itch.io

duuuuude

Page refs are a pain, especially when there are 2 existing versions of the books, a new one (2e) in development and the first version is just 4 zines. Pure chaos! I will leverage my electron wizard powers and hoist words from castles of caged light. Anyway man, thanks for reading it and sharing your thoughts, I really laboured my ass off over this so I’m really glad it landed for you. I deeply admire your work, and respect your taste.

Well, you have heard of the game system now, AND I linked to the SRD, so you can go check out the rules and stuff for free. If you get nothing else from this, exposure to vaarn is what I want you to have.

Yeah I know there its a heavy subject, but don’t let it get your down, you can always try again next loop!

Hey thanks for reading. You know originally the idea was the party could start from any hex, and only one of the hooks started you in a specific hex, but in the end I decided it was less clunky to run from the hip if you just have a place to start and restart from, save the GM some work, and we can always just override that at our own tables anyway. I feel like designing in small spaces you get a lot of value from just deciding on the thing sometimes.

I’d love to hear how it goes! Thanks for checking it out. I had considered Black Sword Hack for it originally (would have been more sorcerous) but was also dancing around the idea of Mothership.

“She may not rise, lest a storm rage for 7 days and 7 nights without relent”: the safeguard is the trigger, and the weather is the plot. Pairing five statted groups with a d6 activity column gives thirty scenes off one table, so the referee never invents what anyone is doing? The crown giving +1 max HP an hour: two hours to help the village, four to save Marlus, so every mercy is priced in boss health, just sick.

You are too kind. I’m a huge fan of your work, so it means a lot to hear you think well of mine.

Thanks for the kind words. I really enjoyed reading yours as well. That lava trap at the end is devilish stuff.

I’ve never played starfield or really heard much about it. Dune is definitely in the register for Vaults of Vaarn, as is Gene Wolfe and a bunch of other Appendix N influences. I think at some level with these things, you are relying on the evocative quick jab of words to deliver a mental image that isn’t necessarily going to land for everyone. Thanks for checking it out.

“Not thriving communities, but blossoming ones” does more work than most supplements manage in a full page. The creed reads like real doctrine, not villain notes. The vine strip running the full width of the interior looks decorative but it’s the 48-hour clock, so the art is the thing you drop a token on. The real prize is the double-d12 wares roll: rolling what the priests gave you, then rolling again to learn whether that gift was the poisoned one. Nobody at the table knows which kindness carried it. Stealing that.

Incredible entry. Really a joy to read, fun themes covered in an evocative way. I love the map art and playful layout and design decisions that were made. The Descent Events sounds legitimately terrifying, like being pulled apart in the hands of the matrix kind of stuff. Very messed up, I love it.

Well that’s just a hell of a lot of fun right there. Great work.

I’m glad you feel the vibes came through. I was really trying to hit a tone I didn’t know would land. The gravity well, the impossibility of escape, really seemed to line up with my conception of despair.

Thanks for reading! I love my little phantom of the opera snake. Glad I added to the hype pile for Vaarn, a worthy system for exploration, to be sure.

Too kind, I did work pretty hard to achieve some brevity here, but I admit to standing on the shoulders of titans (the age of whom is a Vaarnism)

Tight solid slice of adventure. That stress carrying capacity design is super elegant and works great for forcing the decision making. Fun ideas well executed with a clean layout and clearly written for play. Well Done.

Haha, dangit. Yeah I had made that note for myself (councilor -> counselor) and I guess just missed implementing the fix. Good catch. The hex coordinate system is just being expressed as X.Y instead of X,Y because I thought it looked more sci-fi. Agreed on the brevity of 21st century digital boy, but alas the space taketh away. Thanks for reading.

Sounds like they got mushrooms in their brains and they’re gonna have to do some murder about it. Pretty weird, good stuff.

Fun little romp to release a imprisoned dragon soul. I love that its the dragon who gave us magic and she wants us to go on quests to bring her stories of the outside world. Pretty fun.

