gshowitt

DUNGEONSCRAWL - THE PALACE OF THE BRIAR PRINCE

So. I don't have a working printer, or a working scanner, at the moment. Which means that this was printed on crappy internet cafe paper and scanned with my phone, so my apologies for the fact that it looks even more zine-y than normal.

ANYWAY. 

This game has a micro OSR system on the left hand side of the page, drawing heavily from Into the Odd (cracking system, that). On the right side of the page, there's rules for crowd-sourcing a dungeon by scrawling (geddit?) r...

THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOUR

This isn't my normal sort of thing; it's very storygame, Not a whole bundle of mechanics. I hope you like it.

When I read This Place Is Not A Place Of Honour it really inspired me; I love the idea of one civilization exploring the ruins of another, and how a game of telephone played over millennia has the capacity to change original intent and meaning.  It's a brilli...

BEAUTIFUL SPACE PIRATES IN: "The Galaxy's Most Dangerous Funeral!"

Or: BSPI:TGMDF for short. Or BEAUTIFUL SPACE PIRATES for middle.

It's a rough-and-tumble game about being handsome, dashing and vicious; of star-skimmers and laser-flintlocks; of falling madly in love with a crystal horse and having it die in your arms.

I know it says "Part One of a six-part series" but honestly I just wanted to make the header even so I wrote something in there. I reckon you could sort out some more adventures pretty easily, though, as long as they're full of der...

KOBOLD ENDEAVOUR

I wanted to write a game where the main mechanic was causing distractions to help other characters, even if what they're doing is creating distractions themselves. Kobolds seemed like an excellent fit, once I'd hammered out the core mechanics. Please enjoy playing the MIGHTY DRAGON KING: I recommend you give them the voice of a spoiled - giant - child.

Also! This game is the third I've done since the last mailout, so I'll look to get physical copies of this, Goat Crashers, and WAKE out ...

WAKE.

A serious one this month - it can't all be party goats and justice trams, after all. This is WAKE, a game about playing coma patients in a shared, violent dreamscape where you're always at risk of being snuffed out like a candle to fuel someone else's wicked plans. As the basic game is a little hard to parse, I've included a clean version without all the drawings and scribbles all over it which might be a little easier to read at the table.

Hope you have fun with it,

- Grant

GOAT CRASHERS

You're a cheeky little goat and you want to party.

In other news, I'm running late on sending out the physical copies - I moved house at the start of January so everything's been up in the air a little! I'm all set up now, so I'm going to sort out printing October, November and December's games and get them sent out over the next week.

As previously mentioned, I'm going to include the re-designs of July, August and September's games in the envelopes too. I wasn't happy with the ba...

TRAMFORCE

December's game is TRAMFORCE, an RPG about fighting crime on the mean streets of post-Brexit Britain. It's not quite what you'd expect. (Or, rather: if you've read my other games, it's probably exactly what you'd expect? Anyway.)

Also, cause it's Christmas, the PDF download includes OPERATION: CHRISTMAS which sees brave TRAMFORCE operatives struggle to defend Eastbourne's Christmas lights from invading Blackpool barbarians, hell-bent on stealing the bulbs for their glimmering Northern hellscap...

RETROGRADE

November's one-page game is RETROGRADE. (Thanks to Chris Taylor for coming up with the name.) I wanted to make a game inspired by the Mega Drive game Flashback, or more broadly, any sort of cyberpunk thing where people leave messages for themselves before losing their memories and having to learn what happened - and what they did.

Attached is a PDF of the hand-illustrated version, and a plain text one which is probably easier to read and hack.

Let me know what you think!

- Grant 2018-11-05 17:02:22 +0000 UTC View Post

ADVENTURE SKELETONS

YOU'RE A SKELETON. You're on an adventure. People keep hitting you and your bits keep flying off, but you're having a good time. 

(This game was originally written in a slightly different format for Chris Longhurst's Kickstarter, Tales of the Talking Skeletons. Unfortunately, Chris' Kickstarter didn't fund. We figured that it was a shame to lose the game, so we talked to Chris and he agreed to us releasing it publicly in lieu of our fee.)

THE FIVE

September's one-page game is THE FIVE, a game about knights battling a vile and insidious corruption that's spread across the land since their Queen died. It uses a heavily modified variant of the DEAD CHANNEL ruleset, and hopefully you'll be able to use it to tell stories of sacrifice, body horror and loss with your mates.

Plus I did a drawing of the knights which I'm quite proud of

Love,

- Grant

Don't worry, the mistake is solved

Hello! 

I posted in the wrong Patreon this morning; you might have received a message saying you've been charged for an episode of my podcast Hearty Dice Friends. I've deleted the post and none of you will be charged, so no worries there.

If you'd like to hear me and co-designer Chris guff off into mics for an hour every week, you can take a listen to the show here: https://soundcloud.com/hearty-dice-frie...

PRIDE AND EXTREME PREJUDICE

The subtitle is: REGENCY LADIES AND GIANT ROBOTS POWERED BY ELDRITCH CURSES, which I think explains everything you need to know?

Anyway, much love,

- G

CRASH PANDAS

You're a raccoon and you're involved in the dangerous world of illegal LA street racing. Except: you can't drive a car on your own, so you need to team up to do it. But no conferring. 

Good luck!

- G

P.S. I've put in three versions: a plain PDF document, a cut-and-paste layout of printed text, and a handwritten version. A few of you have said that you much prefer the handwritten versions, but this game had simply too much stuff in it to fit on a single handwritten page and sti...

