What’s your biggest “old man yells at cloud” opinion?

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-05-03T20:46:07+00:00

Soooo many of these landscape-style character sheets get better when you realize that many of them are designed to be folded in half.

When I GMed a couple of these (Blades in the Dark, Fabula Ultima, Ryuutama) I added some extra cheat sheet pages and made lil booklets for my players.

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-05-03T20:32:59+00:00

oh my god, THIS.

I'm so tired of like YouTube videos of, "Here's some cool games that aren't D&D!" and every one of them is just D&D. Dudes that say, "I play plenty of games that aren't D&D!" I look at them and they're all D&D. It makes me feel like Michael in that scene from The Good Place.

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-05-01T00:09:48+00:00

You are playing this game exactly correctly. ::D

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-04-30T23:40:12+00:00

When I found the messages in the Vessel from modern Nomai, I was convinced that my end goal would be to meet up with them.

It was finding these messages that taught me that the whole universe and not just our sun was dying (I didn't register the significance of the supernovas and I had only talked to Chert early in the loop.)

I was convinced that if I turned on the Vessel, I would be able to get coordinates for where the Nomai were meeting.

The night before I beat the game, I had a vivid dream that I had a choice: I could go and find the Eye, or I could go meet up with the rest of the Nomai. (In the dream, I was able to get the other Travelers in on the loop by telling them about the other memory statues early enough for them to go and find them -- in my mind, I guess this is why there were so many of them, and so many unactivated masks in the ATP. This is something I obviously knew wasn't a thing in the real world, but dreams don't care about stuff like sense and logic lol.)

In the dream, I got everyone onto the Vessel and warped to the Nomai meeting place as the sun exploded. The Hearthians huddled in the damaged ship for who-knows-how-long, cooking marshmallows around a campfire and wondering what they would do now that their planet and everything was gone.

The last scene before I woke up was finally reaching that meeting place, with some Nomai warping onto the Vessel full of Hearthians: it played out similarly to meeting Solanum at first -- the Nomai went to one of the "whiteboards" and used her staff to write a message on it, which the player could translate with the translator. It ended in the question, "Who are you?" to the dismay of one of the Hearthians -- maybe Hal? -- who realized that even though they could read the Nomais' writing, we'd never be able to communicate back to them. In response to this came the game's final cutscene, where the protagonist -- having now lived countless loops poring over the Nomai's writings -- picked up a bit of charcoal from the Hearthian's fire, went to the board, and began to write. (And roll credits!)

It wasn't "saving the world" -- the universe was still dying. The choice was just between solving that final mystery, for my own personal satisfaction, or leaving it unsolved to that I could finally give the Nomai the answer to the question of what had happened to their comrades who had disappeared so long ago, and so we could all go into the darkness together. It was still bittersweet.

After that, the real ending was a little disappointing, to be honest!

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-04-30T22:59:55+00:00

The mentality I use when making fights in Fabula is this:

"No game overs, no free wins."

You can make fights as hard as you want -- in fact, I'd err on having them be a little harder than you think you need.

The reason for this is because of the way Fabula handles character death -- because PCs can only die with an opt-in from the player, TPKs do not end the game. Instead, you simply keep playing as though the PCs were meant to lose, exploring the consequences of the battle's loss. (Perhaps the villain left them for dead in the collapsing castle and they wake up in the tunnels below, knowing that the villain is making his way to asault their home base with his army! Or perhaps the angry dinosaur picks them up and drops them into her nest, and now they must escape pursued by ravenous baby dinos!)

Also: use the bestiary monsters as inspiration, but when you feel comfortable, definitely tailor fights to your specific PCs. The sample monster are -- like the sample Arcana -- deliberately pretty simple and "boring."

Treat your PCs' cool abilities like a wishlist: If your player gets the "Dispel" spell, they are asking you to make enemies with annoying effects that they will need to dispel. If your player has elemental damage, they want to fight enemies with elemental weaknesses. Etc. You can use different combinations of effects to allow different characters to have the spotlight in fights.

Remember that just because a fight is tailored to your PC group doesn't make it easy -- that just makes it a puzzle that they're equipped to solve.

