Traverse Fantasy

My partner got me and herself really into  Dandadan , which she described at one point as  Mob Psycho  for people who go to the club. It's so so so fucking good. Momo and her friends are my queens. Okarun is such a precious squishy boywife . The stories of the monsters they encounter and how others get wrapped into their life pull you by your heartstrings to the edge of your couch. Anyway, I was reminded that the most popular RPG in Japan is Call of Cthulhu , and it struck me how Dandadan is a perfect potential reimagining of that premise: just replace grimy 1940’s investigators with bitchy modern teenagers. Since I tend to center my home game on mysteries anyway, this led me to think about how I would lean further into it and support Dandadan -style supernatural hijinks in the same way that D&D supports sailor guardians and Fortnite supports Sabrina Carpenter. I think there's two main considerations: possessed characters and psychic characters. Both of these can b...

This is partly my attempt to modularize more complex rules from Cinco! (I can’t decide how to type that) as opt-in rules for characters, as well as coming up with additional ones because they’d make more sense as special abilities than as general (if complex) rules. The following subsystems would be impacted and restricted only to characters with the appropriate feats: Critical attack moves Travel options Arcane enhancements Healing at havens This isn’t my first time doing this, but I was never fully happy with my initial two attempts (wow, one year apart, in 2023 and 2024 ). I feel happier with these because they feel more potentially abstract and reskinnable based on who your character is. My plan is to have 20 "experience feats" that you gain from your levels, and 20 "origin feats" which I've written before and I would actually be really happy to play with. So, these are the 20 experience feats! As a treat, here's the optional "unified...

Hi all! I've been sneakily uploading changes to my home game  Cinco!  over the past month. Here's a changelog: Armor items act as a virtual +1 heart and give resistance against certain damage types until hit (represented by flipping over the card). Damaged armor resets during downtime. Supply is now a discrete item which fully restores a character's hearts and inspiration during travel or exploration; in the latter case, it requires 1 turn to consume. Expanded guidelines for opponents, including a framework for damage resistances and vulnerabilities. Expanded rules for travel into a " pick-your-poison " minigame (this has been a hit!). Renamed "readied" to "packed" items on the character sheet since it confused even myself. Renamed (unnamed?) "bashing" to "bludgeoning" damage so it didn't rhyme with "slashing". Created worksheets for havens, ships, and optional cardless characters. Hope you enjoy! :) Below are ...

Had such a fun session of my home campaign! Got to use my new travel rules and (due to the all-you-can-roll nature of them) honestly I had to convince my friends to end each leg of the trip to actually play where they were wanting to go... But we love it when journeys aren't about the destination, right? The rulebook for  Cinco!  now has all the latest updates I've been using to play if you're curious :) I'm tired and a little buzzed so I'm gonna summarize this session with bullet points. Roster These were the characters in play: Enkidu: Amnesiac dwarf following strange dreams to the land of Flo’Rida; 9 (+3) experience. Makandal: Orc maroon and voudonist ratted out while carrying out a raid; 9 (+3) experience. Nolan: Orc stand-user raised by elves, arrested on accusations of spying; 7 (+3) experience. Queen-sama: Elf prostitute, arrested after being caught by a client’s wife; 11 (+3) experience. Queen-sama leveled up! I need to remind her player. Summary Pr...

One common complaint about feats or even class features is that they foreclose particular actions from characters in general by cloistering them within specific character options. For this reason, I tend to like what I currently have going on in my home game  CINCO , where a character's equipment in combination with their aspects determines their capabilities, which feels both more flexible and more natural. But I had a thought: maybe the foreclosure is the point? Sure, it keeps things simple one way to not have character builds, but the trade-off is that all rules apply to everyone all the time. I realized in the shower that I wouldn't necessarily like to have every possible rule in the back of my mind even if I only use a subset of them. It's nice in typical  D&D  to know that you're a whatever, and to have your special rules in your character sheets where you know what you need to worry about (and you don't need to open the book to find rules that always appl...

I like fluxcrawls , but there's little choice involved as such. Instead of rolling for a random event or the quality of an event, check D20: on 9–, pick 1; on 10–19, pick 2; on 20+, pick 3: Avoid an encounter! The Game Mother will not roll for a random encounter event. Bypass some danger! The Game Mother will not roll for a random disaster event. Complete your journey! You arrive at your destination after resolving travel events. Discover a location! You spot someplace new, and have the choice to detour there. This is just a sketch, not tested yet, but I wanted some way to reintroduce the mini-game feeling of travel without giving the appearance of choice via granularity.

Finally published the 'dry' version of  CINCO! Table-Talk Odyssey  on Itch! If you're seeing this here then you probably know what its deal is, but essentially: this is my home campaign ruleset, which are meant to isolate the character-driven dynamics of my  D&D 5E  subculture into something geared specifically towards making silly quirky characters and playing with them. The setting is... pirates, or really like... Haitian revolution... Caribbean. Yeah :D Also Norn Noszka illustrated the booklet and they did an incredible job, just gorgeous evocative art!! Please enjoy, hope you like it! Will eventually publish with my campaign prep which I feel like is the actual sauce of the thing, not the rules rules. But I don't want to do that until I feel like it's fully useful. 

