Traverse Fantasy

Challenge rating (CR) in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition determines basically everything you need to know about your monster: armor class, hit points, and average damage per round. This makes conversion between 5e and classic editions of D&D like B/X quite difficult, not only because of different conventions but also different expectations of how monsters and their math should function. Hits deal more damage than in classic D&D because characters add their ability bonus to the dice roll, and hit dice are kind of arbitrary and calculated retrospectively because what really matters is hit points by challenge rating (e.g.: a giant monster might have d12-sized hit dice whereas a medium monster might have d8-sized hit dice, but a CR 10 monster needs to have around 160 hit points either way). What do you if you're writing an adventure that you want to support both systems, but you don't want to work from scratch? My friend Nova found herself in this situation while...

I have made this recipe five times in the last week: first for some friends, then for my partner, then for her friends, and then for even more of her friends. Not complaining, though, because they're delicious! And it makes me really happy to make and share with other people. Think of this as an application of my " variable cookie recipe ". That is, totally make it, but also think about how you would make your own cookies! Baking is really fun and easy, and it helps if you think of it as something that expresses you and your own taste. Chocolate and cinnamon are "me", but what's "you"? I'm really excited at the thought of having people over to hang out over fresh cookies. Maybe you might consider making some for your game night? Recipe Here's the recipe! It makes about 2 dozen cookies depending on how big you make them, though I've managed to stretch it into about 30 cookies (since my partner's baking sheets are smaller than mine). ...

My friend Liz from Underground Adventures just introduced me to Cthulhu Dark and, in doing so, kinda blew my mind. I've been raving about Trophy Gold , or Trophy in general, for a couple of months ( see my shared review on Bones of Contention with Alex and Ram —that we only just published because we're a bit behind). It turns out that Trophy Dark , the original rulebook in the series, was based off of a rules-light Lovecraftian horror game called Cthulhu Dark . Even better is that Cthulhu Dark seems easier to grasp than Trophy ! If you've played Trophy , you know that there are two main kinds of rolls you can make: risk rolls for when your character is... risking their safety or sanity, and hunt rolls for when your character is delving deeper into a mystery. Both start with 1 light die plus another light die if your character is skilled at the task; only for risk rolls, however, do you roll a "dark die" representing the potential risk of your character'...

I ran my homebrew ruleset FIVEY for the first time using the first adventure in the Justice for Neverwinter series, originally (sorta kinda) written for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition . It turned out to be a lot of fun! Though not because of the adventure. Background I feel like I need to explain what this adventure is and justify using it. Justice for Neverwinter is a series of mediocre railroaded adventures that try their very best to model political situations through a gushily rad-lib lens (“peaceful protest!”). The first adventure in the series is about a factional dispute between a mining company (called ForestCo, obviously), its overworked employees, and a tribe of kobolds whose land the company stole to build their mine and company town. The adventurers are sent by ForestCo to deal with the kobold problem by whatever means, but soon they realize the plight of the kobolds and the workers (who are somewhat overeager to work together, even unprompted by the party). Th...

I've had the rules bible for a while, but that's less fun than something I could hypothetically print! They look pretty plain, but maybe that will change. I'm just happy to have the main nitty-gritty rules over one spread. Actually going to run some tonight :)

Iron Valley is a solo tabletop game based on the Ironsworn system, but drawing from farming and village life simulation games as its inspiration (especially Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons , Animal Crossing , and Stardew Valley ). My friend Lino from PinkSpace brought it up, and I asked if we could play in parallel because I wanted to hang out, and also because I so desperately want a pencil-and-paper farming game that I can zone out playing. Here's my short-form verdict by way of Discord message: i think lino should also give a verdict, but mine is: it’s conceptually very sweet but you kinda need to bring your own game (“ fuck you design ”, as per alex), and it also infantilizes the reader and—by making the game overly cozy—swings in the opposite direction because you can’t help but think about how perfect everything is. one example is that, like harvest moon and similar games, it quantifies friendship points via gifts you give them, but it treats it as wholesome and contr...

Someone shared a Reddit post , quoted below: Games Made By Cis Women As the title says. Looking for games made or designed by cisgender women. Played most of the indie games I could find that are made by women, but surprisingly few seem to be made (or are designed) by cisgender women. Wanting to expand my experiences. I vomited the thoughts below: i get where they’re coming from and sorta sympathize, but think they’re sorta misattributing the root cause in a way that comes off as reactionary? i always call it tumblr/reddit culture as a shorthand/joke, but there are cultural differences between female and male spaces that rub off on even individuals who transition later. e.g., tumblr trans culture is associated with trans men and reddit trans culture with trans women. it feels weird. attributing it to sex-assigned-at-birth reflects short-sightedness at the least and more likely implicit prejudice, but i’ve asked myself a similar question. not an insignificant number of trans ...