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Thank you! Thanks for giving it your time!

Dragon Slayers is the game I *wish* I played back in high school. All of the character classes you expect in a high-fantasy dungeon crawling RPG of any sort are here - and they are all different, interesting, and dynamic. There have been times when I've read a ttrpg and thought "oh yeah, I'm excited to play this particular class/playbook/archetype" etc. - but with Dragon Slayers I felt that way about EVERY one of the character options.

It is laser focused, quick to learn, easy to understand, and full of fun and relevant options. Monsters are thematic without needing long wordy entries. Each of the Dragon "boss" monsters featured is wildly different and all look like a blast to run or to fight.

I'll just say how I really feel here:  if you are playing D&D right now, you probably want to play Dragon Slayers instead - you just don't know it yet.

Thank you! Breathless is such a great foundation to work from and its fun to find new ways to twist it. I hope this ends up being a hit and supports the kind of stories your group desires.

Yes - to a degree. The current iteration of After\\Burner is "feature complete," and while I  might make some future editing adjustments, that is more or less the definitive version.

I'm currently 45% finished with a "Lumen 2.0" version of the rules that have been a long time coming. The new ruleset removes dice for the most part (gasp!) streamlines play, and emphasizes stacking up defenses while bypassing those of opponents for lethal, 1-hit kills.

That's in the works and I really want to get in gear and have that out in some form later this year.

Sevens is a very light but correspondingly flexible framework to do your storytelling. While it works perfectly fine for individual characters and the typical adventuring party, I think its flexibility allows it to shine outside the usual tabletop gaming paradigm. Players could portray small groups of people, entire factions, etc. It scales well with different magnitudes of play.

Probably the easiest way is a direct message on Discord, if that works for you:  theyoungking45

Otherwise I can figure another good way! Apologies for the delay in responding - week got away from me!

Yes! Always happy to chat about my approach to building opponents! Since there's a need out there, I'd happily consider working up another expansion here soon ... 

thanks for the kind words, and I’d be thrilled if N7 Ops finds its way to your table in any form!

thanks for the heads up on the character sheet zip! Uploaded a new version a day or so ago and this should be all set. (Apologies for the delay - it was a little tricky finding the time to get that straightened out.)

Faction Turn is my favorite kind of TTRPG tool. It breaks down novel and desirable systems into a flexible core that can be ported to whatever game you have a hankering to play, or can just be enjoyed as is.

I’m a sucker for this kind of play and Faction Turn gives you just enough to juggle, then gets out of your way to let your imagination do the fun stuff.

Songs and Sagas is a tight OSR/NSR leaning TTRPG that gives you just enough setting and lore before getting out of the way of your player's own ideas. The shape-shifter forms and interesting play with collecting/spending cards to give you an advantage, familiar "quantum" inventory, and some very Banner Saga reminiscent focus on destroying enemy armor all go along way to preventing the game from falling into the blandness that some lean OSR style games suffer from. Giving you the option to focus on the hex map and eroding the threat rating of various hexes is a welcome riff on hexcrawl expectations - I'm a sucker for territory control and it is a simple way to approach it that makes that style of play robust.

It's a great RPG system that's concise and flexible enough to step well outside the bounds of what Songs & Sagas in particular is interested in offering (Good news, since you get a creator kit with it!)

Pubic text version of my review

Absolutely! I usually re-up those after a significant update and forgot about it this time. Take a look now.

Not at all! I honestly did it because it LOOKED to have more gravitas, and that felt very "World filled with Darkness." I'll probably nip that in a future edit : )

Absolutely! I always appreciate a purchase of course, but knowing that folks are reading, playing, or (best option) playing and enjoying my games is the biggest reason for doing this. [Little praise hands emoji]

Stoneburner is a great evolution of the already tremendous ‘Breathless’ system. It shoots the gap between harsh OSR game and the narrative-heavy, success-with-costs play that indie TTRPGs have become accustomed to. It nabs the best of what it needs from both worlds and combines them in a novel but flexible setting, with lots of room for various personalities and adventures. Being light on rules, it’s easy to learn, easy to build a character for, and easy to get playing (by yourself or a traditional group). The name is pretty cool, too!

I’m wrapping up the character sheet this evening, and the game will go live for sale shortly.

thanks for your patience - the page is a bit of a preview at this point 😅

An update on this: the newest version has removed all AI generated imagery. Artwork is now all licensed stock images.

Hell Grinders does exactly what you need: gives you the framework to run a couple hours of brutality with extreme 'heroes' shredding hardcore monsters that have just enough crunch to make them feel interesting without overwhelming. A good entrypoint into LUMEN and a great system for running a game with a heart made of boomer-shooter nonsense.

Slamming a Surge cola before playing is about the only way you could make this better.

Love everything I'm hearing here. 'Stern Chase' is on my short list to get to the table once I can wrest GM control of our regular group again and I love to hear that there may be refinements ahead!

FIST lives in a very difficult to manage sweet spot between what makes OSR style games appealing and what makes narrative-heavy indie games fun, accessible, and freeing. With an easy to pick-up and hyper-lean ruleset, it gives you a treasure-trove of gameplay and storytelling that laser focuses on its genre.

