itch.io

Yes! Been a bit behind on updating those.

Evlyn art simply cannot be beat.

https://awkwardturtle.itch.io/chubby-bear-salmon-gobble

Just in time for the tail end of Fat Bear Week I present Chubby Bear Salmon Gobble, a push your luck game about being bears in the Katmai National Park trying to eat as many salmon as possible to prepare for hibernation.

It’s formatted as a little pocket mod zine, and “only” requires a slightly unhinged number of dice to play (if you’re a TTRPG player you’re probably set, otherwise it might be a struggle).

To be honest I sort of forgot I had started uploading things to DTRPG. I’ll update the Wallet Dungeons listing to include the plain text version, and continue my (slow) process of getting the rest of my stuff up there (including Wallet Stations).

Wallet Monsters is slated for a reformatting to bring it more in line with the other two, and when I do that I’ll include a plain text copy as well.

Super cool to hear you’ve used Wallet Dungeons at the table! I love hearing about it actually intersecting with people’s games!

That’s awesome! Glad I could provide even a little bit of a push!

That’d be rad! Please shoot me an email (found at https://awkwardturtle.games to avoid posting it here to be scraped by bots).

Oh wow I totally forgot to upload those. Thanks for the reminder, I’ll get them up today.

Thanks for the kinds words!

My intent for “combine them” is your second example, to add them up. What this looks like is very much up to the reader though. Could be different encounters scattered throughout the large space, or a single encounter that has the characteristics of each rolled entry.

It is! And it turned out really well, it looks great.

As for the process I’d have to direct you to Brian for the details, as he did all the layout. I know that some software makes it easier, but he had a somewhat complicated template/layer system in Affinity Publisher set up to handle exporting the different colors.

Sure! I’ve just added a handful.

Yeah, currently the stress system is very swingy, which is very in line with general ITO/Cairn mechanics but might be more all or nothing than is optimal. Really just needs more play testing generally to dial in.

Firefight inside a ship is a good question. Usually I’d just assume that hand weapons can’t hurt a ship, but in this case I think it’d be fun to play up the risk.

My first thought was to say that rolling max damage on any attack roll causes damage to the ship (or maybe 6+ damage). Or a luck roll on every attack unless they’re specifically being careful (and therefore impairing the rolls). This does make me realize I haven’t actually included the luck roll as an explicit mechanic in Meteor. Gotta put that on the to do list.

Hey, thanks so much for this detailed feedback! I really appreciate you taking the time to write all this up.

First, think you for reminding me I need to update the random skills table to remove my “cute” reference skills and replace them with something actually useful.

Undefined skills do have that danger of being so flexible everything feels too easy. It’s hard to split the difference between “interesting specificity” and keeping things fast and flexible enough that you don’t get bogged down making decisions during character creation. It might be dialed a bit too far towards flexibility currently, especially because the tables I usually playtest with tend to spend them as often on jokes as on useful skills.

The stress system is another one that I’m not sure is dialed in properly. I honestly don’t engage with it in every Meteor game I run, just ones that are intended to focus on stress and horror. When I have used it, I felt the pacing went okay, but it’s so heavily dependent on the scenario, dice rolls, and GM calls that it could go in a lot of ways. If nothing else it would probably benefit from expanded GM guidance to help with dialing it in to the proper pace at a given table. My intent is sort of a slow simmer until it suddenly boils over in a dramatic explosion, but that transition might be too sudden.

Glad it went well overall and everyone had fun though! This is good feedback and will give me things to chew on as I start digging back into the design of Meteor.

https://awkwardturtle.itch.io/wizard-trash-goblin-treasure

Wizard Trash, Goblin Treasure is a madcap fantasy adventure of summoned autonomous drones, resourceful goblins, and a down-on-his-luck wizard with a penchant for transdimensional retail therapy.

This is the first official adventure my own TTRPG system Brighter Worlds but it also has stats for Cairn and the Common Rules for Adventure Campaigns by Knock for easy conversion into your system of choice.

Wizard Trash is for tables that don’t take themselves too seriously, and find the idea of goblins running around with fitbits and being fascinated by toasters hilarious.

My intent was just the cardinal directions, no diagonals, but as you say it works both ways.

I’m /u/AwkwardTurtle on reddit (not to be confused with the similarly named power mod whose hate mail I receive regularly) although I’m no longer hugely active there.

I’d love to see what you end up with!

