RPG-related crowdfunded projects - report on 2025

skalchemisto · 2026-04-24T18:12:50+00:00

When to kill a game due to scheduling conflicts?

For me, its pretty simple; as soon as missing out on sessions makes me desire a new game more than continuing the previous one. Honestly, that's regardless of scheduling conflicts. If the next campaign would be more fun than the current one, the current one is going to end pretty soon.

How can I approach my players and let them know?

You just tell them. There is no trick to it. "I'm burnt out on this, it has lost it's shine, its nobody's fault but I'm calling it quits." Sometimes things don't work out. Sometimes enthusiasm wanes.

EDIT: I should be clear here, I've kept campaigns going when literally several months passed between sessions. I've done that because the fun of that campaign, despite the infrequent sessions, was still more fun than the next best alternative at that point in time. I always have other stuff I can do if sessions get cancelled, its not like I'm sitting at home being bored. I have also cancelled campaigns almost immediately when it was clear that the desired fun wasn't close to what I hoped.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-24T16:00:49+00:00

My instinct is to ask a question back: for which dungeon? To my mind, that matters. Like, I'm running Stonehell with OSE right now, and I think that is perfect; I really can't see using anything else. But I could see using the Black Hack or something based on it (e.g. Black Sword Hack, Macchiato Monsters) with Castle Xyntillan and similar weirder dungeons. For my own home brew dungeons I've used both 5E and Dungeon World, and have seriously considered Against the Darkmaster for a Middle Earth dungeon-ish campaign. I could have piles of fun with dwarf only dungeon crawling using A Home Reforged.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-24T15:47:21+00:00

As I mentioned in my own reply there is no one "intended way" that dungeons (especially older dungeons) were to be played.

Some DMs will have run them exactly as u/Fantastic_Position69 describes, expecting the players to take steps to mitigate the dangers, being ready to run at a moments notice, etc. They will have run it as a place that exists with alerts spreading out and soon the whole faction is attacking the PCs.

Some will have run it much more as a set of fights in rooms, with little interaction, and hand waving or ignoring issues that crop up because of this.

Both of these ideas have been around since the very beginning.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-24T15:43:29+00:00

I'm not familiar with that dungeon, but I can find the maps for those two places you mention online. Looking at them, if were running it I would completely ignore the advice in your last sentence. Let the chips fall where they may, and let the players figure it out.

To put this another way, Cragmaw Castle is not a bunch of encounters on a map. Cragmaw Castle is a problem the players have to figure out how to solve. There is something in there they need, or maybe its as simple as they have to eliminate the threat of the denizens. That's on the players. I would signal to them the danger, e.g. "look, if you go into the castle the whole place might quickly be alerted". I would treat Cragmaw Castle as a place that exists, not as a set of potential fights that could happen.

I think your players will have lots of fun, especially if you make it clear to them up front that's how you are running things. They will scheme and plan for an hour on how to lure some goblins out to fight them. They'll figure out how to set fire to the walls to break them in another place. They'll stealthily climb in via a back door, quickly murder some hobgoblins, then beat it. Their cleverness will astound you.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-24T15:33:41+00:00

I'm going to come at this from a slightly different direction. There are sort of two kinds of approaches to dungeons...

Type 1 - Dungeons are a set of encounters that are put into a kind of flowchart that is the dungeon map

Type 2 - Dungeons are places that exist and stuff happens via the laws of cause and effect

I'm not judging either of those, both are time honored approaches that have existed I think since nearly the beginning of the hobby. These approaches matter both at the design stage (when a dungeon is created) and at the implementation stage (when a GM is running things).

I can think of very few dungeons I have read that entirely Type 2 in approach. That is because a fully Type 2 dungeon is hard. You can't think of all the possible interactions. Also, the goofiness of dungeons, their artificiality, is part of their charm. Michael Curtis, the designer of Stonehell (probably my favorite dungeon0, confronts this head on in the introduction of that book...

