Fae King

Got challenged to partake in a game jam, so I decided to give it a go. There's just one problem: the theme for this game jam was to make a hack of a game that was released before the year 2000. I don't really care for the games released before the year 2000. I am very unfamiliar with them. The only ones that I know (and even then, I only know about them) are games that do something weird, like Amber Diceless. After I remembered that Puppetland was released in 1993, I made up my mind. I was going to work on the system I wanted to publish in April 2023 as a 200-word RPG. Back then, I got stuck on a problem or two and later got a better idea for a different 200-word game. The time has come to pull this one out of the thought cabinet and make it happen.

Taking Names

One of the aspects I didn't recall or appreciate about Puppetland before is its system for "attributes", or rather "what your character can and can't do". It's kind of easy to miss with the rules for how the game could be played and all being so much more prominent. If you are to play a game in which anything you say is spoken by your character, you can't rely on numbers to say how good you are at this or that. But I wanted to develop it a bit beyond to keep it thematically related.

Instead of doodling your own character and crossing out parts of it, I chose to represent a character just with their titles, split up into syllables. Well, okay, technically "-er" isn't a syllable, but I don't mind. What I really like about this is just how fluently it can be used in the game where anything spoken is crucial.

"What a wonderful game of tag, Miss Everyoung! I see now that you are Quicker than I am, so it's rather difficult to compete with you."

A character's proper name is there as a buffer that the players can cross out at any point in time without losing their character's efficiency. Though it should reflect what others call them in the game.

Fae Cant

Back when I wanted to write this game nearly two years ago, I had two possible names for it: Fae Cant, or To Kill a Fae. I liked the sound of both of them but for this one... I figured the best name is Fae King due to the pun involved. Fae Cant is just as good though, truth to be told.

The original game's premise was killing the fae using the Traditions, which to them would be seen as laws of the society. The biggest problem was that I couldn't identify a reason for this. Why would the players want to enter this realm and just kill the fae?

Nearly two years later, I gave it some more thought, and I figured it could be about killing one specific fae. Taking a hint of inspiration from the Heart, I decided that the players would try to kill the Fae King to get their wish fulfilled. From that point on, things were a lot simpler.

• Why does the game last one hour? Because that's how long they're visiting the Elfame (land of fae according to some myth in our world) last.
• Why would the fae not do something about it? Because fae have a hard time distinguishing between the mortals and themselves. Why is that? Because mortals don't visit this realm.
• Why can the players just kill any fae? Because they will reincarnate in a bit, death is merely an inconvenience to them.
• Why would the fae want to kill the players too? Because a fae can get their wish fulfilled by absorbing a mortal's soul.

A House of Cards

The pure game of Puppetland doesn't include randomness, or any gamism really. It's a narrativistic experience. I wanted a little more meat on those bones, so I added a deck of cards into the game. To be allowed within the Fae King's vicinity, players must gain the trust of enough fae by helping them out. They must build up a four-story house of cards, which requires 26 cards. Since each assistance grants the players a pair of cards, they can build this up by helping the fae 13 times. Perhaps by playing this game quickly enough, this could be done in a single sitting, perhaps it could be done faster. I don't know.

After the players kill the Fae King, or the house of cards falls, the Hunting phase begins. The fae know who the mortals are, and they will seek them mercilessly. I will admit, I'm not sure if this is such a good way to play the game or not. It's just the best I could come up with in the couple of days that I had to make this game. I'm calling it good enough.

That's everything I consider noteworthy about the game. I don't feel like publishing this on my itch.io page, at least not yet. Yes, I'm counting this towards my New Year's resolution, that's another Thing finished. Believe it or not, I'm at eight out of 12 to 25 Things as of writing this article. At this rate, maybe I could finish even 52 Things this year, just as I briefly considered in my Review of 2024 article.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

P.S.: If you haven't, please check out my latest youtube video, it's about time loops!

Design of There Is No Tomorrow

My day was busy, and just today I realized that my 08:47 PM reference will vanish from Youtube and Itch.io after publishing the game, so I'll need to be fast about this one.

Yesterday Is History

The first D&D campaign I've ever DMed featured a time loop and the last one I ever did. To be fair, the latter was just a three-session adventure. I like time loops, because it's a sandbox for the players to roam around in. They get to try things they'd normally be too afraid to try with little consequence, enjoy freedom, and see the world's reactions to their actions. Having done this before, I have enough experience to talk about the preparations for running a time loop. Instead of talking in detail about the pointless details of the system's development, I'll take this opportunity to talk about some things that I didn't fit into either the video or the written system.

I'd prepare several phrases to repeat word-for-word in every loop whenever relevant, especially at its start. Most commonly, this should be used with the NPCs unaware of the loop. I suggest limiting this to descriptions of the world since that could get stale quickly.

I'd also prepare some cool environmental aspects that the players could use to their advantage and something that can be done only at a certain time of the day (e.g. a door that's unlocked only between 11 AM and 1 PM).

Consider if you want to give them a vehicle or not. Consider what that means for the time units. Think about whether the NPCs use vehicles. A vehicle, in this context, could also be a mount, such as a horse. Just anything that makes you go faster. I'm not even gonna talk about the teleportation.

