but Kyle is extremely good with kids without even trying, so having this man in your life makes it feel like it's easy most times.
❥ Even if Kyle didn't come from a big family or have any experience with children except for the ones he rescued a while back, he's a natural. Giving the kid space to explore their little curiosities if it's safe enough.
❥ Seeing your child having a panic attack was a lot harder for him than it was back when he had to comfort kids he rescued from being hostages..
Kyle woke up to the sounds of heavy and shaky breathing, not to mention something or rather someone pulling on his clothes. He opened his eyes to find his little light teary eyed.
"Shhh, it's going to be alright.. you're safe here with me" Kyle whispered, after immediately pulling the kid to his chest for a snug embrace.
Still with the hyperventilating, the only solution Kyle found was to distract them and to help regulate their breathing back to normal, slowly turning their attention to something else.
"Thank you, dad" was whispered with a yawn. Kyle's eyes almost bulged out of their sockets, before he could talk to them again, he looked at the child who was fast asleep in his arms.
Alejandro Vargas
❥ Alejandro seemed fine around kids, finds them entertaining for the most part since children were never really something he planned on having but he was open for when the opportunity presented itself.
❥ He only ever was learning along the way and was it such a pleasure to do so along with loving you, having said that he's been doing better lately.
❥ Safe to say your sick toddler was in good hands..
Soft cooing with coughs is all Alejandro heard all day, he felt bad about the little one suffering even though it was something small, it's difficult for them to even crawl or move on their own.
You found yourself not being able to comfort your baby, no matter how much you tried to, they won't stop crying.
Luckily, Alejandro was willing to lend a helping hand. He managed to calm their little temper down and rocked them to sleep.
You walked in on him cradling them to sleep, muttering and whispering Spanish to the little one, laughing quietly to himself while he admires their peaceful state.
Rodolfo "Rudy" Parra
❥ Rudy has always wanted children, he used to watch while the children in Las Almas played together in the streets. One of the things he wished to protect about the city.
❥ Then he was given the opportunity to have that kind of family by you. It's almost like his prayers were answered, at any given moment he could lose you and your kid, whether that'd be through danger or an end to you relationship.
❥ What this sweet man wasn't aware of was that he wasn't the only one terrified of losing his family..
Rudy walked into your home hoping to find your kid somewhere in the living room, he thought it was alarming seeing that they weren't in their usual spot playing.
He was about to knock in their bedroom door when the door creaked, giving him a small peek. Soft sniffles, hiccups and hands in their eyes.
"Mija/Mijo, what's wrong?" he asked, he thought it might've been a quarrel between friends or some mean person at school.
"Are you really leaving.. forever..?" They asked, it tugged on Rudy's heart, although some part of him feels so amazing, it was an accomplishment to be cared for by his child.
"Of course not, I promise I'll come back home just for you. And when I do, we'll get to spend even more time together than we have before" The way your little one's eye's light up made Rudy forever sealed to you, he wants this, nothing more and he'll never ask for anything else.
Everything is worth the risk if it was with you if he gets to make you and them happy, anything it'll take..
Honestly, same..
#cod x reader#aethelwyne lia writes#ghost x reader#simon riley x reader#cod headcanons#simon ghost riley x reader#ghost x you#simon ghost x reader#kyle gaz garrick x you#kyle gaz garrick x reader#task force 141 x reader#kyle gaz x reader#captain price x reader#price x reader#john price x reader#soap x reader#gaz x reader#john soap mctavish x reader#john soap mctavish x you#simon ghost riley#dad!soap#dad!ghost#dad!price#dad!gaz#dad!rudy#dad!alejandro#x gender neutral reader#x female reader#x male reader
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Part of me kinda wants to stop DMing my first and current campaign? IDK just need to vent
So, brief expo.
like many, got into CR during the pandemic (mainly due to "The Legend of Vox Machina" which lead to me actually bingeing the all 3 campaigns)
During which time a friend (who was in my immediate friend group but like the rest of my friend group, i didnt really feel close to) told me that he was really into CR as well.
As a fresh new critter, i was stoked. Was able to share my blossoming love of CR with someone (FINALLY!) during which we both mentioned how D&D looked so much fun and that it would be really great to be able to play and ooo what if we got our friends together and played.
After which we discussed, if we did, who would be DM? Seeing as how none of our friends really played D&D our talk lead to either my friend or me and after asking the question "Which do you think you would prefer more?" It was clear i would try my hand at DMing (i like lore in games, and i like storytelling, and im a tad bit of a control freak at times, lol)
Anyway, we eventually got in touch with our close knit of friends, and though i intended to be a standard 6 we suddenly had an 8 party party (and that was with me having to tell even less close friends there wasnt room).
Feeling it would still be manageable (as there was precedent that i could pull inspo from, CR) i began planning a rough idea of a campaign and working with my friends to create their characters and running a session 0 so we were all on the same page. You know standard stuff.
-Fast Forward to current date and time-
It has its stressful moments, but i still am able to enjoy the time with my friends for the most part (though theres a lot of times were ive never felt lonelier)
Which brings me to the whole point of the post, my need to vent to the void about this loneliness.
