Author: Justin Hamilton

Primeval 2D6 Layout Update


Trying out my hand at learning Affinity Publisher, so I tried to make a two column spread for Primeval 2D6. I also tried to cut through my verbosity and trim it down to one page, hopefully I was successful at making a more usable text.

I am currently working on an example of how I use the game as a framework to play in a world along with an adventure. Let me know if you have any feedback or recommendations for a “Play worlds, not rules” sort of product.

Also let me know your thoughts on the changes to the document, as well as any recommendations or tips while I am learning this stuff.

Thank you!

Barrowmaze Open Table Session 8

Summary

The party decides to search the immediate southern portion of the barrows, running into a variety of figures and learning a few details of the tomb.

Cast of characters

Player Characterss

  • Barkface the Druid, played by EvilTables
  • Donnie the Bard, played by Malley
  • Grick the Half-Orc, played by John
  • Groolgrod the Dwarf, played by Directsun

Hirelings

  • Arnd Cobblestone, dwarf
  • Cravos (deceased), thug turned fighter
  • Garbash, cleric of Crom
  • Irya, archer and former squire
summary follows

Less Rules to Do More: Wounds

One of the things I have done when running Primeval 2D6 is to get rid of the more abstract notion of hit points, number of hits, etc. in favor of a more descriptive form of injuries.

This has coincided with my attempt to move all of my old school-styled gaming away from discussions of numbers and mechanics, and instead towards a discussion of the fiction as much as possible.

details follow

Less Rules To Do More: Combat Maneuvers

In my previous post I suggest removing mechanics around the important parts of the game to see if a more freeform rulings style of play will give you what you looking for, instead of defaulting to adding new mechanics.

Let’s look at one of the most popular areas to begin to add rules to games: combat maneuvers.

by Stepan Alekseev
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Less Rules To Do More

Hanging out on forums, game design communities, discord servers and the like I come across a lot of people trying to hack games, old school D&D in particular to do more than what it currently does for them.

Some examples include things like:

  • Differentiating between “kinds” of hit-points, often breaking out concepts of luck, stress, actual physical damage into a variety of classes.
  • De-abstracting armor class, clearly defining between the kinds of armor that keeps blows from hurting you, and actions you perform to completely avoid these blows (such as dodging and parrying).
  • Adding concrete actions and reactions to combat – rules for called shots, active parries, specific classes of strikes, etc.
  • Various implementations and adjustments to the magic system.
  • Skills in general.
  • More nuances to the experience systems.

This is all great – hacking is very much in the spirit of D&D and roleplaying and definitely should be done. Some really awesome games have developed out of the tradition of grabbing D&D, removing stuff you don’t like, adding stuff you do, and putting your own mark on it.

What I want to do is make an argument for removing rules to do what you want, before adding them in. This may seem counter-intuitive – how can you establish something as a priority if you don’t have a concrete rule for it?

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Barrowmaze Open Table Session 6

edit: I accidentally listed this as session 7 before, but have edited the title to the correct number, sorry if the URL stays the same and is confusing.

I am going to try more of a short summary this time around (instead of the longer form narration of events), since I’ve fallen behind updating these. This may also allow me to kind of summarize process a bit more.

If you’re reading along and you have a strong preference for one style or the other let me know.

Barrowmaze Sapphire Skeletons
summary follows

How I run Primeval 2D6

In my last post I wrote up a summary of a Primeval 2D6 session that I ran, and I got a lot of great feedback and a lot of questions about how I run a closer-to-freeform/FKR rpg. I wanted to write a follow-up post to kind of explain the how I did as well as clarify a few of the questions I received.

not quite the crow demon, but I thought it looked funny
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Cursed Rookery of the Moon Empress

Over the weekend I ran a playtest of my Primeval 2D6 system along with some sword & sorcery rules I have been working on for a while. The basic setup was that I had each player generate a positive and negative trait, a homeland, background, virtue, vice, then each player generated a pulp adventure title.

They then free form pitched their character’s appearance in this tale, along with a special ability, item, relationship or unique detail. Then the player to the right of them had their character featured in this tale, and they helped the primary protagonist out of some pickle.

The adventure was one I have ran before. Its a bit of a magical detective mystery, filled with decadent corruption and horrific monsters, it has a number of avenues a party can take. It has been interesting running this and seeing some groups go purely investigative, some purely skull-crushing, and an in-between. Spoilers for one avenue the adventure can take, if you ever want to playtest this with me.

summary follows

Barrowmaze Open Table Session 5

This is a tad late as I have been super busy since this session, so I may have forgotten a few things. Also my notes are complete trash – usually it will contain a bunch of numbers scrawled onto a page, unlabeled tick boxes, and phrases like “rocks fall” without context. When playing they make sense to me, but are complete gibberish outside of it. None the less, here’s my memory of our last session.

Cast of characters

  • Barkface the Druid, played by EvilTables
  • Donnie the Bard, played by Malley
  • Lothomir the Elf, played by Graytung
  • Sky the Druid, played by John/Captain Caveman
  • Uriel the Ranger, played by Dante

Along with their hirelings:

  • Arnd Cobblestone, a Dwarf they found in a pit
  • Cravos, a thug from Helix who serves as their torchbearer
  • Snookums, Cravos’ flea-bitten hound
  • Foamy, Sky’s befriended dog
session report follows