Tag: RPGs

Five or So Questions with Paul Riddle on Undying

Hi everyone! Today I have an interview with Paul Riddle about his new game, Undying, currently on Kickstarter!

As a disclaimer, I’ve played a session of Undying, and I totally loved it. I’m a fan. 🙂


Tell me a little bit about Undying. What excites you about it?
Undying is my first published game, so getting it out there is a huge deal for me! I’m blown away by the support for Undying on Kickstarter and on social media. To everyone supporting Undying, thank you so much!

Undying is a diceless vampire roleplaying game of predation and intrigue. I think what excites me the most about Undying is how elegantly the game functions in support of the core theme of vampirism. Blood, debt, humanity, and status work together to create a common tension that plays out in really compelling ways. I think the simplicity of the rules are great for people of any experience level and I think there’s enough complexity in the interplay of the rules to keep game play engaging time after time.

Your examples for meddling, hunting, and feeding feature characters of a variety of genders and identities. What inspired you to make sure you show diversity in roles and representation? Will we see more of this in the game?

Blood and sex are both very intimate things and blood, at least, is essential to a vampire roleplaying game. Sexuality is a spectrum and I believe that the same concept should apply to blood and feeding. I want to cultivate an environment for Undying where folks playing the game are empowered to explore genders and identities in both feeding and sexual contexts. I hope the examples I’ve provided for hunting and feeding help by showing strong female characters and strong non-heteronormative characters.

As a gamer and lover of fiction, I’ve seen a fair share of vampires. What makes Undying different than, say, Anne Rice or Bram Stoker inspired media?

Undying is an amalgam of various vampire media. I think what makes Undying special is that it isn’t strongly typed to any one take on vampirism and, instead, offers a toolkit in the form of predator lore that allows you to design the vampire roleplaying experience that you want. Predator lore teaches you how to make house rules and encourages you to do so on the fly, while you’re playing the game. For example, when the question comes up, “Will staking a predator through the heart kill them,” there’s no canon, you decide while you’re playing whether it does or doesn’t.

One of the most complicated factors of vampire lore is the matter of consent. In Undying, how do you approach this concept, and did it impact your design?

That’s a tough one and yes, consent is definitely a factor. As far as the design goes, since losing your humanity by doing horrible things — often to people who can’t resist or wouldn’t consent — is an open ended question, the game itself doesn’t dictate that the taking of blood or sex must be consensual. Instead, it’s an exploration. To help frame things in a positive way, I’ve tried to give examples that show a variety of situations.

The Hunting and Feeding moves provide a solid framework for taking blood and the choices that a predator of various levels of humanity must deal with. While blood is covered, sex is not. Sex is left entirely to the gaming group to decide what works best. There’s a section in the book that discusses how to play in a supportive environment. This gives you tools for how to work together to set expectations and be respectful of each other at the game table.


If someone was on the edge about kicking in to get Undying, what would be the most important aspects of the game, mechanically or fictionally, that you would like them to know?

Well, if the diceless thing is the hang up, all I can say is, no one (except my wife perhaps, who knows me better than anyone) is more surprised that I made a diceless roleplaying game. The diceless system works! It really clicks — delivering a high-stakes experience! If it’s something else they’re hung up on, I’d just say that the mechanics give you enough flexibility to play the vampire game you want to play, whatever that means to you.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Update! – Details on current projects

I know I have not posted this month on my blog! I have been super busy with life, but I’ve spent a little bit of time on editing and prepping and doing photography (which will hopefully eventually be art) for Sweet Valley Hell. It’s a work in progress! I’m still planning on releasing it eventually. I still haven’t figured out how to make playtests happen, unfortunately. 

Hearts in Crisis is on hold pretty much until I finish school because I can’t really do the amount of research I want to do for the project while also doing school. It makes me sad, but it is still something I intend to finish – I just need to build a stronger supporting text for it than I had originally planned.

Finally, I’m hoping to start work on a new project soon (starting with writing down stuff), but it is pending the final release of someone else’s project, because it is… well, a hack. Hacks aren’t normally my thing, but there is a big fiction property that I want to try building a game for. I don’t think it makes sense to make a whole original system for it when it will work well as a hack – this might change, but the main plan as of the moment is to hack another game for this project. I’m not much for secrets, so I’ll let you know: I’m hoping to hack Urban Shadows (because it is a beautiful game) to fit the Parasol Protectorate series universe. It’s obviously an unofficial thing, but I still want to make it, and it will probably be a massive undertaking. If you’re a fan of the series and familiar with Urban Shadows (via G+, the Kickstarter, or otherwise), feel free to drop me a message with any tidbits of ideas you have, if you want and don’t mind me using them. 🙂 

I’ll try to update more! It’s been pretty hectic around here, so please accept my apologies.

Sweet Valley Hell – MONSTERS!

This is the draft Monsters section of Sweet Valley Hell. It’s in raw text form for now. Check it out!

MONSTERS AND YOU


There are tons of monsters in the Valley thanks to the Hellhole. This section goes over how they work, a little of their history, and then tells you what happens if one of your players gets the Hellhole treatment? Oh. My. God. Yes, it’s true, sometimes the monsters you see are like, the monsters you know, or something.


How the skill blocks work:

Name of Monster
Description
What they do: This is what the monster’s primary goal or action is.
How they do it: Their method of killing or whatever.
How to kill them: Pretty self-explanatory – how the player characters can kill the monster.
Powers: Any special abilities the monsters have.
Hit Points: How many hits it takes to kill or socially dominate the baddie. These are often variable – the number here is an average, and can change with the specific NPC monster.
skills: What die type they have in each skill, Fight and Sosh.


