From the toy box. Great for convincing servants to let you into forbidden areas. Only works if he's unconscious. Will start going about his duties and nagging you if not stowed quickly.
2. Trick Hoop and Stick
Grandfather's pride. The names "Trochus" and "Clavis" are messily etched into the wood. An older model that will impress other boys your age, to the point of obsession. Use wisely.
3. One Day-sy
A handful of seeds from mother's greenhouse. Place one and tell it something you wish to do one day, and it will grow as tall and strong as a tree in a single minute. You no longer have that wish.
4. Black Kerchief
Taken from the hearse driver's coat. Any who dry their own tears with this leaves behind a secret, readable in the embroidery by the trained eye. Secrecy proportional to tears.
5. Bespoke Cello
Gift from your instructor. A tune opens the back panel like a door, and the interior is spacious enough for you or objects. Different tunes open different interiors, some of which are occupied.
6. Deck of "Cards"
Underside of the parlor card table. Contains 52 jokers. A joker placed on someone's person makes them the unluckiest in any room. The more jokers placed, the harder it becomes to stifle your laughter.
7. Length of Rigging
Souvenir from uncle. Salty, frayed and restless. One end pulls toward adventure, the other towards treasure. Stringing this into the dumbwaiter's pulleys will let it take you to places besides the estate.
8. Handmade Handmaid
Inert until Miss Hilda's passing. Will listen to one burdensome thought, alleviating guilt and its associated penalties. The staff fear it and hide it from you, usually in the attic.
9. Gargoyle Gravel
Rubble from fallen gargoyles has many uses. A handful wards off fear, a pocketful wards off sleep, and a mouthful wards off day. Gargoyles will accept it as a snack, and repay you by falling at perfect moments.
10. Jewelry Box
On your aunt's vanity mirror. Made of dark tortoise shell. People forget about things placed in the box within a few days. Take care to leave it some place where you'll bump into it again.
11. Hearth Hounds
On either side atop the great room mantelpiece. Twin spaniels of cream white pottery, vigilantly listening for conspiracy against their masters. When shattered, releases its accumulated rumors for your perusal. Be a dear and scoop the shards into the fire so it may reform by the next morning.
12. Sneaking Key
Left on a random side of the hedge maze. Opens the side cabinets on rosewood sideboards in each sitting room, wherein lies a convenient series of passages betwixt them. If you should bump into a sideling, be polite and thank them for use of their work.
13. Lurking Key
Left at the end of the hedge maze. Opens the rear drawer on the walnut end tables in each drawing room. Inside lies crawlable passages betwixt them. If you pass by an endling, be polite and compliment their handiwork.
(Be warned: sidelings and endlings don't get along, and one may take offense if they discover you've mingled with the other.)
14. Ice Sculpture of an Angel
In the meltwater tray of the ice box in the kitchen. A new one sneaks in each week. Letting it melt on a slumbering person will make them extremely agreeable the following day. Shattering it on them, however, crushes their spirits until they leave.
15. Cracked Hand Mirror
In the fountain. Lets you tell mother stories of your exploits.
16. Silvered Hedge Clippers
Stashed somewhere in the topiary garden. Your only defense against the briar of the maze. Too sharp for someone your age to be handling, but thankfully incapable of harming the innocent.
17. Familiar Perfume
On grandmother's nightstand. Stout vial of a pleasant yet overpowering fragrance. Those caught in its spritz are suspended in nostalgia, abandoning immediate concerns for a spell to reminisce over fond memories.
18. Quixotic Tea Set
In the pantry. Painted with frolicking critters. Tea parties are perfect for introductions; when in new company, sharing black tea emboldens the spirit, and green tea the mind. You don't really like tea, and can only stand one cup a day.
19. Meerschaum Pipe
Displayed in the smoking room. Your words become captivating while it is in your mouth. Plumes of smoke swirl into phantasmal shapes, whether anything burns within or not. Carved as a whale.
