POKEMON ANALOGUE SANDBOX FOR A 5-YEAR OLD KID

 My 5yo child caught sight of this in my feed (on some platform or other): 

ANIMON STORY

...and of course they were immediately curious! They're just getting to that age where they're moving on from Paw Patrol and taking an interest in more varied worlds with higher stakes for the characters: Pokémon and Star Wars being the two franchises most appealing to them at the moment.

The game Animon Story was crowdfunded to great success last year and was recently nominated for  Dicebreaker's Best Roleplaying Game' category (the winner was Women are Werewolves, in case you were desperate to know who won). It is currently available at this link, but I would recommend taking a look at the free playtest available on itch.io before committing the tanks. 

Having looked at the playtest, I was impressed by the bold artwork and simple, double-spread layout (example page below). I printed out the entire playtest on photographic paper and they immediately felt to be of "retail quality", if that makes sense. My kid was suitably impressed.

Animon Story Playtest page, text available from the linked free playtest

However, I felt for the purpose of (gently) introducing my young child to RPGs it was a little too crunchy. To be clear, this is not a critique, just a statement of how my personal preferences didn't align with the game's design intent, and also the fact that "five year old kid" is probably not the game's target audience. I'm also aware that your child might enjoy this level of crunch: in which case, you consider ordering the full version of the game. 

I wanted to try something different: as it happens, Animon Story was an excellent catalyst for a few ideas that my child and I are going to explore further.

ULTIMATE ANIMIST MECHANIC: EVERYTHING IS A REACTION

 * TAKES DEEP BREATH *

...all actions are resolved by a 2d6 reaction roll- and specifically a reaction roll: this is god/the spirits/the fates/the forces of the universe responding to your actions based on how much they "like" you.

(or, more specifically, how much they react in your favour)

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This emerged from the ongoing GENIUS LOCI project:

• Atop the Wailing Dunes
• MOSAIC strict Genius Loci
  
• Initial Genius Loci post
• Refined Genius Loci post

...being that, beyond animals and plants being treated the same way we treat NPCs... isn't time to start thinking of the terrain and weather in the same way?

This idea also occurred as a result of how we're resolving skill/ ability checks in CITY OF GHOSTS at the moment, which I'll elaborate on towards the end of this post.

The One Hour Pariah Sandbox: City of Ghosts Session 2 Play Report

Due to time constraints and inspired by Luke Gearing's one-hour megadungeon sessions, I'm running a weekly PARIAH sandbox during my Friday lunch break. This is the second play report: track down all related posts at this link  

Between sessions, I posted on the r/osr subreddit (and also on the NSR Cauldron), seeking advice regarding this undertaking. There were some valuable responses which I'll summarise below, before getting into what happened in session 2...

THE MOON

Clear the table.

Place the map of the moon (as big as you can print) in the centre.

Light a candle.

Play Dawn of Worlds on the lunar map until the candle burns out,

at which point the pariahs return to their bodies with memories of being gods and creating civilisations.

- Pariah Volume 1, page 49

Please print the moon map above.

Next, download Dawn of Worlds:
http://www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf

Never let it be said I never give you anything!

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The One Hour Pariah Sandbox: City of Ghosts Session 1 Play Report

Due to time constraints and inspired by Luke Gearing's one-hour megadungeon sessions, I'm hoping to run a weekly PARIAH sandbox during my Friday lunch break. This is the first play report: track down all related posts at this link 

Draft cross-section of the valley

The PCs

• Ugly Evening, exiled for forbidden sorcery and Rotten Antelope, exiled for thieving (both played by J). Ugly evening has a pet, "probably a dog"
• Nimble Goat the spirit-touched victim of a blood feud and Wandering Jackal, the strong girl with double-headed axe, an aurochs and dog (both played by C)
• An assumed "quantum cast" of as-yet unidentified pariahs, on standby for when other players drop in and out of the game

Anthropology and Archaeology: The RPG Blog Carnival

This is essentially a slush-pile post: last September, user Rook of Beneath Foreign Planets on the Weird and Wonderful Worlds discord server hosted the RPG Blog Carnival with the theme Anthropology and Archaeology. The complete list of posts is at this link is a veritable treasure trove.

Beautiful Neolithic figurines, Gozo Museum of Archaeology, Malta

My first (and I should add, incomplete) degree was in anthropology and it's a discipline I would dearly like to return to one day, possibly when (if?) I (get to?) retire. Consequently I had a few ideas but never, had a chance to expand on any of them. The following is a list of posts I’m likely never going to write out in full: I hope they might inspire someone to make something more of them. In no particular order...

New Pariah Generator: CITY OF GHOSTS campaign

Ahead of Friday's inaugural "lunchbox" it became clear that a new generator was needed! Excellent, a chance to tear my hair out over Javascript... here's a post explaining what I mean by "lunchbox" first:

https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-city-of-ghosts-sandbox-playtest.html 

...here's the latest character generator:

* * *

Weapons & proficiency

I saw this beautiful image of an opalite spearhead on a discord server (the image is a screengrab from this video https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Bffz6HjrF0w, thank you, Krisnan) and it set me to thinking about weapons: specifically, proficiency and enchantment.

Image showing an opalite spearhead being held up to the sun.

Additional big shout out to ANCIENT CRAFT for their ongoing posting of Neolithic and late palaeolithic tool making videos.

This is the nerdiest post I've made in a while and I'm proud of that. Disc-horsers prepare to be bored stiff... you may want to skip to the part marked LEGENDARY WEAPONS as that's probably more fun.

THE CITY OF GHOSTS: SANDBOX & PLAYTEST

A recent trip to Dragonmeet involving actual, face-to-face communication and the rolling of dice instilled a deep longing to get back to the gaming table. Sadly, sitting down with my partner to plan out the next few months it dawned on both of us that our lives are not going to be our own for a very long time. This is the price of having children in a declining former superpower, far from the embrace of a supportive extended family—an arrangement we entered voluntarily and could (in theory) escape at any time, so please don't send your sympathies. Nonetheless the reality remains fixed: no nights off for elf-games.

(Foot note: need an alternative semi-humorous shorthand for the RPGs I play: "elf-games" has the whiff of vanilla fantasy... one that springs to mind was "spirit-games" but that sounds like a Victorian parlour game) 

There's also the matter of this cover image, first shared in this post back in May last year: https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2022/05/pariah-volume-2-city-of-ghosts.html

City of Ghosts cover image by Jef Cox

In short, I have a lot of material ready to go but I want to explore it at the table before releasing it to the world. Fortunately, inspiration was at hand in the form of Ben Lawrence's megadungeon podcast, in which Luke Gearing was interviewed. Turns out that Luke's only gone and been running a weekly online game in his one hour lunch break. Having said that, special mention must go to Pat Eyler aka Foot of the Mountain who has previously shared details of his (face-to-face) lunchtime campaign on his Patreon, which undoubtedly sowed the seed for this latest venture...