Madness in the Mountains

Yup. Just done another one. This time it's for mountains. Same procedures apply. PWYW from RPG Now. Thanks to Filip on my last post, I'll be looking to covert these to epub or mobi and then I'll put them on Lulu. I did that with Legend of the Wayfater ages ago.

Hijinks in the Hills

Hello lovely people! The terrain encounters continue - this time I look at hills.As always, it's PWYW from RPG Now.

I have a question - is 36 encounters too much when I have 12 benign ones? My long term plan is adding all of my encounters and generators to the main rulebook. Would people prefer 18 more focussed encounters per terrain? Maybe have an optional d6 table for benign encounters for all terrains to keep things interesting. I'd like to hear your thoughts. When I make a new mechanic or rule, I'm always keen to make them as simple as possible and maybe 36 encounters is too much.

In other news, Bards don't have the religion ability any more. I found myself using it to contact gods, do ceremonies and ward evil spirits. None of which I thought was very bardy.

For more SCRAWL products, visit mt RPG Now page.

Dungeon of the Orc Boss play through

Hello all! I have just a quick playthrough report of Dungeon of the Orc Boss. I decided that I would
play as Bob the fighter. Bob decided to buy a suit of light armour and a smoke bomb before setting off on his quest to kill the orc boss.

On the way across the plains, he came across a knight who offered him a challenge. Bob loses 1 Vitality point, but gets two hits in and gets 1xp.

In the first room, Bob easily slays a goblin to find a potion of curing. He then falls into a trapdoor down to level 2 into the down stairs room (decided by rolling 1 die). Bob then tries to get up to the next level to escape. He faces 2 goblins which take him down to 1 Vitality and make Bob spend a couple of xp to get rerolls to avoid death. However, he manages to get an art object worth 106 gold pieces.

In one room, he slays an orc (spending more xp) and opens a trapped chest. The chest has a poisoned dart trap which threatens to take his last point of Vitality. However, Bob quaffs his curing potion to negate that damage and opens the chest to find...a curing potion. Great. Bob also gets 1gp in coins (rubbish) and a piece of art worth 28gp.

When he returns to the village, Bob spends all his money on healing and healing salves and returns to the dungeon. He manages to slay his way through and gets to the Orc Boss. He spends a lot of xp to kill the boss and avoid the chance of losing 2 Vitality. Bob slays the Orc boss to get his 100gp and another art object. Bob returns with 199gp of treasure and a potion of curing. He gives 100gp to the villagers to get 1xp and now has a total of 6xp.

Bob has gained:

4 healing salves
74gp
3xp
A potion of curing.

Things I learnt from this play through

• With so few Vitality points, you will be doing everything possible to save them.
• Will points are a dump stat for fighters and, I suspect any class that does not cast spells. As long as you keep your Will above 0 so that Will loss does not lead to Vitality loss, you are fine. Wizards, on the other hand, will be stocking up on potions of clarity.
• Experience points are vital for saving your skin. You will spend a lot on rerolls. It is for this reason, that the bard will get 1 extra experience point every time they gain experience. This was inspired by Alexis Smolensk's blog.
• Art items will give you loads of treasure. Coins, not so much. This relates well to the idea that who is actually hoarding these coins? Where do they come from? If coins aren't so big to the economy, why are there so many underground? Also, you don't want hoards of coins to destabilise the economy.
• The most powerful magic item I found was a potion, which is how I wanted it. I want permanent magic items to be rare.
• Every roll made me think - do I spend an xp or a fate point to reroll? Do I use my treasure rerolls to get more gold or risk trying to get an item? However, I don't have to do any adding or subtracting.
• The playthrough took very little time to do. In this sense, SCRAWL is the game I wanted to play - it is simple, yet gives you lots of choices with how to spend your resources. It also allows you to play a different game each time - either due to random generation or because each class forces a different approach. I'm really happy with what I did, even if I must say so myself.

You too can play Dungeon of the Orc Boss using SCRAWL both of which for PWYW.

Pain on the Plains

Hello all! I've done another encounter table - this time for Plains. Pain on the Plains contains 36 encounters for SCRAWL (or you can use them for your own adventures if you like. I'm just glad you're enjoying them) all for the low low price of PWYW. Have fun!

You can get Pain on the Plains here.

Fun in the Forest

Hello lovely people! The SCRAWL machine keeps on churning out new stuff. Here is a list of forest encounters called Fun in the Forest. Here, there are 36 encounters for when you move onto a forest hex.

I intend to make 36 encounters for all terrains in SCRAWL, so keep your eyes peeled.

You can find Fun in the Forest on RPG Now for PWYW.

