Questing for Tabletop Adventure Games
Stories are Soul Food podcast turned me on to Terry Pratchett. Reading "Guards! Guards!" I cannot believe it's taken me this long to crack open one of his books. It's hilarious, fun, and it's reignited my love for Bastion. Here are some random tables. Roll a d6 on each to get started on reading. Shipwright … Continue reading Bastion – d6 Shopkeepers and d6 Street Vendors
The Hobbit A spectrum of table styles with two extremities: crystalized and fluid. Crystalized. The world is set in stone. The GM or an intellectual property has declared its boundaries. Details are made ahead of time like calendars with holidays and festivals, towns with maps and points of interests, major factions with motivations and rosters, … Continue reading Adventure World Chassis
Artwork from my young cousin. A style unseen here on the blog! 🙂 Part of watching the contrasted reception of Adventure Hour! and Skorne was learning this lesson: more specific pitches resonate with more people, despite having a smaller scope. Use structured campaigns with a beginning, middle, and end. Have something short and sweet that … Continue reading Delivery Knights Meditation
Shipwright. Inspired by this post and this quote from Sean McCoy: I feel like almost any game could be made better by taking the monster manual and just writing The before every monster. Let’s combine a few thoughts: 1) Limits on a world are good. Not everyone can be a Jedi, there aren’t a million rings of … Continue reading “The” Checklist Campaign
This is an odd line of design thinking: how can you turn a two player game into a three player game? Say, hypothetically, you had two cousins playing a game like Connect Four and a third one becomes interested? Could you find a variation for them to play? Rules Players are NOT the colors. They … Continue reading Connect Four for Three
More digital art from my brother, Caleb. Skorne is becoming more souls-like. Using this from Coins and Scrolls as inspiration, here are four sample bosses (Tyrants, as they're known in this game). The stats here are very FKR: Note: the “bloodied” condition triggers once the Tyrant reaches half hits. It is immediate. Critical details are … Continue reading Boss Battles – Tyrants of Skorne
Digitally warped art from my brother, to whom Adventure Hour! is dedicated. In response to the news about Dark Souls 5e and the subsequent jams (there's two?!), Skorne is getting a full layout. I'm re-upping the design (AKA letting it breathe) and adding more advice and tables. I'll be adding content from recent articles written, … Continue reading Becoming souls-like (plus sample monsters)
Been a while since we've had a Shipwright piece around here... This is a sequel to the Diceless Violence post. Main takeaways: Dice can cheapen victories and deliver cheaper losses.Diceless combat (no to-hit rolls, no damage rolls) moves the game away from elements of luck to strategy and critical thinking.In order to make combat a … Continue reading Decisive Combat
Have a lie down for a quick minute... When an attack reduces a PC’s HP to exactly 0, they are uniquely impacted. Look up the result on the table below based on the total damage taken... Scars don’t happen that often in Electric Bastionland or Cairn. Combat doesn’t happen that often in these games too. … Continue reading Scars in Bastionland and Cairn
The vast majority of actions require a quick judgement call to resolve. Players who leverage their environment, use their items and common sense, and clearly declare their actions often receive success. The consequences of any described actions follow accordingly. If an action described by a player is uncertain, the GM may call for a roll. … Continue reading Nim Style
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