Dead-walkers

Ugh, gag me with a spoon. Not really, tho – you won’t need to, because these guys are grody to the max and totes unchill on top of that. Dead-walkers are literally dead people? They are the spirits of the idiots who got sent to Hell for doing like, bad stuff, and they kind of find a body of some variety when they crawl out of the Hellhole. Usually they’ll just grab like, a dead guy or something from a cemetery? But sometimes they get fresh meat, push the Granny outta Granny and go grocery shopping for more than just prune juice, and start murdering as soon as their body starts rotting because it doesn’t have a clean soul in it anymore.


What they do: Eat people. Ew.

How they do it: Biting, and like, tearing off limbs.

How to kill them: Headshots, and not the modeling kind. Oh, burning them works, too. Or a woodchipper.
Powers: None.

Hit Points: 5 Body, 0 Mind.

Skills: A regular dead-walker comes in at Fight: d6, Sosh: null. These aren’t the brightest bulbs in the closet. Tougher ones have a Fight of d8 or d10. If it’s like, a serial killer guy’s soul in a dead-walker body? They sometimes have a Sosh up to d8, but never higher. Groups of dead-walkers happen sometimes – see the Mob rules later on.


Vamps

“See ya later, suckers!” Yeah, the vamps are tired of hearing that joke, too. They’re sometimes super old, they spread like the plague, and they really, really like blood. Vamps are your garden variety vampire, with the same needs as any old creep: blood. Humans or animals, it doesn’t really matter, but most of the jerks always want to have like, live human blood or whatever, while the practically vegan vamps stick to critters – and they totally recycle, too. They have retractable pointy teeth, can turn into bats, and they can get a tan.


What they do: Suck blood and sometimes making new vamps.

How they do it: Tricking or capturing their victims, then getting their slurp on.

How to kill them: Stake to the heart, decapitation, or cremation.

Powers: 

Entrance – If a Vamp has a Sosh encounter with a player character and they win and have more successes than half of the player’s available Mind hit points, they can Entrance the player and give them one Sosh-based command. Example: Laurel (vamp) Entrances Hilary, a player character, and has her tell another character, Todd that his girlfriend Allie is totally cheating on him, and it stirs up conflict in the group.
Fly – Vamps can fly, but only when they change into a bat. This makes them much sneaker, and obvs much more, uh, flighty, but they can’t use their Sosh skill at all when they do it.
Regeneration – Unless the players stake the vamp’s heart, cut off their head, or burn them to ashes (after reducing them to zero Body hit points), vamps regenerate all of their hit points after a fight is over, even if they’re reduced to zero. Basically, don’t leave their bodies laying around.
Immortality – Vamps never die, and never age past the point they’re turned, unless they’re killed in the three ways listed above.
Super-senses – Vamps all have advanced senses, so they all can hear better, see better, smell better, and pretty much anything else. Kinda icky, but really useful.
Turning – Vamps can turn a human into a vamp, too, and it just takes one bite and a quick stab to the heart. No, seriously, like, they bite a person? And then they stab them in the heart! That person then dies and wakes up as a vamp, pointy teeth and all.

Hit Points: 5 for standard vamps, 8 for tough guys, and 10 for serious baddies in Body and Mind each.

Skills: Standard vamps run Fight: d8, Sosh: d6. Some of the smoother cats will go Fight: d8, Sosh: d8. Queens like Laurel would be hitting Fight: d10, Sosh: d10.




Demons

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned… except it kinda does. Mostly in the like, hundreds of demons that hang around in the Hellhole, some of which have managed to climb out and be like, human looking and stuff. Demons don’t possess people initially, they make their own bodies from the ether. This means they’re typically pretty hot, and not just in the Hell way? They can possess people, though, and often do, but it’s really taxing. They have a wide range of agendas, and some could even be allies to the player characters? Some want power, some want love, some just want to watch the world burn. Like, literally, they want to make Hell take over the Earth.


What they do: Possess people, manipulate people, and pursue agendas.
How they do it: Using their demonic powers and their charming personalities.

How to kill them: Capture their soul and toss it back into the Hellhole. Capturing a demon’s soul requires an incantation (any priest should know it), a vessel (a jar, bottle, locket, etc.), and the demon’s Mind hit points to be at 0.

Powers: 

Regeneration – Unless the players capture their soul (after reducing them to zero Mind hit points), demons regenerate all of their hit points after a fight is over, even if they’re reduced to zero. Basically, don’t leave their bodies laying around.
Immortality – Demons never die, and can appear in a body of any age. They can only be stopped if their souls are captured, and even then, they might someday rise again from the Hellhole.
Possession – if a demon reduces someone’s Mind hit points to zero, they can possess their body. While in possession of the body, they can do like, basic stuff? But they can’t perform anything huge like, killing other people or whatever. Simple tasks, man.
Mind over Body – A demon can never be knocked out until their Mind hit points reach 0. Even if they’re completely physically disabled, they can still talk and stuff.

Hit Points: Body hit points can range from as little as 3 to as high as 10. Mind hit points never go below 5 and can go as high as 12. Demons are like, totally rad.

Skills: No demon will have a Sosh of less than d6. Like, ever. The sky’s the limit, too, with that. Fight skills for demons range between d4 and d10.




