Runehack RPG 0.1: Pivoting in a New Direction

It's time for the truth to be revealed. Maybe I never really wanted a game that's action-filled in the first place. I have always dreamed of a D&D game with an all-bards party, where they'd go on a world tour. Or something similar for another system. I lost this dream of mine somewhere along the way to Game Dev years ago and have forgotten about it... until today.

It's time to showcase how the musical pillar will work for the Runehack RPG!

A quick musician doodle redeemed from Mishroomarts

Music Pillar

There are four qualities that the music can have:

• Intensity can range from Calm to Strong, describing how loud the music's loudest tones are. It utilizes Muscle.
• Tempo can range from Slow to Fast, describing the general speed at which the music is played. It utilizes Agility.
• Authenticity can range from Bright to Dark, describing whether the music is more upbeat or emotional. It utilizes Comprehension.
• Creativity can range from Stock to Fresh, describing whether the music is predictable or if it's unafraid to experiment outside of the music theory's range. It utilizes Hunch.

Training isn't represented as a musical genre because it defines your expertise with musical instruments. You can play a number of musical instruments equal to 1 + your Training, and they can have a total number of unique properties equal to your Training.

Note: You can select a musical instrument in place of one of the expert areas that your Training gives you in the Core Pillar. If you do so, you will have expertly knowledge in how this instrument works, its history, maintenance, and significant artists who primarily played this instrument.

The musical instruments can have the following properties:

• Pedaled. Advantage on rolls for Intensity.
• Two-handed. Advantage on rolls for Tempo.
• Multi-tonal. Advantage on rolls for Authenticity.
• Contiunuous. Advantage on rolls for Creativity.
• Static. Advantage on rolls for both Intensity and Tempo.
• Custom-made. Choose one of the musical qualities. You can use Training in place of the original stat when rolling for that quality using this instrument. You can take this property multiple times.

Musical Performance

When performing, it is important to appease the crowd's demands. The GM begins by secretly rolling 4d6 and dividing the numbers between the qualities. The highest roll stands for a preference for high rolls in that quality, the lowest roll stands for a preference for low rolls in that quality, and anything in between begins neutral. If multiple numbers are the highest/lowest, it's applied to multiple qualities. If all four numbers are the same, they correspond to low (1-3) or high (4-6) rolls. The GM keeps them in the order of Intensity, Tempo, Authenticity, and Creativity behind the screen.

At the start of every round, the GM rolls 2d12 without adding them together to see which preferences flip. If they were neutral so far, they get tipped either way at GM's discretion.

• 1-3: Intensity
• 4-6: Tempo
• 7-9: Authenticity
• 10-12: Creativity

These preferences can be represented in crowd actions. These are, on purpose, ambiguous to keep the band guessing. For convenience, each is listed twice to be easier to reference. The GM should mention ideally two of them (one if there aren't two) at the start of each round to clue the players in on what the audience demands.

• Intensity (low)
• or Tempo (low): swaying
• or Creativity (low): whistling
• Intensity (high)
• or Tempo (high): head-banging
• or Authenticity (high): stomping
• Tempo (low)
• or Intensity (low): swaying
• or Authenticity (high): lights above heads (e.g. lighters)
• Tempo (high)
• or Intensity (high): head-banging
• or Creativity (high): playing air instruments
• Authenticity (low)
• or Creativity (low): screams
• or Creativity (high): crowd wave
• Authenticity (high)
• or Intensity (high): stomping
• or Tempo (low): lights above heads (e.g. lighters)
• Creativity (low)
• or Intensity (low): whistling
• or Authenticity (low): screams
• Creativity (high)
• or Tempo (high): playing air instruments
• or Authenticity (low): crowd wave

The DC for all music-making rolls is 8 unless said otherwise. However, the players must either roll above the DC as usual, or under if the audience demands low for some musical quality. Whether a player is trying to roll over or under 8 should be announced before the roll along with the musical quality (e.g. "I'm trying to go for low Tempo). Due to this, any musician can choose to roll with a disadvantage at will, and they can choose whether their stat is ignored, added to, or subtracted from a roll after it is made. The goal is to play according to the crowd's preferences, confirmed by the reactions described by the GM. If a musician succeeds in playing according to the crowd's preferences two times in a turn, or when they roll exactly 8, they get a Starpower Point.

Starpower Points are a way of performing extra actions while keeping up the performance. The pillar will feature some special actions that can be performed by spending an act or a number of Starpower Points. The details aren't worked out yet, but for now, examples could include:

• getting the crowd to sing in your place,
• dance moves,
• musical instrument tricks,
• activating special effects such as fireworks,
• jumping onto the crowd and letting it carry you,
• tossing a keepsake into the crowd.

Each would have its effect, but right now I don't have any further details worked out. Maybe some could coordinate their preferences or something like that.

---

That's about it for now. Of course, once finished the pillar would feature its own roles, their features, and so on, but that all should be done on another day. All that being said, ... it should be obvious this isn't what I want my game to be about, but I do want it to be an actual part of the game. It's not on my priorities list, but I had some time to spare during Easter and thought of working this out before I get to the final details of the core system I want to release this year as a way of relaxing. It might not come off as all that funny of an April Fools joke, but I came up with it not too long ago. The article was written in about 2 hours, most of this isn't set in stone yet. Obviously, it borrows some ideas from Play It by Cheer!, and that's because I really liked the foundation I've laid out there. Its stats map nicely onto this system's stats, Training is an awesome "ace in a sleeve" stat that'd work universally elsewhere, and... I think when I get to making the roles for this system, I'll make it so that the roles are named differently. Writing all this out made me realize that the roles probably should have different names in every pillar.

Anyway, writing the Core Pillar article took me too long, I wrote like 5 or 6 articles since I mentioned it last time it, so I can't promise I'll publish it before I begin the playtests. I'll see what I can do though. I like the way the game's development is going, and my 12 good games resolution is going to be finished soon enough. Or, it would be, if Witcher 3 wasn't still ahead of me.

That's about it! Thank you for reading, and happy beginning of April, everyone!

Two Heckadeck Games

So I couldn't resist any longer and ordered myself a Heckadeck earlier. It arrived sooner than I expected earlier today. And so I figured "Since February 29th comes only once every four years, I might as well try to make a game with the heckadeck before March begins." By the time I got around to actually writing the game, it was 10 o'clock at night. Let's call this a two-hour leap year one-person game jam.

I actually managed to write two games, because the first one I wasn't satisfied with. It was a tabletop game alright, but didn't feel like a TTRPG. Honestly, I don't feel like bothering with tables in CSS, so I'll just turn them into unnumbered lists for the sake of speed. The second one will be a lot simpler, but I can only do so much in two hours with an item I got earlier today. I'm posting both anyway.

Have a great day!

I might be in a hurry, but I can still afford to slap on a picture of a mage with cards on it. I don't know if I have time to find the source until midnight, so here's a link for my source, seems like someone who does commissions on Etsy.