20. Saccharine Locket
Under your pillow. A parting gift, replete with mementos: flower petals, stamps, and scraps of letters. When you would disappear, one of them does instead. Decreasing chance of replenishment each month the truth is not found.
Time to use this thing for what it was made for: a funnel for brain leakage. In this scrap heap:
my recent activity
a video I saw
a movie I saw
a post I like
a world I seek
and a way I go.
BEGIN
What's going on with you lately man
Europa. My days lately are spent attempting to enter "the zone" in hopes of willing some more Europa War Tabletop Module stuff into existence. It's not going BAD, I just wish it was easier to get the mojo flowing, let alone make time for it. Worse, I have that problem where it's hard to bear down on a project if anything is coming up on the schedule soon. The closer it is, the more paralyzing. If I can learn to deal with frequent interruptions and the notion of "doing a thing while another thing approaches," I'll be unstoppable.
I'd like to get this into a playable, readable, usable state by the end of May. (I have no basis for if that's realistic or not, as I've never done anything "real" like this.) But I think we got it. The prospect of adding a "BIG WAR!!!" sidecar to the FIST motorcycle seems more possible the longer I think about it. It doesn't have to be simulationist; FIST is a narrative-centric game. Creative problem solving and driving action are king. We should strive for engaging procedures over numerical perfection.
At minimum, we'd like to include FIST-appropriate, Occam's Razor, clean and simple procedures for...
Forming and ordering around squads of many dudes
Capturing, defending, and improving bases of operation
Navigating the ongoing all-encompassing war
Stuff besides that, such as enemies, factions, Deepest Lore, items, places, NPCs... those are all things. There's gonna be plenty of those, and we're really excited to flesh them out, but not untill the procedures they operate within are better defined. Those 3 bullet points are the bones from which all meat will sprout. (?)
Oh, and this isn't the big formal announcement, but we plan to eventually run a small crowdfunder for this project. We'd like to have good art and a professional touch so that this thing can become its best self. But we're just some normal guys, so we will ask for a little help from anyone who feels like helping. The reward will be the completed zine, of course, and likely at an early bird price. (On that note, I think a free preview version is in order.) I'm ballparking it at like 2,500 bucks, no stretch goals, fulfilled by DriveThruRPG. I'd like it to be as no frills, no risk, and get-'er-done as possible. But keep this on the down-low, we're not there yet.
Check out this weird guy
I recently saw this video.
It's 3 minutes of cryptic "tough love," with some really good advice packed inside... but this AI shit is dumb, man. The fake old man voice, the hammy metaphors ("ChatGPT, write me a 3 minute speech of darkly poetic self help talk!"), the oooh so uncanny weird art, the "erm what the scallop, this sleep paralysis demon is actually wholesome?!" deal... Still, it got me to click, and some things it said also clicked with me. "Begin afraid" is a good takeaway.
I did not actually watch the others for as long as the little red bar claims
But come on, change it up a little, I poked around some others and they all say the same stuff. That one is half an hour! Fuck outta here, man! But thank you for the push.
I watched Minority Report
Logging on
Tom Cruise can run so fast and so much it's unreal.
The technology is so awesome. Self-driving magnetized car-tubes that go up sheer walls, eye-dentification scanners everywhere, the full-room-hologram computers with glass slate data storage... Yet the police jetpacks are comically unwieldy and janky, bumbling and smacking into the windows of smooth, glossy Mac computer skyscrapers.
Drunk driving here
I love Tom's little unit of precrime dudes (I almost called him Ethan because I talk about Mission Impossible a lot). Neal McDonough's character (2nd from the left below) likes to hang around with his muscles out and say things like "pure metaphysics." We don't see the team do a whole lot regarding normal crimes, since the movie is about Tom being framed, but I love to imagine the dynamic of these guys. Nerd-jock detectives with complete faith in a psychic web binding us all.
