Caring for Your 💿🐴: An Owner’s Guide

(Disc Horse was coined by the fantastic Fiona Maeve Geist. Sound it out.)

When first approaching a Disc Horse, check that you are, in fact, a perfect human being. Disc Horses react negatively to people with the wrong opinions, even ones they expressed in the past but no longer hold. They do not believe in personal growth, which succeeds in keeping them safe from genuine bad faith actors or harassers, but makes them difficult for normal people to engage with fruitfully.

Now that you’ve found your own Disc Horse, start out by introducing yourself with a Take. The heat of the Take should exceed your standing in the eyes of other Disc Horse riders around you, but only barely - overreaching with a Take that is too hot for the Disc Horse will cause that heat to be reflected back on you. Try starting with a friendly, banal meme - a “bards are like x; clerics are like y” type format should work well, or, failing that, the old favourite about the “players ‘derailing‘ the DM’s ‘plans’”.

Once you’ve made your first lukewarm Take, you should have a few hundred retweets and likes to get started with. Use this initial boost to make steadily hotter Takes - but, again, be careful not to get too hot just yet. Aim for the temperature of a forgotten baked potato. For instance, try suggesting that games other than D&D 5e exist, or that 5th Edition is “not good at narrative”.

Important: make sure that you don’t criticise or address the actual root causes of these problems/controversies! Taking aim at Hasbro’s capitalist hegemony or acknowledging that D&D is as much a storygame as anything else because of how TTRPG mechanics function in table-centric play are too hot for beginner riders.

Congratulations! A few thousand retweets later, you should now be successfully riding your Disc Horse. Keep making lukewarm takes and things should be smooth from here on out, until you are inevitably caught being less than optimally woke. Remember to constantly and vocally decry any perceived issues, in order to keep stocked on retweets and ensure that your fellow riders believe in your moral purity and infallible judgement for as long as possible (becoming Not Perfect at this stage is worse than having been imperfect from the start, and can result in Cancellation, a fate worse than death).

A few things to remember:

- Disc Horses are cyclical by nature. Expect to see the same issues crop up daily/weekly. Make sure your reaction is just as outraged, if not more so, each time.

- The method of riding Disc Horses is somewhat different for creators of marginalised identities: ensure that your retweets come from established white, male riders to ensure you are taken seriously.

- For an extra boost in retweets, try featuring on an episode of a Twitch-sponsored actual play run by a member of the North American entertainment or marketing industries! The money involved makes you worthy of attention.

- Even when you are Perfect and Good, some people will still disagree with you. The fact that these people have different opinions than yours makes them inherently evil. If you get contrasting opinions in your mentions, don’t worry - just quote-tweet them with a pithy dunk to score even more retweets!

You can play games sometimes if you’d like, but never forget that the thing really keeping you going is talking about them online.

And finally, if you’ll let me be sincere for just a moment...

Never forget that the thing you love, the thing that makes your heart lift or your brain buzz or your jimmies rustle just right, is making games and playing them with your friends. Anything outside of that is chaff. Conversations about or around a thing are part of the thing, but an ancillary one, and not the whole thing.

You may be lucky enough to find other folks who enjoy games with their friends in the same way you do with yours. People from places you’ve never been to, whose stories look so different from your own, united by a shared interest - not an interest in games, but what games can do for people. The fact that they also have friends whom they love. Support these people, and if you like the things they make, do so openly and loudly.

Spend all the energy you would spend tearing harmless ideas down on building up your own. Spend the time you would spend being angry at people you don’t know on being joyful with those you do. Learn why people like things, and move on if you don’t as well. Don’t use tools meant for tearing down structural injustice to tear down people.

Yes - try to be good and kind, listen to people who don’t get listened to enough, and shut out those whose actions or beliefs make them genuinely dangerous. But then - immediately afterwards - get right back to making good* things for good* people. Make ten great games in the time they spend making you feel like you can’t make one. Make them for yourself.

