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runningdoggames · 1 year

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YOUR GOD IS DEAD, and you’re the unlucky soul tasked with figuring out who killed em. As sheriff, you are working to uncover the truth behind this tragedy before your parish’s rage boils over and makes the situation even worse. There’s someone or something on the loose that can kill a god, and it’s hard to know who to trust nowadays. You know you can rely on your horse, your gun, your faith, and your lawman’s intuition. Ride carefully, partner. There’s trouble afoot.

I’m super excited to announce that my new solo journaling game is now published - you can find it here! This game was made for the Hints & Hijinx Jam hosted by @pandiongames. If you’re interested, I encourage you to check out other entries - this system is super fun to play (and to write!). WHO KILLED GOD? is a solo mystery game of divine catastrophe and small-town suspicion in a Weird West setting. This book has prompts and mechanics to help guide you, but it is up to you to follow the clues to wherever they lead, whether that's to redemption or ruin. You play as your town's sheriff, trying to find the party or parties responsible for the death of your god. You will explore various locations around town, meet with townsfolk, and attempt to gather evidence while getting yourself out of tricky predicaments and tight spots. At the end of the game, you'll find out whether or not you were right.

#ttrpg #ttrpg design #indie ttrpg #solo ttrpg #hintsandhijinx #western #weird western #game design

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pandiongames · 1 month

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Our brand new apocalyptic mystery TTRPG has launched on Backerkit!

Substratum Protocol is a solo+ survival mystery TTRPG utilizing step-down dice and card draw mechanics, Substratum Protocol is playable as both a solo game or guided by a GM.

If you are familiar with our Hints and Hijinx system (Waffles for Esther, Hamsters and Himbos, etc) then this multiplayer mystery will feel familiar!

Make sure to check out the campaign to get the free preview PDF!

The preview includes the first 38 pages of the book. It contains all the rules and how to play, but does not include any of the information about the mystery, clues, knowledge questions, the sectors' events and descriptions, or the character folios.

With players taking on the role of Earth's best remaining scientists, Substratum Protocol is our entry into the Deep Delving Mystery genre (like Subnautica and In Other Waters).

On their grueling journey to the center of the Earth, members of the Substratum Expedition will overcome challenges, gain clues and knowledge of the interdimensional portal, discover creatures, aliens, cosmic horrors, and ultimately assemble their final hypothesis to overcome the apocalypse looming before them.

The game intertwines hard science fiction with the inescapable, unknowable horrors of an interdimensional portal tearing apart reality.

Features

Purpose-built for solo and multiplayer mysteries

Unique dice and card draw resolution mechanics

Take special Actions whose outcomes can chain together

Collect beaten cards during Skill Checks to power your suit's abilities

A self-contained story, with unlimited possibilities and outcomes

Quickly build unique and interesting characters at the table

36 unique clues to discover, 36 questions to answer

10 sectors to explore, each one stranger than the last

120 events and encounters to surprise and stump your players

Build the Last Hypothesis: When they have learned all they can, the scientists must pour over their knowledge of the portal, construct the Last Hypothesis and enact their plan. Will it be enough?

Made by an All-Star Team of Creators

We've assembled a fantastic team to bring Substratum Protocol to life, including the group behind the wildly popular dwarves in space TTRPG, Stoneburner by Fari RPGs

Illustrations by Galen Pejeau

Editing by Eric Lazure

Developmental Editing by René-Pier Deshaies-Gélinas

Layout Direction from Tony Tran

Writing and Design by Andrew Boyd

Promotion by Alex from Backerkit

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #mystery #solo journaling #solo ttrpg #crowdfunding #backerkit #playing cards #breathless #hintsandhijinx

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pandiongames · 4 days

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Substratum Protocol, the Solo+ Apocalyptic Mystery TTRPG by Pandion Games

The Substratum Protocol campaign is nearing its end! There are less than 24 hours left to join over 600 scientists on the expedition to save the planet!

