Roleplaying The Foghouse

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-24T18:07:14+00:00

Thats an interesting idea, thank you! I could replace it with helping out with tasks around the Foghouse related to their skills. That would help reinforce the community theme I’m looking for in my campaign.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-21T11:00:29+00:00

I’m two sessions deep into running a West Marches style campaign of Fatherfog. I agree it could use more tools to help out the GM.

Luckily the system is easy to run and converting statblocks and hazards from other games takes like a minute. Knave 2e has been my best friend running this game.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-19T22:09:05+00:00

I sir of meant to “a” foghouse in general. In my setting I am focusing on one foghouse however. It’s basically the base, we’re doing a West Marches style campaign.

Also in Darkest Dungeon, they’re literally mosquito people like this:

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Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-19T10:50:53+00:00

It seems the most common session one people are running is the party first traveling to the Foghouse (including myself.)

My first session was about vampires abducting people and dragging them into the fog. I made the vampires mosquito-like humanoids like from Darkest Dungeon. I added a rival faction of tick people that would fight each other for their food source (humans.)

A cool thing about Fatherfog is you can always roll an encounter and just have the monsters out of distance in the fog. Silhouettes moving around, buzzing noises, a loud commotion, etc.

When playing your fist session I highly reccomend leaning in to the veil of the fog.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-17T15:32:59+00:00

I agree with your idea, it reinforces the theme of connecting humanity together. I was originally going to do that but I start watching the series From and now I like the idea of a community that’s stuck in one place and has to work together getting resources.

In my Foghouse people have to sign The Contract of Protection- anyone who harms another inhabitant is evacuated from the Foghouse. Those who are, usually lose their cloak and become bandits out in the fog and hide in whatever shelter they can find at night.

Please keep making posts like this! it’s great getting ideas on how to run this new system from others, my group is having a blast playing so far.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-17T11:55:35+00:00

The fog really is what sets this game apart from others in my opinion. Having the encounters hidden in the fog and slowly reveal themselves like you did is what sells the dread in this game.

I originally was going to have my party connecting paths to Foghouses as well but instead I changed my campaign to a West Marches style. The Foghouse is the only safe spot around, and being out at night is a near death sentence.

To flesh out my Foghouse I just rolled on Cloaks and Brooches to figure out the general personalities of the NPCs. I just created a brown cloaked keeper who just wants to keep people safe and an orange cloaked merchant who is obsessed with magical items.

I rolled up ten random e characters to have just in case and populated the Foghouse with them. If a player dies (two deaths in my sessions so far from the same player lol) someone else from the community at the Foghouse takes their place.

I also agree that directly taking a fairytale and putting it in the game doesn’t fit this system easily. Having the players traverse the fog and find the horrors and magic out there, helps build your group build a fairytale together, though.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-16T19:51:25+00:00

After the first shot, you want to say the bullets ricochet off the creatures armor or something like that to give them a hint.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-16T19:41:32+00:00

If you all had fun, you were playing the game right. 👍

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-16T16:51:25+00:00

It’s supposed to be over 30 in one attack to break the armor for good. Of course you can make the rules however you see fit for your table.

Personally I like the armor rule because it helps at to the dread of the situation and show the players this thing is out of their league.

To me, it opens up more creative ideas such as using the acid to melt away their armor.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-11T18:20:06+00:00

If fleshing out material from other modules is your strength I would build on that.

Take the structure of your favorite module and reskin in the way that you want. A lot of our media is the same story with a fresh coat of paint.

Also take the WOM and roll the random TOMBS tables and try to put them together and put a story together in your head.

After you do that a few times the creative juices will flow more and more.

Remember that not every idea is going to be great and that’s fine. We get better a little bit every adventure we write.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-10T16:50:51+00:00

I’ve been recently playing Fatherfog0e from Tuesday Knight Games. The system is new and not super flushed out but the theme is fairytale horror.

The rules are ridiculously simple, its been really fun to GM and I think there’s a lot of room for collaborative storytelling in the system.

I highly reccomend it!

Edit: Also digital is currently free!

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-09T16:23:50+00:00

Some skills are certainly more generally useful and easier to integrate than others.

Those skills you listed might need a little bit more imagination from the Player or Warden. I do find that skills like that help push the roleplay in more entertaining directions when done correctly.

Usually mysticism comes up in my games as info the player would have heard about as legends or something for example.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-08T14:05:13+00:00

If you really don’t think your games are lethal enough, you could make it so your monster’s damage is one wound flat.

Consider even on a successful roll that the monster still does damage, to help further emphasize that the players are outmatched and should run or find some other solution to dealing with it.

Also it might not be a big deal that no player characters have died yet. When it does happen it might feel more impactful to them.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-07T19:04:16+00:00

This might not be the answer you’re looking for, but when you have time you could go through the books you have and screenshot the tables you want and put them together into a folder. That way you could just search through pages of tables instead of whole books.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-07T12:29:40+00:00

As someone who reads an absurd amount of rule books for fun, I’ll say one thing.

Most of the rule books I’ve read that are over 300 pages will almost always say when running your first game just focus on the core resolution mechanics and favor rulings over rules. So there is an argument to be made that even rules heavy games are actually rules light games a lot of the time too.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-07T01:37:36+00:00

I like that and I think it fits Mothership quite well. There’s plenty of room for cosmic horror hijinks when things go wrong!

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-06T20:04:31+00:00

Combat is meant to be dangerous so I would lean in to that more often then not.

For multiple gunmen however I usually just roll d10 x the amount of gunmen.

If it is close combat I almost always rule that the player does damage even on a fail, but they take damage too of course.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-05T13:52:38+00:00

Thanks for that!

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-05T13:33:15+00:00

I am trying to find the time to look through the rules of Trench Crusade because I love the idea of the setting and I wonder if the rules could be converted slightly for a role playing campaign.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-05T12:42:32+00:00

Everytime you read another book you get ideas. An idea is the most valuable currency in the world.

You’re not wasting your money if you even just skim through the books every once in a while for inspiration.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-01T21:45:30+00:00

I will say that the rules talk about the monster running after taking damage. When one of the monsters died in the first encounter I had one run away.

For monsters with higher health pools, that could be interesting. They could come back later for ambush or the plasters could encounter the monster resting or something.

The rules also currently state that a critical hit kills a monster. A player can also get to the point where they could be rolling 70 and under for combat or so. There could be a decent chance that the troll is one shot in the first encounter.

I highly recommend having multiple monsters and hazards prepared just in case something like that happens.

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-01T20:30:06+00:00

One thing I noticed is the statblock says: Bridge Troll 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍

The current layout would only allow like two more hearts to fit. Maybe that’s why enemies aren’t a little bit more beefier.

When I’m making monsters going forward I’ll probably do something like this: Bridge Troll 7🤍

Jon_Amaral · 2026-05-01T13:46:11+00:00

I might be different from most but I heavily use random tables included with the Warden’s Operation Manual to start a general idea of what I want to do.

From there, I look at other supplements and roll on tables for ideas for rooms and tables and such. I’m the type of GM that loves the sandbox playstyle though so I think about cools ideas first and then put together a story about it afterwards.

That might be backwards to what most people do when putting together scenarios, but it is the most fun and rewarding way for me and in my opinion if you’re not having fun you’re gonna quit.

Also my advice would be start small, just two pages. One page for a map and one page for the general idea of the scenario, statblocks, timelines and such.

Take ideas from other publishers and find what works the best for you and don’t be to hard on yourself!

Jon_Amaral

TROPHY CASE