I Have Had This Account For A While, But I Have No Clue What To Do With This And How Tumblr Works. So

I have had this account for a while, but I have no clue what to do with this and how Tumblr works. So this is gonna be weird for you and me.

THEME: Fuck WotC

With the updates to the OGL, you might be looking for a way to play your fantasy game without having to worry about supporting a company that doesn't hold the interests of the community as a priority. These series of recommendations are specifically about exploring dungeons in settings that might possibly have dragons, and require little to no time, effort, or money given towards Wizards of the Coast. Moreover, most of these games heavily encourage home-brew, rule hacks, and your own custom creations!

Ironsworn, by Shawn Tomkin.

In the Ironsworn tabletop roleplaying game, you are a hero sworn to undertake perilous quests in the dark fantasy setting of the Ironlands.

Others live out their lives hardly venturing beyond the walls of their village or steading, but you are different. You will explore untracked wilds, fight desperate battles, forge bonds with isolated communities, and reveal the secrets of this harsh land.

Are you ready to swear iron vows and see them fulfilled—no matter the cost?

Ironsworn is majestic. Character motivation is built in during creation, so you start the game knowing something about who your character is and what they want - and from the very beginning, your character’s story is vital to the campaign. You can approach problems from a number of different approaches, including combat, persuasion, physical prowess, and more. 

The game is built for solo, co-op, and guided play. This means that if you have a friend who’s willing to GM, they have plenty of help in coming up with plot. If you have no-one who’s willing to GM, you can still play the game - and if you have no-one who’s willing to play the game with you, you can still play it. Finally, and this might be the best part: Ironsworn, a 270-page PDF full of lore, advice and foes… is free. 

DURF, by Emil Boven.

DURF is a rules-light dungeon-fantasy RPG in the vein of games like Knave, Troika! and Into the Odd. When it comes to character background, appearance, and history, much of what you decide will be up to you: your character backstory doesn’t have to influence your stats if you don’t want it to. Your character’s stats are boiled down to three: Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower, and you have an inventory of 10+ your Strength. The game is rules-light, but the rules that are there make combat similar to what you see in D&D: you have to roll higher than your opponent, account for range, and most rolls depend on a d20. 

Spell casting isn’t limited to specific classes in DURF, because there aren’t any specific classes. However, that doesn’t limit what your character can do to grow. You can increase character stats, add new spells, and consult a trove of content for this game created by people who love it, much of which is either free or incredibly reasonably priced! If you find yourself writing a lot of your own content for your D&D game anyways, you might enjoy the really creative community that’s popped up around DURF and similar OSR games.

World of Dungeons, by John Harper.

World of Dungeons is a simple, quick-play, dungeon crawling game, using one of the core mechanics from the Powered by the Apocalypse rules system. It's compatible with Old School Renaissance and original D&D monsters, dungeons, and adventure modules.

This is another game that doesn’t require a lot of dedication to convert what you know and are comfortable with into a new system. It’s also an introduction to the standard PbtA conceit of rolling 2d6 for every action and a three-tiered level of success that moves the plot forward, even if you fail. Failure in PbtA games can be just as interesting and engaging as successes - and once you’ve got the hang of this mechanic, there’s a whole world of games available to you!

Tunnel Goons, by Nate Treme (Highland Paranormal Society).

Tunnel Goons is a simple table-top role-playing game. It was originally only included in the zine The Eternal Caverns of Urk. It's a light weight 2d6 system that can be applied to many different genres and settings.

An extremely streamlined system, Tunnel Goons is only 4 pages long and is pay-what-you-want. You only need d6’s to play, and have three stats to take care of. If you enjoy roleplaying but find the idea of transferring to a new system daunting, you pick up a game of Tunnel Goons to try out something new without having to learn a bunch of new rules or spending a lot of money. 

This game is small and simple, but it’s also been hacked a number of times for many different genres, which means that if what you like about roleplaying is coming up with new settings and new character options to play with, you’re right at home here!