The Wishstone

Players' characters are on a quest to obtain the Wishstone that can make their deepest desires real, represented by the Omnihedron. Take the Omnihedron out of the Heckadeck and put it in the middle of the table. It can only be taken by the player who discards Talismans of four different colors during their turn. The Omnihedron must always remain face-up on the table, even when possessed by a player.

Divide the remaining cards into two decks. The Character deck contains all Jokers, Jacks, Queens, Kings, Beasts, Hunters, and Travelers, as well as the Crone and the Watcher. The other one, simply referred to as the deck, contains all numbered cards, Arrows, Talismans, and the Darkness.

Each player draws three cards from the Character deck. They select which one is their character, and keep the rest as their Will, representing their close bonds. Once everyone has their cards, they can draw 7 cards from the deck. Before the game begins, anyone who holds a Talisman can reveal it. If any Talisman is revealed, the youngest holder of a Talisman starts the game. If none were revealed, the youngest player goes first.

At the start of your turn, a player by your left side draws two cards from the deck and chooses which one is your Challenge, as per the table below.

• Number: You need to discard cards with a total value of 6 or this card's value (whichever is higher).
• Arrow: There is no challenge. You can choose either the effect of success or failure.
• Talisman: You are overcome with a need to harm one character selected by the player who chose this card for you. To succeed, discard any 3 cards. You can keep this card only if you succeed.
• Darkness: You need to discard cards with a total value between 20 and 25. If you fail, you lose one Will. You can discard any number of cards.

To overcome a Challenge, you must discard enough cards, either from your hand or drawn from the deck. You can keep discarding cards this way until you discard a card that doesn't belong to your suit. Discarding the non-number cards has the following effects:

• Arrow counts as 1 or 11 (your choice).
• Talisman lets you automatically succeed.
• Darkness harms the character of the player who chose this challenge for you.

If you succeed, you can discard any number of cards from your hand. If you fail, you can take the challenge card into your hand. Either way, after a Challenge you can choose to discard cards for any of the following reasons:

• Arrow to attempt harming another Character.
• Talismans if you have Talismans of all four colors to obtain the Omnihedron.
• Darkness to end the game immediately.
• You can also discard cards at this time if a character ability you possess lets you.

You end your turn by drawing cards into your hand until you hold 7 cards.

When a character is harmed, they must discard one of their Will cards. A discarded Will always goes back to the Character deck. When one runs out of Will cards, they are eliminated from the game.

You get a special ability depending on what character you play.

• Joker: Select one additional Character card. You get its ability, but its suits are replaced by the suits that match your color.
• Jack: You start the game with 9 cards on your hand, and at the end of your turn you can draw up to 9 cards into your hand.
• Queen: You can discard one additional time in a challenge.
• King: Draw two additional cards from the Character deck for your Will.
• Beast: During your turn, you can discard two cards of your suit to harm one character of your choice.
• Hunter: Whenever you are harmed by a character, you can discard a card of your suits to harm the character too.
• Traveler: If you succeed on a challenge, you can give another player two cards of your choice from your hand, and take two random cards from their hand.
• Crone: You automatically succeed in a conflict resolution if you discard a non-numbered card (including your Will). You can discard five numbered cards during your turn and choose a player. They must switch their current character with one of their Will cards (their choice).
• Watcher: You can hold no cards. You fail your conflict resolution if the total you drew exceeds 13.

When the game ends, the player who holds Omnihedron wins along with all players whose characters' suits match the holder's.

HeckaRPG

This game requires a GM.

Take all Jacks, Queens, Kings, Beasts, Hunters, and Travelers out of the deck, and they stay out of the deck during the game. Every player chooses two random cards out of these and places them down on the table face up in front of them. The card on the top is their Body, and their Mind is the card on the bottom placed perpendicular. At the start of the game, draw 5 cards from the deck to represent your Determination. Keep them face down beneath both your Body and Mind. When you have 0 Determination, you are unconscious.

When you attempt to do something significant, the GM can challenge your Body or Mind. They tell you the difficulty, ranging from 1 (very easy) to 5 (nearly impossible). Taking someone's Determination away is 3, and giving someone Determination is 4. Draw 5 cards. Your success is measured by counting the cards with suits that match your attributes. You succeed if the number of matches equals or exceeds the difficulty, given by the GM.

• Crone has no suits.
• Darkness has no suits, and it costs you 1 Determination.
• Watcher has all suits, and the GM tells your character some new useful information.
• Omnihedron has all suits, and it gives you 1 Determination.
• Joker has both suits of its color. It also counts as a success for any single-suited card.
• Arrow has both suits of its color. It also counts as a success for any Jack or Beast.
• Talisman has both suits of its color. It also counts as a success for any King or Queen.

Replenish all Determination (max 5) when you get enough rest. Set yourself goals. Upon achieving them, the GM can let you draw additional characters and add them to your Body or Mind, keeping them parallel with the original Body and Mind to distinguish them.

That's all for today! February 29th article done, two-hour "game jam" finished, let's go!

Post-midnight edit: The second game is 300+ words too. Oh well!

Lethal Companions

Lately, I've been playing a game called Lethal Company. It's about going on abandoned moons to collect scrap that's sold to an ominous company afterward. I couldn't resist joining the trend, and it really is the funniest horror game I've ever played. Spooky monsters, sudden deaths, and perfect proximity voice chat make for an awesome experience. This was my mindset when I started pondering what I should make for my December game. I took some extra time with it because I agreed to a collab with a streamer King Starman. I was a guest on his stream to help him and guide him through the process of writing a 200-word TTRPG of his own. I believed in his capability to do it ever since the summer, and today his moment finally came. With minor assistance from me and his chat, he wrote a game named Lighthouse Keeper. Going by his description, it's a game of Among Us, except it's about a ship that's steered by the captain based on the directions given to him by his crew. He thought less of it, but I'd say it's better than my first 200-word TTRPG ever. I was happy to hear just how proud he felt about actually finishing the very first game that he could call his own. After the stream, we agreed on more collaborations in the future, which is awesome. One possibility is... playing Lethal Company together.

That's not the only reason why I brought up the game, though. The main reason for that would be that it is the major source of inspiration for my game. And it all started by flipping the premise on its head: what if the players were the monsters?

Thank you for reading this ahead of time, and I wish you a wonderful day!

The rules I present in this article are given in the form in which I wrote them during the stream. I had to do the formatting after, figured I should give that a go.

Lethal Companions

Your created monsters protect their home from the burglars. Distribute d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20 into:

Hide	Kill	Resist
Sway	Track	Steal

You succeed on a roll if you roll 4+. Die on failing Resist thrice.

Generate the facility starting from the entrance by rolling a 1d6 or 1d4 for every room. Add a corridor of choice if only dead ends are left. All rooms are squares, connected if at least one has a corridor aimed at the other.

1. Dead end
2. Corridor (roll for Direction)
3. Two routes (roll for missing Direction) 
4. Crossroads
5. Staircase (d6: 1-3 up, 4-6 down) + 1d4
6. Entrance + 1d4

Direction d6: 1-2 left, 3-4 straight, 5-6 right

For each room, roll for the loot and describe it.