Were-beasts

Have you ever heard of like, a menagerie? It’s kind of like a bunch of animals, and that’s what there are roaming the streets of the Valley. Well, kinda. were-beasts, or shapeshifters if you want to be fancy, include run of the mill werewolves to stealthy werecougars, but just about any kind of creature works. There are two types of were-beasts: ones who were animals first, called like, therians, and ones who were humans first, called anthros. were-beasts are the result of a magical infection, kind of like, chicken pox or something? It’s totally bichen for the humans who get infected. For the animals, though, it’s more like punishment. The infection is spread by bites and exchange of bodily fluids – basically anything hotter than a kiss will spread it, so cover up.


What they do: Honestly? They just wanna be left alone. But sometimes they eat people, or maim them.

How they do it: Gnashing teeth, grody claws, and crazy serious strength.

How to kill them: Silver bullets do okay – heart and brain only, and cutting off heads only works if you, like separate the pieces? They might still get chatty, though. The hardest, but most effective method, is (like so many things) to just light it up.

Powers: 

Regeneration – Unless they are torched to ashes, decapitated, or shot in the head or heart by a silver bullet (and reduced to 0 Body hit points) were-beasts regenerate all of their hit points after a fight is over, even if they’re reduced to zero. In the case of were-beasts, they will even regrow limbs and reattach heads if there’s nothing keeping them apart.
Strong Body, Strong Mind – All of the were-beasts are like, super smart or strong. The Principal decides, based on the type of animal, whether the were-beast gets a bonus d6 to add to their dice pool for Sosh or for Fight. For example, a werewolf might get a bonus d6 to their Fight, while a wereraven (no joke!) might get a bonus d6 to their Sosh.
Super-senses – Were-beasts all have advanced senses, so they all can hear better, see better, smell better, and pretty much anything else. Kinda icky, but really useful.
Transformation – Any were-beast can appear as a human, a specific animal, and a hybrid form. Most newer were-beasts experience involuntary transformations, particularly around the turning of the moon, either new moon or full moon. Extreme emotion can also result in transformation.

Hit Points: Were-beasts are pretty much the heavy-hitters of the supernatural world, and they have the hit points to show it. Every were-beast, no matter how small, starts with at least 6 Body hit points. They can have up to 12. Mind hit points have the same range for anthros, but therians are typically an average of 2 Mind hit points lower than average, so they’d run from 4 Mind hit points to 10.

Skills: Were-beasts have different specialties, so like, they do different stuff? And like, depending on what kind of animal they are, they’ll have different skills? So the Principal can be super creative here. To toss examples out a werewolf would be like, Fight: d10, Sosh d6. A wereraven would be like, Fight d6, Sosh d8. Keep in mind that therians are often more vicious and less sociable.




Archons

So like, you know when you think of beings of light and energy and people call them angels? Yeah, well, angels exist, but those beings? Not angels. Archons are these totally cool beings that kind of transcend reality, and like, they’re basically untouchable. They come from beneath Hell and above Heaven and they’ve always been here, just as elements of the universe. They are super rare, but when they do show up, they bring either a lot of good or a hell of a lot of bad. The only way to beat them if they’re gunning for you is to basically convince them the world is worth saving. Good luck with that.


What they do: Grant grace or destruction.

How they do it: Self-sacrifice.

How to kill them: You can’t.

Powers: 

Apocalypse – They either temporarily boost the Mind hit points of everyone in the surrounding 30 miles by 2, or they temporarily lower their Body hit points by 3. This effect lasts for one session (if it happens at the end of one session, it would be effective for the whole of the next session). There is no roll, they just do it.

Hit Points: Body is irrelevant. Mind is between 5 and 10.

Skills: Yeah, dude, you can’t even imagine going toe-to-toe with these guys, so let’s just pretend that their Fight is like, infinity. Sosh, though, ranges from d6 to d10.




Ghosts

They clang, they howl, they shake chains. Spooky! Ghosts are, in general, pretty chill. They’re just spirits who spirited out of Hell and didn’t grab a body on the way. They’re undead, not deadly, and basically like your second cousin Lenny who won’t stop leaving his gym shoes in the hallway – kind of a pain the ass, but like, mostly harmless. If they do cause trouble, like, by causing car accidents, disrupting the peace, that kind of thing, they can be exorcised. Call your local priest!


What they do: Cause a nuisance.

How they do it: Haunting.

How to kill them: It’s more like, you know, banishment? But yeah, exorcism. Good ol’ fashioned Latin prayers.

Powers: 

Dead – They aren’t alive, they don’t have a body, they kind of wisp around and are generally immaterial. Oh, and they can’t be killed. Again.
Washington’s Curse – If you think they might have useful info, just ask them – ghosts cannot tell a lie.
Hit Points: Null and null again. To get rid a ghost, seriously, just pray in Latin.

Skills: None.




Cherubim

The holy host has no clue if there is a god, but they def want to be righteous, dude. The cherubim are one of the types of angels, and the only ones you’re likely to meet. The archangels don’t make visits to Earth, so the cherubim do the dirty work. The dirty work being Hellhole crowd control. Almost every cherubim is on the side of the good, or at least the mostly-good. One or two might have delusions of grandeur, though, so like, look out? Oh, also? When you see one, you’ll know it – cherubim have a body like Bessie the cow and faces like Janus, with a couple of sets of wings to go ‘round.


What they do: Defend the righteous.
How they do it: Angelic grace.

How to kill them: Silver cross made into a sword. In the heart. Ouch.