Anatomy of a Village

Hello lovely people. I'm doing some world building for SCRAWL and I've just created a village generator. I aim to make a generator for site adventures for different terrains (including underground), some maps for your to explore and then some special adventures. Enjoy!

To get Anatomy of a Village, go here. It costs PWYW.

The Yin-Yang of game design

So Wayfarer and SCRAWL (along with a SCRAWL adventure) are up on RPG Now for PWYW and in taking them to the next level, I have realised that they are interconnected in a way that is helping them both grow.

I remember the first time I had the idea that would turn into Wayfarer. It was as far back as 2011, I think. I had just downloaded Trial of the Clone from Tin Man Games and I did a test. In Trial of the Clone, you roll d4 three times and if one is equal to or over the difficulty, you win. The numbers didn't all appear at once, but rather one at a time, like on a fruit machine.

Then I had a thought - could I create a game system that had a sense of tension and anticipation even if they lose a roll. In Trial of the Clone, if I failed the first roll, I was still excited to see whether the other two would succeed.

I experimented with several systems, going all the way up to 6d6 and pick the best 2, 2d6 and reroll 1d6. Eventually, about 5 years later and with lots of experimenting, I settled with 1d6 and rerolls. I guess the simplest answer is the best.

However, the system was only half of the battle. The setting was the other half.

I wanted to make the setting as sandboxy as possible. I also wanted to create a world with its own logic and natural lores that I could implement consistently. I soon discovered that this was difficult. Especially if I was trying to do a fantasy world with magic that is pretty much the definition of breaking natural laws. I tried tons of things to have a system that fitted the story. Evetually, I settled for...pretty much no magic.

The world has other races, clockpunk machinery, spirits, undead and faeries, but no magic in the sense of magic light, magic missiles or magically being able to fly or open locked doors. I bend the laws of physics and nature a bit with the presence of these other races, most of which would not be evolutionarily viable. After all, that's the only reason I can think of that dragons don't exist. And I'm sure some mad scientist is working on making a dragon right now (I mean, amassing genomes is great and everything, but that's not going to give you giant flying, fire breathing reptiles that you can ride any time soon, is it?).

The only thing close to magic is the "Aetherlink", a lore that all living things are connected which allows some low level telepathy between you and things like trees, animals and spirits - just don't expect them to tell you anything outside what they would normally know. A tree could tell you what walked past it and how damp the earth is, but it can't see a mile away. You need a lot of training to use the Aetherlink, too and you can't get it as a starting character.

Literally years of thought, experimentation, research and writing amounted to a rulebook that is about 5000 words in size. Wayfarer must have the highest effort to word ratio of anything I have written.

While working on Wayfarer, I came up with the idea of applying the system to a DnD type setting. The idea stayed in my head for a while until a few months back, when I wrote SCRAWL. It spilled out in a few hours and I've barely changed it since its conception.

Why the contrast?

First of all, SCRAWL came after all the work on Wayferer. I had also worked on Adventurer with Shane Garvey which is a solo DnD type game system. So the ideas were there - I just married two systems together for them to have a baby. SCRAWL was the capstone on an intellectual pyramid that I had spent 5 years building.

Also, with SCRAWL, I was less fussy about every detail. SCRAWL is meant to be an OSR style snadbox hack and slash murderhobo adventure. I didn't need to think about funy things like population, infrastructure, economics, medicine or any other of those silly details. There were dungeons all over - why? Because then you can raid them. There are a random number of villages on each hex and they all sell weapons and healing stuff. Also, some adventurer strolling into town with a sackful of gems won't do anything to the economy. There are more humanoid races than you can count all living within close proximity to each other and a number of extremely hostile monsters. And all of this does not bother me one bit.

In contrast to Wayfarer, where I agonised over every detail, I just let loose with SCRAWL and wrote what I wanted. And this is how they help each other. Wayferer and SCRAWL are like an odd couple. Wayferer is the uptight fastidious one and SCRAWL just wants to cut loose and party, and this helps both.

When I hit a wall with my Wayferer worldbuilding, I do some world building in SCRAWL, knowing that I can come up with something in 20 minutes that won't bother me no matter how inconsistent I find it. This might unblock a creative pipe with Wayfarer. What about the rules holding SCRAWL together? Well, if I find a hole in them, working on Wayfarer helps with the system in SCRAWL. And this is why they are the Yin-Yang of game systems for me. I've just come up with ways of generating adventures for SCRAWL which, when complete, I might also apply to Wayferer. Which is good, because I was wondering how to do it with Wayferer.

So it seems to be good to have projects that require different skill sets and perspectives as they feed each other.

And if you are curious as to what I'm talking about, you can get Wayferer and SCRAWL for PWYW.

I picked this colour scheme, because Wayfarer and SCRAWL also remind me of the Blue-Red conflict from Magic the Gathering.