Observations of the Fox

We've got our general abilities sorted. Now to distribute them into starting clusters. A starting cluster in SNAFU is a culture, occupation, calling, or some other element that forms the basis of a character. The types of clusters in the game guide the types of stories that it tells. Walkabout uses cultures, occupations, and a single calling which all characters follow. The cultures describe the type of people they grew up around, and what sorts of tasks and values these people are known for. Every character in Walkabout begins their story by working out what their parents cultures were, then choosing on of those cultures to follow. They might be from a farming community, a group of travelling nomads, a scavenger enclave on the radioactive edges of an ancient city, a neo-tribal group, a formerly wealthy elite who hid in a fallout shelter, or something else. Each has a range of associated skills, talents, and knowledges that are passed down and valued. The occupations describe how s...

SNAFU is a system about relationships and connections. If we think about relationships as strings connecting different elements of play, then the first thing we need to do is establish a framework to attach those strings to. I've done the math in the background, I've done some playtesting through "The Law" and other one off games, and I've generally worked out how the degrees of success obtained by characters will reflect upon their agency in the narrative. Generally, this has led to a few different "base levels" of character...   In the "Familiar" game, most characters are based at "street level" with the benefits provided by the familiars pushing them toward "veteran" level. On average, the numbers mean that players generally have a better than average chance of succeeding at their task attempts, but there will quite often be some kind of fallout (with better success or less fallout when attempting tasks in their specialty...

12 years ago, I did a worldbuilding sequence of posts. It started here , then continued on for almost 30 posts. I'd never really got the chance to run games in this setting, because it wasn't long after this that I really began focusing on my studies to become a teacher.  The setting was a late renaissance/steampunk/pirate affair. You could go back and read the posts, I still think they're kind of cool, otherwise I wouldn't be revisiting them. However, I'll be referencing them while I write this current series.  The point to this series is seeing whether it's feasible to adapt my SNAFU system to this setting. I've been working on the SNAFU Cookbook, and a part of that includes showing how the system can be adapted to different types of settings, so this is a trial run.  The system requires a few cultures, a few occupations, and a few other methods that can used to both differentiate characters and link them into the kinds of potential storylines we envision ...

So, I've mentioned Sceletus a few times. It's not doing too badly, but not surprosingly, interest has dropped off now that Erin and I are charging for supplements. So now it's a case of making sure those supplements are cool and interesting. It's been my previous experience that each supplement for a game gets a bit of interest, then adds a residual kick to the previous games in the line, and this might overflow to other games on my shopfront. Which lead me to two of the current booklets I'm aiming for.  A map of the setting.  A guide of arms and armour. The first booklet is pretty easy. I've got plenty of maps that I haven't used over the years, including a bunch of maps for a mysterious ruined city that could easily be substituted into the Necropolis. All that really needs is a couple of random exploration tables to show some of the interesting things that might be found there (Erin's offered to help populate these tables). The second book will take a ...

 I love a good list of resource links, and this list from ThoughtPunks certainly fits that criteria. Open Source TTRPG Resources  (I'd recommend a few of the other posts in the series too) I've been meaning to do something like this for a while, but when someone else puts in the legwork, I'm more than happy to direct folks to something that looks good. Here we've got a range of license types, SRDs, open source games, ranges of images and sound archives, pretty much everything. It's certainly not an exhaustive list, I've read through quite a few SRDs that aren't included here, but it's a great start and there's plenty of stuff in these lists that I haven't seen and will need to go digging through myself.  Anyway, enough from me, go over and take a look.  

I've managed to get the back end of DriveThruRPG working again, so I've just put up the first 4 books for Sceletus, both individually and as the  Sceletus Starter Bundle . This has included generating up a banner to get some more traction and a bit more attention for the product.   Let's see how things go. The last time I thought I had a game this good, it was Shattered Heroes (and I'm still not sure if we're legally allowed to talk about that).