Take time away if you need it. The you that is small and soft and made of juice is as real as the you that is enormous and powerful and will change the world for the better. Take care of each so the other may thrive. We’ll be here when you get back.

If you really, truly, want meaningful conversations about games with people online? Make the games.

And the second you find yourself in anything resembling a “fandom”, ride that Disc Horse the fuck outta there x

(*not perfect. just good enough.)

further BUTCHERY

The farmhouse door bursts open, and a young woman steps out, brandishing a pitchfork. She is very thin and pale, tall with fair hair that falls limp about her dirty and stubborn face.

The butchers tell her that they have come for the witch. The girl seems confused, but since they seem to mean her no harm she asks the men for aid. Not knowing that Ivar has just done the same, she offers payment if they’ll find the root of the blight that plagues this valley, and has affected her family worst of all these past months.

Allas shoots a knowing look to Dannoll. Twice the reward.

The two accept the girl’s offer, tie their horses to a fence post and stoop inside the home. Within is a warm hearth, two beds, a crooked table with three stools, and little else. On one of the stools sits an older woman, cradling a baby to her breast and staring into the fire.

She does not look up as the butchers enter, nor does her glassy gaze falter as the younger woman tells her that these men have come to help. The younger woman apologises, telling them that since her father’s passing nearly two months ago, her mother has barely spoken.

Allas and Dannoll inquire further, sensitive to the girl’s troubles but clinical in their pursuit of information, like physicians seeking a diagnosis. They learn that the babe is her baby sister, both the other woman’s children, born around the time her father died - and also that there was another child who did not survive. This is no inherent surprise, and the family like many have lost children before, but seeing a faint picture of the truth begin to form the pair ask where the deceased have been buried. There is a grave, the young woman tells them, on the other side of the wheat field.

The two waste no time in setting out, hopping the low fence into the field. Blackened crop falls apart beneath their strides, the smell of decay filling the air.

Then Allas hears a sound. Something rustles from the tall stalks that now surround them. Dalton draws his spear and Allas his meat hook, just in time for a pair of bloated, dog-sized insects to burst out, round mouths chittering with sharp teeth, yellow-green abdomens bulging and heavy.

These are monsters - unnatural beings brought on by humankind’s meddling in Nature. Nature cannot suffer them to live - and it is a Butcher’s duty to enact her will.

The pair set to work, displaying with grim efficiency the skills that earned them their title. Dannoll pierces the gross abdomen of one of the creatures - to his peril, as the wound spurts acid up his arm, burning him. The stuck fiend squeals, running up the spear’s haft as Dannoll retracts his arm and managing to graze the man’s face with its mandibles before he flings it to the ground again.

Allas, seeing his friend’s plight, aims for the creatures legs, landing a sweeping hit with his hook. Dannoll grabs his net, weighted and threaded with the same silver that is forged into all butchers’ tools, and flings it over the remaining monster, trapping it.

Allas hacks away the rest of the first monster’s legs, rendering it immobile, screeching. Dannoll stabs at the trapped one as it writhes and scrapes its way free of the net - to no avail. Soon, both are dispatched.

The men clean their tools. They discuss theories based on the research of similar monsters - these things feed on pollution. Monsters they may be, but they were attracted to the rot, not its cause.

Taking a vial from his pouch, Allas leans in close to the spear wound his friend left, and collects some acid. Most of the carcasses are too damaged to harvest, but a butcher knows to take samples when they can.

The sun is sinking lower, almost at the horizon, as the pair trudge through more decaying chaff to find a clearing at the field’s far boundary. Three cairns here stand - one, grown with weeds and weathered by age such that it barely resembles a pile of stones, the next far newer, and the third likewise fresh, but smaller.

Dannoll pauses for a second, the grimness of the situation not lost on him. But they are butchers first, and have a job to do. If there was witchcraft afoot here, they theorise together, then the timing of the recent deaths in this family cannot be a coincidence. They don’t know exactly what they expect to find here, but it’s the best lead they have.

