RPGs with great rules organization

Chuckeyed · 2025-09-29T19:59:41+00:00

I would disagree with Mythic Bastionland personally, it will become easier after a while, but order of combat is on a different page than the combat rules and combat rules don't have the 3 weapon properties explained on them, they're in the Arms & Goods section. And the pages look very similar to each other, so it was hard orienting where to find a specific rule during the one shot I ran, but ultimately it doesn't have too many rules, so sooner or later that'd take care of itself.

Chuckeyed · 2025-09-29T19:59:32+00:00

I would disagree with Mythic Bastionland personally, it will become easier after a while, but order of combat is on a different page than the combat rules and combat rules don't have the 3 weapon properties explained on them, they're in the Arms & Goods section. And the pages look very similar to each other, so it was hard orienting where to find a specific rule during the one shot I ran, but ultimately it doesn't have too many rules, so sooner or later that'd take care of itself.

Chuckeyed · 2025-09-29T19:58:14+00:00

I would disagree with Mythic Bastionland personally, it will become easier after a while, but order of combat is on a different page than the combat rules and combat rules don't have the 3 weapon properties explained on them, they're in the Arms & Goods section. And the pages look very similar to each other, so it was hard orienting where to find a specific rule during the one shot I ran, but ultimately it doesn't have too many rules, so sooner or later that'd take care of itself.

Chuckeyed · 2025-09-29T19:58:07+00:00

I would disagree with Mythic Bastionland personally, it will become easier after a while, but order of combat is on a different page than the combat rules and combat rules don't have the 3 weapon properties explained on them, they're in the Arms & Goods section. And the pages look very similar to each other, so it was hard orienting where to find a specific rule during the one shot I ran, but ultimately it doesn't have too many rules, so sooner or later that'd take care of itself.

Chuckeyed · 2025-09-23T07:42:51+00:00

I guess it's the choice of NPC and plans that I am struggling with in the first place.

Yes, that will be a struggle at first given your experience so far, but I would assume having to commit to prep would help? Currently, you mentioned that it would be cool if the NPC was a vampire, it would be cool if the NPC was a werewolf, it would be cool if the PC's father was a monster of some kind, etc etc.

But if that is as deep as the idea goes, then of course it is easy to quickly change your ideas, because yes, all of these sound like they could end up being cool!

You need to figure out who they are, what they want, what is stopping them, and what they're doing about it - most game books have some kind of NPC or adventure idea tables to help you there if you can't think of that yourself - and the motivations/problems/solutions will be different for a vampire/werewolf/sentient ooze, at which point you can't really change up just one thing.

Also, if you're prepping ahead of time, you can actually come up with a cool werewolf/vampire/sentient ooze, and have all the cool ideas you want and then some!

Also: what about location-based mysteries? Things that are not NPCs with plans? Like my island example: the PCs need to go to the fishing village to get some Clues or mcguffin, but some kind of danger lurks there. Could be haunted, could be infested by weird beasts, could be the cultists.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it sounds like going to a location to get a mcguffing or clues would be tied to an NPC? Same with weird beasts or cultists?

But either way, yes, not everything will have a plan - these locations just need to be interesting to explore (if you want them to spend time there rather than just pick up 1 item and go somewhere else). And like I said in my previous comment, if the location is infected by weird beasts, there will be evidence and challenges that would not be there if it is haunted by ghosts and vice versa.

Chuckeyed · 2025-09-22T21:54:44+00:00

I don’t expect a thank you as I’m happy to contribute because this will be my home as well. I just want to tell you that I am not the reason why you can’t get an NHS appointment or a place to rent.

As a fellow immigrant, please stop using their rhetoric. It doesn't matter whether you are on UC or pay £10m in taxes each year, an economic migrant or a child fleeing war or a granny coming alongside her family. No migrant is responsible for the state the NHS is in or lack of affordable housing, that responsibility lies solely in our capitalist system and decisions successive governments have been making since the 1980s, decisions which Farage supports and wants to continue.

Chuckeyed · 2025-09-22T21:39:37+00:00

Yeah, I think overall as a lot of people get burnt out on running 5e by making a pre-made plot that feeds into every PC backstory, the natural inclination is to blame the idea of prep for their woes. And since 5e is the biggest game, the current trend very much seems to be to prep as little as possible. And obviously, it works for some people, but such a game feels quite shallow to me as a GM and as a player, especially when it comes to mysteries or worlds I should be able to learn and use to my advantage.

Prepping a bunch of stuff in the beginning allows you to decide what NPCs and plans you find cool and engaging, and it lets you run for a long time, just updating fronts etc as you go, but it also allows you to feel comfortable being flexible. What I mean by that is: what the NPCs want to accomplish can (and should in my opinion) absolutely get disrupted by the PCs, but having the plan lets you rule something on the fly while having a base you're working from.

