Working on the Pipeline's goal of providing gamers more guidance, this is a listing of the new rpgs that appeared on the Pipeline that made it into DriveThruRPG's Top 10 Hottest Selling items during October to December 2019. Listing is by calendar date of entry and not by popularity.
Publisher: Son of Oak Game Studio-
A booklet for players, explaining the rules of the game through short learn-as-you-play reading passages
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A booklet for the MC, explaining the role of the MC and containing the details of your first case, Shark Tank
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Five beautifully-illustrated pre-generated character folios: Detective Enkidu, Tlaloc, Lily Chow & Iron Hans, Job, and Baku.
Hit the streets of City of Mist with the Core Books bundle including the Player's Guide and the MC Toolkit!
City of Mist is a role-playing game of film-noir investigation and super-powered action. It is set in a modern metropolis rife with crime, conspiracies, and mysteries. The protagonists are Rifts, ordinary people who became the living embodiment of a legend, their Mythos. While your Rifts may seek to strike a balance between the mysterious nature of their Mythos and their mortal aspirations, the powers within them always threaten to tear their lives apart. They have unwittingly become a part of a secret world of clashing stories, and soon other legends will come looking for them with demands.
City of Mist is based on the story-driven Apocalypse Engine, but it takes a step further into narrative gaming by introducing several new features:
- Rich character motivations built around compelling Mysteries and Identities. Follow your characters’ themes to gain their benefits and evolve them or go against them to discover new aspects with a unique non-linear character evolution system.
- Know no limits for powers, abilities, traits, gear, or allies. Everything in City of Mist is described by free text tags, so you can create exactly the character you want.
- Full-on narrative engine, with an edge. Every action you take in the game is based on the interpretation of your tags, using moves to deliver dramatic outcomes that drive the story forward.
- Status spectrums, a new system of ‘narrative damage’. You can use descriptors to create any imaginable setback or advantage so that every action in the fiction, in and out of combat, can have lasting gameplay implications.
Publisher: Trollish Delver GamesDungeon Gits is a simple, hackable fantasy system with fast character creation and easy task resolution.
Includes a short bestiary, magic items and all the rules you need to run a game. There are only two attributes in the game: Bashing and Not Bashing. Use knacks to flesh out your character - a freeform system allowing you to create any kind of character you wish.
After your character has retired, the player writes a poem about their adventures.
Publisher: Nordic Weasel GamesTher came sire Gareth in at the gate with an angry countenaunce and his swerd drawen in his hand and cryed aloude that alle the castel myght here hit sayeng “thou traitour syre Gryngamor delyuer me my dwerf ageyn or by the feith that I owe to the ordre of knyghthode I shal doo the al the harme that I can ”
Sir Thomas Malory - Le Morte D'Arthur.
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Welcome to Dreams of Dragons - a game of classic fantasy adventure gaming inspired by classic games such as Drakar och Demoner and Runequest.
A game with knights and rogues and cat-people. And much more.
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Within this book, you will find everything you need to run a fantasy campaign:
*Detailed character creation in a skill-driven system.
*13 playable character species including centaurs, Svart Alfar and the mysterious Skiftkar.
*A solid, skill-driven system based on a D20 roll-under system. No strange dice or fiddling with results. Roll the die and see if you roll under what it says on your character sheet.
*Character improvement through good roleplaying and by actually playing the game.
Characters improve their skills by using them in the adventure and by taking time and money to train and practice.
No character is ever barred from learning a new skill, based on choices made at character creation. Your knight might fall on hard luck and learn some thieving and the thief might decide she wants to practice her swimming skills.
*Combat can be played at multiple levels, from a very simple fast-moving attack/parry system to a fully detailed battle with many tactical choices.
Simple rules cover things like armor weak points, while optional detail covers everything from range penalties to fighting in the dark.
*Extensive notes on miniatures are included for players who enjoy their use. Instead of your miniature figures simply standing still as they kick each others ankles, you will be pushed back, give way or advance heroically as the battle unfolds.
*A straight-forward magic system where spells are learned as skills and powered through magic points.
Spells can be cast at varying levels, allowing the caster flexibility and versatility in game play.
