Thursday, April 29, 2021

ADVENTURE SPARK TABLES - Broken Luck TROIKA! Zine WIP #4

A quick update on the Broken Luck Troika! zine.

OK, first, I'm not going to make it in time for the Troika!Fest Jam. I'm a bit sorry about that, but I am learning to accept that in order to make good stuff one might need some extra time. Trying to be ZEN about it.

Also, I've learned that to make good stuff one needs to ask for feedback from talented people, and that's what I did. perplexingruins, who by the way did the amazing art of the zine, pushed me to be more creative with the layout. I worked a lot and went from a very boring layout to something better.

example spread

Leo Hunt, author and artist behind Vaults of Vaarn, encouraged me to be more consistent and also more Troikish, and Ian Yusem, the man behind, well, a lot of stuff, had shown me the way to some more foolishness, helped me understand better some Troika! fundamentals, and also asked for more adventure tables in the mood of those that I've already put in the zine.

So I'll allow myself to indulge in table design for a couple of weeks and add more Adventure Tables describing the Gods, the Godly Palace, and its dwellers - Because the zine revolves around five backgrounds of unlucky souls banished or punished by childish and resentful gods.

The goal here is to deliver five backgrounds, a cursed Major Arcana Tarots system (all pluggable into any sphere setting), and suggest a Godly palace/setting. So far I have four D6 tables:

  • Which immortal did you piss off?
  • The Godly Palace is hidden
  • The PCs are in
  • And they are

And to those, I'll add:

  • To enter the Godly Palace you must (pass a test, fight an NPC, go through something odd)
  • Minion Generator
  • The Gods are (doing crazy stuff, of course)
  • And after a while, The Palace will (more crazy stuff happens, why not?)
  • God generator






Wednesday, April 21, 2021

TLB Podcast #4 Chris - McDowall - Electric Bastionland

Chris McDowall is the creator of the RPGS Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland. Both games share a fascinating weird industrial early XXth century setting and have been extremely influential to the indie RPG scene for the way they handle game mechanics. As a matter of fact, if you’ve listened to previous episodes of this podcast you might have heard other designers mention Chris’ games a few times.

In this episode we talk about Fear, a strange fascination with the London Underground Railway, a rural English county nobody knows about, one hundred failed careers, miniature wargames, and Intergalactic Bastionland.

You can listen to the episode here: 



On Youtube, with EN subs:

Or on the major podcast platforms:

And soon here:
Castbox
Overcast

Buy Electric Bastionland here:

Or find Chris at his youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQO6EwDBUxOYRR6jcAtv_0A


On his blog

https://www.bastionland.com/

Alec Sorensen's early sketches for Electric Bastionland

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

HOLY DESERTER Background - Broken Luck Zine WIP #3

The Broken Luck Troika! zine completion is getting closer (you can read about why/how I started working on the zine here, and about the KID GOD background here). ETA should be 20 April 2021.

The zine contains

5 backgrounds: Kid God, Holy Deserter, Sun Helmet, Fake Demigod, Roaming Fortune Teller

22 Arcana Major Tarot cards spells + Arcana Tarot combos spells

3 Broken luck tables:

  • Which immortal did you piss off?
  • Where the Godly Palace is hidden?
  • Using the backgrounds as NPCs

Quick Adventure Sparks (triple D6 Table)

Recap of the 13 custom Advanced Skills

AND 8 amazing perplexingruins illustrations. 

A soundtrack by spookyrusty.

As a preview here is the Holy Deserter background


HOLY DESERTER

You’re a Holy. A born killer. The most beloved creature of the Gods, breed to celebrate their rituals and defend their name. Long ago you left the Godly Palace to track a treacherous and impious being. You hunt them for years, across countless spheres, until you forgot what or who you were after. Ashamed of your failure you swore never to set foot back in the Palace. Anyways you totally forgot where it is. You’re a homesick deserter. Other Holies will attack you on sight.


Possessions


Owning is a sacrilege. You’re a deserter but you still have your dignity. You don’t even wear clothes. That would be a disgusting and shameful gesture.




