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  1. timbannock

    Political and criminal intrigue, city building

    Check out Reign: Enchiridion.
  2. timbannock

    JRPG style TTRPGs

    For sure, but it wasn't the only thing. The immediate compatibility with other OSR stuff was more the issue for me and my group.
  3. timbannock

    JRPG style TTRPGs

    There's also Heroes of Cerulea. (I have no experience with it, but it seems cool!) My experiences: Fabula Ultima has a lot of good things going for it, but its devotion to modeling early console RPG combat causes it to become a little hard for me to sync fiction and mechanics. If that's the...
  4. timbannock

    Good video game strategy guides for TTRPG inspiration?

    Recently, Limithron (of Pirate Borg fame) mentioned in a YouTube video how he uses video game strategy guides (among other media) as inspiration for adventures, maps, NPCs and so on. He specifically shows off the one for Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, and it looks pretty dope. I'm not a huge...
  5. timbannock

    West Marches Primer?

    Some smaller sandbox adventures/campaigns are good for this, because you can string a few together. Black Apple Braugh, Tomb Raiders of the Crystal Frontier, Beyond the Borderlands #s 1-3. Bigger works can do this, but IME they may require considerably more work because you have to understand...
  6. timbannock

    Halloween: D4 Zombie RPGs to Try

    The system is usual Palladium junk, but it's a surprisingly more readable and arguably complete version of it than you'll find in their earlier stuff. The game absolutely crushes it in terms of covering all sorts of zombies and zombie hunter archetypes, and has scrounging and community building...
  7. timbannock

    Tell me about RIFTS

    As others have said, it's a mixed bag. Mechanics are at best an inspired but unplayable-as-is hack of early 80s D&D, setting is problematic, and its sensibilities are completely disconnected from the idea that you can both improve the game play and remove questionable assumptions. It's also...
  8. timbannock

    New Edition Of ALIEN RPG Includes Romulus Material--But Kickstarter Delayed To 2025

    Any effort to make the internet a nicer place is worth it IMHO
  9. timbannock

    D&D 5E (2024) The New DM Tools In The New Dungeon Master's Guide

    Although they don't need the defense, I gotta say it's equally tough seeing everyone's take on Ginny and Prof DM when they clearly didn't listen to the first minute of that video that was just shared. "I didn't read it cover to cover" =/= "I didn't read it"
  10. timbannock

    New Edition Of ALIEN RPG Includes Romulus Material--But Kickstarter Delayed To 2025

    Given the nature of the skill, combat, and stress rules (generally speaking), I don't foresee scenarios needing much tweaking. As is, they mostly just tell you what to roll, which should remain the same, even if the "how to roll it" in the rules changes in some way. Stress, by its nature, is an...
  11. timbannock

    New Edition Of ALIEN RPG Includes Romulus Material--But Kickstarter Delayed To 2025

    Given the number of air vents they've added to the maps for the upcoming edition, it seems like a no-brainer to work in some much more streamlined-yet-meaty additions to the stealth rules.
  12. timbannock

    How Do You Keep Track of All Your RPG Books?

    Google Sheet, using different tabs to organize different system families, catch-alls, generic/non-system-specific stuff, accessories, and pawns (as in Pathfinder and Starfinder - luckily the Pathfinder wiki and so on provided lists, so I could just copy/paste those into the sheet). So I have a...
  13. timbannock

    RPG Print News – Chaosium, Osprey Games, Arion Games, and More

    Interesting that Paizo got out of Pawns only for Kobold Press to jump into it. I freaking love them, but after picking up so many boxes and "booster" packs for both PF and SF, I usually can find a "that's close enough" pawn for just about anything. Do I really need more? (The answer is...
  14. timbannock

    Alien RPG 2nd Edition Maps Revealed

    I'm really on-board with the idea of more robust stealth rules and minis. When I ran an Alien actual play recently, I think the only thing I would've changed would have been getting the Aliens out sooner and having some Isolation-type moments. If the stealth rules help emulate that experience...
  15. timbannock

    OSR Anyone playing Aaron A. Reed's Skycrawl (or downcrawl) with an OSR?

    Working on using it in a campaign or two, but nothing live yet. I loved creating an orcery table with loads of blanks for the players to start messing around with and finding out. I watched Last Exile and started watching a play through of Skies of Arcadia to help set the mood. Last Exile was...
  16. timbannock

    How Dragonbane Pointed out the Clashing Desires of My Gaming Group

    Strike is a great choice. Be prepared: it has horrendous organization, and is badly in need of an edit for clarity.
  17. timbannock

    How Dragonbane Pointed out the Clashing Desires of My Gaming Group

    Might've missed it elsewhere in this thread, but have you considered Forbidden Psalm, the Mork Borg-but-Tactical RPG? Or how about the Lumen family of games (NOVA, Light, etc.) I wonder if something like that which greatly simplifies everything but still has some tactical "meat" might work for...
  18. timbannock

    Time in Shadowdark

    Great point, and I think that more succinctly captures why Shadowdark does clockwise turn order and features regrouping: it preserves turn order and avoids spotlight hogging "at all costs." It's such a boardgamey way of doing it, but that's precisely why it works so well and feels familiar to...
  19. timbannock

    Time in Shadowdark

    Taken separately, sure. But I think the thing is that all of this stuff plays together: Real-time puts a meta-game pressure on the players to move forward. Real-time doesn't work when tedious tasks take loads of time but aren't especially fun to play out, so fast-forwarding the real-time...
  20. timbannock

    Time in Shadowdark

    There's also the parts that talk about Time Passes and Regrouping. Those two rules (which can work separately or hand-in-hand) state that you can burn down the real-world torch timer at a faster pace when necessary, and changes when encounter checks are rolled. So that's why rounds still...
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