itch.io

Thanks for the boost! And the great supplement!

Great, I'll be on the lookout!

Hi, just checking in to see if this is still something you're looking for!

Nope! Preferably spooky/horror but it does not have to specifically be about Halloween

From the guidelines:

Submissions should be, well, spooky or at least autumnal in some way. Horror and horror-adjacent are cool but not strictly necessary. Tone can vary considerably but it should generally make sense in the world of the game.

Hi all, 

I've extended the deadline by two weeks to accommodate some folks who are still working on their stuff!

How weird! Sorry it's goofy

try again and let me know if it works

Well that is clearly wrong. Let me reupload it and see if that makes a difference. Otherwise I'll have to contact itch support.

The countdown to Halloween begins! One week remains in the jam, so if you've been cooking something up, it's getting time to submit! As a reminder, it is okay to submit works in progress as long as they are in a playable state! At the same time, if there are folks who feel like they could use a little more time, I'm also open to extending the deadline a little bit -- after all, it's Iron Country Autumn, not specifically Halloween. Please let me know if you'd like me to add some time to the deadline.

jex

Hello! I'd love to talk! You can email me at my username here at gmail, or message me on discord with the same username.

Hey all,

I'm stoked for October. It's probably my favorite month of the year. I love sweaters, snuggling up under a warm blanket, soup, hot drinks, all of it. But most of all I love Halloween. There are some great decorations in my neighborhood, some really creepy and spooky stuff along with the usual Nightmare Before Christmas inflatables. Whatever the case, I'm in the Halloween spirit.

We're about halfway through the jam and have gotten some incredible submissions so far! The jam is already more successful than I ever would have imagined, and there are still folks working on their submissions! I'm really excited to see what folks come up with, and maybe we'll even get a few new people who are interested in submitting. Please don't hesitate to share the jam with your communities. I'm interested in submissions of all sizes, so if you don't have a lot of time or energy left over, 1.) I totally get it, and 2.) maybe you can submit a hook rather than a whole hunt, or disembodied list of clues, or really whatever excites you. I want to see it!

This game is super cool. Currently playing in a PbP game and having a great time.

Shit, that is not supposed to be the case. I'll try to figure it out. Thanks for calling my attention to it!

No problem!

I may yet mess around to see if I can do it and retain the correct formatting for spreads (and remove blank pages in both PDFs) but that is a project for a different day!

Purchases include a key to unlock the game on the Role VTT: https://www.playrole.com/

Is it not specified what the key is for? That's weird, and I will look into it.

I've edited the post to include a more detailed changelog. Thank you for the suggestion.

Just re-uploaded with this change. Thanks for the suggestion.

All of these changes have been pushed and I've updated the PDF to version 0.9.5. 

Should be:

Slayer: Scramble +2, Compel +1, Hunt +1. Relentless.

Local Law: Wreck +1,  Connect +2, Sway +1. Deadeye.

It'll probably be a little while before I push out any changes because there's a big update on the horizon with some new original art but I appreciate you sharing these. 

Oh! Thank you for the clarification. 

This is correct. All playbooks start with three action dots pre-marked; during character creation the player marks four additional action dots.

Unless I am misunderstanding what you are saying?

If the hunt is unsuccessful, they are not awarded any Bond. It doesn't matter if they impressed an NPC in that case, and for their downtime dice they would roll 2d and keep the lower result. 

So for Fallout, they will earn 0, 2,  or 3 Bond, and technically they will go into downtime with 1-3 dice based on what they rolled during fallout. I will clarify that in the text.

Feel free to post them in this thread.

Correct! I will clarify that in the text, thank you!

definitely! And if adults want to play a kids on bikes investigating supernatural stuff type game too. I tried to tune the abilities and stuff to be a little less geared toward a grimdark game haha

Super stoked to have ten people already participating! I'm really excited to see what folks come up with for this jam and I'm also pretty excited to show off some things I've been working on for a minute.

