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!

Languages in Runehack, and Mental Load in Worldbuilding

This article is not written just because the articles made under the tag myRPGs have almost overtaken Runehack. It is part of the reason for this, but I'm writing this because it's a thing I've pondered for a while.

On one occasion in the past, I've talked about the mental load of a media consumer. Sure this is something I spoke about only regarding a D&D homebrew, but it extends beyond this. People love detailed worldbuilding, but detailed worldbuilding isn't for everyone. This is why I feel so many writers talk about the worldbuilding icebergs, an illusion of detailed worldbuilding by merely alluding to some matters in the world, or developing the fictional cultures only in a couple of areas that interest the author the most. And there's some truth to it all. In an ideal scenario, an author who wishes to make a highly realistic world would have a worldbuilding project on their hands that would take them a lifetime to finish. It would take others a lifetime to absorb because such a project would be just as complex as our reality.

One area that fascinates me and intrigues me a lot is the culture around languages. The way we speak influences the way we label things, think, and act. Its influences leak into the way we speak in other languages - our accents, our interactions, the way we express ourselves in other languages, and so much more. Tolkien has put a lot of effort into his Elvish languages. And honestly, I struggle with that. No matter how I put the letters together, they rarely sound good, and I can only imagine writing a dictionary 100 words long for this purpose. There are tools for this online; one person even made a game out of conlang development. No matter what, though, the made-up words feel off to me most of the time. Then again, this is the same thing I've said about my attempts to compose music, and I overcame that hurdle earlier this year, so I'll be able to overcome this mental block in a couple of years too.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that in an ideal scenario, I'd create a world with a myriad of in-depth languages that influenced each other, and use them to at least label everything in the world. However, not only would I see such an endeavor as time-consuming, but due to the mental load it would require I see it as fruitless. Some would enjoy such details, but seeing just how much time it's taking me, I figured I'd take an easy way out. I began worldbuilding for Runehack and writing my novel that takes place in it by coming up with placeholder names, and I feel like they're sticking to me. The city names are mostly English words that express something about the place. People's names, meanwhile, are just jumbled-up English names, regardless of their real-world origin. So what if Samwell originates from Samuel, which is Hebrew in origin. I could reverse-engineer a meaning for the names if it was that important, for now, I'll just let it slide.

That being said, there are some fun linguistic things I came up with for Runehack. I doubt I'll develop them into full languages, they're just neat tidbits of information I wanted to share for a while.

Yes, at one point I thought I'd make the explanation for a shared language something like a 2001: Space Odyssey-style obelisk of knowledge. But that would raise more questions than solve problems.
Daily speedpaint 027 - Ancient language, by DaiSanVisART

Franqa

Let's begin with the most important idea that took me the longest to develop. See, Runehack is a world in which sharing the culture would be difficult. The bubbles of civilization are separated by the wilderness full of dangerous shapeshifters. Therefore, all the cultures would be developing to be radically different. And language, too, is a thing that changes and shifts over time. Due to this separation, they would drift to the point where they'd have a hard time understanding each other. But what if it wasn't this way?

Franqa is a plant that grows special tea leaves. According to the latest Mindlore research of Runehack's scientists, its effects are psychedelic in nature, kind of like being high. Several minutes after drinking it, one can speak, read, write, and understand spoken language called the same as this plant - Franqa. Nobody can tell what the exact origin of this language is, but it's consistent. The effects of Franqa tea last for roughly 4 hours.

The plant was native to the south-eastern regions of the New World, not too far from Moorwell. Its use was discovered even before the Era of Monsters, and it has spread all over the world thanks to its usefulness. It started off as a tool for use by travelers, diplomats, and translators, but it made its way into other areas of life too. Once its use became widespread, some people started to learn Franqa even when not under its influence. The tea leaves of Franqa are viewed as a symbol of community and cooperation. The plant even made its way into the everyday language. When someone wants to be honest and straightforward without trying to deceive the listener, they say they'll be "frank".

This is how all the cities of my world can talk to each other without issues, by using their lingua franqa.