Cool dungeon map, lots of interesting choices to make. I don’t think its helping the adventure but I lol’d at poster of spider on webline saying “HANG IN THERE BABY!” The corpse pile feeding the fly population to feed the spiders is evocative if also totally representative of the inefficiencies of spider cult food security.

Cool wave defender setup. I like the idea of the battle continuing to fall back deeper in the castle. The players actions seem like they have good payoff.

Fun to read, beautiful to look at, even turned me on to a new game I’ll have to get into ;) well done.

I love these little NPC vignettes. Wild vapor-wave style visuals, lots of fun. Ptarmigans? Sneaking my little Canadian chickens into adventures now are we? Very nice. “Thank you”

Man that boss hits like a truck, 3 hits + a far 3d6 at +7 every round? TPK or what. Anyway, this is great. Some genuinely slick ideas in a nice presentation. I love that close fires heal him and goes out. Permanent blindness for con check roll of 5 is 100% shadowdark brutal. I think my favourite feature here though has to be how you leveraged the mutations table from shadowdark core rules and used an icon to tell us how many to roll. Very clever, I’m gonna steal that.

Thanks so much. Can’t wait to get into yours!

The eternal refrain on these jams “but it needs lore space!” So true. I might be up for expanding it into a larger format and bringing a lot more art.

Thanks for the kind words. Honestly I feel like I’ve stolen some of the fire from the gods that came before me on this one. You should definitely check out vaarn (the linked entries in the module go to srd), it’s a really rich and vibrant setting. Offers much for a creator to build on.

Wow, that’s so kind. Thank you!

Sweet, my Black Sword Baby! Seriously, thanks for making this, we need more places to send our barbarians to die. I think the most obvious thing I can say here is: you understood the assignment. Excellent entry, and one I intend to bring to a table. Venom as master key is solid gold.

Strong entry, lots of flavor. Bold move packing a 5e girl in an OSR sized dress. It works though, there is a lot going on here and its worth the read. I’ll probably take this one to my 5e nerds and punish them for thinking they’re so tough at 10th level ;)

This is really great. There are so many cool ideas in here. The central joke is honestly pretty funny and I love the gameable bits of noise and the soul flask work. Of course the letter steals the show, really well written. Wish we could see Jorgius’ signature, it would really pay off the emotional beat.

Thanks for reading. I don’t think there is a category related to the system, but vaarn is a D&D derived system (by ancestry through knave) so it has a pretty familiar 6 stats, d20 roll over system.

Thanks for reading it. In this case darker just refers to the colour on the map not the actual light in the space. The all light shines only toward the Gravity well is just flavour to telegraph its nature as a kind of black hole. Good call on adding the mark for hex [3,-3], it was a late decision to make it the default entry point and I missed the opportunity. Your statement about them entering on a random hex was how I initially envisioned it. In the end, I think them effectively going back the beginning is better, it allows them to “cost analyze the loop” which makes these kinds of attrition loop games work imo.

This just got added to the queue for sure. Incredible ideas in here well executed. The Broken Hero path character growth? Mind blowing.

Cool stuff. That map really sells what’s going on here. Love how efficient Cairn is at delivering this stuff, really lets you focus on the vibes and give the exploration some space to be. I love that the crone curses you for not bringing her specific potpie made by her specific favorite inn keeper. Karen the crone wants to talk to a manager!

Too kind. I also wanted to play with limited movement in a hexcrawl, to try and reenforce the despair mechanically and tonally. I’ve seen a couple time loops that I really love, obviously decagone is the classic one I point to for inspiration.

Haha, yeah I was trying to capture the simultaneous expanse of the desert but the hopelessness of limited choices. I like where it ended up but probably could use tuning to get it just right. Thanks for reading!

To be really honest vaarn does not have very strong rules around light, so the idea was more that it would provide vibes, a thing for the gm to highlight when party tries to look away from the gravity well. It’s a good note though. Thanks for taking the time to read it :)

Oh man, I love these NPC clocks. This has me feeling like playing Final Fantasy X again. Very cool, morose trudging towards an inescapable fate. Love it.