They start to dig.

Dannoll moves black soil, thinking that it looks as though it were disturbed more recently than a month ago, while Allas starts a small fire. The first chill of evening settles into the air as the sun turns dark red and sinks lower still.

Six feet down is a small box.

The fire will cleanse any trace of witchcraft, and should break the spell. That’s old, winter magic. Respectfully leaving it closed, Dannoll places the box on the flames. They flicker, lick and char the wood, beginning to take.

The sun sets. The box rattles.

*

... And that’s your lot. Our tale concludes next week.

Let’s get into the mechanics of what’s happening here, specifically in the fight with the bugs. In some games a lot of that would be pure flavour over a series of to-hit rolls, but with BUTCHERY all the detail in there came organically from the mechanics!

(I like my game, ok? Humour me.)

So combat in BUTCHERY is pretty simple. Players take turns however they’d like. You get one important action on your turn - get to a particular position, use an item, standard fictional positioning stuff. Some of these are gonna be resolved with checks - there’s a basic d10 roll-under thing by way of a “standard resolution” mechanic.

If a butcher is engaging a foe in combat at all, they do a different type of roll, with 1d6 and 1d10. The 1d10 functions a lot like the standard roll-under check, except it does a couple of things:
- if it rolls under (or equal to) the character’s AGI stat, they evade the monster’s retaliation.
- if it rolls under (or equal to) the character’s Skill level in the Tool they’re using, the attack can be a killing blow.

There’s a lot of jargon in that second one so I’ll unpack it a bit in a sec. Firstly, the “retaliation” thing - monsters don’t get turns in combat. They just auto-succeed on a hit if you engage them or if you’re still in range of their attacks from the last round (i.e you didn’t spend this turn defending or moving). The AGI check part of the d10 roll lets you know at a glance if they hit - PCs have 6HP, lose 1 on a hit (and roll a location die if you want to know where you get a cool scar). And the monster action is called a retaliation because obviously they can do more than just attack if they so wish!

The Tool thing: Tools are weapons or anything else a butcher uses in combat. Specially made stuff, like a Witcher’s silver sword. PC attacks always hit - just like the monsters’ attacks - but if your d10 hits the sweet spot of the Tool you’re using it can do more than just damage. There are a bunch of situational rules depending on the monster - more on that next time, don’t worry it’s all v simple - but the main thing is that only a “success” can kill the monster outright. You can wail on it and do damage for free, but important hits need that low d10.

That’s a lot of info packed into the lil d10 roll! But I’ve found it’s super quick to parse, not least because the roll-under system makes it mathless and easy for everyone at the table to work out each little bit of the result at a glance.

As for the d6...

I mentioned it above, but BUTCHERY has hit locations. On PCs they’re mainly just a fun and optional bit of flavour, but for monsters they’re crucial to how the game’s investigative combat style plays out.

And that’s what I’ll cover next time, along with the final part of this session’s play report.

Hope you like what you’ve seen of BUTCHERY so far - stay tuned if so, because I’m looking into getting it into your hands soon so you can have a play for yourselves :)

a little BUTCHERY

The butchers Dannoll and Allas are travelling on horseback along a long country lane, winding through hills, fields and farmland.

No birds sing. Before long, the fields they pass begin to smell. The crops are sickly, wilted and blackened, with each field yet worse than the last.

Hearing hooves behind them, the butchers pause by the roadside, dismounting. Allas hides his silvered hook beneath his cape, small crossbow also loaded and ready at his side - but the precaution is not needed. The riders pass, barely owing the men a glance. These are ordinary folk, peasants in makeshift and scavenged armour, holding old blades and farm tools as weapons.

The butchers follow at a distance, still wary, and come across the ragtag band stopped and deep in conversation, their horses circled and shuffling nervously. A lane leads off the road to a tiny farmhouse, with a hay barn in the dirt patch out back and a field of festering wheat beside it.