Realms of Terrinoth, by Fantasy Flight Games.

Terrinoth is a land of forgotten greatness and lost legacies. Once ruled by the Elder Kings who called upon mighty magics to perform great deeds and work marvels, the land has suffered greatly at the hands of its three great foes: the undead armies of Waiqar the Betrayer, the demon-possessed hordes of the bloodthirsty Uthuk Y’llan, and the terrifying dragons of the Molten Heath. Many of its great cities have been cast down into ruins, and many wondrous secrets and powerful artifacts have been lost.

For hundreds of years, Terrinoth slipped into gloom and decay. But heroes arise just when their lands need them the most. Courageous adventurers brave the ruins of past ages and the foul creatures within to uncover the treasures of their ancestors. The Daqan Barons, inheritors of the ancient kingdoms, rebuild their walls and muster their armies, while the wizards of Greyhaven gather runes of power to awaken guardians of stone and steel. These preparations come none too soon, for the ancient enemies of the lawful races are stirring again, and Terrinoth needs champions of courage and cunning to stand against the rising darkness.

If what you like about D&D is the collection of options and stat-block builds that you can lovingly craft, the Genesys system that runs Realms of Terrinoth has plenty of options that help you build your own backgrounds and create your own classes. So if the setting doesn’t have what you’re looking for, it can’t stop you! The dice system is fundamentally different in that the dice don’t have numbers on them at all - they provide you with successes, failures, advantages and threats, which means that it’s possible to succeed and also running into obstacles, as well as fail and still experience a boatload of good luck! This is the only game on this list that isn't an indie game.

Cairn, by Yochai Gal.

Cairn is an adventure game for one facilitator (the Warden) and at least one other player. Players act as hardened adventurers exploring a dark & mysterious Wood filled with strange folk, hidden treasure, and unspeakable monstrosities.

Based on Knave by Ben Milton and Into The Odd by Chris McDowall, Cairn is an attempt at making Into The Odd semi-compatible with popular OSR settings like Dolmenwood. Character generation is quick and random, classless, and relies on fictional advancement rather than through XP or level mechanics. The game itself is rules-light but functional, leaving most rulings up to the Warden.

Cairn is an excellent example of how creative and generous the indie ttrpg community is, especially within the OSR scene. A free rulebook, it is designed to be used alongside other popular games in the OSR scene, and has many of its own adventures designed by the community. These kinds of games are wonderful for players who are excited about exploring fantastical and dangerous places, and solving the variety of problems that appear within.

Blades in the Dark, by John Harper.

Blades in the Dark is a tabletop role-playing game about a crew of daring scoundrels seeking their fortunes on the haunted streets of an industrial-fantasy city. There are heists, chases, occult mysteries, dangerous bargains, bloody skirmishes, and, above all, riches to be had — if you’re bold enough to seize them.

You and your fledgling crew must thrive amidst the threats of rival gangs, powerful noble families, vengeful ghosts, the Bluecoats of the city watch, and the siren song of your scoundrel’s own vices. Will you rise to power in the criminal underworld? What are you willing to do to get to the top?

Blades in the Dark is a setting that has amassed a large following for a number of reasons: it has free player resources, it prioritizes fiction-first gaming, it has a tight set of rules that are easy to learn and expand upon, and the setting fucking slaps. It’s the parent of the entire Forged in the Dark family of games, so if you don’t want to play criminal masterminds in an industrial city - you don’t have to! There’s so many games published under this ruleset that fall under different themes, such as Band of Blades, a military fantasy setting, Into the Dark, a dungeon-delving game, and Blades Against Darkness, a game about adventurers exploring tombs and new frontiers. FitD games provide a tight setting and focus for your group, so you’ll always know what your players are working towards, and there are number of interlocking systems that you can pull on to increase your chance of success - at the risk of pushing your character a little closer to stress and trauma.