The Unnamed Languages

The last two languages are why I haven't posted this article earlier - both are raw, underdeveloped ideas. The first is a language developed by some elves living in a humid jungle. This language is based on the premise of uninterrupted flow, which is why it contains no stopping sounds. Its vowels would be the typical a, e, i, o, and u sounds, and its consonants would be as follows: f, h, l, r, s, v, z, ʃ (labeled š), ʒ (labeled ž), and θ (labeled đ). The kh sound could in theory fit in too, but I found it too harsh to be used by the elves. As for going beyond that, other than phonotactics I don't have much worked out. I tried making a dictionary several times, but it always sounded bizarre, so I never did it completely. Fun fact, though, one of the earliest iterations of this language is the origin of Avurai University's name. Avurai was meant to mean "flying island" in this language.

The second language I wanted to make, and the newest one among all these, is a goblin code that has evolved into an artform. It's actually quite the opposite of the elvish language, inspired by the Hush language of the Limberwisk Isle. Both of these languages lack vowels. The phonotactics and phonetic dictionary of this goblin code is simple: every "syllable" (if it can be even considered that since it lacks a vowel) is made up of a consonant p, t, or k, followed by an optional letter r, s, ʃ, x, or f. There are no forbidden combinations, and the words can be quite long. The result might sound a bit like beatboxing, which is why this code became an artform of its own.

Tip Tap

Tip tap is a code known by some of the dwarves of Runehack. It utilizes their sensitive touch perception, which lets them sense the micro-vibrations of anything they touch with bare skin. Since most dwarves walk to most places barefoot, some have developed a secret minimal language for communicating with each other that utilizes lifting up the tips of their feet rhythmically to communicate.

Those who communicate using this code are referred to as tappers. It is one of the few ways of communicating that doesn't require the communicators to see or hear each other.

Tip Tap was developed originally by the dwarves who worked in the mines and forges, to inform each other of important things in their surroundings. Eventually, this language became widespread and generalized to be used in other loud work environments, such as forges and factories. It was and is also sometimes used in works or places where staying silent is crucial, such as animal hunting, prison inmate contact, special military forces, burglary, and spying.

Tip Tap is a simple oligosynthetic language with 45 morphemes, primarily focused on the domain of working. The word order in a sentence is Subject-Verb-Object. Adjectives follow after the Nouns they describe, e.g. "document (that is) old".

Due to its simple nature, the language lacks tenses other than present, and a large variety of terms that are not present in it. For example, since there is no term for water, most would refer to it as "Drink", even when it's not clean water or a large pool of water.

Since this is a written medium, we will utilize the Taixuanjing to codify this language. Each symbol represents the sequence, in which the tips of dwarves' feet (called "toes" from now) are touching the ground. Disruptions in the lines are the moments when the left (upper line) or right (bottom line) toes do not touch the ground. Please, assume the toes are touching the ground between the symbols.

⚍ ⚌ ⚎

𝌁 𝌅 𝌂

𝌃 ⚏ 𝌄 

The only restriction for tap sequences is that none of the ideas communicated can begin nor end with ⚌, seeing how that's the natural state for feet to be at.

Important messages can be communicated with both tips of feet and heels, by lifting an entire foot and softly stomping it against the ground or the floor. In this notation, the top two lines stand for a left foot, and the right foot is represented by the bottom two lines. While the line is doubled, it could in theory let the writer represent the heels and tips of the feet separately. However, this isn't utilized in Tip Tap for reasons forgotten by history.

𝌪 𝌊

𝍎 𝌎

The 𝌆 symbol isn't used, since its meaning is identical to ⚌. Symbols 𝌮 and 𝍖 are not listed, because these would require the tapper to jump in the air if standing.

These messages could in theory be tapped using the hands and fingers too. If a wall isn't part of the same material and surface as the ground, the tapper will have to bring the hand to the ground. Tapping the message using two fingers can be enough to convey the message to others.

Quick Messages

Since these are messages of vital importance, they are all symmetric – they can be communicated in an identical manner with either the left or the right foot. Furthermore, they are the only messages that require you to lift a heel. Chances are, if a tapper needs to communicate this message, they aren't concerned with being heard, so it's usually done by stomping the same foot twice or thrice.

