Be it for a fantasy city, superhero game, or space station, these mechanics will help you flesh out 'walking the beat' for your party of law-keepers. Intersperse this with big, landmark cases - murder, heist, kidnappings etc.! Image: The Siege: Inside Town by Francis Goeltner The Stats Of A District First, determine the size of … Continue reading Nothing To See Here: City Guard Patrol Shifts for TTRPGs
I like the idea of faction play, but I find it often gets bogged down into a large number of variables and actions. I've tried to make a system that is trackable with simple tokens representing Assets, and allows for plenty of player intervention. Factions & RegionsRegionsAsset TypesThe Home RegionCreating A RealmAssets and their FunctionsIntelligenceInfluenceMightAsset … Continue reading Intelligence, Influence & Might: Simple Faction Conflict in TTRPGs
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
Samuel Bennett of Tales of the Lunar Lands wrote two neat blog posts about bar brawls in TTRPGs. I couldn't agree more with "In a way, bar brawls could be considered a sort of mini-sandbox" - so here are some mechanics I personally use to spice up tavern-centered conflict! These rules are pretty generic, and … Continue reading Old School Fisticuffs: Bar Brawls in D&D 5e and OSR RPGs
Here I aim to flesh out the step between “you are traveling” and “you found a dungeon” in a hex- or pointcrawl, in a way that hopefully feels natural and like actual exploration. I’ve taken some inspiration from, yes, Skyrim. It aims to add a bit of risk-reward to the process: discovering new locations might … Continue reading The Things We Find Along The Way – Filling The Gaps In A Hexcrawl or Pointcrawl
The following was written with Cairn in mind, but would work just as well for Into the Odd, Electric Bastionland and heck, D&D 5e if you're doing a complete revamp. Performing actions involves time, gear, and skill. Generally, if you have none or one of the three, a task is impossible.If you have all three, … Continue reading Time, Gear & Skill: A Different Approach To Skill Checks
The popularity of Dungeons & Dragons 5e means that it's really attractive to produce content and tools for the game. This creates a self-propagating cycle of sorts; it's the most popular because there's so much tools and tutorials available, causing more people to get into it etc. Over the years, I've gathered a lot of … Continue reading 18 Amazing Online D&D Resources You Might Not Have Heard Of
How to add meaningful gameplay decisions to big, dangerous environments.
Short-range teleporters can make for awesome combat encounters! Here, I use Dungeondraft to create some quick examples.