Tomorrow Is Mystery

At the end of the video, I mention my system's biggest flaw: you can't do this easily for minigames, like combat. I did not want the rules to be too long, so I did not address it there. I asked for suggestions in the video linked above, so maybe the comments will offer something more helpful. Until then, here are some suggestions from me off-the-cuff:

• Difficult: ask every player how much they expended in each of these minigames, record it all, and then whenever they repeat the minigame in the future they expend a little less stuff. It worked well enough for my last D&D campaign as a makeshift solution, even if it's a bit unreliable.
• Simple: count how many of these minigames are there in your schedule. Ask the players to remove a fraction of their resources equal to one divided by the count. For example: if you expect three minigames, ask them to remove a third of their resources. Make it a bit less with every iteration beyond the first one.
• Fun(?): play out every minigame each time. Trust the system, the improvements could make it easier and thus a bit more interesting each time.

How would I go around designing the time loop itself is something I don't go into detail in my video, and I'm afraid I don't have time to detail it right now either. Let's just address it briefly, in no particular order.

• Make a grid out of the locations and time units.
• Come up with the characters in your adventure will feature prominently. Maybe develop simple relationships between the characters.
• Work out where they are at what time, and what are they up to.
• Work out some alternatives, for example, if this thief gets caught or escapes the law, if the players do or don't hire this vehicle for the day, etc.
• Work out some cool things that the players could learn throughout the loop. For example, the thief is in love with the local waitress. The policeman's wife is sick. The fireman's dog is lost.

Today Is a Gift

I had planned this for nearly a month. Some references, just in case you're not too familiar with everything I am familiar with:

• The video, blog post, and There Is No Tomorrow system were released on February 2nd (Groundhog's Day).
• Everything listed above is also released at 08:47 PM CET (Rue Valley).
• While I didn't manage to make my video 22 minutes long, at least it starts and ends the way Outer Wilds' loop does (Outer Wilds).
• Two transitions between the chapters in the video are from Forgotten City and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, both of which feature time loops prominently.

I've put a lot of effort into this. The system is minimal, but that's because Mosaic Strict games have to be. The adventure is also rather minimal, but it's okay enough as an example at the very least.

Thank you for reading this, have a wonderful Groundhog's Day, hopefully with no repetitions!

Four RPG Activity Categories

Over the last few years, I've spent too much time thinking about this. Without further ado...

Four RPG Activity Categories

The four categories are divided into two pairs of two based on these characteristics:

• Mechanics-driven activity relies primarily on the game's rules.
• Fiction-driven activity relies primarily on rulings that make sense within the game's fiction.
• Random means the activity's outcomes are determined through chance, like rolling the dice.
• Deterministic means the activity's outcomes are based on the rules, whether from the rulebook or the GM.

Depending on which end of the spectrum an activity is located in, it can fall into one of these four categories:

• Minigame (Random + Mechanics-driven) is a game within a game, where the players try to achieve a specific goal using the game's written rules.
• Examples: combat in D&D 5e, driving in Runehack: Express Deliveries and the Runehack RPG, Duel of Wits in Burning Wheel
• Clock (Random + Fiction-driven) uses the game's core resolution multiple times to determine the outcome of the current activity.
• Examples: skill challenges in 4e, clocks in Blades in the Dark
• Puzzle (Deterministic + Mechanics-driven) has rules that the players must navigate, whether they know them or not, to achieve some goal. This goal could also be "How can we make this happen?".
• Examples: puzzles in D&D, investigations in Gumshoe
• Freeform (Deterministic + Fiction-driven) is when things are simply happening without a clear goal. It's deterministic because many players' minor actions and the world's reactions are resolved using the GM fiat.
• Examples: most RPGs I can name, stealth in Mothership

These categories are not exclusive! A Freeform activity can easily feature multiple dice rolls. It would become a Clock only if these multiple rolls served the same goal. At the same time, even the most intense combat could feature moments when the GM makes up a ruling or something happens just because the rulebook says so instead of the dice. Bear in mind that Fiction-driven activities can feature mechanics, and that Mechanics-driven activities do serve the fiction, these are just the most fitting terms I could come up with so far. These activities don't always feature clean separations such as the "Roll the initiative!" moment of many D&D sessions. For example, a Freeform activity can turn into a Clock, or it could be interspersed with a Puzzle that the players are solving on a larger scale.

You might wonder why you should care. Game designers can use these terms to communicate what they seek to achieve with their rules.

Example: Social Interaction

How could you resolve the Social Interaction with each of these categories?

• Minigame. The conversation has specific rules, specific moves you can make on each turn, and a way to "win" the conversation (like making the opponent run out of Patience).
• Clock. You make several rolls using the core resolution mechanic until the debate reaches its natural conclusion.
• Puzzle. You need to say the right thing while avoiding saying the incorrect thing. Dice rolls are optional, you could resolve the discussion without any randomness involved.
• Freeform. Talking without any specific goal in mind.

How to Use This

From what I've seen and thought of so far, we tend to naturally switch up the styles now to keep the game interesting. Thus, I'd guess that most systems would need multiple types of activities. What types of activities one runs might depend on personal preferences, what's included in the system, how easy or difficult is it to prepare, and other possible factors I have yet to work out.