1—3	Nothing
4	Small
5	Expensive
6	Two-handed (holder can't act)

The game begins when 1+1d6 humans enter. Each has 1d6 Morale, reduced when they:

• See a monster
• See a dead body
• Have an item stolen

A human with 0 Morale runs away. When all humans leave, every living monster chooses one stat to increase by 1 step.

Look back, look back!
     Lethal Company (Coil Head), by Cuautzin

The biggest reason why I said before the game that I present it in the form in which I finished it during the stream is because it has some shortcomings. But let's start with the strengths.

I wouldn't have guessed that I would be able to fit an interior generator into a 200-word game. I surprised myself here, I think it's pretty well done. If one wishes to do a flat map, they just keep rolling d4 and decide wherever the entrances are, or they roll d6 but keep rerolling a 5 (or just ignore the stairs part). The loot generator isn't that in-depth, I mean it barely says that a two-handed item prevents you from acting.

The stats were fun to come up with, but eventually, I realized I should get a sixth one. During the stream, I settled on Sway because I figured some of the monsters were so threatening/cute/passive that one wouldn't want to kill them. But honestly, ... if I were to edit the game, I'd replace it with the Speed. It would be pretty cool for enemies like coil heads. The stat system and the conflict resolution are otherwise picked up completely from the Savage Worlds.

The action economy of this game isn't quite clear either, so let me clarify: the intent is to both move and either pick up an item in the room or do something that requires a roll in a turn. This applies to humans too, with the fact that their attack actually causes the attacked monster to make a Resist roll. A couple more and a little more time would have resolved this, but I'll just fix that if I want to rework the game into something bigger.

Of course, I couldn't fit into it special abilities or "monster types" that I hoped I would include at the start, but... I hope at least the stats will provide some variety, along with the players' descriptions. For what it is, I'd say the game is kind of neat.

This is the final 200-word TTRPG that I've made for this year's challenge of mine. I will list all twelve of them during my 2023 retrospective, and I can confidently say that I am proud I finished this challenge I set for myself. Whether I'll keep making more 200-word games or not is a question I can't answer. What I can say though is that I will make these tiny games when I'll have a concept that I want to test out quickly. I don't have plans as of yet to keep up the challenge in 2024, so my blog activity might go down a bit. I do have some of my resolutions figured out, though. It's hard to tell whether I'll make a post around Christmas time, so just in case I won't: Happy Holidays and Happier New Year!

P.S. Almost forgot to link my Twitch channel, where I'll likely play more Lethal Company and make more funny clips.

Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

Rolling with It

You know what's kind of silly? I keep making these short TTRPGs monthly, and yet I haven't made one that would take place in one of my previously made worlds. It's always something already present in media (such as the zombie apocalypse represented by Double the Zombies), a setting made by someone else (such as the city of Revachol from my first game of 2023, (Almost) Everyone is Harry), or setting agnostic (like most of those games). The time to change that is now, and I'm making a game that takes place in my world of orb-based magical technology, which will be named "Geniorum" for now. I've actually worked out a couple more details behind the scenes and wanted to make an article that would update the orbtech concept for several months but never got around to it. Well, now I have to because the clock is ticking and my November game needs to be published soon.

Have a great time and a greater day!

I've spent too much time learning blender basics just to make this. Can't say I'm truly satisfied with it, but it is good enough.

Rolling with It

Requires 1 GM and 1+ players.

Orbs are magical quartz spheres fueled by alcohol. One can program it by falling asleep while touching it, entering its dreamscape. You were murdered while pondering your orb, transporting your mind into it permanently. Discover your murderer and their motive. If you ever run out of alcohol, you die.

You can:

• see and hear your surroundings,
• roll like a sphere for 4 hours*,
• change your surface's temperature between -50 and 50°C*,
• change your appearance,
• produce sounds heard by anyone touching you,
• absorb alcohol through your surface magically,
• control your dreamscape completely (10x slower time inside),
• send/receive digital funds to/from other orbs through touch,
• create flammable sturdy matter up to double your volume after spending 8 hours away from any starlight*.

* Costs 1 unit of alcohol. Max units equal die size.

Choose your orb's size. Here are sphere size comparisons from our world:

d4	marble
d6	golf
d8	pool
d10	shot put
d12	bowling
d20	boulder

When you need to, roll your die. Example difficulties listed below.

Difficulty	Strength (≥ difficulty)	Speed (≤ difficulty)
4	bottle of water	fraction of a second
10	human weight	seconds
16	a large car	tens of seconds

He who ponders the orbs becomes pondered.
Can't trace the author of this edit, and can't be bothered to spend too much time on this search. Instead, I'll credit the original M. C. Escher's Hand with Reflecting Sphere.

I wanted to say that it's a short game, but then I realized it's exactly 200 words long. Why does it feel so short then? Well, the answer is simple: there are very few mechanics in it. Most of the game just talks about how orbs operate, since they are very different from humans. Not everyone's a fan of details like this, so I don't expect too many to enjoy this game. Then again, I don't expect that of any of my 200-word games, these are prototypes.

Ever since I've heard about Savage Worlds' stats being dice and the difficulty being always 4, I wanted to do something with that. I figured this was a good chance, seeing how differently-sized orbs would be capable of differently-sized things. Well, actually, all of them are capable of movement. But not all of them are capable of pushing around a car-sized thing. Sure I couldn't fit into it stuff like "if you're a boulder, you probably can't enter buildings", but that's something players will hopefully be able to think of on their own.

Here's another tiny detail: all of your actions should in theory cost alcohol. But keeping track of all alcohol spent on such minute actions as making a red dot on your orb's "north pole" would just get too tedious. I opted for restricting the alcohol expenditure only to the actions I figured would be influential and left it there. But if a player does minor actions way too much, the GM has the right to tell them they've spent a unit of alcohol.

With such a word limit, it's quite difficult to fit a pre-established setting into it. Even if Geniorum can hardly be considered a setting yet, it's got a multitude of rules related to the orbs. I feel like it deserves more of my attention in order to be developed, but honestly... I like Runehack a lot more. When I was picking a world to cover with my 200-word game treatment, I had several options. The divtech's world is... well, a starless rogue planet populated only by robots. I have yet to even work out its materials completely before I start doing anything with it. Then there's leytech, which would have been perfect for a TTRPG about warriors but is also quite complicated with all the different kinds of rings that influence the water passing through. I have one more magitech world that I've wanted to write about on this blog for about a year now, but I've been pushing it off the same as an update on Geniorum.

Of course, there are more details I couldn't fit into the ruleset. For example, an inworld name for folks who got trapped in the orbs is "genie". And the creation of matter is due to lumpowder, a substance that manifests in alcohol hidden from all forms of sunlight, including reflected. Then there's the fact that multiple people could get trapped inside the same orb, but only the first one retains complete control over it. Usually, they'd have their minor genies manifest as parts of their body, which is what I nickname "medusa". I could keep going, but the truth is that Geniorum is still vastly underdeveloped. That doesn't change the fact that this was fun to come up with.

Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

Design of Runehack: The Asterist

Ahoy! I have something I've wanted to tell you for a long time but kept it to myself for now. While making so many short games is nice and all, I do want to make a bigger game that could be fun to play for a longer time. I want it to be stimulating as a game, fulfilling narratively, but also different from what the market offers. Plenty of designers take the three pillars of D&D for granted like they are meant to be the foundation of every big TTRPG. Combat, exploration, and social interaction are fine, but I have some issues with them. Combat tends to be overrepresented and I'm tired of it. Exploration is okay in theory, but either undefined or unused in most cases I've partaken in. Social interaction is fine as is. So, I've been planning this project for quite a while, as some of you may know, and my first step was actually to figure out my own pillars of experience. In Runehack: The Asterist, I have explored one of these pillars... hacking.

I hope you'll enjoy reading this article, and I wish you all a wonderful day!

This artpiece was created by my wonderful girlfriend Arell with great care. Since one of my sources of inspiration for this project was the video game Transistor, I asked for something a little more surreal. I really like the glitch effects on the character, the lines that connect to the illustrated endpoints in the exact same way as the dice would in the game, and the big clock at the top with 23 spokes that represent the 23 hours during which the city is simulated every day.

In the Beginning, There Was a Line

The origin of my hacking minigame goes back to June 24, 2022. In the afternoon hours after a Friday lunch break, I've been talking to a pal of mine about one of my game design goals: if you want the story to focus on an activity, make it into a minigame. Combat in D&D is very much a minigame, and I'm pretty sure there have to be some minigames out there in games I haven't played as much too. I briefly mentioned how Watch Dogs has this hacking game I like a lot, pretty much a waterpipe-connecting puzzle, and how it does a couple of twists just to spruce things up now and then. Of course, not all hacks are done that way, it's just the really important ones when the game wants to emphasize the process.

But that got me thinking... wouldn't it be fun if this was doable on a board? After a few minutes of pondering this while the conversation continued, I had an idea. Placing the dice down, connecting them into lines using their pips. The dice pips are very underutilized, so much so that plenty of six-sided dice have replaced them with numbers. Eventually, this idea grew from just lines into branching trees. One cool thing I realized is that if the trails these dice make up were traced on paper, they would have no sharp angles, only 90° and 135° angle connections. Kind of like circuit boards. ... okay, those don't have a 90° angle, but it's close enough to remind me of those.

After working out the rules, I had to make up some basic patterns for the GMs to use, and abilities for the players to rely on. Fortunately, this minigame is rich with unexplored metaphors: firewalls, crossroads, pivots, endpoints, and so on and so forth. The turn structure for a player is simple - roll the die, use an ability if you want and can, and place a die on the board.

I'm extra proud of the fact that I came up with a way of explaining the basic rolls players would make to resolve simple things into hacks too. "Solo hacks", as I call them, are required when you would've succeeded on a task, were it 5 points higher than it currently is. What happens here is that you make a minor hack using only a single die, and on a success, the attribute increases temporarily by the necessary number. There are solo grids included in the rules, which are interconnected only by the corresponding die roll, or higher. For example, a solo hack grid for a difficulty of 3 succeeds only on the rolls of [3], [4], [5], and [6]. Yes, I've gone one step beyond and explained how the most basic rolls work, in case the players would like to hack those too. There's an optional rule for it.

Watch_Dogs 2 was rather influential for me, and it is still one of my favorite games. Even if these hacking puzzles are quite easy to grasp, they were enough to inspire me.

Immortals in the Ocean

The setting of Everling is one I had in my mind long before the game was written. Even before technologies anywhere close to ChatGPT have been invented in our world, we've been worried about the rise of Artificial Intelligence. I figured that a fictional world would too, which is why they'd want to test out its behavior in a secluded place, safely tucked away from the civilization. Then, I realized something important: these people are holograms. The entire city can be a hologram. And an image can be hovering anywhere if it's done just using the runes. Even... at the bottom of the ocean.

All this being said, though, the toughest part to figure out was the question of worldbuilding. Being a member of an immortal, theoretically post-scarcity society is fine, ... but how does one turn that into a game? What drives these people, what do they do on a daily basis? How do they identify each other and communicate? And is there anything that could have a price in their eyes? These questions took me literally months to answer, long before I even conceived of the hacking minigame in June. I got answers to these questions eventually, most of which you could find in Everling's article, which is why I'll move on from this point and come back to describing how it affected the game.

Originally, I wanted the players to keep track of their simulation time in the form of "hyres", a modernized version of the term for an hour they'd use as slang. However, while writing the game, I came to realize that that sounds rather intimidating. So, instead of doing that, I decided to group them into six time blocks. I still don't know if it's a good design decision, but it's a bit of an experiment on my side.

Of course, being a simulated mind with a hologram body comes with a lot of other aspects, which I felt the need to outline in the rules in the Ghost's Baseline Traits section. I wonder if this won't be too much for a player to get into, keeping in mind all the things I listed there.

The attributes were a tough cookie to work out because there are so many things a ghost could build themselves for. Ultimately, I decided to go with 11 attributes sorted into three groups: Corporeal (relating to how much influence they have in the world, such as telekinesis-powered strength), Phenomenal (relating to how they are perceived by others), and Intelligence (describing how fast they can retrieve information from the Mistweb). One extra attribute technically exists, but it's just for the unspent points. A player could change their loadout of attributes during any maintenance, giving them a lot of flexibility in expressing themselves. Furthermore, I've provided in the document a table that describes what each of the attribute values stands for numerically.

Finally, there's Corruption and memories, some of my favorite aspects of the game. During the maintenance, a corrupted ghost gets fixed to an extent or backed up if they were completely uncorrupted. You can't hurt a digital ghost, but you could try to corrupt their code. And the more corrupted they are, the higher the chance their simulation gets terminated. If you remember how annoying it is to lose that one document you've worked on for hours without saving it, you can imagine what happens when a ghost gets terminated. They are restored from their last backed-up state, forgetting everything that happened since then. Of course, there's also a way of "killing" a ghost, which is in actuality just hard-locking it by getting the city's servers to back it up while it is terminated. As for how that's done, let me just hint that that has to do with the following paragraph.

Hack the World

I don't say this lightly, but this might be the greatest game design idea I've had in my life. Hack the World is a mechanic available to all player characters in Runehack: The Asterist. To put it briefly, they can temporarily rewrite the rules of the game itself for you, increasing or decreasing some number in the game... by 1. It's usable once per Cycle (term for a day in Everling), after which the effects cease. I honestly can't think of a better setting for this mechanic, a city that's completely simulated and hacked from the inside is perfect. Of course, the rules had to be written around the fact that this can be done, but it wasn't as difficult as I thought. (Though this might be proven otherwise once players actually get their hands on it.)

