HILLS OF THE DEMON BEAR (a PARIAH hex)

Having recently shared an additional hex for the Atop the Wailing Dunes sandbox (title: randomly generated) it occurred to me that I hadn't posted the second hex in the series, despite it being up on itch already. Anyway, here it is in JPEG format:

I heard a rumour: seeding a sandbox

 

A very silly superpower, now on Netflix. You might be better off playing Molotov College by WH Arthur

This post has nothing to do with Umbrella Academy, and everything to do with how to randomise rumour-mongering in a TTRPG sandbox. Sandbox in this context refers to any open-world campaign where narrative is emergent rather than plotted, though writing that maybe it's better to say it's "character plotted" rather than "player plotted". Anyway, another discussion, for another post.

EBUA & THE SPIRIT MOUNTAIN (a PARIAH hex)

 A fortnight ago I shared GENIUS LOCI, a wilderness exploration procedure based around territory-as-spirit. I included an individual hex to a) demonstrate how the procedure could be further "fleshed out" and b) to provide a bit of "gameable" content to PARIAH fans and readers.

Here's another hex: a volcanic spirit-mountain protected by the guardian EBUA.

Review: Gangs of Titan City Quickstart

THE BEST THING RPG bloggers can do to support RPG creators is to make additional gameable content for those games—especially adventures.  The second best thing to do to offer one's support is to review their content, bring it to one's readership and allow them to make a judgement as to whether or not it might be for them. Over the next few months I intend to do a little bit more of both, starting today with a review of  the Gangs of Titan City—Quickstart which is available to download for free, now: 

https://soulmuppet-store.co.uk/products/gangs-of-titan-city-quickstart

Disclaimer:

1. This game is published by SOULMUPPET, who currently distribute the print edition of PARIAH Volume 1[a game I wrote]. I have no other commercial stakes in this house however...
2. ...the game is currently being kick-started, I backed it, and part of the reason for me posting this review is that YOU back it and get it over the line so I can get my hands on the hard copy.

Here's the Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/soulmuppet/gangs-of-titan-city-grimdark-urban-roleplaying

Index Update June 2022

Nearly a year since my last update to the index. This is now done and can be read here:

https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2020/12/200-posts-before-2021.html

Looks likely I'll have published 300 posts before the year is out. Any ideas for what I could for a milestone?

(BTW, index also accessible from the top of the blog)

Heart of the Primal Delve: ANOTHER One-Sheet Adventure Powered by Hex-Flower Tech!

Announcing Heart  of the  Primal Delve, a one-sheet procedural generator made with PARIAH in mind (but easily adaptable to other systems):

GENIUS LOCI and FOOTHILLS OF THE TEETH

I think I've managed to distil the ideas of previous posts concerning landscape/hex/environment as NPC into a much neater package. Given that I've been enthusing the virtues of Michael Prescott's MOSAIC Strict I thought it would be a nice challenge to see how much of the concept could be squeezed onto a single spread:

The concept being that as a party of travellers moves through an unfamiliar territory, there actions and conduct impact the environment: the spirit-of-place responds to their presence.

The word "shaman"

Today I updated two of my games on itch and DTRPG, removing the word "shaman" and replacing it with alternatives. Henceforth, materials published on this blog and by Atelier Hwei are not going to use the words shaman or shamanic and — it is my intention to update the rest of published material so those words are no longer used. References within previous blog posts will remain.

For clarity: I have taken this decision for a number of reasons, all which pertain to real-world cultural sensitivity rather than aesthetic or game-related reasons. Apologies if you clicked on this hoping for a post about a "word-shaman" character class, but I think this is important.

PARIAH XX

Towards the end of last year I found myself fantasising about playing face-to-face RPGs again, and toyed with the idea of rocking up to a FLGS with a copy of PARIAH, a mini-hexcrawl and my winning (if somewhat crooked) smile. It did occur to me that the character sheet and the rules might be daunting for a new player... and wanted something lighter. 