Mr. Cruise's character, while viewing the future murder visions and scanning for clues on where it will happen, seems to show an encyclopedic knowledge of local architecture and the history of different districts. He uses the design of buildings glimpsed in the visions to narrow down where in the city the murder will be. I dig the idea of a detective who has to study a lot of really obscure and seemingly innocuous things to catch would-be killers; urban planning, townhouse room layouts, where the sun is visible from at particular times... Knowing the signature on that old ass blueprint could be the difference between someone living and dying.
Man, a Minority Report TTRPG campaign would be good fun. You could run it in probably anything, and it seems well suited to one shots. We've only got 3 hours till this guy does this murder; figure out where on this city map it's gonna happen, get there fast enough, and successfully prevent the death. You could probably include crimes that are predicted far in advance as long term objectives too. Precogs gave us a vision, 3 weeks out- we have that long to figure out which John Smith from this list is gonna be a murderer.
In the movie, the precrime division isn't a nationwide thing; it's in a localized trial period to see if it works. It does! Murder is down to basically nothing in the city. They've got the backing of some big money, a headquarters, VTOL transport, sophisticated computers, the works. In a campaign, maybe it would be a bit scrappier- maybe a private precog firm, or vigilantes, or an underfunded experiment? So instead of getting airdropped as close as possible, you need to acquire transport or carpool. Instead of jetpacks, you've got 2 guys who can do parkour, and the rest of you have to take the stairs until you earn enough for rappelling tools.
Allow me to re-introduce myself
There's a blog I love called Garamondia, check it out if you're in the RPG sphere. He recently put out this post detailing a real-time longterm play-by-post system where you captain enormous vehicles and enlist your friends as your lieutenants. Just nuts. I wanna play it so bad.
But there's another post of his that I really admire: his first. It starts off with this humble little self-intro. I like how perfectly it describes the works of the gloggy blog space that I observe: laconic, visceral, abstract. The whole passage is very succinct, respectful, humble, and passionate. The fascinations and motivations discussed here resonated strongly with me.
I cite it here because I admire the approach used to kick off his blog: he points out why the gloggy part of the TTRPG blogging world is so compelling and cool, declares he'd like to start sharing his thoughts in the spirit of it, and then does.
I too would like to post more in the spirit of that space. I want my ideas to say more with less, evoke strong sensations, and use cool archaic words in a natural-sounding way. Looking back, I kinda wish I just started, instead of wanting a foundation (an introduction post with some background, a rundown of current projects...).
I figured I'd get to pure ideas posting once "housekeeping" was out of the way. But then Europa hit, so of course that needed a post... SO NOW, 2 months into it, my ideas blog has 3 big wordy posts (4 now), none of which are pure ideas! Ridiculous. But I'm just complaining. It's all coming together.
To summarize, I must get more gloggy with it.
Gloggy, why do you keep saying that, what does that word mean
The GLOG, or the Goblin Laws of Gaming, is a tabletop RPG rule system, or perhaps more accurately, a philosophy. It was devised by the blog Goblin Punch, and can be found in this post.
The PDF starts off with the GLOG mindset distilled to its essence.
GLOG freed my mind. Even in a sea of creative indies, the heights that people take this thing to are unimaginable. (Especially if 5e is your main experience.) You don't need much. There's just 4 levels, called templates, to a class. Words like "always" and "never" often appear in traits. It prioritizes orthogonal progress over incremental upticks and bonuses.
In another post like 7 years later, he hits a million more home runs:
God damn! Perfection.
Of course, the community around the system is just as cool. The GLOG blogosphere, or "GLOGosphere", is a treasure trove of wisdom; everyone's got a unique take on the system skeleton, with their own things swapped in or bolted on, and everyone's got a strange and beautiful world that they build on with each new class or enemy or place.
They pass around themes for things to post about in great waves; just a short while ago I think the general idea of "assassins" made the rounds, and so many unexpectedly unique takes on the premise were put out in a very short time. This happens constantly.
Here's a good post breaking down some key points of the GLOGosphere, with an awesome list of blogs to boot. They're extremely active, with crazy levels of originality and variety, plus a lot of interaction and cross-referencing. Not to mention how, in my experience, it is completely free of the stupid fucking buzz of the larger RPG sphere, that even reaches into the OSR sphere.