Feel free to use this space to ask questions, share ideas, and request feedback. Additionally, I will do everything I can to try to help facilitate people's participation in the jam, so please don't hesitate to ask me and/or the other participants if you need assistance with something!

Here's to a spooky and creative autumn!

jex

I'll look into it. Thanks.

Okay, I see. Maybe it's not "acting quick" but could it still be "thinking quick"? Either way I would definitely say that kind of sneaking counts as Acting Under Pressure. I'll think about updating it, but definitely you should play the way that makes the most sense to you, and tweak these if necessary!

Do you mean the original trigger in the book or the revised version here? I think sneaking under the radar of a watchman absolutely counts as "acting quickly in the face of danger." What do you think?

Thanks so much for your support!

Can't wait to hear about it when you get there!

Thanks so much for all the kind words! This game is a little bit of a love letter to Monster of the Week, so I don't think you'll go wrong there (or you can always change mid-campaign hehe). 

Thanks so much!

Gorgeous art!

Nina! Thank you so much for your kind words! I'm glad you're excited about the game and I hope you share your experiences with it once you've played it. Twin Peaks is a major inspiration for me and the last campaign I ran definitely had some good Twin Peaks vibes. It's not a perfect fit but I think you can do it pretty well!

thank you <3 <3 <3 

Thank you so much for the kind words! I'm glad you're having a good time.

It does?? I had no idea! That's really interesting to know. I backed the game on Kickstarter but haven't looked at any materials that might be available yet. 

Anyway, thanks for engaging with the game! Let me know if you have any other questions.

Hi! Thanks for asking for clarification.

The way the showdown roll is intended to work in Bump in the Dark is that:

1. You get 1d per question that you are able to answer using at least one unique clue

2. A clue only counts as answering a question if you haven't already used it to answer a previous question

I can see why the way it's written is somewhat confusing, since "each clue used only contributes to your dice pool once" could be read as each clue contributes a d6 to the pool, however, this is not the intention. I can look at clarifying that passage.

I will say that the showdown roll is the last bit I still find myself tinkering with. Overall, I think it works well this way: you technically only need to find three clues to be able to get the maximum dice (unless you have the "diligent" pact ability, which awards you for finding all the clues before the countdown clock fills), but in practice the more clues you find, the easier it is to come up with a theory that makes sense fictionally. I've only once had players insistent on rolling with only three clues (experienced Brindlewood Bay players, interestingly); every other time they've wanted more to be able to feel like they could come up with a theory that makes at least some sense. (I'm also pretty generous with clues when I'm running the game, so it's likely they're going to find more than just three anyway -- but if they can't figure out how to answer the second question with the clues they have, it's still helpful to have more clues). 

In early drafts of the game, the showdown roll worked just as the theory roll does in ECB, where if you answer a question with multiple clues, you get multiple dice for that question. In practice, I found that players were getting a shit ton of dice (usually 6-8) for the showdown roll in a way that felt really uninteresting to us at the table. One solution for this is to push the countdown harder, so that they can't find so many clues in the first place before having to deal with the monster, but we tried limiting it to only 3 dice maximum (4 with the pact ability) and it worked really well at the table.

I have played around with making it more like The Between or Apocalypse Keys, where there is a complexity rating equal to the countdown clock but that hasn't felt quite right, either.

I did draft this version at one point, trying to mechanize the race between finding clues and the clock filling. I may still playtest this version, and would certainly be open to feedback on it:

Take 1d for each unique clue you use to answer one of the showdown questions. Clues can be used to answer multiple questions, but each clue used only contributes to your dice pool once. Then, take -1d for each filled segment of the countdown clock. If you are left with zero or fewer dice, roll 2d and take the lower.

Regardless, I appreciate your feedback and would encourage you to try what makes sense to you, and report back if you're willing! I think it works well as written (or as intended, if the wording is confusing) but clearly I've never been 100% firm on that, or I wouldn't still be tinkering with it long after the rest of the game is done.

That's wild! I wonder what the hell was going on. Well, I'm glad it worked now and I appreciate your support!

that is ... very strange. not sure what was going on. try again?