Those are fantastic! Do you mind if I link to them from the S&B page?

Cool to hear from someone that’s seen the game at different stages of writing!

And yeah, not much consideration is given to making the layout printer friendly yet.

Sounds rad! I’d totally be interested in seeing them, and I hope the game goes well!

That’s fantastic, thanks for sharing.

For things I’ve written, Wallet Dungeons is the only thing that creates full places to explore. I’ve also got Waypoints but that’s more of a feature within a larger map.

From other people, there are some online ones I’m aware of:

One Page Dungeon

Dizzy Dragon

Some pen and paper dice rolling:

Hedonic Ink’s Die Drop Dungeons

Esoteric Enterprises has a bunch of die drop generators in it, but it’s all modern/urban fantasy stuff and may not be the genre or tone you’re looking for.

I’m sure there are more that I’m not thinking of at the moment.

Thanks you! And that’s a hilarious test for a game, I’m very glad Brighter Worlds manages to pass it! The Shaman/Druid calling is actually at the top of my list for needing playtests, so I’m glad there’s interest in it.

If you end up playing or running, please do let me know how it goes, I’d love to hear about it and I’m always looking for more feedback!

This is rad! I love the little doodles for each location.

I haven’t pushed the update yet, but this is what I’m currently planning as an adjustment to fix the “optimization” issue, lemme know what you think.

For attributes you just assign d4, d6, and d8.

Then at “finishing touchings” you write a Eulogy Entry that describes a previous exploit of your character. Either gain 1 XP, or roll d10s on any equipment table to see what you gained from that adventure.

If you gain XP here, you can choose to immediately spend it to gain +1 Grit, or to step your d4 Attribute up to a d6.

Whoops, thanks for the heads up. I’ll get that fixed.

You’re absolutely right about how high STR makes things much more durable than high Grit. Not only do you have the entire die’s worth of “damage” to get through, you have a higher chance of any given attack not getting through at all.

Now, some caveats to that:

1. It encourages people to gang up for simultaneous attacks so they can add the damage together. This goes both ways though, so a single PC trying to fight a big group can get dangerous fast.

2. NPCs have to make Morale Saves to avoid fleeing every time they take Critical Damage. So they won’t necessarily stick around for the PCs to get through all their STR.

3. Stepping down STR means an actual wound, and something that takes time to heal. Whereas Grit heals almost instantly. This isn’t necessarily something that will come up in an average session, but when combined with Morale Saves or if they’re recurring characters it can start to matter.

For myself, I usually use d4 for mooks, and d6 for almost everyone else. And then step up above that only for enemies that are supposed to be very difficult to simply attack down.

Which is all to say: I need to expand the guidance in the book to cover all this. Part of this is that I haven’t sat with the newest version of combat rules long enough to have 100% internalized them. Another thing on the “to do” list, haha.

Any thoughts you have about any of this as you continue, especially with your plan to use only armor and STR as your “toughness” dials. I’ll be really interested to see how that pans out.

Hello, thanks for running Brighter Worlds!

For the conversion guidance, I do need to take a second look at those. Under the original combat rules stats were far more comparable between Cairn and BW, but now characters are much more fragile at low STR, and much more durable at high STR, so I’m not yet sure how I want to tweak the guidance for converting Grit. If you find yourself consistently feeling that using Cairn HP as Grit is too much that’s good information.

Writing a price list is one of the last “big” chunks of the game I haven’t done yet. So your want of it is very reasonable. If you’re looking for something short term, I’d recommend looking at the equipment prices in Electric Bastionland, which is usually where my head is at about these things.

For armor specifically, my eventual intent is that any single piece of equipment that provides 2 armor should have some sort of drawback or limitation (outside of stuff produced by Calling abilities). I plan to have a number of examples for this, because as you said high armor is very useful so it’s going to be in high demand.

Whoops, the missing d6-d8 cost is absolutely not intentional. You guessed right, and I must have just dropped that bit of text somewhere along the way, I’ll get that fixed on the website and in the PDF for the next update.

That’s a really good point about the starting attribute bump being a bit of a trap. I added that in the most recent version to give people more flexibility at character creation, but there’s absolutely an “optimal” choice, which is something I really want to avoid. I’ll have to think about ways to address that.

Really appreciate this feedback, and I hope your game is fun!

Thanks so much for your feedback! I love to read how people are getting on with the system.

I agree the elaboration on the more open ended elements is needed, I’m currently planning to expand the “Cast & Crew” chapter to include guidance and examples for things like minor miracle, runes, and cleric domains.