I left my Switch at home so I've been borrowing my partner's to play her copy of  Shadows Over Loathing , a silly quirky goofy point-and-click RPG in the lineage of the browser-based  Kingdom of Loathing . There's six-ish regions in the game, each having a dozen-some points of interest which you navigate with your character (as a "physical" location with one or more rooms, rather than an abstract point). You can travel from any point of interest to another in the same region, and it may just trigger an event such as an encounter or a detour into another site hitherto undiscovered (the more sites you discover, the less random events are possible, the "faster" you can travel between sites). That's all there is to it! I had an epiphany while playing that such a structure could solve a "problem" I've had running my pirate campaign, that I feel obligated to locate adventure sites in the geography of their particular island, having the player...

I'm working on aggregating the posts on this blog into a big book so I can eventually delete it for my personal safety, considering the state of our world. There were some things, though, I wanted to share while I still had a soapbox here. This will be a short revisit of bite-sized dungeons , which in sloppy fashion I over-complicated. This is basically copied from Cinco! , my personal campaign book. You don't need preset patterns of rooms and connections! Just have six circles, each numbered: Entrance Monsters with treasure Monsters without treasure Treasures without monsters Random shit Random shit Roll D6 six times to draw connections from each of the rooms to another, re-rolling results equal to the current room or those which have already been rolled. If you want, you can also roll D6 for which connections have special attributes like being lengthy (requiring 1 turn to traverse), difficult (requiring some check), or hidden (requiring foreknowledge). And that's all! 

Thank y'all so much for y'all's interest in the last one! Will respond when I can, just preparing for a (nice) busy week and weekend :) in any case, yep... they're back ! Been using them. Just slightly different. Bracket Hearts Power Aptitude Defense Speed Grunt 2 1 +1 11 3 Elite 4 2 +2 12 4 Champ 8 3 +4 14 5 Boss 16 4 +8 18 6 Minion* 1 1 +0 10 2 To translate each of the columns: Hearts: How much damage they can take. Power: How much damage they can deal per turn, possibly split into multiple attacks or spent on special effects. Aptitude: Attack bonus, or more generally for D20 checks if applicable. Defense: Roll against for D20 checks to attack. Speed: Initiative score to beat . Then, you can quickly build encounters by spending heart budgets on opponents (hold off on minions): Difficulty Heart Budget Easy 1/PC Medium 2/PC Hard 3/PC Deadly 4/PC Having used this to plan sessions an...

Procedure? I hardly know her! Harharharharhar. Travel, exploration, combat. That's what we're talking about. Wait, what's this? DISCLAIMER The author wrote this article out of her interest in this hobby, and also to synthesize this with her other interests in literary, mathematical, or political theory . Any criticism in this article was written in pursuit of that interest, and it is not intended as ammunition in factional disputes nor as a personal denouncement of the individuals whose works are being criticized. The author also has no interest in petty arguments on any topics discussed in this article. What the fuck? Anyway. Art by Norn Noszka !! Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah The word ‘procedure’ is interesting in that became a sort of buzzword for marketing rulebooks without people necessarily agreeing on what the word meant or referred to. Some held the notion that ‘procedure’ referred to the discursive, non-written structures that which encode how a table interacts wit...

Okay so basically last Friday I was going to post about play procedures—the basic bitch shit for travel, exploration, and combat—but then I was like busy with nice real life things and didn't really care enough to post here. The truth is I wanted to participate in a blog bandwagon about economy shit just because I think it's fun? And the posts up until now were just to make it look like a coincidence? But again I don't really care enough to put the effort in to do that. I just care enough to write into the void and hit "publish". That being said, I am really happy with what I have going on with this. The campaign's goals aren't super oriented around treasure or money or stuff like that, but I think of it as like when you're playing Fall Guys (yeah) and you get special currency to spend on fun useless things. In this case, you don't really spend it on useless things, but it just feels fun and that’s more the point of it than anything else. Here...

Oh yeah, I forgot I was doing this! Here's some gorgeous art by Norn Noszka to start. :) Last time, I talked about the UX side of your character's inventory. This time, I'm talking about what you can slot into it. I'm trying not to say "structure" and "content" for some reason. Character development? Armor Armor is pretty boring, and I think only one player ( Ènziramire! ) has a defensive item which he basically reskinned as a vodou amulet. Much cooler! I have the basic D&D armor types otherwise, which aren't particularly exciting but are at least useful as a comparison: Leather: +2 defense [12]; 1 slot; resistant against elements. Chainmail: +4 defense [14]; 1 slot; vulnerable to elements. Plate: +6 defense [16]; 2 slots; vulnerable to elements; cannot swim. The defense values are basic bitch. More interesting is to think of armor as making characters more or less vulnerable to elemental harm, even if it otherwise helps one avoid harm i...