There is one youtube video about the glog. (And it's just a stream archive of an RPG guy, Hexed Press, reading about it.) That's how tucked away this is.
It's paradise.
That's why I'm only bringing it up in the latter half of a "general thoughts" post. I do not want to be the guy that ruins this fishing spot for everyone. But I can't not talk about my favorite thing... SO! Be responsible with this knowledge. If I see a drama video, a reddit meme, a reel, a short, a tik or a tok, or any sort of virality bait regarding the GLOG, I'll do it for real.
To erudition
In conversation, the word I keep using to describe this mindset and this community is erudite. It's a cool and somewhat older word for "smart through study." It brings to mind classical scholars huddled in little sanctuaries of knowledge. Alchemists and occultists.
Check out homie in the bottom left
It's my catch-all word for the learned, worldly, clever, aged, strange feeling that this creative space gives me.
It's somewhere in between the old-world language, the severe but interesting consequences baked into the designs, the settings that don't fit neatly into boxes, the embracing of simple but powerful abilities, the ruthless trimming of excess, the beautiful union of mechanics and narrative, the power and space given to the imagination of both player and game master, the sensibilities of the old school woven with the startling ingenuity of the new... It's just erudite.
I wish to be erudite.
I don't think I'm smart enough yet. Sure, I study. I've been aggressively absorbing theory for years now. But I need to get some more experience in the field- the actual game mastering- as I'm way out of practice. I should also read more. Blogs and books. I should also get to the ideas posting soon, and go where the wind takes me; I don't imagine my favorite creators got where they are by crafting the One Single Good Idea for ten years.
Enough thinking about thinking. Consider this a formal proclamation: I shall seek erudition!
To put a bow on this, I tried to find a cheesy quote about how you never really stop learning, or the importance of stepping out of your comfort zone or something, and found a really funny guy stepping in a hole.
complain about (but humbly accept) my brainchild breaking containment
share some of my favorite Europa stuff (both pre-breach and post)
discuss details about the zine project!
I'm posting this Context: Deluxe Edition post a few days after Europa posting has cooled down (lol), partially because I'm busy, partially because I've had my fill of buzz for a bit, and partially because I'd rather fully explore my thoughts than put out something I don't mean. Enough preamble. What happened?
Good Lord What Is Happening In There
I'll cover the broad strokes:
I've been chipping away at a tabletop setting booklet for a few months now.
It revolves around a massive endless war on Jupiter's moon Europa.
Over time, I've posted funny little snippets from that world, including chat logs and ridiculous war stories.
My awesome perfect mutuals joked along, or "riffed" as real ones call it, and that went on for a while.
A few of my awesome perfect mutuals have quite the large following.
Thus, anecdotes from Europa "broke containment" and hit the big time, and thousands joined in the fun.
Even the NASA Europa Clipper account chimed in. Crazy shit.
It was so nuts being at like, KBBQ or board game night or something, and getting a DM that Europa had escalated further. Once every few hours, it was Hey bro, check out this artist that got inspired, check out this big account that's throwing their hat in the ring, check out this streamer who noticed it, check out this video essay about it, check out that the NASA mission sending a probe there alluded to it. I owe it all to my epic mutuals.
And How Does That Make You Feel?
A lot. This year, I'm putting out more of my creative work, so I've been trying to get some eyes on me. Then BOOM, it just happened. I've gained over 5,000 followers in 4 days. Now, let's keep it on the level, that's not a mind-blowing or life-changing amount. A situation-changing amount for sure.
Check this shit out; "europa war" over the last 30 days
Sure, some of my posts has gotten big on twitter or tumblr, but nothing of mine has become a trend. Speaking of "mine," I'm fully aware of how these things work, and that the trend at large is basically out of my hands. There is an original body of work, but through telephone, it quickly snowballed (lol) into something more collaborative and spontaneous.