If you haven’t yet, check out the campaign before it’s too late!

There have been some fun updates since launch, including additional artwork by Galen Pejeau, new rules for environmental hazards, and a big story update!

If you want to see what the game is about, we also have a free preview PDF for you on the campaign page.

An Anomaly

During our interview with Rascal News, we realized we had made a fundamental mistake in writing an open-ended mystery: We said what was at the core of the planet, an interdimensional portal. The portal being is now just one possibility. We spent last weekend updating all the writing to now be an anomaly. The otherworldly abilities you get from taking stress are now Anomaly Influences, rather than Portal Influences, for instance. The Expedition can still decide it's a portal, but calling it an anomaly opens up a huge range of possibilities. What is the anomaly that's splitting the earth open?

Is it a massive cosmic egg hatching a world eater as part of a natural lifecycle?

Did an advance interstellar ship accidentally exit hyperspace at the center of the planet due to a miscalculation, and its damaged engines are holding open a hyperspace bubble?

Is there a cult of advanced species calling forth eldritch gods with a powerful ritual that consumes planets to power it?

Substratum Protocol is about letting the clues and your answers determine what is really happening, and we think this update opens the floodgates for it.

Depth Sector Deep Dives

In our campaign updates, we have been talking about the different sectors players can visit and their inspiration. These are all available publicly on the campaign - but we wanted to share the Fracture Opening sector with you here.

How the Depth Sectors Work

Substratum Protocol is a collaborative mystery game. The text gives hints and whispers of possibilities, but strays away from definite answers. What you discover and imagine at your table becomes canon to the story and the setting. Each sector shows its location in the Fracture, includes in-universe handwritten notes from an unknown scientist, relevant art, and a table of events - each giving a glimpse into what the sector contains. Scientists can spend as much or as little time in a Sector as they want. When they're ready to venture deeper, whoever leads the way rolls for the Travel Action.

The Fracture Opening

This is the first sector of the expedition experiences. At 1,300 kilometers long, it covers the distance between New York City to Miami, Florida. London, England to Naples, Italy. Melbourne, Australia to Alice Springs. Buenos Aires, Argentina to São Paulo, Brazil. It is massive. Where did the fracture open in your game? What exists teetering at its cliff walls? The world at the surface is a hellscape of the apocalypse, and much of the Fracture Opening is littered with crumbling buildings, detritus, and ancillary debris of civilization. Oceans spilling over the edge seem small in scale. Sitting suspended over it, is the Fracture Observatory. The Fracture Observatory, the home of Mission Control.

Furthest from the anomaly, this sector is rooted most in the reality of the surface. Here, players may find groups of survivors from the cities that tumbled into the great fracture, steam vents, cave ins, and earthquakes make finding solid footing and a reliable path difficult, and even here, strange subterranean creatures may make an appearance. Old research stations, part of the Substratum Protocol's monitoring efforts may still be intact here, and dangerous fast flowing waters threaten to whisk away scientists into massive whirlpools to further below. When we were first designing Substratum Protocol, the thought was that players would start in the action of the expedition and wouldn't really spend time on the Fracture Observatory or on the surface. The Fracture Opening was our way of showing what the surface was going through while still being en route. It is meant to showcase the incredible destruction happening, and give the players a sense of urgency to stop it from getting worse. How do the scientists descend into the fracture before being left to their own power? Lowered on a cable lift? Paraglide down? Or perhaps they are more like hell jumpers, free-falling through the gargantuan opening (or Link entering the depths in Tears of the Kingdom!)?

The title screen fades to klaxon alarms and screams of the world above, slowly giving way to a deafening silence of rushing wind as the expedition descends past the cliff walls into the abyssal black depths of the Fracture Opening...

Join the Expedition!

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #mystery #solo ttrpg #hintsandhijinx #horror #journaling #crowdfunding #ttrpg community #solo journaling

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pandiongames · 11 months

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Alright, Mystery Lovers, we have a huge update for you!