Advanced skills


2 Oblivion spit - your acidic saliva induces short term memory loss


3 Maul - your crystal claws inflict Axe like damage


3 Colorshift - you can change your color and that of the objects or beings you touch


2 Spring - when you fall bounce with no damage





Special 

You can take your incandescent lava eyes out of their sockets.

Your blood made of inframicroscopic blue crystals is flammable.

You are fluent in Godly tongues.



[EDIT] Been trying some layouts. Nothing definitive yet.

[EDIT END] 




Saturday, April 10, 2021

KID GOD Background - Troika!Fest Jam - Broken Luck Zine WIP #2

Quick post. The work on the Broken Luck zine for the Troika!Fest Jam has continued. (it started here)

I've been rewriting some content originally drafted for The Lost Bay, which universe has a pantheon of annoying divinities, giving it a weirder, space fantasier feel. In the process, I've been very much inspired by perplexingruins older drawings.

There should be 4 to 6 six backgrounds, magical Tarots, associated spells, and a few tables to generate unluck. Hopefully, I'll post it to the Jam by the end of next week.


Here is a first background that sets the tone of the zine

[Edit!! and here is a layout page draft, sorry for the multi-updated messy post]



KID GOD

[Edited the 13 April 2021]


You’ve always loved mortals. They’re so funny with all that blood pumping through their veins. They make you laugh and cry, so much. The Holies never approved your illicit proximity with those frail beings. They stripped you of immortality and cast you out of the Godly Palace. Now you too can die, and experience the mortal coil.


Possessions

Cosmic Pajama, covered with perpetually exploding protostars (counts as Medium armor) - Plastic Sun Helmet (toy, looks cool) - Sound Sword (made of the purest of sounds, screams when wielded) - Golden Peaches (1D4 fruits, glow when danger approaches under 20 ft, then rot)


Advanced skills


3 Give life - to small dead beings or objects, they obey you


3 Empathy - what you touch feels what you wish


2 Sense death - in a 1 mile radius


1 Sound sword fight


Special

Your ultrafluid iridescent metallic blood is the most valuable substance in the creation, it heals instantly any wound (2D6 Stamina recovery). You might be hunted for that.
You are fluent in Godly tongues.




Wednesday, April 7, 2021

TLB Podcast #3 - Ben Milton - The Waking of Willowby Hall

Ben Milton is behind the popular YouTube channel QUESTING BEASTwhere he does reviews and flip throughs of RPGs and OSR books and zines. Watching his reviews, I've been struck by the constant attention he has for the layout or the design choices of the books, and how these choices might affect the playing experience.



Ben is the author of MAZE RATS and KNAVE, two rules-light RPGs, that had a great influence on the OSR scene. Ben recently published the WAKING OF WILLOWBY HALL, a fairy-tale med fan adventure in a Haunted Manor.

In the episode, we talk about mathematician Edward Tufte, teaching Game Mastering to kids, an angry cloud giant, Ben's obsession with rules, and how a childhood book can affect game design choices.

You can listen to the episode here: 




On Youtube, with subs:


Or on the major podcast platforms:


And soon here:

Breaker
Castbox
Overcast

Find Ben Milton's games here




Sam Mameli's early sketches for The Waking of Willowby Hall

Friday, April 2, 2021

A Troika! Detour - Broken Luck Zine WIP #1

> BTW there's been progress on the Troika! zine development, check here <

So I'm taking a short detour from The Lost Bay development.

I've been asking myself a lot of questions lately. Questions that can end into an unsolvable loop, like: D20 or D6? 3 stats or 1 stat? PC backgrounds or tables? I feel that I need to answer those before continuing to write the TLB zine.


As I decided to get to know better Troika!, for that research purpose, the Troika!Fest Game Jam 2021 was announced. So I took that opportunity to dive into the Troika! SRD, knowing that the limited time at my disposal would prevent me from getting stuck at the bottom of an unclimbable too big of a project. 