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

This month's game is UNFINISHED BUSINESS, a game in which you play an intangible ghost who must possess luckless souls to achieve your single driving aim - to get revenge on your killers. It uses 2D8 to resolve actions, because I feel like the noble D8 doesn't get enough love.

This one's primarily done via cutting up text printouts - I tried writing it up by hand but there's too much text on there to make it legible. Hopefully my inventive layout makes up for it, and the drawing, too.

Mu...

THE BEAST

It's one-page RPG time again! This month's game is THE BEAST, a game about hunting down a nightmare creature that can break you in half without really trying.

I've attached the raw text as well as the hand-written, illustrated version - it's pretty small in some places so it might be hard to read on a screen otherwise.

Should also note that the deer-hound-wizard on the sheet is one of the many Beasts available, and yours can look like whatever you want it to.

Much love, 

Listen to how we design games.

Me and Chris recorded a bonus episode of our podcast, Hearty Dice Friends, in which we documented our design process for this month's game. If you're interested in learning about how we do it, take a listen! 

- Grant

JASON STATHAM'S BIG VACATION

This game was suggested on Hearty Dice Friends, a podcast that I do with my co-author Chris Taylor. You can listen to it here!

In JSBV, you play a group of elite operatives with one mission: make sure that Jason Statham has a nice holiday.

We recorded the design session too, and we'll be releasing that next week once the game goes on public release.

Muc...

STREETS OF KARAZUN

So.

I've been reading the brilliant Turn to 400 blog, now sadly stopped, which focused on playing through and reviewing Fighting Fantasy books with a loving, if critical, eye. It's fun stuff.

I also played an FF book with my nephew, and jeez it was dull.

But: I wanted to recreate that sort of grimy,...

No More Room In Hell

February's game is No More Room In Hell! It's a survival horror game with four GMs and four players, with those roles rotating throughout play. Although it started out as a zombie horror game (which is where the title came from) it could be used to tell stories of people sneaking out of occupied countries, evading capture by the secret police or navigating an abandoned city overrun by dangerous animals.

It's also basically impossible to illustrate and quite text-heavy, so there aren't...

GIANT GODDAMN ROBOTS

This month's game is GIANT GODDAMN ROBOTS, a mech fighting game that involves throwing dice and cards at pictures of enemy robots!

GGR isn't really like anything I've written before: although you can use it for roleplaying (and there's a "Stuff other than giant robot combat, for some reason?" appendix which contains very brief RPG mechanics) it's more of a board game. Or a card game? Mainly, it's a game where you hurl dice across a table at the GM and hope to land them on pictures of ...

LAST CHRISTMAS

LAST CHRISTMAS is a game of time-travelling festive ghosts trying to avert global societal collapse. I wrote it with help from Chris Taylor and Charles Dickens.

N.B. I consider the Muppets version of A Christmas Carol to be more canonical than the original, but I have left the "summon homonculi" power in under Christmas Present's abilities because I felt it was more fun

- G

JUSTIFIED ANXIETY redesign

I'm experimenting with doing layout on my computer rather than by hand - it might be easier, or it might end up being a lot more work than writing it down. I dunno. We'll see.

Anyway, here's a redesign of JUSTIFIED ANXIETY, a game which comes so close to infringing copyright I should probably just try and sell it to Mongoose already.

Do you prefer the cleaner layout, or does the rough-and-ready charm of the hand-drawn one float your boat? Let me know.

- G

TRASHKIN plain text

In response to some folks saying TRASHKIN was hard to read (and I legit don't blame you, I can barely read it and I wrote the damn thing) here's a PDF of the Google Doc I used to write it in the first place.

DEAD CHANNEL HOPPERS

Chris and I got together this morning and wrote up the back page content for DEAD CHANNEL, October's game, which takes the theme and runs with it: it plays as normal, but each character has an additional problem on their injury list that forces a channel change. The show changes, but the characters (and the threat) don't. Which is fun!

Above is part of the table of shows we've put together. $15+ patrons can expect to receive their copy of DEAD CHANNEL, and by extension DEAD CHANNEL HOPPERS, in...

TRASHKIN

TRASHKIN is a game of kinda rubbish fantasy races doing kinda rubbish stuff. Incredibly (and also unwisely?) I have included two different schools of magic in this one-page game. 

Also attached as a PDF, because I have a scanner now!

EDIT: After a playtest, I have updated the system to V 1.2. I can't change the image (???) but the PDF reflects the new rules. 

Changes: all stats increased by 1.
Foxfolk class is now Divorced.
Pigeonkin class Smokes Cigarettes.
It i...

HONEY HEIST spell list

Hi there!

I'd like to extend a warm welcome to all of my new patrons off the back of Critical Role's Honey Heist game. 

I've had several people ask me how to get hold of the spell list that Marisha uses in the episode. The spell list (which contains 36 stupid spells) is part of my back-page content - never-released-online, super-exclusive, pay-a-bit-extra-to-show-your-support stuff.

Which puts me in a quandary, because I'd love for you all to have it, but I've mad...

Games design podcast

Hi there!

I'm one half of Hearty Dice Friends, a gaming advice podcast. This week we had a bonus episode in which Chris and I design a game on mic, and it's turned out pretty good!

If you want to listen to more episodes of HDF, check out our other Patreon here: patreon.com/heartydicefriends

- G

IT IS HERE.

The behemoth has arrived.

Brace yourselves for incoming print copies.

Much love,

- G

Did it again

Keep posting in the wrong Patreon. Guess that's what I get for doing this on Monday morning.

- G

Oops!

Just saw that I uploaded something meant for my other Patreon (Hearty Dice Friends) to this one! Apologies. I'll make sure none of you are charged, and I've deleted the offending post.

- Grant