That's all for now. This opened my eyes, and it received very positive reactions from the people who helped me polish this. That's why I wanted to share it as quickly as possible. Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Brief Thoughts on Damage Types

Gotta get these thoughts out of my head so I can focus on other projects at hand.

These days, I don't even play D&D 5e, but I chat with people who are influenced by it now and then. The other time, we had a talk about the damage types, and I figured I'll try to express myself in regards to those. I don't like how 5e does the non-casters dirty. Sure you get to pick a weapon, but largely it doesn't matter because most creatures who are resistant or immune to one are resistant or immune to all three of the weapon damage types: bludgeoning, piercing, slashing. How could this be remedied?

1. Non-BPS Weapons. Give non-casters decent weapons that don't deal bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. Torch as a weapon is a joke, 1 fire damage might be good for burning a rope or whatnot, but not in an actual battle. Yes, you could get some kind of magical flame sword, but magic items are given out at DM's discretion, and spells are the domain of spellcasters. Non-casters need weapons that they can choose which don't deal BPS damage.
2. Two out of Three. A monster is at most resistant or immune to two out of Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage, or at least the vast majority are. If they are as common as they are in 5e, the DM is actually obliged to give the non-casters magic weapons. They might be happy about it, but those completely step over the problem and lead right back into "BPS doesn't matter" category. Player characters would thus have to carry multiple weapons on their body.
1. Tangent: When I discussed this online, people brought up that most players picture wielding a single weapon, to which I say "Yes, but even that weapon can be situationally swapped out". How do you expect a greataxe-wielding barbarian to fight flying foes? Yes, with those javelins that they in their equipment by default. Characters in fiction swap their weapons when necessary. There's also the fact that you can't play a pure pyromancer or cryomancer in this game, it's pretty much the same problem: the game expects the casters to pick multiple spells with different damage types, and it doesn't offer enough spells for most damage types anyway to fill out your spell list. Even sticking to a single damage type you could be picking up buff, debuff, and utility spells. A player's "aesthetic" for a character can expand. And by having to carry multiple weapons on their body, suddenly magic weapons don't get devalued as fast, just because "this +1 dagger is worse than that +2 dagger of Teleport behind the Enemy".
2. Also, I know that there would be problems like balancing out how many magic weapons does which player get and such, I will admit I haven't given it too much thought since I'm trying to focus on my other projects these days. These are just raw, unprocessed ideas.
3. Also-also, maybe this wouldn't be necessary if non-casters indeed got good Non-BPS Weapons, see point 1.
3. Monstrous Traits. Monsters could have traits that trigger upon taking specific damage types. Not just BPS, but still broadly applicable and I think it'd enhance the game.

• When (insert some ooze here) takes slashing damage that's less than 5, it splits into two, each with half of the original's remaining HP. (Note: Maybe one of the oozes in 2014 Monster Manual does this, I honestly can't tell because it's been forever since the last time I've opened it).
• When a mind flayer would take psychic damage (but doesn't because it's immune), it can locate the source.
• When a shadow takes radiant damage, it can't hide during its next turn, or it has a disadvantage on all of its rolls as per the Sunlight Weakness.

That's about it for now. Some simple ideas.

Review of my 2024

Another year has come and gone. It was an eventful year at that.

2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

How Was 2024?

Plenty of things have happened this year, and some things changed. The blog earned itself 14.4K views, and I made 29 posts on it. Interestingly, I wanted to focus on my New Year Resolutions, and yet I was fairly active on my blog. That was for a simple reason: I engaged a lot with online TTRPG design communities. Oftentimes, someone would come there with an idea they want to do, and I'd go "I would do it this way". Then, they wouldn't use my idea, so I'd post it here. Another frequent source of blog posts for me was "thought dumping": since I was focusing a lot more on my goals, I didn't want to get distracted by random cool ideas too long, so I'd put them here to rediscover and use them later.

Resolutions from 2024

I've set two goals for this year, and I am glad to announce that I have accomplished both of these. First, the shorter one...

The Runehack RPG is out! You can purchase it right now on itch.io, and sometime at the start of 2025 I want to work out how to do community copies on it for those who can't afford it. I knew all throughout the year that I could publish my game, but I didn't know how finished it would be. Since I didn't have a lot of work done halfway in, I was considering cutting content. At some point, I was considering making a game only with the parkour pillar. But in September I got a jolt of inspiration and kept working on the game for several months straight. I have to say that I surprised myself with how much work I got done. Not only does the game feature the Tech pillar (formerly Hacking) as well as the Spy pillar (formerly parkour/freerunning/sprinting). It also features the Job pillar, a way to wrap up the core mechanics into a comprehensive single unit named Social pillar, a Lore section, an example map for the sprinting, several cities, aaand... the GM section. All in one neat 80-page document (though I also offer a player variant without the GM section, just in case they wouldn't wanna be spoiled). Is it perfect? Heck no, I had nearly no time, energy, nor drive to playtest this thing, and I feel bad about that. But then again, I knew what I was going into at the start of this year - I wanted to publish it, not finish it. And I know there's plenty of work still ahead of me regarding this game.