Nobody really gets in touch or interacts with me at all. Not to talk about the campaign or even collab on their characters. The most i get are occasional critiques about how i could have done something better couple sessions prior and request to add another person to the 8 person party. When we have sessions, people show up late quite often, leave early quite often, have to cancel as they have other things they are doing (even though we planned and scheduled weeks prior) and even when people are there they somtimes feel like they arent always present.
i already feel extremely distant from all of them as they all live closer to each other while i live on the totally opposite side of the state and theyve known each other way longer than i have, but the minimal interactions they have with me, the DM/GM of all people, just continues to add to all of it
I know we all are busy with our lives, and that compared to those things D&D is really not that big of a deal or important. And i get that, it is just a game afterall, but it still manages to hit pretty hard
I've communicated my feelings through our time of this campaign, if im being honest, maybe not this indepth. I mean, its partially because i barely see or talk to them (again life gets in the way) but also because i feel extremely guilty for putting this kind of tension to something we are all supposed to be enjoying and relaxing to.
Its especially painful as most recently 2 players, who said they would get in touch with me about changes possibly being being made to their characters, never got in touch in anyway shape or form, and its been about a month now? And session is in a week...i didnt even get much as a reply back.
Idk, its been almost about a year now and i felt i just needed to get this out somewhere other than debating myself.
Thanks for listening tumblr.
#D&D#Dungeons and Dragons#venting#vent post#its just a game it really isnt a big deal#feels pretty lonely though#not what i was hoping for
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Hi Mint!
I love your game recs so much! Do you know any wilderness survival ttrpgs with a lot of crunch? The genre could be anything including horror, fantasy, etc, mainly I’m just looking for a game with plenty of rules/systems for things like foraging and building shelters. Ideally I’d like something with a solo option, but I’m also good with group games :)
Thank you so much!!!
THEME: Wilderness Survival
Hello there! Thank you very much for your kind words. I don’t have a lot of recommendations for you today, but I hope the few I do have are useful for you!
Cast Away, by Monomyth Games.
A shipwreck survival horror game that will crash you against the rocks of mysterious unknown shores and leave you asking—why me?
Castaways are unfortunate lost souls stranded on a far off island… but they aren't the only ones who now call the island home. With rules for exposure, building shelters, crafting, hunting, gathering, debilitating ailments, escape plans, an island weather system, a menagerie of wildlife and monsters, and mysterious island encounters, players will have to fight tooth and nail exploring the harsh island environment to survive against the odds.
MÖRK BORG has really made a name for itself over the past few years as a game with astounding layout and easy-to-learn rules. Cast Away, being built on MÖRK BORG, looks to have plenty of rules built onto the original framework, so I think it might be a bit crunchier than the original game. The setting is also pretty brutal, in tune with the themes of the game it hails from. The game also has a supplement for solo play, called Stranded, in case you want to take the game for a spin by yourself.
Against the Wind, by Cezar Capacle.
In the lands where the wind howls like a beast untamed, you forge your path. They say the gales here shape not just the land, but the very spirit of those who walk it. You are one of those souls, a wanderer amidst the churning skies and the earth that bites with frost.
Against the Wind is a solo/coop fantasy-adventure sandbox game in a land ravaged by fierce winds and biting cold, all infused with a subtle pinch of fairy tale ambiance. In this world, players step into the roles of magical nomad heroes, confronting the relentless climate, traversing diverse landscapes, and following their own unique paths.
The game blends traditional and modern styles of play, merging the classic elements of fantasy adventure — like wilderness exploration and dungeon delving — with contemporary, narrative-driven mechanics.
A character in Against the Wind has plenty of descriptive pieces that tell us about how they look, but they also have pieces that appear to matter mechanically, such as their background, role, gift, skill, and weapon. As a GM-less and solo-friendly game, much of the world appears to be procedurally generated through rolling on tables, so it looks to be pretty dense when it comes to player involvement.
With all of these pieces, I’m not sure how much of this game can be labelled “crunch”, but if you’re surviving I imagine you’ll have to deal with things like the surrounding environment, inventory, and dungeon navigation, which feel pretty “crunchy” to me.
Stranded, by Rúnica Games.
The best navigators in history have searched for a northern passage to join the Atlantic and the Pacific. Many of them never returned home. You should have been the last in this line of pioneers, with a discovery that would have brought light to these uncivilized lands. But things went wrong.
A few weeks ago, the fury of the elements left you stranded between sheets of ice. Summer has been very short this year, and it is clear that you do not have enough time to free the ship and repair it to return home.
You must go through the harshest fall and winter of your lives, waiting for warmer days. But neither the ship nor you are prepared to spend months isolated in the most remote part of the world. You have neither the food nor the proper equipment. You only have yourself. Will this be enough?
This game is still in playtest, but it’s a pretty sizeable playtest! Unlike the other games on this list, it’s situated in a very specific time and place, that of an arctic voyage in the Northern Passage. It looks like character creation occurs as you play, so you’ll have a lot of pieces on your character sheet, but you don’t figure them out all at once. I think this kind of character building might be helpful for long-term play, as you can achieve mastery over a long period of time without feeling overwhelmed by new rules or tracks.
Games I’ve Recommended in the Past
Cast Away, by Afterthought Committee.
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