A Mostly Complete Diary Of All The Media I Consume That I Bother To Write Down And Then Also Post On The Internet 🍽️😋

I overlooked this game in my library when I was looking for solarpunk games. Its subtitle is “Solarpunk Adventures in the Future”. It is … kind of solarpunk? It is little more than a reskinning of the Push SRD by Cezar Capacle. Which is a really good system! The core mechanic is the “push”: roll 1d6. 1 - 4 = weak hit; 5 - 6 = strong hit; 7+ = miss; you can reroll and add your result as much as you want. Characters are made by rolling for gift, upbringing, experience, mark, charm, and bond. There are tables for creating missions, challenges, moments, etc. And that’s pretty much all there is here! No setting, no real guidance on building community and harmony in the face of conflict and scarce resources. Which is to say, there’s not much here that feels like solarpunk. Cute game though! 5/5 stars! https://zeruhur.itch.io/solaris-a-new-dawn https://capacle.itch.io/push

The ultimate distillation of d100 games in the BRP / Chaosium / CoC tradition. Found this via Sean F. Smith, who chose it as the ruleset for a play-by-post game of Dark Conspiracy that we’re playing. Incidentally, I’m also starting a short campaign of Delta Green, and the character creation process was okay, but still way complicated. I would far prefer to have just done Die 100 Times. Very flexible, short and sweet, hackable. Love the integrated combat roll. Would 100% run/play a game with this! 5/5 stars! https://alexandre-kobayashi.itch.io/die-a-hundred-times

Look at this cute little guy! “A sisyphean dung beetle solo RPG.” You play a little dung guy trying to roll a ball up the hill. And it frequently rolls back down the hill, and that is frustrating! And that’s the whole game. A strong undercurrent of capitalism vs organized labor. Love it! 5/5 stars! https://sleepy-badger-games.itch.io/little-dung-guy

Disquietingly beautiful game. Logan shares very intimate key moments of his life, and allows the reader to determine their outcome through the roll of the dice. You are encouraged to consider your own life’s significant moments and how different outcomes might change your life, and who you are. I love the “methods of play” section. Method #1 says explicitly that reading and thinking about the game is playing the game, which is something I believe to be true about games. You play by completing the playbook, which guides you through experiencing moments, narrative milestones, and self-care breaks. The layout is fantastic. Can’t believe how good this is. 5/5 stars! https://breathingstories.itch.io/logan

NASA released an adventure! missed opportunity to call it HUBBLE TROUBLE. the plot is: a dragon steals the hubble telescope. adventure design is by Christina Mitchell with graphic design by Michelle Belleville. so, nice to see some women driving the project. they go out of their way to not say “D&D” probably because legal and licensing reasons, but this is a D&D adventure “designed for a party of 4-7 level 7-10 characters … for your preferred tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) system.” i’m a little disappointed that they decided to go with straight D&D fantasy instead of a more sci-fi or even science fantasy game, but I understand the marketing reasons for doing so. the adventure is pretty okay! player characters wake up on a mysterious planet with no memory of how they got there, and start to slowly reveal and unravel the mystery. there are locations (and a map!) and npcs and guides for roleplaying them. there’s a fair bit of “background science.” there’s exploration, combat, puzzles, and social encounters.. it is a varietally correct if not particularly inspiring dungeons & dragons experience with space telescopes. 5/5 stars! https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/multimedia/online-activities/the-lost-universe/

super neat mystery game inspired by Disco Elysium. this game borrows heavily from Everyone Is John in that different aspects (Intellect, Psyche, Fysique, Motorics) compete for control of the detective, and also play NPCs and locations under their domain. while the objective of the game is ostensibly to solve the murder, a significant portion of the game is occupied by the minigame of the aspects competing for control and dominance, forming alliances against the dominant aspect, tampering with each others evidence, etc. other mechanics are from pbta: playbooks full of detective moves and aspect moves, and 10+ strong hit / 7 - 9 weak hit / 6- miss 2d6+aspect rolls. evocative of Brindlewood Bay in that the mystery is generative: the mystery itself—and the solution to it—don’t exist until you start playing, and are resolved via mechanics. not logic or deduction or anything premeditated. of course, this doesn’t prevent you from using logic and deduction to drive the mechanics. it’s just that the solution doesn’t already exist anywhere ahead of time. the mystery resolution mechanic involves a tree called the DEDUCTION PYRAMID. you begin by collecting eight pieces of evidence. these can be combined to create 4 minor deductions, connections that don’t directly identify a suspect or method of death, but that suggest plots like alibis, alliances, etc etc. these can be combined into 2 major deductions which do relate directly to the murder and or suspect. e.g. murder weapon, motive, time of death, etc. finally, the fourth tier combines all the evidence and deductions into the final solution. this game seems super clever and super fun, and i would love to play it! 5/5 stars! https://pieartsy.itch.io/after-the-mind