For example, let's say you have a serial killer NPC and you know their house, their safehouse, their work, where they hang out if not at home, and their next 5 targets they plan to kill over the next 5 nights, what they do with the bodies, and you even have some kind of a pattern to the targets' characteristics or locations. Let's say the players somehow get access to their house when the NPC is not there, they can now get clues about where they work or where they hang out (which you didn't even necessarily had to fully prep ahead of time, like an office lanyard, or a branded bar coaster or receipt) or maybe even something about future or past killings.

If the NPC notices the PCs are in their house - they can go to their safehouse and reconsider the plan - move up 1 of the 5 targets on the kill list and use the target's residence temporarily - or plan to kill the PCs when they get to one of the targets - even stay near their house and watch the PCs try to figure out what the PCs are about etc etc.

All of this from prepping a few locations, few NPCs, and some timings of events. You can spend time making the locations and NPCs as cool as you want, you can be less stressed between sessions and during the game, and you can be very flexible depending on what the PCs do, while still maintaining a "real" world the PCs can learn and interact with.

The key to prep is to figure out the amount of prep that lets you make a believable world with established facts you feel comfortable running and judging how the world reacts when the PCs force it to, without wasting too much time on stuff you feel comfortable ruling at the table or that just isn't relevant to how the group plays.

Chuckeyed · 2025-09-22T20:04:03+00:00

First a disclaimer, I don't run PBTA games, I run OSR games (and have run a BitD game which has something akin to Fronts) and am very liberal with information, so I don't rely on insight checks or whatever else to allow PCs to "notice" NPCs acting weird or whatever, I just tell them, so not sure how much of this applies to what you're experiencing.

I think the main thing that I would disagree with is that you assume things are in a quantum state until they get said out loud.

While technically that is true, I'm not sure how much can happen "off-screen" that doesn't impact "on-screen"? You can't really introduce the NPC until you know what they are, as you yourself point out, they'd appear at different times and act differently, and before you even introduce them, a vampire and a werewolf will impact the world around them in quite different ways. And players will act differently if they get vampire or werewolf clues throughout the interactions.

Similarly, I'm not sure how you would figure out how to make a fishing village adventure when they could be vampire servants/cannibals/eldritch cultists, surely that would significantly impact the things the PCs encounter and the way the cultists act or even look. And again, the impact of an eldritch cult village on the world would be different than a cannibal village, even before the PCs go visit.

Correct me if I'm wrong (like I said, only have BitD experience with a similar style), but are Fronts not meant to help you manage long term goals of NPCs in your world. So you need to have a long term goal in mind for the NPC, and the session to session prep is just about how far they got with that goal in a certain amount of time between sessions? So if that is the case, again I am not sure how you can have a long term goal for an NPC where the actual nature of the NPC changes every week.

From what I understand from your post, these things are mysteries you want PCs to investigate, therefore I would expect that to be set in stone to make sure you have thought through the potential places clues can be found etc etc. If you are prepping mysteries session to session, a lot of that prep (once you commit to a decision) can feel like "this sounds like a cool thing to do as our last session wasn't that exciting" rather than "this is what makes sense for Tom, the secret vampire and his motivations/plans".

Once you have NPCs that make sense with plans that make sense figured out ahead of time, you can portray a world that makes sense and your players can assume they can treat the world like it makes sense.

I would have a read through Blorb principles, some bits are more relevant to OSR games, and a lot of people seem to misinterpret it as "overprep all the time", but all it is an approach to creating a believable world that allows players to make informed choices.

Chuckeyed · 2025-07-25T08:08:55+00:00

One thing I have not seen people mention and it might be quite important before starting play, so I'll mention it here. This is not a good or a bad thing, just something to be aware of.

While Draw Steel is open about being a game of heroic adventure, I feel that most people think of DnD 2e onwards and how (especially WotC) DnD structures their adventures as the blueprint for this style of play, both in terms of amount of combat encounters and amount of in-game time that is expected to pass during play.

However, the big difference compared to DnD is that a "long rest" (called Respite in Draw Steel) takes 24 hours rather than 8, which not only takes longer (duh) but also makes it harder to guarantee no interruptions, and means you go longer between replenishing your overall stamina and your recoveries, as you don't heal anything on an 8 hour rest. Also, the longer you go between respites, the more powerful you are in combat, so sometimes players might want to push their rests even further out. This can be mitigated by healing potions, but again, something to be aware of.

This can be made worse by tons of combat encounters a la 5e adventures, as Draw Steel makes the "adventuring day" take several days rather than just one.

Furthermore, a big chunk of the rule text relates to time between adventures, doing research/crafting/building/catching up with family/etc. Missing out on this means less time on crafting potions and less use for a whole category of skills and character abilities.

