D&D and Dying of the Light

The Dying of the Light is an adventure for Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play (first edition), originally published by Hogshead Publishing. I’ve owned my copy for twenty or so years and finally led a party through it this year. The catch? I converted it to Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition and ran it for a high-level party. That was tough and enlightening.

The Dying of the Light
The Dying of the Light, a WFRP 1st ed. adventure about the Apocalypse.

I’ve owned my WFRP books for more years than I haven’t and never played through the adventure from cover to cover. WFRP was a great game, but it’s mechanically dated and cumbersome when compared to newer games like D&D 5e and Pathfinder. (Heresy!) A group of D&D players asked me to run a game for them, so I figured I’d bang a square peg into a round hole and mash the two together.

The Basics

The first task was to convert checks into DCs. This I mostly did on the fly. WFRP skills were converted in the same way — find the D&D equivalent of a skill and you’re good to go.

NPCs and monsters were pulled from the Monster Manual or the Dungeon Master’s Guide, as appropriate. For the skaven I used wererats, while the fimir I replaced with monsters I had miniatures of. Whatever happened to the fimir beyond WFRP 1st ed anyway? I also created a bunch of new creatures to fill out the ranks.

The Problem

The tough part of this little undertaking was using the rules for a “hopeful fantasy game” like D&D to run a game set in the grim Old World. I added diabolical monsters to coerce the PCs, and I’d suggest using the rules for sanity and madness from the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Still, D&D characters are far more powerful than an ex-rat catcher from the sewers of Nuln could ever hope to be, so plan accordingly. The Dying of the Light is probably best run for characters around 3rd level.

Did You Know: Chris Pramas, who wrote The Place of Testing, is the founder and president of Green Ronin Publishing.

The Secret Sauce

We’re GMs, we improvise. Nothing in The Dying of the Light is so sacred that it can’t change to fit a different system, your players, or your maniacal ambitions. Let Moorslieb swallow the sun and plunge the world into darkness — for Khorne!

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

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Don’t forget about our big Pathfinder sale on at Drive Thru RPG. Ends very soon!

Busting Out of My Shell

“Write about your personal experiences,” the gurus say. “Speak from the heart, and your readers will listen.” That’s great advice, but I lean so far over to the “introvert” side of the continuum that busting out of my shell isn’t natural or cathartic. But that’s partly why I love roleplaying games so much.

Photo by Alex Chambers - Busting out of my shell
Photo by Alex Chambers

This month’s RPG Blog Carnival has one of those deceptively tough topics: “Why do you love RPGs? Why do you love GMing?” Easy: RPGs are fun. But there’s more to it than that. There’s always more to it.

Busting Out of My Shell

So yeah, two things about me. One, I’m the quiet silent type who avoids crowds and, two, I spend most of my working day involved with RPGs — I’m a huge fan. At the same time, I’ve been a teacher, small group leader, and GM, so I’m used to coordinating others. I learned to do that the old-fashioned way — by running games at high school and after university, then by being involved at church and by taking an English teaching job in Japan. Now I feel confident in my ability to work with others or to run a game.

I still dislike crowds, but roleplaying tables are easier to handle. They also give me a chance to meet others with a shared interest.

Roleplay gives me a chance to dream, and to escape the real world. Since returning to South Africa I’ve felt disjointed. I loved the culture in Japan, the nature, the food, and especially the people. Being back in SA has felt like an uphill struggle in a world that’s no longer my home, but my roleplaying friends were among those who’ve helped me most to settle back in. It’s also great to close the door and drown out the world, now and then. John Kovalic nailed that thought in this Dork Tower comic.

Roll Dice – Touch The World

I’m not suggesting RPGs are a replacement for life. That’s dangerous.

In Japan, I made many friends through roleplaying, but my wife and I also took the time to explore, to get out into a country that was totally alien, even a little frightening, and become part of the community. That wasn’t always easy for me — Tokyo being one of the most crowded cities in the world — but it was good for me.