I played 12 good games. Not only that, I actually played 26 of them! I kept a list of them, including their rankings and when I played them. I'll however reveal only the rankings of the top 12 and a little something I learned (or relearned) in each game.

My only regret regarding this is that the only games I was counting were video games and TTRPGs. I played a couple of good board games this year that I didn't record anywhere or rank, and with those included, I could have had over 30 entries here. Who knows what others I could have tried if I didn't restrict myself like that.

12. Hunter: The Reckoning (Aug 9th)

I've kept the World of Darkness games on my radar for a while now. During the summer oneshots event on the D&D server I moderate, one of our members who's very much into Vampire the Masquerade offered to GM us a oneshot. The mechanics of the game were interesting, and the story was quite good, ... but the whole oneshot ended because of what felt to me like one bad die roll that happened because of a misinterpreted thing said by one of the players (specifically me). For quite a while I've been thinking about building trust between the GM and the players. This experience did not feel good, or at the very least the ending did not. I don't know much about WoD in general, since I haven't read its rulebooks front to back, and I'm not really interacting with its community, but if this is the standard there, ... maybe I'm better off just keeping my distance. To be fair though, it's a well-put-together game, and the GM was quite good in all other ways. After the game, we got a debriefing on why the game ended so suddenly, and while it does make sense, sometimes even a thing that makes sense doesn't have to be accepted.

Lesson: I don't want to foster an environment in which the GM works against the players, even going as far as to misinterpret their words. Some will enjoy this sort of thing, personally, I'd rather avoid this.

11. Mothership (Nov 27th)

A friend of mine told me about the Mothership RPG and how much he wants to try it out. We didn't get to try it out together. Fortunately, it was thanks to another member on the same server, this time for the Halloween oneshots event. I have to say, first and foremost, that its character sheet design was interesting. At least the variant that has all the flowchart-like arrows pointing at what you fill out in what order. What struck me as the most interesting about this was seeing the idea of "rolling is not a good thing" in practice. It may not be something I'm all that into, but it's good to be aware of this. In the game design circles, I've heard that a player should have about a 60% chance to succeed at a thing under normal circumstances. I have no idea where this number comes from, maybe some GDC lecture about how the percentages in X-COM are something the players complain about and so they nudge the numbers, or maybe something completely different. Well, the Mothership tosses that aside. In this game, your attributes on their own have roughly a 35% chance of succeeding. You should avoid rolling in this game. And while that feels odd to me, I guess for this game and this kind of genre... it works.

Lesson: The magical 60% chance to succeed at a thing is more of a guideline.

10. 10 Candles (Aug 13th)

The fact that this game made it to the 10th place is either a pure coincidence or a mysterious omen of something far beyond us. This was quite an interesting experience. Everything but the setting was made up on the spot - the characters were generated by us collectively by passing each other the traits, the monsters were made up on the run, and the drama was quite something. We started playing it while the Sun was still shining, and we finished long after it had set, with the candles being the only source of light, other than our phones we had to use to shine on our "character sheets", if they could be called that.

Lesson: The right atmosphere can improve the experience a ton.

9. Baba is You (Feb 2nd)

This game looked pretty interesting, and I've received a recommendation to play it a couple of times. When it was on sale, I got it and waited for a good time to play it. It wasn't easy, several levels were quite tricky, but overall I enjoyed its mind-bending madness.

Lesson: Thinking outside of the box is neat. Take something that people take for granted, like Sokoban, and add an unexpected element to it for lots of fun.

8. Chants of Senaar (Mar 21st)

This is a charming puzzle game, in which your task is to go up a tower, learning the languages of its civilizations along the way to solve problems. I liked its visual design made up of relatively simple character models and elaborate environments, I enjoyed its sound design and minimal music, but what struck me as the most inspiring part were, of course, the languages and cultures. While there isn't all that much information given along the way, it's quite interesting to observe how these cultures perceive each other.

Lesson: Languages can provide plenty of space to play around in. Especially interesting is when two words stand for the same thing, yet they have different meanings.

7. Buckshot Roulette (Nov 23rd)

There's a shotgun between you and the Dealer. Several blank rounds, several live, were inserted randomly. You take turns shooting the shotgun - either at yourself or at the Dealer. If you shoot at yourself and it's a blank, you get another turn immediately. It's a bafflingly simple premise, and on the surface, it sounds like coin flips with extra sound effects and gnarly visuals. But with the addition of the special items, randomness gives rise to order. Strategy. Even if the items are random, you suddenly have options on how to control how the randomness goes. This might not be a game I'd play for hours upon hours, but it sure was fun for the little bit I played it for. Multiplayer is fun too, and we even tried the All Live Rounds mode, as stupid as it may sound. I never expected a game of Russian Roulette with all live rounds to actually be made into a tactical game. Well done!

Lesson: Seemingly random chance can be tilted quite a bit with the right tools.

6. Blades in the Dark (Feb 26th)

When I talked about the kind of game that I'd find appealing, Blades in the Dark was recommended to me a couple of times. It's an award-winning game built specifically for sneaky stealth missions, so when I had the chance to try it out, I went for it. The group was fine, the GM was pretty cool, and the story progression was okay, from what I recall we all had a moment to shine here and there. And yet, despite all that, something felt... off to me. I can't put my finger on what, even months later, and that's bothering me. Maybe if I get a chance to play the game some more I could figure it out. It's well made, don't get me wrong. But the reason why it wasn't just right still eludes me.

