Hello! I ran this last night in the basement of our games shop and wrote up an AAR and some playtest notes. TLDR: interesting approach and I love the restrained focus of what you're going for, but needs a bit of work to make full sense of kind of experience it should be, and why a DM wouldn't just use OD&D. I hope there's some useful feedback in the article:
https://ludicghoul.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-gresseham-miasma-hammers-rpg-aar.htm...
AndrewWalter
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It's an honest-to-goodness RPG ZINE in the tradition of the pre-Zinequest rot days. That is to say, it's a one person effort that has (great) black and white art, a rough-n-ready quality, useable game stuff, and even gives back to the community with a couple of mini-reviews of other zines at the end. Two mini-dungeons, several great hand-crafted maps for your own stocking, some bespoke character sheets and a whacked out character class that I won't spoil. Ten fucking skulls!
Fabriano are most well known for their artists/watercolour papers, but the pad in question isn't anything extra fancy. Likewise Rhodia basically make somewhat fancy looking notebooks/pads - not in the ridiculously lavish Moleskine bracket though.
The maps are drawn on A4 paper, and then the contrast on the pencil was tweaked a little bit in Photoshop.
Hi Orxalot
Thanks for the purchase and for your question.
It didn't really come up in playtesting, mainly because I mostly presented stunts to playtesters as 'A little somethin' extra' on top of your successful hit, rather than very complex set-ups.
In the grenade round a corner example, I might rule something like the hostile around the corner is damaged but only takes 1d8 damage from the splash damage instead of the full 3d8. Or, if I was having a bad day, I might instead just say no damage was dealt and those are the consequences for trying something so tricky. What were your own ideas?
Rulings-on-the fly are very much part of Slipgate, coming as it does from OSR type games. Depending on your table, you may wish to roughly outline what the success or failure consequences could be before the player attempts the stunt, although you'll find that slows things down with players hemming and hawing before they commit. All depends on the sort of game you want.
The Stunt Die mechanic is shamelessly ripped off the Mighty Deeds rule for Warriors in the Dungeon Crawl Classics roleplaying game (though extra damage is explicity never a result of a Mighty Deed - slightly different) so if you wanted to read further about how people use that rule it might elucidate things a bit - there's certainly a lot more DCC players than SGCP players!
Let me know if you need anything else.
Cheers
Andrew
This game needs more attention. It openly cribs mechanically from Whitehack, Troika, Maze Rats and probably some others, but the feel is definitely unique.
Starting characters pack a lot of punch and essentially have an equipment list granting them immediate access to two magic items, as well as potentially great powers from the abstracted spell system, high damage output, multiple attacks and even 'extra lives' (at a cost) with the True Name system. Despite this, it can be GM'd as deadly even with these advantages. The resulting experience feels a bit like immediate mid-to high level OSR play from the get-go, crunchier than many indie rules light games but entirely manageable. Add in the modularity of the planeshopping Rungs system that make up the implied setting and you've got something perfect for quick pick up and play games or short campaigns.
Don't drown in the hype stream, check out Ruiner instead!
Thanks for your reply. In order:
-Thanks for clarifying, I think I was confused by the dice icons on the delver sheet.
-I am proud of my survivor! I feel like he might be doomed for the next trip though...
-In the current version, it says that a fully mapped room has Danger 0, not +1! So that might be something you want to look at. Also more generally I would recommend rigorously checking how you use and differentiate the terms entry and room in the rules as it seems a bit flaky right now!
Also I only got a Drop at the mission end, is the intent you can also buy them during a delve? Because it doesn't say that anywhere.
- Yeah I would settle on either power up or checked and eliminate all other mentions of the other!
Curious how many rooms will be in the final thing? And yes please I would love to be credited as playtester!
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