Busting out of my shell
Photo by Chris Chan

In the same way, a game group can be a way to touch reality. As a GM, I’m a part of providing that space for others, where we can be with friends, joke, and have fun. It’s a place to be part of humanity again and silence the voices in your head.

And believe me, those silent voices are real.

When you spend most of your time locked away in your wizard’s tower, writing RPGs, the voice of reason quickly gets drowned out by negative thoughts and false assumptions.

But that’s a post for another day.

rpg blog carnival logo

Thanks to Campaign Master for hosting this month.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Check out our store, subscribe to our newsletter for monthly updates, and visit us on our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.

 

 

 

June Sale

We’ve slashed our prices on a bunch of products for a June Sale. Let’s take a look at what’s on offer.

Pathfinder and Starfinder

All of our Pathfinder and Starfinder products are 33% off this week.

Gnomes!

This week’s Google Doodle inspired me to put Claustrophobia on sale too, so you can enjoy the game about garden gnomes in tight spaces. Offer ends Thursday.

Claustrophobia 50% Off Sale

Rolling Dice is for Nerds!

Rolling dice is for nerds! Drop your dice down the hungry maw of a gargoyle-guarded Lego dice tower instead — that’s geek chic!Lego Dice Tower and GM Screen

My Lego dice tower and GM screen combo took an afternoon to build, which is pretty fast considering the number of tiny, grasping hands in my household.

Plop the dice into the top of the tower and it tumbles down, smacking hidden “randomizers” — commonly referred to as Lego Technic poles — before rolling down a ramp, through the double doors, and onto the “Patio of Fate”.

Lego Dice Tower and GM Screen

A “GMs-eye-view” of the tower and shelves. Nothing says “your character is mine” like a stern-faced GM peering over the top of this bad boy!

Lego Dice Tower and GM Screen

It even comes with a lightsabre and polearm, in case the players decide to mount their own Lego-based siege on your fortifications.

Lego Dice Tower and GM Screen

The walls are detachable, so you don’t need to break them down to cram them into a bag when traveling. It also makes it easier to extend the screen — all thanks to a well-placed Lego Technics pin.

Lego Dice Tower and GM Screen

Assemble the horde! Here’s what the setup might look like in-game. A medium-sized mini fits on the shelves perfectly, and dice won’t move around too much because of the Lego studs.

Build Your Own Lego Dice Tower

The core of the tower contains a number of Lego Technic bars, which are enough to make dice tumble randomly down. Making sure there is enough space between the walls and the bars so that dice don’t get caught is the only major thing to consider, otherwise building the tower is simple enough. A ramp at the bottom and a space to catch the dice are the only other structural components. I tiled the “patio” with smooth Lego tiles so that the dice would land perfectly flat, and not tip on top of Lego studs.

Future Mods

There are three things I want to add to the GM screen to make it more useful. L-bend sections would hide more from the player’s view, and dice cages would make it easier to store dice. There are some small Lego rope ladders from a pirate set I have that would work perfectly for this. For keeping notes handy, I’ll add some 2-stud flat Lego pieces with L-shaped hooks, which can then hold punched Post-it notes.

A Lego Love Affair

This was my second Lego GMing tool, and I hope it will inspire you to create your own. Please share your creations with us on Facebook, here, or through our other social media channels. I’d love to see what you come up with.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

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We are the Stitched!

They came in a deadly whirlwind of steel and spell, annihilating all within the catacombs. In the aftermath, you awoke, gaining sentience from residual magic they’d left behind. Battered and frail, you creep forth.

Last week I wrote about flexing your game design muscle, which is where Stitched comes in. In Stitched, you play the reanimated remains of long-dead corpses, eager to feast and grow in power. The game is my entry into this year’s 200 Word RPG Contest. This month’s RPG Blog Carnival’s theme is “What Scares You,” which gives me the perfect opportunity to share the game and talk about it.