i was turned off by this game for a while because of the tactical mercenary / assault weapons packaging. but upon actually reading it, it is actually pretty great! So don’t judge a book by its cover. Its vibe is The A Team meets Doom Patrol: you are a rogue team of strangely powered mercenaries investigating weird stuff. There’s even an evil / rival agency a la COBRA called CYCLOPS. Character creation: choose one of d66 ROLES and two of d666 TRAITS. Complete with a Mission Generator to create missions, objectives, and complications for you. A rare “War Dice” meta-currency allows you to add an extra d6 to your roles for when you really wanna succeed. (I like it when there’s a way for you to bargain with the game and bend the rules a little bit when you really wanna roll good.) It has PBTA dice resolution: miss, weak hit, strong hit on 6-, 7-9, 10+ after rolling 2d6+skill. Double Skills are Force, Tactics, Creative, and Reflexes. Lots and lots of GM advice supplement the relatively light core rules. I like this quote: “FIST is camp and pop-cultural pastiche. We’re being grim, gritty, and serious as a joke—but the joke we’re telling is dead serious.” 5/5 stars! https://claymorerpgs.itch.io/fist

my beekey blinders group is thinking of running this game. it is directly descended from Call of Cthulhu and retains nearly all of its character creation rules and dice mechanics. In fact, it’s just CoC with with an X-Files / Government Agents kind of vibe to it. There are some additional rules around relationships, which slowly deteriorate as you spend more time investigating and succumbing to The Strangeness. Seems fun. I’d play it.

Wanderhome! Picked this up because of Last Tea Shop and Fox Curio’s Floating Bookshop. A very beautiful book full of gorgeous art work and very lovely writing. It’s a No Dice No Masters / Belonging Outside Belonging game which means it has Playbooks for characters and a token based metacurrency based on playing to your strengths and vulnerabilities. It’s a cute-as-a-button animal-folk game about wandering and traveling. That’s pretty much the whole game! It’s full of traits and natures so that players can also play NPCs and Locations. It doesn’t provide you with any kind of plot or storyline. You open each session arriving somewhere and prepping some locations and npcs to interact with. It has a full list of seasons, months, and seasonal holidays complete with rare seasonal specials. Wanderhome’s influence on Floating Bookshop is so strong that Bookshop is essentially Wanderhome on a river with a “selling and trading books” aspect to focus the game and provide Wanderhome’s missing storyline. This book is gorgeous, friendly, and dreamy. 5/5 stars! https://possumcreekgames.itch.io/wanderhome

This is a short 16 page pdf. A solo journaling game (with alternate rules for 2 players) about operating a quiet tea shop between the lands of the living and the dead. You receive guests on their way to the land of the dead, and serve them tea and ask them questions. My grandfather died this morning. It got me emotional thinking about getting to ask him the questions I never asked. And thinking about somebody offering him tea and comfort on his journey. He would prefer coffee though. He liked to talk about how ‘toffee’ was one of his first words, and how he’s been drinking coffee since he was a little kid. Anyway, this is a very cute game and I really like the feel of it. I picked it up because I had just read Fox Curio’s Floating Bookshop, and it listed this game as an inspiration. Floating Bookshop is clearly a descendant of Last Tea Shop. Incidentally, this game cites The Lighthouse At The Edge Of The Universe by lostwaysclub as an influence. Lostwaysclub is who wrote Floating Bookshop, which cites Last Tea Shop as an influence! Mutual respect! They should be friends. https://springvillager.itch.io/last-tea-shop-complete

this book is fucking delightful. super cute, super cozy. it’s a solo journaling rpg in which you float up and down the river in your floating bookshop and sell books to animal folk a la redwall, etc. it’s a fully realized setting with seasons and weather and seasonal holidays and river towns with features and characters, and stuff happens that you have to address, and you can make friendships and go fishing and cook meals for your new friends and i just love it. there’s even a part where you can photocopy or tear out a page and then cut out a bunch of furniture and then arrange it in your bookshop however you want. i can’t stand how cute this is, and i can’t wait to play it. it says it is inspired by the last tea shop and wanderhome, and i think i have both of those, so i’m going to read them next. because if they’re like this, then i will love them. 5/5 stars! https://lostwaysclub.itch.io/floating-bookshop

Richard Kelly aka SprintingOwl aka kumada1 is my favorite game designer. He churns out an improbable number of games. Some of them are memes, some are jokes, some are hauntingly beautiful, none of them are just straightforward boring games, and nearly all of them show very careful and deliberate thought and design.