In my post where I give some context about the whole thing, I used firm language to describe it ("fanfic" may have sounded harsh... I meant it scientifically), but looking at it, it really is blurry. It's not like my own thing had an Official Announcement anywhere, only scattered mentions that it's happening. Plus, statistically, the "original" stuff by me and my pals is now a small fraction of the Europan body of literature. So, at the end of the day, I don't think anyone would be totally incorrect looking at all this and seeing something like the Backrooms.
I don't take issue with that, just thinking out loud here. What I do take issue with is the way a few specific people seem to be grossly mishandling it. Here's the thing, though: are they "mishandling it" when "it" is something totally different to them? Basically, I'll be doing my own thing, so it (probably) has no effect on me what other people decide to do with the idea of war on Europa.
Even the fucking memecoin and the guy who seems to want to AI generate a movie about it.
To sum up, I'd like if people knew it was from the mind of lolt64, I acknowledge that's sort of unrealistic, I believe that there now exists "my thing" and the "public thing," and I shouldn't worry about who messes with the public thing, since it's so far removed. I've seen (and been sent) some really impressive Europa-based writing- I encourage anyone with ideas to develop them!
Okay, enough context, commentary, examination and reflection. The future is now.
Actually one last thing. Can I get weird and picky for a second here? I am so, so sad that so few public Europa works touch on the silliness of the original stuff. I'm grateful that many truly amazing artists have created so many beautiful and badass works- ones that really nail the fervor of the soldiers, the weight of this crazy situation. Still, I feel like it's all so serious, when all the original stuff was really zany. Make no mistake, I love the cool pictures of cool soldiers getting off of cool dropships in cool armor- all I'm saying is that if they were getting off the cool dropship directly into a nuke minefield while under fire by yeti guerillas, I'd be freaking out.
Do I sound entitled enough yet? No time for that; the future is now.
The Future! What Happens Now?
Glad you asked- I buckle the fuck down and get this project made! Or rather, we buckle- I'm writing this with my IRL buddy (in the midst of setting up his own blog!), and we'll be commissioning the spectacular Finn of Sharp_Sticks for more of those perfectly chaotic illustrations.
We're aiming for a nice 40 to 60 page setting book (when do things ever go to plan?) that may be compatible with Mothership or F.I.S.T.; both are calling to us for different reasons. Plenty of setting zines are system-agnostic, but the way we see it right now, committing to one gives us a solid frame for a bunch of fun new toys. My top priority is fully exploring this crazy setting in a "gameable" way- all interactive, all experiencable, all fun. Here's a dangerous idea: we're eyeballing the big red "completely new system" button. Nothing crazy, but one must always beware the scale creep...
Here's some of what's definitely gonna be in there:
A variety of locales and landmarks to explore, capture, or blow sky high
History of the war, with tables of rumors for things the troops like to speculate about
Characters to meet, including some whose exploits you may be familiar with
Factions, from massive and moon-owning to just a few crazies with a dream
Knacks to acquire from experiences; think "crevasse climber" or "friend to yetis"
Items, gear, and other classic nouns to find in the frozen wastes
It'll be out as soon as it's ready. It's the main thing I'm doing right now, but it'll still be a while.
To close us out, here's some of my personal fav Europa posts. Thank you sincerely for reading. See you on the ice!
Here are 3 of my brainkids. I'm raising them, but some may be locked in the attic while guests are over, or when I can't think of what to do with them.
"Jets Game"
My design buddy and I have been hitting our heads against this on and off since NYE 2023. As soon as I learned about the rpg system framework LUMEN by Gila RPGs, we agreed that it could possibly work for something related to playing as high-flying fighter jet pilots. Zippy pace, arcadey combat, standout archetypes, stunts, drama that shifts how your team works together... We had a good skeleton for everything. Unlike some of these other pet projects, Jets actually has a lot of legwork done!
Oh by the way: Happy 4th birthday, LUMEN !!!!