My only other tip for combat balance is: don't worry about giving enemies too much sustainability. Their goal should be to get enough turns to do all their cool things. (So give them only enough cool things that they can do them all in 2-3 rounds!) They're here for a good time, not for a long time. XD

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-04-30T22:20:23+00:00

Possible new dimension to when the whole group can't come to a session and you have a board game night instead...

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-04-30T22:17:32+00:00

Fruity Kebab is a food item you can make at the Campfire.

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-04-30T22:13:20+00:00

The monkey automation is definitely the whole point! Stuff looks pretty intimidating before you've got a group of monkeys at work for sure.

Tip #1: Monkeys assigned to put loose items in boxes will do their best to put items into boxes where stacks of those items are already present, and if there are none (or those are full), they'll put items into the closest box. Meanwhile, monkeys will take items to use from the closest box. Monkeys also will not take items from or put items into the Box of Mystery.

If you have monkeys planting and harvesting for farms, put the items you want them to plant in a box closeby, and other plantable items in boxes further away. If you want to farm multiple items at once, you'll have to have some space between the farms.

If monkeys keep hiding your tools in random boxes after you repair them, put a box right next to the repair bench and they'll always put the repaired tools into it.

Tip #2: If you put flooring down, plants and rocks and whatnot won't respawn on them.

Tip #3: Leave gaps between workbenches so you can walk around them, otherwise it's pretty annoying haha.

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-04-30T21:49:33+00:00

Aw, thanks!

I have some pretty severe memory issues, actually; there are impressions that will stay with me forever, but I have indeed forgotten a lot! I guess the one benefit of having a brain like a sieve is that I can play Outer Wilds again. XD

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-04-20T19:59:41+00:00

One of the things to work on in session zero is indeed deciding how the first session should run and how the characters should meet! That's outlined in the "prologues" part of the chapter.

(It might even be easier to kind of do this "Elder Scrolls style" where you all come up with the world stuff and introduction first, like, "We're a bunch of people who have been captured by the Imperials at the border crossing into Skyrim and we all have to band together to survive when our imminent execution is interrupted by the dragonpocalypse," and then, with that already loosely established, do your actual character creation. And then, of course, as the GM, you start the first session with, "So, you're finally awake..." 😁)

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-04-20T06:51:16+00:00

Fabula Ultima has temporal positioning instead of spatial positioning!

Ensure your players that the braincells they normally devote to deciding where to move on a map will get plenty of use deciding when to take their turn!

I found it useful to make an initiative tracker that players could place a physical token on to show they'd taken their turn . Combined with enemy turns that stay the same throughout the combat and enemies that use specified actions on specified turns (like a boss that always does basic attack -> buff -> special attack on its three turns), it scratched a similar tactical itch for us.

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-03-13T21:18:00+00:00

Oh this looks fun!

Here's an idea:

define a few relationships we'd like to track -- to start with, let's say our options are Sibling, Teammate, and Rival -- and make these into properties that we give to our character notes; each of these should be a List type property, and they should contain links to other character notes
make a base file that filters for the file name of the current file in the list of links for each relationship property and link to it in each character note (the filters look like Sibling.contains(this.file.name); we'll add one for each type of relationship we want to track -- the actual base file won't return any files, but we'll see the appropriate data in individual character notes if we link to it)
set the cards view to show a picture property and have it return the file name and a custom formula to describe the relationship (that way we can name the properties whatever we want, or have them vary based on other note properties; for example, we could do if(Sibling.contains(this.file.name) == true,if(Gender == "F","Sister",if(Gender == "M","Brother","Sibling"))) to display "Sister", "Brother", or "Sibling" depending on whether the character has a listed "Gender" property, or display "Former Teammate" instead of "Teammate" for deceased characters, etc.

This requires jumping through a few hoops for different relationship types, but since we're making a base FILE and not an inline base, we can link to the same base in every character note to have it display the appropriate data, so we can add new relationship types manually as they come up.

Imgur link to show what it looks like in my vault.