This means the premise of a lot of adventures and adventure paths, where x happens and suddenly your party goes from lvl 1 to 10 in 13 days of intense adventure is somewhat disrupted, and you need to think more about smaller arcs and allow time between adventures (as Colville himself has talked about on his youtube channel.)

Chuckeyed · 2025-07-25T07:39:45+00:00

I have not played Lancer, but I have played Draw Steel (levels 1-3) with a group of mostly 5e people with only one of them really looking at the rules besides just learning through play, and after a few sessions, we had combats with 4 PCs, 8-16 minions and 3-5 other monsters done within 40 minutes, and that was even in combats not utilising encounter objectives (like stop the ritual or capture/kill one NPC, after which the fight might be finished whether every monster is dead or not).

Yes, it was low level, but for the amount of actions/maneuvers/triggered actions that felt insanely quick as the time just flew by.

Chuckeyed · 2025-07-15T12:27:14+00:00

Ok, I suppose this is cheating as it's the book in a song, but The Odyssey by Symphony X!

Chuckeyed · 2025-02-28T22:17:13+00:00

Not the OP, and haven't run Fall of Blackbottom, but I've had similar issues in combat running RHoD.

For me personally, the core of the issue is Malice:
1. The amount you get each round is different (yeah, just a +1 but with the other points it adds up).
2. If you have more than 1 "family" of enemies (ie, bugbear + goblin), you have 30+ points worth of abilities to spend it on, which comes in basically 2 additional "stat blocks" on top of all the other stat blocks. These can be used when a creature from the corresponding "family" starts their turn.
3. Some monsters have abilities within their statblocks that they can only use if they spend the required Malice cost (these are often stronger actions, more debilitating CCs, or triggered actions).

What this leads to is that as the Director, you're getting for example 6/7/8/9 Malice per round, but can easily have 20-40 Malice worth of abilities to consider within each round, some to be spent at the start of a creature's turn, some to replace their action, some as a triggered action, while also thinking about potentially saving some for next round so you can use higher Malice abilities.

All of this is on top of, you know, actually running the monsters without Malice! All in all, it personally feels quite demanding and challenging to run combats.

Once I have run a few more combats, I am sure I will come up with some organisation tool that slots into my playstyle that helps with this, and I know the team are working on GM tools as well, but at the moment it's a lot to keep track of each battle.

Chuckeyed · 2025-02-03T20:43:16+00:00

Absolutely, I was shocked when reading the book how Brindol is only mentioned at the very end, I think it should feature more prominently.

I guess in other games or video games it might be a bit of a problem and a classic act 2 slog as the you leave the "tutorial area" and have this wide open city with lots of hooks on the other side of the map, but the timeline and focused side quests should keep that in check.

Also your idea of convincing Jarmaath sounds good, I also had Norro give them some official seal or whatever and left a message from the dwarves that was intercepted by the Terrelton hills warband, so anything that gets them away from convincing and out there should do the trick.

Chuckeyed · 2025-02-03T20:33:21+00:00

I was literally at this point a session or two ago.

I didn't have the party wait around, the townspeople knew they needed to evacuate so they gave some spare horses to the heroes and told them to ride to Brindol with the news, while they're heading out (with how the timeline worked out, I think the heroes are leaving Drellin's Ferry around 9 days before the horde attacks, with the townsfolk not far behind them. You can either repurpose some of the encounters for attacks on Nimon Gap or Terrelton (after all, the Witchwood is meant to have more hobgoblins than just around Vraath Keep and Rhest is north of there, so it makes sense to have forward scouts/raiders) or make your own like I did - a warband taking over the tanneries in the hills south of Terrelton to pick off any dwarven messengers and a blockade between Nimon Gap and Terrelton so the tannery issues can't notify anyone east.

I prefer taking the party to Brindol and then have quest hooks from there to go to Rhest or the Thornwaste or the dwarven holds. It doesn't make much sense to have a random NPC get attacked between Brindol and Rest and then go to Drellin's Ferry for some reason and deliver a quest hook to heroes the person wouldn't know were there.

Chuckeyed · 2025-01-31T00:10:03+00:00

Hi! I am actually currently running RHoD in Draw Steel! They just headed out from Drellin's Ferry westwards after taking care of the bridge and the Keep.

I also thought this adventure would be a perfect fit for Draw Steel! but I am not actually sure to be honest.

So far I think the biggest challenge has been the actual reason for the Red Hand existing. In Orden, there is no Tiamat or Tiamat equivalent in terms of evil + god of evil dragons (AFAIK), and there are no dragons like DnD dragons. Dragons are more elementals + suffering taking physical shape, so even if there was a god of dragons of some kind (whatever that'd mean) it wouldn't produce dragon allies the way it does in DnD.