No more lists of near-identical-yet-different-strength healing and fire spells.
*The creatures section offers an introductory cross section with 37 creatures from fantasy, legend and mythology.
*Tools are provided to actually help you play the game, such as detailed Morale rules, a quick town generator, a system for managing NPC plots, how to handle characters researching a topic or owning land, among others.
*Of course this would not be a Nordic Weasel game without several game options, such as tailoring the magic system, making the combat rules far more gritty or maybe lightening up with some fate points.
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While the game can be played in any setting you like, we have included the game world of Erehwesle, a fantastical fairytale land where you will find everything from dragons to earth-worshipping cats to war-torn battle fields …and pirate ducks.
A love-letter to the kitchen-sink fantasy of our youths, it is also a modern, playable setting developed specifically to fit with how fantasy games are really played.
The setting is not just an afterthought either.
We’ve included full notes for character creation, language rules and more.
With Erehwesle, Dreams of Dragons is a true out-of-the-box experience. Simply create characters, pick a place in the world to adventure in and see what happens.
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What is this game not?
It’s not a dungeon-murder-hobo game, where faceless and disposable characters get massacred in a killer dungeon.
It’s not a highly narrative story-game driven by meta-currencies and story mechanics.
Neither is it an ultra-lite 1 page game.
We’re not here to shock your grandma, change the world or redefine gaming.
However, if you enjoy quest-driven games where a group of beloved, long-term characters adventure together and overcome challenges in a fun fantasy realm, then I think this game is for you.
If you like your games to have a bit of realism in them to make the magical critters all the more fantastic in contrast, then I think this game is for you.
If you miss the days of "rules medium" games that had some meat on the bones, but which didn't require 500 pages to deliver a good experience, then I think this game is for you.
If your idea of good fantasy is a bit of Tolkien and a bit of David Eddings and a bit of Thomas Malory, then I think this game is for you.
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All game rules by Ivan Sorensen, the creator of games such as Five Leagues on the Borderlands, Fast and Dirty and FiveCore.
Game setting created by Daniel Luce.
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This is NOT intended as the final version of the rules.
First, there are areas of the rules that are yet to be developed, such as the Resource system for handling characters with networks of contacts, more creatures, plot ideas etc.
Second, as with all Nordic Weasel products, we strive to correct errors, improve explanations and incorporate improvements as they are discovered.
Third, some niceties such as quick reference sheets, more game examples etc. are missing from this version though we will try to add them as quickly as we are able to.
This then is a “workhorse ” version. I’ve made every effort to make it as easy to use in play as possible.
The game rules will be updated as improvements happen.
It is my hope that after a period of roughly 4-6 months, we will look into producing a fancier version with original artwork, a new cover and so on.
If this happens, everyone who has purchased the original game will be able to get the “deluxe ” or version at a discount equal to what you paid for the original.
Publisher: Dragon Turtle GamesPlay as a Cyberpunk, a rebel refusing to live life by the rules of the oppressive megacorporations that rule San Francisco in this high action tabletop roleplaying game by Robert Marriner-Dodds.
Carbon 2185 gives you the chance to play in the cyberpunk worlds you've seen in movies, television shows, and video games.
The Core Rulebook is the only thing you need to run and play hundreds of hours of games in the world of Carbon 2185.
Carbon 2185 is a brand new tabletop roleplaying game built using the D&D 5e open game license, with all the magic, magical items, and fantasy elements removed, and replaced with cybernetic augmentations, upgradable and customisable weapons, and computer hacking skills.
Publisher: Mark HuntGangbusters B/X the Roleplaying Game is set during the Roaring Twenties and Dirty Thirties. It has all the usual trappings of the period: Prohibition, mob bosses, Tommy gun-toting thugs, speakeasies, big hats, big cars, big personalities, swanky gin joints, illicit booze and crooked people out to make a quick dime, and more, but what the game is about is rather simple. It is at its core just a good old fashion game of Cops and Robbers. This is because it is set during a time when America produced some of its most notorious and legendary figures. John Dillinger, ‘Scarface’ Al Capone, ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, ‘Ma’ Barker, Bonnie & Clyde, Eliot Ness and the ‘Untouchables’, J. Edgar Hoover, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and a host of others. Whether you join the in the crusade to stamp out lawlessness or join in on the crime spree that is gripping America is up to you.