I am reworking some tables first drafted for TLB and designing a small supplement for the Game Jam. The theme is Tarots, not as playing helper tools, but as in-game magical objects. The supplement revolves around an unlucky character, The Roaming Fortune Seller, that can be alternatively a PC background or an NPC (yes, I like the unlucky ones)


There should be 7-8 tables, which is not too much, but enough to be challenging as I am trying:

  • to design all the tables in a consistent way
  • to imply some sort of micro setting
  • to avoid redundancy.


I guess this is my first closed project, as opposed to the open ongoing development of the GM Tools, which is more a work in progress prefiguration of The Lost Bay.


It has been super helpful to read again Crapland by HypatiasAngst, a Troika! super crazy setting, super inventive, super effective in delivering the fictional world. And the same can be said of A man on the road by Ian Yusem, a two-page supplement that delivers a kind of game agnostic great wicked NPC, that I've been studying with attention. 




The zine/supplement/whatever will be adorned by several illustrations made by Perplexingruins. And by the way, most of the super evocative drawings I'll use come from the Patreon benefits one gets when supporting him.


So without spoiling the zine, here is the Background description, and a drawing (check the crazy mesh work!). The Jam ends in 27 days, and I'll try to share the zine in a couple of weeks max.


ROAMING FORTUNE SELLER BACKGROUND


You used to chitchat and drink cocktails with the Gods. You told them their fortune with frightening precision. One day you became overconfident and pissed off an Immortal. They banished you from their palace and cursed your Tarot Deck: it’s broken, useless and soiled by weird magic. Now you wander restlessly and can barely predict what you will have for breakfast tomorrow.




Wednesday, March 24, 2021

TLB Podcast #2 - Leo Hunt - Vaults of Vaarn


Leo Hunt is a multi-faceted creator. He wrote four novels, and in the last year, released two issues of VAULTS OF VAARN, a science-fantasy rpg. In this episode we talk about his inspirational sources, the differences between writing a novel and an rpg, game design, the American anthropologist David Graeber, and above all, about the colorful, fascinating world of Vaarn. Check below a few of Leo's original drawings.





You can listen to the episode here:

On youtube, with SUBS

Or on the major podcast platforms:


And soon here:

Breaker
Castbox
Overcast

Vaults of Vaarn is available as a printed booklet from online stores, find the full list here



Or in pdf:



Be sure to check Leo's blog, where you can follow episodes of actual play, and be updated about the creation of Vaults of Vaarn


Leo vampire RPG project, Bloodheist


Leo's research and drawings. Photos by Leo Hunt.


This is the original synopsis of the game.












Thursday, March 18, 2021

TLB Actual play #1


Well actually this is episode #3 of the new campaign, but the game system went through significant changes between #2 and #3, I feel that we landed in full OSR territory only with episode #3, episodes #1 and #2 were more some kind of prologue and fine-tuning sessions.

The party:

Carmin, 16 yo, he. Terror: Being lost. Likes rules. Smells funny and has a strange condition that makes him weak.

Nina, 13 yo, she. Terror: Water. Likes exploding things. Has pretty serious anger management issues.

Nina and Carmin are spending the summer at the Citadel, a summer camp for rebellious teens. During the afternoons they explore the Lost Bay. In the previous episodes, they have visited an abandoned heliport on the seaside and bought tickets for the Arrow, an old bus touring the Marshes. They got the tickets from a weird kid, Jacky. As payment, he asked Nina to help him fight some guy. Nina thinks that's bullshit. Going back to the Citadel just before the sunset, Nina almost drowned wrestling with an electric eel. Actually, the group was crossing the Nameless river, one of the small tributary brooks of the Tears of Apollo, when Catalin (who was part of the group in sessions #1, #2) saw something shiny at the bottom of the river. She tried to grab it, unfortunately, that was an eel. Nina was badly injured and she lost her most precious belonging: a portable chemistry set.