Pilots accumulate Nerve from death-defying stunts, like near misses and evasions and high-g maneuvers. You can use it up lending aid to teammates, red-lining your machine's components without dying, and rerolling certain checks. You don't want to have NO Nerve, and you definitely don't want to max out; bumping against your min or max limit would cause your pilot to make the wrong call, whether from being on a hair trigger or from freezing up. The key is to be in the Zone; if the max is 10, you'd want to keep your Nerve value between, say, 4 and 6, or other ranges depending on your archetype. Doing so grants you enhanced or extra capabilities; e.x. the Hotshot's odds-defying evasion boost, the Human Calculator's predictive targeting skills, and the Sensitive's strange missle-kinesis.
We moved from abstracted range zones to a hexagon grid, a la APOCALYPSE FRAME, to inject some tactical decisions and maneuvering. Why be in the plane at all if flying it isn't a focus, right? Yet, movement is sticky and exact on a grid (obviously), even with 6 directions to go. Worse, you'll need an enormous grid to be able to feel anything like a plane. The fantasy of flight is hard to reconcile with all this. Plenty of games and wargames get along just fine this way, but looking for a fresh approach for so long took the steam out of us. And our unfed brainchilds were calling.
And so, the winds of change and the march of time have pushed this beloved project onto the backburner- FOR NOW. I spend a lot of time racking my brain on how to inject the fun, and on whether my hangup is even that big a deal. I feel like there's an elegant solution, just outside my current knowledge base. I'm excited to refocus on Jets when I'm 100x smarter. It's sort of our white whale, or one that got away, or whatever you like.
The Brutal Lands
This is a setting I've had in my head since 2018. I wanted to move my D&D 5e campaign of the time to a sandboxy situation for some classic questing, and dreamed up "a place where everyone is fighting all the time." It's a raised mesa (plateau?) far from civilization, that entices warriors with a magic whisper promising them any one wish if they prove themselves worthy. Players would galavant around, dealing out steel, spilling blood, waging full-blown war, and perhaps allying with anyone sane enough to resist the "combat madness" that steeps your mind the more you kill.
World map from MHW, featuring all the classics: forest, desert, city sized pile of rotting flesh and bone, national park sized coral reef, mountain solely inhabited by the most powerful beasts alive
Monster Hunter: World came out in 2018, and I really liked its region setup. Big themed zones, with an ecosystem of relations to each other. It was also around this time that I learned what a hexcrawl is, so things started to fall into place. Soon I had pages of unique regions with special foes, hazards, events, mysteries, allies, and of course, loot.
TBL is perfectly suited for nonstop violence, and every warrior finds their niche hunting grounds. Ninjas and rogues sneak around the dark forests assassinating each other, foul sorcerers harness the mountaintop mana crags to supercharge their spells, barbaric warlords paint the desert red smashing their legions together, and those with true potential are able to enter the forbidden keep to duel among the elite. But if you want a shot at that wish, figuring out what "worthy" means is going to take some digging. Is it pure kill count, or maybe like a prowess or honor thing? Who's running this joint, anyway? Better get galavanting for answers.
Now that I'm older and wiser(?), I've got plenty of other systems I'd prefer to run this in. It tracks as MORK BORG appropriate, since life is cheap and all you need is kill, but I also need to check out some things with a little more combat meat.
Rebellion Story Cards Game
Are you familiar with mapmaking rpgs? Instead of being single characters doing things in a GM-provided scenario, the players are collaborating on coming up with a place, piecing together a layout and a history. A really good one is "Beak, Feather, & Bone."
You pick some factions of townspeople, like fishmongers, pickpockets, merchants, aristocrats, farmers, craftsmen, so on, and take turns drawing cards. The card's suit tells you a building's purpose, and the value is how influential it is, from 1-10. Face cards are worth 0; locations currently inhibited by a rival from another faction. Using all that, you then come up with the details of this place: broadly speaking, what people say about it, what it looks like, and what's inside. By the end, you've got a place full of interesting landmarks and little conflicts.