In my experience 9 or 10 dice is a good number. I don’t know that there are really hard limits, as it mostly just shifts the results of the larger rooms with larger numbers. I wouldn’t go significantly higher though, at least not without modifying it to split up Halls and Towers. Alternatively just roll handfuls separately, assemble, then connect the results.

Yes! I apologize I was so extremely wrong about how long this would take.

I’ve actually gotten started on the PDF updating now, about halfway done, so I can be a lot more confident that I’ll have at usable version ready soon. Likely by the end of the week.

Thank you!

I’m not currently actively working on it, but it is on the list of things! I fully intend to make progress on the game and some adventure modules for it this year!

Thank you for the kind words!

And yes, you’re completely correct on how the details work! That’s the most confusing part of the card, and the bit I’m the least happy with.

Hiya! Thanks for your kind words about Meteor!

And yes, it’s been quite a while since I’ve last updated the game. I haven’t intentionally abandoned it, but I was focusing on other things (which have also been progressing extremely slowly) to the detriment of Meteor.

My rough outline for the future is:

1. Finish and release the first adventure module for Meteor. This is already “written” but needs significant revision after playtesting. Plus layout and art.

2. Finish and release the first “campaign location”. This is going to be a full star system with a number of detailed locations, intending to be a ‘vertical slice’ with examples of each of the main modes of play.

3. Finish Meteor, polish, and attempt a physical printing. I have a large list of extra feature, generators, and tools I’d like to add to the game, but I expect that to get whittled down significantly as I get closer to finishing.

No real timeline for any of that unfortunately, and I do plan to focus more on Brighter Worlds for the time being.

As always any feedback or play reports people can send my way are extremely helpful, but just knowing that there are people out there interested in or playing the game is very motivating for me!

The reason it’s taken so long is because I’ve gotten stalled on one point, which I think I’ve finally found a way to push past (plus spending time on the soon to be released adventure module).

I’m hopeful I’ll have the beta version done, then into PDF within the next couple weeks. Possibly sooner, but I don’t want to make promises one way or the other.

Rad! I’ll add the community copies.

Did you get a digital copy through Bits & Mortar as well? If not I can send you a key.

Rad! Reskinning it all with human items for Mausritter is a great idea.

Sounds interesting! I like your ideas for where to place them, and using the towers as fast travel points around the corners of the map is exactly what I had in mind.

If I were prepping for my own game, I’d do a mix of having towers that are easily accessible by the players (but might require some repair) and towers that have obstacles to access or are currently occupied. It adds some fun challenge and conflict if they need to convince a bat or bee hive to let them in.

Having a tower buried inside a termite tower sounds great!

Just updated with some more, grab one while they’re there!

The WIP of the next big update can be found here: https://dev.brighterworldsrpg.com/

The intent for this version will be to reach “feature completeness” so that only polishing, typo fixing, and small adjustments will be needed/

Feedback on what’s there, what isn’t there but should be, and errors are all very welcome.

I also do a fair amount of computer stuff as my day job, which makes this all the more embarrassing.

Anyway, current beta rules are here: https://brighter-worlds-dev-branch.onrender.com/

Caveats: I’m actively working on it so there’s unfinished and mid edit stuff scattered around, as well as some big missing sections. Also the changelog on the front page is very much not comprehensive.

All that being said I’m always happy to get feedback on stuff. I sometimes worry I’m “over-fitting” to a limited amount of testing.

Thanks!

And yes, each of the versions I’ve released (aside from the translations) have alternate back sides. So the normal one, colored version, and the one that’s in the back of Echelon Forest.

I was never entirely happy with how the detail generator worked so I make a new attempt at it each time I make a new version.

Thanks for the reminder! Just updated them based on recent sales + some extra.

The nice glossy copies are printed with a local printer as actual business cards, but it wouldn’t be hard to find a place that can do color + UV gloss. Even staples or fedex would do a decent job for pretty cheap (assuming you wanted a bunch of copies for some reason).

Otherwise I’ve seen people just home print either double sided, or single sided and fold, then trim and laminate.

This is all extremely helpful, thank you! I run a lot of one shots, or micro campaigns, for playtesting but I only really have one long term game of Brighter Worlds. So getting feedback for how things feel over a longer period of time is really really good feedback for me.

I’m glad things are going well and your players are having fun!

It’s good to know that the core abilities of the Soulbearer feel a bit flat compared to the others. Moving Psychopomp into the Core Abilities might be the right move. I’ll have to think about what might replace the empty slot though.

I recently ran a short game and had a player using the Shadow Clone ability for the first time at my table, and boy you were not kidding about how useful it is as a scout.