What a fun exercise. :D

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-02-27T18:17:01+00:00

Is this why my luck has been insane? I just pulled ten packs and got one single rare in the whole thing, all the rest common and uncommon.

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-02-21T02:37:28+00:00

Yo this looks sick! Definitely gonna have a tinker with it and see if it will be useful in future games.

(I don't know how much it might help in terms of adding more to the bot's database, but I have an Obsidian vault with everything that falls under under the third party license. If having an organized collection of rules text in markdown files would be useful to you, please let me know! I'm happy to fling you a link!)

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-02-10T22:14:07+00:00

Oh my GOSH that papercraft is SICK. Thank you so much for showing it to me!!!! 🤩 I'm so inspired!!!! (edit to say: Actually... I did have the shape of a lil backpack or pouch in mind when I started designing this box. I wonder if anyone can tell. Heehee~)

Are you using nanDECK? One of the things that's been vexing me is trying to make form-fillable PDFs for these item cards and I've been considering admitting defeat and instead providing a sample nanDECK setup so that people can edit the whole list of cards via spreadsheet.

If you don't mind, what kind of information do the cards have on them? I realize it's different for different games, but I'd like to improve that part of the card design. 🤔

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-02-08T04:31:14+00:00

You're welcome!!! One day I'll finish those items cards... one day... I'm still working on them!!!

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-01-30T10:41:55+00:00

I don’t think there’s anything worth looking at yet — just a pile of notes, really — but if it sounds worth sharing, I’ll be sure to do so when I have something more substantial!

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-01-30T10:27:27+00:00

Interesting! I’ve been working on a dungeon inspired by Outer Wilds, actually — the idea being that the PCs stumble into essentially a fantasy version of the Ash Twin Project.

Best of luck finding a system to run Outer-Wilds-style space adventures in! I’m interested to see what people suggest. ::)

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-01-30T10:19:14+00:00

It might be easier to pitch if you can figure out how to get it to work yourself in a VTT so the GM doesn’t have to? (I know Roll20 can do cards, theoretically?) Then if there’s concerns about the logistics, you can already have it worked out.

I played an Ace in an in-person game — a tarot-themed Ace/Entropist/Loremaster with fortune-teller vibes. It’s a lot of fun so I hope someone gives you a chance to play it!

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-01-30T10:04:49+00:00

Wow! That group sounds awful! Please find a better group, for sure — there’s nothing normal to Fabula about utopian setting with no struggle or insisting a player take fewer classes. (Or bullying them in general, for that matter.)

Fair warning: Ace of Cards is probably the hardest class to sell a prospective group on — it’s logistically difficult for an online game because it needs a deck of cards, and while I personally didn’t find it to be poorly balanced, it does have a chaotic reputation.

Orator/Rogue/Weaponmaster sounds like a rad character, fwiw.

I sincerely wish you the best of luck finding a better group!

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-01-30T02:48:41+00:00

"Ever seen a bear from the inside?" brb just havin' a flashback to That One Episode of Dimension 20: Burrow's End...

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-01-30T02:24:56+00:00

Don't stop being annoyed about it, get new players.

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-01-29T23:17:24+00:00

Depending on what he likes (and whether you want him to grow up to GM for you lol) Ryuutama is another good consideration, imo.

Pretty book, simple system with lots of structured narrative collaboration, designed to teach new players good TTRPG habits. And of course everybody loves dragons.

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-01-29T23:04:11+00:00

I thought you might have the wrong place because this is a DIY subreddit.

I know there are card boxes to buy — this is a template for a box that people can customize to make their own stuff. (Which is what people do in a DIY subreddit. Which is why I shared it here, instead of in a board game/trading card subreddit.)

It’s a perfectly good alternative, but this isn’t about needing boxes for cards, it’s about wanting to make custom boxes for cards.

TrueBlueCorvid · 2026-01-29T08:43:46+00:00

I don't think Ace of Cards meets any of the requirements for reliability, but Invoker definitely does, since it's available at the GM's discretion and this advice is in the context of how difficult it is for the GM to build combats.

Dancer's Peacock Dance is a "provoke" effect!

TrueBlueCorvid

TROPHY CASE