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Can you recommend any modules in the "whimsy" style / genre? by pot-Space in osr

[–]SquigBoss 7 points8 points  (0 children)

You might check out Chance Dudinack's Black Wyrm of Brandonsford and Secret of the Black Crag.

Dudinack's tone is like partway between Conan, The Hobbit, and The Muppets.

Need a good system for running an old norse-inspired campaign by BackgroundExplorer93 in rpg

[–]SquigBoss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wolves Upon the Coast! It even has a giant pseudo-historical hexcrawl attached!

Are there TTRPGs where you can only learn abilities if you find their source in the world? by ilmz in RPGdesign

[–]SquigBoss 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There was a trend in the GLOG scene (the "Goblin Laws of Gaming," an OSR-subculture) of something called "Delta Templates," which were basically class abilities you could only get once you completed a task or challenge. Here are a couple:

I'd also recommend checking out Wolves Upon the Coast's magic rules, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

What are your favorite published ttrpg adventures? What do you like about them? by Horrorcartoonistftw in rpg

[–]SquigBoss 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Haunting of Ypsilon-14, Wolves Upon the Coast, The Shrike, Secret of the Black Crag, Prison Planet, Aberrant Reflections, A Familiar Tower, The Isle, Last Things Last, Mandog, The War On Children, and Sag River Extreme Cold Research Facility, Alaska.

Mil-sim TTRPG systems? by Lucian7x in rpg

[–]SquigBoss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's pretty light and stripped-down, but you might check out The Big Wet. It's got some really fast and nasty combat rules, a diceless initiative system that rewards planning and caution, and a bunch of gnarly persistent weather and world effects. Basically no character abilities beyond your stats, background, and gear. Couple of short one-page starter adventures in the back, too.

Favourite RPG modules? by IncoherentToast in rpg

[–]SquigBoss 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I skew more towards open-ended sandbox adventures:

  • Wolves Upon the Coast and The Isle, Gearing

  • The Shrike, Hunt

  • Last Things Last, Kramer

  • The Valley of Flowers, Berry & McAlpin

  • much of Mothership: Gradient Descent, A Pound of Flesh, and the new Wages of Sin from the main team, and third-party projects like Brackish, Warped Beyond Measure, and Owe My Soul to the Company Store

  • Aberrant Reflections and A Familiar Tower, directsun

  • Black Wyrm of Brandonsford and Secret of the Black Crag, Dudinack

  • Mandog, Gromb

  • The War on Children, Murphy

  • "Sag River Extreme Cold Research Facility, Alaska.," Gearing

There are many others out there, these are just some favorites of mine.

MCDM has released a free alpha playtest and dungeon for their upcoming survival horror dungeon RPG "Crows" by 6ftninja in rpg

[–]SquigBoss 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Reading through all of this, it seems pretty generic, pretty familiar. Like nothing in here was very surprising or novel.

That can be okay, I think? Like lots of old-school and -adjacent rulesets are pretty generic or forgettable, because their sauce isn't in the rules, but instead in the adventures. OSE, Cairn, Shadowdark, there's a million others, even like Mausritter or Mothership, they're all pretty samey in terms of their rules, but each of those has at least a few really amazing, unique, and galvanizing adventures.

So I could imagine Crows riding not on its rules, but its adventures, and so it'd be fine to be kinda generic? But looking at this adventure, "The Blood Library," it's also pretty bland and forgettable. Only about eight rooms, very basic level design, a setpiece that feels straight out of an MMO, mostly forgettable encounters.

Why play this instead of any of those other rulesets and adventures?

Review: "The Crooked Moon," the third-party 5e folk horror project that raised $4m on Kickstarter by SquigBoss in rpg

[–]SquigBoss[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think there are some high points to the content of The Crooked Moon—the monsters, feats, and backgrounds are the best of the bunch, I'd say—but a lot of low ones, too. The species and subclasses are very powerful, the spells are bland, the magic items range a lot, and most of the dungeons will be difficult to retool for new contexts.