I love that game, but one of my personal gripes is that it creates a snapshot of a still world. It's sort of like a picture coming into focus: not changing per se, just becoming clearer. Not really a problem, but what if changing or shifting was baked in? It also self describes as lightly competitive; the winning faction claims the "seat of power" building and is considered to be most influential at the moment. But the winner is determined by highest influence, which is solely up to who drew higher numbers. Maybe realistic, but not competitive, right?
That made me start wondering what a lightly competitve location-making game would look like. So, the main idea is still to invent an interesting fiction together, but there's decisions and a winner? To me, that sounds like the place is in a time of change, and the players control agents of that change. And lately, stories about rebellions or insurgency are on my mind, probably due to Andor. So I let those clouds swirl around for a while, and now I've got the early stages of something.
A "map evolution" game (pretentious enough?) where players flesh out a cool location in the midst of a societal upheaval; galactic empire, small village, cyber city, what have you. Players pick a faction or type of citizen, such as partisans, firebrand protestors, the downtrodden working class, whistleblowers, foreign agents, anyone who might want to overthrow the current powers that be.
Here's how it might work: Cards represent steps your faction is taking to progress the revolution. The suits represent the kind of action, and the value is how effective it is at shaking things up. On their turn, players draw 3 cards and choose one to put into play. (There'll be some reason to not just play the biggest card every time, eventually...) I'm thinking a given society might have abstracted areas to "target"- Cultural, commercial, and civil? The common people and public opinion, the industries and/or the affluent, and the workings of the governing body itself.
How it might look
Next, you flesh out how your chosen action went. Maybe by writing about the target, the plan, and the outcome? I was thinking ♥️Hearts are actions against/involving a person, and ♦️Diamonds involve a place or thing. ♠️Spades and♣️Clubs are the same, respectively, but represent violent actions. In this revolt narrative, drawing a little blood will drive home that you're not messing around. But that comes at the risk of much more severe consequences.
Maybe it's a gamble on whether the masses will take to it, or it might provoke an immediate "reaction turn" from the city (more on that in a minute). Ooh, maybe before writing the outcome, you roll a d10 against the card value to see if things spiraled out of control. And of course, certain factions can have a preference or aversion towards violence, such as partisans being extra effective with it, or a reformist being able to convert a violent action into several smaller nonviolent ones.
On faction specialties in general, some might have the ability to pocket a card of a certain type, for deploying in combination with another card later. One could reactively add a suit to someone else's play, representing a collaboration or interference from their faction. I think all these little side-actions and decisions will be how players scrape together influence or move it around.
Some examples for the suits: Let's say I played my card in the "civil" pile. Our rebel cell is targeting a cog in the machine. The 3 of ♥️Hearts might be slipping someone a bribe, the 7 of ♠️Spades might be slipping someone a bomb. Meanwhile, the 1 of ♣️Clubs could be smashing some regime cameras, and the 10 of ♦️Diamonds could be shutting down the regime camera factory with a historically huge occupation.
I think the 2 cards you don't play could get given to the Powers That Be for a "reaction turn" of sorts, where a card is selected (random, or highest value?) that prompts you to come up with how the current order is striking back. Arrests, disappearings, spies and moles, and of course, cracking down on the populace at large. You'll probably lose some points with the average citizen if they're being subjected to "instant kill" curfews because of your BS.
Oh, and I guess face cards could be really important people, like icons of the revolution? Or, if played by the city, they're the big-name denouncers, enforcers, public faces calling for "moderation"... any of the white blood cells released in response to the infection of dissent.
In "In Too Deep", you play secret agents trying to foil a crime syndicate's Evil Plan by cyber-jacking into the minds of criminals and influencing their actions in ways that allow you to gather evidence. The entire game is moving these bad guys around and choosing how they act, so why not just BE them? There's a whole page in the rulebook saying "remember, you're not the criminals, you're just nudging them in specific directions towards crimes they would have committed anyway!" Hello? What is this? Let me be that guy?
