Enfors

I just came across this. It's an awesome, extended version of The Game Master's Apprentice Deck, which is an oracle deck which is excellent for solo and group TTRPG.

This online version, however, has lots of extra features. Look at the buttons across the middle (it's easy to miss that they are buttons) that let you randomize NPCs, dungeon rooms, encounters, etc.

I found this really helpful. I hope you do too.

I've been looking at padfolios to use to store all my solo RPG things in one place for easy transport. Has anyone found something suitable for this? Ideally, I'd want something like this:

• Pocket large enough to store a standard 7 dice set
• Clipboard to hold a dungeon page or character sheet, etc
• Possibly a four ring binder to hold multiple papers
• If, against all odds, there was somethine padfolio-like product that had something that could be used as a dice tray, that would be ideal.

I don't need a builtin calculator which many of them have, though. Also, I don't need card holders.

Any ideas?

I came across a site / blog called Ezora Chronicles, which has a number of interesting articles related to hexcrawling. For example, this article seems like a good starting point.

I want to run a multi-session supernatural mystery adventure in my game. Evil forces are trying to learn the forbidden arts of witchcraft, in order to get the attention of a long-lost god who is considered by many to be "the devil." The PCs will have to learn and delve into witchcraft themselves in order to stop this from happening. A mysterious mentor will teach them how to use a Tarot deck (Raider-Waite-Smith, if anyone cares) to learn the lessons required to be able to use witchcraft. Seven cards of the Major Arcana (this is Tarot terminology) will provide the vital clues on how to do this.

I think I've got the mechanics of this down. I know about Justin Alexander's Three Clue Rule, and so on. What I'm struggling with is how to elicit the athmosphere I want. If you've seen the movie The Ninth Gate, read the DaVinci Code, or seen the Netflix show Archive 81, I think you know what I'm talking about; that sense of "What the f--- is going on here? I just have to know how this all connects together and get to the bottom of this!" The TV show Lost is probably another good example, but I haven't seen it myself.

Things that I think will help:

• Thematic music. Every time the topic of the Tarot deck comes up, some mysterious-sounding specific song should be played. This trick is used in Wagner's The Ring opera, as well as in the Lord of the Rings movies (for example, the ring has its own theme which is played when the ring is mentioned).
• Frequently giving the PCs new little bits of information which seem to lead them to the conclusions they're hopefully craving.
• I think personal stakes will probably help to keep the players engaged, which in turn will perhaps contribute to the "I just have to know more" feeling I want to elicit.

One trick I can't really use is what the DaVinci code did - it used a story that in some ways sounded so plausible that the reader could think "Wait, could what's proposed in this book actually be true?" That worked in that story, because it took place in the real world and was about Christianity which many in the western world take very seriously. I can't really do the same with my homebrew world which has very little in common with the real world.

So - does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how to accomplish this? Again, it's the atmosphere of mystery that I'm primarily concerned with here, although mechanical discussion would be welcomed too.

I love stuff like this - hexcrawl combined with dungeon crawl. I continue to be surprised by how much Four Against Darkness stuff engages me, depite its simple mechanics.

My friends and I have been playing DnD 5e for a few years now, but now I’ve decided to start GMing PathFinder 2e. We’ve played through most of the Beginner Box, and now I want to continue with my own homebrew content. As part of my world, I want to introduce a fighter “subclass” (probably the wrong terminology for PathFinder). What I want is a tribe of warriors who fight without armor (starting at level 2 or 3), and to compensate for the lower AC they get magical tattoos which increase their AC. It will also be possible (when you advance in levels) to choose to add other tattoos with other magical effects.

So my question is: Is this what archetypes are for? Because I don’t think “subclasses” are a thing in PathFinder? Or how would I go about this?

My friends and I have been playing DnD 5e for a few years now, but now I've decided to start GMing PathFinder 2e. We've played through most of the Beginner Box, and now I want to continue with my own homebrew content. As part of my world, I want to introduce a fighter "subclass" (probably the wrong terminology for PathFinder). What I want is a tribe of warriors who fight without armor (starting at level 2 or 3), and to compensate for the lower AC they get magical tattoos which increase their AC. It will also be possible (when you advance in levels) to choose to add other tattoos with other magical effects).

So my question is: Is this what archetypes are for? Because I don't think "subclasses" are a thing in PathFinder? Or how would I go about this?

For those who aren't familiar, Four Against Darkness is a solo pen-and-paper dungeon crawler. You control four characters of various classes at a time. You roll dice, a table shows you which dungeon room or corridor to draw, then you roll again for its contents, etc. In the base game, all combat and all actions are resolved with a simple d6.