Fivewild is a shockingly complete old school clone, and “… In The Gullet” is an adventure scenario for it. I say shockingly complete because it starts out with such a tone that the reader is convinced that this will be just another jokey memey product. But no. It is 150 pages of very funny dungeon fantasy adventure that you can tell came from a very fun home campaign. It has details that otherwise wouldn’t be in a mere joke system. Details like fall damage and suffocation damage. Rules for multiclassing. An equipment list and a bestiary.

Language takes a new front and center role in the game. Including introducing what is possibly the doom of all mind kind: crabs, and their dangerous, magical language “That’s carcinization, baby!” Totally custom races, each with its own language. Kelly attempts to address the “Human Problem” with the “Ladies” race: all humans, male and female, are “Ladies.” All custom classes, some familiar some exotic and some, you can tell, custom made as a joke for a player who had one very specific, odd itch that needed scratching.

I can’t say enough good things about this! I would run it / play it in a heartbeat. 5/5 stars!

https://kumada1.itch.io/fivewild

A short madcap adventure made for, and by the author of, Brighter Worlds. A wizard has been portaling modern tech into their fantasy world, and throwing it away down the trash chute. Only to find out that the resident goblin population has found and been using the tech. So the wizard summoned a bunch of autonomous quad-copter drones to stop the goblins. And hilarity ensues! I would run this in a heartbeat. I love the artwork and the layout too. That progressive roll d6 on a ten item table on the inside cover? Chef’s kiss. 5/5 stars! https://awkwardturtle.itch.io/wizard-trash-goblin-treasure

This short essay describes a method for creating procedurally generated dungeons that have a cohesive feeling of intentionality and human design. It defines twelve different “cycles,” all of which have a starting point, a goal, and some insertion points. Cycles can be nested within cycles to create complex dungeons. Examples of cycles include “lock and key” and “hidden shortcut.” It finishes with an example of the creation process, in which we follow a hypothetical dungeon designer as she creates a dungeon from scratch. The dungeon map and key are included at the end. Can’t wait to try this! 5/5 stars! https://sersavictory.itch.io/cyclic-dungeon-generation

Wormskin is a series of short zines that establish and develop the setting of Dolmenwood, a dark fairy tale forest. Now that the Dolmenwood player guide, campaign book, and monster book are nearing completion, these zines are no longer available.

This zine provides a beautiful hex map of the forest complete with settlements, rivers and roads, and magical leylines.

It primarily showcases two playable races: the Moss Dwarf (a druidic forest gnome / classic dwarf / swampthing kind of creature) and the Grimalkin (a catperson capable of some innate magic, and that constantly evolves back and forth between mundane cat, cat person, and a fey trickster). Both races are dripping with flavor and I would love to play either of them.

The zine also has a lengthy guide buying and selling mushrooms, and about 30 different mushrooms + effects for Moss Dwarfs and other characters to experiment with.

The tone is very whimsical and fairy tale-y. If this is what Dolmenwood is going to be like, I will purchase it in a heartbeat when it’s available.

https://necroticgnome.com/blogs/news/the-end-of-wormskin

https://necroticgnome.com/pages/about-dolmenwood

A very cute little book. Excellent layout and art. It has a two stat Honey Heist mechanic: move points from Grandmother and Mothership when attempting tasks. The classes and loadout and setting all adhere to the “Grandmas in Space” theme. And the point of the game is to gather clues and put them together as in Brindlewood Bay. All in all, a fantastic package! 5/5 stars! https://armandah.itch.io/grandmothership

Named is a framework / toolkit for playing high-trust, rulings-over-rules games in the Free Kriegspiel tradition. And Sky Pirates of Jotnaar is a setting guide for Named.

Sky Pirates is great. The setting takes place on a gas giant planet that is covered deadly mists. A few mountaintops protrude from the mists like islands. But most of the action takes place on hot air balloons equipped with lightning coils, batteries, furnaces, and swivel-guns.