Based on the Original Gangbusters from the ’80s created by Rick Krebs this edition is adapted to use the B/X game engine. But instead of exploring musty dungeons, characters in Gangbusters investigate crime, run speakeasies, rob banks, expose corruption, capture murders or try to get away with it all.
Now you can relive the adventures and exploits of these daring men and women with GANGBUSTERS and trade; 1920s role-playing adventure game.
Publisher: Livres de l’OursEXCTINCTION is a stand alone RPG of Sci-Fi survival horror made with the BLACK HACK, inspired by movies like Alien, Outland and Event horizon.
Players can choose a character class, from Corporate drone to Medic or Deck officer (8 classes in total), read a 1 page summary of the setting, pick a rules cheat sheet and start to play right away.
GMs will find an introductory adventure, Breathing Day, so they can start running the game on the same day they bought the book!
Keeping with BLACK HACK traditions, EXTINCTION is loaded with tools: create NPCs, colonies, space stations, alien ruins, find what's wrong with a corporation or the next target of a fringe group... It's a big universe and xenomorphs are not the only danger players will face.
Publisher: Gallant Knight GamesArrrrgggh....ya ready to sail the high seas in search of plunder!?
The minimalist TinyD6 ruleset gets salty as it hits the Age of Sail and Golden Age of Piracy in search of treasure.
Written by the ENnie award winning author Ben Woerner, alongside TinyD6 designer Alan Bahr, Tiny Pirates introduces a new way to enjoy minimalist roleplaying. Feature expanded ship rules, an aquatic bestiary, and new archetypes, Tiny Pirates adds nicely to the TinyD6 line, both standing alone as it's own game, and combining with other TinyD6 products to add a dash of swashbuckling piracy to all genres!
The optional duel rules in Tiny Pirates do require a "Duel Deck", which comes in PDF with this book, but can be bought in print here.
Tiny Pirates is a stand alone game.
Publisher: Zadmar GamesPayment is optional! You can download the full PDF by clicking on the Publisher Preview. If you’d like to support the product by paying a dollar, you’ll also receive the tablet version (4:3 aspect ratio—this also looks good on laptops and desktop computers when using “Two Page View ” in Acrobat Reader) and a Word document version (convenient if you want to copy the text for your own products).
What is Tricube Tales?
This product started out as a simple set of guidelines I created to run short games for my five-year-old son. However, I found the rules worked really well for adults as well, so I decided to expand them into a full game.
- Versatile: Tricube Tales is a rules-light roleplaying system capable of handling a wide variety of genres and settings.
- Portable: Games require little preparation or bookkeeping, and the PDF is designed for reading on a 16:9 aspect ratio smartphone screen, so you’ll always have the rules at hand.
- Free: You can download the full Phone PDF for free by clicking on the Publisher Preview, and the entire text has been released under the CC BY 3.0 license, meaning you can also use it for your own commercial publications.
Character Creation
The player makes up an archetype, a perk, and a quirk. An archetype consists of a trait (agile, brawny or crafty) followed by a concept (usually a profession or calling), a perk typically represents a special ability or item, and quirk describes a foible or drawback. The entire character can be summarized in a single sentence, such as “an agile masked vigilante who is skilled with a rapier and loves to humiliate his foes, ” or “a brawny cyborg cop who has a cybernetic exoskeleton and is programmed to uphold the law, ” or even “a crafty professor with telepathic superpowers who requires a wheelchair. ”
Resolution System
To overcome a challenge, players roll 1-3 six-sided dice (depending on their archetype) against a difficulty of 4-6 (depending on the situation), and need to succeed with at least one die. Perks can be used to reduce the difficulty, while quirks can increase it, but both are controlled by the player using karma tokens—they spend karma on perks, and recover it from quirks. This core mechanic is used for everything, including combat, and all rolls are made by the players.