Powers: 

Regeneration – Unless the players stab them in the heart with a fancy sword (after reducing them to zero Body hit points), cherubim regenerate all of their hit points after a fight is over, even if they’re reduced to zero. Basically, don’t leave their bodies laying around.
Mind over Body – Cherubim can never be knocked out until their Mind hit points reach 0. Even if they’re completely physically disabled, they can still talk and stuff.
Immortality – Cherubim never die, and only appear as their totally rad winged form. They can only be stopped if they’re killed, and even then, they are only sent to Heaven again, and might come back someday.

Hit Points:  Body hit points can range from as little as 3 to as high as 10. Mind hit points never go below 5 and can go as high as 12.

Skills: Cherubim rarely have Fight skills of less than d6, and can go up and up from there. Sosh skills for cherubim, however, are like humans – d4 and up.




Void

Void are the depths of Hell, the darkest of nights, the deepest of seas. Epic, yeah? They’re super creepy little guys – typically the size of children or teens but not kids at all. They are literally Hell beasts who have crawled up to devour souls. They have these wicked big mouths with sharp, pointy, needle-like teeth. Too many teeth. Ugh. They’re not super sociable, and mostly speak in the tongues of Hell, but they’re quick and stealthy.


What they do: Devour souls.

How they do it: Bite, suck, slurp. Soul be gone.

How to kill them: They die like mortals, so you can mow ‘em down.

Powers: 

Devour – they literally eat your soul. If they get a bite on you, they’ll suck Mind hit points out of you by the minute, getting an extra bonus d6 to add to their Fight that always counts as a success so long as they get at least one success in their roll, including that die.
Stealth – They’re creepy, they’re crawly, and they blend into the shadows like… uh, like a shadow.
Speed – Void are totally fast. It takes one additional success to get the first hit in on them in a fight.

Hit Points: They average around 5 Body and Mind hit points, just like humans.

Skills: Void have no higher than Sosh: d8, and average around Fight: d6.


Mob Rules

When monsters get together in groups of 3 or more, they’re called a mob. So, like, when this happens? Treat the monsters as one unit, where the stats are equal to the most powerful monster, but raise their die type for their stats by two ranks. As an example, if you have six dead-walkers, and the like, strongest of the deadwalkers is at Fight: d6, the mob as a whole would be at Fight: d10. Their hit points will still be equal to the highest hit points.

It’s important to keep in mind that major NPCs should not be part of mobs and should have their hit points and rolls monitored individually. Basically, like, if they are important enough to have a name? Like, they aren’t totally mob mooks.

PLAYERS AS MONSTERS


It would be like, totally uncool if they players couldn’t be like, monstrous. Here’s the way that works.


Players get the powers of all of the monsters applied to their character, so they can transform, possess, all that. If the monster has higher hit points and/or skill rank dice than them, they gain one hit point in each hit point set that is higher and/or one skill rank die in each skill that is higher. If it is the opposite, where the hit points or skill rank dice are lower, then the player character would lower their hit points and/or skill rank dice by one. For example, if a vampire bites a player character, and the vampire’s hit points are Mind: 6, Body: 7, and their skill ranks are Fight: d8, Sosh: d10, while the player character’s hit points are Mind: 5, Body: 5, and skill ranks are Fight: d6, Sosh: d6, then you would adjust the player’s stats to be Mind: 6, Body: 6, and Fight: d8, Sosh: d8.



This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Sweet Valley Hell – Principal’s Instructions

This is the game I’m working on during my pre-week of summer classes. This is the Principal’s instructions and I’ll soon be releasing the Monsters section. Enjoy!

PRINCIPAL’S INSTRUCTIONS (DRAFT)


So like, you’re in charge? Wow! You have a really good chance to make the players have loads of fun, so grab a seat and listen up.


Your first responsibility as the Principal is to like, set the scene. This is pretty cool. You get to decide who will be in the world and what the current events are. You can probably sum it up in a paragraph, and you can make a few predictions for the future. Keeping a handful of index cards or scrap paper with your notes would be a good idea, or even a notebook, and always have some blanks on hand to take down really important events and new non-player character names. Non-player characters are suuuuper important, so make up a few! You’ll need to assign them skills, too, so think about how tough and how clever these dudes are, and write down a die type for their Sosh and their Fight. Don’t stress about spending points on them, just be reasonable.


Setting
This game is set in the Valley in the year 1994, right after the Hellhole opened. Everyone knows about the Hellhole, but not everyone deals directly with it – most people, honestly, just try to keep it a secret from anyone outside of the Valley. The main players in town are Azazel, a demon with aspirations of mayorhood, and Laurel, the queen of vamps, who has tons of minions crawling around the town. The player characters are all seniors at the local high school.


Non-Player Characters (NPCs)
Coach Wilson – the coach of the Stallions, the football team of West Valley High. Stubborn, funny, and surprisingly caring, this guy knows the students better than anyone. He also supports the Fillies, the cheerleading squad. Fight: d8, Sosh: d6
Mayor Andersen – the town mayor. He’s prickly and like, really doesn’t like kids. His politics are pretty ace, though, so he’s not too bad to have in power. Unfortunately, he has little social klout. Fight: d6, Sosh: d6.
Lindsay Golden – the mayor’s right hand, and the power behind his words. Without her, the mayor has no chance of keeping his political position. Fight: d6, Sosh: d10.


(see the Monsters section to skill up Azazel and Laurel.)
Shelley Winters – a local reporter who knows way more about the Hellhole than anyone else, and no one is quite sure why. She is friendly and useful, but kind of creepy, really. Fight: d8, Sosh: d8.