Named is mostly advice on playing and cooperating. The chore mechanic is the “Name” which can be any character descriptor in the tradition of Risus cliches, only with no dice value attached to them. You just start with 3 - 4 Names.

In a sticky situation, you can avoid rolling by accepting a Devil’s Bargain, or revealing a Dark Secret, which is kind of the same thing as a Devil’s Bargain. It is something undesirable that happens in exchange for you succeeding at the task.

If you do decide to roll, Named provides the One Dice Engine (ODE) resolution system:

1. Roll a six sided die. If it’s a 1, 2, or 3, that is 1, 2, or 3 “Swords” or successes. If it is a 4, that’s a “Devil’s Bargain. Essentially a success at cost. If you roll a 5 or 6, that is one or two "Skulls” or failures.

2. If you don’t like your roll, you can choose to re-roll by invoking a name that you haven’t used recently. If the new roll is a sword, that’s a success. Add any swords from from your first roll. If the new roll is a skull, that’s a failure. Add any skulls from your first roll.

3. If you don’t like your re-roll, you can choose to roll a third and final time if you agree to feel a Strong Emotion. This has consequences on future actions. Re-roll, adding any previous skulls or swords, plus one for your strong emotion.

That’s basically it. A great system because it can resolve conflict quickly with a single role. Or it can draw out the conflict with multiple rolls and escalating stakes.

All in all, a great little framework, and a great guidebook for playing in the FKR style. 5/5 stars! https://wightbred.itch.io/named-toolkit https://wightbred.itch.io/skypirates-of-jotnaar

A very cute little solo journaling game about finding a record shop and having experiences with your discoveries. Does a pretty good job of creating that magic feeling of rifling through a bin of strange and wonderful records, and then choosing something to take with you and be a part of your life forever or for a short time. One thing that has stuck with me about solo journaling games after talking to Paul Czege about his “The Ink That Bleeds” is that there’s really no reason not to play a bunch of solo journaling games all at once and all at the same time. And this game seems like a 100% perfect candidate to slip into some other game (or games) in which you’re playing an approximate version of yourself. Be it about relationships or adventure or whatever. That version of yourself can certainly take a moment to duck into a mysterious record shop or a yard sale and have a personal experience with some music. 5/5 gold records! https://craigmaloney.itch.io/record-shop

This is the second title, and the last one, in the series of two “solarpunk” games that I downloaded and read after thinking about and looking for solarpunk games. (The first was Arcology World.) You can blame tomasino’s solarpunk prompts podcast for my current interest in the topic: https://podcast.tomasino.org/@SolarpunkPrompts

The World After is starkly different from Arcology World. It is primarily a game of violence and combat, whereas Arcology explicitly has no rules for combat or violence. In fact, there are almost no aspects of solarpunk in this game at all, aside from it being set in a now thriving post apocalypse after the world was destroyed by climate crisis. I wish I could remember who told me this was a solarpunk game so that I could tell them, no. It is not. There are none of the elements of hope, cooperation, and co-existing with nature intrinsic to Arcology and to the solarpunk genre. Nature instead is something to be harnessed and controlled and channeled through the magical Essence.

None of which is to say that The World After is a bad game. It emphatically is not. It is a highly polished and very complete game. What sets it apart is its deep lore. Humanity has evolved down five differing paths, resulting in five different human species and societies from which player characters can come. Each is complete with pages of history and culture. The lore and setting are extremely rich and detailed.

The game also has a starting adventure, a bestiary, and advice for starting a campaign.

It has a branching “evolution” system instead of leveling up that grants you different abilities and bonuses. Each branching path (I think there are five) eventually rejoins at the capstone evolution, proving once again that the journey is the thing, not the destination.

It primarily uses a d6 pool mechanic, counting “successes” (4-6) against a difficulty number, with extra degrees of success for exceeding the difficulty.

And then it goes and ruins a perfectly nice d6-only system with an interesting but unnecessary initiative system. You get two of a set of predefined actions per turn. And every combination of two actions is assigned an initiative die ranging in size from d4 to d20. Everybody rolls their different sized dice to establish initiative order. Cute, clever, but also probably the first thing I would throw out from this system because it would require constant look-up, and also throwing it out means a d6 only system.

Its magic system is based on Essence, the magical material the Earth secretes when under extreme duress. Its white blood cells. It provides just enough crunch and math to be engaging. The formula involves whether the spell is innately weak, common, or strong; the difficulty number based on the desired effect; and the amount of essence it will cost the caster. It allows a little bit of nuance and consideration to casting.