Honestly, I feel like I could keep going on and on forever, but I've said everything about the game that's important, and then some. I'm just happy it's finally out, and I look forward to testing the rules out, and connecting them to the bigger project I've had on my mind for literal years.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Watch Your Time

I know this will seem like I'm playing it up because it's the spooky month, but... I don't remember when I wrote this. I found it one day on my computer, copied it without checking for the timestamp, and I've been saving it for October. Yes, sometimes I pre-write my games, but not all of them make it here. Maybe I'll talk about that after publishing the final game in December. Speaking of, I'm not sure if I'll continue this challenge into 2024 or not. It's a nice way of keeping myself engaged in the game design, while also exploring new ideas every month and prototyping quickly. But I'm not sure if it's necessary, and how long can I keep it up. So, I plan to retire this trend after 2023. I will write new RPGs on this blog the way this started—when I feel like I have an idea worth sharing. Most of these were just that, but there were times when I realized I was forcing it. Bars on Mars would be the only published example of that, and my unpublished fae-themed game would be another. There are some games that I regret because they could have used more polish were they longer, such as Clues and Hunches, but I can say that generally most of these gave me some new tool or perspective for designing my games.

 

I'd imagine this system would be perfect for the situations, in which you need to hide away from a monster and move out when the time is right.
This art piece is a cover art for The Dark Eye made by Luisa Preissler.

Watch Your Time

Stopwatch that can be stopped without looking at its numbers required.

The GM describes a scary life-threatening situation. It could be a natural disaster, a slasher movie monster attack, or anything else scary. Play only situations that won't cause actual distress to the players. Each player then describes a character they'll control who's involved in the situation.

Players take turns. On their turn, a player describes what their character does to prevent this situation, escape it, or assist someone else. The player then starts the stopwatch and stops it blindly. They mark X if the final time is less than 50 seconds. Their character dies if they are marked with three X's, or if the last time is 60 seconds or more. Otherwise, the player adds up all the numbers (ignore the third decimal and beyond), marking a success if their sum equals 20 or more. The GM can increase or decrease the difficulty by 5 depending on the circumstances.

The GM must announce when a life-threatening situation is over, beginning a moment of peace. At this moment, each player can remove one X from any character. Whoever ends with none gets to subtract 1 from their future difficulties.

The Adventures of Lua and Nina, by Felipe Cavalcanti

Who doesn't like conflict resolution gimmicks? Sure dice are a classic, and the cards provide interesting complexity to a game. But some people crave novelty. Whether it's playing a game with a Jenga tower (like Dread), or the Rubix cubes, bringing something new to the table is interesting. This time, I wanted to emulate the time-sensitive tasks with something beyond a random die roll. Realizing that the decimals of a stopwatch are pretty much a random die roll, I figured I'd try giving this a go. It's bizarre, and I'll likely never end up using this in a proper TTRPG of mine, but it's a neat experiment regardless.

Honestly, not much else to say about this one. It's quite minimal, and definitely closer to the Proof of Concept side rather than an Actual Game side. But it is what it is, so I'm running with it.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Design of Final: Sole Survivor

As part of this year's One Page RPG Jam, I made two games this year. Previously, I described the design of Your Royal Slyness but didn't get to talking about my other game. So let's open this year's October with a thrilling and dangerous journey of how I worked on...

Hack of a Slasher

If you've been reading my blog for a while, or you've ever looked at some of my older posts, you might have found one called Slasher Oneshot System. If you've seen both that and Final: Sole Survivor, you might see a lot of resemblance, primarily because this is my updated version of that system. It's mainly focused on fixing what I saw as the weak spots of the Slasher Oneshot System, such as the fact that it's a oneshot system only. While F:SS isn't built for extremely long-term campaigns, it allows for some form of serialization between the games, building up what I like to describe as a "small horror story franchise". Recurring characters that pop up after a while, items that keep their relevance, perhaps even similar places.

The biggest contradiction to fight in this case is the fact that I am looking for a way of serializing a horror game in which the whole point is that nearly all characters will die. How is one supposed to level up, if they are not allowed to survive the game? Well... one person is always allowed to survive. And since I wanted to experiment with this for a while now, I've made it so that several years pass between sessions in-world, aging the character up and letting them grow into someone different from who they used to be.

This means that a player character could grow to be an adult, or even someone old. The older they get, the more encounters with the monster they've survived, making them yet more skilled. I had to replace the labels that were fitting for teens with labels that could apply to adults as well. The Qualities aren't perfect, but I'd say they do their job decently enough. I'd consider growing this list further if I could come up with more "+1" abilities for the players to have, as well as more skills that could be useful to them. To keep the legacy of the Slasher Oneshot System in the new product, I still keep some of the older descriptions on the optional second page, in the table of Archetypes.

Speaking of character creation, can I just say how happy I am with how elegant it turned out? It's as easy as 1-2-3-4, because you get one Quality, two Health, three Skills, and four Items by default.

One main difference some might notice is conflict resolution. Roll 2d6, 7-9 is a partial success, 10+ is a success. This part is taken straight out of Powered by the Apocalypse since it does its job well. However, I've sprinkled in a little twist of my own that I grew to like a lot. Featured in both Double the Zombies and Bars on Mars, something extra happens when both dice roll an identical number. I really like the mechanic because it gives each roll the potential to up the stakes of the game somehow. I could imagine this playing a role in so many of my other game ideas.

Embracing the Edge

I don't like to make things that look too edgy. But as of lately, I've kind of grown fond of such design when it is in place. This is definitely the case that warranted it the most. Red headers, horror fonts, dark red highlighted areas, and a simple outline of a hand holding a knife on the cover art make for quite a visual identity. And since I like to hide the GM side of this game from the players, it's written in a font of the same color as its background, hiding in plain sight. I had to include a little GM blurb as to how to play the monster in the player section due to 1pRPG Jam's rules, which state that the second page must be completely optional. If it were up to me, the GM section would be on a new page, perhaps even in a completely different document, but it is what it is.

The name was what I struggled with the most. For this, I've talked with my online friend NASA to brainstorm some ideas: EXist, Singular, Alone, Lone. Then, we got to ideas that would make for neat abbreviations: "Yet Again, One Survives", Only One Makes It, Just One Makes It Out, Just One Survives, Nobody May Exit/Escape, One Survivor Remains, Surviving on Your Own, Persisting on Your Own, ... until we slowly reached Soul Survivor and Sole Survivor. But since those are already established, we expanded it a little. That's how the title of Final: Sole Survivor came. And it's also the reason why I sometimes still make a mistake and call it Final: Lone Survivor, or Final: Soul Survivor.

That's about it for the design behind this game. What a way to open the October, huh? There's certainly nothing that exciting that happened about a day or two ago that I'll be addressing soon, not at all. See you soon with my 200-word TTRPG for October, an update on something I've worked on for months, and me talking about what I'll be working on in the future. Have a great day!