Lesson: A game may sound like something you'll certainly enjoy, but then you play it, don't enjoy it as much as you expected, and can't tell why. And that's fine.

5. Inscryption (Jan 2nd)

There are so many things I could say about the Inscryption that have been said already. The Magic Circles, the overall visual aesthetics, the satisfaction of its sound design, and the fact that the game has no real HUD (at least in Acts 1 and 3). The one thing that I look back to the most though would be breaking the game with infinite loops. It's fun when numbers go big. While most TTRPGs don't really have acceptable space for this, ... maybe it would be nice to consider it in the future.

Lesson: Infinite loops that happen due to emergent game mechanics can be quite fun. Consider rewarding it if you want to see this kind of stuff, but be cautious of it breaking your game beyond a point you're okay with.

4. Slay the Princess (Dec 2nd)

I was aware of this game before its release thanks to the demo. I didn't play it, because I figured it's a visual novel and I could just watch that online. And I could. But then I decided to buy the game spontaneously when it was on sale after the Pristine Cut and played through it myself just so I could include it on this list. I was in for quite a surprise when I discovered one of the new endings added in the Pristine Cut. The Happily Ever After ending was an experience that hit me harder than I thought this game could. Due to my own personal experiences, it felt too real, too relatable. The game easily earned a rightful spot among my top five just because of that, and then it got even greater when I found the Dragon ending. Those who have gone through the game would surely be able to tell what I mean.

Lesson: Sometimes, a thing that you think you know rather well can throw you an unexpected curveball that changes your mind completely.

3. Outer Wilds (Aug 3rd)

I was one of those people who kept mistaking Outer Wilds and Outer Worlds before I looked at them closer. I took my time getting to this game, and I have to give a shoutout to my friend Jay who gifted me a copy when he heard of my resolution for 2024. I played the game, and I was pleasantly surprised. It looks nice, its controls take some time to get used to but it was worth getting used to, and I was surprised many more times over the course of playing this game. Missing the forest for the trees, learning about the Moon, visiting the Sun Station, and the grand finale of the game, all of it made for a stellar experience. There were some things I didn't learn on my own but I found online, and the game thoroughly impressed me. I had no idea that the planet positions were simulated in real time! What I appreciated was that the solar system felt both huge and tiny at the same time and that I could hardly ever get lost somewhere boring. Not because every place had something interesting, but because the interesting places were obviously more interesting than the rest. I can't remember the last time I played a game where I just wandered around to see things and learn about them instead of pursuing some kind of objective. I need to learn more mindfulness... one day.

Lesson: Learn how to reward the player's curiosity. Also, time limits are important.

2. Hades II (May 19th)

I don't care if it's an Early Access game, it's my list so I'm including it. The last thing I'd expect Supergiant Games to do would have been a sequel, but this one was very much worth it. Switching up the main character, new areas, new enemies, the combat system overhauled to include spells, and so many other changes and additions... I did not expect they could improve what was in my eyes a perfect game, but they did it somehow.

Lesson: People who like stuff will generally welcome more of the stuff. I had no idea what to expect of the studio that was about to make its first-ever sequel, but they certainly did not disappoint.

Honorable Mentions

Before I talk about the top of my list, I'd like to list the other games, which are sorted into three separate categories. To keep these short, I'll list only their lessons.

Beyond the Top 12 (Alphabetical order)

• ABZÛ (Mar 3rd). Underwater environments can be both calming and dreadful.
• City of Mist (July 8th). Powered by the Apocalypse isn't for me. The dice rolls took too long because of the time the players needed to add the tags together, and the tags were easy to abuse for high rolls.
• D&D 4th Edition (Aug 1st). Sometimes a system doesn't need that many mechanics to feel like it has too many mechanics.
• Indigo Park, chapter 1 (Oct 13th). I might enjoy this sort of thing in a Let's Play that runs in the background while I do other stuff, ... but I felt too old to be playing it personally. Mascot horror just isn't for me.
• Maid the Roleplaying Game (Nov 11th). Silly fun can occasionally be a good thing. Go ham! And screw the realism, I don't care if it would burn on its way down, a giant wooden stake tossed down from the outer space rod-from-god style piloted by Rasputin to kill a vampire is a fantastic way to finish a silly session.
• Mörk Börg (May 12th). Fantastic players and an awesome GM can run a great game even with the blandest rules. Yes, Mörk Börg has style, but mechanically it was nothing extraordinary to me. This is the game that made me coin the term soup stone game because it's hard for me to call it a good game or a bad game. It's as good as the players playing it are.
• Never Stop Blowing Up (Nov 26th). A premise can sometimes sound way better than how it actually is. Your roll could in theory end up a staggeringly huge number, but the chance of two explosions happening in a row without the player spending a token is 1 in 24 at best.
• Spec Ops: The Line (Mar 3rd). Sometimes, you can be too late for a good thing. By the time I got to experience this for the first time (nearly 12 years after its release), things that made this game special became the industry standard.

