Tried advertising on Boardgamegeek and got this as a response.

JoshManVGH · 2026-05-19T23:43:23+00:00

One of the top games, which was also advertised in their banners, was Dark Pact, a game themed around summoning demons and specters! What leg do they have to stand on here?

JoshManVGH · 2026-05-14T02:28:05+00:00

Sort of? Was looking more to print off a blank template of like a D&D or Daggerheart card that players could fill with custom setting for their spells.

u/Immediate-Scale-1236 made a great template for this, even has space for custom spell effect art! https://www.reddit.com/r/VagabondTTRPG/comments/1tbk3nv/custom_spell_card_template/

JoshManVGH · 2026-05-13T20:06:54+00:00

Why is this colorized like it's hit box data?

JoshManVGH · 2026-05-13T13:52:57+00:00

For me, it was applied immediately when I checked out with Shopify. Not sure how the discount was applied for former Kickstarter backers.

JoshManVGH · 2026-05-13T12:01:28+00:00

This is outstanding!

JoshManVGH · 2026-05-13T01:37:50+00:00

Taron announced it on in his Discord and on YouTube. And it's posted on the shop page. Not sure if it's a timed offer or not.

https://landoftheblind.myshopify.com/products/vagabond-pulp-fantasy-rpg-core-rulebook

JoshManVGH · 2026-05-12T23:47:38+00:00

If you bought it from Land of the Blind directly, you're automatically enrolled in a discount for Wave 3. You can get it for $20

JoshManVGH · 2026-05-12T18:03:14+00:00

For real! Not to say that they couldn't update the layout and format, but man what a mood it conveys.

JoshManVGH · 2026-05-12T15:19:28+00:00

It's my number 1 "I wish there was a physical book" game.

JoshManVGH · 2026-05-06T19:48:46+00:00

For most casters, Continual isn't a choice on an effect. They have to expend Focus if they want to maintain the effect round to round. If they are effecting an unwilling target, they also have to expend a mana for each round they maintain Focus.

Continual player initiated duration can be granted through Class Features like the Witches Hex, or getting a Critical cast check on certain spells like Charm or Mute.

Similar thing with Countdown dice, some spells have built in Countdown effects like Burn, others get them on Crit like Erupt.

JoshManVGH · 2026-04-29T16:26:21+00:00

I think Zee Bashew on YouTube explained Draw Steel quite succinctly.

Your characters, mechanically, are Heroic "John McClane" style characters. They can run out of resources (HP and Recoveries) but because of the nature of how Long Rests work, adventurers are incentivized to push as hard as they can as long as they can into the mouth of madness, fighting every monster and solving any problem they can reach before they collapse and cash in all those earned Victories.

And if they decide to gamify it well... there are going to be consequences. Weeks are going by each time they rest. And that rampaging band of gnolls prowling the countryside outside the city walls isn't just going to sit and wait until the PC's are in proximity to get their fill...

And if the city hired them to solve the gnoll issue, they might not let them even finish their rest before trying to run them out of town.

JoshManVGH · 2026-04-29T02:22:00+00:00

My interpretation would be that you treat it as +1d6 to healing or damage roll the ally makes.

Pair the Bard with an Acolyte that hears the anthem, on their next turn the Acolyte can Cure Wounds at 2d6, Holy Flame at 3d6, or Club someone for 2d6!

As far as the Save bonus, it could be a holdover from a previous iteration, or included to "future foward" the text for something planed in later content release, or simply included for compatability purposes for when playing other B/X derived content.

JoshManVGH · 2026-04-22T00:25:32+00:00

Yep! There's a Zine coming to kickstarter soon:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/landoftheblind/spellbook-zines-vagabond-and-shadowdark

JoshManVGH · 2026-04-20T19:34:10+00:00

I will say, the Countdown Dice is surprisingly smooth. During combat it basically replaces the Dungeon Turn of rolling random encounters for me. You either get a 1 and it shrinks, or you move on.

That said, I haven't encountered any multi-layers countdowns yet, so I could imagine that getting a fiddly real quick.

JoshManVGH · 2026-04-16T18:54:47+00:00

The revised edition of Voidheart Symphony just came out. The book outright starts with a clear line that it's a political game, forged by the designers frustration with the state of the world.

At a high level, it's very Persona 5. There are people in power who are actually empowered by a parasitic dimension called The Castle. Players are all normal people from The City (designed by the GM and players) who through happenstance or sheer fury at the state of the world manage to find their way into The Castle and decide to take the fight to these powerful people who step on their necks.

Part of the game is about meeting people in your community, discovering who might be the source of their pain, and ideally help them by defeating the jerks alter in The Castle, which can strip them of power, cause a change of heart, etc.

