Recent content by Ilya Bossov

It is a rules-light low-prep game where you build your starship out of spare parts, crew it with custom made aliens, and go explore the galaxy one randomly (or not so randomly) generated sector at a time. When you blow something up, you weld the leftovers onto your ship, call them upgrades and...

This is a false connection. Just because two words are similar-sounding in one language, it often means very little regarding their origins or roots. Orcs have more in common with orcas, I believe. In Tolkien's writing, they were creations of a fallen god/angel equivalent who tried to emulate...

As a person who has written my own PbtA hack for Shadowrun, I'll go ahead and recommend Shadowrun 3rd edition. It was the last "good one", arguably. Although, Shadowrun in general is a bad fit for your needs. You're looking at cyberpunk themes with no magic, and Shadowrun's approach to vehicles...

Classic D&D presumes a lot about the party and the game master, but colonialist themes observation is spot on. The party is supposed to be good, the monsters are supposed to be evil, and following tradition of Tolkien's presumptions of all members of this species (it's really wrong to call them...

Are you an accomplished punomancer? Would you like your name listed in the credits of a brand new space western RPG? This is your chance. Dust Bowl Galaxy is coming out on August 1st. You name one of the 11 ships with a terrible tooth-ache inducing pun, or if you name all of them, and if your...

It's described in the link. You start to gain angel levels. There's a bunch of bells and whistles.

[Minor spoilers for Curse of Strahd] A little bit of preface here: my players are exploring the Amber Temple, looking for a way to defeat Strahd for real, thus breaking the cycle of his reincarnation. They are aware that if they defeat him, he will only free Barovia for a month or so, and then...

Some of this stuff is OP, mostly because the player rolled very poorly for stats. With adjustments, it might be suitable for your campaign, too! Look, free stuff: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/r1Q7bH6m3V :)

I enjoyed 4e for what it was: an excellent tactics game. As a melee character (fighter I think?) I had a lot of fun using footwork lure and such to rearrange the enemy positions for a perfect stomp by my friends. I don't see how it harmed roleplaying in any way, because that's on the players...

They're already 418% over their goal. The extension sounds odd at this point. It's already wildly successful - does that mean they're going to delay the rewards?

Hello folks. I'm making a book cover for this game, but I'm not sure if it conveys the right feeling. If you were looking at it in your friendly neighborhood game store, what would you think it was about, without opening and reading it? You don't get a second chance at a first good impression...

RPGs are a creative endeavor, I think we can agree on that. Writing campaign books is similar to writing your own adventure books, and is thus literary. Writing character backstories would also classify as literary. For example, if GRR Martin was playing a rogue assassin in a D&D campaign, he...