Taking a break from my home game because real life has gotten a little crazy (later edit: unrelated to the election results!). What better time to blog about tabletop games than when you're not actually playing them? Harharhar! I wanted to share the character sheet I've been using for my game, explain how/why it is the way it is, and reflect on how it's been going. My goal with the sheet was to make it very easy to explain to newcomers, and also immediately intuitive for anyone who's ever previously come into contact with D&D . There's three major sections: the concept section on the top-left where you describe your character and come up with a mini backstory (with a beginning, middle, and not-end); the mechanical part on the top-right where you interface with your character through numbers (honk-shoo); and your character's items on the bottom (represented by cards that you illustrate yourself because it's fun). I guess I'll just go in order. The con...

From my personal play packet! Possibly the laziest setting ever, but it’s honest. All the gorgeous art shown here is by the delightful Norn Noszka ! World of Faia Faia is the setting of my home campaign, a sort of cosmic crossroads between worlds. Portal-hopping dwarves meet star-sailing terrans on a planet otherwise populated by a species known as faians—some elves, others orcs. Though Faia is a usual fantasy world, it is written to explore realist themes about society and history. Cathedral of Light Elves are faians who were baptized under the Cathedral of Light, a religious institution established by the Snow-White Queen. The elves were initially unified by this swordseer to defend their continent against the dwarves of the Midgard Company. However, they eventually opted to split the Dark Lands of Faia between themselves and the Company. This coincided with the Crusade Against Darkness, a declaration of all uncivilized faians as demons (orcs) from myth-times. They worship Qesem,...

Free adventure or whatever? This is my prep for the first two proper sessions of Turtle Island ( S1 , S2 ). There's only one statistic of note: that Bokor is a "champion". In my house rules, this means he is a figure who by himself is of medium difficulty in combat (a mini-boss, so to speak). That might make him equivalent to an ogre or troll? Idk. Locations These are the bare bones of the adventure site; it wasn’t until after the first session that I expanded upon the site’s story based on what seemed interesting. Entrance → Crop Fields, Big House Crop Fields → Entrance, Slave Quarters, Driver’s Home, Engines 3 farms: sugar, cotton, cacao. Actively being worked by 150 enslaved zombies, who go to “sleep” at night. No overseer to be found. Slave Quarters → Crop Fields, Provisions Gardens, Big House Not been lived in for quite some time. Some mementos of the once-living: Amulet of birth control (treasure). Bible overwritten with cultic depictions. ...

Zombies and vodou and marital drama oh my! Crew Roster Participants this session are in bold! Nicole: Elf arrested for bodysnatching, now a knife-hoarding edgelord; 4 experience. Nolan: Orc stand-user raised by elves, arrested on accusations of spying; 4 experience. Makandal: Orc maroon and voudonist ratted out while carrying out a raid; 6 (+4) experience. Queen-sama: Elf prostitute, arrested after being caught by a client’s wife; 8 (+4) experience. Xen: Amnesiac dwarf magician following strange dreams to the land of Flo’Rida; 6 (+4) experience. Downtime I let Xen spend 1 treasure so everyone present could do the research action (add 1 rumor to the map, or ask the game mother to ‘clarify’ 1 rumor already on the map). In the future, I think I’ll have individuals spend their own treasure; I just wanted everyone to participate this time. Queen-sama asked for clarification on the sea serpents rumor. I said that there have been multiple sightings of the sort of flying sea cre...

The official “first”, i.e. non-introductory, session of Turtle Island! Unfortunately, Makandal (played by Ènziramire ) couldn’t make it this time, but Xen joined us for the first time! Our roster, with participants this session in bold : Nicole: Elf arrested for bodysnatching, now a knife-hoarding edgelord; 4 (+2) experience. Nolan: Orc stand-user raised by elves, arrested on accusations of spying; 4 (+2) experience. Makandal: Orc maroon and voudonist ratted out while carrying out a raid; 2 experience. Queen-sama: Elf prostitute, arrested after being caught by a client’s wife; 4 (+2) experience. Xen: Amnesiac dwarf magician following strange dreams to the land of Flo’Rida; 2 (+2) experience. This is going to be a quick and dirty session summary, more for our use. Blog's just convenient! The crew was contracted by Captain Polly, an orc pirate and revolutionary, to raid a plantation on the island of Xamaka to connect the eastern maroon territory with the sea. They encount...

Started my long-awaited pirate campaign! I don't know if I've mentioned it here, although I've definitely talked about it in conversations with some of y'all. The basic premise is that elves and dwarves employ extraterrestrial humans as privateers to settle land disputes over a fantasy pseudo-Caribbean; meanwhile, and more centrally to the campaign, orc slaves revolt to liberate themselves and establish a free republic. It's a pretty lazy setup—but it's both distinct from typical Euro-fantasy and more relatable to our various experiences. I can't say that being away from my family wasn't a factor! We left off our first session by the crew taking an offer to raid a plantation in exchange for a ship and whatever loot they find there (specifically, barrels of rum for the Ugly Coyote Inn, which offered one of the pirate characters a rehearsal on the condition that she delivers rum to them—the others asked if they could just get paid instead, to which the own...