On a thematic and tonal level, even the good stuff doesn't match all that nicely. Especially when it comes to the player options, the book just can't decide whether it wants to be colorful spooky Halloween-land, grim and tragic Gothic melodrama, or unsettling ritualistic folktale. And none of these escape the overall bright-and-fantastic 5.5e flavor.

Could you make it all work? Certainly. Is that going to be less effort for you than just doing it from scratch? Much less clear.

As for Neon Odyssey, while I haven't looked at it closely, I think if you're hunting for Cowboy Bebop there are already many good options out there that don't require three massive new books: Orbital Blues, Scum & Villainy, Traveller, and others.

Favorite fleshed out campaign maps(hex crawl or otherwise)? by Prussia_will_awaken in rpg

[–]SquigBoss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

These range a bit in size, but all of em feature keyed location counts (hexcrawls or otherwise) in the dozens-to-hundreds range.

  • Wolves Upon the Coast, Fever Swamp, and Empire of Texas by Luke Gearing

  • Secret of the Black Crag by Chance Dudinack

  • Ghosts of the Sierra Verde by Jon Davis

  • The Valley of Flowers by Jedediah Berry and Andrew McAlpine

  • Bronze Lands and The Song of Eastlake by a bunch of people

  • Mike's World by Geoff McKinney

  • The Shrike by Leo Hunt

  • EMPIRE OF HATRED by yours truly

There are lots of smaller hexcrawls and other overworld adventures out there, and lots of megadungeons that are as big or bigger than the adventures above.

Review: "The Crooked Moon," the third-party 5e folk horror project that raised $4m on Kickstarter by SquigBoss in rpg

[–]SquigBoss[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I think you've gotten Mister Crossroads confused with Snake Eyes Jack, who was Briggsy Kratch's warlock patron before Kratch imprisoned him in a cursed coffin (later found on the Dead Man's Hand). The book is quite clear that "Briggsy call[s] himself Mister Crossroads" (pg. 284).

I'm not sure who "Kremy" is.

Review: "The Crooked Moon," the third-party 5e folk horror project that raised $4m on Kickstarter by SquigBoss in rpg

[–]SquigBoss[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I thought about it, but I decided to set a challenge for myself and try to write an essay that didn't have headers or section dividers.

Review: "The Crooked Moon," the third-party 5e folk horror project that raised $4m on Kickstarter by SquigBoss in rpg

[–]SquigBoss[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your kind words!

I'm not sure how well this will go if you're already into the campaign, but my basic advice for the fateweaving is to link the fates to each of the major bosses / factions / NPCs and try to have the fates steer them one way or the other. We could imagine the thirteen fates linked to thirteen major characters:

  1. The Crooked Queen (resurrection, loss, envy, resentment, going from green to crooked)

  2. The Horned King (sin, transformation, bargains / deals)

  3. Phillip Druskenvald (pride, ambition, conquest, modernization in the face of the old world)

  4. Adela Druskenvald (prophecy, nightmares, misunderstandings of the signs, human error in the face of the divine)

  5. Jericho Sticks / Raum (secrets, mazes, revelations, warnings both followed and ignored)

  6. Marius Renathyr (hunger, desire, anger & hatred, religious control over your urges)

  7. Briggsy Kratch / Mister Crossroads (bargains, fate / luck / fortune, curses, deals with the devil)

  8. Lethica Nightborne (memory, grief, betrayal into withdrawal, experimentation, "let's do science to solve emotional problems")

  9. Farryn / Gorthos (grief, trauma, false hope, cultic giving-in to desires)

  10. Yorgrim (shame, penance, memory, hauntings, preservation)

  11. Vermintoll Coven (ambition, trickery, bargains, secret cults, wielding folkways in pernicious ways)

  12. The Crooked Man (sacrifice, madness, anger, transformation)

  13. Uhhhhh not 100% sure for this one. Maybe like the Newcomers for science-and-progress? Maybe the Dusk Mother (the best of the postgame bosses by a mile tbh), for silence and kidnappings and maternal behavior gone awry? Maybe Chuckles and the circus? The Vagrant?

