Character March 2025: (Almost) Everyone is Harry

Let's continue this series with a quick entry from the year when I committed myself to writing a game every month. Except this game came before I knew I'd challenge myself like that.

My ratings will be done on four scales, each ranging from 1 to 5:

• RPG: How much does this feel like an RPG to me, as opposed to a board game?
• Soup Stone: How little content does the game expect you to add? For this scale, 0 is a complete Soup Stone since I'd like to sum the scores to see the game's total score.
• Would I Play: If I were given a chance to, would I play this game?
• Would I Write: If I were inspired enough and had time/energy for it, would I get back to working on this game?

(Almost) Everyone is Harry

This game features three types of players: the Game Master, the Detective, and the Voices in his head. Your goal is to solve a crime together despite your amnesia. I'm going to assume that I'll be a pair of voices inside of the detective's head, seeing how that will be the role of most players.

The number I'll choose for these two voices to share is 5. Sonder is a hunch you have for other people's lives. It allows you to guess what their job is, whether they have a family, what kinds of songs they like, and so on. It's not based on perceptions, at least not on the kind you'd be aware of. The other voice, much weaker than Sonder, is Attriage, your control over the emotions you feel for others. The original rules didn't say that the two voices have to be related, but I figured I'd try to connect them. It makes sense here - the better you know others, the harder time you'll have not feeling for them.

Ratings

3/5 RPG. Some important details are missing, but it's pretty clear this ain't a board game.

1/5 Soup Stone. Make up the characters. Make up the detective. Make up the crime. Make up the world. Make up the NPCs. A ton of work. You have to make up pretty much everything, save for the premise and the body hanging from a tree (and even that feels rather shallow).

1/5 Would I Play. It could be fun, but I'm not exactly driven to do it.

1/5 Would I Write. This was an experiment on my part. It's an okay premise, but if I were to return to it, it would be independent of franchises and maybe with more mechanics for how the voices could interact with each other, also giving each player maybe just one voice and figuring out another way to balance them. It's an okay start, but I don't feel like developing it more anytime soon.

6/20 Total Rating

Character March 2025: Fae King

Continuing in this month's challenge, here's the second article on my most recent game, the Fae King.

My ratings will be done on four scales, each ranging from 1 to 5:

• RPG: How much does this feel like an RPG to me, as opposed to a board game?
• Soup Stone: How little content does the game expect you to add? For this scale, 0 is a complete Soup Stone since I'd like to sum the scores to see the game's total score.
• Would I Play: If I were given a chance to, would I play this game?
• Would I Write: If I were inspired enough and had time/energy for it, would I get back to working on this game?

Fae King

I won't talk much about this game since it's fairly recent. Let's cut to the chase and get to the character.

Janette Swift is a mortal who wants to kill the Fae King to bring her husband back from the dead. Perhaps she's a model, fighting the fae on their home field of beauty. So her twelve spaces of adjectives are:

• Way Fair er
• Keen er
• Quick
• Prim
• Shrewd
• Smooth er
• Thin ner

Losing these would be tragic for her, but it would be worth it for her ultimate goal.

Ratings

2/5 RPG. Courting Phase gives opportunities for roleplaying. But outside of that, it's largely a game bound by its rules. This is what it takes to build the house of cards, this is what happens when you're being chased, and nothing happens when you're not in Elfame because it's not included in the rules.

4/5 Soup Stone. You still need to come up with the problems that the fae have, but other than that the three pages of rules give you plenty of stuff to work with.

2/5 Would I Play. This game was largely made for the game jam within a single week. It's okay, but I can't say it's something that actively entices me to give it a try.

2/5 Would I write. Right now, it's way too recent for me to delve into it in a useful way. Maybe after I let this project rest for a bit, I could do it.

11/20 Total Rating

Character March 2025: Clues and Hunches

This is a game I already reworked once. The older version of the game was published on this blog in March of 2023, and it was a decent starting point. I won't deal with that, though. Let's see how I will do with the newer version of the game.

My ratings will be done on four scales, each ranging from 1 to 5:

• RPG: How much does this feel like an RPG to me, as opposed to a board game?
• Soup Stone: How little content does the game expect you to add? For this scale, 0 is a complete Soup Stone since I'd like to sum the scores to see the game's total score.
• Would I Play: If I were given a chance to, would I play this game?
• Would I Write: If I were inspired enough and had time/energy for it, would I get back to working on this game?

Clues and Hunches

Miss Ponsible, first name Iris, is a private investigator with a strange power of reverting time a couple of seconds back. This gives her an edge in her investigations, allowing her to make daring moves and maneuvers without others knowing anything about them. That being said, her only domain of specialization is in psychology. At least she has a friend on her phone, Theodore, who knows a lot about culture. That being said, the one thing she can rely on the most is her intuition, represented by the six points of Hunch.

Ratings

5/5 RPG. Barely anything about this feels like a board game. One could argue it's comparable to telling someone a puzzle, but I still think that roleplaying it makes it feel different.

2/5 Soup Stone. The system gives you a decent set of special powers, a way to progress your character, example domains, and guidelines for GM preparation. That being said, the GM will have a lot of prep ahead of them, and they'll have to stay on guard throughout the game in case the players pull off something unexpected.

5/5 Would I Play. I am working on a oneshot with this system, so that's a yes.

4/5 Would I Write. If I get decent ideas and won't have anything higher up on my priorities list, I would.

16/20 Total Rating

Characters March 2025: Deviants

New month, new challenge. This time, I decided to go through the TTRPG Character Creation Jam. The goal of this jam is to create 31 characters throughout March. I will revisit games I made, make characters for them, and rate them with my current point of view on them. I'm gonna put little effort into these articles, since there's likely gonna be 31 of them.

My ratings will be done on four scales, each ranging from 1 to 5:

• RPG: How much does this feel like an RPG to me, as opposed to a board game?
• Soup Stone: How little content does the game expect you to add? For this scale, 0 is a complete Soup Stone since I'd like to sum the scores to see the game's total score.
• Would I Play: If I were given a chance to, would I play this game?
• Would I Write: If I were inspired enough and had time/energy for it, would I get back to working on this game?

Deviants

My first proper TTRPG. Deviants was based on a simple premise, playing superpowered people in a modern setting. It was very inspired by Prototype and inFamous, and I believe it holds up well enough.

My character grew up in a big city where the game takes place. He's a grounded person who doesn't overuse his powers too much, but he uses them for good. He probably hides them and tries to live a normal life for the most part. His powers allow him to manipulate Neodynium, which is why he purchased a whole set of Neodynium magnets and made a cool weapon out of them. I'm imagining something akin to the Buster Sword that can split into several floating parts he can telekinetically manipulate. Though I'm not sure if he'd be that violent. As for his name, Drew Near.

Ratings

5/5 RPG. No arguing with this; it's quite a freeform game.

1/5 Soup Stone. That being said, the only thing the game gives you beyond the core resolution mechanics-wise is the system for injuries. Anything beyond that would have to be added to the game.

3/5 Would I Play. I could go with this if I needed to run a quick game with very little player-side prep. However, I'm afraid the GM need to prepare a lot more.

4/5 Would I Write. I don't have ideas as to how I could expand the system or whether it even needs expanding. But yes, if I had everything necessary for an update, I would be very willing to republish this game as a better product.

13/20 Total Rating

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.