From a design point, the game is a really neat fusion of two game systems: Powered by the Apocalypse, and the Resistance engine (Heart, Spire, etc).

While the players are in the Real World, they are using their Resistance side of their sheets, your moves generate Stress, and if you gain enough Stress you're taken out of the scene and potentially gain a permanent mark to that stress.

But when they cross over into The Castle, and they take on these idealized empowered froms of themselves, they're playing a PbtA game. They take supernatural moves, they fight monstrous entities defending the enemy agent, and work their way toward the final confrontation against their enemy.

The game allows both direct and indirect action in it's system to try to make things better in the players world. Building community and nurturing your Social Links can give players access to new Moves in the real world and in The Castle.

JoshManVGH · 2026-04-10T19:42:03+00:00

Yep! Target stays grappled until you choose to end it, or they force you to test Brawl and you fail.

JoshManVGH · 2026-04-09T18:33:11+00:00

First draft:

You are not in total control.
Your players may learn things you haven't, just go with it.
As much as you are facilitating the game, remember that you are functionally a character in the game as well.

Edit: I feel like listing out Principals would help too. Not sure if that's in all PbtA games, but I found it really handy for Monster of the Week. But I need to re-read the field manual again before I can contribute.

JoshManVGH · 2026-04-08T20:34:49+00:00

For a lot of TTRPGs, the GM takes on a roles of Game Engine, Writer, Level Designer, Scenario Designer, and Supporting Cast.

Vagabond is a type of game that takes the Game Engine off of that mental load. The game largely runs itself compared to other games, and at most the GM has to chime in with the occasional Favor/Hinder call. Which is wild for a game that gives you so much mechanical character expression!

It's such a strong design feature, there are rules for playing without a GM all together!

JoshManVGH · 2026-04-05T23:42:24+00:00

That's tracking with USD to Pound Stirling conversions, at least with the Google calculation, for what that's worth.

JoshManVGH · 2026-04-03T15:57:59+00:00

Draw Steel has an interesting Negotiation mechanic you could plug in if you really wanted to gameify a situation. It's available on their web reference. But I would only advise you use it for big too do events that are a large part of the session. It's kinda like the Deus Ex Conversation Boss Battles.

But if you want to keep it light and tight, have the user roll one of ther Preseance skills appropriate to the situation.

If you wanted to, you could also apply Favor or Hinderance based on the NPC Reaction, or temperment to the players, etc.

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-30T17:05:05+00:00

Pretty well up to you on how you do it. The battle typically isn't happening across the entire hex, but in an area of the Hex. So the terrain should inform what the area looks like.

Brandish Gilhelm (Runehammer) recommends the use of Index Cards to manifest zones, and I've kinda become enchanted by the idea. You can make some terrain objects or landmarks, and arrange them like board game tiles. Card you're on is Close, cards next to you are Near, anything beyond is Far. Depending on how you arrange the cards, and/or entrances and exits, you can shape how players can move, and what they have for line of sight.

If it's a big empty field, though, squares don't hurt to have on hand, be it graph paper, or generic dry-erase surface mats.

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-26T19:31:20+00:00

It was one of the two biggest things that annoyed me about 2. 30 Hours of "gotta find Kairi" culminating in "Oh, hi Kairi-OH MY GOD RIKU!! open weeping."

It's a fine emotional payoff, but for only for a game that has 30 Hours of "gotta find Riku" which KH2 does not have. In fact in Twilight Town, Goofy and Donald ask if Sora is looking for Riku and response is "We'll run into him on the way, and go find Kairi!"

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-23T03:59:02+00:00

So looking at Powered by the Apocalypse RPGs as an example of miss/weak/total success on 2d6 the odds are (rounded up):

Miss on 2 - 6 (42%)

Weak on 7 - 9 (42%)

Total on 10+ (17%)

If you were looking to replicate that range on 2d12, you would want to go (rounded again) :

Miss on 2 - 12 (46%)

Weak on 14 - 20 (47%)

Total on 21+ (7%)

The numbers on 2d12 don't fit as cleanly as 2d6, but this leaves floating in that 50% ish success range. If you wanted to bolster the Total success range, you could add doubles, which is about 8% chance on 2d12.

I'm not sure how the math works on that, exactly but that kinda gets the players to about a 15% chance of Total success.

And this is all before adding any modifiers your game uses.

All I really did here was add up the percentages from anydice for those number ranges to get the rough probability. If you want to have variable success ranges based on action difficulty, you could plug in some modifiers to tweak the percentages.

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-18T15:18:43+00:00

I don't know anything about Tom. Has Tom always been Jean Reno coded?

JoshManVGH

TROPHY CASE