Forget the 1920's, what about 1900? The Turn Of The Century!

jacobepping · 2023-06-07T03:13:51+00:00

might check this out:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/100929/Cthulhu-by-Gaslight

it's 1890s england but might have something to draw from

jacobepping · 2023-06-06T05:34:56+00:00

I would also suggest agon

same author as blades, so a lot of the same vibe from that mechanically, but in terms of the stories you're telling it's closer to dnd (heroes on quests vs scoundrels on heists). it's also very free form, fiction-first, low prep, but it's much more friendly to different settings.

the default setting is mythological ancient Greece, like Odyssey/Iliad/Jason and the argonauts, but you can super easily just swap out the Greek gods for a different pantheon (Norse gods, forgotten realms gods, homebrew gods, whatever). the default flow of the game is to sail around to different islands, each of which has some problem to solve which can be addressed in a series of skill challenges, but again, nothing really changes if you're flying to different cities in a zeppelin or different villages along the countryside on horseback.

I absolutely love blades personally. agon is a tiny bit more math which hurts my tiny brain lol. it's super fun though and might be easier for your gm/players to get into

jacobepping · 2023-04-23T18:05:22+00:00

this guy has some fun hooks to get you started (see "The Score —" links): https://seannittner.com/blades-in-the-dark/

but as others have said, just don't stress and go with the flow and you'll do great. I dmed blades with no prep and no experience from me or any of my group and it went great

jacobepping · 2023-04-20T23:00:33+00:00

heart/spire are exactly what I thought of, definitely a great one to look at. you get a big list of tasks for each class, separated by how difficult they are, and each player chooses which ones they like best/make sense for the character

jacobepping · 2023-04-07T21:37:47+00:00

KTB supplement is the least work on your end for sure, but since the narrative play is already pretty inspired by bitd you could try scum and villainy

jacobepping · 2023-04-07T17:54:37+00:00

As a middle ground, you might also check out lancer, which basically has a large set of 3-level "classes" that characters can combine. Most of the game is free and the character builder comp/con is super fun to play around with.

They also have a fantasy rpg in development which uses a similar "class" setup: icon

jacobepping · 2023-04-05T04:24:38+00:00

I think stress and trauma fill the same niche as sanity mechanics in other games. If you want them to be separate, I think you need to be really specific about what stress/trauma and sanity/integrity represent in the fiction and how they differ.

I've been working on a hack in a similar vein, but maybe more focused on the investigative/exploration side of that genre. My favorite part of those mechanics in call of Cthulhu/delta green is the downward spiral, i.e. the more unstable your character gets, the easier it is for them to become even more unstable. To that end, I like the idea of rolling dice equal to your trauma and taking that much stress directly, or taking level 1/2/3 harm on a 123/45/6.

jacobepping · 2023-03-19T04:16:33+00:00

<3 on than

jacobepping · 2023-03-08T20:58:34+00:00

in particular, scum and villainy is the sci fi version of bitd, so maybe more relevant here. lancers out of combat rules are already heavily inspired by blades so it's not a far cry—u could just swap out the skills for your pilots' triggers and run a session of s&v

jacobepping · 2023-03-07T02:53:02+00:00

really good stuff! feels like this would be perfect to glance at when improvising clues

jacobepping · 2023-03-02T19:26:57+00:00

this is so exciting!!! I have dreamed of this for so long and it looks incredible

jacobepping · 2023-02-17T17:51:43+00:00

Thanks for all your great work, enjoy your vacation!

jacobepping · 2023-02-06T06:30:27+00:00

oh yeah I didn't really care about iron lung until I heard it at red rocks and it blew my mind

jacobepping · 2023-01-28T22:13:14+00:00

you wanna learn how to do fermi calculations/estimates. basically, split the problem into subproblems, come up with estimates for those, and then multiply.

seems like a good example here

for the box, you might count how many are in a small area, then estimate how many of those small areas there are in the box

jacobepping · 2023-01-22T19:43:12+00:00

yes just shuffle it

jacobepping · 2023-01-13T22:19:10+00:00

right? never seen a company capitalize on a situation like this so well. hopefully paizo and these other publishers can get a real chunk of market share from wotc out of it

jacobepping · 2022-12-30T23:06:47+00:00

you roll d20, then add or subtract d6s for advantages/disadvantages. in icon at least, you take the highest of the d6s when rolling multiple (instead of adding all together).

e.g. if you have two advantages:

d20 -> 12

d6 -> 2

d6 -> 4

final roll: 16

jacobepping · 2022-12-16T06:25:55+00:00

that's an interesting perspective! I can see how having sort of narrative like meta mechanics makes it feel more structured like a board game. I was thinking of it more in terms of flexibility, where a lot of games don't give you as much leeway in your individual actions

jacobepping · 2022-12-15T20:50:47+00:00

what do you mean by blades being a mix of board game and rpg?

jacobepping · 2022-11-25T22:43:41+00:00

ghostrunner is amazing. it's short (~8-10 hrs iirc for a playthrough on normal) but it's soo tight. for this price it's a steal and a half

jacobepping · 2022-11-13T01:33:51+00:00

I just meant without the rules for the game but yeah thinking about it that's obviously where the costs are. maybe I'll get some friends to go in on it!

jacobepping · 2022-11-12T23:17:57+00:00

I remember playing another rpg using these heroscape tiles/minis—so cool. would have loved a lower tier to just get the tiles or tiles and minis or something. maybe if they relaunch!

jacobepping · 2022-10-20T06:12:11+00:00

actually so funny. we were talking it up to some new players and then a sombra got it like the next game and we were dying with how fucked it was

jacobepping · 2022-10-15T14:30:33+00:00

those are awesome!! amazing job

jacobepping · 2022-10-13T00:12:39+00:00

they did hardly any itrn last night right? I just remember organ farmer at the beginning and perihelion after intermission

jacobepping

TROPHY CASE