Normally, I would balk at this. A d6 simply doesn't permit sufficient resolution. It leaves little room for depth of mechanics. And to be fair, the base game isn't really all that interesting (to me) because of its lack of depth.

But - and here's the thing - there's so much extra content you can get for this game. Adventures, new classes, new mechanics (some of which involves other dice than the d6 although the base mechanic of the game is always based on the d6 as far as I'm aware), etc. For example, the excellent Treacheries of the Troublesome Towns supplement (which comes in two books) adds the ability to enter towns where you will meet all sorts of characters. There are even options for romance, having children, buying a house, and becoming the mayor of the town - there's so much that can happen. And that's just one of the (around 50, I think?) supplements that are out there.

So, in summary, I find myself fascinated by this game despite its lack of complex mechanics, simply because there is so much content for it. If you want, you could think of it as not very deep (read: simple mechanics), but very wide (read: lots of available content).

What are your thoughts on games like this?

The Monsters & Mazes blog has suggested #Hexplore24 to replace #Dungeon23. The idea is to solo play through a newly generated hex each day for a year.

I'm making a fantasy-based TTRPG, and I'm pondering whether or not I could make foraging interesting.

I have a hexcrawl system with rules for what happens when the players traverses a hexmap using random tables. One of the things that can happen (besides random encounters, finding locations, etc) is that they can come across "resources", which for now is only different types of food (mushrooms, edible roots, etc). But I wonder if I could extend this system in a meaningful way, to make foraging fun? As in, can I make a system where players think going out to forage for herbs or spell components in the wild is more attractive than simply buying them in a local magic shop?

The most simple and obvious solution is to extend what I already have in the same way that it already works. That is, one of the things that can happen as players traverse hexes on the map is that they can come across resources in the form of "herbs" or "spell components", etc. When that happens, there could simply be a random table (different for each type of hex terrain) that you roll on, to see what and how much you found. This system would work, but I'm not sure it would be very interesting.

I mean, sure, as you're walking around in the wilderness, the other things that can happen (possibly hostile random encounters, and finding random locations, etc) will probably help keep the process of wandering in the wilderness as a whole interesting, but I wonder if the "you found resources/herbs" event itself could somehow be turned into a mini-game or something, to make it more interesting.

Anyone have any suggestions about this?

In order to reduce the amount of times you have to update your number of torches (etc), and also to introduce some random uncertainty, some people suggested an alternative method. Instead of putting "10" in the number of torches you have left on your character sheet, you could put "1d8". This means that every time you need a new torch, you roll 1d8.

If the result is anything other than a 1, then you don't have to update your character sheet at all. But if you do roll a 1, you change it from 1d8 to 1d6. And if you roll a 1 on the d6 in the future, it goes to 1d4. And once you roll a 1 on the 1d4, you're out of torches.

Again, the point of this is to reduce the amount of times you have to change the number of torches you have on your character sheet. Also, it introduces tension - you're several levels into the dungeon, and you only have 1d4 torches left; will it be enough?

This is all fine. I like this system. But it does have a small problem, I think.

Let's say you have 1d4 torches left, and you buy 2 "units" of torches to go from 1d4 through 1d6 up to 1d8. Each "unit" (read: die) you buy costs the same. But, and here's the (slight) problem: going from 1d10 to 1d12 is more valuable than going from 1d4 to 1d6, because the 1d12 only has a 1 in 12 chance of depleting (which is good), but the 1d6 has a 1 in 6 chance of depleting (which is worse).

In other words, it always makes sense to buy as many torches as you can (if you ignore encumbrance, I guess), because the last "unit" you buy will be more valuable than the first (read: have a smaller chance of being depleted).

So, one way of changing this would be to flip it around: Having 1d4 torches is the MOST amount of torches, and when you roll a 1, you switch "upwards" to 1d6 instead. Then, when you finally get to 1d12 roll a 1 on that, then you're out of torches.

This doesn't solve the problem of each "unit" of torches you buy is valued differently, but at least then the least valuable ones you buy are the ones you buy last, instead of the ones you buy first. This introduces diminishing returns on buying loads and loads of torches, which has some positive effects. But the problem with this approach is that it's less intuitive ("What? Having 1d12 torches means I have LESS than 1d4? That makes no sense!").

So, what do you think? Personally, I feel like I'm overthinking this and that I should just go with 1d4 being the lowest amount which is more intuitive, and the problem with that which I'm describing above is so small as to be insignificant.

Additionally, I want to abstract this further and say that instead of "torches" in your inventory, it should just say "supplies" which includes torches, arrows, and other similar resources. The point of this would be to reduce clutter on your character sheet.

This channel is shaping up to become a really interesting resource in the #TTRPG space. They've already got some good videos from which I've learned a thing or two. I encourage you to check them out.