Actual Play
If you want to see an Actual Play using the Tricube Tales system, check out “Tellers of Tales ” by Eli Kurtz and Drew Mierzejewski (note that the second episode delves more into system mastery):
Publisher: Gorgzu GamesStar Dogs is a super simple space opera tabletop roleplaying game. It is designed to be picked up and played as quickly as possible and for the focus to be on the galactic hi-jinx taking place at the table - not flipping through pages in search of specific rules.
Star Dogs has straightforward and easy to play rules for combat, skill tests, vehicle combat, space combat, space magic, cybernetic augmentation, technology use and more!
This is the Player’s Handbook for Star Dogs that features everything you need to roll up a heroic or villainous Star Dog and explore the galaxy in search for as many credits as possible.
(For resources to help run a campaign of Star Dogs, please check out the Lizard Man Diaries blog: https://lizardmandiaries.blogspot.com/2019/11/star-dogs-players-handbook.html)
Publisher: Vajra EnterprisesPlay in an epic science-mystery as the first humans to encounter alien life. Each scenario represents humanity's first encounter with an alien life form so different than us that it challenges our ability to understand and communicate. Create a team of the world's best scientists, diplomats, mathematicians, technicians and other experts, assembled specifically for each scenario.
A complete role playing game using ORC-L, the light verison of Organic Rule Components. No other products needed to play.
Includes three complete first contact scenarios and extensive material on creating your own.
Publisher: CRISPR Monkey StudiosA BIOPUNK WORLD MADE FOR 5E
This book contains everything you need to play GeneFunk 2090
The GeneFunk 2090 Core Rulebook includes the setting and 5E rules for:
- 60+ CYBERNETIC UPGRADES!
- 14 DIFFERENT BIOENGINEERED GENOMES!
- 48 DIFFERENT GENETIC ENHANCEMENTS!
- 8 NEW CLASSES WITH 21 ARCHETYPES!
- 31 NEW FEATS!
- 13 NEW BACKGROUNDS!
- MIND HACKING, BIOHACKING, ENGINEERING HACKING!
- ROBOTS, DRONES, AND ANDROIDS!
- BIOENGINEERED BEASTS, PLANTS, AND FUNGI!
- DRUGS!
- LOTS OF GUNS AND ARMOR!
- CHASE RULES!
Imagine a world in the not too distant future, 2090, where technology has entirely shaped the very essence of human nature, and where fiscal interests, the international arms race, and consumerism have entirely shaped that same technology. This is the world of GeneFunk 2090.
Supercomputer in your Bloodstream
The human condition as a whole has become something somewhat different. Somewhere along the way almost every single human has been modified to have a powerful supercomputer coded directly into their DNA and physiology, one that has merged with their consciousness. In this world the internet has become as real as the physical world and hackers have become manipulators of the very stuff of the human psyche, probing and rearranging memory and mind the way a potter molds clay.
Plasticity of Genes, Form, and Human Nature
Large sections of the human population have had their genes chosen before birth to breed success, while others have had foreign DNA included to produce wholly different physical traits that were once thought inhuman. On top of all the innate genetic tweaking, individuals modify themselves through cyberware surgeries and biohacks, to the point where some are considered entirely "posthuman".
Violent, Shallow, and Unequal
Multinational corporations have gobbled each other up, producing ever larger entities until only nine remain, each of which is a superpower bigger than most of the world’s countries. Corporate executives have the power to shatter entire governments in the name of their company’s share value and their own ambition. Gangs and organized crime saturate every urban environment. This world, bloated from overpopulation and consumer greed, has become one of the most violent eras in human history. The rich segregate themselves from the poor, and the tension caused by this wealth gap is causing the world to burst at the seams.
Virtual Immortality
Recent innovations have allowed the rich to undergo a process that maps their entire nervous system, connectome, endocrine complement, DNA and gene expression, and every other feature relevant to the human mind. This digitization of consciousness allows the world's wealthy and powerful to essentially live forever, switching from one bioengineered shell to another as they see fit.
