10/10 premise, incredible naming conventions on the mechanics. Love a bunch of silly little guys on each other shoulders causing mayhem. I really love the narrative tie-in for the rotating GM mechanic.
Bright Bard Games
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I think my favorite piece of this is the portion of the enemy generator table that helps the GM decide what that enemy's targeting preference is! It's an interesting mechanical way to provide an additional layer of personality to threats you generate through the table. Definitely seems like something nice to have handy while I'm playing Eat the Reich!
I love the tone you set and representing the characters with different sets of nails is an extremely charming and thematic way to sell me on you game.
I agree with the other comment, the biggest snag I encountered reading the character sheet was that I was unsure of how many dice to roll for any given stat! I would love to see those numbers assigned for me or simply give me a total pool of stats to assign myself (My rule of thumb is 18 total divided among all 6 stats for Trash to Treasure). I think setting them up for me feels a little more in line with the usual Havoc Engine pre-gen character style.
I'd also love to see some little tidbits that help me settle myself in the characters, the name's are excellent, but some titles or a single line of text that gives me a vague personality to jump off of in combination with their stats would really help me dive into play once I pick up their sheet.
All in all, an excellent read!
As another commenter mentioned, using the Havoc Engine objective system to represent the fog of war is a sharp choice and helps sell the grittier, more grounded fiction you're gunning for here compared to Eat the Reich. I think your other mechanical choices support that fiction well, with the lethality die slowing the crawl towards each objective being a standout choice towards achieving the senseless hostility and slogging pace of trench warfare.
The visual design choices definitely help sell the fiction, but I found large blocks of typewriter text a little difficult to read at times. I'm definitely interested to see the VTT stuff you've set up when the links are ready to fire!
Ah, beans! I think I did a whoopsie when I was resetting our store pages after our own charity sale last month and mixed up which games we submitted to Jes' bundle. Axolotl with a Gun, Mushie Missions, and Kobolds and Trench Coats are all part of the bundle, but Trash to Treasure is not.
If you'd like to get a little bit of an idea for what the game is like, you can check out the review on TTRPGKids or our free supplementary adventure Panic at the Panto, which doesn't include the rules or core character sheets. Character sheets are free here, and are a good way to meet the goblins you'll play, and the rough ashcan/preview edition is still available from the Kickstarter last year to get a general idea for how the game works, though a lot has changed since the preview edition.
Ope, I think this is a minor typo! The latter sentence should say "Then play chapters scenes in any order you choose." I'll add it to our list of stuff to fix in the reprint.
In short:
- Play the chapters in order, 1, then 2, then 3, and so on.
- Chapters 1 & 4 do not require you to play the scenes within them in order (You could, for instance, play scene A, then scene C, then scene B)
- Chapters 2 and 3 require their component scenes to be navigated in a more specific order for narrative continuity (unless you modify their contents). The path is A->B->Star or C->D->Star. After reaching the star, you can choose to play the other path to complete every scene in the chapter or go straight to the boss of that chapter.
- Chapter 5 scenes are played in order because [REDACTED] is [REDACTED] and you'll have to deal with [REDACTED].
Also, thanks for the review and it was lovely to see you at Gamehole Con! I'm really glad the Saturday morning cartoons energy really shines through. I had a blast in playtesting rolling giant piles of dice as the GM, it really adds a lot a ton of gravitas to the big bad guys or to large swarms of baddies. I hope you can get it to the table soon, and I'd love to hear how it goes!
LGBT is a queer one-shot tabletop role-playing game inspired by a charming post on everyone's favorite fandom hellsite (Tumblr). You'll play a queer character with a weapon of your choice racing to make their upcoming pride celebration the best one they possibly can. Slash, Swing, Spray, and Zap your way through a variety of scenarios across a breadth of genres.
LGBT is inspired by Rowan, Rook and Decard's Havoc engine. Under the hood, it's a d6 dice pool system with a few simple ways to mark progress through the game and introduce complications to scenes. It's really just an excuse to spend an afternoon 1-upping each other with goofy, queer antics with a little help from some six-sided dice.
You're more than welcome to release an Ashcan version of your game and update it later! Games are still games without art.
I'll also say that if you want to pick up some art assets, Bri de Danann also has some generic fishblade art packs for use in the Jam (Or other games) https://ko-fi.com/s/44090c8d60. There's also a black and white pack.
If you're stuck making your own system but you have a solid idea for a game I always recommend trying a hack! It's a great way to take the pressure off yourself for the design aspects and focus on writing the game you want to make. If not a hack, deciding on what the most essential experience is/the core gameplay is and then looking around at other systems you like for inspiration is a good bet.
I dont think it has to be specifically Fish and Blade! If you've got aquatic creatures and sharp implements, I think you're on the right track. I tried to leave it intentionally vague so that people could interpret that prompt as they liked!
Another poster mentioned putting "Fishblade" somewhere in your game title or subtitle, and as they said, that might not be a bad idea for discoverability purposes. That's up to you! 😊


