Prior to that point, also last year (or the year before? Time is bendy) JFUR explained she'd made a game  called 17XX as part of a micro RPG jam all using the same SRD, which happened to be Jason Tocci's SRD 24XX. This was hot on the heels of my interview with Jim Parkin and a growing.. murmuration...about the FKR scene.

It took me until last week to finally bring these facts together and produce a lo-fi version of everyone's favourite psychedelic animist proto-Neolithic RPG...

HEART: Delving into the world of story games

Here's a shift in.. well, certainly not tone, but... game philosophy? Regular readers will know that my main frame of RPG reference is the OSR, meaning that the mechanical chassis to which I default is 1980s D&D. However...

Heart: the City Beneath is available to buy

...I am aware that other systems exist. 

This is a post about how and why I came to run a Heart: The City Beneath campaign, and all the people I had to kill along the way. 

ANIMA: MOSAIC Strict Spirit Magic

What's This?

I'm fond of the free-form magic system that was included in PARIAH Volume 1 and have written multiple posts about using hit dice in a similar way to GLOG magic dice, a number of ritual magic posts (including this one) and an attempt at summarising free-form spirit-magic for the post-kickstarter crowd. 

Fond, yes, but not in love... and perhaps it's time to take some advice from Jim Parkin (via William Faulkner) and kill my darlings...

PARIAH VOLUME 2: City of Ghosts

I had planned to write a long-winded post explaining the major changes to my RPG design philosophy and other nonsense that would not be fun for me to write and possibly much less fun for you to read.

Given that a picture paints a thousand words, please take this image instead:

City of Ghosts cover image, WIP by Jef Cox

We'll be launching a kickstarter for this at some point next month.

Interview by Weird & Wonderful Worlds

I was simultaneously honoured and humbled by Maxcan7 (of Weird and Wonderful Worlds) offering to interview me last month. That interview is available NOW via the following link:

https://weirdwonderfulworlds.blogspot.com/2022/01/alone-in-labyrinth-weird-wonderful.html

Be warned: it was conducted via instant message, so my tendency to ramble was indulged. 

Hope you enjoy it.

Check out the whole series, there's some great interviews including ScrewHead McDuff, Spwack, Semiurge and some other people whose names don't begin with "S" — including Patrick Stuart.

https://weirdwonderfulworlds.blogspot.com/search/label/interview

Demi-Humans & Alignment: Dwarfs

Continuing my extrapolation and twisting of original material to create a new chassis to run old school modules I'm jotting down some notes about so-called "demi"-humans. 

This was originally meant to be part of the "alignment" post. Likewise my post about elves (forthcoming) was supposed to go on the end of this one, but I started to ramble...

Previous posts in this series:

• Initial concept:
  https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/09/reverse-engineered-adventure-game.html

• Hit Points, Hit Dice, Death and Dismemberment etc.
  https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/11/generic-adventure-game-hit-protection.html

Most pertinent to this post... alignment:
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/11/alignment.html

 

Image courtesy The Internet

DEMI-HUMANS 

What is a Demi-Human? 

Dungeons & Dragons has always taken a Tolkien-esque approach to "demi-humans" and "humanoids":  dwarves [sic] and elves are treated as "races" rather than the magical spirits that appear in our myths and folklore. This treatment is extended to orcs, goblins, gnomes etc. The clue is in the terminology used: they are human-like or human derived, or variations (or corruptions) of humans.

Folding that back on itself, what if they became "in world" what they are outside the fiction: projections of human ideals? These are spirits rendered flesh: they exist because of our stories and folklore, and our belief in tales of ancient kingdoms in forgotten mountains or slender gender-fluid aliens materialising in dark forests.

They do not have economies and cultures and taxonomies, they are archetypes.

Demi-Humans and Alignment

When I first started to think about alignment again, may brain did this:

• Law vs Chaos
• Clerics vs Magic-Users  
• Dwarfs vs Elves

As with other binary pairs, there are (multiple and interesting) exceptions, but I like this set up as a foundation.