There’s your starting setup. You can create more NPCs on the fly, just make sure you write them down so you can bring them in for later scenes.


Running the game should be pretty chill. What you want to do is try to encourage the players to have a good time, while like, not forgetting to make them feel like the bad guys are a real threat. Pull from media resources to get the feel just right if you want to, y’know, like TV shows and books. The players’ enjoyment comes first, so be okay with flexing your story a bit – don’t get too attached to the plot and forget about having fun.


In the player’s instructions you can find an example of play, and for what you are doing, things go about the same. FYI, fights are over when the baddies are knocked out (at zero hit points), or when they or the players retreat. What you need to know is how to build your dice pool for Fights and Sosh encounters. It’s easy!


The Principal gets an allowance just like the players do, based on how many players there are in the game. You start with two Pops and $100, and then for each player in the game, you get one Pop, and $200 in Daddy’s Money. You spend them just like the players do.


Remember, you’re representing like, bad guys, superiors, and people in power, for the most part (sometimes you’ll be other teens or whatever, too, but they should be pretty breezy for the players to deal with). You want to make it a challenge without ripping any hearts out… unless you’re representing something that like, rips hearts out.


Sweet Valley Hell doesn’t have like, totally strict scene framing. This is kind of cool, but makes things a little tougher when you’re in charge? You’ll want to try to keep players focused, and the best way to do that is by keeping it interesting. If an in-character conversation starts to die down, move on and come back to it later if you need to. If a fight seems futile or boring, call a retreat.


Retreats are simple: the baddie backs off and gets away. You’ll want to give the players a Pop for this to make up for it, but it’s just a good way to keep the villain active without like, totally boring everyone? So keep it in your pocket, just in case.


The Principal’s agenda is on-point, man. You want to:


Give the players a good time.
Creep people out.
Make the baddies feel real.
Encourage players to build the fiction.

Create a good story.

Sweet Valley Hell – A like, Hellhole in the Valley

This is the game I’m working on during my pre-week of summer classes. I’m hoping to write up the Principal’s instructions and the monster section over the next couple of weeks. Enjoy!

SWEET VALLEY HELL (DRAFT)

PLAYER’S INSTRUCTIONS


“Oh. My. God. Did you see the dagger that Azazel was carrying last week? Did you know it like, devours souls?”


“No way!”


“Yes way. It was totally rad!”


—


So like, in this game, you play valley gals and guys in this totally sweet alternate universe where a portal to Hell has opened up in the Valley. There are like, really rad monsters, demons, and dead-walkers roaming the ‘burbs and like, magic is a thing. It’s bitchen.


Most of the time, you’ll be hitting up the mall and hanging with your friends, so sosh skills are like way important? But, you’re gonna find out how dangerous it really is living on the edge of Hell, too, so whether you’re into football or cheerleading, rock those abs.


In the game, you’ll see demons – some are friendly, others are, like complete jerks? I mean, what is their problem? Then, there are the monsters – you know, dudes and chicks who are like, not human and stuff, and they range from vamps to werecritters to like, other creepy stuff. Last are the dead-walkers. They’re like zombies or whatever, but most of the time they’re totally grody and used to be like, murderers, so you gotta watch out.


When you start the game, you get like, anywhere from 4 to 8 points to build your character’s skills, depending on how hard the Principal (the like, person running the game?) wants the game to be, or how long after the Hellhole opens they want it to be. You have two skills: Sosh and Fight. Life is simple in the Valley, so don’t bum anybody out by making it complicated. Your skills buy you die sizes in your skills. The first point in a skill buys you a four-sided die. This is like, sooo lower than average. So you can spend another two points to buy up to a six-sided die. Each die up costs two points, so if you wanted to start the game with a six-sided die in Sosh and an eight-sided die in Fight, you’d spend 3 points in Sosh and 5 points (3 for six-sided and 2 to move up to eight-sided) in Fight. This makes you a little tough for fighting and pretty average in social situations.


Your hit points are on your character sheet. There are both Body and Mind hit points. You only get 5 of each unless you get a magic boost. 

Each player (like, you guys) starts with these things called Popularity Points (We’ll call them Pops, because yeeah) and duuuh, some of Daddy’s Money! Pops are really cool because you can spend them to increase the size of your dice when you are rolling against the baddies. Daddy’s Money buys you more dice to roll! The dice you buy are equal to the die size that your base die is or to the size that is bought with Pops, so like, if you buy your base die up to a ten-sided die, all of your dice you buy with Daddy’s Money would be ten-sided. Sweet!


Each session of the game, you get a bit of each of these – kind of like, an allowance or something. Along with setting the difficulty of the game with the skill points, the Principal will decide how many Pops and how much of Daddy’s Money you get. Typically you’ll start with two Pops and, since Daddy’s Money only comes in hundreds, like, $400? Each die you add with Daddy’s Money will cost you $100. Cha-ching! If it’s going to be an extremely long game or the Hellhole is going to bite you hard, the Principal might up it a bit. You can always gain more Pops by doing sweet things in game, like risking your life for another player or a bystander, or maybe like, doing something epic. Daddy’s money, though, only comes once a sesh.


Fighting demons, monsters, and dead-walkers is pretty rad. You like, run up to them, or try to trick them, or something like that, and then you grab a die from the table – a like, six-sided one sometimes, or bigger. You can change the size of it and totally add more dice.