Early into this idea, I was really set on including a rondel somehow, due to this Skeleton Code Machine piece lighting up my mind. I thought the segments could be the districts of a dystopan city, like In Too Deep (pictured above). It's probably not literally a donut shaped city, like, the rondel movement could represent the steps your agents need to take to move around covertly, or something, don't worry about it. Sadly, districts didn't really scan as easy to prompt writing for, at least not as easy (and setting-neutral!) as abstracted aspects like cultural and civil.
So, the rondel is probably out, but I liked the idea of a pile of tokens or chips in the middle of it, roughly gauging the overall stability of the society. Through your actions, you'd bring that pile lower and lower to incite the populace to wake up and do something. But! Reduce it to nothing, and the society properly collapses. Game over. (At least for your factions; for players, a prompt to write a catastrophic conclusion!)
So, the loop, as of now: Players draw and choose an action prompt, write it out, and after everyone goes, the city deploys a retaliation prompt. Repeat until win or lose. If you lost, write the failure out and the fate of your factions. If you won, determine who came out on top and thus gets to drive the city for a while.
Ok Woah Easy There Tiger
Damn, should the rebellion story game have been its own post? Nah, it's good that sharing it caused me to develop it more. That was the point of the blog! Nice!
I'll get the other brainchilds out of their cages soon, there's plenty to go. After or parallel to that, there's all kinds of other crazy stuff I wanna post about. Thank you very much for reading.
I’ve been meaning to do this for a few years now. On this random ass Tuesday, I do this.
Do What? Why, “Blog” Of Course
Here's the skinny: basically all I can think about are cool ideas for tabletop games. A lot of those thoughts don't get shared. It's tragic.
For some reason, I think a “blog” will help with that, and more. Here are my main goals:
Develop and share my cool ideas
Talk about current projects
Discuss what I'm learning
Get used to sharing longer form stuff
Chitchat games… with YOU!🫵
And here's some tenets I’ll try to uphold as I work toward those goals:
Done is better than perfect
No shame in being earnest
Write like you talk
Make for making's sake
More TBD as my mind opens. That's the main takeaway: I want to open my mind by sharing and discussing creative thoughts about tabletop games, so I will begin (and hopefully continue) posting here about that. Dismissed.
Craving more details? Read on, interloper...
Why Are You Doing This
When I was working remotely, I pledged to lock the fuck in on writing and creating to see where I ended up in 2 years. I planned to launch a blog, join some game jams, write some zines, the works. Sadly, I never did end up locking in, and now it’s 23 months later. Shit!
So here we are, locking in. And not a moment too soon... that arbitrary deadline is right around the corner.
(breathy perfume ad voice) Table Scraaaps….
That’s the blog name I came up with so long ago. (I went all in and commissioned a logo! More on that TBA...) Maybe it could be the catch-all name for my whole online tabletop presence? I’m so surprised it wasn’t taken. Originally I picked it because I wanted to purely make stuff- "scraps"- for people to use in their games, but now I see it also fits my general design ethos for tabletop stuff.
It boils down to this: when I make something for a tabletop game, I like gradually piecing together a bunch of distinct bits, like stitching quilt squares together (I assume). Start with well-defined anchors that other things will revolve around: people, places, plans, powers, and so on. The big names that you feel define the setting or situation. (Make sure to cut up existing things for their reusable parts- that's a big part of the scrappy code.) Over the course of play. finer details will come naturally to you as your focus shifts to follow the action; how the anchors interact, how X feels about Y, how to get from A to B, etc. That's how it all stitches together.
It's similar to something I learned in my public speaking class, called “extemporaneous" speech. Instead of a script, you've got index cards with your main ideas bulleted out. You glance at them, then talk from off the dome. You prep enough to make improvising the rest easy.
There's countless thought models in this hobby for fleshing out ideas. This (admittedly loose) scrap analogy is just one I like. Although, come to think of it, I guess I haven’t actually been the game master since like 2022. So it’s all conjecture then, and might suck! Well, there's other stuff to talk about.
Okay sounds good
Thank you for reading this lil’ primer. Up next, I think I’ll talk about my current projects instead of work on them. From there, just whatever I’m learning or rotating in my mind.