Before we jump in, a word of thanks to Reckoning of the Dead for hosting this month’s carnival.

rpg blog carnival logo

Stitched!

They came in a deadly whirlwind of steel and spell, annihilating all within the catacombs. In the aftermath, you awoke, gaining sentience from residual magic they’d left behind. Battered and frail, you creep forth.

Stitched is a game for 1–5 players and a GM. You’ll need 8d4, 4d6, 2d12, and 1d20. The GM uses a pile of counters.

The Stitched

You are undead, weakened but sentient after tomb raiders invaded your dungeon home. You begin with 1d6 to represent your abilities. As you hunt, you’ll gain dice, allowing you to attach them to your growing form by spending two similar dice: 2d4 = 1d6, 2d6 = 1d12, and 2d12 = 1d20. Each die represents a different amalgamation of necrotic flesh with a shared consciousness.

Playing the Game

The GM sets the scene, then players take turns describing their actions. Roll the dice. A 4 or more indicates success. A 1 is an injury: split the die or remove it if it’s a d4.

The GM can increase the difficulty by 1 by giving a player a token. A player can spend 2 tokens to gain 1d4.

Reap the Flesh!

The Design Perspective

So that’s the game, in all its 200-word glory. The core of the game is the dice mechanic, which I first built to emulate oozes splitting and rejoining. Playing an ooze, even a sentient one, didn’t sound like a fun session at the table, so I changed ectoplasm into limbs and got the Frankenstein’s monster-like stitched, undead that can sew more body parts onto themselves.

I hope you enjoy it.

For more games I’ve designed, check out 3 Stone Stories (free) and Claustrophobia!

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

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Hacking Hearthstone

Hacking Hearthstone is all about figuring out how to optimize your play sessions and cards for maximum reward.

First up, some pics.

These Hearthstone screenshots were too good not to share. They’re from the last Tavern Brawl, where each player’s deck was made up of four copies of a bunch of random legendary cards, leading to some unique situations not seen in other formats.

Hacking Hearthstone Screenshot - Cards
I Can Haz All the Cards!

Turn 1 and the opposition’s mage has 50 cards to play with, thanks to four copies of Prince Malchezaar. Usually, you’re limited to one of each legendary card, so getting 20 extra cards is awesome. I wasn’t going to win this game with fatigue!

Hacking Hearthstone Screenshot - Dolls!
Doll Master!!!

Dollmaster Dorian creates a 1/1 “doll” of a minion you’ve just drawn. What happens then, when Dollmaster creates a doll Dollmaster? Let’s just say my opponent and I had all the barbies at our tea party.

Want more Hearthstone screenshots? Let me know and I’ll share ‘em when I get ‘em.

Join Us

Hearthstone is a great game that’s easy to learn and tough to master. If you’ve played Magic the Gathering then many of the concepts in Hearthstone will be familiar to you, and you can play it on your phone or PC. You can jump in by following this link, which will help me get my hands on a murloc shaman.

Hacking the Rankings

I have a theory about busting through the rankings. It goes like this:

At the start of the season, players are scrambling to climb the rankings, leading to some tough competition. The same goes for the end of the season when players are trying to grab that one last tier that will give them a better reward chest. The difference is, by the end of the season, the field has spread out, and you’re more likely to have easier competition.

So, use the early and mid-season to focus on quests. Start building up your rankings in the mid-season and optimize your decks, then hit those ranking hard at the end of the season.

And, since this season’s about to end, I guess it’s time to play some cards and see if the theory sticks.

If you’ve got some ideas for Hacking Hearthstone to maximize your effectiveness in the game, why not share it in the comments below.

No Place Like Home

We’ve updated our homepage. It’s now easier to find us on social media, check out our latest products, or connect with us.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Subscribe to our newsletter for monthly updates and visit us on our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.