You’ll roll the die and the Principal (the like, person running the game?) will roll a die or a couple of dice to represent the monster (find more on that later), and you compare them to see who has the highest numbers, and how many of them. The roller who has the highest number on a die wins, and the loser takes hits equal to how many dice show a number higher than their highest.


So like, if you’re rolling against a vamp, and the Principal lays out like, four dice – all six-sided – based on the vamp’s powers? You put out the same number of dice, using your base die (In this case, for your Fight skill), which you buy up to an eight-sided die, and then some added ones. You both roll. You get a 6, 8, 3, and another 3. The vamp’s results are 4, 5, 3, and 2. You win because you have the highest number – 8. They take 2 hits because you have two dice (6 and 8) higher than their highest number (5). Bam, bam! You kick ass.


Social situations are simpler, because bystanders and non-player characters (like your BFF or your Dad or your Coach) mostly have skills equal or lower than yours. If you’re going up against them, this is normally a time you can be pretty chill, unless it like, means a lot. If you’re in a social situation with a demon or a monster, it rolls like the Fighting scenes, except you use your Sosh skill. Dead-walkers can’t be reasoned with – they’re raw and stupid, just filled with rage.

You’re ready to start the game. The next part of this is for the Principal’s eyes only – like, seriously, dudes, you don’t want to be totally uncool.

Hearts in Crisis – new project

Hey everyone!

I started working on a new project yesterday that I’ve had in mind for a while. It may be a long-term project because of how research intensive it might be, but I wanted to tell you a little bit about it.

The game is called Hearts in Crisis. It is set during the Vietnam war, and focuses on the lives and stories of the women (primarily nurses) who worked in the war. It’s focusing on drama and personal relationships while dealing with intensely difficult crises.

I’m really excited about it. Here is why.

I grew up hearing a lot of stories about Vietnam – from people who opposed the war, people who carried legacy racism and bigotry from the war, and people who served. Most of the people I knew who served were men, and hearing stories of women working in the service during that time was really rare and that actually makes me kind of disappointed. Most of the stories I heard were not heroic or even hopeful, they were stories from the perspectives of snipers and soldiers who had to do awful things just to survive and protect their fellow soldiers. From everything I know, the Vietnam war was a horrible, terrifying experience for everyone involved.

There were not a ton of women who served in Vietnam. The total numbers I can find are at highest around 10,000, but more likely around 7500, and over 6000 of them were nurses and medical personnel. While I wouldn’t ever discount the experiences of women who served in administrative roles, from what I have read, they typically were far from most of the trauma and immediate danger. Those who were are the kind of characters I would see being played in this game, but most of the characters will probably be nurses. Nurses were not in combat, but they dealt with some of the most tragic and intimate crises, saving lives and comforting the people who were suffering.

One of the stories that really inspired me was not of a nurse, but of a stenographer, Karen Offutt, who was awarded the Soldier’s Medal around 32 years after her actions in Vietnam saving injured children from a fire (when she would have initially been awarded the medal during the war, she was given a certificate and told that women weren’t awarded the Soldier’s Medal). The actions of women are so often forgotten and dismissed, and I think that we can take the step forward to tell these stories.

I intend to do a fair amount of research about this piece of history, and I want to really work on telling the stories that many people have let fall through the cracks.

As far as mechanics, I’m working on structured scenes with token exchanges and flipping tokens for success/failure. For me, the mechanics will be important, but will have to be very strong and support the feel of the game as well as possible in order to ensure that the mood isn’t lost.

ETA More details on the mechanics:

Right now, I have it set up so that there will be three scenes: one intimacy scene, one crisis scene, and another intimacy scene. Each player will have certain numbers of tokens that they start with and that they can earn, and during intimacy scenes players will give each other one type of token that can be used in the crisis scenes to save casualties who are brought in to the triage. The main way to determine who lives or dies is by flipping the tokens and seeing which comes up heads or tails. The main characters themselves cannot die unless they elect to for story reasons, because part of the point is that they have to live while others don’t.

I’m looking forward to sharing my progress with you!

Musings on Horror Games

I’m playing Alien: Isolation on PC right now. I’m not very far in, but I’ve found some stuff I wanted to talk about (which I recorded the audio of while playing but the file corrupted or something).

I want to make a horror tabletop RPG at some point. This is something I have been interested in for a while but have not had the capacity to do as I don’t have a ton of experience with horror games. I’ve played some tabletop horror RPGs – Don’t Rest Your Head, Black Stars Rise, and a fantastic game by +Nick Wedig that should be published if it isn’t already (I’m a little behind on Nick’s work.) (ETA: I’ve also played Dread, very late at night at a party, and it was pretty great). These games are good, but they require two things: good, experienced players, and a great GM. The systems do some of the work, but I feel like they wouldn’t work as well without the support of the players and GM. I want to make a game approachable to new players, which is challenging for me in the first place, but I also want something compelling.

There are a few things I want to avoid that I have found to be way to common in various horror media (games, television, movies, etc.): boredom and sexually predatory themes. The former is just wasting time, but the latter actually kind of pisses me off. I feel like I should be able to avoid that kind of trigger in horror instead of being constantly confronted with it, so I’ve tasked myself with aiming for the kind of horror – maybe dread? – that avoids that specific trope.

Things I want to include: suspense, vivid descriptions, and the ability to run and play the game without tons of tabletop experience. Much harder than it sounds.

Part of me wants to interrogate the people I know who are good about horror, but at the same time, I feel like I need to focus on what makes me scared in order to satisfy what I want.

