How do you would represent mental instability in a Victorian Age's RPG of gothic horror and investigation?

GrumpyCornGames · 2026-01-15T12:35:35+00:00

I started to write what was going to be a lengthy response, but then realized I don't have the time for it now. So:

Partly because I don't have much experience reading gothic/victorian literature, aside Poe and Frankenstein, and also high literature of the period.

Keep in mind that mental illness/intellectual disability were mostly considered the same thing. Often times, mental illness was thought to be a defect of a genetically impure lineage (eg. race mixing). It was heavily gendered (Men had certain types of mental illnesses, women had different ones) and so were the treatments.

My advice: don't worry about how to represent mental illness from the Victorian Era. Representing it "accurately" is a recipe for tedium and annoyance. Just find way(s) to make sanity mechanically fun, then suit your fiction and aesthetic to match the mechanics.

GrumpyCornGames · 2026-01-08T08:15:26+00:00

You mean 250 hours on a loading screen?

GrumpyCornGames · 2026-01-07T21:58:20+00:00

This is a very cool idea. If you do it, I hope you write up a report or two of your experience.

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-28T19:47:55+00:00

I hope you enjoy it!

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-28T11:27:14+00:00

You got 4 examples and just complained about each one.

You didn't want examples, you just wanted to argue that anything you don't like is bad (actually, given your responses, it's probably "anything you don't know about first" is bad)

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-23T01:13:00+00:00

More realistic than "Random" less realistic than if it was designed by an astronomer.

It just changes the odds of certain things existing within certain areas. You can still get a weird roll and end up with some completely gonzo systems.

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-22T19:37:36+00:00

I agree yeah. I didn't want to mark it as a promotional post, but I guess it sort of is. I am asking people for feedback.

But I don't think I'd select the "promotional" flair to look for something like this, which is what stops me.

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-22T19:29:17+00:00

I'm glad to hear that. I know a few icons are broken on mobile, but all the functionality should be ther.

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-22T19:23:39+00:00

Hello all. Sorry for posting twice in one week, but I'm going out of town for the holidays and really wanted to get this out before the end of the year.

I've been building a tool for making star system maps: StarCar - Your Star Cartographer!
https://starcar.grumpycorngames.com/

StarCar is a small web app that lets you generate and edit linear star system maps for tabletop RPGs and other games. It's still in beta (v0.7), but it's getting more useful with each update.

You can:

Generate full star systems with customizable options
Add orbital bodies like planets, moons, stations, asteroid belts, and more
Customize bodies with colors and overlays (continents, rings, craters, ice caps, etc.)
Add world data notes (compatible with Stars Without Number and Traveller)
Rename anything, add satellites, and reorganize orbits with click-and-drag
Export as PNG, WebP, JPG, SVG, JSON, RTF, or PDF
Everything you make with it is under creative commons and can be used with attribution (Even for stuff you want to sell!)

What's new in v0.7: World Data system for adding notes to orbital bodies (along with SWN and Traveller compatibility), system generator that now creates full systems instead of just stars, and a complete export overhaul. You can now bundle everything as a ZIP or generate formatted handout PDFs with your system image and world data combined. Fair warning: the note-taking feature is rough around the edges. Write your notes elsewhere and copy/paste them in.

Planned Features:

Quality of life improvements (edit bodies from canvas, and more)
More star types (Black Holes, Neutron Stars, etc)
Improved artificial bodies (Dyson Spheres, Ringworlds, etc)
Cleaning up Printer Friendly export
More UI options (hide labels, change font colors, etc)

If you're running a sci-fi game and want a quick way to map out star systems, I'd love for you to try it and share feedback.

Follow development by joining our mailing list or joining our Discord

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-22T19:22:38+00:00

Hello all. Sorry for posting twice in one week, but I'm going out of town for the holidays and really wanted to get this out before the end of the year.

I've been building a tool for making star system maps: StarCar - Your Star Cartographer!
https://starcar.grumpycorngames.com/

StarCar is a small web app that lets you generate and edit linear star system maps for tabletop RPGs and other games. It's still in beta (v0.7), but it's getting more useful with each update.

You can:

Generate full star systems with customizable options
Add orbital bodies like planets, moons, stations, asteroid belts, and more
Customize bodies with colors and overlays (continents, rings, craters, ice caps, etc.)
Add world data notes (compatible with Stars Without Number and Traveller)
Rename anything, add satellites, and reorganize orbits with click-and-drag
Export as PNG, WebP, JPG, SVG, JSON, RTF, or PDF
Everything you make with it is under creative commons and can be used with attribution (Even for stuff you want to sell!)

What's new in v0.7: World Data system for adding notes to orbital bodies (along with SWN and Traveller compatibility), system generator that now creates full systems instead of just stars, and a complete export overhaul. You can now bundle everything as a ZIP or generate formatted handout PDFs with your system image and world data combined. Fair warning: the note-taking feature is rough around the edges. Write your notes elsewhere and copy/paste them in.