Flex Your Game Design Muscle

An excellent way to flex your game design muscle is to take on a mini design challenge, like a game jam, the One Page Dungeon Contest, the 1KM1KT 24 Hour RPG Contest (if it ever gets going again), or the 200 Word RPG Challenge (due May 28!). Even if you’re not into table-top RPGs, you can learn a lot from mini challenges like these. It’s often said that limitations encourage innovation, and that’s exactly the point of these challenges.

Claustrophobia Cover
Claustrophobia was born out of the 24 Hour RPG Challenge.

A bunch of our products built on work I did for various challenges. Claustrophobia was born out of the 24 Hour RPG Challenge and Lunatic Labyrinth built on the shifting dungeon I created for the One Page Dungeon Contest. Those mechanics also influenced David N. Ross’s design for Forests of Secrets, making the adventure infinitely replayable. You can find the Secret Forest map here.

Lunatic Labyrinth Updated
Our cover designs have come far, from this…
Forest Of Secrets
…to this!

But enough product placement. How about some real tips?

How to Hack Contests

There are some (legal) things you can do to improve your chances of winning a contest. These steps will also help you be a better designer, and are based off lessons I’ve learned through various contests and as a freelance writer for other RPG publishers.

  1. Read the Brief. Then read it again. When you’re done, read that bad boy one more time. Make sure you’re presenting something the judges want to see.
  2. Be Innovative. Create something new and interesting that makes the judges go “hey look, this is cool.” A sense of wonder can be hard to achieve, but look to explore new ground.
  3. Be Grounded. While innovation is important, don’t make something too weird or wacky that people won’t get it. Find ways to ground your design in current conventions that people can easily “read.”
  4. Make Fun. Look at your games collection. There probably isn’t anything boring there, but there are bound to be games that stand out as more fun than the rest. Deciding if a game is fun or not is subjective, but a good place to start is by asking “What’s fun for me.” Build that.

Go out, flex your game design muscle, and have fun. Good luck out there.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

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Write – Design – Program is a series of game design, writing, and programming articles that includes interviews, insights, and tips. If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it.

Children of the Fall — Design Insights

In this edition of Write – Design – Program we’re chatting to Gareth Graham of Frenzy Kitty Games about his latest Indiegogo campaign for Children of the Fall.

The cover of Children of the Fall.
The cover of Children of the Fall.

Rising Phoenix Games: Hi Gareth. First up, can you tell us a little more about Children of the Fall?

Gareth Graham: Hi Rodney. Thank you for inviting me to feature on the blog. Children of the Fall is an apocalyptic story game for 3–5 players. In the game, the players play as the sole survivors of a terrible apocalypse that has turned all the adults on the planet into evil, bloodthirsty savages. In addition to portraying their characters, the players will also need to manage their tribe and haven — fighting off the terrible atrocities that exist in this broken new world. It is a GMless game and has an improved system that is built on the mechanical skeleton of my previous big design, KARMA. Each session is framed around a mission and the world is built collaboratively by all the players through an extensive session zero. Children of the Fall also offers support for campaign play as well as one-shots. There is a huge variety of different missions and characters which are all customised every time they are used, meaning the game has a lot of replay potential.

RPG: You’ve already achieved some of your stretch goals. Where is the campaign currently sitting and what can fans expect once the next stretch goal is met?

Gareth: The campaign got off to a bit of a slow start, but we have successfully funded and unlocked our first stretch goal. Future stretch goals include new character playbooks, missions, and improved quality of the printed materials.

RPG: Frenzy Kitty Games has several apocalyptic survival horror titles, including Dusk, Downfall, Unchained, and a few of the modules in KARMA: A Roleplaying Game About Consequences. What is it about the genre that inspires you?

GG: There is something about this particular genre that excites me from a gamification perspective. What’s great is that it is rich with opportunities to create narratives that are dripping with tension, drama, and high stakes. It also allows the players to get into the action straight away, starting scenes or sessions in-media-res. In my opinion, the best stories are those of characters overcoming truly terrifying and seemingly insurmountable challenges (or seeing them die trying).