Demos

These four games are previews of what is to come, but they still left an impression on me. A good enough impression to make me include them in the list ranked on halved spots to minimize the mess with the ranking of the other games.

• 12.5 Esoteric Ebb (Jan 15th). Everything hasn't been discovered just yet. New genres are out there, waiting to be unveiled by those who create amazing things. Imitating them is the sincerest form of flattery.
• 10.5 Pip My Dice (Oct 8th). Even a game with a NUMBERS GO BIG game loops can be a valid source of fun. I know Balatro exists, I avoided that game on purpose because I had resolutions for this year.
• 5.5 Rose and Locket (Oct 12th). Art direction can certainly sell a game.
• 4.5 Rue Valley (Dec 30th). Seeing how spots 2 through 5 involved some kind of time loop or an excuse to go through the same story again and again, ... maybe I really like time loops as a storytelling device.

My Own Works

I did not want to include them on the ranked list, so they were in their own separate category.

• Everyone Slays the Princess (Aug 16th). Sometimes, very little is good enough.
• Runehack: Express Deliveries (Jul 30th). An awesome idea can be proven crappy on the first playtest of it.

Now for the top of my list...

1. Disco Elysium (Mar 17th)

An amnesiac detective wakes up in a rented cafeteria room. Behind the cafeteria, a dead body has been hanging on a tree for a week. It's his job to solve this case. I tried to play this game multiple times in the past, but couldn't bring myself to finish it. I started over at least three times before the playthrough and I finally played all the way to the end. To say that this game is a lot of reading would be an understatement, and that's talking about it after it was updated with voice lines on pretty much everything. And that's not even mentioning the flowery language the game enjoys using. It's well written, but I'm not a native English speaker, so sometimes it takes me a moment to fully grasp what's actually being said. That being said, this is truly a genre-defining game and a start of something new. Remember how I mentioned the Esoteric Ebb and Rue Valley above? Those two could be described as 'disco-like', and they are not the only ones. There's already another game in the works called XXX Nightshift that appears to also fall into this genre. And more might be on the way.

The most important aspect of Disco Elysium to me has to be the strangeness of its world compared to ours, and how those who live in it take these things for granted, more or less. The bizarro nature (or lack thereof) of the Pale that surrounds the various parts of the world. The future of Revachol. The encounter that the protagonist of the game has towards the end of the game, those who played the game know which one I'm talking about. The Doomed Commercial Area, where all the companies somehow fail. Literally everything about the Shivers, and Inland Empire. How they don't track their centuries with numbers and don't really question it. The glowing lungs as a divine sign. The detective having entire dialogues with things that shouldn't be able to talk. So many times we make a fantasy world, and yet we stick to the sensibilities of the medieval times, or Industrial Revolution, or ancient civilizations, or the modern era. There's so much untapped potential for new things. The next time you work on something in your fictional world and you're about to put into it something we take for granted, pause. Take a step back, and consider what could it be like if things were different. It doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't have to be a huge thing. But it could be something tiny that could one day bring awe to a person who experiences your world.

Lesson: Don't be afraid to be weird in the worldbuilding, and treat the weird things as real.

Hopes and Goals for 2025

Wow, that took me a long time to write! Now then, what grand goals do I have for the next year, you may ask? I accomplished everything I wanted to do this year, and arguably to an extent greater than I even dared to imagine at the start of the year. Surely I want to aim higher this time.

For this year, I have one resolution only. I want to Make 12-25 Things. It's partly inspired by Jonathan Coulton's "Thing a Week" project, where he composed a song every week for a year. What is a Thing in my case? Honestly, anything that's at least a bit beyond my comfort zone. For example:

• A TTRPG that's more than a page long and has nice formatting, or one page with optional stuff on the other page.
• A YouTube video that's either more than a minute long or a decent Short.
• A song that I'd compose and post on YouTube. Those both would count as one Thing.

Things that are month-long challenges, such as NaNoWriMo or Inktober will count as two Things since I expect myself to make one Thing roughly every two weeks. I know I don't want to count the blog posts as Things since those are already firmly in my comfort zone, so I can't even guess how many blog posts I'll make this year. Honestly, I don't want to list what specifically Things are, because I don't want to repeat the same mistake I made with the 12 Good Games resolution. Who knows, I might find new Things over the course of the year that I didn't consider today. Maybe cooking? Maybe cosplay? Who knows what the future holds!

Thank you for reading! Have a lovely Happy New Year 2025, and may you too achieve your goals!

Non-casters Should Be Specialists

I don't like the Martial as a label, largely because I am not as excited about combat as I used to be. Today I went through a lengthy conversation log in one of the discords I'm on, and came to the realization that this could solve two of my problems with D&D on one fell swoop.

Let people be Specialists instead of Martials. People will laugh about a Fighter having skills that are not fighting, but I find it so utterly bizarre that only the typical Rogue would get to be a specialist. Everyone needs to be useful both in combat, but also out of combat. And what better thing could balance that out than skills? If you don't waste time learning spells, you waste it learning skills.