Cadre of Professionals
You and your allies are a cadre, a lean start-up corporation that specializes in investigation, intelligence, protection, and violence. To keep their hands clean, the syndicates often outsource this kind of work to smaller outfits, like yours. Your cadre's skillset is in high demand in this intrigue filled world, being sought after by megacorporations, nation-states, organized crime, or wealthy individuals. As an autonomous entity, your cadre of elite agents take contracts as you see fit, navigating the shadows of corporate espionage and savagery with competence and panache.
Publisher: 23rd Century Productions, LLCROLEPLAYING IN A GALAXY AT WAR
BATTLELORDS OF THE 23RD CENTURY is a science-fiction tabletop roleplaying game where players can assume the role of mercenaries, misfits, soldiers, spies, pirates, and heroes
adventuring in a war-torn universe.
“The soldier of the future will be more like a medieval knight in ultramodern armor than a soldier of the 21st century. Operating autonomously, they will be light years from their commanders and support. ”
-Military Scientist, Howard Dickenson. Earth, Year 2083.
By the year 2282 humanity has spread among the stars and joined The Alliance of Allied Species. The Alliance is composed of over a dozen species who pool resources and technology to expand across the galaxies and defend themselves against the threat of galactic war with the hostile Ak-Nar-Ryn. The Ak-Nar-Ryn, who are more commonly called the “Arachnids, ” have destroyed worlds and decimated populations as they advance into Alliance territory. More recently the Alliance has been faced with a new threat that is even more insidious than even the Arachnids. The shapeshifting, nanite swarms of the Atlanteans which are capable of devouring entire cities.
Many member species of the Alliance have longstanding rivalries, conflicting agendas, and a few have even gone to war with each other in the past. However, each species brings something unique to the coalition, but all must overcome their bias and speciesism if they are to cooperatively achieve their goal of survival. In the midst of it all, the mega-corporations run the show from behind the scenes and cash in every chance they get. If you’re not living in a colony town on some backwater world on the frontier, you’re probably working for a mega-corp on a long-term contract. They own and run nearly everything, including you … for as long as you’re under contract.
Against the backdrop of war, you can take the fight to the Arachnids as soldiers of the Galactic Armed Forces. Become a hired gun working as a corporate mercenary. Explore the universe, discovering new species and relics of past civilizations. Protect the bottom line of your company as you engage in corporate espionage or research the hidden threat the Atlanteans pose to the Alliance working as a spy. Maybe plunder is more your style? There’s always room for another pirate out on the frontier. The possibilities are as limitless as the universe.
“Lock and load, private! Bring your extra pulse mags and your sense of humor. You’ll need both. ”
Battlelords of the 23rd Century is a complete, self-contained, roleplaying game. All you need besides this book are some gaming dice.
Publisher: Onyx Path PublishingTHE ONLY CONSTANT IS CHANGE.
“Potential is everywhere. You can’t really see it, but you can feel it. And all you really need to do is reach out, grab that potential in your hand, and bend it to your will. Nothing goes wrong if you just use your potential. I know it sounds easy. I can’t really tell you how to do it. But when you do, you’ll just know. ”
- Janeka Spencer, Neptune Foundation first responder
The Trinity Continuum Corebook is a standalone game for the Trinity Continuum, and is meant for use with and AElig;on, Aberrant, and Adventure! Inside, you will find:
- Rules for creating characters within the Trinity Continuum
- Rules for Action Adventure, Intrigue, and Procedural play
- Advice for running genre games and styles of play in the Trinity Continuum
- Information on playing Talents in the modern era
Publisher: Newstand PressDouble or Nothing is a roleplaying game for 2 or 3 people, in which you take the role of a pair of agents who get involved in over the top disasters and have to shoot, kick, and flirt their way out, hopefully without creating too much collateral damage along the way. It is heavily based on Dirty Pair, and replicates the style and absurdity of the anime with a variety of simple and quick mechanics that will quickly lead to ever-escalating danger, and a corresponding bill for damages.
In many ways a spiritual successor to Damage Control, Double or Nothing is snappy to play and guaranteed to be ridiculous. Custom mechanics include flirting with one another for bonuses, tracking collateral damage in large monetary units, and actually, straight-up playing Truth or Dare with each other. It can be played with or without a GM, as a one-shot or a short campaign, and requires nothing but d6s and a token. It also contains a quick set of random generator tables so you can start playing within minutes.