Bars on Mars

Ahoy once again! This time, I was inspired by a system creating challenge in the community of a youtuber TTRPG designer JFace Games. On his discord server, people tend to roll a couple of random tables for several themes, and then see what comes out of it. This time, the challenge prompts were: modern, sci-fi, scoundrel (like Firefly), diplomatic, and must use a d8. Upon reading these, I had two thoughts that I needed to resolve quickly and surely enough did. "How am I going to make this sci-fi and not cyberpunk?" Well, the answer is simple enough: aliens. Just situate it on not-Earth, fill it up with alien species, have a blast. Well, that'll be difficult to fit into 200 words on its own (though the challenge isn't to write just 200 words, that's a restriction I kept for myself). Now a bigger question: how to combine the scoundrel prompt with diplomatic matters? Well, my answer was simple, and it was illegal substances. It's not a perfect answer, but I ran with it, and created this game. Since it was made for a challenge, I also gave it a bit more flourish with a one page RPG treatment, with an image, and some experiments regarding the formatting.

I hope you'll enjoy this, and have a nice day!

Fun fact: making the rules and the PDF took me about 33 hours and 22 minutes of total time. I was on a roll this one time!

Bars on Mars

You sell narcs in Mars city bars to humans and aliens alike.

GM names and describes the city. GM and all players name and describe strengths of one alien species each and one narc each. Then, everyone gives one downside to their right neighbor's alien species, and one downside to their left neighbor's narc.

Describe your character. They get:

• a Number (between 5 and 13, your choice),
• 8 + 2d8 megacredits,
• species,
• two narcs they specialize in,
• a weapon,
• and their love (not money).

At the start of a day, everyone's Presence is 0, and GM rolls 1d8 to get every narc's current cost. You can get narcs you specialize in for half the price (round up).

Take turns clockwise. When GM tells you, roll 2d8. Reroll either die once when receiving help. Your character succeeds if the result is:

• ≤ their Number and they're selling, lying, or pushing.
• ≥ their Number and they're running, sneaking, or cautious.

Identical number on both dice increases your current Presence by 1. Laying low lowers it. GM picks the threat: competing dealer gang, or lawkeepers.

• 0. Safe
• 1. Tracking you
• 2. Following you
• 3. Catching you
• 4. Caught you
• 5. Killed you

The first image won mainly because I could include more of its stuff in a vertical game page. This one is a cooler, calmer bar.
Alien Bar by KangJason

If some parts of this design seem familiar, that's because they are. I must admit, I really really grew to enjoy the combination of Lasers and Feelings' conflict resolution mechanic with rolling either above or below a number, and with my extra outcome mechanic from Double the Zombies of "something unrelated happens if both dice are the same". Frankly, this is mostly a numbers game still, but I try to add at least some roleplay-ability with the requirement for a character to have a love that isn't money. It's left up to the reader whether that's another character, some activity, a place, or even an item.

My final piece of inspiration for the mechanics has a surprisingly nostalgic source for me, the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Specifically, its Exhaustion rules that came with six levels were kind of inspiring. After I wrote up the levels of Presence in my game, I realized they sort of reflect those, and also that I'm not the first one to come up with this idea. Wild!

I also used this as a learning opportunity to experiment a little with visual design. A crooked box, neon glow letters, colored highlights and a numbered list that flows between colors, it's not a design I am perfectly happy with but it was meant to be an experiment.

Huh, the October is just around the corner. I should get ready to write up the blog post about the design of my reworked slasher horror TTRPG, and prepare the October TTRPG. Time is ticking. Until then, have a great day!

Intercosmic Bonds

Ahoy! The August was a close call due to the fact that I was visiting my girlfriend in another country for a couple of weeks. Both the travel and the visit were as fine as they could be, I had a fantastic time. For a while, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to make the 200 word TTRPG for August, but shortly before my return home I talked to an online acquaintance of mine I look up to. Irina, also known as SwordMeow, makes D&D homebrews like I used to. My favorite creations of hers include the Atavist, 10th-level spells, and the Way of One Hundred Blows monk. Her idea was a TTRPG that would begin with a slice-of-life group of friends in modern-time world, but over time it would pivot into a multiverse-spanning story of how friendship bonds can cross the worlds. And while that's not literally what I made, it gave me the kick I needed to be inspired. After the prompt, what began my process was a simple thought: if we are a mosaic of our closest people, … what if the regular stats an in-game character has were replaced by relationships? Well, my thought experiment on that can be seen below. Just a note - it will come with an example listed below, but I don't want to count examples as part of the rules (both for the word limit, but also because they're not rules per se).

Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful day!

It's safe to assume that League of Legends kind of inspired this idea. The default ninja character is displayed in the image above as (left to right): a popstar, a cyber ninja, a sushi chef, a blood moon priestess, a nurse, a soccer player, and a fire djinni.
All of these pictures belong to Riot Games.

Intercosmic Bonds

Each player creates a different

• world (they'll GM),
• character (to play while not GMing),
• stat (their character excels at).

Starting Level equals the number of players. Assign whole numbers to relationships your character has with other characters until their sum equals your Level. These relationships remain identical across the worlds even after changes. Relationships needn't be identical both ways.

Make a version of your character for every other player's world.

Select a GM before each session, different when possible. The GM comes up with a scenario that others' characters undergo as a group in one session. Scenarios combine into greater plots.

If a significant action's outcome is uncertain, the GM picks a relevant stat and asks the player to roll 2d6, adding the relationship with that stat's character.

• 3+ success (your stat only),
• 7+ success for simple challenges, 
• 10+ success.

3 failures in a row cause 1 stress to the character. Eliminate the character from the world if your Level equals the stress.

You can increase your character's relationship with another by 1 when relevant, but you must decrease another by 1.

+1 Level after completing greater plots.

Let's have a look at an example of how a single character might look in a game like this below.
Elementalist Lux, by Citemer Liu.

Since this is a high concept game, let's make an example that involves five players. Their characters are named: Aleez, Bhob, Charcol, Daann, and Elvenoore (initials are ABCDE, for easier tracking). Let's see how these characters might be built based on every player's creations before the first session.

Character	World	Stat	Aleez	Bhob	Charcol	Daann	Elvenoore
Aleez	Corrupted Wonderland	Senses	—	-1	+1	+3	+2
Bhob	Post-apocalypse iron age	Might	+3	—	-1	+0	+3
Charcol	Grand conspiracy renaissance	Intellect	+4	-3	—	+1	+3
Daann	Space opera horror	Spirit	+1	+6	-2	—	+0
Elvenoore	Cyberpunk dystopia	Finesse	-2	+1	+4	+2	—

Let's have a closer look at Aleez. If her player is GMing, the setting the game will take place in is a corrupted version of the Wonderland. According to the above table, one could say that she adds the following bonuses to her rolls:

• Senses +0 (but she succeeds on a roll of 3+)
• Might -1
• Intellect +1
• Spirit +3
• Finesse +2

It might seem counter-productive to track them as relationships, but keep in mind that these can change throughout the sessions, and even across the multiverse. If Bhob helps Aleez out in the grand conspiracy world and Aleez figures it's significant enough, she will increase her relationship with Bhob from -1 to +0 (either by also decreasing her relationship with another character, or the next time the group gets a Level up).