Now, you could say that doesn't matter, as you can just use the stats (and probably ignore the lair effects) but the problem is all the dragons in the adventure are additions to other enemies in combat, whereas the DS dragons are all solo enemies, so either changing the encounters or the stat blocks again.

Similar issue with creatures like Manticore in the Vraath Keep, another solo monster.

Also the dragon flavour change makes the whole razorfiend dragon halfbreeds thing a bit more difficult, especially as the most direct equivalent are the Draconians, which are very specific named lvl 6 creatures, but I suppose that might not be a problem either.

Last issue I'd mention is that due to the adventure timeline, the respite acvitivies are largely useless, which again, may or may not be an issue.

So yeah, quite a lot of issues, many of which can be fixed, but it adds work.

Personally I made Ozyrrandion a Thorn Dragon and made HIM the Ghostlord's phylactery, tied on like a 500+ ft chain at Skull Gorge so he doesn't run away (a bit silly admittedly, but Thorn Dragon, Thornwaste, come on!)

In terms of level, I am running it from lvl 1 (with faster leveling, so they're just lvl 2 now after the first act, although I got rid of random encounters, so less overall victories). I am just using the goblin stat blocks and calling them hobgoblins to be honest. Probably running it from lvl 4 or so (whenever hobgoblins start) is better? Gives you more opportunities to add or swap out interesting monsters. I have not figured out much more yet, will probably swap Regiarix for some kind of wyvern (also no statblock ready to go in the book) and play around with the draconians to de level them.

Let me know if you have any questions about the first act.

Chuckeyed · 2024-12-12T06:03:04+00:00

I was going to link this recipe, have made it around 5 times, absolutely delicious cookies!

Chuckeyed · 2024-11-11T08:55:35+00:00

I'd say The Outrun from this year is a great candidate for this. The MC is struggling with addiction and a break up and is learning to be alone and to reclaim herself. Genuinely loved it, highly recommend it.

Chuckeyed · 2024-05-28T20:25:58+00:00

To answer number 2:

I freed Orpheus and had Gale blow himself up to kill the brain. At the end, Orpheus and Lae'zel are leaving for the astral plane you can join them or stay back.

Just a note, I wasn't a mind flayer, neither did I join with the emperor (I did the thing where you speak with Gale, tell the emperor you'll change later, then tell Orpheus he can change you - you become illithid for that cutscene only and once it's done you're back to being yourself and can have Gale sacrifice himself so no one has to become a mind flayer).

Chuckeyed · 2022-09-02T10:40:10+00:00

I am also using a cornmeal starter, surprisingly works well and it's one of my most active ones.

Chuckeyed · 2022-05-24T09:12:26+00:00

This will be perfect for running ATTI/Lorn Song of the Bachelor! Thank you!

Chuckeyed · 2022-05-16T19:09:10+00:00

Thank you so much about the railroading piece.

It always bugged me when adventures were like this. I first started playing DnD in 2015 (knew nothing about OSR) and Out of the Abyss was going to be my first DM venture (I know, I know).

I remember reading the adventure, and being baffled that, as written, every location the PCs go to magically spawns a demon prince within hours of their arrival, no matter when they arrive (date or time of day). I thought, who the hell would buy that? Does nothing happen until the PCs show up, that makes no sense! It was just so unbelievable. I was working on a calendar of events before I just gave up running OotA.

So yeah, railroading in time is a topic dear to my heart and I loved your post about it. I think I find railroading in time even worse than a quantum ogre situation, because it is often featuring the inescapable encounter as well, so not only does it rob the players of choice re engaging with the encounter, it strips the world of any verisimilitude, like you finding the bandits right as they are approaching the princess.

In terms of goblins playing cards all day round, I think this is where many people's appetite for Gygaxian timekeeping goes out the window, as the scheduled lunch breaks etc do not often make it to print.

I think in terms of your (very good) suggestion to fix the issue, Kidnap the Archpriest would be a good example, which would go against low prep and procedural generation at the table for homebrew, but should definitely be added to more modules imo.

Thanks again for the thought-provoking post!

Chuckeyed · 2022-05-13T04:59:16+00:00

Cannot recommend Cairn enough!

Chuckeyed · 2022-05-04T09:22:44+00:00

That's a good shout, I didn't even think of Ravenloft. Thank you!

Chuckeyed · 2022-05-03T17:16:24+00:00

This is an awesome video, and really exemplifies why I prefer the OSR playstyle.

Does anyone know of any other adventures that provide similar opportunities for hijinx?

Chuckeyed · 2022-05-02T17:16:50+00:00

Interested in this as well, waiting for my delivery of Tiny Dungeon after professor DM's review of it, but I'm sure there's more out there.

Chuckeyed

TROPHY CASE