Taps	Meaning
𝌪⚌𝌪 or 𝌊⚌𝌊	"Go away!" "Save yourself!" "Leave!" The message implies immediate danger to anyone who's receiving the message.
𝍎⚌𝌪 or 𝌎⚌𝌊	"Come here!" "Help me!" "I'm in danger!" The message implies immediate danger to the tapper, and a request for help or assistance.

Negation

Most messages are made so that they do not require the user to negate things. But in case it's necessary, 𝌃 and 𝌄 tend to be used. These taps are reserved for negation because they were too complex when used along with other terms.

People

Messages that involve people usually begin with the ⚏ taps.

Taps	Meaning
⚏⚏	I
⚏⚍	Guard, protector, security
⚏⚎	Civilian (someone not related to the work)
⚏𝌅	My colleague
⚏𝌁	My boss
⚏𝌂	My subordinate
⚏ followed by a Place	Someone in the Place (used only when it's clear from the context)

 

Items

Taps	Meaning
⚍⚏	Valuable
⚍⚍	Lock
⚍⚎	Junk
⚍𝌅	Consumable
⚍𝌅⚎	Food
⚍𝌅𝌂	Drink
⚍𝌁	Document
⚍𝌂	Tool

Places

Taps	Meaning
⚎⚏	In front of me
⚎⚍	To my left
⚎⚎	To my right
⚎𝌅	Behind me
⚎𝌁	Safety / Relaxing Place
⚎𝌂	Workplace
⚎⚏⚎	Home

Adjectives

Depending on the context, these can stand for a color, or another attribute of an item.

Taps	Meaning
𝌁⚏	Bright (color), New, Young
𝌁⚍	Yellow, Sticky, Sharp
𝌁⚎	Red, Hot, Burning
𝌁𝌅	Dark (color), Old
𝌁𝌁	Green, Slippery, Flat
𝌁𝌂	Cold, Wet

Actions

Taps	Meaning
𝌂⚏	Take, Keep, Want
𝌂⚍	Store, Drop, Don't Want
𝌂⚎	Throw (if followed by something that can be thrown) Go (if followed by place)
𝌂𝌅⚎	Eat
𝌂𝌅𝌂	Drink
𝌂𝌁	Relax
𝌂𝌂	Work

Numbers

The numeric system that dwarves use somewhat resembles the Roman numerals. One communicates a number by starting with a 0 and then listing all the numbers that add up to the desired number. For example, the number 11 would be communicated as 𝌅𝌂⚎⚍. Tip Tap uses Many for the numbers greater than 15, and Few for fractions, as well as negative numbers, since it never really needed these.

Taps	Meaning
𝌅	0
⚍	1
⚎	2
𝌁	4
𝌂	8
𝌅⚏	Few*
𝌅𝌅	Many*

* When the criminals use Tip Tap to discuss money, Many (followed by a number without a 0) stands for 10.000× the number of credits, and Few stands for 1× the number of credits. If neither Many nor Few are mentioned, the value equals 100× the number of credits.

Sorry that languages other than Tip Tap aren't as developed. I just wanted to share these ideas instead of having them lying around in my archives, waiting to do something cool with them. At least I'm happy that Tip Tap is quite defined.

But that's about it for now. Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

Prophecy Maker

Regardless of how Blades [in the Dark] handles [planning] mechanically, the point of Blades is that characters and situations work hand in hand to weave a story—there’s no such thing as “failure”, its just a different branch along an infinite path. [Dungeons and Dragons] 5E conditions players that a failure state exists (ctrl+F the PHB for “fail” and see what I mean). 
—HeavyArms

This time, I was the one to start a conversation by venting my frustration regarding overtly long planning sessions and how I experienced most of them in D&D, curiously enough. There are many reasons for that sort of stuff to come up: too many players, too many tools (abilities, equipment, etc.), players getting stuck in a loop of arguments, and so on. The one that stuck out to me was a focus on failure, pointed out by HeavyArms quoted above with permission. This led me on a journey that made me relabel this article half a dozen times.

