A Continent of Banalities

Last night I ran the first playtest game of The Gathering Gloom. It was a hoot. The Physick, The Witch, The Battuere and The Disgraced Officer (from faraway Spain!) encountered the Kabouter and its offspring (a fairy gnome, inspired by Cronenberg). They wanted tender meat, and help in getting a relic out of the church. To my surprise and glee one of the PCs took them up on the offer! This lead to much fun and some PvP situations that I had not prepared for. Luckily I had great players. "I have a proposition for you..." Things I need to work on: - PvP rules, maybe. Or at least some thoughts on how to handle it. As the rules stand the character who wins the roll has the loser at their mercy. That's not a problem if the players are ok with it. - A bit more background. That was a request from one of the players. I don't want to make it a game where historical accuracy is paramount. - Some rules for GM prep. As it stands there is a bit about what dice to use an...

The Opposition A rudimentary monster generator (for The Gathering Gloom or whatever you feel like).  D12 Basic shape 1 Human (no physical signs of its monstrous nature) 2 Human (signs of the uncanny). 3 Hominid (debased human or ancestor) 4 Beastman (some combination of animal and human) 5 Animal (A natural seeming or near-natural beast) 6 Magical construct (golem, affront to nature, homunculus) 7 Undead (corporeal) 8 Undead (spectral) 9 Debased fey (giant or gnomish, possessed of low cunning). 10 Noble fey (tall, regal, beautiful, made of incongruous matter) 11 Utterly alien entity (unlike anything in nature) 12 Roll twice a...

Another Career for The Gathering Gloom, this one inspired by an Ambrose Bierce short story. Captain Graffenreid lay alongside the dead man, from beneath whose breast flowed a little rill of blood. It had a faint, sweetish odor that sickened him. The face was crushed into the earth and flattened. It looked yellow already, and was repulsive. Nothing suggested the glory of a soldier's death nor mitigated the loathsomeness of the incident. He could not turn his back upon the body without facing away from his company. Ambrose Bierce - "One Officer, One Man" Your line of ancestors is a long one, and there were plenty of stories about valor and horsemanship, conquest and camaraderie. You set out to war as was right and proper, your spirits stirred to a fever pitch by the bugle and the drum. When you came to battle there was no music, only the thunder of cannons and the cawing of carrion crows. There were no comrades, only frightened farm boys fumbling with sword...

A calling ('character class') for The Gathering Gloom. The Freeshooter You were never much of a hunter, which meant that you were a wallflower at best, and a target of cruelty and scorn at worst. You turned to books, to knowledge, to pursue things that did not involve bringing home a twelve-point buck or a brace of rabbits. That was until you met Sofiya the game keeper’s daughter. She was funny, curious, and did not mind that you could not hit the broad side of a barn, let alone a mallard in flight. Her father was another matter. You asked for her hand in marriage. He laughed. Then he spat. That was when your readings took a darker turn, and one night you found yourself in Wolf’s Hollow, waiting for Samiel, the one that some call the Black Huntsman. He appeared as a handsome man with a clubfoot. Samiel offered you the magic bullets, but warned you: ”some are for thee, and some are for me”. Since then you have become a master huntsman, and you are to be ...

Another project I'm working on (on and off) is a kind of proto-Resistance 1700s horror game. It's inspired by Darkest Dungeon, Otfried Preussler's Krabat , as well as all kinds of horror and Gothic fiction. The English title is a bit more descriptive. The concept is very basic: A group of idealists and misfits are tasked with hunting a monster preying on a small village in Bohemia/vague central European place. There are such 'character classes' or callings as The New Priest, The Disgraced Officer, The Brokenhearted and The Coffin Birth. The project started as a version of a sanity/mental stress mechanic which I'm crudely bolting on to a simple version of the Resistance rules (the die mechanic, really) found in a game called The Beast . The mechanic is as follows: HOPE (starts at 6, but your choice of calling may change this) CERTAINTY (starts at 0, but your calling may change this) How HOPE is gained and lost Hope is faith in providence, a bel...