Author: Thrythlind aka Luke Green

Armello is a indie board-game inspired video game for the PC the introduction of which is linked below (not coincidentally, I link the Let’s Player whose channel introduced me to the game).

I’ve kind of been looking for a way to do something like the setting in a roleplaying game and now I think I have found the RPG for it:

The Fellowship by Jacob Randolph, the Drivethru of which is linked here: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/177662/Fellowship–A-Tabletop-Adventure-Game?hot60=1&src=hgrs

It won’t actually be Armello, of course, true to PbtA we’ll make up most of the stuff ourselves along the way, but similar setting. Anthropomorphic animals representing the different groups rather than fantasy races with an Overlord in the form of a once wise king gone mad due the corruption of an awful power.

Current thought is to do one or two sessions during my short winter break. However, I could also run a bi-weekly set of sessions of this Friday evenings American time (Saturday mornings for me) fairly easily (alternating with my other regular games).

https://youtu.be/_Uc8sMsJFXI?list=PLTvwKQHVid4bEIIJNf8ItXh86pSFX7SgH

https://youtu.be/_Uc8sMsJFXI?list=PLTvwKQHVid4bEIIJNf8ItXh86pSFX7SgH

Every once in a while a get an idea to do something similar to Twitch plays Pokemon. Where I set up an RPG or story thing to run on polls and/or suggestion threads.

Would likely set it up in its own community because it would be obtrusive elsewhere.

But basically run the polls and fill in the fiction based on poll results before introducing the next poll.

Current thoughts is to do this with The Fellowship where I am the Overlord and the polls play the characters.

Not sure it would be popular enough to work though. Ideally you could get a fair number of votes in a day but if not it would just stall.

Oh well. Random thoughts.

Relearning the fine art of sticky notes.

I usually only did this for conventions and usually didn’t have as many to place…I’ve been removing sticky notes as the party completes sections…we just completed the optional prologue.

I am a bit excited. My graphic designer has informed me she expects to be finished with the PDF and print proofs of my coming book on Friday. This means that I’ll be ordering the test copies shortly. It’s cutting close to the October deadline I set but looks like we’ll make it.

This will be the first expansion I’ve published for my Fate based game: Demon Next Door; focusing on civilian life and slice of life game play in the Divine Blood universe. While the focus is obviously on giving more information about the setting and gameplay within the Fate based system I use, I hope that it will prove useful for anybody looking to do a similar style of game play as slice-of-life is a somewhat rarely touched upon game focus. Usually we focus on stories of adventure, horror and action. Though recent games have delved more into the daily life (such as Masks) of heroes alongside their peril-filled exploits. I was endeavoring here to give advice for dealing entirely with games set outside of a dangerous lifestyle. Reproducing shows like Clarissa Explains it All, Azumanga Daioh, Office Radio, WKRP in Cinicinnati, K-On, or Saved by the Bell.

Sorry about posting here I’m a bit bouncing in anticipation. After this I will be able to say there’s more than one book for the Divine Blood game. (And pretty soon I hope to have a couple more pieces of fiction out for the setting.)

So I mentioned that I had hit upon an idea of how to convert my Divine Blood setting to a PbtA system. Short version: focus on alternate timelines to preserve the “play to find out” agenda (include the novel’s canon as a sample campaign); examine City of Mists flexible templates; and look into a set of shifting principles to account for mood shifts.

When I mentioned this to my playtesters as something I might look into starting next year when some of my plate is cleared it was suggested that I do a full book that was just how to do Divine Blood in different systems. It is actually an interesting idea and one I might do after I look into various games with open licenses.

My original plan for Divine Blood was to do a system agnostic book and let people adapt the system they desired. I eventually created the current Fate based system as an example. It was never meant to be The System.

In general I believe that game companies should start broadening their publications to present their settings in multiple systems. I’ve a poorly edited rant on the subject somewhere on my blog. I tend to think that permanently tying a setting to a system is essentially handicapping your IP. Certainly there are fans that will toolkit any setting to any system already but many would happily buy an official conversion to save the work.

I’m curious about two things here:

What are your thoughts on converting settings to as many systems as possible?

When do alternate system publishings m, should I put multiple alternate systems in one book or focus on one system per book to enable greater detail?

I probed Richard Rogers to see if he was interested in this a couple of months ago and he said to bring it back up when I was organizing it and one of my players from the Gauntlet campaigns I ran this summer suggested I’d be welcome to post here.

So that I can keep statements of interest all in one place, please post to the original thread on the Just a Game Community.

Thank you in advance.

Originally shared by Thrythlind aka Luke Green

I’m looking to start a playtest for my current Powered by the Apocalypse build of Just a Game which is a hack aiming at reproducing stories such as those found in Sword Art Online; Ready, Player One; Log Horizon; Snow Crash; Captain Power; and so on.