I took inspiration from the conflict resolution from PbtA and Matt Colville's notion of a "null result" to avoid. Add a dash of my favorite mechanic from Double the Zombies, equipment inspired by the Final: Sole Survivor with a bit of a Gon' Click inspiration, and a "but" here and there. The outcome of this process is my very own dice oracle.

All you need is a pair of six-sided dice.
The image is public domain.

Prophecy Maker

The count starts at 0 unless it's greater already. Start by defining:

• a good, a bad, and a random outcome,
• an expected outcome, and a countdown amount,
• the skill bonus used,
• and the item used, if any.

Roll 2d6 and add them to the skill and item bonus.

• The good outcome happens if the sum is ≥ 7, and it has a catch if it's 7.
• The bad outcome happens if the sum is ≤ 9, and it has a catch if it's 9.
• The random outcome happens if both dice have rolled the same number.
• For every 6 rolled, increase the count by 1. When count ≥ countdown, the expected outcome happens, and the count is reduced to 0.

Finally, the item can be damaged if the lower die roll ≤ item's bonus. In such a case, subtract the roll from the bonus. If the new bonus equals 0, the item is destroyed.

Now available in a business-card format! ... okay, I don't know how big a business card is, but with some shifting around this could fit for sure!

---

Since I wanted to shorten the above as much as I could, it's time for some notes.

Skills are assumed to range from +0 to +3, with +1 being the average. and items are expected to have a starting durability of +1 to +3 depending on how reliable (yet fragile) they are. The total of a skill and item bonus shouldn't exceed 7, otherwise bad event has no chance of occurring.

A character is assumed to carry at most 4 items at a time that they could use for the oracle. As for what the nature of a random outcome is, it should be something that raises the stakes and is perhaps typical of the genre played. For example, zombies appear in a zombie apocalypse story. The expected outcome is anything that could happen any moment now to raise the stakes (such as guards bursting into the room after activating the alarm in a heist), and you can get the countdown amount by tripling the number of rounds you think this should take. The math likely doesn't check out, but I don't mind too much, this is a guideline, not a hard rule.

The numbers 7 and 9 could be shifted up or down individually based on an outcome being more or less likely, I just picked these two numbers because they'd be easy to remember after a while.

The random outcome, the items, and the countdown to an expected event are all optional. You do not need to do them with every roll, they are just there in case you need them.

---

As you can see, I've tried to squeeze as much use out of 2d6 as possible. One could still in theory replace the 2d6 with a 1d12 for a reckless attempt at it, but that would complicate the matters of equipment durability and random outcomes. I actually dropped some parts of it, like 2 and 12 being an automatic bad outcome and good outcome respectively, but both getting an extra "and". I've considered going beyond what it is at the moment too much. This is good enough, considering all you need is two six-sided dice (or one rolled twice).

Anyway, that's it. I originally wanted to make it into a 200-word TTRPG, but honestly... why would I. Making it into a dice oracle is pretty neat. Besides, this game borrows so many of my ideas from other systems I published that it barely tries anything new. It's a culmination of the ideas I've been processing this year with my monthly game design challenge, and I'd say it's a pretty good outcome.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Reliable vs. Reckless

Here's a quick idea. Instead of asking a player to roll the same dice every time, give them a choice: they can either try to do something in a reliable manner, or reklessly. When doing something in a reliable manner, they roll multiple dice. When doing something recklessly, they roll one die. Both should have roughly the same values and averages. In the case of my future Runehack TTRPG, these would be 2d6 vs. 1d12. While their numbers are not a perfect match, they do have some minor side effects, such as 2d6's average being a tiny bit higher, and a 1d12 having a possibility of rolling a 1 (which has the same likelyhood as 12 or any number between them). Other valid options include 2d4/1d8, 2d2/1d4 (if you like coins?), 3d4/1d12, and 2d10/1d20. In case you want to protect the players who are indecisive, treat the reliable roll as a default, and reckless as an opt-in choice. It won't be a perfect solution, but it's better than nothing. Anyway, that's about it for now. Thank you for reading, and have a nice 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!