After their meal, they continued their journey, the forest growing darker and more foreboding as the rain intensified. The compass remained steady, its needle pointing unwaveringly ahead. It was late afternoon when they reached a clearing, the sudden openness startling after hours of navigating the dense woods. At the clearing’s centre stood a monolith, its…
Category: Game Design
Progress and updates on the game design process.
The Crossing
The Wanderer rocked violently, a fragile speck in the vast, storm-beaten waters. Spicer, the captain, stood barefoot at the helm, his wiry frame braced against the ship’s shuddering frame as waves slapped mercilessly at the hull. A deep-set grin carved into his face despite the danger, he looked more at ease here, at the edge of…
Domination….no, not what you’re thinking.
I was a fan of Domination (the RPG) for a while. It was published by Starchilde Publications in 1989. Starchilde also made another game I really liked: Justifiers (and I have to say it is definitely in the heritage of our upcoming new game Whole New World.) The system used a percentile ‘attribute’ which made…
New posts on Childbirth and Death in Tales of Distant Lands.
I’ve done a lot of worldbuilding here and on the RPGPUB but the place where the most content for Tales of Distant Lands lives is on the Patreon. Thers’s heaps of member only material available for free – certainly enough to actually play the game.
NEW RELEASE: Rise of R’lyeh – a new post apocalyptic vision
The strange aeons arrived and R’lyeh rose from the dark waters. A Dark Past When the darkness came for me, There was no-one who stood in their way In 1998, the unthinkable happened. It started with immense earthquakes under the Pacific Ocean as the Earths crust was torn and rent under the oceans. As the…
Tales of Distant Lands – Fights
Drennus is a Privean pirate who fights with a long blade. He’s matched against Blackfeather, a Saalian dockworker. Both have seen several scrapes in the past Drennus Body d10, Pirate d10, Past: Grew up on a Privean pirate ship (+1). Has a long blade (+1 to hit, 2 damage). Drennus is wearing boiled leather armour…
Whole New World: Seeking Artists
The art for Enhanced or Through the Silver Gate doesn’t vibe well with Whole New World so I’m hunting for an artist again to produce the cool retro-space vibe I need for this. “The human race is going to be adrift, desperate for a rock to cling to while they catch their breath.” FTL There’s…
Using Twilight 2000 Resources with Blade Runner
Blade Runner is one of the published games by Free League which uses a version of the Year Zero Engine (YZE) which eschews dice pools in favour of stepped dice. This means that instead of just adding more dice until you’re rolling a handful of clickety-clacks, you increase the ‘magnitude’ of the dice for skills…
New Release: Through The Silver Gate – a new alt-campaign for Twilight 2000
Through the Silver Gate is a new alt-campaign for Twilight 2000 cementing it as a flexible and practical modern task and combat resolution system. It sits alongside Here Be Dragons and The Gloom as possible alt-campaigns for T2K on the premise of “what if it wasn’t the Soviets….” This means it’s perfectly possible to play…
Tales of Distant Lands Playtest: Group 2, Session 2 – AP
Once she was sure that everyone was asleep, Joy crept from her stuffed straw pallet and slipped out of the room. She was sure no-one would have heard her move because of the constant put-put-put from Makaira’s snoring. But even as she pulled the door closed, she wouldn’t have seen a pair of eyes flick…
The Fantasy War – putting the War in Wardrobe
I wrote some notes a while ago so forgive me for brevity. This morning on the bus….I kinda expanded them. Images are placeholders, I’ve pinged my artist, Dino, to produce some nice original art. The Long Stair was an internet thread on rpgnet which imagined, possibly to excruciating detail, what happens when a fantasy world…
One Page RPG Jam 2024 – Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf
This is an examination of being a starfaring race in the Dark Forest. The idea of a violent and hostile void out there filled with predators lurking in the vast darkness between the stars. Welcome To The Dark Forest
One Page RPG Jam 2024 – Communists in the Funhouse
So, where did this one come from? Communists in the Funhouse is a euphemism used in Denmark to describe a woman who’s at a certain stage of her menstrual cycle. My wife and I thought this was hilariously phrased and as a result, it had to inspire a mini-game. So, if it tickles you, pop…
One Page RPG Jam 2024 – We Go In – Saving the World when you’re not From The World
The third RPG I’ve posed to the Jam is WE GO IN The concept is being a disaster relief operative. A little like “International Rescue” also known as Thunderbirds. Now there are differences It’s team based per player rather than playing a single “brother” with their own craft. Every player has the same vehicle (though…
One Page RPG Jam 2024 – Chosen Men – “Sharpe” by any other name
The second RPG I’ve posted for the Jam is Chosen Men This game is the “Sharpe” of RPGs. The idea of romping around Spain putting Napoleon back in his place has entertained me for years while watching the TV movies and also then reading the books. If you’re familiar with the concept, you’d have no…
One Page RPG Jam 2024 – Talking to Dragons – an Earthsea-inspired RPG
So far I’ve posted two entries for the Jam The first is….Talking to Dragons This is the base system for “Tales of Distant Lands” and could be considered a QuickStart so it’s also available on DTRPG. I’ll still be working on the full release of Tales of Distant Lands obviously
One Page Game Jam 2024
We will be hacking together some entries for the one page game jam over the coming month. Pop onto our discord if you want to join in.
Tales of Distant Lands: The Song of Rusal and Erse
The Song of Rusal and Erse In the history of Saaland, Rusal was a legendary warrior, poet and prince. In the story, Rusal become enchanted with a woman he sees on a passing ship and pursues her by jumping in the water. But the waters are too strong for him to catch her. The song…
Maps of Ilsien
I put a new [public] Patreon post up today. Maps are hard. Well, they’re hard to get right.
Languaging and the Naming of Things
One of the important things for the World is familiarity. I remember reading a great (and hefty) first RPG by a Scottish crowd and one of the things I remember most is not their evocative prose or the art which captured the sort of neo-victorian fantasy world, but that they took the time to use…