If you want something that's not high-fantasy dungeon delving -well, that's what the rest of my blog is for!

itch.io

SHROOM GOONS by ChaosGrenade Games

A "Spore-Core" Fantasy Trip for Weird People.

SHROOM GOONS. Little Mushroom Folk on Big Adventures. Completely free, powered by Tunnel Goons. Artwork by Skullfungus. Just need some six-sided dice, writing utensils, some weird friends and your imagination.

Revisiting Savage Worlds

It has been a few years. When the SWADE Crowdfunding launched, I participated but never really got into it. I was burned out and wanted to ...

Looks like SWADE is back on the menu!

TRICUBE TALES

I'm going to start moving (and updating) reviews from my website, and today I wanted to start with a rules-lite system that packs a surprising amount of punch: Tricube Tales by Richard Woolcock of Zadmar’s Games. There’s a lot I want to say about it, which is crazy because it’s also pretty lite and simple. Also, the damn game is free (full thing in the DTRPG preview) so you can easily check it for yourself.

I’ll keep this brief: Tricube Tales is a minimalist, lite RPG using a mechanic where you roll 1 to 3 six-sided dice, and if any of them hit the target number you succeed. It uses fluctuating difficulty (a base scale of 4, 5, and 6) and Players make all the rolls. This makes it a great system for solo gaming and asynchronous play-by-chat games over Discord.

Character creation is very straight forward, appearing almost too simple but there is weight for it. Here’s what a playable character looks like at a glance:

Sam Strongblade, a Brawny Dwarf Soldier Perks: Dwarf Stamina Quirks: Wooden Peg-Leg Karma: 3 / Resolve: 3

That’s it. You can glance at that, have an idea of what the character does, and maybe dismiss the fact that there’s no stats (Karma and Resolve are point pools, which I’ll explain in a bit.)

That first statement is your archetype, which includes a trait (Agile, Brawny or Crafty) and a concept. Your archetype will help determine if you’re rolling two or three dice (or 1 if it has nothing in common with the action being performed). Your Perks establish special qualities, powers, abilities or unique equipment. Often you can spend a Karma point to use a perk significantly in an action (such as lowering the difficulty). Quirks, likewise, can hinder the character. A player can actively choose to work their Quirk into the narrative, taking a penalty but in doing so restores 1 Karma.

So, if you haven’t guessed yet, Karma is the luck/fortune/power pool that lets the players do cool things. Resolve is the stress/health/endurance pool for every character. When a character hits 0 resolve, they’re taken out of the conflict, and the victor (either PC or GM) gets to narrate what happens. When this happens to player characters, they return next scene, their Resolve restored but now with an Affliction — usually a temporary quirk, but sometimes these can become more serious. Character death isn’t off the table as long as GM and Players agree to the arbitration.

Running things on the GM side is pretty easy-peasy. Most challenges are static pass-or-fail; more elaborate obstacles or tasks are assigned a pool of Effort tokens (where each successful die roll against it removes a token). Combat encounters can track multiple foes separately or you can just say “a horde of goblins” and track a single pool of effort tokens.

There’s a lot more going on — the game covers some quick ground on genre rules, like handling cybernetics, fear, magic & psionics, varying power levels, superheroes and vehicles. For the most part, all of these are just common-sense guides for arbitrating things based on context. This may be the deal breaker for some — this is a game system where players and the GM should be comfortable going back and forth making their own judgment calls on how things go down. It’s pretty much “Roll the dice, and if you succeed — narrate what happens.” It was a system originally designed with kids in mind, but obviously it has appeal to older gamers as well.

I love the damn thing. I’ve played solo games with it, and even made a pocketfold game based on it.

Definitely check it out, and if you dig it — toss the guy a couples bucks. Buying the game gets you a PDF scaled for tablet/PC use as well as a Word doc so you can hack it and make your own stuff with it.

Only 23 copies of my book left at Games Omnivorous!