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Showing posts from 2024

TTRPG Tuesday: Channelers Tasks for Second Playtest

Alright it’s another TTRPG Tuesday.  It’s late, I have to be up less than seven hours from now for hockey, and my wife’s coming down with something that I’ll probably catch in some form or another.  But let’s gooooo! So with Playtest Zero coming up in uhhh two days, I have to be realistic about what’s achievable by then.  I am close but not close enough to being able to have folks test out combat; and I still think having some pregen characters for that will help me do that.  The issue is I’ve jumped around so much that I don’t have those characters, or a character sheet; so since that’s the first domino, I’m focusing on that as the bit to playtest, and will take what I learn from character feedback to build and stat out my pregen characters, and the scenario I skeletoned out last week. I have split the original Channelers doc into a Devlog and a WIP for the system itself, and have started a little slide deck I can use to introduce folks to the concept.  Between now and Thursday evenin

TTRPG Tuesday: Blueprint for Channelers MVP

It’s nine days til the next US-evening Playtest Zero.  I’ve worked on Channelers more days than not recently. Welcome to another TTRPG Tuesday. My goal by 3/14 is to have an MVP that can at least be tested.  An introduction to the game, some pre-gen characters for each of the belief systems, and a scenario to test out the double 3x3 combat grid.  I’ve just been writing down the random bits that pop into my head and are worth figuring out, but I should definitely start with what’s needed for the test and then work my way out from there. So let’s do that today! Test Scenario: The Numinous Spores The Charter calls upon 3-5 Channelers to address a manifestation of the Angel of Decay, an Aspect of the Chanterelle Spirit.  In Heron’s Call Bay, living creatures are wasting away and the scavengers and rot are flourishing.  Three incursion points hold the manifestation in place; binding or cleansing them will release the Angel’s hold on the aread. Incursion Point 1: Three sporestalkers and a fo

TTRPG Tuesday: Let's Do That Hockey

Yo uh is it another TTRPG Tuesday? I think it is! I said I’d bring something to Playtest Zero on Thursday, and you know what’s been rattling around my head? Well, Channelers still, and Cold Iron Company, but today in particular: this post on mechanics inspired by Blue Lock.  But I don’t want to make the Blue Lock fan game - I want to take an already insane feeling system and map it on a world I care more about - Tartans Hockey Live! THL is, as everyone knows, the narrative fiction podcast series that exists entirely in my head and various Google docs, following a ragtag team of players in the fictional Hockey Elite League, which includes games played atop a moving train, trapped in a time loop, or in the shadow of Goshzilla, the Great Lakes Kaiju.  While THL follows a specific cast, I think for this game (which I might call Outside Edges or WHEEL BABY WHEEL or the Top Shelf system) we’ll play a lot looser, somewhere in the middle of the “This Is An Insane Approach To A Real Sport” of

TTRPG Tuesday: Three Means Of Resolving

Hi it’s another TTRPG Tuesday! First of the year.  Let’s get right into it. Saw a challenge on Twitter to make some resolution mechanics.  I can do those! Here we go: Hand to Hand The player performing the action and the person running the game or otherwise opposing the action both put their dominant fists toward one another, bounce them three times to get a rhythm, and reveal a number with their fingers, 0-5.  Sum the two numbers, and if the number is greater than 5, subtract six, so that the final number is always between 0 and 5.  On a 0, the action fails catastrophically, on a 1-2 it fails, 3-4 it succeeds, on a 5 it succeeds spectacularly.  The player taking the action starts the game with all five fingers up on their non-dominant hand; after an attempt, they may lower fingers on that hand to add to the sum of the attempt. Ex. Alice attempts to seduce Cat’s character over to the coup conspirators.  They put their dominant hands together (right for Alice, left for Cat) and thro