Often when I'm running a game, I focus on antagonist NPCs, characters who force me to think about what they're doing and how the player characters can react to their activities. It is rare when an allied NPC gets spotlight time, which brings me to this idea of "checklist NPCs". The NPC is associated with a checklist of prompts or events that best represent their purpose in the game. A player can check an item off the list to bring that event into play.
I made a Fiasco playset for the July Sixth Park Dinojam over at itch.io. Spared No Expense brings lofty ambitions and poor impulse control to an all-inclusive theme park and resort, where their aging robosaur attractions have been replaced with all-new real life dinoclones! Find your way to the one-of-a-kind Mesozoic Valley Resort and Casino, … Continue reading A Fiasco Playset 65 Million Years in the Making
SUPER BANDIT, my game about deadly starfighters and thirsty pilots, is out! Get it on itch! Previously known as 24XX BANDIT, it's inspired by Wing Commander, Top Gun, House of the Dying Sun, and Battlestar Galactica. It's got thoroughly-researched rules for space dogfighting - trust me, I watched a lot of DCS videos on youtube … Continue reading Get Super Bandit
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!
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.
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.
BREACH is my first submission to Jason Tocci's 24XX game jam over at itch.io. His 2400 series of microgames are one-page rpgs that range from psionic thriller to cyberpunk to space horror, and I appreciate this small format. He's used Creative Commons art by BEEPLE on all his covers, and I continued the trend. Finding … Continue reading 24XX: BREACH
Here's the Wasteland from Glow in the Dark reframed as Hard Zones for AW: Burned Over.
Insomniacs is available in print and pdf from DTRPG!
My followup to Insomniacs this week is a space opera meets office politics playset for the excellent new edition of Fiasco.
Don't Roll a One 