RPG: As a designer, how has Children of the Fall allowed you to dig deeper into apocalyptic survival horror? What can fans of the genre expect from the game?

GG: One of the design goals I had with COTF was to really emphasize the struggles that these characters face as children in a deadly and dangerous new world, and the scarcity of resources that are slipping through the character’s fingers as they and other tribes fight over supplies. The engine was mechanically designed from the ground up to tell these kinds of stories — stories of desperate measures in desperate times. The complication system has been weighted to make characters succeeding in difficult complications something rare and truly worth celebrating. The players also have story points which serve as a metagame currency to allow the players to possibly affect other player’s scenes — and this resource is limited and invaluable — emphasising the scarcity and helplessness that these characters must be feeling as children in a world hell-bent on wiping them out. It’s not all hopeless though — players also each get one Determination and Helix point which allow them to flip a result on its head and add great twists in the tale.

RPG: The art from Vincent Sammy really fits the theme and the mood of the game. Can you tell us a little more about their involvement with the project?

GG: I’ve known Vincent for years — we worked together on DUSK and in my opinion, nobody does dystopian art like him, so when it came time to make Children of the Fall he was my first choice. One of the things I love about Vincent is that we are both on the same wavelength — something I’m not extremely good at is writing up briefs for art commissions, so I explained the setting to him and told him to let his imagination run wild — and the images he has created for COTF are better than I could ever have hoped for. He’s also from Cape Town, so it’s great to have a product that is proudly South African.

Click here to see the image in full screen.

RPG: This isn’t your first Indiegogo campaign, following the fully funded KARMA: A Roleplaying Game About Consequences. What, if anything, did the past campaign teach you and how has it influenced the Children of the Fall campaign?

GG: The two main lessons I learned from KARMA was to set a more achievable goal and to make the campaign only 30 days (as opposed to KARMA’s 60-day campaign). Setting a lower target allows you to fund quicker and to get into that delicious stretch goal territory which is why people really decide to back crowdfunding campaigns in the first place.

RPG: You’re from the “Mother City” of Cape Town, South Africa. What’s the gaming scene like there?

GG: The gaming scene in Cape Town is great. It’s grown exponentially over the last 5 years, with gaming stores, cafes and conventions becoming more and more commonplace. One thing about Cape Town’s scene is that it is still a little more fragmented than I would like. Hopefully, as the conventions become bigger and more popular they will help to solidify connections between different gamers and game groups.

RPG: And yourself? What are you playing, what’s inspiring you as a designer, and where can folks find you and Frenzy Kitty Games?

GG: I’m diving into John Harper’s stuff a lot at the moment — Blades in the Dark and Lady Blackbird are absolute masterworks. There are lots of indie RPGs that just get me excited — I love the whole DIY mentality of indie game design. I’m also very interested in a lot of the OSR stuff that’s been coming out over the last few years — that feeling of nostalgia with modern design sensibilities is hard to beat.

Thanks Gareth and good luck with the campaign.

If you’ve got questions for Gareth then put them in the comments below. Be sure to check out Children of the Fall on Indiegogo and Frenzy Kitty Games on Drive Thru RPG.

 

 

Three Stone Stories — Rerolled

Get your copy of Three Stone Stories: Solo Narrative Roleplay from the Rising Phoenix Games Store, Drive Thru RPG, Open Gaming Store, or Itch.

Three Stone Stories Cover

In 2014 I wrote Three Stone Stories, a quick and easy solo story game that used simple dice mechanics to resolve challenges — challenges that told a story.
Now I’m putting the final touches on a playtest version of the updated game.

What’s New

The mechanics have been totally reworked, making each die roll more important to the story you’re telling. Some concepts introduced in the first version of the game are still there, but I’ve worked hard to make the game more fun and playable while keeping things streamlined.