I have two specific things I’d love to ask, if you don’t mind. First, for character creation, did you feel you had enough options to give you the ability to really customize and create the character you wanted? In the opposite direction, was there too much front loaded leading to it feeling overwhelming?

Second, I’m very interested in hearing how combat feels as you continue play. I want to maintain that impactful feel you mentioned, while also avoiding things being too swingy. And I’m a little concerned that particularly beefy enemies might lead to long, frustrating fights. So less a specific question and more a request that if anything ever stands out to you in combat to please share!

As for where future feedback should go, for now here is honestly probably the best place. I might switch this itch page from comments to a forum though, which would help organize things a bit more.

Honestly every time I have a need to reformat this (like for Echelon Forest) I rewrite that section. I was never super happy with the details generator so I just keep taking more shots at getting it right.

This is all fantastic feedback, thank you!

I honestly didn’t even know dark mode for pdfs was a thing, so I’ll have to look into how it works and how I can adjust to fit it.

Making the Death table optional is a good idea and easily done with a small change.

My own opinion of how good the “fluff” is from calling to calling is highly variable, so I think I’ll end up trying to do a rework of all of them at some point. This is good feedback to know what to aim for. Alphabetizing is also something that’s been on my list, but there are a couple wrinkles I need to solve first.

Agreed that the Archivist it can (and does, from my experience) trivialize some things. I’ll have to think on how to change it to keep the spirit but retain some puzzle challenges.

Grimblade is one of the, as of yet, untested Callings so it could easily be busted. I already had it earmarked as probably the strongest “go and fight things” Calling, but I’d like to see it at the table before I make big changes.

I do have example builds of each Calling planned, but having a small set of examples specifically for the more open ended Callings like the Cleric is a good call.

Overall, thanks! Not sure what of these changes will make it into the next release, but know that I’ve got it all noted down.

Thanks! I’ve got a couple more callings currently percolating, although I’m not sure if they’ll be included in the next update.

https://awkwardturtle.itch.io/meteor



A science fiction hack of the fantasy RPG Cairn set in a corporate dystopic future run by megacorporations reminicent of the Company Wars novels by C J Cherryh or the Alien movies.

This is a fast to pick up and play tabletop rpg with quick character creation, decisive combat, and rules light enough to teach on the go. Includes a simple stress and panic mechanic for running horror scenarios, and simple systems for space combat and exploration without requiring players to get bogged down in logistics.

Choose between four archetypal classes to give your character a starting direction, while the "Undefined Skills" chosen on the fly let you shape their background during play.

Meteor is still a work in progress, playtesting will likely result in changes and expansions to the rules, and some sections are still a work in progress. The game is currently free (pay what you want) and will remain that way until the final, full release of the game.

If anyone runs Meteor please give your feedback here!

I'd like to know what module you ran (if any), how character creation felt, how players took to the system, and if there were any sticking points or confusion anywhere in the process.  Plus any other thoughts or opinions!

I'm especially interested in feedback on ship navigation and combat, since I've playtested that the least.

This is extremely cool! Thanks so much for sharing!

Thank you, that's an extremely kind review of the game!

You are correct, thank you! I've fixed it in the source and the pdfs will be fixed in the next update.

I did not! I have no artistic skills at all. Almost all of the artwork is in the public domain from old travelogues or nature books. They're sourced through the British Library's Flickr page.

The one exception is the example random dungeon in the back of the book was drawn by https://brstf.itch.io/.

Absolutely! At its core this is just a glorified d66 table with some extra bits attached.

If you made a d66 table of locations (or a subset of d66) and a 2d6 table of roads or connections you could apply it to almost anything. Adjust the extra mechanics based on what you're specifically trying to generate.

Ahh, thanks for the note on the references. I'll fix those, and the pdf should be good on the next update.

For going off trail, my intent is that it's if people decide to "off road" it and just cut directly through the forest. I agree I didn't make that clear enough though, I'll add some extra explanation in the next version.

I love the drawing! Super cool to see how the forest looks for other people, and I honestly appreciate seeing the result with fewer dice than I used.

Ahh, you're right. An earlier draft allowed up to 4 connections to the Heart, but I ended up changing that for the sake of simplicity to just let the Heart act like the other locations. Just forgot to update the list of values. I left the value of 1 in there just to let the lists of numbers all be the same length, although that's a moot point if I fix the list to account for the other issue.