The World After is a fantastic vehicle for classic turn-based game of exploration, combat, and adventure. I would definitely play it. 5/5 stars!

https://davidblandy.itch.io/the-world-after

If Apocalypse World and its various and sundry Powered By The Apocalypse progeny have a lasting legacy on games and game design, it will be because of the Playbook, a list of triggers and moves that allow a character and its player to have a profound impact on the story being told and potentially on the world in which that story is being told. The genius of the Playbook is that there is one for each character type (i.e. “class”) and there is also one for the Guide, the non-character player who guides the game. The GM, or DM. There is thus no distinction between a Fighter archetype player gaining a situational advantage based on in-game bravery and strength, as defined in their Playbook; and the Guide creating drama and tension by offering a Tough Choice as defined in their own Playbook.

Gone is the adversarial “DM vs the Players” relationship encouraged and perpetuated by some classic dungeon crawling games. Instead, everybody is just playing their own Playbooks toward the same end: telling an awesome story, creating interesting situations, and seeing what the heroes will do.

In Arcology World, Dyer Rose capitalizes on the defining legacy of Apocalypse World by giving each player not one but two Playbooks, a Method and a Role, each complete with its own special moves, and triggers for collecting XP, and relationships, etc. So you can be an Aggressive Doctor, or a Dramatic Zoologist, or any other combination.

All of the moves and Playbooks are based on the theme of Solarpunk. This is a post-Disaster world of small communities working together to survive in an unpredictable world of heavily mutated flora and fauna. A lot of the general moves shared by all players have to do with calling an assembly and convincing them of a course of action. And a lot of moves have to do with science: analyzing, research, hypothesizing, and synthesizing. It is thematically all about community, resources, problem solving, and working together.

https://basiliskonline.itch.io/arcology-world

Note: This was a bathtub review. I read the book on my iPad, and wrote this text on my Freewrite, all while soaking my aching muscles in a hot tub.

I picked this up I think because nico mentioned it.

It is a not a game. It is a super short guideline on self-exploration. Super light on details or instructions. Barely a manual at all. Doesn’t even commit to what it’s teaching you: this practice can be considered mindfulness, meditation, magic, or self-hypnosis. Basically you meditate on an Intention (concept/question) every day for six days, and then journal about your experiences.

warning: although there is none in this book, the author writes a lot of hypno-kink. so if you don’t want to see that, don’t click on their itch page.

https://sleepingirl.itch.io/six-days-asleep

The Goblin Pulls Out a Gun, by Viditya Voleti

Okay so I identified a gap in logging. And that is indie rpg gamebooks. I log everything I read on goodreads, and everything else here. But these tiny indie itch.io gamebooks aren’t on goodreads. And I read a ton of them. But then I don’t write anything down about them, so then I forget about them. But no more!

So here we go.

Last night I read TGPOAG. I found out about this game on the Party of One podcast. The one featuring Brennan Lee Mulligan, where they play goblins, and they Find Out. It was highly entertaining obviously. But also the game mechanics were really fun, and they were based on this “tech pack.”

It is designed for GMless, high stakes playing, where the player/s roleplay themselves into a sticky situation, and then do one huge roll to resolve everything.

You start with a 1d6 player pool, and a 2d8 challenge pool. Then you add d6 for each advantage, and add 1d8 for each complication or disadvantage, and then you throw them all.

Line up all the d8, and then you assign d6 to each challenge to try to beat it. If the d6 total exceeds the d8 total, that’s a success. If they are equal, that’s a complication. And it the d8 is greater, that’s a failure. So there are multiple potential outcomes, one for each challenge in a scenario. There are also opportunities for Extreme Success (if you beat all d8s with a d6 left over) or a Catastrophe (if there is a d8 left over with no d6 assigned to it).

Listening to Brennan and Stormer play, there was a fair bit of consideration involved in deciding how to stack up your d6, deciding which challenge took priority over the others, and what kinds of collateral and failures are consequently acceptable.

I think this is a very fun system that allows for interesting degrees of success and failure! The book is short, 7 pages long. And the whole system fits on just 2 pages. The rest of it is advice for playing and for incorporating this system into your own original game. So this is definitely a framework to be adopted and hacked. Five out of five stars!

https://vidityavoleti.itch.io/goblin-pulls-out-gun