It is also illustrated, and includes running examples throughout.
Publisher: Free League Publishing“I can’t lie to you about your chances, but … you have my sympathies. ”
Space is vast, dark, and not your friend. Gamma rays and neutrino bursts erupt from dying stars to cook you alive, black holes tear you apart, and the void itself boils your blood and seizes your brain. Try to scream and no one can hear you—hold your breath and you rupture your lungs. Space isn’t as empty as you’d think, either—its frontiers are ever expanding. Rival governments wage a cold war of aggression while greedy corporations vie for valuable resources. Colonists reach for the stars and gamble with their lives—each new world tamed is either feast or famine. And there are things lurking in the shadows of every asteroid—things strange and different and deadly.
Things alien.
This is the official ALIEN tabletop roleplaying game—a universe of body horror and corporate brinkmanship, where synthetic people play god while space truckers and marines serve host to newborn ghoulish creatures. It’s a harsh and unforgiving universe and you are nothing if not expendable.
Stay alive if you can.
The ALIEN tabletop roleplaying game is a beautifully illustrated full-color book of 392 pages, both presenting the world of ALIEN in the year 2183 and a fast and effective ruleset designed specifically to enhance the ALIEN experience. The game supports two distinct game modes:
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Cinematic play is based on pre-made scenarios that emulate the dramatic arc of an ALIEN film. Designed to be played in a single session, this game mode emphasizes high stakes and fast and brutal play. You are not all expected to survive. The core rulebook contains one introductory Cinematic scenario, Hope’s Last Day.
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Campaign play is designed for longer continuous play with the same cast of player characters over many game sessions, letting you explore the ALIEN universe freely, sandbox style. The core rulebook contains random tables and other powerful tools to quickly create star systems, colonies, missions, encounters, and NPCs for your campaign.
The rules of the game are based on the acclaimed Year Zero Engine, used in award-winning games such as Tales from the Loop and Mutant: Year Zero, but adapted and further developed to fully support and enhance the core themes of ALIEN: horror and action in the cold darkness of space.
™ & © 2019 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.
Publisher: Micro RPGWelcome to One Page Apocalypse, a simple and easy role-playing-game for the solo player. You only need some printer paper, dice, and a pencil to play, making it perfect for a plane ride, hotel room, or anywhere else. The game works with a procedurally generated game map, adding some randomness to the game.
This first volume marks the opening to Season 1 of the game--set in chilling nuclear winter where radiation turns any dead bodies into zombies. This season builds on the absolute basics of the One Page System (used in One Page Dungeon and One Page Cthulhu) and updates it for a modern horror setting.
Each volume will build upon the last, offering new snowy and frozen buildings and locations to explore in each entry--along with new horrors, mutations, and class options as well. Each entry stands alone, so no need to worry about playing them in order!
Publisher: Dying Stylishly GamesPicture the adventuring party of most old-school games. A band of thugs, occultists, criminals, weirdos and outcasts who, rather than settle into normal society, risk everything exploring the dark, dangerous places of the world. Perhaps they will become rich and powerful, perhaps they die unceremoniously.
Keep this same adventuring party, and picture their equivallent in the modern day. A world with police, the internet, chain stores... The same band of thugs, occultists, criminals, weirdos and outcasts drift into the underworlds of organised crime and the esoteric.
This, then, is the premise of Esoteric Enterprises: the occult exists in a dangerous black market, where organised criminals traffic in magical grimoires and relics alongside narcotics and weapons. Hidden from the public eye, various gangs, cults and covens struggle for influence and resources in the dark tunnels beneath every city. And beneath that, stranger things lurk; inhuman creatures turn their cold gaze on the mortals who intrude on their subterranean realm.
Welcome to the Occult Underworld
This book details all the rules you'll need to play games as an occult or criminal gang in the undercity. They're based on the standard framework seen in most old-school games, adapted to work in a modern-day urban fantasy setting.
Character creation is quick and streamlined. Characters are members of the occult or criminal underworlds, and might be magicians, mad scientists, cultists, urban explorers, career criminals or even inhuman monsters. Spells, equipment and character perks are all tailored to suit an urban fantasy setting.