If I thought I could get away with just writing Sum Mod 4 + 1 I'd do that, but listing the values seemed like the better option.

Thanks!

Two answers to the labyrinth question:

First, you shouldn't be able to get the labyrinth result except on multi dice rooms (Towers and Halls). It is intended that if you have a room that's next to a Hall or Tower, you don't include the entire room in the sum, just the physical die that the room is touching. Small example but if you have [6][6][3] you'd have a Hall with a total of 15 (Arboretum) and a Split with a total of 9 (Kitchen).  I wanted Labyrinth to only be likely to show up if you had a particularly large Hall or Tower, where it would makes sense that the interior could be broken up into a complicated maze. I just didn't have enough space to explain things fully enough to avoid confusion.

Second, the nice part of this system is that even if you don't resolve things the way I intended, you still end up with something you can use. In your case, if I ended up with several single room labyrinths, I'd be tempted to say that they're all connected with portals or some weird non-euclidean geometry. Or a less esoteric answer could be that those are all entrances to a labyrinth that stretches across the floor below the rest of the dungeon.

The third bonus answer is that the exact results the dice spit out is often not super coherent or useful as is, and requires a bit of finessing on the part of the user to make it work at the table.

Anyway, hope that's helpful!

I actually cut a "Martial Artist" calling, that was sort of an overlap of "want to hit things" and "want to sneak around". It had issues of trying to do too much, and also having an over-complicated core ability.

I've been mucking around a bit with a "sneaky, in the shadows" calling that might make it into the next update. As for a "want to smash things" I haven't figured out a way to make it work that gels with the rest of the game yet.

I'm always happy to hear ideas for things, although I don't think I'd include other author's work in the book itself. However, I'd absolutely love to see "Compatible With Brighter World" on supplements or standalone Callings! Although, realistically, if you go that route I would probably say to also make them Cairn/ITO compatible for the sake of interacting with a reasonably sized audience.

Whoops, good catch. I'll get that fixed, thanks.

I've actually been slowly working on a new version, but keep getting sidetracked by other projects. I'll try to move it back to the top of the pile.

If you have any feedback about parts you like or dislike I'm always happy to hear it!

A fantastic module full of adorable, bewildering, hilarious, and wonderful creatures and NPCs. A very fun structure with locations that uniquely change as calamities befall them. Worth the price of entry for the art alone, highly recommended!

Ooo, interesting thought. I hadn't considered importing that rule into S&B.

A fantastic little module ready made to drop into any Mausritter (or other game with a bit of tweaking) hex crawl. Has a nice set of "sockets" and "plugs" to help you integrate it into the world with almost no effort. Highly recommended for anyone currently running, or interested in running, a Mausritter campaign.

Only one 5 means it's a very short tower!

The non-glib answer is that the generator fails a bit for some combinations of numbers. Rolling multiple fives means you have a tower, rolling just one makes it just another room and some of the specific rules don't make a ton of sense anymore.

Thank you! Definitely went through several iterations of layout and text to get everything to fit nicely on the page.

If you make either of those please let me know! I'd love to see what other people can do with this idea!

https://awkwardturtle.itch.io/oceans-2400

Yeah, you'd stack all the 5's into a single tower three dice high.

The way I determine the room is to add up the entire tower (in the example on the card it's 10+neighbors = 19). Then for things that neighbor the tower, I only count the specific dice that are physically in contact (so for the 3 die it only gets +5 from the tower).

However! It totally works either way you do it, it just shifts the results on the Room table up or down. So if you want more low results only count the top down view, if you want more high results count the entire merged rooms.

Absolutely! Please shoot me an email so we can talk about it.

Absolutely, please feel free email me about it.

That would be really cool! If you want to email me at DavidJLombardo@gmail.com we can talk more about it.

I agree it's unclear, unfortunately space constraints meant I couldn't figure out a good way to explain it better. Here's how it's supposed to work:

Pick the room you want to add details to.

If it's a 1, 2, or 3 look at it's highest neighbor. Check the table under [1][2][3] and use the detail that matches the highest neighboring die.

If it's a 4, 5, or 6 look at it's lowest neighbor. Check the table under [4][5][6] and use the detail that matches the lowest neighboring die.

So as an example, if you use the die layout that's on the card, the Throne Room (two 6s) has a 3 as it's lowest neighbor, so it's "Pristine".

Or the Jail die (the 1 near the rear) as a highest neighbor of 3, so it's "Trapped".