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System Agnostic Downtime Rules

Downtime Rules In mission-based games, where each adventure doesn’t directly follow into the next, the heroes will need something to do in between each mission. This is downtime, which by definition is uneventful, so you need a list of things the characters can do. Of course this assumes the character is working to maintain their lifestyle, however, depending on the length of the downtime; usually one per week, the characters may also perform a downtime activity. Downtime Activities During each week of downtime where you are not resting to heal, you may perform one of the following downtime activities. The nature of where the downtime takes place may limit certain activities. The Downtime Check Most downtime activities use an average difficulty skill check (what that means varies by game, so just know your ruleset and adjust accordingly), but the can be anything you and he referee feels best fits how your character would go about it, and the difficulty can vary depending on where...
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System Agnostic Dungeon Crawling

 Are you playing one of those mainstream roleplaying adventure games that seem to have forgotten that dungeons are more than just guided tour from one encounter to the next? Are you too in love with your system's character creation to give it up? If so, how about a system agnostic dungeon crawling system that can work with almost anything... those narrative heavy games that have whole scenes of conflict turn on a single dice pool might not work here but basically anything else can. Dungeon Crawling The term dungeon itself typically refers to monster-filled cave networks and subterranean constructs. However, it can really be used to refer to any hostile location. The ruins of a demon’s fortress-castle is just as much of a dungeon as a dragon’s lair. Overland movement is a less stressful affair, however. Britannia is a populated, well known, and well mapped continent, and as such, overland travel isn’t much of a risk so long as you have the rations to survive. These rules can be us...
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 Remember that Ultima game I made? https://stevemangames.blogspot.com/2023/01/i-made-game-in-48-hours.html I went back to it and filled in a lot of the gaps and made it into about as close to a complete game as I can (since I have no idea how to write a GM section and didn't want to sit down and fully detail the settong of Ultima 3 through 5). Here it is https://www.mediafire.com/file/om5y7gbaahzi1vs/Ultima_TRPG.pdf/file It's not the best thing since sliced milk, but it is a good game. More of a game than Mork Borg that for sure. also an art wip the blocking sketch of some fanart of the intro scene from U5
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My Thoughts on WotC's OGL Statment

Mind you I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but after looking over the satement on WotC's new OGL plan. My reading of it comes into three bullet points. 1. This does not look like smokescreen for something more sinister. By stating publicly that they are not longer going to try to deauthorize the OGL 1.0a in such a public way, they are making it harder to try to deauthorize it in the future. 2. The SRD 5.1 being released under Creative Commons is a nothing-burger legally. The SRD is just common ideas to fantasy gaming and game rules, both things that re not copyrightable. However, by releasing it into the CC, they're ensuring that people will still use their derivative works. This is a bit sinister, as it completely undercuts Paizo/Kobold Press/Green Ronin's ORC license. 3. This is a double-edged sword for the industry at large. While it brought people's attention away from D&D for a time and got more attention on other games, it also ensures that D...
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I made a game in 48 hours

Where have I been? Mostly focusing on work and managing pain. However, a discord server specifically about small indie videogame development had a 48 hour game jam. I don't make videogame beyind poking around in RPG Maker for fun, nothing completed. But the rules of the jam did not ban tabletop games. The theme was Nostalgia so... I made a mostly complete OSR-adjacent trpg based on my nostalgia for Exodus: Ultima III (NES) and the DOS versions of U4 and U5. It's lacking dungeon creation guidelines, examples for traps, and setting information beyond telling you to go play U3, U4, and U5. I would also like to test it a bit more than just mathhammer and asking a friend of his opinions. It was the only tabletop game so the admins, while impressed, aren't putting it in the rankings instead just summarily creating a "tabletop games" subcategory and giving best in category to me. Anyway, here it is. https://www.mediafire.com/file/om5y7gbaahzi1vs/Ultima_TRPG.pdf/file Whi...
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Second half of 2022 a heck I wanted to use this blog more but didn't. Have been working on my Dungeonpunk game. Overhauled my dice mechanic in a bout of inspiration and an inability to leave well enough alone. Picked up Battletech thanks to moving closer to one of my oldest friends who is huge into it. Finally refined the definition of the genre term I've been using for my Dungeonpunk setting. I have very little interaction with WotC's Eberron setting beyond meming about the lolipope but I think it als counts as anachro-fantasy as do most of the later Final Fantasies. Anachro-fantasy Anachro-fantasy is a neoglism that describes high fantasy settings where everyday magic is so integrated into everyone's lives, the people basically live like the modern day. It is a setting type where the referee or author selects a technology level for most things between the medieval and Renaissance era, then sprinkles in items from post-WWII. It marries the aesthetics of medieval fantas...
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Magic-Users!

This thread gets posted time and time again on /tg/ about what terms do you use for various magic-users and the like so I thought I'd sit down and right out the variety of jargons for mages in my own pulp-fantasy worldbuilding project (the one run with 10D6/dungeonpunk, not BX D&D). And if you're one of those loons who shits on worldbuilding all the time as a distraction, suck eggs. You're wrong and your games are bad. Magic-User Anyone who uses magic as their trade. If you use magic, you are a magic-user. Mage A term magic-users use to refer to themselves in a casual sense, often prefixed or suffixed with a description of what they do. Life mages are magical physicians, Fire mages throw fireballs, Death mages futz with the powers of life and death, magewrights make minor magical trinkets. The only exception is Potion-makers, they don't identify as mages normally. Specialties Abjurer, Pyromancer, Necromancer, Artificers, etc. Within the academic circles of sorcery, ...
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