One of the feelings I want to incorporate is that feeling of “I know what’s going to happen, I can’t stop it, and it’s terrible,” that dread. One of the movies I was unable to finish because of how distressing and dreadful was Buckets of Blood (1959). Part of this is because I for serious cannot handle harming animals in film (we shut it off before the first icky part, admittedly), but part of it is that kind of dread just shakes me up. I would love to capture that in a game, but how do you do that? I feel like there needs to be a script, so I’m wondering how you include three things:

  • The illusion of free will
  • Freedom of description 
  • Compelling story

I mean, part of it is that I’m just not a super experienced writer or designer. Part of it is I need to consume more horror media, but I don’t want to consume too much and lose my focus, you know? I think video games are a really good place to focus because I am learning a lot about games and interaction from them (I’ll eventually write another post about some of the games I’m playing now).

 Avoiding boredom is suuuuper hard. This is my biggest problem with horror movies and games. If the suspense isn’t done right, or things are too repetitive, I totally lose focus and interest. Sometimes this is useful because there can be jump scares, but jump scares are not only hard in RPGs but can be kind of silly. I don’t want players to be uninvolved enough that they want to start checking their phones or having side convos.

That’s where I am right now. I’d appreciate your thoughts!

Brie Creates Religion

Hi all!

I wanted to talk a little bit about some work I did in the past on a game setting called A Deadly Affair. It was a game run by my husband +John Sheldon, originally in a modified D&D 3.5 system, then later a modified Pathfinder system. One of the biggest elements of the game was that players were able to build parts of the setting – species, religions, cultures, historical events. It was really cool! I got to be really involved in setting creation and John allowed me to build one of the religions for the game.

The religion was called the Nord. You can read some about it on the Deadly Affair wiki page on Obsidian Portal. In the religion, there are five gods. “Norric the cruel god of ice and cold, Eitne the chaotic god of the winds and herald of change, Shima the benevolent lord of the earth representing growth and life, Raer the demanding deity of fire and warmth, and the Unnamed – a treacherous god of magic, spirits, and deceit.”

I spent a long time while I was growing up reading myths and legends about Norse and Greek polytheistic religions. I was a huge fan of them. This is part of why I wanted to create a religion specifically for A Deadly Affair.

One of the first things I did was determine whether I wanted to do a polytheistic religion, or stick with a single god, or something different. I was most familiar with the myths of polytheistic religions, so I picked that. I then wanted to pull from something recognizable to begin the definitions of the gods, and I picked a compass. Norric was the North, Raer the South, Shima the West, the Unnamed the East, and Eitne as the center, ever changing.

Once I had that down, I spent a lot of time on my own just thinking about it. I wish I’d taken the time to write down everything I thought of. Hindsight, you know? If I had written it down, though, there would have been a lot about the behaviors of the gods, the rituals of the priests, and the habits of the followers. There would have been descriptions of the avatars of the gods, and of the symbols carried by the followers.

I guess, I regret not writing them down. And I’m hoping to play the game again, so maybe I can get my stuff together and write down some new information to put in the Wiki, or on here. I hope that people enjoy whatever I choose to share when the time comes.

<3

Five or So Questions with Ryan Schoon on Edara: A Steampunk Renaissance

Here is a link to the Kickstarter! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/edara/the-travelers-guide-to-edara-a-steampunk-renaissan

Tell me a little about your upcoming Kickstarter. What’s exciting about it?

It is a follow up to the successful launch of Edara: A Steampunk Renaissance. This campaign companion delves even deeper into the world we created, offering more maps, adversaries, background and historic information, NPCs, and plot hooks so that GMs can bring their parties deeper into the world.

What did you do to develop this new material – what kind of preparation did it take?
Well it took a lot of work to develop, honestly.

We had to really study the cultures we wanted to base our world on. We worked with an Economist to figure out how money would work passing between nations in a world like ours. I teamed up with a latin and classical cultures major to fully flesh out the details of the culture, down to the histories, traditions, politics, and day to day lifestyle.

But mostly I studied the Renaissance. One of the biggest criticisms of the Core book is that it didn’t dive fully into the Renaissance themes that are present in the world. I wanted to closely resemble the movement in Edara to that of Italy during the Renaissance so it required a lot of intense study and reading, and I learned more about Renaissance italy than I ever would have 🙂

Tell me a little about the plot hooks. What were you looking for in the plot hooks?
So this ties in a lot to the plot hooks. The biggest themes of our game are the conflict between science vs religion, renaissance vs steampunk, and the inherent racism that comes with a mult-racial fantasy world. In the corebook, we basically said here are the themes, you can build your games around these. But the plot hooks dig deeper into that. We focus on each realm individually (and some of the bigger realms are divided into regions, or even down to cities) in order to provide these hooks. They aren’t fully fleshed out ideas or adventures, just hooks to help the GM build a campaign. The types of adventures that one might go on. For example, in the human kingdom of Kuria, which is broiled down in political disputes, the plot hooks have to do with one house playing the party against the others. There is also a racist movement inside the kingdom that might attempt to use the party to act out against the other races, which puts the party in a tough position as they have to decide what is more important to them: appeasing their employers or breaking the cycle of racism that has built up in the kingdom after years of war. Meanwhile, in the Dwarven kingdom, the plot hooks are more adventurous; exploring new tunnels and ruins to find lost dwarven treasures, or escorting merchants while they sell their wares above ground.

