Finding the right words is worth it, especially when they're going on a character sheet. Take the time to nail the right vibe and your games will be better for it.
Vocabulary is Magic
Cortex Prime Car Chases
Again with the car chases. After several attempts across multiple ad-hoc systems, I think I've twisted the excellent ttrpg toolkit Cortex Prime into something that'll run satisfying car chases.
Spy Chasers
My Mad Max-gone-Fast & Furious board game project is finally good enough to play. It's a light card game that uses commonly-available 1/64 scale cars (like Hot Wheels or Matchbox) and plays great with kids. Check it out (for free or PWYW) on itch.io!
Fast & Fury Road: Spy Racers
My Thunder Road / JUNK'D homage game sat on the back burner for a long time until my kids got interested in Fast & Furious: Spy Racers on Netflix. I decided to bring out the XPS foam road segments and make a fun racing game that was less Mad Max and more kid-friendly. I'm still … Continue reading Fast & Fury Road: Spy Racers
Car Chasing
I followed the principles laid out in my recent post about getting car chases into tabletop rpgs and ended up with this mildly-playtested rules system.
The Chop Shop
I'm working on another game, because tinkering with otherwise perfectly functional games is part of the hobby for me.
Horsepower
Car chases in TTRPGs continue to be my white whale. I've watched a ton of car chases in movies, real life, and video games, but the problem is you don't often read car chases. It's primarily a visual spectacle, and so the challenge in translating a good chase to a roleplaying game lies in finding where the decision points are.
Destroying the World
The Earth in doomed in Insomniacs, but how it's doomed is up to you and your group. The Kurzgesagt youtube channel continues to be an invaluable source of information on existential threats, mass extinctions, and productive nihilism. Here are a few choice options that either made it into Insomniacs more or less directly, or were inspirations for some of the doomsday scenarios or exoplanets.
Peace Was Never An Option
I wrote up a very light PbtA game about mischievous animals trying to act like people and generally committing low stakes crimes in the process. The fever dream prototype of this game turned out to be the perfect fit for the roleplaying club I ran for elementary schoolers last year.
24XX: BANDIT
YOU ARE A STARFIGHTER. You dance through the void, strapped into a fragile hypervelocity shell capable of glassing moons. Now your colony worlds burn. Your fleets are scattered. The false prophets and traitor kings call you renegade. They hound you through uncharted space while billions of ghosts cry out for vengeance. Let them come. Show them how easily the hunter can become the prey.
