I'll be honest - I had no idea if Block, Dodge, Parry would sell. Heck, I didn't even do the project to sell, per se. To me, it was more about, "hey, I've been writing about RPG stuff for a while now, and some people seem to like it. It'd be really, really cool if … Continue reading Celebrating The Launch: More Free Content for Block, Dodge, Parry
I've been hard at work on Block, Dodge, Parry; a classless, levelless fantasy adventure RPG, which combines many of the ideas I've written about on this blog into one coherent system. Besides bundling those ideas, it expands upon them, making for a toolkit of procedures that hopefully spark your imagination. But... what's actually in it? … Continue reading Coming Soon: Block, Dodge, Parry
I'm a simple man - Netflix's Edgerunners has rekindled my interest in the Cyberpunk aesthetic (though I've loved and revisited it many times already over the last decade). Here are a few byte-sized ideas I put together for running something Cyberpunky in Into The Odd, Electric Bastionland, Cairn and similar games. Image: Cyborg Yakuza self-tuning … Continue reading Various Cyberpunk Musings for Into The Odd-Style Games
I'm in the midst of playtesting Block, Dodge, Parry, and I'm doing so with a 1-on-1 campaign with a friend. The campaign centers around a dethroned noble trying to seize back control of the land he lost, and in the most recent arc, he has arrived in a border city in order to gain some … Continue reading Intrigue & Investigation: A System for Urban Suspense
I came across Cyber by Oskar Świda recently, a really neat cyberpunk version of Cairn. Since I've been playing a lot of Cyberpunk 2077 recently, and since I already made some firearms rules in the past and since I already made some new weapon tags for fantasy Into The Odd/Electric Bastionland/Cairn, I figured I'd combine … Continue reading Locked & Loaded: More Firearms for Modern Into The Odd & Similar games
Most of my systems and posts are about adding interesting, meaningful choices to TTRPG procedures that tickle the players' sense of risk and reward. This particular system was originally written for ships at sea, but can be repurposed just as well for on-foot encounters in the wilderness - or spaceships venturing into parts unknown. This … Continue reading Oh? You’re Approaching Me? Closing The Distance in Dungeons & Dragons Encounters
I'm a big fan of Emmy Allen's Duels in OSR rules, so I made a small adaption for it to suit a game I'm running at the moment. Image: Senat by Pascal Quidault I also love OSR tendencies to just leave out any dialogue- or social stats & mechanics, leaving it to the actual players … Continue reading Hostile Negotiations: A Conversational System for Into The Odd/Cairn
Recently, I've been really interested in classless RPGs. I'm working on a quite extensive system that I'm currently playtesting, but in the meantime, I got a pretty lightweight take that I made in preparation for a Star Wars campaign I'm running. Image: Prepare to war by Darek Zabrocki Design Notes I primarily designed this for … Continue reading Lightweight Careers for OSR RPGs
This is an attempt to bring the risk-management decisions of my Dark Souls inspired combat to a more contemporary form of fisticuffs. Be it for Old West, modern-day, cyberpunk, or sci-fi type adventures, I hope these rules give you some bang for your buck (it helps that it's free!) Image: Oscillator by Kevin Moran What … Continue reading There Was A Firefight: Gunfighting Rules for Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland/Cairn
Image credits: Merciless by Vlad Marica I've started playtesting my aforementioned Dodge, Block & Parry system! I've tied it into the Weapon system as well, and it's working quite good, so far! Design Notes Fight back makes combat even more lethal, by allowing for essentially a double attack (attacking in response to the enemy => … Continue reading Dodging, Blocking & Parrying in Practice