Creating new characters is always a blast because there are so many options that mix and entwine in strange and delightful ways. FIST does that thing I love with its character generation where you get pieces of story to fit together - but also some clear mechanical things that your agent DOES.

You will read FIST and think "Oh, this is pretty good."
You will play FIST and think "Oh wait oh my God why did I sleep on this it is FANTASTIC!"

Great idea! I'll be making some updates to these anyway for the 0.2 release. I can include some "blank" cards in the extras and might even take some time here to get a few templates prepped for software I can get my hands on (Affinity might be the only common one I can't do).

I'm in the process of prepping a new release of the game with some major layout changes (gameplay tweaks here and there but mostly presentational). Once that's ready I'll re-up the number of community copies available.

Until then, I do have a Quick-Start solo session adventure available as well (There should still be a few community/review copies available) to give you a taste until version 0.2 is up.

https://theyoungking45.itch.io/operation-snowblind-for-afterburner

Though now you have me thinking on some optional rules for adapting to a traditional hex grid map...That might need to be included in a 0.3 update...

"Descended From The Queen" games are always a hit but "Chasing the Ace" is especially good. There are deep and interesting prompts that tee you up to play around in the common tropes of the genre in the ways you would expect, but also give you the flexibility to take things in a novel direction. This is a great game to jump into for a night with your Mech-loving pals. 

Yes! I've been looking into this myself in the case I were ever to run demo games. I'm actually going to work up a more detailed answer as a Devlog post here shortly, for posterity. Thanks for getting me thinking on this topic!

We finally had an opportunity to get ECB on our table and had a blast! A mix of experienced “Forged in the Dark” vets and someone starting from square one and it was still easy and intuitive to step into for all. 

Despite walking in with a mess of clues the Theorize roll tanked which honestly made for a much more exciting experience! 

Thanks for all your hard work on this and for keeping the Redacted Materials adaptation guidelines so flexible! 

I know it’s been a while since this request was tossed out but wanted to second it. Even just a PDF version of the template to fill by hand/form fillable would be great if that’s not too arduous a thing to assemble.

Fantastic! So glad the game is making it to your table. I'd love to hear all about how it goes!

Thank you SO MUCH for sharing! It's exciting and rewarding to hear about folks playing the game, (especially as a first game to run for a group!) and to get a snapshot of how it went. I really appreciate you taking the time to let me know.

Yep! It is entirely up to the players (based on how they describe their attack) which attribute to roll. Missiles with +LockOn encourage the player to use GAUGE but they aren't forced to

Thanks for the heads up! Looks like an export error I missed! The Spreads version should be working correctly now.

Hope you enjoy the game! I'd love to hear how it goes!

Ah! I made them a bit on the high-res side out of caution. I don't have TTS on my computer at the moment, but I recall you can right click objects and resize them. 

Worst case, I'll hop in this evening or next and create some smaller versions of the tokens for easier use.

I think I'll have everything together a week or so before the end of the jam. Writing is nearly done, art is mostly or entirely there, and layout has started. Fortunately, I can scavenge some of the layout from the core game to speed things along!

This is intended as a "give the game a go and strip out any rules that are a little extra/not relevant to a oneshot." If folks like it, the core game is there to jump into afterwards. Pre-generated characters so that the table isn't immediately overwhelmed with a menu of options or disappointed that they picked something not relevant to the mission. As tight a single evening experience as I can get it!

The plan is to put together a one-shot, introductory adventure for my first TTRPG, After\\Burner.

I'd been meaning to put it together anyway, and this jam was the perfect excuse to get off my duff and get working!

This one will give players a stab at all 3 phases of play (with greater constraint to keep things fast and light) and puts them in a scenario familiar to fans of outer-space ice planet bases in peril!

I was thinking maybe section heading text being hand drawn and decorative, or even the tables (since there aren't too many of them overall). My first thought was "Oh the page background even if light would be cool hand drawn!" but I looked it over again and like the glitchy effect more I think.

Certainly not a necessity. More thinking aloud of what could look cool on a second pass.

LUMEN would be a perfect choice for this, absolutely!

Hand drawn is such a fun look for this! I know this is a first step with this game in particular - and to do more would be HELLA work - but having some of the hand-drawn elements in the layout as well would absolutely slap.

This has one of the wildest, most compelling, and inventive combat systems I've seen in a while!

Super refreshing to see a Cyberpunk game that is just as dedicated and interested in the 'punk' as it is the 'cyber.' Also "Push" is a really cool system and this is a great use of it!

It absolutely does! I could easily see my group running this with Dungeon Crawl Classics and 3/4 players reaction being "Why would you do this to us?!" and the forth player saying "Hahhahahahah I am so glad you did this to us!"

Just...talking so slowly any time they speak to Esther. All unskippable dialog, gang!

This one pager is absolutely gorgeous! Also, while I put a strong rating under "excited to play" I caveat that with "If I am the game master." :-)