Tag: design
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Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
The OGL wildfires have inspired me to get back to game design. I’ve thought about this unformed game a lot (four years if you count that first blog post), and worked on it very little. I’m writing about it now to put it out into the world, to add that weight of accountability.
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Star Wars With Cortex Prime, Episode II
Last year I talked about using Cortex Prime with Star Wars. I’ve run a few more times and while there are no major changes in my philosophy, I’ve learned enough to warrant sharing some ideas.
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Super Bandit Development
I made 24XX: BANDIT a while back for Pretendo Games’ 24XX Jam on itch. Of the two 24XX games I’ve made (BREACH being the first and simplest), I’ve run BANDIT many more times and its rough edges are more apparent now after a fairly lengthy online campaign. Like the Super Sabre, Super Hornet, and Super
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Star Wars With Cortex Prime, Episode I
Two and a half years ago I wrote a series of posts about adapting Cortex Prime for Star Wars. I’ve had some sessions and learned some lessons since then, not just about StarCortexPrimeWars but also about what parts of the expansive Cortex toolkit work best for me. As usual, preferences vary, I’m not your dad,…
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Vocabulary is Magic
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.
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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.
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The Chop Shop
I’m working on another game, because tinkering with otherwise perfectly functional games is part of the hobby for me.
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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…
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Insomniacs, a Cryoship Road Trip
Insomniacs is out! The journey through its design has ironically mirrored an Insomniacs campaign – an incredibly long odyssey punctuated by false hope, mistakes, research projects, and self-discovery.
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Teaching a Spaceman to Spacefish
I’ve got maybe a year or so of my Insomniacs playtest campaign under my belt, but I’m struggling with how to put that into actionable content in the book. I don’t think I’ve ever used a setting or module verbatim, and I don’t know how other GMs adapt canned material for their own campaigns. I…
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Can’t Sleep. Space’ll Eat Me.
I’ve made tremendous progress on Insomniacs‘ interior in the past few weeks but I also redid the cover. Inspired by Ian Hubert’s Blender videos, I tried my hand at making an entire stasis pod with an unwilling occupant. It’s not that different from my original cover idea, and the first one has a nice negative
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Insomniacs: The Reverent Between
The Reverent Between is what the Somnambulist’s AI called the gulf of stars between the crew’s last stop at 186 Herculis and their fruitful colonization prospects in the constellation Lyra. I’m also deep in Insomniacs’ editing and layout process, and that is its own sort of thoughtful journey. The Pillar of Contemplation The Pillar was
Don't Roll a One 