While Aleez' player isn't the one to GM, the character has to be adjusted slightly to fit into other worlds easily. A reminder that Aleez doesn't exist in her own Corrupted Wonderland.

• In Bhob's world, she might be an easy to impress gatherer who's curious about the way the world was before its apocalypse.
• In Charcol's world, she's a nosy handmaiden who smokes and seeks everyone's secrets.
• In Daann's world, she's a janitor equipped with special tech that allows her to shrink down for cleaning hard to reach places. (The ability to shrink down isn't written anywhere in the rules per se, but maybe Daann decided to treat the players by letting them have a gizmo of some kind.)
• In Elvenoore's world, she's a spy working for the criminal underworld, pretending to be but a simple delivery girl.

A final note is that there are no rules on crossing between these worlds, or anything akin to that. If you wish to do that and have a way of pulling it off, be my guest, but the game is only so long and crossing the worlds would take way too many words for me to pull off.

Overall, I think it's a promising concept that I might make into a more fleshed-out game someday. Maybe by mixing in a bit of the rubix cube, maybe by mixing in other games' mechanics I've been coming up with recently. But for now, this is what it is.

Thank you once again for reading! I hope that soon I'll get to write up a blog post on the design of my latest TTRPG I've released on itch.io, but for now that's all. I wish you all a great day!

Design of Your Royal Slyness

One Page RPG Jam 2023 began this Monday, and the same as in 2022 and 2021, I wanted to participate. This year, I have a bit of a disadvantage, an extra time limit since I won't be available for a significant portion of August. I had to work quick. Within five days of it starting, I published my TTRPG and submitted it to the game jam, feeling great about it. In this article, I'd like to go through the details behind this system and its development.

I had the idea of using for logo an image with all four suits in it. My girlfriend drew it much better than I could. It's simple and effective.

In the Beginning

A week before the game jam started, my wonderful girlfriend told me about this one show she stumbled upon and convinced me to watch it. Am I Being Unreasonable? is a British comedy thriller that, honestly, at a glance gave me the impression of a low-brow British comedy about an awful mother and her son who's way too emotionally mature for his age. I was quite impressed after binging it for over three hours, having gone through all of its twists, turns, and reveals. It's best to go into it blind, but I think it could be compared to Odd Taxi, another short-ish show that I liked a lot. Thinking about these two shows, and some others, had led me on some interesting thought trains. One of them is the essence of social interactions.

A mechanical way to run a social interaction feels to me like a holy grail within the TTRPG designer community. Some games have done it and are known because of it, but generally, I hear folks say "It can't be done", or "It shouldn't be done". I've given it a try, several times actually. Giving attributes like Trust, Stubbornness, Composure, and others, or mechanizing it, turning it into a social combat as per suggestions on Tribality. But it didn't feel right, something wasn't clicking. When I actually ran the social combat I just linked in my D&D campaign, the novelty wore out quickly and it devolved into a literal name-calling fight. Why? Because I required players to keep making arguments and to roll to see if they convey the arguments well enough. It was a fine thing to try, but I can tell now in hindsight that I likely didn't play it right. After all, you don't require your fighters to describe every single maneuver as something completely new in a battle, right? Of course, after a time it would get tiresome and they'd devolve into something simple. Experiences like that one, combined with never achieving the goal of designing a good social interaction system had led me to a conclusion that it's not impossible, but not worth it either. My philosophy ever since has been that what players need isn't an intricate mechanical system, it's a set of tools they can use to do what they want.

Coming back to the shows, I had an epiphany sometime in the week after. These shows, and social drama generally, are about manipulating the information flow. Think about it: character A finds out about something character B hides from characters C and D. What will they do about it? Will the character B find out? We might assume that character C would react to this fact with sadness, while character D would use the secret in the future against character B, but can we be sure? I was pondering this over the weekend before the game jam began, staying up a little past midnight while chatting with a friend about this, toying with the idea of making it into a game. And then, the game jam began. I put those thoughts on hold, refreshed the game jam website, and waited... That's when the theme was revealed, and it hit me.

This title provided me with the other half of the social dynamic. Sure character A holds the power because they know something nasty about character B, ... but what if it's not true at all? And just like that, I had the perfect game for this game jam.

Finders, Keepers, Binders, Weepers

I started writing down all the rules, slowly but methodically. The structure was clear: secrets, rumors, discovery, revelation and finding out if it's true or not, reactions. To speed up the process, I decided I'll need a basic setting to write this game for instead of trying to make a generic system on my first try. I chose medieval royal courts, and I believe it worked quite well.

What are some basic secrets that I need? I narrowed down the qualities I needed them to have and came up with several, seeking a fourth one online in various group chats. Each secret must be something that can be done rather quickly instead of over the case of days or months. Each secret must be something doable by a single person. Each must harm at least one other person. And each one must be something immoral. I settled on these four:

• murder,
• theft,
• affair,
• and libel.

In the original version of this game, I started with two stats: Composure and Trust. Composure goes down whenever you find out that another person knows about any of your secrets. Trust goes up and down based on who one shares secrets with, whether these secrets turn out to be true or not, and whether the secret could harm you. Based on my theories before, I developed four character roles that you can see in the title:

• Finder is someone who finds out about a secret.
• Keeper is the original owner of this secret, the one it regards.
• Binder is a finder who would use the secret against the Keeper, for example in blackmail.
• Weeper is whoever would be hurt by learning this secret.

Of course, these roles would be dynamic, and related to each secret individually. A Finder of one secret could be a Keeper of another and a Weeper of yet another. One might even have multiple roles at the same time. Sadly, this roles system kind of fell apart the more I wrote and the more I realized just how complicated this system is getting, involving inconsistent dice rolls, as well as some other props. Originally this system was even supposed to be played on a simple building map, with rooms similar to Runehack: Fairy Heist's or Slasher Oneshot System's. I had to ditch several things and simplify it, and the one tool that helped me out the most was a deck of 52 playing cards.

Your Royal Slyness

Cards are great because drawing a card is like rolling two dice and then banning that combination of die rolls for some time. Suits and ranks can represent a lot of different stuff. Inspired by Bang!, I started with cards that would define player characters: one for Class, their social standing, and one for their secret Motive. Unlike in Bang!, I don't use the face-down card for tracking hit points, and these two cards don't come from a separate deck.

Depending on one's Class, they came with several Secrets and Rumors off the cuff. Yes, it's a little on the nose, seeing the theme of game jam is literally that, but I can't argue - it has inspired me. These numbers increased based on your Class card's suit: hearts giving you both an extra rumor and an extra secret, diamonds giving you an extra rumor, spades giving you an extra secret, and clubs not giving you anything extra. That's also why the suits are ranked the way they are: Hearts should get to go first because they hold more Secrets as well as Rumors, and so on.