A few days later.
The group is now heading inland, towards the marshes, intending to find the Arrow. The landscape has drastically changed, and the kids are surrounded by small ponds of muddy water. They stop at a dusty road and wait for the Arrow. After a brief moment, the bus approaches. It's an old vehicle. The orange paint of its rusty body is marked by a fading golden arrow. The kids hop in. The laconic driver stinks of liquor, and the bus is empty.

The Arrow hurries through the marshes, drawing a perfectly straight line. It passes by an abandoned arcade game store. It looks like it's never going to stop and as Nina and Carmin start worrying the Arrow brakes suddenly: out of nowhere, a dark figure gets on the bus. Long hair, laced and embroidered full bodysuit, some sort of show costume. It's Phasio (he) a 17 years old kid. He sits not far from Nina and Carmin hiding his features under the hood of his cape. Carmin approaches the guy, they talk a bit. He's the guitarist of The splinters, a punk band. He's late, he's going to a rehearsal and the kids can come.

The Arrow stops in the wetlands, Phasio is in a hurry, Nina and Carmin follow him. They are in the Heart of the Mercury Marshes now. Mud has almost entirely replaced dirt, and water surrounds the tight path that leads to the entrance of an abandoned Opera House. The old building is gigantic, crumbling, and partly submerged by water. The place is both magnificent and decaying. The theatre stalls lay under a broken glass dome, and on the stage the rest of the band, Damien (he), Enna (she), and Gloria (she), are waiting to play music. Nina and Carmin take place on broken theatre chairs, and Damien, the band leader, starts screaming, well, sort of singing. He sounds like broken glass, but the kids seem to enjoy it. A few little cute colored birds fly around Carmin and Nina. They're Rainbow Parakeets. At first, it's just a couple of them, but little by little, bird by bird, they fill the entire theatre flying erratically like annoying insects: the musicians can't play anymore. As soon as the music stops, the birds dive on musicians and spectators alike. They're everywhere, and they're mean. Carmin fights valiantly trying to protect Nina who is totally petrified. She screams in horror and pain at the top of her throat. Her howl somehow stops the birds. The kids take a moment to assess the situation, the parakeets are on the balconies, on the dome, on the chairs, everywhere. There are hundreds of them. Phasio falls on the stage floor, his face is lacerated, he's agonizing in pain. As band members and kids start arguing about what to do next, the birds resume their attack.


Abandoned theatre, photo by Julia Solis

Everybody runs to the closest make-up room. It's tight, messy, windowless, and flooded. Clouds of parakeets fill the room, and the entrance door is blocked by mud and debris. Carmin manages to kill a few birds with his skateboard: they explode in littles puffs of colored feathers. Nina in a heroic gesture pushes aside everybody, and with all her strength tries to unblock the door. Her attempt is a total failure, Nina falls backward and the door opens wide to the terrifying storm of parakeets. Everybody dives underwater and takes refuge under a couple of upside-down floating theatre chests.

Damien seems to know what's happening, the birds were sent by Heroola, his ex. She's pissed off about something. After endless debates the kids manage to return to the stage. They move using the upside-down chests as a turtle shells. The thick cardboard of the chests is almost torn out by the birds, the kids realize that their refuge won't last much longer. Nina grabs two hairspray bottles inside Gloria's stuff, she gets out of the chest and stands in the center of the stage, alone, surrounded by the birds. She sees at the entrance of the Opera House a feminine figure illuminated by the sunset. Nina quickly turns the hairspray bottles into a flamethrower, using her silver storm lighter and, as she whispers the Prayer of St Apollo, she produces a gigantenormous flame that burns the birds to ashes. The mysterious woman standing at the entrance of the theatre runs away followed by the remaining birds.

The kids hurry out of the theatre just in time as the colossal glass dome crumbles into dust. Carmin is in pretty bad shape. It's almost night and Nina and Carmin have to go back to the Citadel, but before parting with the band they all agree to go and see Heroola the next day, and sort things out with her. The birdmaster lives in the abandoned arcade store.





Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Do we need backstories?


If you're not that much into backstories, but still, you'd like to spice up your PCs with simple backstory curse-like mechanics just jump to the bottom of this article you'll find a D10 curses table.