But how could one make several different types of specialists without putting them into very specific niches? Let's see if I can succeed at that. (Bear in mind there can be overlaps in these categories)

Self Specialization

Your body is the only thing you need to resolve most problems you meet. Whether it's fighting, fixing things, getting places, or anything else. Sure a body is limited in some ways, but you've exercised it enough to be excellent in all the things that really matter to you. This doesn't mean that you have to be strong, or sneaky, or anything else. You still pick your specialization for yourself, but it's your body that you do this with.

Tools Specialization

You get things done with the right tools. Hammers, saws, and such are just one aspect of this, don't get fooled by a label of a 'tool', what the label actually represents are things. Physical objects separate from your body. Picking a lock is hardly doable with your fingers, you'll need a set of lockpicks. Fighting a hoard of enemies is easier if you have a long stick with a pointy rock at its end, or a spear if you're more advanced than that. You won't get hurt that easily if you wear an armor, and you won't lose your way if you have a compass. You're gonna be fine as long as you are not empty-handed.

Environment Specialization

Upon entering a room, you can tell immediately what you could use in what ways, conventional or not. That pan would make for an awesome improvised weapon, or you could make a gnarly omelet with it. This table could be climbed under, jumped over, or maneuvered around to get distance between you and a pursuer. Use chairs to reach high places, use a spoon or a knife or a ladle to reach a distant thing. How is this different from using the tools is improvisation and thinking out of the box. A tools specialist has their set of items that they'd like to carry around, which they too could use in unconventional ways. You look around and see what's around you that could be used. It doesn't have to be an item either - a tree could have many different purposes, same for a hole in a ground or another lack of a distinct thing.

Others Specialization

No, this isn't a catchall "everything else" category. This category stands for other agents, other living (and possibly unliving) things. Whether it's your own servants, or other people. You are a manager type of person, who gets other people to do things for you. This doesn't mean that you sit around doing nothing, you coordinate the group so that it works efficiently.

Neeeeeeeeeeeerd!
Art by o.sporin

In Practice

Let's say you are trying to find which way is North. What do you do?

• Self: You think about which way did you see the Sun rise or set last. Maybe you look for the North star or its equivalent for the world. Or maybe you mentally keep track of this all along.
• Tools: You pull out your trusty compass, of course!
• Environment: You check for moss on the trees and other typical environmental signs of which way the North is.
• Others: You ask people, observe the migration of the birds, or otherwise find it out from other people/animal/living/unliving beings.

Maybe you're trying to fight. How do you do that?

• Self: Kicking, punching, headbutts, and so on.
• Tools: Knives and blades, staves and hammers, whatever you feel like wielding this time.
• Environment: That branch over there, this door, that window is perfectly positioned for tactical defenestration, and so on.
• Others: You give out commands and coordinate multiple people for a nasty combo.

Still not convinced? How about they try to convince you instead?

• Self: Draws from their deep knowledge resources within.
• Tools: Books, maps, letters, measuring tools, plenty of ways to show the evidence.
• Environment: Drives a point by making comparisons to people and things that are present. Or, maybe contrary, seeks to understand what's going on in your mind by observing you and the social situation.
• Others: Structures others' arguments into a more coherent whole.

What classes would these correspond to? Well, let's start by dropping Rogue, since that one influenced all four to some extent. I'd say Monk is the closest to being a Self Specialist, with a dash of a non-magical Wizard. For the Tools, Fighter is without a doubt the best, although a non-magical Artificer also would suit quite well. The Environment is a difficult one, I want to say Ranger or Druid if we were to ignore magic. As for Others, Bard most probably, yet again without magic. I don't know if Barbarian fits into any of these neatly without being forced into the role, but that's the beauty of working on my own things - it doesn't have to fit.

Is this a perfect way to do this? Probably not. But it sure seems like a start of an interesting one. I've been thinking about this for months, but never before in a "non-casters should be Specialists, not Martials" way. This could be quite interesting. The truth is, I was saving the Self/Tools/Env/Others as stats for another small game I've been pondering for a long,, long time... and this I think provided me with a push that I needed. Now I think it clicks a lot better.

That's it, the third article! Personal record broken once again. Time for me to finish the Review of 2024, and prepare myself. My 2025 will be quite... productive. Thank you for reading, and have an awesome rest of the year!

Thoughts on Prayers

It's time to ponder D&D once again. I was thinking recently of the Turn Undead and how odd this ability is. Yes, it makes sense because the undead are generally unholy creations, yadda yadda, there are other Channel Divinities too, even more with 5.24e. But you can only do this a couple of times in a day. Plus, there's something that's certainly missing from the Cleric class to me.

Prayer, by Alex Petruk

Prayer

Picture this: at level 1, a cleric gets the ability to Pray. A prayer requires the cleric to keep talking, they can do it any number of times in a day, and for as long as they manage to do this, they get some kind of benefit. My initial thought was +1 AC, but it could be other minor boons too, maybe depending on the portfolio of the deity you pray to. Maybe you could also have multiple possible prayers, or a prayer book. Just keep the prayer itself as a relatively minor thing. I'm so unused to thinking in D&D terms, I'm not even sure whether I'd make this a bonus action, a reaction, or no action whatsoever. But, here's the juicy part.

The monsters could have a trait that reads something along the lines of...

Unholy. You can't willingly move closer to any creature who is Praying to a deity who doesn't have the Death in its portfolio.

