I’ve been working on the experience and advancement system for Claustrophobia! The original game didn’t have rules for XP because I figured gnomes would die before they had a chance to level, or that sessions would be once off affairs. After play-testing and thinking about it more, I figured it was necessary and an important way to award players for creating an entertaining story.

In designing the system there were some specific considerations. The system needs to reward players for the following:

1. Entertaining role-play.
2. Interesting, dramatic or creative character death scenes.
3. Creative use of a gnome’s name in play.
4. Creative use of a gnome’s gear.
5. Completing missions, overcoming challenges and defeating monsters (the bread and butter stuff).

I didn’t want a clunky system with loads of tables and calculations, like the rest of the game it had to be rules light and easy to run. Also, since gnomes should always be expendable, I wanted to award the player, rather than the character. Some games that stood out to me for their experience systems are the Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game and the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game, which I recently picked up, so I drew inspiration from them in part too.

Trophies of Triumph

For the Beta I decided on a simple awards system, with award recipients decided by group voting. Players have four awards to give out and, like in Mouse Guard, need to give them to different players. If there are fewer players than awards then awards are dropped from the list until there is one award per player.

The Golden Gnome: given to the best role-player or the person who delivered the most interesting scene using their character and the circumstances before them.

Drama Queen: given to the player with the most entertaining death scene.

I Name Thee…: given to the player with the most creative use of a name during the session.

I Never Leave Home Without It: given to the player with the most interesting use of gear during the session.

Players who win an award get 2 experience points. Each player also gets one further point for each scene in which they faced danger. Once six points are accumulated, the player can increase one sphere by one point or gain two health. Sphere scores cannot be increased above 5 or a total of 14 between the three spheres of Social, Mental and Physical.

Lastly, when a gnome dies, the player can take half of its total XP, rounded down, to create a new character. This represents crew members of the HMS Keeton rising up through the ranks to take their place in the spot light.

What do you think about this simple system? Any ideas or comments, please let us know!

Drive Thru RPG is currently having a sale on Old School RPG’s. You can check out the sale here, and use this coupon code to get 15% off featured titles: OSRF711F2.

Avernos in Trow-ble

You may have noticed that I’ve reworked the Avernos Campaign Setting here on the site. I’ve got so much in store for you that I needed to rework the structure of the pages to ensure it would all fit together well. I’ve added pages too and the most recent is a look at the Trow, or dark elves. These guys put the “dark” back in being a dark elf.

Claustrophobia!

The copy editing for the Beta is done, so expect more news on that in the coming months. You can keep in touch by connecting to the Claustrophobia! Facebook page.

Super Secret Mystery Projects

Because of contracts and bad tempered gnomes I can’t reveal some of the other projects under way in the lab, but many wonderful things are bubbling away nicely. I’ve decided to refocus my efforts and so you’ll notice less blogging from me and more wonderful goodies in the future.

Till next time!

Today I get to play with the Blog Carnival topic, “Pimp A Game”, which gives me a good chance to write about cool games. And who doesn’t like cool games…

“Free” is a good thing right? Many games are free in some way or another, like Facebook games, which make their money from those annoying “in game purchases”. But what about role-playing games? There are loads of free ones out there, and a quick look around will prove a universal truth: “Free isn’t always good for RPGs”. Generally, no income means no support and a poor production quality. Players are likely to disregard a game if they think it’s cheap, which impacts how many people even give the rules a spin. Thankfully, some games break that rule, and build a huge fan base around them which keeps it going and growing. Take the Pokéthulhu Adventure Game as an example. The game is possibly one of the simplest free games around, but its strong community of fans means the game is still available for download today. I got to play it at a convention a few years ago, and man, it was awesome. Hands down the best session I’ve played too.

I’m going to look at three games that got my attention recently. They’re all free. You don’t need to pay a cent, give your email address or pay for additional books to make the thing work.

I came across this great review yesterday while researching another blog post.

“Claustrophobia! – A bunch of mostly insane dwarf adventurers attempt to ride a home built nuclear powered ‘submarine’ through the earth to reach the core, while slowly (or not so slowly) going completely insane. This game seems like a hilariously fun time, and really encourages off the wall and ridiculous scenarios cropping up constantly. I will most certainly be hounding my gaming group to play this one some time. (Currently my favorite of the one’s I’ve read.)”

Now that’s a positive review!

You can download the game for free from 1KM1KT and visit the official Facebook Page to discuss it.

It’s been a busy week in the bunker, including having my backside kicked in a rousing game of Munchkin Bites. That hasn’t kept me from Claustrophobia though, or the world of Avernos. So without further ado… the news:

Oh, so very, very close to the Beta release of Claustrophobia! now. In fact, the rules are just waiting for a final read through and you’ll have them, if you’ve signed up of course. You can still sign up for the beta test by letting me have your name and e-mail (preferably use our contact form).

You can never have enough beasties in a role-playing game and Claustrophobia! is no exception. Here are three new monsters that showcase some of the ideas I’m playing around with for next weeks Beta release. Enjoy! 

Claustrophobia! is a light role-playing game about gnomes on a suicidal mission to the Earth’s Core. Today I’m offering you a re-worked combat system. It’s lighter than the previous version (which was already pretty light), but this one has the benefit of actual play testing. Please have a look and let me know what you think.

A Garden Gnome ready for battle. You can tell it’s not a dwarf by the shoes, apparently.

Play testing for Claustrophobia! is coming to an end and I’d love to hear your feedback. I set up a little survey on SurveyMonkey. Check it out and let me know what you think of the game. Don’t forget that there’s still a chance to bag a free copy of the improved version of the game. You know, free stuff. Nudge nudge, wink wink.