There were three Classes: Monarch, Noble, and Servant. The only things they determined were the starting amounts of Secrets and Rumors, as well as the turn orders and how they can be possible targets for other players' Motives. Speaking of, Motives could be grouped into five categories: Collect more X than any other player, Silence (kill) X, Slander X, Steal from X, and Seduce X. The first motive's X is a resource that takes the form of one of the card suits, the other X's stood for one character at the table each.

Fun fact, originally I had four resources tied to the cards: hearts for favors, spades for military stuff, diamonds for material resources, and clubs for information and development. I couldn't fit these into the rules, though, so... I guess they'll remain hidden here on the blog.

The game needed turn order, and turns should be made up of distinct actions. I borrowed the basic structure from Bang!, which is: draw cards, do stuff, discard cards if you have too many. To limit how long a turn can take, I decided to make the middle phase a "do one or two of these actions", listing: Bartering with other players (for cards or Secrets), Plotting, and thus creating a new Secret for yourself (and possibly another player), Presenting two or more cards which can possibly earn you secrets or their details, and Revealing a Secret to the public. Each new Secret created by Plot gave you mechanical boons, Revelation of a Secret had some mechanics, and I decided that the game will end after the drawing deck ran out three times. The game was almost done.

But how would one motivate the players to create a new Secret for themselves, if it puts them at a risk? To keep it simple, Secrets are power in this game: you get as many marker tokens as you have Secrets in the game, and at the start of your turn you draw that amount of cards. Though looking back at it, instead of secrets I could have just asked the player to keep track of their number of secrets on a paper slip. But tokens are nice, I imagine them being little stones or poker chips that the player can toy with to show off just how many secrets they have.

You don't need to personally do your secrets. You could let poisons do it for you. Or you could also get a trusty loyal servant (NPC, not a player) to do it for you. I'd count all of those as your own Secret, you were their direct cause.
This artwork is from Gwent.

It was at this point that I knew the game needs a better name. Finders, Keepers, Binders, Weepers was kind of lame for the concept of royals playing dirty. I did my research on the puns and rhymes and settled on... Your Slyness. But to make its setting a little clearer, Your Royal Slyness.

The Second Page

One Page RPG Jam allows for the second page to cover stuff like character sheets, variant rules, and GM tools, so I figured I'd make use of mine. Among the examples, there's a variant ruleset there for longer-term games that span several sessions. You just need to record your characters and make a mark for every time they've succeeded in their Motive while also surviving a session without getting murdered. It's simple, and yet a little complicated. I like the way it turned out.

Hacking Potential

Could this system be hacked? Absolutely! After all, most of it is a card game. You could replace Classes with something else, like school roles (Principal - Staff - Students), and you could establish that there are more or fewer of the highest Class people, that they do or don't belong to different "kingdoms". You could also swap out the types of Secrets and their effects when one Plots to make a new Secret. There's some potential for hacking and reflavoring it all, even adding more actions to the middle phase and magic. Maybe someone can draw an extra card in phase 1 and return one to the top of the drawing pile. Maybe some Plot could let you swap one card with a player against their will. Maybe you could just hand someone a card (maybe this counts as Barter where you get nothing and they get a card?). Plenty of possibilities.

There are some things I could have handled better. For example, if a player does some secret through the Plot action, others will certainly know it's not a rumor, so they wouldn't be afraid to Reveal such secrets. I don't know yet if and how I could fix that. Another potential issue is that players could be killed off before their first turn, which could be not fun. I might update it later on down the line if I'll feel like it.

And that's about it! While I hope I'll get to write another TTRPG for this game jam, because the game is excellent, I'm not sure if I will, because I have about two weeks of time left before I go for a summer vacation. Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

The Heaviest Metal

A couple weeks back, I challenged myself to write a TTRPG that would involve a rubik's cube. I know there's a TTRPG out there that uses it to randomly generate dungeons, which is perfectly fine, but I wanted something more. See, TTRPGs love rolling dice. Some even feature custom-made dice. What if... I made a game that's all about rolling an ever-shifting die? But what kind of game could make use of an ever-shifting die, I hear you say. Well, hear me out: scrappy mechas made out of junk.

Hope you'll enjoy reading this, and have a wonderful day!

Please ignore the wrecking balls.
Originally I hoped to make it themed around heavy metal in the style of League of Legends' Pentakill or Brütal Legend, hence the title. Sadly, I ran out of words for doing proper English grammar, so that would be a hard squeeze. At least it's more broadly applicable this way, so I think it's a win.
Metal god, by glooh.

The Heaviest Metal

Every player (rider) needs a standard solved rubik's cube and a soft surface to roll it on. GM optional.

Twist – 90° rotation of a cube's side, done to your cube usually.
Match – tile that matches the color of that side's central tile.

Riders construct their mechs for a tournament. Twist every side once. Take turns clockwise starting with the oldest player. On your turn, roll your cube and count the matches. Consult table below, roleplay the bold part, and twist the cube as instructed.

Roll

1	Another Man's Treasure. Make three twists.
2	Breakdown. Twist two sides twice each.
3–5	Secret. Make two twists.
6–8	Explosion. Twist another player's cube twice.
9	Revelation. Twist one side once/twice. The tournament begins!

Tournament is a battle royale. Go counterclockwise, starting with the youngest player. On turn, either:

• Fix: make two twists.
• Strike: pick one opponent. Roll your cubes. Player whose side has more matches does two twists to the other's cube. Mech without 3 matches on any side is eliminated.

Winner chooses one side of their final cube to roleplay (see table) and gets +1 twist on every future roll.

Variant: Construct your cubes alone. No 9 matches allowed.

My headcanon is still that each mech is built with a music genre in mind. Mostly the subgenres of metal, punk, or rock.
St. Elmo's fire, by Alexey Egorov.

As always, this section is for my design thoughts and similar stuff. I started this one with rubik's cube, imagining where it would fit, and I arrived at mechs made out of junk and scraps found in a junkyard. Curiously, my first thoughts right after were of a sort of "deck-builder" but with the cube: everyone comes to the table with a pre-built cube. That idea was scrapped though (pun intended) when I realized that that would make it a tabletop game, but not a roleplaying one. So, I've added a construction phase, where some roleplaying prompts are handed to the players for inspiration. I think that's called a "draft" in the TCG terms, probably?

While playing, I found out that the role of a GM in this game is mostly optional. If you can deal with roleplaying NPCs to each other, and developing the world together, the GM is largely unnecessary. That being said, it might be useful to define your characters and the world you're in before the game together if you don't have a GM.

Originally the game was so much more complicated: matching tiles being attacks, amounts of colors on a side being defenses, each side representing one body part of the mech, ... but adding the construction part took up most of my allowed words, so I had to trash it (pun intended) and simplify it a ton. It's hacked together, and there isn't much to distinguish characters from each other, but it works as a proof of concept.

Small clarification: The +1 twist on every future roll was intended to reset on losing the tournament since that would likely cost you your cool mech, but I'm afraid I ran out of words to include that in the game. My bad!

Let me know what you think though! Do you like it? Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!