Combat is fast and brutal, with dirty fighting emphasised and the potential to suffer horrible injuries. Away from combat, there are subsystems for interacting with various underground contacts, medical and magical experiments, exploring the undercity, and common criminal activity. Since the game uses treasure-for-XP, wealth and status are abstracted into being a function of character level.
Magic is rendered a risky enterprise. Magicians either cast previously memorized spells (in the case of occultists) or pray to a patron to grant them power (in the case of mystics). While a careful occultist can avoid disaster by limiting their activity, a mystic's magic is always at the whims of their patron, and every spell cast might result in complications. And, of course, the temptation to experiment with magic is always there, with consequences that can range from the surreal to the apocalyptic.
The Spook class, meanwhile, covers all non-human PCs. Each such spook is a unique creature, combining their basic nature (such as undead, ghostly, or artificial beings) with a selection of minor powers (such as blood-drinking, hypnosis or resistance to pain) to reflect the creature's capabilities.
The greater part of the book, however, is made up of tools and resources for the GM. This begins with a short section of GMing advice, describing the game's intended playstyle and giving tips for managing scenes, handling darker content and using randomness to create emergent narratives.
After this, the meat of the GM's section deals with actually creating and running a setting for the game. There are systems to create a network of different underworld factions, tracking their relationships with one another and events in the underworld. Likewise, there are methods to track the attention PCs are drawing from the police, as well as their alliances, rivalries, and grudges with other players in the underworld.
Likewise, a system is given for creating the undercity that PCs explore - essentially a small megadungeon beneath their home town - along with the various hazards, treasures and terrain features to be found underground.
Lastly, an extensive bestiary is given, ranging from law enforcement, to career criminals, to various occult weirdos, to the incredibly strange creatures found deep underground; over 200 different NPCs and monsters, many of them modular and customizable.
The whole thing is designed so that a GM familiar with the material can randomly generate an entire setting from scratch in a few hours, and with proactive players the game can be run with very little prep between sessions. The whole thing can be played straight out of the book.
Plus, the whole thing is lavishly illustrated with full colour photographs. Seriously, the book's very pretty as well as being packed with content.
Publisher: San Jenaro Co-OpWelcome to the San Jenaro Short Games Digest, Volume 3! For this Winter’s issue, we tackled our first "theme" issue, all the games herein are great to play as a family, every game within should be appropriate for, but certainly not limited to, children! It's a fairly loose theme and we'd love to hear your thoughts! The San Jenaro Co-Op is a fully operational machine of game making, and we want you along for the ride.
Check out some of what we’ve got in store for you:
- In Paleo Party, play a group of adventurous young dinosaurs going on a Jurassic Journey, a game inspired by The Land Before Time!
- In Yule Army, play a squad of crack commandos with a single mission: Get people the perfect presents!
- In Raccoon Disuption, play as a gaze of raccoons making your neighborhood safer by stealing all the tasty and shiny components from the local ritualists summonings and keep your home demon free!
And so many more!
The San Jenaro Co-Op is a collective of designers, writers, artists, and other creatives who believe in equal pay for equal contribution. Our books are 100% profit-shared, 100% creator-owned. So if this book does well, the creators do well.
Check out our first two digests below!
Publisher: Machine Age ProductionsBe a hero. You pick the hours.
#iHunt is a story telling game about killing monsters in the gig economy. In it, you play millennials scraping by paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet. A gig app called #iHunt offers them more money than they've ever made to hit the streets and kill vampires, werewolves, demons, and anything else that goes bump in the night.
- #iHunt uses a modified version of the Fate Core Rulebook. You do not need it to play.
- It's a high-drama, story-heavy urban fantasy roleplaying game.
- It takes a critical look at the gig economy with irreverent humor.
- Make your own hunters and monsters using easy collaborative tools.
- It uses one normal six-sided die, and four Fate Dice.
Within the coming months, this book will exist in print-on-demand format. If you purchase a digital version, once the print version goes live I will give you a $25 off coupon code to help defray some of that cost.
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