Use Praying with a capital P as a keyword. The monsters could react differently to different kinds of prayers. Maybe a fiend is blinded if it looks at the cleric Praying to a Light deity, maybe a celestial can't attack a cleric who's Praying to some evil deity, maybe the prayer to the deity of War makes specifically the giants frightened.

I know what you might be thinking. Isn't this done kind of backwards? Why make it traits instead of just saying these things in the prayers? Well, firstly, because I think that a trait called "Turn Immunity" is kind of weird. But secondly and far more importantly, because this way the player doesn't necessarily know what extra effects their prayer will have, leading to moments of discovery and awe at their deity's powers.

Another thing you might be considering is... why not make this a cantrip? "Divine Protection", bonus action to cast, Verbal component, ... My reason is simple: I don't want this to be treated like magic. I want this to be treated like a miracle. No anti-magic field or counterspell could possibly stop the deity's power. Isn't it too good then? To make a prayer that's unstoppable like this? Not if I remind you of the requirement... the cleric must keep talking. If they stop, during or out of their turn, the prayer is done. How do you silence them? That's the best part: you tell me. You could put a rag in their mouth if they are sufficiently immobilized. You could try to suffocate them. You could shove their head underwater. You could of course also use the good ol' reliable silence spell. My point is that this condition is open-ended, and both the GM and the players could have tons of fun coming up with ways to stop it.

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure about the monster traits part and whether it's better than just saying "all the undead run away from you". But it's a neat idea that I came up with recently, and I am trying to overcome my blog posts personal record here, so onto the blog it shall go! Maybe I'll get a cool game idea next year where I could use this without relying on the D&D as lingua franca to communicate this idea.

Thank you for reading my minor rambling, and have a great day!

These Bloody Cells

Quickie today because I am three articles away from breaking a personal record again and I had an idea: What if there was a game, in which the Plan had... hit points?

I won't be back.
Bloodmist Infiltrator, by Wild Blue Studios

These Bloody Cells

You are vampires. You are immortal, technically, and you have been imprisoned. You and your buddies decided to escape.

You get Bite, and two of the following abilities of your choice:

• Animism. Talking to and controlling animals that you could hold in a hand.
• Transform. Turn into an animal.
• Charm. Mind control a person.
• Push. Strength greater than that of the best human.
• Rush. Speed greater than that of the best human.
• Sneak. Move around unnoticed.
• Fly. Soar through the air.
• Bite. Refill your blood fully by biting a living being, killing it. The killed being becomes a ghoul that follows your commands, but it's visibly undead.

Each player rolls 1d8+4 to determine their starting Blood pool. Everyone also rolls a 1d6 that's contributed to the shared Plan pool.

Whenever you do something, you roll a die and reduce the pools by amounts that add up to the rolled number.

• Roll 1d8 by default.
• If you use only the vampiric abilities you chose, roll 1d6.
• If the vampiric weaknesses are playing a role, change a roll of 1d6 into 1d8, and a roll of 1d8 into 1d12.

If possible, you must reduce both your Blood pool and the shared Plan pool by at least 1.

• If your Blood Pool is reduced to or below 0, you are killed. You turn into fine red mist, and travel back to your coffin in your prison cell.
• If your Plan is reduced to or below 0, the reality has diverged too much from your plans, and the guards are now after you, chasing you with guns that shoot silver bullets with wooden stakes imbued in them.

The game ends when every player character either dies or successfully escapes the prison. On every successful escape, you gain one additional vampiric ability. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts, it won't be long until you come back.

The GM side would include a couple of roll tables with foreshadowing and obstacles based on the vampiric weaknesses. As a placeholder for now, let's go with...

1. Exit is in a building that surrounds the prison (yes, even above), vampires can't enter it without an invitation.
2. A corridor with laser beams of concentrated sunlight. To a vampire, it's like a lightsaber.
3. Flowing water moat that no vampire can cross.
4. An airlock chamber that gets filled with garlic-infused gas.
5. A human eye scanner that doesn't allow vampires through because they don't show up on digital footage (akin to no reflection in mirrors).
6. Four corridors meeting at a right angle... they form a cross. A cross road, so to say.

Bonus round: Betrayal.

• Super easy mode: Nobody has to betray the rest.
• Easy mode: GM hand-picks one player who is a betrayer.
• Medium mode: The GM prepares a pouch of black and white stones, deciding which ones stand for betrayers and which ones don't.
• Hard mode: Everyone flips a coin and keeps it under a cup until the very end of the game.

Betrayer's goal is to hinder the group. The betrayers win if they are the only ones who successfully escape. They don't have to be all alive for this, if they managed to hinder the rest enough to get it killed before the escape, they all earn their freedom forever.

A vampire can use their Bite on another vampire, draining them of their Blood but not turning them into a ghoul.

Of course, players would catch onto this, so the Betrayer has to be smart about it. Is this Among Us? ... no, Among Us isn't the only social deduction game around, come on.

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Lessons: One, it's fun to write around vampiric strengths and weaknesses. Two, Plan as a resource works. Three, ... I forgot about three. Four, I make lots of lists in my games, especially when I'm too lazy to make a table. Let's see if I can write two more articles!