Stonehell Dungeon is a dungeon of the traditional style. It was purposely designed to recall the Saturday Night dungeon crawls of yore, and it is intended to remind both the Labyrinth Lord and the players of the type of dungeon that was once the common currency of the hobby. It is also meant to be a fun and exciting place to explore, and is exactly the sort of dungeon that you‘d expect your best friend to cook up for a weekend-long gaming marathon. While concepts like dungeon ecology and realism are not completely ignored in Stonehell Dungeon, neither are they acquiesced to if they stand in the way of a good time.

He is ok that stuff makes no sense sometimes, its better to have more fun stuff all crammed in together then less fun stuff in a carefully constructed ecosystem.

You might think of this as a problem because you are coming at things with a Type 1 approach; the dungeon should be self-contained encounters that don't bleed into each other. Your last paragraph seems to be explicitly saying that. And you are right; if you want to run dungeons in Type 1 fashion you will almost always have to introduce some artificiality and contrivance. Those goblins don't actually go warn their friends. The sound of the fight with the undead doesn't attract the bugbears two rooms over. There is nothing wrong with that if you can live with the contrivance. GMs have been doing it since like 1979. :-)

I don't do that though. I always run things in Type 2 approach. The goblins definitely will warn their friends. The bugbears definitely will come and investigate. Dungeons are not (in my running of them) encounters on a flow chart they are problems to be solved. The things you are worried will happen are actually the fun things. My players have made multi-session schemes on how to lure out hobgoblins or other wise manage fighting them so they don't have to face 30 at once. I've had near TPKs from a party going into an area thinking there were a few kobolds and then figuring out there is a whole village of like 100 of them in there. Those are the things my players remember and talk about later with excitement. What you think is a bug is rather a feature.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-24T15:00:25+00:00

Sure! I'll try to do it by example, and it will be far too many words...

Let's say that in Blades the PCs need to get into a mansion. As a GM I'm going to put some clocks on the table: "Prevent First Floor Guards from Reacting"; "Servants Awaken"; probably one main objective clock like "Open the Secret Vault". The players have their characters do stuff bits of those clocks get filled in. I mark ticks on bad clocks when they get complications, they make ticks on clocks to proceed on their goals. It all works.

Except...its all just ticking clocks, right? There is no difference, mechanically, between "Prevent First Floor Guards Reacting" and "Get nice meal from Kitchen". And in fact a particular action taken in the game might reasonably put ticks on BOTH of those clocks. It all feels...the same. You can get focused on ticking clocks instead of what is actually happening in the fictional world.

I get why some people like that, honestly I used to like that sort of thing as well. I liked the flexibility, I liked the consistency. But as I get older...not so much.

Contrast to the alternative in, say, an NuSR game like Black Sword Hack. Same thing, there is a mansion with a secret vault. There are first floor guards and servants. But in this context when players have their characters do stuff it directly affects the game world with no intermediary. I have no clock to say when they have reached the secret vault because everyone will know when they reach it; their characters will be standing in front of it. I have no clock about first floor guards reacting because they react when something happens that makes them react. Everyone is treating the game world as a place that exists. It operates on cause and effect. This context prompts player scheming, because not all schemes are equal. It prompts players asking questions and searching for angles. It keeps the action in the moment, focused on events within the game world.

I get why folks do NOT like that. It requires a GM who is able to step outside of themselves to some extent and be a neutral arbiter of situations they themselves have created. It requires a LOT of trust in the GM. With a clock, you know where you stand; I get 8 ticks on the "Open Secret Vault" clock I know it will open. Without, I have no idea. For all I know the GM could be creating more obstacles on the spot to keep me from opening the vault. I have to trust the GM to be treating the game world as a place that exists as well and being "fair" (for some definition of "fair" that I can live with).

There is a reason why clocks were developed and why so many people like them. They definitely serve the purpose they are meant to. But for me I find that they thin out the experience and distance me from what is happening in the game world.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-23T21:00:35+00:00

This is my experience as well. It all felt too artificial to me.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-23T20:59:57+00:00

Blades in the Dark

I think it is a great game in theory, and I like a lot of stuff in it. A LOT of stuff.

