Tag Archives: Madness Cards

General

Claustrophobia is Four! Celebrate with Us!

Claustrophobia!, the game of little gnomes in tight spaces, turns 4 today! Celebrate with us and get 40% off Claustrophobia! when you buy it from our store. Full details below.Claustrophobia Cover

“This is pretty much up our alley.”

— John Arcadian, Gnome Stew

Grab your pointy hat and say goodbye to the daisies, it’s time to embark on a perilous subterranean journey as a brave — or suicidal — garden gnome.
Face grueling challenges and unique monsters as you explore the dark places, traveling aboard the HMS Keeton, a scratch-built, nuclear-powered drilling rig with a mind of its own.
Claustrophobia’s unique mechanics and elegant rules system emphasize cooperative story play, providing the perfect mix for an evening’s hilarious insanity. Just add friends and dice.

 

*Use the code ‘FourGnomes’ on checkout.

The coupon is good for 40% off on Claustrophobia!, until the 7th of June, 2020. Use the coupon code ‘FourGnomes’ on checkout to redeem your discount.

A Brief History of Claustrophobia!

Personally, I learned so much from making Claustrophobia! If you’ve ever wanted to make a game, then the best advice I can give you is: go for it. The process is worth the journey, and each game you create will help you grow as a designer.

Claustrophobia! isn’t perfect, by any means, but it taught me so much and helped me do a much better job of later projects, such as the upcoming Nightscape: Red Terrors TTRPG. It’s one of the reasons why I treasure the game, it was a stepping stone towards going pro.

Here’s a look at the various logos we had for Claustrophobia! I think they speak for themselves. Hiring my brother Don to take on the art and layout of Claustrophobia! was one of the best decisions I made. The book wouldn’t have been nearly as good without him, or my team of playtesters.

The Future of Claustrophobia!

Work is already underway on Claustrophobia! Expanded, the second edition of the game. I’ve learned so much in these four years since the book launched, and there are many things I want to do with the system, that revisiting and expanding the system into a fully formed RPG just makes sense.

I’m toying with licensing the core mechanics under a Creative Commons license, which means you’ll be able to use the mechanics in your own published games. I’d love to see Claustrophobia’s community grow, and supporting creators is one way I can see of doing that. What do you think?

New Fiction

Don’t forget to check out our latest fiction from Valkyrie: Ragnarok. The crew of the dwarven mine crawler known as the Rat face new dangers and have tough decisions to make in Soup With the Enemy.

Bowls

Madness Cards Available Again

Our Madness Cards for fifth edition are available again!

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, card printing was unavailable for a time, so we used the opportunity to update the set. This meant that we had to reorder print proofs, but we did and they look great. Madness Cards are available through Drive Thru RPG.

Madness Cards Set
Madness Cards for fifth edition.
We’ve got Madness Cards coming for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Second Edition too, so watch the blog.



General

Madness Cards for D&D Fifth Edition

As sanity slips away, draw Madness Cards to decide your character’s mental affliction.

‘In a mad world, only the mad are sane!’
— Akira Kurosawa

Madness Box Cover
Madness Box Cover

A pack of Madness Cards contains 60 cards; two copies of 30 unique afflictions, each with a short term, long term, and indefinite madness, including afflictions from Arcanaphobia to Zoophobia, compatible with the Fifth Edition OGL.

Check It Out

You can see our in-depth look at the Madness Cards on YouTube:

The free printable rules leaflet is available on Drive Thru RPG. It goes into the differences between the cards and the madness rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. It’s not a big difference, really, and we’ve tried to keep these as intuitive as possible.

Madness Cards Set
So many cards.

The cards themselves are pre-cut, poker-sized, with rounded corners, and they come in a handy card box.

Our Design Philosophy

Madness Cards were designed to be intuitive, with all the rules you need printed on each card. Nobody wants to page through reams of text at the table, so having everything on a poker-sized cards makes things easy. We included two copies of each card so that the DM and afflicted character’s player could each have a copy.

We wanted a connection between the various madnesses, so here each card’s content is grouped by affliction, such as Vampirism, Claustrophobic, or Delusions of Grandeur. Each level of madness affects your character in different ways, with short term madness mostly affecting combat and indefinite madness affecting how you roleplay your character.

 

Most of the rules text is brand new, so you can give up on that stuffy old table in the DMG.

South African Limited Print Run

If you’re in South Africa and are interested in a pack or two, let me know by contacting us through our Contact Page. We’re looking to do a limited print run of the cards locally, to defer some of the high import costs involved in getting the cards from the US.