New Paths Going Forward

New paths going forward

Last November, I shared on Rеddіt my 2-year perspective as a full-time game designer.

Since then, that post's been seen more than 80,000 times.

The conversation helped me investigate aspects of my career going forward.

And some important changes are about to happen.

If you follow me, you probably remember a thread from August, in which I announced that 2022 would be my last attempt to make this path work.

Well, it's 2023.

And although I consider my Раtrеоn a success, I'm still below 50% of my goal.

What now?

One of the major takeaways from that reflection was that I spend most of my time promoting my games, rather than making them.

My actual "job" is selling games, if I'm being honest.

Ironically, I'd potentially make more games if I were not a full-time game designer.

In general, the advice I received on how to make a sustainable living out of games was to double-down on that path.

Do more marketing, follow more trends, become an actual company.

Look at my career as a proper business, not as an art project.

And also:

Foster a community around one of my games, offer support and create supplements, and so on, instead of making many different games.

Either that, or offer my services as a freelance writer/editor.

All these ideas have something in common:

I don't wanna.

It took me a long time and a high dose of self-honesty to admit that I'm not willing to do that.

I've just turned 40, and after leaving a somewhat successful career to pursue my dream, I'm not ready to succumb to what the market demands.

Not quite yet.

So what am I going to do?

Stop.

Not with games, but with the rest.

To become what I truly am, I'm deciding first to stop being what I am not.

No more constant marketing, no more trying to keep up with 11 different social platforms.

I'll still promote and share my (and friends') stuff eventually, but I'll stop worrying about it.

It was like having 20 tabs constantly open on my mind's browser.

Spencer Campbell once said he wishes he could be a TTRPG hermit who goes into the mountains and then eventually emerges with a new game.

Well, I might just try that.

Hopefully, the free time allows me to explore more, to be curious once again.

To let my mind wander.

I'll continue with my Раtrеоn, I love that little cozy corner we created together.

I also polled about creating a game design-focused nеwѕlеttеr, and got an immensely positive response.

So that is going to happen.

Again, with no commercial pressure whatsoever.

I am well aware that this resolution is a self-inflicted commercial annihilation.

The Algorithm™ will swallow me whole and spit me out on the shores of irrelevance.

But I'm tired of swimming against the tide.

I just want to float for a while.

If you like what I do and want to support me on this unusual path I am in, I deeply appreciate you.

I gathered my nеwѕlеttеr, my Раtrеоn, my games, all in one page.

Here are all the ways you can follow me.

Feel free to share it around.

Bento

Cezar Capacle - Bento

Create a beautiful page to show your audience everything you are, create, and sell in one link. Designed in Berlin.

So my Calendar app has informed me that today, November 18th, is "Occult Day".

Best info I can find on it said back in 2000-2001, newspapers recorded the holiday but other than that? No idea who or when it started. Which I think is deliciously appropriate.

Happy Occult Day to my weirdos. The strange in me sees the strange in you.

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.

Differences of Pathfinder and Savage Worlds Combat and how they relate to Savage Design

While reacquainting myself with Savage Worlds, I read an Interview from 2021, given around the Savage Pathfinder Kickstarter. In it I think Mike Barbeau said the following: "If you boil Pathfinder combat down to its barest essence, you're making a bunch of decisions managing your most important resource: hit points. You can still see the influence of grandaddy Chainmail in Pathfinder's design. You have so many tools to shift the flow of hit points in battle that you’re constantly discovering new strategies and tactics as you play. It's still a wargame at heart, which makes the decisions in combat feel so vital and fun. While Savage Worlds still has tactical combat that follows the same generalized principles as Pathfinder, when you take a hit, we want to scare the player. Taking a Wound is a big deal, especially since you can only take three before you're taken out. That said, Wounds modify your ability to succeed at rolls and negatively impact your actions. Tests, Support, Bennies, etc., all focus on altering your ability to succeed on a roll. The bonus and penalties to your rolls are the resources you manage in Savage Worlds. So long as you're still on your feet, you still have a chance to make a big difference in combat." This is an incredibly clear and very important distinction between the two games. Something that was always implicitly clear to me, but seeing it spelt out like that was eye-opening. Many new players to Savage Worlds struggle to understand what's really important in combat and how to approach it compared to D&D. These two paragraphs clearly mark the difference. Explaining this to new players can shift their perspective where it needs to be. This is also a good guideline for when I am thinking about Savage Space and how to approach ship edges and ship combat. I don't like giving creatures more wounds. It can be done in exceptional cases, but I avoid it as much as I can. Just my preference. Instead, I can focus on reducing the penalties from Wounds or getting better modifiers on rolls for the opposition and the players. Manoeuvres, Edges and all the other fun toys SWADE is giving us are more interesting than simply more hitpoints. I'm not sure where this all fits into the reboot, but I will keep it in mind when I re-examine my old work.

OOPS, went quiet

i didn't abandon my Tumblr! Just holidays, family life, and keeping my nose on the grindstone has kept me quiet. So have an update!