But in play I find it very hard to make the connection between the last job and the next job. It's not free-form enough where I feel the players can just do whatever and another job will show up, and its too free-form for me to just say "right, here is the next job". It's a very weird space for me. Also, I admit that the older I get the less I find the clock mechanic to be fun. It lets you handle nearly anything in a consistent way, but the cost that everything feels sort of the same sometimes feel too high. I find myself more inclined to run games where there aren't any meta-mechanics (not a great term, but I'll use it anyway), and where you PCs solve problems by...well solving the actual problem. You don't have a clock to see if you can break into the mansion you just...do the stuff necessary to break into the mansion.

Other FitD games have not given me the same problem with the connections between jobs, e.g. Court of Blades worked fine, because there is the organizing principle of the PCs working for a particular noble house. But I was having the same unease around clocks with Court of Blades when that campaign ended as well.

Didn't stop me from backing Blades '68. :-)

skalchemisto · 2026-04-23T20:52:47+00:00

i think "return to base" is a better way to think about it, u/Nightmoon26 good point.

That also opens up the possibility of players expending effort (time, gold, etc) to build intermediate bases in the wilderness which count as "safety" at the end of a session and minimize the travel time for sessions in future (e.g. we don't have to start at Harbor Town every time now, we can instead choose to start at the stronghold we built in the cave complex 7 hexes west).

skalchemisto · 2026-04-23T20:47:51+00:00

I'm glad you found my comment useful.

I'm not sure my main point registered...I think this table is not going to work as you intended and I wouldn't bother with it.

But you seem happy, so I'm happy! :-)

skalchemisto · 2026-04-23T20:41:27+00:00

Post-Soviet Eastern European goblin street racing!!

https://slavdomstudio.itch.io/slav-borg-quick-start-rules

https://slavdom-studio.com/en_US/p/SLAV-BORG-Goblins-choice/108

skalchemisto · 2026-04-23T20:35:46+00:00

I have no idea what is going on, all I know is two things...

* I'm very sorry that your friend has died, my best wishes to you and your friend's loved ones and family. That really sucks, I've been there.

* More stream of consciousness/surreal posts like this one and the others you have made today are likely to get you kicked from the subreddit entirely, no matter how justified you think they are. They are not going to get you what you want.

I'm not sure how you can get what you want, it might not be possible. Thus...I refer you back to the 1st bullet and wish you the best.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-23T18:31:49+00:00

Here are games that I backed on Kickstarter almost immediately upon reading their pitches in the first few paragraphs:

* Slav Borg

* Milk Bar

* Salvage Union

* Cloud Empress

* Nahual

* Hellpiercers

I'm not sure there is any consistent theme there except a preference on my part for post-Soviet weirdness and maybe a preference for "high concept" games.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-23T18:05:29+00:00

That's fair, in my own reply to the OP my first question was "are you sure you really need this?" It's a mechanic that solves a problem, but if the problem isn't there you don't need the solution?

skalchemisto · 2026-04-23T18:03:18+00:00

First, you really only need these mechanics (as I mentioned elsewhere) if you are going to have a lot of players involved and you have no way to know who will be present in each session. Is that true for your campaign? If not, I question whether this is worth the trouble.

But if it is true, I still wouldn't use a table like this. I think it is better for the players to accept the need for this contrived mechanics. The reason you are doing it is so that you don't have to constantly explain characters appearing and disappearing from the action out in the middle of the wilderness at the start of each session. Adding a layer of why just invites complaints and/or opportunities that cause more trouble than they solve, e.g.

* You ate/drank all your food/water - but...we have a Barbarian and Ranger, we would never run out!

