Barest Bones Release and Look Back

Thank you so much for the positive early reception for Barest Bones! This game was a massive labor of love, and my first real attempt to put my years (and years and years) of TTRPG homebrew writing into a more solid form. I wanted to make a post about general things I learned while creating Barest Bones, and the story of it's development.

THE USEFUL PART

Some tips I learned from this game's development, for any other theoretical indie rpg devs:

• Research is good, people are better.

Barest Bones was always intended as being a unique, brutal, and dystopic look at Victorian England. I wanted to paint a more realistic look at the Victorian era from the perspective of the poor rather than the wealthy. However, being a dirty USian, I naturally made a lot of mistakes when it came to naming and dialogue not matching the period. The thing that ultimately fixed this snag was sending my work to someone across the pond to proofread/point out the worst inconsistencies. If you are writing something deeply outside of your perspective/culture (something you don't know) a person will always (maybe usually?) be more useful than researching it.

• Combat is hard.

Combat is tough to balance without playtests, due to the sheer potential variety of options/number of rules. When I first tested combat, I very quickly realized many problems with the system that made fights feel less fun than intended. By going back to the drawing board and tweaking some of the game's core systems, I was able to fix these glaring problems (enemies being to hard to hit, crit confusion in opposed checks, impact on the Bone system, etc.)

• Economy is harder.

Balancing the economy was far more difficult than balancing combat. My initial draft of the reliability system was far more complicated than the modern version, and food items were too expensive to validate purchase by the players. Hopefully (hopefully) these issues have been dealt with in the newest version, but rpg economies are hard man. You want players to have just enough that they have options, but if they have too much it makes none of their options feel impactful

THE LESS USEFUL PART

So here is the general timeline for the conception/construction of Barest Bones:

• It started at Gen Con 2024, where I first played Shadow Scar (really cool game). It was my first time playing a dice pool system, and it really opened my eyes to new systems. I wanted to make my own RPG that only needed d6's to play. 
• After messing around with different mechanics for a bit, I suddenly got the idea for a weird fusion of a dice pool system and a standard roll+stat system. This was Barest Bone's bone system, or at least an early version of it.
• I really wanted to make a game around this bone system, and after racking my brain for interesting potential settings I got the idea for New London while playing through Bloodborne. I really liked the idea of taking a look at an alternate-history setting for the system, and the kind of unique disempowering feeling in that kind of setting felt like it matched the restrictions the bone system put upon the player.
• Now, New London has more inspirations than just Bloodborne. Primarily because it is set in the same universe as my (likely never to be released) novel 'Starstained Stories'. Fusing the settings led to a lot of fun new things, and it served as a very interesting exercise in worldbuilding/updating my own (bad) worldbuilding with (better) worldbuilding.
• That brings us to Gen Con 2025, where I served a more active role running tables for RTalsorian games. I was able to meet a lot of really cool people there, and talk with designers like James Hutt and Mike Pondsmith.  I had learned so much from the convention that I resolved to fully release Barest Bones online (unlike all of my other creative projects that gather dust in my google drive).

Which brings us to now! Thanks so much to everyone whose downloaded, skimmed, and even played Barest Bones. You guys all mean the world to me, and I sincerely hope that my silly writing has brought a bit of fun into your worlds.

...

...

wait...

there's something else here...

A FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT

You squint, trying to make out the letters of the journal entry.

The sight is burned into my memory, you know?
Maybe. Maybe she's right. Maybe writing it down will help.
And there, I beheld him. He was floating above the buildings upon invisible wings.
The Archmage, draped in white robes, like a pale ghost against the sea of night.
The fighting stopped, on both sides in the streets. We all looked up at the sky, bewitched by his beauty.
Wotan, it was beautiful. He was beautiful. His white robe. His tan skin. His sharp black beard.
The kind of beauty that makes a knot in your stomach. That makes you feel small and ugly.
As we all stared, he stopped his ascent above the city and spoke.
He didn't quite 'speak'. He simply... intoned. He spoke in the language of the soul, and we were all forced to hear and understand.
I remember it, clear as crystal-

"You have committed sins most dire. Against Anima Mundi most precious."
"You have disregarded our warnings. You have attacked the very thing that gives us all form."
"For this, most grave of transgressions, you have forfeit your lives. For your lives do not belong to you."
"Your lives belong to the Soul of the World, and I shall take upon my divine burden to return them by force."
"Hold your breath. Look at the sky. Savor these last moments of consciousness, and yield to the force of Law Absolute."

And the sky, at the middle of night, erupted into the most brilliant yellow.
Moving his hand, a circle of light formed around the city.
I heard a chorus rumble in the distance. An orchestra of infinity.
And the horrifying sensation that all of creation beheld me, as the pillars of flame and air and magic rained down upon us.
Our relatives, lost family members, all of humanity that had fallen before us cried out for our destruction. And then-
And then... it was over. The midnight war was lost by the hand of only one man.
'Man' is not the right word. By one herald of the divine.