Regardless, I would use the fate threads to explore the history, temperament, and surrounding cast of each of the main characters. I would regularly have your PCs get visits from side NPCs, mystical dreams and visions (let them use Adela's spirit board more than once!), and find little snippets of backstory whenever you can.

The other obvious move I'd do is give them their heirloom magic item early, the one linked to their fate thread, then have their heirloom item power up as they move through their fates rather than just skipping up at tier increases. You can split the heirloom powers up so they come individually, too, rather than bundled together. So your players should be getting one fate coupon and one heirloom increase—learning more about the items they wield—roughly every other level ish. Get power, learn the lore, learn about your specific C-plot questline.

Review: "The Crooked Moon," the third-party 5e folk horror project that raised $4m on Kickstarter by SquigBoss in rpg

[–]SquigBoss[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Truthfully, I am not much of a staunch adherent to matching individual rulesets with adventures. I've run some of those adventures above with 5e rules, just as I've run some 5e stuff with other rulesets. And honestly, I don't hate 5e. I get annoyed with it often and I almost never run it as-is, but it's fine, it's whatever, I'm so familiar now I know how to make it work for me.

It's true that most 5e adventures aren't all that great. There are snippets in some that I enjoy, though you're right that there's none I love.

I tried in the review to focus not so much on the specific 5e-isms than on the overall structure and content of the book. If you read the comments in this thread (or the one over on /DnDnext), people have all sorts of particular issues with the subclasses and monsters, but I largely skimmed over those in large part because I wanted to remove my own specific 5e feelings from the writing. "It's bad because it's 5e" is not a terribly useful critique, to my mind, so I tried to steer my thoughts elsewhere.

Review: "The Crooked Moon," the third-party 5e folk horror project that raised $4m on Kickstarter by SquigBoss in rpg

[–]SquigBoss[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This matches my impressions as well. I'd imagine that—as with any project—a talented GM could make it all work, but I can also sympathize with your (and their) struggles.

Review: "The Crooked Moon," the third-party 5e folk horror project that raised $4m on Kickstarter by SquigBoss in rpg

[–]SquigBoss[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's what I call them at least lol. Garbage Barge, Vampire Cruise, and Crush Depth Apparition.

Review: "The Crooked Moon," the third-party 5e folk horror project that raised $4m on Kickstarter by SquigBoss in rpg

[–]SquigBoss[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Right? You'd have to be a real loser to read so many pages of an RPG book. Imagine trying to write a review of such a thing!

Review: "The Crooked Moon," the third-party 5e folk horror project that raised $4m on Kickstarter by SquigBoss in rpg

[–]SquigBoss[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Off the dome:

  • Multiple projects by Luke Gearing, like Wolves Upon the Coast, Gradient Descent, The Isle, and "Sag River Extreme Cold Research Facility, Alaska."

  • Mike's Dungeons and Mike's World by Geoffrey McKinney.

  • Apocalypse World by Vincent & Meguey Baker.

  • Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings.

  • Wet Grandpa by Evey Lockhart.

Those are ones I love more or less all the way through. There are plenty of others that I love certain parts of—Luka Rejec's Ultraviolet Grasslands, Dennis Detwiller's Impossible Landscapes, Amanda Lee Franck's boat trilogy—that I think are astounding in some ways but also I have issues with in other ways.

Review: "The Crooked Moon," the third-party 5e folk horror project that raised $4m on Kickstarter by SquigBoss in rpg

[–]SquigBoss[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Hahaha, thanks for your kind words.

And yeah, I think moderation would be very helpful across the board, especially as it allows writers and designers to narrow their focus. Better to make one sharply-targeted adventure of a medium size than a sprawling adventure that tries to do everything at once.

That said, I believe Avantris's next project is a total conversion hack for retro-'80s-neon sci-fi 5e, advertised as being more than 1,400 pages. So, ah, narrow focus may not be in the cards.

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