Echoed Invocations is a "supplemental zine for Sigil & Shadow". Currently wrapping up Issue: 0, which is just a quick rules reference with clarifications/errata. I like to think of it as a GM screen, except it's a booklet you can print out and shove in your book.

I'm also already beginning to write articles for Issue 1, which will be a hodge-podge of optional mechanics. Hope to start dropping these in the new year!

drivethrurpg.com

Eyes Beyond the Torchlight - MAX HP | DriveThruRPG.com

Eyes Beyond the Torchlight - Eyes Beyond the Torchlight, a roleplaying game of fantastic adventures. Powered by an innovative game system wi

So I've taken a vow to move my RPG reviews/rambles to my Tumblr, and I'm willing to bet someone after this week might be in the market for some new indie fantasy RPG -- especially one that isn't using the OGL. So let me tell you about EYES BEYOND THE TORCHLIGHT!

Disclaimer: I originally reviewed this on Twitter months ago,and have decided to put it all together here in support of this game I love.

SUMMARY:

It's a fantasy heartbreaker. It has 4 archetypes (Cleric, Mage, Rogue & Warrior) and familiar fantasy ancestries (Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, and Human). It has dungeons, dragons, & themes that will surprise nobody. But it's the approach to game mechanics I've been enjoying.

The core mechanic is d20+Stat vs 12. The catch is that stats are rated in dice, from d4 to d12. There also "Boosts" and "Setbacks" that add or subtract d6s to the total. The system is player facing, with some fun twists.

For example: on successful attack rolls, the value of the Stat Die determines the amount of damage dealt to the target. On unsuccessful defense rolls, your Stat die determines how much damage is soaked (on successful defense rolls, you dodge completely). Enemies have flat damage values -- this is all one roll and go.

Character Creation is fun and flexible. It doesn't inundate a newcomer with too many choices, but it gives a lot of room to build on a theme. Your choice of ancestry and archetype provides starting Edges, and you can choose to gain extras by taking on Hindrances.

Edges & Hindrances are pretty straight forward. They give boosts (or setbacks), raise (or lower) a Stat Die in a situation, or establish a factoid feature or flaw in the narrative. These are all interesting choices, and not "build theory" number tweaks like feats in DND.

I should also note here: there's only 4 stats (Brawn, Agility, Intellect, Presence) and some derivatives (Hit Points, Armor, Initiative & Movement). Oh, and there's HERO POINTS! (Your luck/cool point meta-currency that lets you re-roll or do cool things).

Then there's Backgrounds. Your Background actually functions as your "skill" set -- any non-combat roll associated with it gets a Boost.

Let's talk a bit about what there's not -- NO LEVELS! At least, not proper (there are "tiers" of characters). At the end of every adventure, you get Advancement points. You spend these to raise stats, buy off hindrances or acquire edges. The character progression is pretty open.  

One of my players was an Ugly Dwarf Pirate, whose punching attacks deal lethal damage. His companion is a Half-Elf Warrior Poet, who can shapeshift into small animals. Tell me that doesn't sound badass out the gate!

The game also has a pretty complete bestiary of traditional fantasy game monsters, although it skimps details and expects you to already be familiar with them from other games. But hey: stat blocks for them fit on a notecard, which is my most desired aspect as a GM!

I should mention that every monster is listed with a "Threat Number" -- this is the penalty to actions opposing them. You have two choices: add the Threat to the base 12 target number or subtract it from a player's roll instead (whichever is easier).

Now let's talk POWERS -- aka magic. Powers are spells, and once you learn one you keep it. You roll dice when you cast; should you fail you have the option to either take damage OR "burn" the spell to cast it (can't cast it again until you rest).

There's a good list of Powers here, but not a crazy tome like other fantasy games have. Most are utility, with a few combat-based ones. Your token Area of Effect spell "Blast" is dangerous -- it targets EVERYTHING in an area. Fire it off in a mine you risk a cave in.

Blast and other spells also have consequences should you roll 1's on both the d20 and your Stat Die. In this case: your caster *literally explodes and dies* while also harming nearby people. Thankfully not all powers are this risky!

Anyway, plenty of treasure and magical items provided in these rules as well. Anyone can pick up a scroll or potion as a single-use power. There's your usual magical arms and armor, rings that do cool things like teleport you, grant 3 wishes, command elementals etc.  

Finally, the rules come with a sample setting and adventure. The setting is a free city on the borderlands between warring nations, with ruins and monsters about. Again, not breaking any molds, but it's pretty cool and has a lot of loose hooks to build a campaign on.

So, to wrap this up: EYES BEYOND THE TORCHLIGHT is RPG comfort food to me. I love the dice mechanics, and how easy it is to hack new content into it. Flexible & interesting player facing mechanics means it's easy to run online. It has old-school vibes without the baggage. Scott Myer wrote and illustrated this game, and now it's in the hands of the folks at MAX HP who seem to be pretty cool as well. PS -- there's an SRD for the Target 12 System that it's built on, and released under Creative Commons.