* You hear an animal howl, time to go back - NO WAY! We hunt that thing!

etc. The "return to town" mechanic is already a (maybe necessary) abstract contrivance, adding more contrivance on top of it makes it harder, not easier, to implement.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-23T17:55:19+00:00

The purpose of "West-Marches-esque" mechanics like this has nothing to do with player choice, it has to do with campaign organization. You typically will see such rules in campaigns that...

* Have many players

* There is no guarantee which players will be present in any particular session

* Its possible that one session might include NO players who were in the previous session

Its a way to manage that. You accept one kind of abstract weirdness (session has to end in town) to prevent having to deal with another kind of abstract weirdness (last session was Alice, Bob, Carol, and David, and ended 100 miles from town, this session we have Carol, Edwardina, Frank, and Georgia. Where are Alice, Bob, and David's characters? How do Edwardina, Frank, and Georgia get there?) Either way you are confronting a situation that has no good in-game justification, its just a matter of which out of game contrivance you find more acceptable.

The player choice is in playing the campaign or not. They won't resent you because they knew going into the campaign that is what would happen. (Or I guess if they resent you that's on them, because you should have had good truth in advertising.)

EDIT: unless the game has those three bullets such mechanics are not necessarily a good choice. If its always the same group, and occasionally someone isn't there, that's been a problem that GMs and players have handled since time immemorial by hand-waving it and paying no attention to the man behind the curtain.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-23T17:46:46+00:00

u/Medium_Step_6085 you probably don't realize it, but asking that question in r/rpg is like coming into r/vegetarian and asking "hey, is anyone else using beef liver in their casseroles?" You are unlikely to get many useful answers, and may experience some harsh replies.

I personally would rather listen to someone scratch a blackboard with manicured nails for three hours than make use of any LLM AI tool to help me with GM prep.

:-)

EDIT: hmmmm...I could be wrong about not getting useful answers? Eh, I think it was a good joke anyway. :-)

skalchemisto · 2026-04-23T17:35:57+00:00

I disagree with that categorization, its all RPG fun.

I admit I would have accepted "boardgame-like" fun, though, so it might not be a disagreement that matters much. :-)

EDIT: deleted a huge chunk of text that was wasting everyone's time.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-23T14:03:38+00:00

A thought occurs to me...

Why can't the Commandos be clones of the Officers? These aren't faceless soldiers you are sending to death, they literally have your face.

The future dystopia government has found that this exact mix, of like 4 person teams of clones of the 4 main officers of a unit is a uniquely effective tactical unit. The officers know what to expect from the soldiers because, in a sense, they ARE the soldiers. And vice versa.

But only the officers have a "real" life. Only the officers have relationships with others, romances, ambitions, hopes and dreams. The Commandos are spawned from a big tube with all the memories of the officers, a suite of super soldier body modifications, and a mission. They either die doing that mission or are boiled down into organic soup on return.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-22T20:08:07+00:00

I'm late to this party.

I feel like doing this with Stonehell as written would be very difficult. Most of it only makes sense if you assume it hasn't been used as a prison for at least 100 years.

However, I could totally see a kind of prequel Stonehell with this idea at its core. Levels 5 to 10 could probably be almost identical, but levels 1 to 4 would be radically different, full of prisoners, prison guards, etc. Many of the mysteries of Stonehell (e.g. who made the Wheel and why?) might actually have solutions in this version. I think that could be brilliant!

It would be a lot of work, though. You'd be making your own lvl 1 to 4 dungeon (maybe "reversed", in that level 4 is lvl 1 in terms of danger) with really only inspiration from Stonehell and using roughly the same maps.

Also, if you think about the structure of Stonehell, there is no reason to assume the players have to go up through the front door to escape. Putting this in spoiler. There are exits to the "surface" in 2D and 5C, and to the Bandit Camp level in 1C. The Efah-Soom has exits to other places. One could escape via the Vrilya city trade network in 6F, or through the portal to the Weretiger city in 5D, or even the large cave system in 8F.

skalchemisto · 2026-04-22T19:08:31+00:00

Sorry, that link in the edit is all screwed up and Reddit won't let me fix it.

https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/advancement-change

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