I’m not super worried about it from a “power” POV, but it makes it super annoying for the GM to need to roll encounters and do room descriptions at a much faster pace, and ahead of where the party is. This is also the reason the Bone Sense ritual got removed (“I don’t know how many skeletons are in the next room, I haven’t rolled the encounters yet!”)

I’ll be updating Shadow Clone (and honestly likely the other two Clone Techniques) in the next version, with my current idea being:

Shadow Clone: You can separate your shadow from yourself and attach it to another living being it touches. While attached you can borrow that being’s senses. If your shadow is destroyed (by magic or bright lights) you may restore it with 10 minutes in complete darkness.

I’m curious if you have thoughts or feedback, based on your own experience with the ability.

I absolutely plan to get this into print, but unfortunately I don’t have any real timeline as to when that’ll happen.

Thank you!

Now that one is in that as an obscure sci fi reference and should really be taken out.

It’s from the book Voyage of the Space Beagle by A. E. van Vogt which I believe to be a direct inspiration for the film Alien (although everyone involved with the movie denies this and also the book is honestly pretty bad).

Nexialism is described as being sort of the “meta science”, the idea that all other fields of science are merely a small part of a larger whole, and nexialism is the generalist study of that larger thing. Honestly not sure how you’d use it in play, since it’s either worthless or way too broad. When I was making the original Skills list I was having some trouble filling out the full 36 so some of the entries are weaker, or merely references to things, and this is one of them.

The intent is that it shields you from any sort of electronic attack: EMPs, hacking, etc.

It’s not really explained though, and it’s a very niche effect to begin with. Honestly, I’ve got it on the short list of things to replace when I come up with something better to go in that slot.

Thank you! Enjoy!

That’s awesome, great system pairing as well!

Thanks for sharing, I’ll add the community copies!

Awesome to hear it’s been so useful.

And I have actually gotten other requests for a city version, but I haven’t progressed it past some notes so far. I’ll move it up the priority list!

Hey thanks for playing Brighter Worlds and also taking the time to write all this up!

Your comments about some of the Calling abilities simply bypassing a lot of obstacles is feedback I’ve gotten before. Sometimes I think that sort of thing can be fun, but as you say when it happens too often, and with no cost, it can suck all the tension out of exploring dangerous places and situations. It’s also making me reflect about how both of my groups constantly running into problems may be self inflicted in spite of their powers, not due to BW intrinsically.

For what it’s worth, the Sneaky Bastard is on my short list of “potentially problematic” Callings (especially the Snap ability) so I’m not too surprised it’s giving you a headache. I haven’t had much direct playtesting of it yet, so it hasn’t gone through too many revisions.

WIL Save to read without being detected makes sense to me (you’re pitting your willpower against the opponent’s) and I can totally see the justification for not seeing in pitch darkness (even if the shadow is a shadow, it’s still the character seeing things).

Ways I would consider limiting the shadow:

• Set your Grit to zero to split it off, you’re deprived until you recall it. This at least increases the risks a bit.
• Step down one of your Attributes to split off your shadow. This would put a max limit per day, and limit the ongoing use by the rate of healing (currently 1 step of 1 attribute per night’s rest). If you want to limit it even further, you could make it work only off of WIL.
• Make the shadow more fragile:
  • Any perception of the shadow destroys it. That is, if someone notices a shadow acting oddly or weirdly, the split off shadow is instantly destroyed.
  • Any light at all destroys the shadow. This would require there being a continuous path of darkness for the shadow to get anywhere. Could still hide in an enemy’s shadow, but would require you to get it there first.
  • Could combine this with stepping down WIL to split off the shadow, where if it survives and returns to you, you get the WIL back. If it’s destroyed you have to regain the WIL by healing normally. Or make it so that your shadow being destroyed steps down your WIL.
• Add a specific recharge condition to use it again (or maybe just to use it again after its been destroyed:
  • Consume a defeated creature’s shadow.
  • Spend an hour in complete darkness.
  • Spend a full watch (6 hours) with your eyes closed.
  • Spend an hour deprived as you concentrate on regenerating the shadow.

Or some combination of the above, I hope this is at all helpful.

For myself, I think I need to go through all the Calling abilities carefully and find places I can limit scope or add costs to make using them more judicious, but without undercutting getting to do your special thing too much. This feedback is super valuable, and I appreciate you taking the time to write it up. I’m always happy to hear any further notes, criticisms, etc. you might have.