What it is: The only RPG directly inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, Sword and Backpack is a minimalist-maximalist RPG designed to be played with only a pen, d20, and a 3.5” x 5.5” notebook. Once you create your character, you fill out the rest of the notebook with monster sketches, adventure notes, dungeon maps, and more—creating your own copy of the Young Adventurer’s Almanac.
This game looks cool as heck and it looks like it would lend itself well to a drinking game, too (one of the spells looks like it has that in mind, anyways)
Yo who wants to play?
Sword and Backpack is an awesome drinking game—it even lists beer as one of the game’s suggested accessories (as the game puts it, “Dungeon-crawling without ale is just spelunking”), and helpfully includes “drink some beer” in the official notebook assembly rules.
Another interesting thing I’ve noticed about the game—for a free PDF release, it’s uniquely unsuited to online play, by design. That’s not a knock—it’s a really interesting combination of high-tech implementation and traditional values (usually games meant for analog play skip the digital release altogether, like Burning Wheel did). But just the way you play—filling in notes, drawing sketches, drinking—are not things that mesh well with online play. It’s interesting.
So have we mentioned we’re huge pro wrestling fans? Because we’re huge pro wrestling fans.
Most of all, we’re fans of Chikara, the only pro wrestling promotion tough enough to feature mummies, time travel, and not one, not two, but three separate stables of ant-themed wrestlers. And they do it all without sacrificing entertainment in the ring.
And so upon discovering there’s an officially sponsored Chikara card game, we were intrigued. And upon playing the game… we were more than intrigued.
It’s basically a neat little beer & pretzels dice game, that has you rolling dice and checking charts and tables to tell you who’s punching who, how the matches go down, and so on—which is a cool twist from games like Kayfabe, which require you to know the winner (not a knock against Kayfabe, which will always be my wrestling game of choice). Check out the rules here. And then around all of this, you’re encouraged to build your own storylines, federations, and so on. It’s all the perfect combination for us—fun downtime games, mixed with just the right level of planning and prep.
Yes, this is a game I expect to spend a lot of time (and not a small amount of money) with.
So I put together a sort of generic superhero Fate Deck, combining Marvel, DC, and Indy heroes, for use with the Marvel Superheroes Adventure Game (AKA Marvel SAGA).
The suits are as follows:
Blue (Superman) = Strength Red (Spider-Man) = Agility White (Future Foundation/Fantastic Four) = Intellect Green (GL Corps) = Willpower Black (Doom) = Doom
I’ve set it up in two versions—individual JPEGs for use with Roll20 and other online apps, and 8x10 printable pages.
If you’re going to ring that bell, you’ve got to walk right up to it and ring it.
—Dwayne McDuffie on the commentary for Justice League Unlimited.
Big week for ballsy storytelling (Chikara, VGCW, Game of Thrones, I’m sure I’m missing some). DMs, take note for your games—if you’ve got a twist in mind, don’t pull back because it’s too crazy, and don’t overcook it because you think it needs an encyclopedia of backstory to convey (remember, gaming is an artform where a year-long story is the exception; make the short term count.). Step to the plate, take the swing, and don’t half-heart it.
What is it: A one-paragraph story game I’ve talked about before, designed to put the PCs in over-the-top, in-over-their-head situations and let the chaos ensue. Read it in full here.
Just got back from Star Trek Into Darkness. Good movie! It made me (because my brain works like this) want to run a Trek-themed game, which reminded me of when I did just that.
I learned a ton from running that game—it was my first proper play-by-post game to get off the ground, and (almost) completed the adventure.
What did I learn:
Initiative Order is the enemy. Dungeon World is the future. The game ran great when it was everyone flying fast at once. It was only when I said “only this person can post next” that the game collapsed. Doing it DW
Be obvious. The one time in the game I thought I went TOO broad with a clue, the players picked up on it the exact amount I wanted, and I got just what I wanted.
This one sounds obvious, but PbP gaming doesn’t play by the same rules as face-to-face gaming. Group size is easier to manage when it’s impossible to talk over someone, and when everyone HAS TO speak up. Splitting the party, same deal. Players have more time to think, and the GM has more time to track info. It works much better.
This one has been said many times, but no plan survives contact with the players. I wrote a conventional 3-act episode arc, with complex skill checks, twists, turns, the whole nine yards. The players turned it into virtually a one-act, all before leaving the ship. It was glorious.
Nonphysical rewards are some of the best rewards. Something as simple as “hey, player A rolled well, so player B, take a bonus” works like gangbusters.
So I’ve been really thinking about how to run a solo tabletop roguelike game since reading this really great post at Rumors of War about the difficulties of running one. Well, technically since before that, since I’ve been interested in running solo games for a long time, but you get what I mean.
I agree with the author that RPGs are tough to play solo because you just can’t come up with everything on your own. You can certainly try, but it’s tough to capture the sense of building on another person’s input, your shared experience creating the grand narrative.
But what if a game could force you to think like two people? What if instead of two people building a story, it was two levels of thought—one proactive and one reactive?
I’ve come to realize Dungeon World is—or could be—just that game. It’s packed with mechanics that, when applied to solo play, encourage you to plan ahead as a player (“my next move is going to be X”) and think on your feet as GM (“Action X is partially successful—so what makes my life more complicated?”).