The folk argue. Whatever their mission, they’ve faltered, hushed voices raised in dissent. Among the snatches overheard are calls to retreat, to make new plans, and one word repeated - “witch”.

Seeing the butchers approach, and recognising them as such by their bearing and silvery tools of the trade, the leader of the riders hails them. Introducing himself as Ivar, he suggests to the strangers, and his own band, that they could pay a professional to do their work. This seems to satisfy the others, and Ivar asks the butchers their price for dealing with a witch.

It transpires, as Ivar tells it, that crops all through this wide valley have been struck by a blight that has lasted over a month now. After some investigation, he and his militia - the guard for a nearby township - have found the epicentre of the rot to be this very field. Nowhere is the blight worse than here, and it seems to spread from this spot in all directions. Believing a witch’s curse to be at fault, and blaming the woman that lives here, they had come to deal justice... though would be glad of a butcher’s aid.

Seeing that these are poor folk, and wanting little for coin, Dannoll suggests that they be paid in supplies for the road. The group agrees, turning to head back along the road, eager to leave.

The pair, glad to ply their trade but still apprehensive, approach the farmstead.

Aaaand if you want to know what happens next, come back next time.

The above is an actual play report from the first ever session of a new game I’ve been working on for my home group. Here’s how this all came about:

Dec 24th: Watching the new Witcher series (a solid 3 Stars from the Graverobbers Guide) with my partner, I remember there’s a Witcher tabletop game. I browse the pdf on my phone that night, imagining it might be fun to try with my group, the rest of whom are fans too.

It doesn’t seem like my kind of game exactly, so I begin houseruling in the back of my mind. By the time I fall asleep, I’ve scrapped most-to-all of the original and am considering making a new system.

Dec 25th: No time for work. Food, family. The ideas bounce around the back of my brain.

Dec 26th: Yes, this’d make a decent game. Not much more thought put into it, though the ideas are more solid now. Departed from the inspiration somewhat. Finish the series (very much 3 Stars).

Dec 27th: Ask folks round for games the next evening.

Dec 28th: Scribble my ideas on the back of an envelope, think up a quick starter adventure. Playtest over dinner.

It was a hit. I’m having fun with this one. Some notes on the system so far, since I know that’s what you’re here for:

- kind of still the Witcher but also Monster Hunter and a dash of Etrian Odyssey, plus tons of my own low fantasy preferences - big themes of Nature and humanity’s odd place as being both Of and Outside the “natural order”, and also how that natural order is harsh and amoral. Early Britain and Sengoku Japan and all my faves.

- aggressively picaresque, fuck a monomyth. Episodic adventures that feel like short stories or Witcher 3 sidequests. Still tweaking the tone but it’s much more Mononoke now.

- Combat as sport?! But still brutal. Weird mechanics, PCs do one roll that governs a bunch of details and that’s their turn, HP is different, there’s aiming and hit locations are a thing. Already sounds disgustingly crunchy compared to my normal fare but it’s oddly seamless in play. Calling it “investigative combat”?

- Magic is magical, no spells or anything. There’s alignment but it’s different and also good now

- monsters need stat blocks because of how some mechanics are but it’s hugely fun to write for (while I normally spend literally 0 time on that kind of thing) and I’ve never seen players more engaged in a fight.

- Easy to GM once the prep is done (took me an hour? Prewritten adventures wouldn’t need a second). Never felt bogged down by mechanics, most of that is player facing and seemed intuitive enough.

- Planned for an hour’s character creation + mini adventure, played all evening. We were all into it, plus lots of feedback which is great.

Been drafting a rule book and it’s pretty much done barring further playtests. Miiight do a ZineQuest?

Also I want to try and do at least one con this year so if you do UK RPG cons and know a good one, bug me to come and I’ll run a game for you.

Next post will be the next instalment in the play report, with any progress on the game made between now and then. (General trigger warning for the rest of the story as it deals with some darker themes, but if you’ve played or watched the inspirations I mention above it’ll be nothing you can’t handle.)

