Thursday 21 June 2018

Announcements: A Playtest! A Guild!

tl;dr: play my game here, help me make it here.

***

GRAVEROBBERS
is a gothic fantasy heistcrawl RPG, with a feather-light ruleset inspired by the OSR.

Things I've written about it on this blog can be found here.

The Current State of the Game

Some folks have been expressing an interest, so I figured I might as well put the rules up, such as they are. You can get what I'm calling the Player Starter Sheet right here in a lil google doc.

The Player Starter Sheet has everything a player needs to know to make a character and play the game. As a GM, all you need to do is:

a) prepare a situation (a heist)
b) decide when to call for rolls (bearing in mind how the rules work)

I feel like anyone who's GM'd an OSR game before can do this competently enough.

The Future of the Game

I'd like to eventually release a finalised ruleset, in a document along with GM advice, at least one starter adventure, various example hacks for the game, and a few of the most pertinent posts from this blog, rewritten to be relevant to Graverobbers specifically.

Any updates to the rules, additional content, and previews on a final product will be shared through the Graverobber's Guild.

art by Nicoletta Migaldi

The Graverobber's Guild

I'm setting up a Patreon, intended to:

- Support the making of Graverobbers and other games I'm working on
- Direct access to all updates on those games, and a direct channel to me for your feedback
- Serve as a kind of tip jar for folks who like this blog
- Develop a community, so you can talk to each other and me about ideas
- Provide me with a direct line to the folks who most want to support me, so I can give you stuff

The Guild can be found right here. The only pledge level is $1USD per month.

This is not a payment for a service - it is an optional way for you to help me if you are able to and want to. I hope you will consider sending a little bit of spare change my way if you like what I do :)

PS: If you don't want to commit to a dollar a month, you can give a one-off donation by spending an amount of your choice on any of the products on my Gumroad online store.

8 comments:

Ynas Midgard said...

I really like it, especially the diminishing returns on the stats, and the implementation of "no dedicated combat rules" thing you talked about earlier.

D. G. Chapman said...

thanks!

Charlie said...

Will you mind if I post about this on /r/rpg and /r/osr on reddit? Your piece on combat seemed to go over well on /r/osr, I'm sure they'd love to see you followed through on this.

D. G. Chapman said...

go ahead :)

Charlie said...

https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/8tairn/graverobbers_player_guide_keen_little/

and https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/8taix5/graverobbers_player_guide_keen_little/

Cheers!

D. G. Chapman said...

Thanks for all the support :)

Charlie said...

How would you handle aid? If the whole party wants to get in a fight, how does that work?

I would think everyone involved could contribute a die from either their stat or from describing something helpful, but everyone involved is risking some Luck. However, with a large enough party it seems like they could move things up to 10-14 dice, right?

Or you could have one PC designated as the 'leader' for the action, one helper only contributing one die, and then both of them are risking a point of Luck in the conflict. I think this is better - it makes it less likely that a 5-6 person party can steamroll things.

But I'm just curious about what you wind up doing. Cheers!

D. G. Chapman said...

I tend to treat other characters aiding a roll as fictional positioning that adds a die or two, same as other instances where the GM adds dice in for clever thinking. Or if the group is creative enough, I bypass the roll entirely. In those instances I don't factor in things like the number of characters helping or their Stats, it's more about if the idea is a good one.

I think multiple players risking Luck is a good idea when other characters help out but the overall situation doesn't necessarily get any less risky. Don't forget as well that risking Luck is about possibly being caught as well as being hurt, gambling everyone's Luck is a good way to represent that.