So, what about Player Character's backstories? They're great, they give depth to the game, they're a crucial part of the gaming experience. Or they're useless, and a waste of time that only delays the beginning of the campaign.

Until recently I used to play and run heavily story-oriented games: long story arcs, in-game world populated by complex and multidimensional NPCs, lots of relationships between PCs and NPCs. I ran entire sessions dedicated to actually playing the backstories, usually at the beginning of a campaign, and that was fun. I would play a backstory scene between each major character creation step. That’s a great process. At the end of it, the player really "owns" their character, and the backstory is not just a set of ideas and concepts, but, at least partially, the fruit of the game itself. In that case, the backstories would be actual memories of the player because they had generated them through gameplay. Sometimes we even played the backstory session in the middle of the campaign. Like a flashback, when the players had become more "fluent" with all the peculiarities of the game-world.

I used to favor backstories that implied complex relationships between the members of the party or between the PCs and some powerful PNCS, and so did the players of my group. I ran a pretty intense campaign a couple of years ago, in which one of the PCs was the very young daughter of another PC. That fact alone basically became the backbone of the campaign. 80% of the problems the party had to face were a consequence of the impulsive actions the Mother took in order to protect her rebellious Daughter in a post-apocalyptic world. That was really fun, for everybody. But playing the backstory, the relationship, relied only on the players. There was no real way to enforce the consequences of that specific relationship on the game. I could have crafted some custom rules at the time, but that seemed too complex to achieve in a meaningful way.


Jackie and Yellow, the daughter and mother PC, painted by Clara who played Yellow.

Lately, I became more interested in explorative gaming experiences that fall somehow into the OSR realm, that favor emergent narrative and problem-solving. But I still like backstories. I'm not totally eager to let them go. I feel like they add an emotional layer to the game, they add an emotional layer to the problems the NPCs have to face. But if the backstory is purely descriptive it can probably lead to beautiful and even intense roleplay moments, but it’s not really going to contribute organically to the fiction. In other words, if a character has a backstory, the effects of their backstory shouldn't be an option.

How can we design backstories that are not purely decorative but have a tangible effect on the game? How can we design a backstory that gives color to the character, but that is also tied to simple and powerful mechanics and brings new elements to problems that the players have to face?
Of course, it can be the work of the GM to fill the gaps and to ensure that NPCs, or other pieces of the game world, react accordingly to the backstory of the characters. But what I am looking for here, are mechanics, objective mechanics, in pure OSR fashion.

Randomness


Two games, Cairn by Yochai Gal, whom I interviewed recently -- you can listen to the podcast here https://anchor.fm/thelostbay -- and Knave by Ben Milton/Questing Beast, have random character creation tables that include backstory elements on different levels. Both games are classless, but the characters begin with a set of different items, weapons, and other objects, that can somehow suggest a backstory. Cairn has even a set of starting packages depending on the trope of the character. Both games have a Misfortunes table (Cairn has also a Reputation one) that adds backstory elements to the character. These tables/tools are great, they allow to generate random backstory elements quickly and add flavor to the characters. Simply having your PC starting with different objects based on an implicit backstory (for example a flute or a lantern) will have different effects on the fiction. 



Cairn / Knave creation tables

Cairn and Knave random tables add a set of unwanted traits to the PC as to say: you don't always choose where life takes you. Randomness adds a lot of unplanned problem solving, and thus fiction. Backstories should be random.

Backstory as debt


Electric Bastionland by Chris McDowell has the characters start with a failed profession, some objects, and a shared debt, usually a large amount of money the PCs owe to somebody. That debt drives the characters into their adventure. That’s simple. You got a gigantic debt, you’d better do something to pay the money back. Here debt looks very much like a curse. Something powerful and unpleasant that is hard to get rid of, and that will have unwanted and unavoidable consequences.