Three Stone Stories
Fear the Skull Die

Challenges still form the basis of the game and are the main aspect driving the story. The rules include simple instructions for creating meaningful Challenges, but they’re still as intuitive as asking a question.

Banes have been replaced with Consequences, and you suffer more of them than before. Consequences drive the story to some degree and also aid the major villain in your story. Watch out!

Boons are still around. Who doesn’t like Boons! Now you have a chance of gaining more Boons per Challenge, and they have a greater impact on the story, giving you some control over your hero’s fate.

The biggest addition is a section on Group Play, which details how to use the rules to play in a group, with or without a Game Master.

More Three Stone Stories

When the full rules are released I’ll include six or more adventures, each offering a jumping-off point for your Three Stone Stories. Each adventure will be vastly different from the others, giving you an excellent look at the variety of stories you can tell as you play the game.

Get Your Copy

There are three ways to grab your copy of the playtest rules, once they go live:

Subscribe to our newsletter.
Each subscriber will get a free copy of the playtest rules when they launch. The game launched on the 15th of September, 2022, so this offer is no longer available. You can still get free e-books by subscribing though.

Buy it on Drive Thru RPG.
The rules will sell be available on Drive Thru RPG, Itch.io, the Open Gaming Store, our own store, and anywhere else our games are sold. We did have plans for an open playtest, but we’ve kept our testing in-house and will release the full version, when it’s done.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Subscribe to our newsletter for monthly updates and visit us on our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.


Simplify Your Design

A big part of good design is simplification.

Simplify Your Design with Icons - Classic Simplification in Design
Photo by Harpal Singh.

I often rewrite rules text, fiction, or code, and the rewrite almost always ends up a lot simpler than the first draft. Version two is often more intuitive, which is a big part of why simplification is important. If something’s too complicated, it’s hard to wrap your head around and more likely to break down.

Write - Design - Program: Simplify Your Design
Write – Design – Program

Here’s an example from my recently released Manual of Masks. The first piece was my initial stab at a magical puma mask that gives the wearer a speed bonus when they’re running:

Totem Spirit Mask – PumaWondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement)
While wearing this mask you gain a +20 ft. bonus to your speed while taking the Dash action. This bonus is doubled along with your speed as part of the Dash action, effectively giving you a +40 ft. bonus to your speed while using the Dash action only.

The rules weren’t clear enough, and another designer questioned the mechanics as well. The second piece is much clearer and takes far less space:

Totem Spirit Mask – Puma
Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement)
When you take the Dash action while wearing this mask your speed is 50 feet.

Less is More — Refactoring

In game writing, writing in general, and in coding, the simplest solution is always the best. In practice, it might take several attempts to find the most elegant option, which is why rewriting or refactoring is so important — it’s what makes “good enough” better. The more time you put into simplifying your work, the more it will shine.

In On Writing, author Stephen King gives the following formula:

2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%

King writes that this simple formula had a big impact on his writing and was at least partly responsible for his success. It’s not only that the formula reduces word count, but that it forces you to chuck the unnecessary baggage your story is lugging around.

Design Question: How can I simplify.

A Pathfinder Example

A lot of you may be following the Pathfinder 2 Playtest. If you have you’ll likely have noticed how Paizo has gone out of their way to make Pathfinder 2 simpler yet still as deep as its predecessor. Pathfinder 2 is essentially the same game refined through a process of simplification. The end result can be seen in mechanics like the streamlined action system and their more intuitive encumbrance system.

Some Homework

If you’re a game designer, you probably do this anyway, but next time you play a digital game, take a hard look at the menu system and the graphic user interface (GUI). Great pains are taken to keep the GUI intuitive. Explore the GUI of your favorite games and find what works, what doesn’t, and how the designers have attempted to simplify things.

Till next time, simplify your design and Make Good Games!

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Subscribe to our newsletter for monthly updates and visit us on our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.

Be the Hero