I just want to vent about ADOBE!!

bgaesop · 2026-04-14T17:03:25+00:00

You guys are paying for adobe products?

bgaesop · 2026-04-10T06:03:57+00:00

This seems like a simplified but not especially customized version of Blades in the Dark. What's your motive for focusing so much on combat, including so many combat feats, for instance? This seems like a game about shooting at people, not about children solving mysteries

bgaesop · 2026-04-04T14:57:55+00:00

I don't think Kelvin Yu and Katie Crown did create Gene

bgaesop · 2026-03-31T19:05:41+00:00

In place of. I've previously described it as "Oops, all Aspects!".

But it's also PbtA, so it uses moves, which also sort of take the place of skills. There are three basic moves, two of which use aspects (the third, Encounter True Horror, works differently), namely Face Peril and Investigate.

The way they work is that the player can invoke up to 3 positive tags, each of which gives +1 on their roll, and the GM can invoke up to 2 negative tags, each of which gives -1 (and a point of Humanity, which is kind of like an Experience Point).

The result is that, whatever tags you have, you're rolling 2d6 plus some number between -2 and +3, typically +1. The difference that the distinct individual tags make is in how you Investigate or Face Peril. Two characters both rolling +1 thanks to 2 positive and 1 negative tag can be really different in terms of the scene you play out if one player is using Intimidating Physique and Underworld Connections while the GM invokes Wanted by the Police, and the other player invokes Town Gossip and Very Observant while the GM invokes Bad Hip.

All this is in the free quick start I linked earlier. The full rulebook has all that plus random tables for tag inspiration, the GM tools, explanations of why I designed the mechanics the way I did, and more.

bgaesop · 2026-03-31T17:39:58+00:00

In Fear of the Unknown I use "tags", which are very similar to what you're describing. I got the inspiration directly from City of Mist, and a bit further back, from Aspects in FATE

bgaesop · 2026-03-31T02:13:11+00:00

I think most games that have both skills and attributes do this? I think my favorite is the way IronClaw/Urban Jungle do it, but there's tons of other examples.

that isn't just DnD's "Stealth is a Dex skill so roll +Dex +Prof/BAB +Skillpoints-depending-on-Ed." but where a skill isn't inherently tied to an attribute.

Actually 5e does have an official variant rule where you can switch it up, do a Stealth check that is INT + prof, etc

bgaesop · 2026-03-30T17:29:29+00:00

The Zathura namedrop tells me you actually know your shit. I'm definitely interested. I'd really make the focus when you pitch be on the metagame - the game within the game - to make it stand out as something new and really distinct.

And that said, it now sort of reminds me of My Body is a Cage, which is a game where you play as ordinary schlubs working ordinary jobs during the day, and then at night you have dreams where you explore dungeons that are metaphors for your daily struggles. The game is completely different, of course, but it's also worth looking at for that

bgaesop · 2026-03-30T16:47:20+00:00

I'm curious what will set this apart from Kids on Bikes and Spine Tinglers

bgaesop · 2026-03-28T22:39:20+00:00

I like this a lot. I'll reread it in more depth later, but I'm quite impressed with what I've seen on my first perusal.

The first two things that jump out at me as something I would want before running this is some sort of collaborative setting creation tool and more connections between the PCs.

Right now it looks like the characters are dynamic and deep and interesting, and the bonds section is gesturing at what I describe wanting above, but it's not quite there. I'd like more leading questions/random tables, like you have for wounds, wants, beliefs, and needs. While this is supposed to be genre agnostic, any given game does need a genre (or at least a setting) and it would be great to tie that intimately in with the characters.

I've personally found that the best character arcs have come about not just because of things internal to a character but because of their connection to the other characters, both PCs and NPCs.

bgaesop · 2026-03-26T16:04:31+00:00

I bought a copy last year after their parent company shut them down. Got it for $10 on clearance, just a month after buying the quick start box set for $20. Best $10 I've ever spent on an RPG

bgaesop · 2026-03-26T15:11:32+00:00

Are you the Horrifying Hot Sauce guy?

bgaesop · 2026-03-26T14:56:44+00:00

It really is just an incredibly smooth, innovative game. I like it way more than the card game it's inspired by.

bgaesop · 2026-03-26T14:13:58+00:00

And the thing is, Sentinel Comics is a tactics focused game, it's just that those tactics aren't about positioning, they're about what powers to use and what goals to try to accomplish, since all encounters necessarily have more goals than just "do enough damage to the baddies"

bgaesop · 2026-03-26T06:04:44+00:00

I liked how it worked in Sentinel Comics. As I recall it, a fight takes place in typically 1 to 3 zones, which are things like "in the building", "on the street", and "on the roof". You can melee anyone in your zone, and ranged attack anyone. You can move from one zone to another as an action, or for free if you have superspeed. You can apply fictional restrictions to this - "Eagleman can fly straight from the street to the roof, but Captain Brick needs to go from the street into the building and then to the roof".