The Haunting of Ypsilon 14

Last year I wrote an official module for the Mothership RPG. Up until it was only available as a pamphlet handout at conventions - now it’s available for download.

The Haunting of Ypsilon 14 is a zero-prep, one shot adventure for the 2019 Ennies’ Best Game Mothership. Along with the core rules, this quick little adventure is an easy introduction for new players or easily inserted into a larger campaign.

Download it via TKG’s itch page or DriveThru and get 3 free in-universe audio files to play during the adventure and really freak out ya bois.

What’s haunting the mining base on Ypsilon 14?

Twelfth Night Heist

I just finished writing an adventure on Twitter made of 12 tweets, one for each of the 12 days of Christmas. Check it out here!

I’m reasonably happy with how it all turned out. Sticking to the theme of the song was a fun constraint, though I had to get a little loose with it at times to keep things coherent. Making everything up as I went was fun, but meant I was stretching a little to tie a bow on things by the end, especially with the character limit. I’d treat this as a first draft - there are bits I’d adapt or change if I ever reworked it in another format.

System-neutral of course, but if you want something to run it with that emphasises the stealth elements, try GRAVEROBBERS ;)

Graverobbing 101

Happy New Year!

This is the 101st post I’ve made here. That means there’s a d100 table of Graverobber’s Guide posts to go back and read if you missed ‘em the first time round!

But are they all worth reading? Probably not! This is a place for me to splurge a lot of half-formed ideas and fleeting opinions. Do I stand by everything I’ve said in these last 100 posts? Hell no!

With that in mind, I’ve quickly curated a list of what I consider the 10 most immediately useful posts I’ve made in the last couple of years. Roll a d10 and pick one to peruse!

And if you’re new, this should serve as a half-decent introduction to what I do here. (The 101 thing being a play on words, because it’s the... y‘know, like in school? With... and the 101st post, so... so it’s... you get it.)

1: Bell Peppers and Beef. A mechanic that replaces money, for games where you want your players to struggle.

2: Building a GM’s Oracle. Steps on how, and why, you should build a bespoke random generator for your game - that makes your work as a GM easier and better.

3: The Mountain (a 200 word campaign). A gameable fantasy setting in 200 words. Try writing your own!

4: Calliope. A whimsical setting for any fantasy RPG composed of d10 tables just like this one. Fits into your game as a pocket dimension, and facilitates non-violent problem solving.

5: Adventure Collection 2018. Some adventures wot I did two whole years ago! Pick one you like the look of. (The Witch’s List is a favourite for many.)

6: Marrying Off Your Player Characters for Fun and Profit. If you haven’t proposed to your player (‘s characters) yet, why not?

7: To Hurtle Through Hell. Setting details, spells and a table of random viscera. A twist on planar travel and teleportation for any setting.

8: Magicienne (OSR Class). A magic-using class based on real life performance magic. Works in any fantasy system with a little tweaking.

9: Away With the Faeries (a racial mechanic). A replacement for alignment, and a dice mechanic that could be reworked to many different purposes.

10: The Graverobber’s Guide to Gardening. Plants for your dungeon-fantasy game setting. Why not make even random flora into gameable detail for your players to engage with?

*

Over two years and 100 posts later, I’m incredibly grateful for the support this blog has received. It’s been a sounding board for ideas, a gathering point for great discussions (RIP G+), and my way into a community of varied and amazing individuals of all identities from literally all over the world.

Every single time I post here I doubt the validity of what I’m doing, but you folks have welcomed and supported me the whole way. I’ve gotten jobs here, completed my own projects on scales I’d never thought of before, and worked and chatted with some truly awesome people.

Thanks for your support, whether it was a purchase, a donation, a like or comment or +1, sharing my stuff around or just being part of this space and reading my rambles.

Here’s to new heights, in 2020 and beyond.

Happy gaming x