This will be a Play by Post game run via Google Docs and I want the posting schedule to be at least a post a week but depending on RL issues, I may post more than once in a week if I see everyone has responded before the week has passed.

I will be keeping track of mechanical stuff in comments on the doc so I can have an easy reference for what happened at what point.

I would like somewhere between 3 and 6 players. I plan to look for interested parties for the next 3 weeks or until I get 6 players, whichever happens first, and then start in on world-building and character-creation via a G-Doc. We’ll start with world-building as that could affect the character concepts people have. At least one of the current persona-books may be inappropriate for some campaign concepts.

I’ll be sharing this across to a couple of places but asking people to comment on this original message in the community for the game. (to the 9 people that are already members, yay! activity…though I know some of you would prefer I had started developing the Fate and/or GUMSHOE rulesets first). Anybody that wants to join the Community yay.

I’ll be posting weekly updates pasted from the G-Doc playtest to the Community as well for commentary and discussion in the “Actual Play” section.

(as a side note, I’ve been thinking about using my unused patreon for playtest materials rather than drivethruRPG, it feels more appropriate)

The first playtest packet has a lot of my essays on the genre in general and the second packet more focuses on the overall agenda of the game and the mechanics of the PbtA build.

After my summer three-episode demo, I’ve already got some doubts on using Bonds (a la Worlds in Peril) but will continue to use them for now. As three demo episodes is too little for me to abandon that right away.

I don’t have a particular target yet, but am doing a general test run to see if the gears work together, if they fail to catch or if they grind and break. As problem areas get revealed (which may be my GMing, admittedly), I’ll start to focus more on those.

The playtest packets are at my publisher page on drivethruRPG: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/4131/Thrythlind-Books-and-Games

They are pay what you want and my general assumption is that most people download them for free. I will admit that most of my drivethruRPG profits go to cost of living and occasionally RPGs that look like they have interesting mechanics I can use for something else. I’ll do a full kickstarter when I get playtesting done and am ready to make the final production, commission art and the like.

Until then, I’ll continue using the art of my expansive RPG list of my RPG heroines of the past and other things I own the copyrights too.

The original playtest packet is here: www.drivethrurpg.com/product/153922/Just-a-Game–Playtest-Packet

The current Powered by the Apocalypse build is here: www.drivethrurpg.com/product/182206/Just-a-Game–Playtest-Packet–PbtA-Version-2

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/4131/Thrythlind-Books-and-Games

Originally shared by Thrythlind aka Luke Green

The third and last Just a Game playtest and last of my summer short campaigns. We had a new player join in this very combat heavy session.

I unfortunately cut short the broadcast before a very useful roses and thorns session, and am just realizing that I failed to give roses and thorns myself.

My thorn: I knew this was going to be heavy combat going in since it was a raid, but I was initially disappointed about how same each combat turn felt.  Thanks to David for suggesting that his Cleaner roll Pass Obstacle instead of Take Offensive, for helping me clear that mental hurdle. I’m also a little iffy on Bonds. They’re rather cumbersome and I’m still not feeling whether they fit into the fiction well. I might return to a simple Influence style method as per Masks rather than use the Worlds in Peril Bonds.

Rose: I’m more and more liking the way Gear Upgrades work and the flexibility of combining a persona and an avatar to represent physical capabilities with character personality. Also, the players gave me some great advice. Especially on hitting the themes. I’ll probably be adding some official options to failure results for whether the failure presents an existential, social or physical consequence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ztwTgGZvQE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ztwTgGZvQE

The player Mitchell in this game is actually one of the GMs at a forum based site that runs my game in an Alternate setting (ironically enough, that alternate setting the supernatural is already public and has averted the bad news coming down the pipe for my canon by virtue of all the good guys already working together)

So I sometimes got caught up into my habit of answering his questions as per a developer answering an FAQ, (this happened a lot last week), but I tried to keep that down this time.

I hope I managed to do so and that Jason Cox  and Edward Hickcox didn’t feel too put out when I started ranging into deeper world stuff.

It was a fun game.

Originally shared by Thrythlind aka Luke Green

So, due to technical issues, we got cut off and despite attempts to wrap it up afterwards we went another thirty to forty minutes. The general gist is a meeting involving the US Navy, Psyche and Hermes (representing Nirvana) with our heroes taken on as witnesses/experts as regards of trying to get out front of the “supernatural people exist” thing.

As one person said “Okay, we’ve got a plan to go public in maybe a year.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi6FPxYXlZA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi6FPxYXlZA

Third and last session of Masks RPG. Wishes are made, powers are altered and the young heroes finally come face to face with the authors of much of their recent troubles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cobYuqYMVhw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cobYuqYMVhw

Originally shared by Thrythlind aka Luke Green

Session two of my Princes of the Apocalypse run:

http://thrythlind.blogspot.jp/2016/08/the-lord-of-lance-rock-princes-of.html