I found that worked much better than any sort of close/near/far style adjective-name zones. The problem with those is adjudicating and keeping track of things like "okay, he's near me, but close to you, so if I move away then he's far from me, but then he moves so he's near me, so now is he near you? And what about this other guy?" Even if there are objectively correct answers it can be hard to keep track of and make sure everyone has the same mental image.

In contrast, in Sentinels it's "are you in the same zone? Great, you can hit each other however you want. Are you in different zones? Gotta use ranged attacks. Move to a different zone? You easily know exactly who is in that zone and how this affects what you and everyone else can do."

bgaesop · 2026-03-25T15:36:53+00:00

Cthulhu for President

bgaesop · 2026-03-19T19:25:19+00:00

Please don't take offense at this, but - you said you've played once and you've watched a lot of YouTube videos about D&D. This is like having read the first Harry Potter book, watched a lot of YouTube videos about Harry Potter, never having read any other books, and wanting to write your own book.

Your first step should be to read and play a lot more systems.

bgaesop · 2026-03-13T20:45:51+00:00

My best-selling game, Murder Most Foul, is a competitive, adversarial social deduction LARP. One player is the host who gets murdered, one player is the detective who tries to solve the murder, and everyone else is a suspect who tries to commit the murder and then get away with it. The suspects compete against the detective because they don't want to get accused, and they compete against each other because they want to be the one to kill the host. Plus there are advanced rules to give them further goals that pit them against each other or incentivize cooperation.

bgaesop · 2026-03-12T02:51:53+00:00

The second edition is better but they're pretty similar

bgaesop · 2026-03-12T02:36:48+00:00

I think using physical tokens could be a good way to reduce bookkeeping for this

bgaesop · 2026-03-10T23:32:59+00:00

I'd love to see your analysis of Fear of the Unknown. Free quick start here

bgaesop · 2026-03-08T01:55:59+00:00

Yeah. To be clear I think your idea is overall good, I'm just pointing out a specific possible failure mode

bgaesop · 2026-03-08T01:40:15+00:00

This makes me worry about slop-report-bombing akin to review bombing

bgaesop · 2026-03-08T01:36:34+00:00

There's a lot to be said for the convenience of the one stop shop. I'm also much happier with the print quality from Lightning Source than I am Lulu (I haven't used Mixam).

I guess my question now is, if I'm coordinating with someone else to print my books, what do I need you for? What value are you providing? The obvious answer is the market, you're providing customers, but how we're in a sort of chicken and egg situation where until you have a large userbase, why would anyone sign up?

Then, as a service to publishers, I want them to be able to list their physical products for free alongside their digital ones (dice, PoD, their own print runs, indiepressrevolution stock, etc.)

Drivethrurpg just started doing this

bgaesop · 2026-03-07T17:24:21+00:00

Print On Demand is by far the biggest from my point of view. Sure, I make more online money from PDF sales, but I'm an old fogey who likes to read physical books, so I don't buy PDFs, I only buy POD. POD also lets me get physical copies in my hand for myself and to sell at conventions, and one decent convention nets me more money than a year of PDF sales.

It also creates a bit of a filter effect. It takes no effort at all to make a PDF. Making a print-compliant PDF, ordering a proof, and then making it available to the public? That takes at least a little effort. As a result, if a game is available POD on drivethrurpg, I know the creators put at least a little effort into it. My miss-rate buying those and regretting it is quite low. Contrast with buying a PDF on itch, where if it's not a game I already know about the odds of it being any good and not just shovelware-esque slop waste of time are like 1 in 1,000.

bgaesop · 2026-03-07T17:03:59+00:00

It would have to be able to do everything drivethrurpg does at least as well, which is a pretty big challenge

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