When you think about Oedipus, his backstory had him killing his father, having intercourse with his mother, and becoming blind. It couldn’t avoid confronting with it, like a monstrous debt he had unwillingly, and unfairly, inherited. He tried to escape his fate with no success. When told by the Oracle of Delphi that he would kill his father and marry his mother he fled from the parental house in Corinth, ignorant of the fact that King Polybus, and Queen Merope, were his adoptive parents. When later in Thebes he killed king Laius and married his wife Jocasta, his biological father and mother, he fulfilled the prophecy. The mechanics associated with Oedipus’ backstory could have been: whenever you will kill somebody, it will be your father; whenever you will lay with somebody, it will be your mother. That’s a pretty strong effect on fiction.


The Plague of Thebes by Charles-François Jalabert

For Oedipus the consequences of his backstory were Inevitable, like a curse, and also Unexpected, as he couldn’t know in advance when they would manifest. And they always should be, to some extent, Inevitable, and Unexpected. The mechanics triggered by the backstory should have a strong impact. 

Backstory as a scar


Cairn, again the game designed by Yochai Gal, borrows to Electric Bastionland the idea of scars. When a character reaches exactly 0 HP in they are afflicted by a scar. The scar is picked from a table. One of my favorites is:

Deafened: You cannot hear anything until you find extraordinary aid. Regardless, make a WIL save. If you pass, increase your max WIL by 1d4.

That's quite radical. The Deafened scar articulates two components: an immediate effect, a modifier tied to the WIL save, and the fact of becoming deaf, which can evolve if the PC finds "extraordinary aid". That creates fiction. A table of backstories could have, in a similar way, strong modifiers or mechanics, attached to the backstory. But the backstories should also give the PC the possibility of some sort of evolution, like in the example of the scar above.

With all that in mind, I designed a first random Backstory table. Actually, I called it a Curses table, as each backstory element is a bit grim, and the modifiers are pretty tough, even if technically they are not curses, but rather consequences of past actions of the PC. Basically what they do is create specific problems for each character. I’ve tested them in actual gameplay, and yes, they do create fiction! 

So I laid out a table themed to The Lost Bay universe. The entries are very 90s dark-weird teen adventury. But they are quite easy to tweak and adapt to different settings. The mechanics should suit any D&D or OSR game. The Lost Bay uses only 3 natural abilities (STR, DEX, HEART) and the mechanics have effects on those.

Here is the full table (it's not super easy to read, sorry I have difficulties with tables in blogger):

1.NOSY - You climbed to the top of a tall evergreen tree, you just wanted to peek through that window. You saw something terrifying, and fear made you fall. Now you constantly feel dizzy. You lost 1D6 DEX. If you find a cure to your vertigo roll 3D6, if the result is higher than your current DEX score keep it.
2.FOOL - You never payed enough attention. Always joking, and once too often. Your hand was crushed by the engine of a scooter. Your fingers are so weak now. You roll all DEX saves involving hands at Disadvantage. If you can mend your hands, roll 3D6, if the result is higher than your current HEART score keep it, you lose the Disadvantage
3.STIFF - You were locked into a small storage trunk by bullies. Your legs couldn’t move for a full weekend. When you got out, you could barely walk. You roll all DEX saves involving legs at Disadvantage. If you are able to fortify your limbs you lose the Disadvantage, roll 3D6, if the result is higher than your current STR score keep it.
4.RAT - You were united by a secret oath, they were like sisters and brothers to you, they were your tribe. But jealousy drove you mad and you betrayed them. You broke their hearts, they kicked you out. You’re so lonely now. You lost 1D6 HRT. If you find a way to make amends roll 3D6, if the result is higher than your current STR score keep it.
5.BLACK HOLE - You did something really ugly. And then you swore it wasn’t you. You were believed and another kid payed for the mess you made. Your broke your soul. All HRT saves at Disadvantage. If you manage to purify yourself roll 3D6, if the result is higher than your current HRT score keep it.
6.OUTCAST - The other kids just don’t like you. For no reason. Lose 1D6 HRT. The first time your HP goes below 0, add 1D4+1 to your max HP.
7.SCAR - You wanted that thing so bad! You stole it from the kindest most delicate kid of all. You were caught and beaten up, broken bones, tore skin. You’re covered with scars now. You lost 1D6 STR. When you’re in a melee fight halve your damage roll. If you defeat someone stronger than you, roll 3D6, if the result is higher than your current STR score keep it and lose your damage malus.
8.UNDEAD - You were so unloved. You lacked everything, food, warmth, protection. You barely survived, but somehow you managed. Halve your max HP. If you find a source of love roll 3D6, if the result is higher than your current HRT score keep it and add 1D4 to your max HP.
9.MOSS - You went on a hike alone in the woods and got lost. For days. You found nothing to eat but rotten moss. That messed up your body. You smell funny now. You roll all your STR saves at Disadvantage. If you find a way to clean your blood roll 3D6, if the result is higher than your current STR keep it.
10.BEAST - You’ve lost your head and went too far in a fight. When you came to your senses it was too late. You beat that kid so hard you almost broke their face. Guilt is haunting you now. At the beginning of each fight STR save at Disadvantage, if you fail you can’t attack. If you heal a wounded enemy, roll 3D6, if the result is higher than your current HRT you lose the malus.