Tell me more about the cultures you based the world on. What kind of characters and cultures will we see?
Well we have several cultures spread across the world. The humans are actually based on medieval culture with Italian Renaissance flavors. Then we have the orc mountains which is based more on nomadic Mongolian aspects with a high focus on honor. The elves are rooted more in Tolkienesque fantasy and an almost pure socialist society. So there is a lot of variety!

Is this the last we’ll see of Edara, or is there more to come? If there is more – what should we be excited for?
And no this is not the last! We plan on offering future books in this line focusing on parts of Edara that we haven’t seen yet. There will be this same amount of focus and death on the areas beyond the mountains and forests, which we will talk about more as time goes on! This book will lead right into the future timelines of Edara.

Five or So Questions with Fraser Ronald on Nerfertiti Overdrive

The Nefertiti Overdrive Kickstarter hits today! Keep an eye out.

Tell me a little about Nefertiti Overdrive. What excites you about it?
While I can sometimes be more interested than is good for me in the specific details of a historical setting, I can also really appreciate a story that purposefully disregards the facts and focuses on the fun. I am unapologetic in my love for the movie the 13th Warrior and happily sit through the Scorpion King. These movies take historical settings but then don’t sweat too much in favour of presenting a fun and exciting story.

That’s what I’ve done with Nefertiti Overdrive (first clue: it’s not even set during the time of Nefertiti, I just though the title sounded cool). Then I added physics-defying action with mechanics that reward exciting and detailed narratives of character actions. In Nefertiti Overdrive, you can still say “I punch him in the face,” but you won’t get rewarded for that and could easily fail. If you say “I leap up, flipping over my opponent and landing behind him. I then swing back with my elbow, cracking him in the side of the head.” That will not only make it easier to succeed – because it’s pretty cool – but you can also earn Luck – a kind of Hero Point/Plot Coupon/Benny – from other players if you do something they really enjoy.

This all excites me because it amps up the energy at the table, players trying to outdo other players with their descriptions. It rewards creativity and creates a really strong, cooperative table dynamic that has always led to a really fun game in my experience. This is the kind of game I love to run or play.

What sort of mechanics do you use in the game?

Any time the dice hit the table in Nefertiti Overdrive, it’s called a Test. PCs have four attributes that provide dice. Each Attribute has two Qualities – a descriptive word or short phrase like ‘Protector’ or “Loyal to the House of Kashta.’ Each Attribute also has two die-types associated with it, the lower being the base die and the higher being the max die. If you can apply one of its Qualities to the scene, the Attribute provides its base die. If you apply the Quality in a narratively exciting or interesting manner, you can use the max die.

Dice are compared for Initiative (which character is active and which is passive), Target (does the active character overcome the passive character for a Triumph), and Effect (can one of the character’s impose a penalty – known as a Condition – on the other). Each Challenge has a number of Triumphs required to overcome it.

Tell me more about Luck. What can you do with it?

With Luck, you can add an extra Quality – meaning you can roll five or more dice in a Test and use them all – re-roll a die, or remove some or all of a Condition – a penalty that can be imposed during a Test. Luck is provided by players to other players, and there is a limited supply. When a player uses Luck, it goes to the GM, who can use it to buy a natural 1 rolled by a player and add that die-type (though not the die itself) to a Threat Pool. The GM can add any die from the Threat Pool to any Test, but it can be rolled only once and is then removed from the Pool. When the GM spends Luck, it returns to the pot, available to be distributed by the players to other players.

When a player or GM has extra dice, she can apply those in whatever fashion she feels is best, to increase Initiative, Target, or Effect. This generally means an amazing result, which might lead to more Luck from players. It’s the circle of life!

How are you preparing for the Kickstarter, and what kind of cool stretch goals will we see (if any)?

The Nefertiti Overdrive Quickstart rules are already available (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/137307/Nefertiti-Overdrive-Quickstart-Rules) and were released in the hopes of creating some interest in the Kickstarter.

I have an agreement with Magpie Games to facilitate shipping, which takes a huge load off my mind. Magpie Games fulfilled my last successful Kickstarter, Centurion: Legionaries of Rome, and it makes a huge difference in regards to the period between having the book printed and getting it into the hands of our backers.

The text for the game is 75% finished, and we have about half of the artwork in hand.

The first stretch goal is going to be maps for the included adventure. I’m trying to present a very realistic goal for the Kickstarter, but that means I won’t be able to afford maps. The plan is similar to what was done in the Quickstart – suggestions for image searches and a link to an existing map or illustration available on the internet at the time of publishing. I would really like to provide maps for the included adventure, but I believe $3,000 Canadian is more realistic than $4,500, but if I can get the latter, the adventure will get maps.

The next stretch goal is a port of Nefertiti Overdrive to Fate Accelerated written by none other than Jason Pitre of Genesis of Legend Publishing, the man behind Spark and Posthuman Pathways (and a pretty awesome guy – but let’s keep that between us, it might go to his head). I am a fan of Fate Accelerated but did not feel comfortable hacking Nefertiti Overdrive. Thankfully, Jason is more than ready to oblige. This would happen at $6,000

After that, at $7,500, we’ll include another setting I’m calling Daredevils of the Water Wastes. Part of Nefertiti Overdrive is a scenario creation system that can either be done as a kind of game or just as a framework for brainstorming. It allows the players to create the kind of campaign and setting in which they want to adventure. Daredevils of the Water Wastes is a product of that system, and uses the same mechanics as Nefertiti Overdrive, but with slightly altered Attributes for the player characters.

We have other stretch goals planned, and will reveal those as we knock these one’s down.

Yes, I am exactly that insanely optimistic. It could happen!