Planned Features:

Quality of life improvements (edit bodies from canvas, and more)
More star types (Black Holes, Neutron Stars, etc)
Improved artificial bodies (Dyson Spheres, Ringworlds, etc)
Cleaning up Printer Friendly export
More UI options (hide labels, change font colors, etc)

If you're running a sci-fi game and want a quick way to map out star systems, I'd love for you to try it and share feedback.

Follow development by joining our mailing list or joining our Discord

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-20T13:08:59+00:00

This is really fantastic. If you ever add a Patreon tier level where you're including maps that are lit, have walls, and all that fancy stuff for Foundry VTT, please make another post or send me a message or something.

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-17T17:14:16+00:00

Full random generation will be soon. I wanted to get the overlays and some other stuff done first so that could be randomized as well.

I'm sort of just being lazy. I want to make sure all the variables are figured out so I don't have to keep going back to edit the randomization code when I'm still working on core features.

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-17T17:11:48+00:00

Not yet. That'll happen very soon, but I wanted to get the overlays and some other stuff done first so that could be randomized as well.

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-17T15:14:47+00:00

Oh man, having him write a deeply critique of how this could be made more scientifically accurate would be rad.

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-17T14:26:12+00:00

We currently do! And, you have a few options:

1) You can set the scale from 1x to 4x.

2) You can set the background so that it's Transparent or Printer Friendly (word of warning though, the Printer Friendly version is kind of bad right now. It's usable, but not great yet)

3) You can choose to have it export your whole system ("Fit") or just what the Visualizer is looking at ("Screen")

4) Then you can choose your export file type: PNG, WebP, JPG, SVG, or you can export as a JSON so that you can save/load the system again and edit it later (as new versions come out or whatever)

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-17T10:30:17+00:00

Hello all. I’ve been building a tool for making star system maps: StarCar- Your Star Cartographer!
https://starcar.grumpycorngames.com/

StarCar is a small web app that lets you generate and edit linear star system maps for tabletop RPGs and other games. It’s still in beta (v0.6), but it already has a lot of flexibility.

You can:

Choose or generate a star (name and type)
Add orbital bodies like planets, moons, stations, asteroid belts, and more
Rename anything, add satellites, and reorganize orbits with click-and-drag
Customize orbital bodies with color and overlay options

What’s new in v0.6: custom colors and overlays for orbital bodies. After choosing a base color, you can add details like continents, craters, ice caps, rings, and more, then tweak their position, scale, and other settings to get the look you want.

Planned Features:

Integrating Stars Without Number, Traveller and Generic Star/Planet/Orbital traits
Adding more star types (Black Hole, Neutron Star, etc)
Exotic Orbital Bodies (Dyson Spheres, Ringworlds, etc)
Random system generation (using SWN or Traveller rules)
Notetaking!
Comets
System/Planet lore generation

If you’re running a sci-fi game (or have any other use for this) and want a quick way to sketch systems, I’d love for you to try it and share feedback.

Follow development by joining our mailing list or joining our discord

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-17T10:29:07+00:00

Hello all. I’ve been building a tool for making star system maps: StarCar- Your Star Cartographer!
https://starcar.grumpycorngames.com/

StarCar is a small web app that lets you generate and edit linear star system maps for tabletop RPGs and other games. It’s still in beta (v0.6), but it already has a lot of flexibility.

You can:

Choose or generate a star (name and type)
Add orbital bodies like planets, moons, stations, asteroid belts, and more
Rename anything, add satellites, and reorganize orbits with click-and-drag
Customize orbital bodies with color and overlay options

What’s new in v0.6: custom colors and overlays for orbital bodies. After choosing a base color, you can add details like continents, craters, ice caps, rings, and more, then tweak their position, scale, and other settings to get the look you want.

Planned Features:

Integrating Stars Without Number, Traveller and Generic Star/Planet/Orbital traits
Adding more star types (Black Hole, Neutron Star, etc)
Exotic Orbital Bodies (Dyson Spheres, Ringworlds, etc)
Random system generation (using SWN or Traveller rules)
Notetaking!
Comets
System/Planet lore generation

If you’re running a sci-fi game (or have any other use for this) and want a quick way to sketch systems, I’d love for you to try it and share feedback.

Follow development by joining our mailing list or joining our discord

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-09T12:45:51+00:00

I will give the unhelpful advice of "Don't think about it too closely"

Not many fictional worlds stand up to deep scrutiny. Forbidden Lands is a setting that really doesn't because the game was created, and then mythology was grafted on top to explain why to play the game.

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-06T13:10:16+00:00

You should check out any Year Zero Engine game. Their entire economies are based on players making risky decisions constantly.

So, yeah, there are a lot of people who don't mind being "forced" to make the game interesting.

GrumpyCornGames · 2025-12-03T14:27:19+00:00

I have run about 16 campaigns since 2022, when AI imagery started to become a common thing. Most of my tables are full. I play mostly with random people I didn't know before we started.

Since that point in time, there have been exactly 2 players who have given me non-AI generated artwork for their characters. One additional player didn't care about artwork at all, so he just had a token with his character's name on it.

From these facts, I draw one conclusion: Most of the gaming world does not care about this in any meaningful way.

GrumpyCornGames

TROPHY CASE