The expectation in terms of design is that these backstories would also create a drive for exploration, as they offer the PCs the possibility of a strong evolution. 

The effects of these grim Curses can be quite strong, and I am working on a Gifts table, to somehow compensate for the Curses. This will probably result in unbalanced characters, which fits totally the mood of The Lost bay (I love unbalanced characters!)

You can find the same table nicely formatted in the DM tools pdf on itch.io, they're free or PWYW.





Wednesday, March 10, 2021

TLB Podcast #1 - Yochai Gal - Cairn

The OSR / NSR scene is amazingly fertile and creative. It has a very active community, and I am always curious to discover new works, new worlds, and the artists that create them. The lost bay podcast comes from this curiosity. It's a show about indie tabletop role-playing game artists and designers, and what's behind their creative processes. New episodes are going to be released on a bi-monthly basis. 

The guest for this inaugural episode is Yochai Gal. In October 2020, Yochai Gal released CAIRN, a rules-lite fantasy roleplaying game. Cairn is, among other things, inspired by Yochai's love for the forests and forest-fantasy fiction. 

You can listen to the episode here:


Or on the major podcast platforms:

On youtube, with subtitles:

And soon here

Apple Podcasts
Breaker
Castbox
Overcast

Cairn is available as a printed booklet from online stores, find the full list here



Or in pdf:


Yochai's New School Revolution post


The forest next to Yochai's house. Photos by Yochai Gal.






Friday, February 26, 2021

Odd suitcases and Marshes

This week I added two new tables to the GM Tools

#1.

A D20 Marshes random event table. No encounters, just unsettling stuff. I wrote it for The lost bay, as the setting of the new campaign I run is The Mercury Marshes, but the table is quite game-agnostic, and also setting-era agnostic.

10. A petrified bull. If you touch it, it crumbles down to dust. CONST/WILL/HEART save or your fingers turn into stone.

13.A spiral staircase in the floor. If you take it you can’t go back. It only goes down. After a while it only goes up. Once you climb out of it you are elsewhere, but not so far.



#2.

A D4-D20-D20 Odd suitcases generator. 2 400 possible suitcases filled with plastic dogs, miniature scissors, cheap birds, and such. A major location of the campaign is a dump, which has some sort of temple dedicated to lost luggage. The suitcase generator was made for this setting but is quite easily hackable. 


I bundled all the previously released tools into a unique A5 printable pdf zine. I think it looks nice. The art cover was made by www.instagram.com/perplexingruins/


I will update weekly the zine with new tables/tools as the development of The lost bay continues. Next week I'll probably do something on character backstories, stats/mechanics alterations as a consequence of random backstory.


You can grab it here the-lost-bay.itch.io/the-lost-bay 




The Lost Bay Podcast season 2 big update

Here's an update on Season 2 of The Lost Bay Podcast. Four episodes have already been released, and many more are on the way. Paolo Grec...