We have released a new update for the Hints and Hijinx system! The Solo+ Expansion (and it's still free!)

Find it here:

You can now choose between the classic solo-only Hints and Hijinx ruleset, or the expanded solo+ which adds support for multiplayer and more traditional play (GM/Player, multi-session, free movement between locations, etc.) while keeping the core concepts of HnH.

Think of Solo as playing a great Detective (Sherlock Holmes, Hercules Poirot, etc) whereas Solo+ is designed for a mystery solving team (like Scooby-Doo)!

Solo+ does add a little complexity to designing games, which is why we decided to keep the two versions separate: "Solo" and "Solo+".

The new Solo+ pdf still includes copy/paste rules, and a list of where to add your content.

This is the same system that will be used for our upcoming games The Substratum Protocol and Whispering Pines. Hints and Hijinx used a base of Breathless, GRANDMOTHERSHIP, and Brindlewood Bay for its rules. Solo+ adds additional concepts from RPDeshaies's Firelights.

The core changes between Solo and Solo+ are:

The number of skills increases from 2 to 6.

Skills are rolled in pairs, summed, and compared against the value of two drawn cards (Ace =1, King = 13)

Beaten cards are collected by players can be used for benefits - special boons players gain by discarding specific types of cards, or playing vs. the Guide.

Stress added health mechanic.

Determination grants new abilities as Stress increases, at a cost.

Actions - specific moves players can take with dedicated outcomes

Free flow between locations and dealing with complications.

Moving between locations is done with the Travel Action, with possible bonuses or negations while a montage of travel plays out.

Each location has a complication/event table, instead of a shared table.

Gathering a Clue and Understanding it are two different steps.

Understanding a Clue takes the player to a table of leading questions they can answer about the mystery. The split is optional in your own game. Simply remove the Understand action and Clue Question table.

With this release, we have plans to launch another Game Jam in the next month or so, so keep an ear out!

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #solo ttrpg #solo journaling #hintsandhijinx #mystery #ttrpg community #srd

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pandiongames · 10 months

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Available Now!

Giant hamsters have appeared in Willowdale!

Their flowing, shining coats tell of pampered creatures on a rich diet full of keratin. However, the townspeople are terrified and have no clue where these creatures came from or why they are here.

Children ride them like ponies as they devour all the flowers, and uproot Ol’ Harold’s pristine lawn he has manicured to perfection over seventy years. The roads through town are impassable as they bask in the streets. Poor Edna was even trampled by their dainty paws while shooing a group off her porch with a washrag and is still in the hospital.

That's when you, the president of the local book club, and self proclaimed gumshoe, knew exactly who to call for help.

Three himbos with courage as big as their muscles.

Big Thighs, Big Arms, and Big Heart may not be the brightest bulbs in the box, but they sure know how to make things happen. Paired with your deductive reasoning and strong sense of plot cliches, the four of you embark on the investigation of a lifetime across Willowdale to uncover clues and discover the truth behind the giant hamsters.

A Hints and Hijinx mystery!

#ttrpg #ttrpg design #indie ttrpg #mystery #solo ttrpg #hintsandhijinx #indiegamedev #himbos #hamsters #guinea pigs #mystery games #sherlock holmes #small town problems

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pandiongames · 10 months

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Releasing Wednesday, July 5th!

Giant hamsters have appeared in Willowdale!

Their flowing, shining coats tell of pampered creatures on a rich diet full of keratin. However, the townspeople are terrified and have no clue where these creatures came from or why they are here.

That's when you, the president of the local book club, and self proclaimed gumshoe, knew exactly who to call for help.

Three himbos with courage as big as their muscles.

A Hints and Hijinx mystery!

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #mystery #solo journaling #hintsandhijinx #indiegamedev #ttrpg community #solo ttrpg #solo mystery #silly #himbos <3 #muscle boy #himbos

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